#I actually had a ridiculous amount of fun writing this

[pamelaiscrying]

Off your hands

A kenan yildiz fanfic

Summary: you and kenan are childhood rivals yet one night brings you closer than what you expected.

Notes: i was so tempted to write greek!Reader but i know most of my followers arent greek 🥲☝️

Kenan Yildiz was charming to the public—charismatic, talented, effortlessly likable. But to you? He was a lifelong headache.

Your history with him stretched back to your preteen years, where his idea of fun was pulling the most ridiculous pranks on you. By high school, your rivalry had evolved into heated arguments—especially over who had the right to the field during recess: the volleyball team or the football team.

You thought you’d left all of that behind after graduation. You swore you’d never see him again. But fate had other plans.

Both of you had been picked up by teams in Turin.

“Fuck Yildiz,” you muttered before downing a generous gulp of alcohol, feeling the familiar burn at the back of your throat. “He’s everywhere. I turn my fucking head, and there he is.”

“To be fair, Y/N, aside from playing in the same city, you also share the same social circle,” Chiara pointed out, ever the voice of reason.

She wasn’t wrong, but that didn’t mean you had to like it. You had spent months perfecting the art of avoiding Kenan Yildiz, making sure to steer clear of any event he might attend. Yet, here you were—at a party you hadn’t wanted to come to in the first place, all because Chiara had a crush on him.

“Whatever. I didn’t know that before I accepted the invitation,” you muttered bitterly, shifting your attention elsewhere.

Specifically, to Nicolo Savona—Kenan’s teammate.

Unlike Kenan, Nicolo was everything you liked in a man. Sweet, considerate, always making sure to ask how your day was and throwing in a compliment that actually felt genuine. You had been interested in him for a while now. Maybe tonight was the night you’d finally make a move—

A breath ghosted against your ear, sending a shiver down your spine.

“He’s not into uptight chicks.”

You startled slightly, immediately recognizing the voice. Kenan.

Your jaw clenched as you turned to glare at him. “First of all, come up behind me like that again, and I swear I’ll smack you. Second of all, shut the hell up.”

He only laughed, taking a slow sip from his cup. “Just saying. Wouldn’t want you to get your hopes up just to be let down.”

Your blood boiled. “You have an insane amount of aud—”

Before you could finish, he cut you off, turning to Chiara with an easy smile.

“Hey, Chiara. Sorry for ignoring you. Wanna dance?”

Chiara’s eyes lit up. “Oh my god, yes!”

She practically threw her drink into your hands, giving you an apologetic look before disappearing into the crowd with him.

You stared after them, grip tightening around the cup.

Of course, once again you end up lonely in a mansion full of people..not even a fucking room.

Harsh.

The music pulsed through the mansion, laughter and conversation blending into an indistinct hum. Around you, people were having fun—dancing, flirting, drinking like they had no worries in the world. Chiara was already wrapped up in Kenan’s orbit, smiling and twirling under the dim party lights.

You weren’t jealous. Not of her, not of him.

At least, that’s what you told yourself.

Still, something inside you twisted, a strange hollowness settling in your chest. You needed air.

Without saying a word, you slipped away from the main room, weaving through bodies until you found an empty lounge deeper inside the mansion. It was dimly lit, the golden glow from the bar casting long shadows against the sleek furniture. A few discarded bottles sat on the counter—expensive liquor left untouched.

Perfect.

You poured yourself a drink, downing it quickly before pouring another. And another.

At first, the alcohol warmed you, numbing the edges of whatever emotion you didn’t want to name. But as you kept drinking, the warmth turned to fire, coursing through your veins, making your limbs feel lighter. The world blurred at the edges, and suddenly, everything felt… easier.

Somewhere along the way, you wandered back into the main room, the music vibrating through your chest. People were moving, laughing, lost in the beat.

You felt light. You felt reckless.

And then, somehow, you found yourself on a table.

You weren’t sure how you got up there, but at this point, it didn’t matter. The music pulsed beneath your feet, and you let it take over, your body swaying, moving, completely uninhibited. Laughter bubbled from your lips as you twirled, arms lifting above your head.

Someone whistled. People cheered.

The music pulsed through the mansion, laughter and conversation blending into an indistinct hum. Around you, people were having fun—dancing, flirting, drinking like they had no worries in the world. Chiara was already wrapped up in Kenan’s orbit, smiling and twirling under the dim party lights.

You weren’t jealous. Not of her, not of him.

At least, that’s what you told yourself.

Still, something inside you twisted, a strange hollowness settling in your chest. You needed air.

Without saying a word, you slipped away from the main room, weaving through bodies until you found an empty lounge deeper inside the mansion. It was dimly lit, the golden glow from the bar casting long shadows against the sleek furniture. A few discarded bottles sat on the counter—expensive liquor left untouched.

Perfect.

You poured yourself a drink, downing it quickly before pouring another. And another.

At first, the alcohol warmed you, numbing the edges of whatever emotion you didn’t want to name. But as you kept drinking, the warmth turned to fire, coursing through your veins, making your limbs feel lighter. The world blurred at the edges, and suddenly, everything felt… easier.

Somewhere along the way, you wandered back into the main room, the music vibrating through your chest. People were moving, laughing, lost in the beat.

You felt light. You felt reckless.

And then, somehow, you found yourself on a table.

You weren’t sure how you got up there, but at this point, it didn’t matter. The music pulsed beneath your feet, and you let it take over, your body swaying, moving, completely uninhibited. Laughter bubbled from your lips as you twirled, arms lifting above your head.

Someone whistled. People cheered.

The music pounded in your ears, drowning out everything—your thoughts, your loneliness, the gnawing emptiness that had followed you all night. The alcohol coursing through your veins made you feel weightless, reckless, untouchable.

You swayed to the music, arms above your head, letting the rhythm take over.

Then—hands.

At first, it was fleeting. Fingers brushing against your ankles, your calves. Maybe accidental. Maybe not.

Then bolder. A palm on the back of your knee, sliding up. Another set of fingers tracing the hem of your dress, teasing, testing. A murmur, a laugh from below.

Your mind felt slow, the alcohol thick in your bloodstream. You swayed again, blinking down at the sea of faces, at the hands reaching for you like you were something to be taken.

Your stomach twisted. Something felt wrong, but your limbs were heavy, your thoughts sluggish. You told yourself to move, to step down, but the floor felt too far away.

More laughter. More hands. Your skin still burned where they had touched you, laughter ringing in your ears, but you couldn’t focus, couldn’t move.

Then—

“Hands off of her”

The voice was low, sharp, and filled with something dangerous. The hands vanished instantly, retreating like shadows in the presence of something stronger.

Before you could register what was happening, arms wrapped around you, lifting you effortlessly from the table. The floor tilted beneath you, your head falling against something solid—warm, steady. A familiar scent clung to the fabric against your cheek, stirring something in the fog of your mind.

Kenan.

“L—leave me alone,” you slurred, weakly pressing your hands against him. It was pathetic, your limbs useless, heavy with alcohol.

“Shut up, Y/N,” he muttered, his grip tightening as he carried you through the crowd.

No one stopped him. No one questioned it. They just watched—some amused, some indifferent, like this was just another moment in a night that would be forgotten by morning.

A door creaked open. Cool air brushed against your burning skin.

Then it shut.

And just like that, the noise, the crowd, the wandering hands—all of it was gone.

Only Kenan remained.

The cool air of the room did nothing to clear the fog in your head. The spinning wouldn’t stop, your body felt disconnected from itself, and the only thing grounding you was the warmth of the arms that still held you.

Then, suddenly, you weren’t weightless anymore. Kenan dropped you onto the bed—not gently, not carefully, just enough to make you bounce slightly against the mattress.

“Are you a fucking idiot?” His voice was sharp, edged with something raw, something furious.

You blinked up at him, your vision swimming. “Wha—?”

Kenan ran a hand through his hair, pacing once before turning back to you. His jaw was clenched, his dark eyes burning with something you couldn’t name. “What the hell were you thinking?”

You tried to sit up, but your limbs felt like they weren’t yours, the alcohol still pulling you down. “I was—having fun,” you mumbled, rubbing at your temples.

Kenan let out a bitter laugh, shaking his head. “Fun? Yeah, looked like a fucking blast, letting those bastards put their hands all over you.”

His words should’ve stung, but everything felt distant, muffled, like you were underwater. You exhaled heavily, turning your head away. “Not your problem.”

He moved before you could react, crouching down in front of you, forcing you to look at him. His eyes locked onto yours, dark and unreadable.

“Like hell it isn’t.”

Your breath caught in your throat. The room still swayed, but Kenan was steady—too steady, too close. His hands pressed into the mattress on either side of you, trapping you in place. You could smell the faint trace of alcohol on him, but he wasn’t drunk. Not like you.

Kenan scoffed, running a frustrated hand through his hair before his eyes locked onto you again, burning with something close to disgust.

“You let yourself fall this low? Letting strangers put their hands on you? For what—Nicolo’s attention?” He let out a bitter laugh. “That’s a new all-time low, Y/N.”

Your blood boiled. The fog of alcohol didn’t dull the anger clawing its way up your throat. You pushed yourself up on shaky arms, glaring at him through blurry vision.

“Don’t fucking talk, Mr. ‘I fuck everything that moves.’”

Kenan didn’t even flinch. If anything, his expression darkened, something sharp flickering behind his eyes. Then, he took a step closer, voice dropping.

“Maybe that’s why you act like you hate me.” He tilted his head, watching you carefully. “Because that night, I never made a move on you.”

Your stomach twisted.

You knew exactly what night he was talking about.

That disastrous double date when you were seventeen.

It had been set up by mutual friends—something casual, something fun. You didn’t even want to step a foot at first but promised your friend to make the effort; But from the moment you arrived, Kenan had made it clear you weren’t worth his attention. He spent the entire night flirting with the older waitress, ignoring every attempt you made at conversation, making sure you knew exactly where you stood. Not only that but he didn’t even return you at home just dumped you on the bus station.

He had made sure to shutter your ego and any self respect that you had built.

You had told yourself you didn’t care. That it didn’t matter.

But the memory still burned, even now.

Your nails dug into the sheets, your body tense, but Kenan didn’t back off. If anything, he leaned in, his voice lower now, rough around the edges.

“Admit it, Y/N.” His eyes flickered down to your parted lips before meeting your gaze again. “That’s what really pisses you off, isn’t it?”

Your jaw tightened, the alcohol still buzzing in your veins, but the anger cut through it like a blade.

“I’m glad you never did,” you spat, your voice sharp, laced with venom. “I’m not into fucking manwhores.”

Kenan didn’t flinch. He barely even reacted, his expression unreadable. But something flickered in his eyes—something dark, something amused.

Then, slowly, he smirked.

“You can act like you hate me all you want,” he murmured, voice low, deliberate. “But we both know the truth.”

Your stomach twisted, a heat rising to your skin that had nothing to do with the alcohol.

You hated him.

Didn’t you?

The words slipped from your mouth before you could even stop them, the bitter truth clawing its way out. “W-what truth? That I find you disgusting? Yes.”

You tried to shove him away, but your hands were weak, too shaky to push him back. He didn’t move an inch, his gaze heavy and piercing, as if he could see straight through you, into every thought you were trying to keep buried.

“What truth, Y/N?” His voice was low, rough, as his hand inched further up your thigh, the touch sending a wave of heat that had nothing to do with the alcohol. “That you want me just as much as you hate me?”

Your breath caught in your throat, heart pounding, as you stared back at him. You tried to speak, to shove him away, but your body betrayed you, feeling like it was pulled in two directions. You hated him. You did—but there was a part of you, hidden deep down, that wanted him just as badly.

“Move,” you whispered, your voice barely audible, strained. But instead of stepping back, his hand moved higher, the pressure of his fingers against your skin like fire. You could feel the tension between you, thick, unbearable.

Then, he leaned down, his lips brushing the shell of your ear, his breath hot against your skin. “You can keep pretending you don’t want this.” His voice dropped, almost a growl. “But we both know the truth.”

Before you could protest, before you could form another thought, his lips captured yours in a kiss—hard, desperate, demanding. His hand moved from your thigh to your waist, pulling you closer, your body pressed against his with an intensity that left no room for escape.

You kissed him back before you could stop yourself, the heat of his mouth on yours sparking something inside you, something you had tried so hard to keep buried. But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Not the anger. Not the hate.

You pull away, your lips trembling as the charged silence stretches between you. Your eyes flash with raw emotion as you growl, “I hate you.”

A crooked smile tugs at his lips. In a low, husky voice he replies, “I hate you too.”

The moment your lips met his again, everything else disappeared. The anger, the history between you two—none of it mattered anymore. All that existed was the heat of his kiss, the way his body pressed against yours with a desperation you couldn’t ignore.

Your breath hitched, and you tried to push him away, but your body was betraying you. Every part of you was drawn to him—his touch, his scent, the way he made you feel as if you were on fire. You hated him. You did. But your body responded in a way you couldn’t control.

Kenan’s hands gripped your waist, pulling you closer, and the roughness of his touch only made it harder to fight. He growled against your lips, his voice thick with something primal. “Stop fighting this.”

You didn’t know if you wanted to slap him or kiss him harder, but before you could even process what was happening, he lifted you easily, pressing your body against the wall. His lips moved to your neck, leaving a trail of heat and tension that made you gasp. You didn’t want this. Didn’t want him. But in that moment, the way he touched you, the way he made you feel, everything else was drowned out.

You found yourself tugging at his shirt, pulling it over his head, desperate to feel his skin against yours. The heat between you was undeniable, and even though your mind screamed at you to stop, your body refused to listen.

Your heart raced as your hands explored his chest, the hardness of his body under your fingertips sending jolts of electricity through you. “Don’t stop,” you whispered breathlessly, the words escaping before you could stop them.

Kenan smirked, his lips brushing your ear as he whispered back, “I don’t plan to.”

And just like that, you gave in—lost in the overwhelming pull of desire. Without another word, your lips meet again in a desperate search of finding warmth; a body to belong to even if its just for a night.

There was no chiara, no nicolo and no anyone else just the bittersweet revenge after all those years.

[cjbennet]

IMO Charlastors are the modern Reylos

I mean we keep getting the biggest pile of poo 'cause 'it erases ace representation'. But I've never seen this argument applied to RadioApple and etc...

And let's be honest. We aaaaall know it has nothing to do with noble act of asexuality protection. People hate this ship for the same reason as to why Supernatural never had any prominent female characters: misogyny and jealousy.

Opinions of the post author do not represent opinions of this blog. I said what I said.

But I'm off the track.

Yeah, so reylos. I've been a shipper since the first movie (I can give you the reasons why but not now). The amount of hate we were getting - oooof, gurl. You need at least 28 hours in a day to write that much of wrathful essay.

But reylos just continued to be. Unstoppable in enjoying in what they liked. Bulletproof almost. Like, you get constant hate in the comments but you don't care. Because you have better things to do in life.

And after 10 years (jesus christ) look who's laughing? You can buy "reylo" books in every bookshop.

Is that good for literature? Deeeeebatable, BUT the fact still stands. Slow and steady wins the race.

I see the same thing happening to the charlastor ship: getting shit - don't care, it's ragtime party!

I love it❤ it's a crack ship, we love it. That's all there's to it.

It. Just. Fun. Period.

We just want to and actually do have fun with it like with a favorite hobby.

Idk even those I'm procrastinating myself now writing this post, I believe there are better things to do with your time than sending offended messages to people you don't know. For liking radiobelle

Really, bitch?

Btw where DO you get this much time?? I'm always busy doing something. And that offended 3000-word essay must have taken some time to write.

Aaaaaand (again, as with reylo) the show was ridiculously charlastor coded. Like, I wanted to represent Alastor as ace, no-no lovey-dovey, I would've been embarrassed.

Someone, get the creators a class in visual-contextual storytelling. 'Cause yiiiiikes.

[gulliesforever]

Hi @gingerandcelery my good friend and brother in Mir @gingerandcelery! I was your gifter this year!

I made you a fic with accompanying art entitled "Time After Time". It’s about Amir getting into an unfortunately large shenanigan — one that involves the delicate concept of time. Fortunately, some of your favorite Jake and Amir characters might be able to help... if he'll let them, that is.

Full arts in better quality under the cut because AO3's embed feature is horrendous with quality. Fair warning though, you might want to look at these after you read the fic, since they are beats in the story and thus spoilers!

Hope you like it and happy holidays to you :)!!!

[snoopyracing]

grapes and good fortune // ln4

pairing: lando norris X reader

word count: 4.7k

warnings: cursing and alcohol use

includes: friends to lovers, mutual pining, and fluff

summary: when your plan to find love on new year's eve doesn't work a certain someone may just fix those plans.

a/n: surprise! here's a cute little lando nye fic for you! it was so fun to write and i hope you all enjoy :)

masterlist

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

It’s not the end of the world to be single. You’ve gone your whole life technically being single– each guy you’ve had a thing with never resulted in a full fledged relationship. It never really seemed to bother you that much, you’d learned to be more independent and learned that your time is in fact more valuable than men think. Though, as the years passed and your friends started to get into serious relationships you couldn’t help but feel a little left behind.

You knew everyone’s time would come and seriously you were in your early to mid twenties – you still had a whole lifetime ahead of you. But the third wheeling you seemed to be a professional at by now was starting to get embarrassing. Also, holidays just really seemed to suck while being single. You knew there was more to life than being in a relationship, but god dammit you’re a human. You crave love and affection and no matter how independent you are– you still want to love and be loved. 

Your friend group had unsuccessfully tried setting you up with more guys than you could count. Each one you really did try and give a chance, but there was nothing there. You didn’t think you had high standards by any means, but if you didn’t feel anything with these guys then why waste your time? 

“You went on how many dates this month and none of them piqued your interest?” Your friend grills you as the two of you are sitting on the balcony of your apartment. You’d come back from another unsuccessful date and decided to drown your sorrows with a bottle of wine and a yapping session. 

“Genuinely think there might be something wrong with me at this point.” You complain as you sip the sweet wine in your glass. 

“There isn’t anything wrong with you.” The two dates a week for the past month say different, but you weren’t going to actually disclose that number to her. “Maybe your heart has already laid claim to someone else?” 

“I think I would know if I was in love with someone.” She doesn’t say anything, but the way she inconspicuously sips her wine is telling you what she’s wanting to say. “Not this again.” 

She puts her hands up in defense all while having a shit eating grin on her face. “I didn’t even say anything, but you immediately assuming that’s who I’m talking about says it all.” 

“I’m not in love with Lando.” 

Yes you were. 

“I mean he’s one of my closest friends and it would just make things weird. He also for sure does not look at me in any way other than platonic. He’s got models flocking to him and literally thousands of other girls– I couldn’t compete.” Your friend remains silent once again as she sips her wine and watches the scene in front of her unfold. “Ok– just because I drunkenly admitted last year that I might possibly have a little tiny miniscule amount of feelings towards him does not mean I’m in love with him.” 

“Yes it does.” Your friend replies without missing a beat. 

“No it doesn’t” You say with a huff. 

“Y/N, babe. You don’t see what everyone else sees and maybe your brain is trying to protect itself from the small chance of destruction, but you two are so in love it’s actually ridiculous.” 

“I don’t think he’s looking for a relationship right now. If this season so far is any indication of what next season is gonna be like, do you really think he’ll want a serious relationship to juggle too?” You’d chugged the last bit of wine in your glass and immediately filled it back up. 

A loud scoff comes from your friend. “With some girl he just met? No. You are a whole different story though. You two have history and are quite literally each other’s person. Two peas in a pod. Match made in heaven.” 

You didn’t understand why your friend was so adamant about Lando and you getting together. What if it ended in flames and your friend group is stuck having to play children of divorce? You don’t want that. 

“Do you hear yourself right now? I think you’ve had too much wine because that’s not true.” 

She sits up on the edge of the wicker couch with an annoyed expression painted across her face  “Do you hear yourself? I’ve never seen someone deny themselves happiness like you.” 

“I don’t think I have actual feelings for Lando though. I really think it’s just because we are the only two single people in our friend group and it’s like I feel obligated to somehow have feelings for him. I just need to find the right person and whatever I may be feeling about Lando will go away.” 

If someone could professionally roll their eyes your friend would be a pro. “You’ve already found the right person though!”

Before you can argue back for the hundredth time tonight the familiar tune of an incoming facetime call fills the air. Your phone that’s sitting on the glass coffee table lights up and Lando’s face fills the screen. You glance over at your friend who’s got a smirk on her face that could rival the Cheshire Cat. 

“Speak of the devil.” She laughs. 

You let it ring, fully knowing that if you answer it your friend will be insufferable the whole time you’re talking to him. You do send him a quick text to make sure everything's alright and of course he immediately responds with-

everything's all right.. just missed you is all. 

Which has you locking your phone and stuffing it in the pocket of your hoodie. When you reach for your glass and realize it’s empty again you decide to just grab the bottle and drink straight from it. 

“Drinking from the bottle because you’ve come to terms with how dumb you’ve been?” Your friend teases. 

“Nope. It’s from having to deal with you all evening.” 

Alright so maybe you did have actual feelings for Lando, but you were never going to fully admit that to your friend or anyone else for that matter. You didn’t want to risk ruining what you two already had, which was an amazing friendship. So for the following months you continue to go on an endless amount of dates and with each one that fails your friend's voice rings in your mind.

Maybe you wouldn’t be able to find someone else if you subconsciously compared every guy to Lando. They were never funny enough or charming enough or took themselves too seriously. In the end it was simply the fact that they weren’t Lando. So maybe your heart had already dug its claws into Lando, but you weren’t going to give up without one last battle. 

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

New Year's Eve. The final night of the year and the one party of the year that celebrates ends and beginnings. You’d hoped that with the plan you had for tonight that your streak of horrible dates would end and the next one would be the one. The trend of eating twelve grapes under a table at midnight on New Year’s Eve had been all over your social media. According to the internet if you were to do this you’d find love or your soulmate the following year– which was something you were so desperate for. So, your said plan was to bring some grapes with you and find a table to sit under. 

As you were taking one last final look in the mirror a familiar British accent echoed through your apartment. “Are you almost ready?” 

You quickly slipped on your heels and grabbed your bag off the dresser, but by the time you turned around there stood Lando, leaning against your doorframe with a slight smirk on his face. “Been waiting forever. It’s gonna be next year by the time we get out of here.” 

His teasing, which usually always got a reaction out of you, was ignored. The sight of him had you frozen in your tracks for a moment. He had on a white button up, which he always looked good in, but it was the couple of undone buttons at the top and the necklace you got him for his birthday last year around his neck that got your attention. There was always something about seeing Lando in things you got him that made that funny feeling bloom in your stomach. Perhaps it was the fact that everytime he chose to wear them you knew he was thinking about you and that when he was away a part of you was always with him. 

“Quit staring.” 

You're knocked out of your trance and the blush that creeps onto your cheeks from getting caught is almost as embarrassing as being caught. “I wasn’t staring. I was admiring my good taste. Should have gotten one myself.” You try to play it off and push your way past him with what little amount of confidence you have at the moment. 

“I’ll get it for you, then we can be matching.” Lando says as he follows behind you. 

“I can buy it myself.” 

“Yeah, but I’m still gonna get it for you anyways.”

You stop in the kitchen and grab the little bag of grapes out of the fridge. “I don’t need you to get it for me Lan.” You’re too preoccupied with figuring out how to fit everything into your small purse to see the utterly confused look on Lando’s face. 

“Ok forget about the necklace. Why the hell are you bringing grapes with you?” 

“Incase I get hungry.” You reply without missing a beat. 

“There will literally be food at the party. I even made sure Max got those little cocktail sausages you like.” 

And there he goes again, making those feelings you’ve tried and are still presently trying to push down come to the surface all because of some damn cocktail sausages. “I appreciate that Lan, but I’ve been on a grape kick lately. Just can’t seem to get enough of them.” 

With your purse finally closed with the grapes securely inside, you head towards the door, more than ready to get to the party. 

“I’ll text Max and tell him to get some grapes delivered.” Lando mumbles as he closes the door behind him. 

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

You’d never considered yourself much of a party girl, but there must have been something in the air tonight because you were living it up. From the dancing to the drinking and then to top it off somehow in the middle of everything you showed off your DJing skills with Lando. 

Somehow you’d managed to unglue yourself from Lando for a moment and ended up in the kitchen among the various kinds of alcohol. You’re pouring the last bit of coke into your coke and malibu when Max comes up beside you. 

“I see you finally escaped from Lando for a moment.” 

An airy laugh emits from you. “Yeah, he’s been a little clingy tonight.” You state as you turn and lean back against the counter, facing the large crowd of people. 

Max copies your actions, but not before grabbing a beer. “What are you talking about tonight? When he’s back home it’s like you two are conjoined at the hip.”  Which was true, but you didn’t get to see Lando as much as you’d like, so you make the most of what you can. “Oh forgot to tell you, your grapes are in the fridge.” He motions towards the stainless steel appliance with his beer bottle. “Lando better pay me back. Do you know how much I paid to get that damn bag delivered? Absolutely insane.” 

Your mouth forms an ‘O’ shape at Max’s words. “I heard him mention something about asking you to get some when we were leaving. I thought he was just joking.” 

Max scoffs. “There is no such thing as Lando joking when it comes to you. Think he’d chop off his own arm to make sure you were happy. Hell if you needed an organ he’d be the first one in line to give you one.” 

This time it’s your turn to scoff. “No he wouldn’t.” 

“Why do you do that?” Max groans. 

You narrow your eyes at him, confused as to what he was referring to. “Do what?” 

“Act like he doesn’t think the world of you.” 

Your mouth opens to reply, but no words come out. Instead you bring your cup to your lips and fill the void with your drink. What Max had said was true, but you couldn’t help it. You figured if you forced yourself to think that Lando didn’t care that deeply about you, then those feelings that you harbor for him wouldn’t rise to the surface. It didn’t help that his behavior recently had you thinking that perhaps he felt the same about you and when you have your mutual friends in your ear implying that to be true it just makes things that much harder for you. 

“You probably haven’t even noticed that he’s been practically watching us talk this whole time have you?” 

You can feel your heart rate start to speed up just at the thought of it. As your eyes scan the room they finally land on the Brit standing in the corner with some other people, but he’s not actually engaging in the conversation, he’s too busy staring back at you. Somehow from across the room you can still see those pretty mixture of blue and green eyes of his sparkle and when he realizes you're finally looking back at him a shy smile spreads across his face before he’s quickly looking away. 

“Wish you two would stop dancing around each other and just admit what we all already know.” Max mumbles before taking a swig of his beer. 

Maybe it’s the mixture of alcohol and the fact that you’ve once again got someone in your ear about Lando and you, but you can sense those feelings starting to claw their way back up and you aren’t sure if you can push them back down tonight. 

“Ten minutes until midnight!” The DJ’s voice travels through the apartment and you’re sure Max will be getting some kind of fee taped to his door in the morning. 

Max says something about talking to you later before exiting the kitchen and you realize with ten minutes till midnight that you’ve got to get your grapes and find a table to fit under. For the moment you push Lando to the back of your mind and focus on your very important task at hand. 

Luckily for you Max had a decently sized dining table in his apartment so with your grapes in hand you crawled under the table, which thankfully was shielded by a tablecloth, and settled in for your feast. 

Lando on the other hand had been searching for you everywhere since the ten minute announcement. He’d literally just seen you in the kitchen with Max and then when he looked back again you were both gone. He’d gone in the bathrooms, the bedrooms, the closets, every single place he could think you would be and it’s like you had vanished. Max had a large apartment, especially to be living in London, but it wasn’t that big to allow for you to not be found. His texts to you had gone unanswered and he began to think maybe you had left, but he knew you would have told him if you were leaving, so that theory went out the window. 

When the five minute announcement hit his ears he began asking people if they had seen you and with each no or i think she was in the kitchen a while ago he received his hopes of finding you before midnight started to diminish. 

He’d finally worked up the courage to tell you how he’d felt tonight. After years of holding himself back and not wanting to ruin what you two already had, he’d decided that life was too short and that he would come to regret not allowing himself to truly love you like he should. He knew you were the one and there wasn’t a bone in his body that didn’t think you didn’t feel the same. So, he was finally going to bite the bullet tonight and he wanted you to be the person he was kissing as the clock struck twelve. But if he couldn’t find you, then how in the world was he supposed to do that? 

Lando was honestly starting to get worried over not being able to find you, screw the whole love confession at this point. What if something had happened to you? He’d been all over Max’s place countless times and he still couldn’t find you. With the official countdown echoing through the apartment he decided to just say fuck it and head to your place and see if you had gone home.

As he was heading to get his coat a familiar sparkly heel sticking out from under the dining table caught his attention. It was the same type of heels he’d seen you put on earlier and he did somewhat of a double take. He wondered if it was the couple drinks he’d had messing with him because why would you be sitting under Max’s dining table? 

He crouches down and slowly lifts the table cloth up, unsure of what he’s going to find underneath it. Everyone is only getting louder and with five seconds until midnight what he finds staring back at him under the table is not at all how he expected his night to end up. There you are with your now empty bag of grapes on the floor and your cheeks stuffed full of said grapes. You resemble something of a chipmunk and Lando can’t help but laugh at you. 

“What the hell are you doing down here?” 

The excessively loud shouting of happy new year from everyone while noise makers and confetti fill the air distract both Lando and you for a moment. He didn’t think this is the position he’d be in right now, he figured he’d be in that crowd with his lips on yours like so many others right now. While you on the other hand didn’t think you’d be caught in such an embarrassing situation, not to mention you hadn’t even gotten all your grapes down, so this stupid thing was probably all for nothing. 

His attention is back on you in no time and he really wants to know what you were doing. Were you that addicted to grapes that you had to hide under the table while you got your fix? If so, he may need to have a talk with you. 

“Seriously, why are you hiding under the table stuffing grapes into your mouth?” He prods again. 

Your mouth is still so full of the grapes that you can’t really talk and all you can manage to get out is leave while simultaneously trying to jab his leg with your heel. You were embarrassed and at this point scared you might choke on the grapes, and you’d rather go out in peace then have Lando cause a scene because you were choking. 

“Ouch!” Lando yelps as your heel finally makes contact with him. You know he’s being dramatic because you barely even kicked him, but you would try anything for him to drop that table cloth and let you be. “Come on, come out from under there.” Lando grabs your arm and practically forces you to come out from under the table.

Luckily, everyone else was too preoccupied with still ringing in the New Year to see you crawl out and as you dust yourself off you're still chomping on the last couple grapes left. The party only seems to be getting crazier and you don’t really feel like staying here until the party inevitably ends at an ungodly hour in the morning, especially now that your plan for love has undoubtedly failed. 

You finally swallow the last couple grapes and take a deep breath, the fear of choking and embarrassment now behind you. “Do you care if I leave? Not really feeling the party that much anymore.” 

Lando doesn’t even question your request. “I’ll walk you home, let me grab our coats and tell Max we are leaving.” 

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

The cold England air hits you as you exit Max’s apartment building and you’re thankful that your place isn’t very far from his. It’s silent between Lando and you for some time, the sound of your heels on the pavement, fireworks in the distance, and other people celebrating are the only things you two hear. 

“Can I ask you something?” Lando finally breaks the silence. 

“Shoot.” 

He takes a deep breath fully knowing once he opens this locked away side of him that there’s no going back. “Have you ever thought about us?” 

You feel your heart skip a beat at his question, yet you try to remain cool and collected. “What do you mean?” 

He stops in his tracks causing you to mimic his actions. “Like,” he motions between the two of you, “us.”

There’s not a doubt in your mind about what he’s referring to and yes you do think about the two of you. Yet your brain feels scrambled once you're actually confronted with the possibility of Lando feeling the same as you. You’d tried so hard to ignore the feelings, hell you’d tried something you saw on the internet to hopefully bring a different man into your life to finally squash those feelings. You’d just never thought you’d be in this position though and it’s throwing you into a whirlwind. 

Lando isn’t sure what your silence means and he figures he’s already started, he might as well just fully admit it at this point. 

“Fuck it. I told myself I was going to do this tonight and I’m not gonna chicken out again.” His cheeks are rosy from the cold and you can tell by the way his pretty eyes dart all around your face that he’s trying to figure out how to say what he wants to say. “I’ve got feelings for you.” He finally blurts out.

“No scratch that I’m in love with you Y/N. Think I have been for some time now. I’ve tried telling you how I felt for what seems like ages, but I’ve always been too scared to. I’ve been afraid that you wouldn’t feel the same and to me I’d rather bottle up my feelings and keep you in my life then tell you how I feel and lose you. But clearly I’ve grown tired of that and realized that the reward would be higher than the risk. You’re my person Y/N. I couldn’t imagine life without you and to have you be mine would make life that much better. So here I am baring my heart to you on some street in London on New Year’s Eve. I actually had a whole plan on how I was-” 

His rambling while you loved most of the time was cut off by your desire to shut him up with your lips on his and you did just that. You grabbed him by his coat and pulled him into you, your lips crashing together. It takes him a moment to realize what's happening, but when his brain finally starts to work and he kisses you back it’s everything you could have imagined and more.

Kissing Lando is like heaven on Earth and the way his soft lips feel against yours has you wishing you would have just stopped being so stubborn and listened to your friends ages ago. His large warm hands come out of his pockets and he cups your face as he deepens the kiss, which has you feeling lightheaded and warm all over. 

There’s fireworks being let off not too far away that light up the sky above you, but you’re too engrossed in each other to pay them much mind. It’s truly like a scene straight out of a movie and you know you’ll remember this moment forever. 

You two finally pull away to breathe and it’s like you can see the world in a whole new way. The depressing grey landscape of London in the winter time suddenly looks like it was painted in technicolor and neither of you can wipe the cheek hurting grin off your faces. “So I guess you feel the same?” He asks. 

“Yes Lando Norris, I’m in love with you too. Have been for a while and like you I didn’t want to ruin what we already have. To me there was no possible way that you felt the same and I hate rejection and the idea of losing you. So, I went on a million dates trying to find someone that would replace how I felt about you, but I guess you can’t replace someone who your heart has already laid claim to.” 

You feel Lando intertwine your fingers with his and it’s like everything just feels right in the world. 

“I’m glad we stopped being so stubborn and that I don’t have to see you out with all those random guys anymore.” 

“Believe me, none of them even came close to comparing to you. It was like going on a date with a sack of potatoes most of the time.” 

His infectious laugh fills your ears and you feel your heart swell. You can’t believe this was what you were depriving yourself of for so long. 

The rest of the walk back to your apartment is spent walking hand in hand. All while little giggles escape each of you ever so often and Lando occasionally kisses you on the head or lifts your intertwined hands up to plant a kiss there. 

“I have to ask again. It’s really been bugging me. What were you doing under that table?” Lando asks as you near your apartment building. A loud groan emits from you and there isn’t anything less that you would want to talk about than that. “Come on, just tell me!” 

“Fine! I saw this thing on the internet that if you eat twelve green grapes under a table at midnight that it’s supposed to bring you luck in the love department in the New Year. Like you’d find your soulmate or something. I was so desperate to try and get over these feelings I have for you so what we had wouldn’t be ruined that I was willing to try anything.” 

He’s silent for a moment and then he looks at you with the biggest smile on his face. “Well I’d say it worked didn’t it? You’ve found love and not to be overzealous, but I’d say your soulmate too.” 

You’re stunned for a moment when you realize that yes, the grapes did work, just not in the way you planned. The universe had put Lando in your life years ago and for some weird reason had you wait this long to finally truly be in one another's lives, but you wouldn’t have it any other way. Hell, you’d eat a whole package of grapes if that meant Lando and you got to be together in every lifetime. 

“They did, didn't they? I guess almost choking to death was worth it in the end.” 

“I mean I know I’m every woman’s dream, but you didn’t almost have to kill yourself to get my attention baby.” 

You playfully slap his arm as he laughs at you. That big head of his was sometimes fully ego and you realized you were going to have to put up with it all the time now. “Oh shut up.” 

“Yeah, but you love me.” He states before pressing a kiss to your lips, which has your mind feeling like TV static once again. 

When you pull away and look him in the eyes there’s nothing but pure love staring back at you and you know that this is who is meant to be in your life, till the end. “More than you’ll ever know.��� 

The next morning you receive a group text from Max with Lando and you in it.  

max: why have i found an empty bag with what looks to be a grape stem in it under my dining table??? i fully know it was one of you.

you: i don’t know what you're talking about. 

lando: me either. no grapes were consumed by us last night. must have been someone else. 

[mihii-i]

Hi love 💕 May I request comfort/fluff one shot Arlecchino x fem Reader who developed a terminal illness a few years back and is now often bedridden but is getting better however Arlecchino is still super overprotective of her

white light.

Pairings: arlecchino x fem!reader

CW: sfw, female reader, terminally ill reader, angst, but there’s comfort yay I know yall love this, LOTS of mentions of death, like a ridiculous amount, dw reader doesn’t die but grim reaper bullies us every chance he gets like damn, or is the grim reaper a she, that means my friend is immortal since if death is a woman it’ll never come for them, sorry off topic, very soft arle, yes we love our soft king walskskfj, why is the shower so cold help me, not proofread.

A/N: THIS WAS SO FUN TO WRITE AND IT TURNED OUT SO NICE HOLY also, school is starting soon so I might have to go on break in couple months but no worries I can find some time to write and it’ll be a while into the year until i actually need a break yk <3 🕯️

The fluffy layered clouds hovering in the sky slowly parted themselves to reveal illuminating gleams of sunlight pouring into the room through the window curtains situated to the right of your bed. Slow gusts of wind began to join the warmth of the gold light, brushing along your skin and causing an array of goosebumps to bloom along your arm. You were lucky. Not too long back, your immobile body was enveloped into the same bed, a sickly hue painting your face as your pale tinged lips could only part to cough out a few strained noises.

Perhaps the gods had took pity on you? You supposed you’d never figure out the answer as to how your body curved back from a terminal illness in its final stage. It was supposed to be incurable, and your body back then seemed to agree with what should have been. You were dangerously dangling right above the realm of death, only a hair apart from succumbing to your imminent demise. The doctor who noted your worsening state only had a strike of pity in her voice whenever she’d inform Arlecchino of your current condition, shaking her head as the words: “she won’t make it.” muffled through the door seperating your room from the outside.

It hurt to hear. Not for you per say, but more to hear the emptiness in Arlecchino’s voice when she attempted to dismiss the doctor’s words coldly. She didn’t want to hear that. She didn’t want to hear that your condition was only drawing you closer and closer to death, she wanted to hear that you atleast had a small chance of surviving. As much as she tried to choke back the bitter pain in her unwavering voice, she always clung onto that small sliver of hope deep down, internally calling out to a sea of nothingness in hopes that something would come help you.

Sudden news of your recovery, or rather your condition suddenly improving one day was nothing short of a miracle. It shouldn’t have been possible at all. You were around the final month mark, your entire body burning with an agonizing rush of soreness as you wanted to plead for death to take you away from the unbearable discomfort searing every limb of your ghastly and thin form. That night you had gone to bed, hoping to escape the aching pain of your illness eating away at you. That was when you saw it. You dreamt of a faint glow of white light—or was it a slight pale yellow? The dream was vague and confusing, and held no meaning at all. The light simply danced in circles before you as your life trajectory seared across your eyes.

However, the dream must have meant something.

The next morning you had awoken, your body feeling much lighter all of a sudden, as you had the strength to now sit up completely. Hands carefully massaging the thick blanket draped over your lap, you blinked in confusion upon realizing that you were indeed alive and able to sit up. Sure, you were still incapable of moving around or sitting up for long, but originally, you weren’t even able to raise your body a quarter of the way up, as it would simply result in your spine slamming back into the sunken, comfortable mattress.

When the doctor made her way into the room, performing her checkups which she believed to be futile and tragic, her initial expression of sorrow shifted to one of quick shock. This shouldn’t have been even the slightest bit possible. Arlecchino’s reaction was all the more endearing the moment the newly discovered news made its way to her. You’d never forget the rare smile of pure relief and happiness crossing her usually stoic front, seeming as if Arlecchino was glowing in that moment.

She had attempted to clear her throat and position herself upright, concealing the internal delight bubbling in her mind at that moment. The door had softly creaked open, the sway of the old hinges on your bedroom door being the only noise, along with the quiet howls of wind, resounding within the cell of a room that held your life by a mere thread.

You simply sat there, your scrawny form nearly engulfed by the heavy blankets cascaded onto your lap as the light livened the hue of your face. And when that sweet smile made its way onto your lips weakly upon seeing the harbinger hover before your bed, Arlecchino had to suppress every urge of hers to hem you between her arms in a tight hug and never let go. She wanted to embrace you with every drop of love and affection lingering in her heart as her blackened hands tightened into your back, like a promise to never let you go. Since then, your condition had steadily improved. Months passed, and then years. At this very moment, you now had the ability to walk around and perform minor tasks adequately, yet you still remained bedridden for the majority of your time.

A light pain slowly overtook the side of your chest abruptly, drawing out a few heavy coughs from your throat as your palm pushed against your left breast in an attempt to soothe the throb pushing and pulling against your heart. Quiet ticks of the clock seemed to inch in sync with the rugged beats of your heart, both echoing throughout the room in a sort of twisted harmony. Although your condition had gotten better, storms of weakness and coughs would still persist through, as this was quite a serious illness you suffered from.

The silk white blankets enveloped your limp frame, cascading over your body and situated slightly below your chest, while the back of your head burrowed into the pillows to bask in the favorable comfort enshrouded around every outline of your lounged body. Your chest rhythmically rose and fell as you choked out a few labored breaths, still clenching your fingers against the fabric of your loose shirt covering your chest.

Your vision suddenly started a gradual spin, objects within your range slowly drawn out of focus, and not taking long for the spin to pick up the pace as your vision suddenly shifted to a bleary mess of the room. Head tilting back, you rasped out a line of shaky breaths as the frightening episode of dizziness quickly subsided as soon as it began, causing a sense of panic to rush through you briefly while your chest rose and fell in uneven motions from your initial fright. In that very moment, a small screech of wooden hinges caught your attention, your head carefully raising as to not incite any possible negative reaction from your sensitive body.

Swift and heavy clicks of heels prodded across the room, a sound you’d recognize anywhere even if you were miles away. You raised your head barely even level to the headboard, delivering Arlecchino a feeble smile as her eyes softened upon meeting yours. Slowly, you took her hand into yours, palm resting over the top of her defined knuckles as your thumb circled along the cursed gradient of her hands gently. She could only breathe out a grateful sigh, her head dropping in a restful state as she rested herself onto your shoulder affectionately.

“Are you feeling any better?” She almost immediately questioned, her usually composed eyes having a flicker of concern dashed across them. Her eyes wandered along your frail body, the hints of worry still subtly etched onto her face as her grasp on your hand below hers grew increasingly taut and stiff as she awaited your answer. As much as you wanted to chuckle and tell her you were okay, you clearly couldn’t even say that much.

“Hm. Same as usual. Can’t move my legs well today, but I’ll live.” You casually answered, not taking in the impact your words might have placed onto Arlecchino.

Live.

She was so glad you were able to live.

Arlecchino suddenly dragged her teeth along each other, her mouth remaining closed as the grit of her teeth quietly bounced off of her cheek into her eardrums. It took everything she had to swallow back that wretched feeling boiling up to her throat, her heart wrenching and flooding with discomfort upon hearing the way you threw your life around so casually in your words. She had always been extensively protective over you ever since your condition deteriorated, yet it grew exponentially once you began to recover over the years. She’d always tend to you, sometimes never leaving your side for hours on end as she’d just sit there, head lowered and lips pushed against your frail hand.

Her grip on your hand tensed noticeably, making you shift your eyes up to her lowered dark gaze, staring off into an endless abyss as her expression just seemed…soulless and empty at the mere thought of your passing away. She was afraid. Afraid that just when she believes that her beloved would live despite being in poor condition, she’d walk into your room one day to discover your heart dead still, body completely limp and deceased.

The thought of that made her hand noticeably quiver between yours, disturbing images of your possible sudden death plaguing her mind like a broken subliminal record trying to shatter her soul by tearing away the one person she loves most in this cruel world. It was indeed cruel, as this very world had targeted the reaper to loom over the side of your bed at all times, carefully awaiting the moment to take you away from Teyvat. Arlecchino internally cursed herself at the idea that perhaps this punishment was because of her. She wanted you to be spared. You weren’t the one with blood on your hands, she was.

Despite her agonizing thoughts gnawing at the back of her mind, your sudden firm grip on her hand made her head snap back up abruptly, eyes locking onto your thin fingers cupping her shaky hand in place. If she could, Arlecchino would cry at this very moment, allow herself to shed a couple tears. Yet she knew she couldn’t. She didn’t want to worry you any further, especially in your current state.

“Arle, I’m staying. Please, don’t worry about me. I am better now, right?”

“I know. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t around.”

It was evident that Arlecchino had a difficult time a few years ago, when you were announced to die in under a couple months. She had to mentally prepare herself to lose you soon. She was used to it, you were just another person in her life that slipped away too soon, right?

But she couldn’t.

She couldn’t bear losing you. It was too much even for her.

Arlecchino needed you in her life, and she’d wipe out the entirety of the world just to keep you safe.

Your hand reached up to graze along the skin of her cheek, smiling as she instinctively leaned into your touch. Her eyes fluttered shut as she held your hand in place against her cheek, opening her eyelids once more to gaze at you lovingly with red x-marked eyes.

“Hey Arle, I’m still not feeling the best today…so do you think you could-“

You didn’t even get a chance to finish your hesitant sentence as she lowered herself onto the side of your bed, squeezing herself next to you as her arms gently circled your torso and grasped you against her. You only hummed out a content sigh as you felt your slouched back press to her upright chest, the difference in your postures just making the moment oddly romantic and sweet. Arlecchino’s face buried into your shoulder, intaking a soft inhale as if she missed your scent clouding her senses every time she was close to you.

It didn’t take long for you to drift off to sleep in Arlecchino’s arms as you curled up into the warm blankets piled over both of you. Arlecchino, still awake, quietly shifted her weight onto her side to glance down at you, smiling softly upon seeing your peaceful rested expression. Maybe finally, she rinsed the lingering blood splattered on her hands that led you to this awful fate. She’d rinse it a thousand times if it meant that you would remain safe like this for as long as you lived.

However in this very moment? Arlecchino had forgotten every sense of dread clawing at her constantly, instead focusing on your huddled up form engulfed between her protective grasp.

She swore that she would never let you go again, and she would treasure every inch of you. Not even death can do you two part.

A/N: omg I kept switching between being proud of this and being not so proud bc I had to stop midway through and I lost my train of thought AUUUSHSHDBFN anyway yayayayashshdhd I loved writing this so much AND CALM DOWN ON THE ARLE REQUESTS HOLY SH-

ok bye I’m gonna go on character ai cause I can’t sleep to bed

[onlyhereforthestories]

Gift Guessing Games (Ingrid Engen x Reader)

Day 11. I really love Ingrid but shes so sweet I feel the cute ones like this are best suited for writing for her. So enjoy!

“Alright, let’s do this,” Ingrid declared, tugging her bobble hat snugly over her ears as she adjusted her scarf. The two of you stood at the entrance of the bustling shopping centre, a cold breeze whipping at your bodies that was the only positive about going inside. She turned to you, her expression a mix of determination and something a little more fun. “I need your help, but there’s a catch. Well not really a catch but you’ll get what I mean in a second.”

You raised an eyebrow, curious already. “Oh? What’s the catch? Is this some impossible mission?”

She smirked, leaning in slightly. “It’s for my secret Santa gift… but I’m not telling you who I got. You’ll have to guess.”

You laughed, shoving your hands into your coat pockets. “So, I’m helping you shop but I’m being left completely in the dark? That’s okay but you can’t blame me if we end up with something ridiculous.”

Ingrid grinned and grabbed your hand, tugging you inside where the warmth of the mall wrapped around you like a cozy blanket. Twinkling fairy lights adorned every storefront, garlands hung over doorways, and a giant Christmas tree stood proudly in the centre, its ornaments shimmering under the glow of the many little bulbs lighting up the tree. Holiday music drifted through the air, creating a welcome distraction from the many people who looked like they were panicking or just not liking the sheer amount of people around them.

“Alright, first question,” you said, as the two of you strolled into the first shop. “Are they someone who’s hard to shop for? Like do we actually have an impossible task anyway, even without me being in the dark.”

Ingrid shrugged, a teasing smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. This was going to be a long shopping trip. “Depends on who’s shopping. I have faith in us.”

You rolled your eyes. “Not giving me much here, but okay. Let’s start with something practical but fun. A mug, maybe? Like one of these…” You grabbed a novelty mug from the shelf, reading it aloud. “‘Captain in Charge… of Coffee Breaks.’ It’s perfect if your person drinks coffee. Or if they are, I don’t know, a team captain?” Your guess was the subtlest you could come up with and you were pretty proud of yourself.

Ingrid snorted, the corners of her mouth twitching. “Not bad. But keep guessing.”

You watched her carefully, trying to catch any flicker of a reaction, but she gave nothing away. So not Alexia, one down god knows how many more to go. “Damn it okay,” you said, placing the mug back. “Next question. Are they a more serious person or are they a big goof?”

“Both,” Ingrid said immediately, moving toward a shelf of scented candles and giving one an experimental sniff. “They can be super focused, but they also have a good sense of humour.”

You tapped your chin thoughtfully as you followed her, a gesture that had Ingrid snickering under her breath at you. “Serious but funny. Hmm. What about someone who’s always playing music? Do they love gadgets?” You wandered over to a display of retro-style record players. “This is cute. It’s small, quirky, and perfect for someone who likes to mess around with genres and artists.”

Ingrid chuckled, giving the tiny record player a once-over. “That’s actually a good idea. I really like that as a gift, but nope. That won’t work for my Secret Santa.”

“Okay, now you’re just enjoying this,” you said, narrowing your eyes at her. You had a feeling she had a present in mind already but just wanted to make you come up with things and guesses for her teammates.

She grinned, unapologetic. “Maybe. Keep going.”

“Yes ma’am,” you said with an exaggerated sigh. “Do they like organizing things? Like are they the type to have their entire life planned out in a colour-coded spreadsheet?”

Ingrid laughed, shaking her head. “I think everyone on the team could use a little more organization, but that’s not a hint.”

You spotted a leather-bound planner with gold accents on a nearby display and held it up. “This is classy. Even if they’re not the organized type, it could be aspirational. Maybe push them to be a little more proactive in their organizational skills.”

Ingrid tilted her head, considering it. “You’re really good at this. But still no.”

You groaned, dramatically throwing your head back. “Ingrid! You’re killing me. At least tell me if they’re someone you’re close to.” You grabbed her hand as you strolled around the next shop.

Her smile softened, and she gave a little shrug, squeezing your hand slightly in the process. “I mean we’re all close. But yeah, this person’s special.”

You caught the flicker of affection in her voice and grinned. “Special, huh? So, we’re talking someone who looks up to you, maybe? Someone who thinks you’re the coolest person on the planet?” you made sure she could hear the teasing tone of your voice, she had given you a bit too big of a clue and you now knew who it was.

Ingrid gave you a sideways glance, her smile turning sheepish. “I’m not saying anything.”

You clapped your hands together. “It’s Jana, isn’t it? Oh, I’ve got this. Jewellery. Something simple but meaningful. Like… oh!” You pointed toward a display case filled with delicate silver bracelets, each engraved with a small charm bearing an inspirational word. “‘Fearless.’ That’s perfect. She’s fearless on the pitch, right? And it’s something she can wear every day.”

Ingrid’s silence was telling. She reached for the bracelet, her fingers brushing over the charm as a soft smile spread across her face. “Okay, okay. You win. It’s Jana. And this… babe this is perfect.”

You beamed, pleased with yourself. “I knew it. But for the record, I was onto you from the start.”

Ingrid rolled her eyes, but the warmth in her expression made your heart swell. “Sure you were.” She wrapped her hands around your neck and pulled you a little closer as she spoke. “And I’m sure you played along with my game just for me huh?”

You nodded your head enthusiastically before standing on your toes to press a gentle kiss to the woman’s lips. Letting your hand run into her back pocket where you pulled out her purse. “Time to pay!” Ingrid was quick to grab her purse back before you could even get out of her arms.

As the two of you headed to the checkout, Ingrid glanced over at you, her voice quieter now. “Thanks for helping me with this. I wanted it to be something meaningful, you know? Something that shows her how proud I am of her.”

You bumped her shoulder lightly. “You didn’t need my help for that. It’s obvious how much you care about her. This gift is just the cherry on top.”

With the gift brought, you and Ingrid headed for the outside. Ingrid pulled her scarf tihght around her neck again before she gripped your hand in hers. You made it all of 5 paces into the cool air before you broke the peaceful silence that had settled between you.

“Now,” you said with a grin, “let’s talk wrapping paper. Because you’re not just slapping this in a bag and calling it a day. We’re going all out.”

Ingrid laughed, the sound echoing warmly in the quiet street. “Bows and ribbons?”

“Obviously,” you replied. “It’s not Christmas without glitter.”

She squeezed your hand, her smile wide and full of gratitude. “Deal. But you’re in charge of the glitter.”

[babbling-idiot]

If you still wanna write for colin gray (I'm getting desperate out here). Could you do something based on the line 'Wanna fuck in the back of the Hot Topic?' from Emo boy by Ms Ayesha Ericota? If this ask amkes you uncomfortable you can throw this away. Have a good day/night!

(I know you probably wanted more smutty but I wasn't wanting to do full smut, I hope you like this though!)

Shopping was one of your favorite things to do with Colin. You loved witnessing the absolute thrill in his face after finding a certain band tee or a pair of pants that he'd been looking for. It was always just so fun and such a great time to be with the one you love.

This specific time was no different . You both decided to go to the mall for the day. No to spend ridiculous amount of money but just to walk, window shop here and there. Maybe even stop to eat. At one point, you both were going up the escalator when you both spotted the Hot Topic. He was immediately on his way over there. The sight of him fats walking to the Hot Topic stuck in your mind and you laughed. You tried to keep up but ended up having to stop due to laughing to hard. When you looked back he was already inside. So, you rushed over and saw him already holding two shirts.

You rifled through the clothes as well. At one point while you were looking around a certain song popped into your head. You were singing it in your head and as you were walking by Colin trying to make your way over to a shirt you saw. Without even stopping in your tracks you said, and very seriously I might add.

"Wanna fuck in the back of the Hot Topic?"

You were across the store by the time he actually looked at you. He had a shocked look on his face and when you looked at him over your shoulder you snickered. He walks over and just looks at you while walking past. He walks up to the register and motions for you to come over.

After finishing the purchase you both walk out hand in hand. You both were almost out of sight of the Hot Topic before he leaned close to you.

"Let's leave. I want to fuck you at home."

He says as he walks faster practically dragging you behind him. Smiling you know what you've done, and to be honest you love this eager side of Colin.

[sungodsfav]

just a stranger | t. fushiguro x f!reader

summary : honestly what did he expect was going to happen? you were a complete stranger to him three months ago. it’s not your fault he was an idiot for thinking any sane person would agree to getting married to anyone that soon.

genre : modern au, 18+, marriage of convenience, angst, fluff, smut, 

warnings : MDNI, fem!reader, dilf toji, hitman!toji, stalking, mentions of masturbation, more to be added as I keep writing

prologue wc : 2.3k

masterlist

He feels like a damn pig staring at his current search history which consists of, single successful women in my area, and single young successful women in my city, lastly hot single young rich successful women in my city. That’s when he sees your name and photo at the top of a list of today's most powerful women in their twenties. 

Toji blames Shiu for planting the idea in his head. What you need is to be under the protection of someone powerful. That way whoever left that threat will think again. He likes to blame Shiu even though it was Toji’s mind that jumped to the conclusion that a marriage was the only way. 

So he clicks on your wikipedia page to learn more about you since you were age appropriate, hot, and ridiculously wealthy. He reads that you currently own one hospital, two in state law firms, three out of state law firms, four kids sports parks, and five playgrounds. Toji also reads that you are about to make it six playgrounds as the sixth is expected to have a grand opening in a month from today. 

At first he doesn’t understand how you can have that amount of money and success at such a young age, that is until he sees that you’re a defense attorney. A really damn good one too. Toji digs further and clicks on a link showing him the long list of clients you have defended. Majority of it were a bunch of clan heads as well as some obnoxiously rich business men. You don’t take any pro bono cases, which explains how you afford to own everything. Toji actually knows all of the people you have defended from his line of work. Shit, you’ve even defended his boss, Sukuna, when all odds were against him. You would actually be perfect for him because this just means you are most likely protected by both sides. Since you are the only attorney that represents his kind of people. He decides in an instant that he needs to marry you, so that his son can fall under your umbrella of protection.

Toji Fushiguro begins to tail you for three weeks, and in those weeks he learns things about you. 

First, is that you are for sure single, always ordering for one when getting take out or dining alone. Second, is that you are always working, you spend ten hours in the office and then continue working when you get home. Third, you do not have a life outside of work, you just work, eat, bathe, and sleep. Fourth, you enjoy spending the little amount of free time you have watching trashy tv while giving yourself a fresh manicure and a pedicure always with a full wine glass. Fifth, you hated socializing and kept all interactions minimal and brief unless it was work related. Sixth, you have a favorite place for everything, and you are a regular for each said place. You like routines and you stick to them. Seventh, you owned your house which wasn’t flashy like he had expected, it was an updated modern three bedroom one story home with a two car garage. Lastly, eighth, which is his favorite fact, is that within your modern home you pleasure yourself at least four times a week.

He was able to see it all with the help of your wall length windows and his binoculars. Poor Toji just couldn’t help himself, but to pull out his hard cock to join you in the fun all the way in his car down the street every single time. He only became a widow a year ago and being a single father he didn’t have any time to do anything outside of work and Megumi. With all the information he gathered from you, he finally felt that it was time to approach you and put his plan into action.

Toji decides to keep it simple and slow with his approach with you, not wanting to blow his chance with you. He’s a gentleman of course, so his first interaction with you is opening the door to your favorite coffee shop for you. “Thank you”. Is all you say to him with a small nod of your head and a gentle smile directed to Toji. 

Your voice took him by surprise especially having heard you talk on the phone with colleagues and a few of your taped cases that were online. Your voice was always firm and overflowing with confidence, nothing like how you just sounded. Almost shy just now with a voice barely above a whisper. He stood behind you in line and began to realize just how much shorter you actually were despite wearing your tallest high heels. Barely reaching under his chin. 

He listened to you order your usual obnoxiously long complicated drink. You paid, then stepped aside to allow whoever was behind to order which happened to be Toji. “I’ll just take a hot green tea to go.” He hands the employee extra cash, “keep the change kid.” He stood a few steps behind you and watched as you went through your emails, deleting some, flagging others, and reading a few. 

Both the drinks were ready at the same time so Toji lets you grab your drink first by a second or two before he grabs his and rushes to hold the door open for you again. It isn’t until you both make it outside that Toji goes to engage in a conversation with you before you part ways.

He clears his throat to gain your attention. You don’t notice him at all and mindlessly adjust your scarf. “Excuse me-” You cut him off with your palm held up to pause him not even sparing him a glance. 

“No sorry, I don't have any spare change.” 

You turn and begin to walk toward your building as your heels click against the concrete and Toji can’t help but to smirk not expecting to be having to put in more effort in getting you to give in to him. 

The green eyed man tries again the next day, on your commute home. He sits next to you on the bench as you wait for the subway to arrive. Toji tries to speak to you but you end up pulling out giant headphones from your purse and putting them on. He can't help but to chuckle with a shake of his head at just how unapproachable you actually are and your efforts to keep it that way. It was extremely clear to him now that you were single by choice, not allowing him or even other men to approach you. 

That's how the rest of the week goes. You promptly put a stop to all of Toji’s advances without sparing him much of a glance his way. His favorite rejection from you was when he approached you in a pastry shop as you were scrolling on your phone and so Toji asked “can I get your number?” To which you responded without skipping a beat, “I don’t have a phone.” You didn’t even look at him while rejecting him. Because of you Toji realizes that he has absolutely no game when it comes to picking up women. All he really had going for him was his height, face, and god-like build. That was all he had going for him and that was all most women needed to give him their attention. He tells himself that he’s giving up and going to look for another potential bride if you continue to not acknowledge him. He’s desperate and willing to accept eye contact at this point as a sign to keep pursuing you.

He arrives at the grand opening of your sixth playground, Megumi clinging to his leg. Toji spots you quickly as you do interviews with the kids about the park. You look different than your usual appearance, long gone are your usual heels and slacks. Today you're in some straight jeans, a baggy sweatshirt, your hair neatly styled like always, but the expression on you is soft and kind. You smile encouragingly to the small kids.

“Hey brat, go talk to that lady over there.” Toji orders Megumi with a shake of his leg to get his son to release him. The two year old releases his fathers leg but just stares at the lady his dad pointed at before his attention drifts to the playground watching two other kids his age running and playing. Toji goes to squat to get to his son’s level but Megumi waddles away towards the two kids. He was only two years old so he couldn’t really blame his son for not being able to follow directions.

Toji lets out a frustrated groan before walking towards an empty bench to get a better view of you entertaining some random kids. You’re playful and happy interacting with them, some of the parents even coming up to you to give their appreciation for the new playground in their neighborhood. 

It isn’t until he hears the familiar cries of his boy that his worried eyes leave your form to search for his son. Said son is in tears as he looks at the spot Toji previously stood, great, Megumi probably assumes that he was abandoned. “Dumb kid”. Toji relaxes with a scoff and is about to go get his crybaby of a son until Megumi turns and waddles over to you. Your face immediately fills with concern at the sight of the heartbroken boy. Maybe my son wasn’t completely useless. Toji smirks as Megumi holds his arms up to you seeking comfort and you act quick by bending down and lifting him into your embrace. He can’t make out what you ask Megumi and he definitely can’t hear what his son responds with but Toji takes it as his time to step in and make a move. 

The closer he gets to you and his son he can hear that your soothing words are actually comforting Megumi. You rub his back as he rests his head against your shoulder and his tiny arms wrapped around your neck. Lucky bastard. “It’s okay baby, we’ll find your daddy, don’t worry.” You rock him gently in your arms as you look around the playground hoping to spot his father. You were a natural at this, the complete opposite of what Toji expects from someone so cold and out of reach.

Toji finally makes it in your line of sight and your movements falter, you physically grasp Megumi in a tighter hold, and shift your body so that your shoulder would shield the boy. As if you were attempting to protect him. “You trying to steal my boy?” Toji teases with a smirk stopping a few feet away not wanting to scare you into running away with his son. He isn’t an idiot, he knows that his appearance is intimidating. 

Your eyes narrow at Toji before looking down at the boy in your arms who has stopped crying a while ago and is now playing with your necklace. “He’s your son?” Your cold tone has returned and your eyes flutter back to look at Toji. “He came to me crying looking for you.” Your body goes back to a more relaxed state and you turn to completely face Toji, he watches with a smirk as your eyes slowly trail up his form. “Sweetheart, is this your daddy?” Your gentle soft tone seems to only be reserved for kids, Toji notes. 

Megumi lifts his head up to look over at Toji and he lets out a small sigh of relief. “Yea, my daddy.” However, sweet little Megumi goes back to resting his head against your chest. 

Toji lets out a deep chuckle. “Here let me grab him, your arms are probably getting tired.” Toji steps closer to you to grab his son but again your body reacts instinctively as you tighten your hold on the small boy and subtly lean away. 

“N-no! It’s okay, I’m okay holding him. I’ll let you know if I get tired.” 

He couldn’t help but to smirk at the sight. So all it took for you to speak to him was his little brat. “You have any kids?” Toji asks even though he already knew the answer, standing right next to you. He observes you and notes that your small smile that is directed to Megumi falls. 

With a shake of your head you look up at Toji. “No I don’t. How old is he?” Toji is slightly taken back at you actually giving him the time of day. There was a big chance that you still would have ignored him even while holding his kid like he expected.

���He’s two, just had a birthday recently. Honestly, it was sad since it was just us two, now I’m trying to take him to more parks so that he can make friends to hopefully make the next birthday not so lonely for him.” He easily lies to your face and your eyes soften a tiny bit. 

Your eyes land on his chest as Toji crosses his arms, he grins glad that you were a tiny bit attracted to him. Makes things slightly easier. “Oh, what happened to his mother? Nevermind that’s personal, you don’t need to answer that I’m sorry!” You rush out slightly embarrassed. 

He shrugs. “She passed away about a year ago.” 

Your lips drop to a sympathetic smile looking down at Megumi who is slowly falling asleep. “I’m sorry, that must have been tough for you both. If you ever need help with him, please let me know.” Your tone dripped with kindness that Toji couldn’t help but to take advantage of.  He chuckled with a glance down at the concrete before turning to look into your soft eyes before the scarred corner of his lips tilted up into a smirk.

“Ima need your number for that, doll.”

next

a/n : so this is just the prologue but I’m very excited to post more very soon! I’d love to know your thoughts and depending how well this chapter does I might make a taglist if you guys would be interested in that :)

[etheries1015]

Obey me x twisted wonderland crossover where MC goes to twisted wonderland from obey me but has their full range of magical powers

Only problem is, they can't really use it.

How would MC feel, hearing over and over about their useless state, when they are infact a rather powerful sorcerer?

pt 2 as requested: Here

Magic in twisted wonderland is managed and flows through mage stones, whilst in obey me magic is by a persons inner nature, and seems to be contained/managed via a wand of some sort (until you become mastered at it, like solomon, who still uses a wand!) Of course there are sigils and and other mediums to be used, however for this scenario, they are dulled thoroughly due to the 1) cut off between worlds and 2) The inability to adapt to a different worlds principles of magic.

Blot just isn't a thing in obey me, MC obviously doesn't have the ability to accumulate blot, so their type of magic is just incompatable with twisted wonderland. So imagine how goddamn frustrating it is when everyone likes to remind MC how magicless they are? And they really don't believe you when you tell them you're actually the apprentice of the most powerful sorcerer in humanity, and can control 7 of the most dangerous demons from your world.

"MC has about as much magical talent as a box of crayons," Ace snorts. He wouldn't be saying that if you just had the power to curse his mouth shut.

"You have no real merits to offer me, not to mention you cannot even use magic," Azul pointed out. If only you could summon leviathan and have him send lotan octavinelles way. They would be sobbing at your feet begging for forgiveness!

And Vil. "You're just about as polished as a sack of half priced potatos!" ...If Asmodeus were there to hear that comment. Vil would get a very analytical lecture about every tiny flaw and detail in his life. Vil would be shattered by the end of it, his pride and what he thought was beauty down the drain.

Crowley laughing at you to your face when you tried to tell him about devildom and where you wish to return. You? A magicless human? Hilarious. Crowley has been through his fair share of "demons" and dark magic, and he definitely did not believe you fit a "summoner of terrifying beings" vibe. If only Satan was there, then Crowley would really understand what it was like to fear something, and regret poking fun at you and taking your concerns so lightly. "If you had the ability to summon powerful demons , how come you are still here?" He mocked you. Of course you had tried, however with the problem being the connection between two completely separate dimensions causing a drift in your attempts to summon any of the brothers, It was nearly impossible. Sigils just did not carry the same amount of magic in twisted wonderland as it did back home.

It wasn't until you held one of the wishing stars (from the "make a wish" event) that anybody began to believe...no, consider your "ridiculous" stories. You held the star to your chest and made your wish of wanting to return home, to which it glowed so bright and cracked. Everyone stared at you as your star shattered, only someone with high concentrations of magic could cause something like this to happen. Since it wasn't powered via mage stone or the need of blot accumulation, your natural traces magic had managed to break the wishing star. Something only someone with a huge pool of magical ability could accomplish, if even.

"I have been trying to tell you guys" you growled, picking up the shattered pieces. Getting over the initial shock of the entire situation, they quickly dismissed it as a faulty star and writing off the strange phenomenon. There is just no way someone such as yourself could possibly hold such great traces of magic that you actually shattered the star, right? They all looked down at you, saw you so much differently, and treated you as such. You didnt belong at that school, and they made it clear. Well.... No matter.

Wait until they realize you finally had managed to successfully contact Lucifer, and they were actively working on your safe return.

And wait until they feel his power when he hears how poorly his little sheep had been treated.

~~~~~

Check out my masterlist for more of my works~

[saetoru]

this blog is now archived !! find my MASTERLIST here !!

hi guys, and here’s a long overdue post that i wanted to take the time to make after collecting as many screenshots as i can for a lot of rumors that i think need to be addressed. before i do that, i wanted to apologize to all of my mutuals who ended up wrongfully harassed in their inboxes for simply knowing me—the irony of this issue being about bullying all the while people on this app have been simultaneously being genuinely awful to other writers who have zero involvement has been ridiculous.

i would’ve made this post sooner, but december was very busy—as you all know, i’ve been working with two separate companies for my capstone projects, and i had final presentations with boards to worry about. and then a cruise which was fun, but i was offline. now that i’ve finally had time to enjoy my break and collect my thoughts, i’d like to voice my own side to the discourse i’m sure you’ve all seen posted by @/garoujo, who is now @/gojoath.

first and foremost, i’ve been on tumblr for almost 4 years now, and while i may not have the brightest moments on here (no one will be spot-free in that amount of time), i’d like to think that if i actually went out of my way to vicious or bully people, this would’ve come to people’s attention a lot sooner. i’ve had a relatively large following across all 6 of my blogs in my time here, and while i don’t like to get into the metrics of my blogs, the reason i point this out is because i have willingly started my blog over 6 times. 3 of these were sfw blogs under my nickname tee, another 2 of which were my previous nsfw blogs under a different alias, and saetoru which is the current one, where i finally decided to combine my sfw and nsfw writing into one space. i just wanted to bring that up because i had quite a habit of leaving and restarting blogs before this one, and had i been obsessed with outperforming other writers in terms of follower counts, i would not have left the previous ones as often as i did. 

that being said, i’ll also go through a timeline of events and how they’ve snowballed into an issue that is not as one-sided as most of you might think. i’ve been mutuals with emmie since my first blog, and i’d been mutuals with her through most of her blogs as well. we’ve never really had issues until her last blog @/garoujo, which she’d started after deactivating @/atsymu due to discourse regarding racism accusations. the reason why we had a falling out was because i felt that there were a series of odd coincidences that felt slightly purposeful, but i was still questioning whether or not i was looking too deeply into it to actually point any of it out.

admittedly, when i saw her first set of banners, i felt our layouts were a slight bit similar, but i really didn’t mind too much because i had been planning to change my banners anyway because i was bored of them. so i took that as an opportunity to do so. it just so happened that within a day or two of every time i changed my banners, hers would be changed too—i never said i owned the color gray, and i even fully acknowledge that the last two sets of banners, at first glance, wouldn’t be a red flag. because, like i said, i was more uncomfortable with the pattern of coincidences than the actual layouts. then i switched to my instagram theme, and not long after, i noticed her add instagram story visuals to her navi. again, no one ever said instagram was my original idea, and that no one else could use it, but it was an unsettling feeling having the same moot continuously make changes around the same time as you, and changes that are different enough that you can’t exactly point out an issue, but slightly similar enough that you can’t exactly ignore the slight oddness.

coincidentally, the same day, another blog (who i will not name bc they’re not very active anymore and are also not very relevant to this story) made the same theme as me and i was a bit peeved because this same blog is someone who has copied a few other things from me and a handful of other moots, so i made a subpost on my moots-only personal blog at the time. keep in mind, i made this post fully aware that emmie was on this blog because i didn’t intend for that post to seem like it was about her. but she reached out to me, and i explained to her the situation, and i even provided the relevant screenshots to show my points. i still considered her a decently good friend at the time, and even with the slightly off feelings, i was still adamant about brushing them off and considering them coincidences that perhaps i was being a bit too critical of.

it wasn’t until i woke up a few hours later after changing my theme and going to bed that i noticed she’d then fully switched to the insta theme. again, instagram is an app used by millions and, at one point, was a very popular theme used amongst most people on this app. i’m not entitled enough to believe i was the first person to do it, but like i said. there are just off vibes most of us will not help but feel when a series of coincidences continue to happen back to back to back by the same person.

there were, amongst these things, a number of other small touches that made me feel off. most of them i don’t remember by now or have screenshots of, so i won’t bother to go into all of them, but for reference, one example i’d also like to point out that i’d had the phrase “you’ve reached the hanmas” in my inbox when she was still on @/atsymu, and sometime after, her sfw blog @/loveatsu had the phrase “you’ve reached the miyas.” small things like this are not things i make an issue over and am more than capable of brushing aside, but like i have said and will continue to push firmly is that i felt there were multiple instances of emmie, in particular, making small tweaks to her blog shortly after me that made me feel were not all coincidentally similar. the issue was never themes or thinking i am the first or only person to do something a certain way, the issue has always been me countless times feeling that one particular individual is exhibiting a behavior that is persistent and uncomfortable no matter how minuscule the instances may be. maybe they were really just unfortunate coincidences that happened with poor timing, or maybe they weren’t. but i stand by the fact that anyone in my shoes would be valid to question the timing of each of these events over and over again.

i would also like to bring up kinktober (though this happened a while after the rest of what i will get into) because this was the first public discourse that emmie and i got into due to an anon’s claims of similarities between our posts. i had received an anon who told me “i think someone copied your kinktober masterlist” which i answered to ask if they could let me know who. they had come back to say it was garoujo, and i did not reply to the ask, instead, i made a post to vaguely tell the anon that i appreciate them letting me know, but i will just leave it be and continue on with my kinktober regardless of emmie’s mlist. i do think there were some vague similarities, but honestly not enough to really question it, so i figured a confrontation or issue was not necessary. a while later, several moots had messaged me to let me know they had received anonymous asks saying to “block @/garoujo she copied @/sakusins and she’ll copy you too” (or something along those lines, i don’t remember exactly.) i myself was very confused (and upset) by the situation because i did not, and still would not, want to be publicly name-dropped in other people’s inboxes over issues that do not involve them. unfortunately, it led to some not-very-kind asks to both of us, and while i am sorry she had to deal with that, it is not an apology from a sense of culpability. that situation was, and still is, entirely out of my control. i would not have seen the masterlist unless the anon had mentioned it, and i did not take part in having people send asks about her to other writers. especially not in a manner that was pretty much social suicide for me as well. 

(this is a poorly made collage i know lol but i hit the picture limit bear with me here.)

i would also like to point out that i am not the only individual who has had issues with emmie and feels she had copied them. although i cannot disclose urls (they have been blocked out for privacy reasons) here are a few conversations i have had with my own mutuals, and i would wager there are more people whom i haven’t talked to who also feel this way. they might be small enough instances that sparking issues over them was not worth it to all of these people, therefore she has never heard from people herself about this issue, but the point does still stand that this claim about emmie is not one i alone make, and is one that i have heard countless times before. her never being approached by these individuals for the sake of peace doesn’t erase that they have been, and are, upset by these events, and it’s a habit that she seems to continually partake in. i would also like to link this post where she has been called out by another writer while she was still atsymu, which was posted while we were still friends. i’ve actually had a discussion with emmie about that post, and at the time, i had quickly skimmed the post and felt it was perhaps a reach, but after my own experiences, i went back to reread the post and considered perhaps there was validity to it, and that this might not be a one time occurrence. plagiarism in manners such as this will always have conflicting opinions, and it is hard to sometimes tell if something is a coincidence, a popular and overused idea, or something that has actually been copied. my point is that a number of people have all felt that perhaps there is a good chance this was not an accident, and please consider that so many instances of people feeling this way might suggest that there is a certain degree of validity to the claim.

at the beginning of all of this, when the masterlist banners had first started bothering me, i was upset, and i chose to vent to an ex-moot of mine who most of you would recognize as munsonsins. abby has deactivated a long while ago, but she’s relevant to this because i had chosen to vent to her at the time, and this is more or less what later caused this situation to escalate. at the time of venting to her, i knew she wasn’t mutuals with emmie because, as you can see, she’d told me as such. 

one thing i would like to point out is that there were a handful of people i had vented to about my frustrations with emmie, but one thing i had always been mindful of was ensuring these were a) individuals who i considered close friends and not just random individuals, and b) were not friends or moots with emmie in the event that i accidentally made people who she cared about think lesser of her. had abby been mutuals with emmie, i would not have shared my feelings, and once again, i was not loose-lipped enough to just tell anyone because they’d listen. i told abby in particular because i had felt we were sufficiently close individuals who talked one-on-one and were able to vent to each other. a bit after i vented to her, though, she befriended emmie, which i had no such issues with because abby was/is her own person and is an adult who can interact freely and befriend whoever she wanted/wants to. 

not long after that, on the night before eid (this detail is relevant in the future) an ex moot of mine @/kazuwhora reached out to me. if you guys remember, there was a discourse last year that was all over dash about how writers on this app should be open to criticism. a lot of people (including me and kc) were upset by that sentiment—which is still valid. please don’t give constructive criticism to writers without their explicit permission !! but regardless, kc sent me a screenshot of a mutual of mine who had posted their opinion on this discourse, and their point was clearly that while constructive criticism is important in some aspects, writers do not have to be subject to receiving it should they not want to. unfortunately, i felt as if kc misunderstood what this individual was trying to say, and i was trying to explain it to her, but we got into a small argument over how we interpreted the post. i felt some of the things she was saying about this individual were inappropriate, and i had made it clear that i was very fond of this person, and it made me uncomfortable to be having this discussion. regardless of whether she saw my interpretation of the post or not, i wanted to drop the discussion, especially because it was the night before eid. eid is the one holiday i celebrate, and there are traditions i quite enjoy the night before, and i didn’t want them to be spoiled with a poor mood over a silly argument. unfortunately, she wasn’t very willing to drop the topic, and it ended up making me upset. so i posted this screenshot to my moots only personal from the conversation that consisted of my messages only and said, “tonight i had to explain what a debate is.” it was petty, perhaps, but very harmless, seeing as there was no context given and no names/pfps to indicate who the person was.

truthfully, i had vented separately to cat, eris, and abby about this argument because i was friends with the three of them at the time, but needless to say, venting to your friends about arguments is a universal action, and i believe it is something all of us have partaken in. 

eventually, i decided to softblock emmie because i felt it would be more comfortable for me on my blog to do so. after a bit, i was informed of a subpost that seemed like it couldn’t be about anyone other than me—to make things clear, emmie subposting me was not my concern. i did not hold it against her because she is more than entitled to have her own feelings and vents on her own blog, but the thing that did concern me was that it seemed slightly evident that she was aware of my feelings when i had never explicitly had a conversation with her. it made me question who would tell her, and as you may have guessed, the only person with whom i had shared my concerns who could also be in contact with emmie was abby. 

at the time, eris had also voiced concerns that they had trusted abby with the ending of the plot for the diluc series they were planning, and coincidentally, one of abby’s friends had posted a fic idea eerily similar to their concept, to which abby had been commenting and reblogging more brainstormed ideas under. all of these ideas were very close to the plans eris had for their series plot, and understandably, they felt that it was not a mere coincidence that their entire plot was being brainstormed on dash by a person who was fully aware of their outline. i’d voiced my concerns with believing that abby may have also been sharing things i trusted her with, and as a result we both had made a few vague subposts that we liked from each other—a petty behavior, i will admit, but not something that i think is very out of the norm for a lot of people on this app. sometimes, we all just want to vent out our frustrations, and because we all more or less use tumblr as an outlet, these can sometimes be vaguely taken to dash. it’s not something that is ideally recommended (i’ve learned the hard way) but it’s also ?? not exactly something that only i’m guilty of, or is even a rare behavior. i think to shoot down one person for this behavior is quite frankly hypocritical. again, subposting isn’t a habit i would like to push as mature but it’s something i’d like to point out is very normal in this community, and is not something only i take part in. beyond that, i take to ensuring that whenever i do, i’m not explicitly exposing who i’m talking about in order to keep them out of unnecessary issues. 

after this conversation with eris, it kind of solidified in my mind that i did not want to trust abby with any more personal vents, or information, and i had ultimately decided to soft block her too. i had also decided to take the opportunity to softblock kc as well because i figured i might as well just remove individuals who i felt made me uncomfortable. this is, again, my right to do so to curate my own space. not long after, cat, eris, and i had been softblocked/hardblocked by a number of moots, and we were a bit confused, until cat ended up having a conversation with kc. many accusations were made about all three of us, more specifically, about me to kc by abby because the two of them had been discussing that they’d both been softblocked by me recently.

the list of accusations we were told of is as follows:

me, cat, and eris have a “burn book” where we “blacklist people.” it’s important to note that every time this discourse resurfaces (this is now the fourth time), the “burn book” has fundamentally changed in its composition—it has changed from a discord server “burn book”, to a google doc “burn book”, to the current rumor that it was an entire blog that was used as a “burn book.” it is consistently changed to fit whatever narrative is trying to be pushed, and regardless, the rumor itself is entirely untrue and has been addressed multiple times. cat has had a tumblr theme, a collab theme, and a server theme all dedicated to the film mean girls. she simply had a channel that was to share the urls of minors to block for interacting with nsfw works, or people who were anti-dark content—this is something that i have seen in all servers i’ve been in during my time on tumblr, and is not a new concept for many of you either. it’s simply a precaution a lot of servers take to warn writers about potential minors to block, and potential anti-dark content harassers. the name of this channel happened to be “the burn book” because it was a mean girls themed server, so the name just fit. nowhere in this channel were other writers in the community “blacklisted” or spoken negatively of, and here are the screenshots of the channel. this was simply something abby had twisted in order to paint us negatively. here is the link to cat’s post addressing it for proof and explanation (i run out of pictures or i would include them myself.)

abby also claimed that i was using this channel to talk poorly about kc and a handful of other moots. this is also false bc this server had several strangers (as it was cat’s server and i didn’t know all her moots), but it also had several of kc’s mutuals/friends in this server as well. i’m not so dense as to talk poorly about other writers publicly in a server, let alone a server i know has people who are friends with kc

now, this next part, emmie has conveniently painted out to be about me, as i apparently harassed and blacklisted people for liking itto from genshin impact, but i have been playing genshin for over a year on this app, and quite a large number of you are my own followers who see my rambles and my writing and i don’t have to explain that i have never written for itto, nor explicitly expressed an interest in him apart from perhaps one or two posts from back when i did his story quest. i never had, and still to this day, have no interest in the character itto. i’ve skipped his banner, i plan to skip his upcoming banners should they come, and i have never written for him, nor do i plan to write for him. this issue with itto is between eris and another individual, and i do not have the details to this, as i was new friends with eris at the time, and i’m no longer friends with eris as of current time. quite frankly, even if i knew the details, i wouldn’t go out of my way to share them because it has nothing to do with me. plain and simple.

as you can see, there were a number of rumors spread here to kc by abby, and as you can see, all of which led me to seem quite vicious in character. i’ve provided, to the best of my ability, screenshots and receipts of why each of these is quite drastically out of context and far from true to what abby has claimed. 

i did in fact, after these events confront abby because i was genuinely appalled by the way she knowingly and purposely twisted things conveniently to villainize me. she expressed that she was upset and paranoid by the subposts that she figured were about her once i’d soft blocked her, so i apologized for the posts. she had conversations with both me and cat about the rumors she’d started, and she also apologized for them to both me and cat.

the rumors that emmie has claimed about me in her post, which she conveniently provided no evidence of, are all rumors that are more or less a result of my differences with abby and kc. unfortunately, despite cat trying her best to explain to kc the falseness of most of these rumors, she didn’t really believe them—which is her business. to each their own. i’m sure if i had been in kc’s shoes and in one night, someone i had considered a friend had been painted to do a series of nasty things behind my back, i also would not know what’s true and untrue, and she is entitled to piecing together what she believes is her truth. what’s not fair, however, is for emmie to have no involvement/understanding of these events apart from a twisted narrative she heard from one person and dog pile them into her claims of my behavior to further paint me as a villain. emmie is more than entitled to have her beliefs on my character based on her own experiences, which she has provided her own evidence of, but simply slapping an “and i heard she also….” does not necessarily make claims true, and is very manipulatively thrown into the post to add a list of things that make my character questionable to further validate her point. 

not only this, but she has made a point to openly admit that she and her friends have collectively mocked me for my relationship with my ex-boyfriend, who they have apparently labeled as my “fake” boyfriend that i used to get attention on this app. quite plainly, i get enough attention on my blog that i don’t need a fake boyfriend to amp that up. but furthermore, i am a south asian, muslim individual. my parents are immigrants with very strict religious and cultural beliefs that i feel are very restricting at times, and though i love my family, i struggle with my identity quite a bit as i live in a very western culture that clashes quite a bit with my cultural norms. i do not get to freely explore my sexuality or even romantic life in general, unlike some of you. my parents have been kept in the dark about my relationship because them knowing about it is something that could quite literally create a rift between us, and i find it very insulting and almost suspicious that a white girl is making a mockery of my cultural struggles and my personal life. many of you are either desi or muslim or simply children of strict immigrant parents with quite stubborn traditional views. i’m sure plenty of you understand where i’m coming from when i say that i have to keep my relationship hidden from the majority of the people around me. tumblr is the one place i can anonymously share bits and pieces of my life without worrying about if it will literally cost me my relationship with my parents, so sometimes i may have overshared silly or pointless things, but that is because it’s my own way of being able to express myself and my relationship the way i have always wanted to. apart from that, dragging and making a joke out of someone’s personal life is quite unnecessary in this case. the issue is about tumblr discourse, and i find it very hypocritical that i am being labeled a bully when people, more specifically a white and privileged individual, is plain and simple mocking and poking fun at my personal life and situation that i have no control of. that is my piece on that. whether some of you believe i had a partner or not is not my business, nor do i have to go out of my way to show you evidence of my personal life. what i will say, however, is that there are a handful of close friends i have on this app who are involved in my personal life and have seen evidence of my love life through pictures and private stories on social media. quite frankly, these are the only individuals who i have to justify the validity of my personal life to, and it’s honestly quite violating for someone to stoop to dragging someone’s outside life into issues about tumblr. i extend a very genuine fuck you to every single one of you that have ridiculed my personal relationship and just know that you are extremely bold to consider yourselves above bullying when this is the type of behavior you admit to engaging in. individuals with complex familial relationships, and identity struggles between cultural norms, their ethnicities, and the western world are not your playground to make a joke out of. some of us have very real struggles, such as not being able to pursue careers in favor of arranged marriages, not being able to pursue actual relationships that mean something to us due to a lack of familial approval, being forced to bear children at young ages due to familial pressure, and so on. they are not laughing matters, and are a part of my reality. and before some of you get started—yes, it really is that serious. i have struggled my entire life with having white girls poke fun and tease at my cultural norms, and i refuse to allow another white and privileged individual who already has a record of racially related discourse walk away with once more poking fun at my personal struggles and not be called out for it. i hope you had a good, long, satisfying laugh emmie.

onto my next points based on claims @/anantaru has made about me. the main thing i’d like to really point out here is that anantaru and i have never, not even once, interacted to the extent of my knowledge. they claim that cat and i cannot stand it when people cross us in numbers and that we go through people’s likes in order to find minors and blank blogs to explain all the notes. a) i am very bad at checking for minors and blanks in my own notes, so this is not even a logical approach on my end, but b) this claim is made because cat made this post under the tags of a post going around last year that asked to hear unpopular ficblr opinions.

what cat means to articulate here is that sometimes, when she is scrolling on dash and interacting with moots and their shit/talk-posts, she peeks at profiles she sees in the notes and has happened to catch minors lurking. cat, firstly, has never followed anantaru, so they are not a “victim” to cat glancing at their likes, but secondly, this is not nearly as psychotic as it’s painted out to be. cat is not, and was not, jealous of other blog's notes. quite plainly, she’s not exactly a tiny blog either, and she’s only stumbled upon minors in the talks-posts of moots, including me. shit-posts/talks-posts are easy to notice minors lurking on, and while most people recognize that it’s quite impossible to catch every minor and ageless blog in writing posts with numerous notes, a simple shit-post on dash is more simple, and her unpopular opinion was simply that blogs that grow rapidly need to be better about catching those minors because they are susceptible to having more of them lurking. it’s a really harmless sentiment, and she’s gently reminded me as well on more than one occasion to be more responsible about my habit of being lazy when scouting for minors in my interactions. 

this is not out of jealousy, nor is it some sick and twisted habit she has to “explain” why people get more notes than she might get. it’s also out of a place of concern for her own content ?? i myself and plenty of other large blogs reblog from mutuals, and they are well within their right to be concerned that perhaps minors are lurking on our pages and interacting with works we reblog from our mutuals. cat has voiced this concern to me before, also out of goodwill and simple concern for my content, her content, and minors in general. there is simply no need to twist it into her viciously looking down upon large blogs and their notes counts and claiming they’re “only because they don’t block minors.” admittedly, though, i do need to be better about catching minors, and i have always appreciated her trying to keep me in the habit of being responsible about it. more importantly, it was a small passing comment under a post of unpopular opinions, a lot of them were hot takes, and this is hardly a serious one to get so heated over. 

i’d also like to point out that anantaru has claimed we blocked them for being a gatekeeper and because we’re jealous of their notes. 💀. a) i am very grateful and very happy with the level of interaction i get on my writing, as more people than i imagine leave me countless comments and reblogs. i have never had an issue with comparing my interaction with that of other writers because i have always been abundantly content with the interaction i get. i have no other comment on this other than cat and i blocked anantaru at the same time because we happened to see a post of theirs reblogged onto our dash that made a joke that we felt was a bit insensitive to/alluded to SA—i’m sure it wasn’t meant to be taken that way, but it made us uncomfortable regardless. while we are both dark content supporters, and i myself have read more than one fic that includes noncon in particular, it doesn’t mean we have to like/enjoy everything related to it and we simply decided to block them. i’m not going to bring this post up bc it’s simply not important. they are an adult who is more than entitled to make jokes on their blog and cat and i do not have to like them !! we simply did what we were well within our rights to do, and that’s blocking them.

there’s more they go on to say about receiving hate asks and that apparently it’s because of our “group of friends.” cat and i don’t have a group of friends. i don’t have any group chats with her besides the one with her boyfriend because i get along with him sometimes as well, and we used to play genshin together a lot when i was in low ar. not that i have to explain my friendships here, but i quite literally do not have a group of people to “send after” anantaru because people are well aware of my close friends, who i text with my personal phone number. i’ve posted silly screenshots of convos on my blog multiple times, and none of these friends overlap because i do not have a “group” of friends, just individual friends who i talk to one on one. cat is not friends with my other friends, and my other friends are not friends with her. there are no inner circles that conspire together to send anyone hate because i “tell them to.” and if there are screenshots of me explicitly encouraging someone to send hate on anon, i would love to see it. if i had sent my anons after anantaru, it would have to be a public post, and i’m sure if there were a post of such nature, it would have been brought to light by now. they have also claimed they were given multiple urls of mine to block. i only have ONE writing blog, @/saetoru, and the only other two that are still up are archived blogs @/hanmine and @/katsuphilia, which are side blogs attached to saetoru and have been inactive for several months. there are however, multiple individuals on this app who also go by the name “tee,” and perhaps we have unfortunately been mixed up as the same person, but the only blog i have is saetoru, so there is no other active blog they have blocked me from that belonged to me and was able to harass them.

not only that, but anantaru has claimed that one person off anon sent them hate with a kaeya url which they insinuate to be me. once again, you are all more than aware of my history of urls, and many of you have all been here to see them. i’ve never once had a kaeya url, nor have i ever been particularly interested in kaeya outside of a small number of posts on a rare occasion. my genshin favorites have always been characters from sumeru and, at one point diluc, and once again i don’t have to ?? explain my selfships to you all ?? but literally, i have nothing to do with a kaeya blog or kaeya account, and im unsure why it’s being thrown into my name. quite frankly, i’m not sure  what their moot has told them we have said about them, but the only conversations cat and i have ever had about anantaru was that one about the noncon joke, and that’s it. outside of that, there is literally no evidence of us speaking about this person because it simply doesn’t exist. 

i implore you all to, instead of starting public discourse over things you hear, confirm them first. had anantaru reached out to me or cat and expressed that they are upset that we are supposedly spreading false rumors about them gatekeeping, then whatever misunderstanding it might have been could have been cleared. i would like to also point out that it is not above bullying when you simply dump numerous accusations that you have heard through half whispers from moots and provide 0 evidence for them. i am perfectly aware of why emmie may consider herself to have issues with me, but i have never had an encounter with anantaru, and truthfully, i’ve never actually even read their writing before. my main (and pretty much only) experience with them is seeing the joke i saw reblogged onto my dash, and as i stated earlier, the only thing i did for that was block and move one.

and lastly, the other point i’d like to make is that numerous blogs who i have been objectively very kind to have come out to take the opportunity to stomp on my character and reputation. for example, tumblr user @/osaemu, who used to follow me and interact with me quite often. i have always been excited to interact with her because she was really supportive of my gojo writing, and at one point, i had a small area of concern with her using the same exact title as me for a gojo fic. below are screenshots of our conversation regarding the titles.

i am quite confident that this is a very polite interaction, and i was very clear that i didn’t think that her writing elements, including gojo’s parent dynamics and his dynamics with the reader, were copied or even something that i felt she needed to change. i pointed them out as a way of indicating that between these parallels and between the fact that i know she reads my rb! gojo series, i find it difficult to believe that our fic titles being exactly the same is a coincidence, and it made me uncomfortable—my concern was not how she wrote gojo’s parents or his dynamic with reader. i never accused her of stealing ideas that were mine alone to use, all i simply wanted to do was shed light on the fact that based on these parallels, i figured the names being the same was a touch difficult for me to brush aside as a chance similarity. i was very clear to outline that i know these dynamics and themes in writing are generic, and that people can pull inspo from them because i have done the same thing. my only concern was the title, which i politely asked her to change, and she agreed. case closed. i have been, again objectively, quite kind to osaemu, and i had no intentions of blocking her like a moot had suggested because i felt it was a very silly issue to block over since she was very lovely to me. 

i did, however, block her because she posted one-paragraph posts with multiple characters tagged. that’s not a crime on her end, and i’m certainly not here to police her posts in the tags, but as me and plenty of other people on this app have voiced multiple times, it is a bit irritating and feels like spam to see posts of these kinds in the tags so i blocked her. this is a very popular opinion and i refuse to be considered problematic for it. i am not here to police what constitutes an appropriate post to tag x reader tags on, and while i have made posts simply sharing my opinion on what i feel should and should not be tagged, osaemu is more than welcome to post whatever she feels she would like to into the tags. i do, however, block anyone who i come across who makes those kinds of posts because i simply don’t like them, and i don’t like seeing them. i don’t owe an explanation for why i block anyone, but seeing as i have been painted as some bitch for doing so, here is my reasoning. quite a lot of people agree on this sentiment, and to each their own, but i don’t enjoy seeing those posts. i did also unblock her at one point, as she mentioned. this is simply because a mutual of mine had voiced that they felt someone had copied the concept of their drabble, and i was helping them word a message to send, so i went back to this exact conversation to look back on what i said because it was a similar situation. as you know, blocking someone hides their dms from your dm list, so i had intended to temporarily unblock her just to see how i worded my message to help formulate a message for a mutual. there were no screenshots sent, i simply wanted to jog my memory of my points, that’s all. i did forget to block her again for a bit but eventually did, and that’s the extent of our interactions. i don’t recall posts telling people that i condone sending anons with death threats like she has claimed, and if she could point out the particular posts i have made where i encourage people to send anon death threats on my behalf, i would be more than happy to clear them up, or address them. 

i have admittedly, on a few occasions said in my responses to anon hate itself, the phrase “kys” out of frustration, and there are i’m sure conflicting opinions on that, but i do not regularly use this phrase in my vocabulary. i have been on the receiving end of graphic sexual and violent asks in my inbox regarding me, my teenage sister, and my mother, during my time on here, and sometimes out of frustration i have said less than dignified things, but this is not a constant behavior, and frankly, i think once people make graphic, violent, and inappropriate comments about my 16 year old sister, saying “kys” in response is not the greater of the two evils. it is a tad bit hypocritical to expect benevolence from me to an anonymous hate ask just because there is “another person” at the end of the screen when they have not extended the same sentiment to me.  

all of that being said, jumping on the trend to trample on someone while you have the opportunity to because you’re bitter they blocked you is also no better than bullying. apart from blocking osaemu, I have taken careful steps to always be respectful to her due to the very kind comments she’s left on my writing. leaving nice comments on my writing is deeply appreciated and welcome, but that doesn’t mean i have to subject myself to seeing posts i do not want to see on my dash on my phone. i pay for the phone bill, so i will cater my phone to show me what i want to see, and if that includes blocking a few people, i am allowed to do that !! i should not have to apologize for or be crucified for blocking someone and their feelings being hurt over it. 

not only this, but several of you have somehow started a rumor that i am 26 or even pushing 30. that’s nowhere close to the truth. i’m 21, soon to be 22, and i have stated multiple times i am an undergraduate college student. of course, there is no timeline to college, and people of all ages complete their undergrad degrees, but i have made it a point to vent about my concerns numerous times that i am very stressed about taking extra classes every semester to compensate for changing my major late because i want to graduate on time. my graduation year is 2024 (as would make sense seeing as i will be 22 years old), and if you don’t believe me, i have celebrated my bday on april 12th of every year this blog has been active. you’re more than welcome to check my archive to see if that’s true, and for further reference, here is a picture i have sent to mods of servers i am in to be accepted. (note that my url used to be hanmas before saetoru.)

although there is no shame in being 26 or pushing 30, the reason why i wanted to address this is that i wanted to point out that yet another rumor has been fiercely pushed on my name and has been believed to be the truth. no one has to walk away from reading this post assuming that i’m a saint and i have never done anything wrong or that i have been faultless in differences i’ve had with other people. but a lot, if not all, of these claims are exaggerated with 0 evidence, and people have just run with claiming them as true. i physically cannot deny a large majority of these rumors with evidence or screenshots because half of them are made by people i have never interacted with or talked to, and i cannot produce evidence for interactions that never happened. i have seen blank, burner blogs post stories of their experiences with me, one in particular that claims i dm’d them to tell them their hanma fic was breathtaking before i harassed them about their theme, boyfriend, and parents. a) i do not dm anyone to compliment their fics because i am simply too shy to do that. i would have only reblogged the fic with comments if i enjoyed it. b) again, there is no evidence on their part, and i cannot dispel this story with evidence of my own because evidence of conversations that never took place does not exist. and c) i would like to think i do not come across as dense enough to attack someone in their dm’s viciously about their boyfriend and parents openly with my account, where they could easily spread the proof around if it had actually happened. i am not responsible for people’s internet literacy, and if people believe every story that is shared with not even a small piece of proof that it took place, i cannot do anything besides simply urge you all to formulate your opinions based on what you see, not based on what you hear. 

i would also like to end things off with an apology to all of you—mainly because there was no reason for so many of you to be dragged into something that did not involve you and also because there are very disturbing and important issues going on right now in real-time in the world that are affecting a lot of people. i never want to be involved in something that takes attention off of important discussions such as genocide, and while many of you like to claim i am deflecting, i think it is quite telling that some people have posted nothing about something this important but have made multiple posts regarding discourse. i did not feel it was appropriate at that time to focus on discourse, and i still do not think so, but i wanted to leave off with my own statement.

i would also like to apologize if i have ever come across as unkind during an experience with me; it is never my intention to be that way purposely. i have a habit of being petty sometimes and can be a bit short-tempered, and it’s something i work on. with as large of a following as i have, sometimes it’s better not to say anything at all than say it—however vaguely it might be. i hope some of you who also have larger followings keep that in mind so that you can avoid discourse erupting into something grand scale. please vent to people you trust and be wary of having a habit to subpost. but mainly, please remember that people trusting you with their feelings and troubles is not something you should take pride in spreading. there is nothing to be proud of about sharing people's private socials, urls, and conversations. while i am not always able to keep my temper under wraps, and while i have had my fair share of petty moments, i, to the best of my ability, have always made sure that i don’t come across as intentionally cruel or mean, nor have i purposely broken someone’s trust. sometimes i have retaliated back a bit fiercely, but i stand by the fact that i never purposely chased or drove anyone off, mocked or belittled them, or sent people over to dislike/hate them. i have at times vented to those who i believe are people i can trust, sure—but this is something we as people are all guilty of. there’s no way any of us can hold one person more accountable than others for partaking in closeted conversations that are never meant to get back to people and hurt them. 

i genuinely loved, and still love, writing very much, and i have always appreciated every ask, every reblog, and every comment. writing is a hobby i am greatly passionate about, and it’s always a hobby i was very excited to share with people on here because i don’t get to share it with people irl. i don’t willingly tell people irl that i enjoy making elaborate plots about anime characters, and i have always been very excited to share that hobby with you all, whether you are a reader or writer. i’ve read fanfiction for a very long time before i ever decided to try my hand at writing it, and i would never want to knock other people down simply because they “surpassed” me. i enjoy finding writers to read from, especially those who write better than me, because they are where i draw the most inspiration and motivation from. the moots i look up to most are moots who are in my opinion, far stronger writers than me, and moots who i always firmly believe deserve much more reach than i do on their stories because they’re far more fleshed out and in-depth than anything i can produce. and i am proud of them !! and even those of you who feel you are stuck not getting as much reach as you would hope, i am proud also of all of you for picking up a google doc or pen and writing and trying, whether you choose to share it or not. i will always strongly encourage you all to try your hand at writing if you have ever considered it because i have genuinely built such a better sense of self-esteem when being able to incorporate pieces of myself in my stories and express parts of who i am—i think some of you might really enjoy the catharsis that writing brings, and if you ever debate on trying it out, please do !! you might become really passionate about it. 

anyway, this post is abysmally long. none of it is to clear my name in hopes that i will be “un-canceled” (LOL) because i have decided saetoru is long overdue to be put to rest. i hope you can all, at the very least, allow other writers some peace and stop harassing them in their inboxes for knowing me (because that is also bullying and very ironic of you), and i hope you all got some sort of understanding of where i am coming from. if you think poorly of me, that’s okay. i have an opinion of myself, and the close people who surround me, that i am confident in, and while i may not have always handled things in the brightest of manners, i am well aware of what my intentions have always been. 

i’m deeply grateful to all 41k of you, and thank you for reading my works and allowing me to write for you !! thank you for all the very, very kind asks that i never got a chance to fully answer each one of, and thank you especially for all the supportive comments and love on the writing i’ve posted. they might be silly fics you read once and moved on from, but they’re all pieces of me, my life, and things that are important to me, and as cringe and cheesy as it sounds, it means quite literally everything to me when people read them and take away something from them. 

also, as a parting gift, i will be posting the nerd gojo, ex-convict geto, and a marriage rb! gojo fic to my ao3 (also saetoru) for those of you who have been patiently awaiting those wips to enjoy. please (a little more patiently) keep your eyes peeled for those <3 i will no longer be posting or active on saetoru, and in the event that i keep writing, it will be posted on my ao3, so you all will know where to find me !!

so for the last time, i love you my little runts !! wishing you all the best, and goodbye to my lil saetoru bestees. 

mwah !!

— tee <3

ps. i also have turned off reblogs for this post and limited replies to people i follow only. a lot of you will jump to say that it’s simply because i am “hiding,” but it is solely because i have said my piece and i intend to move on. thank you and have a lovely day shawtee ✌🏽

[mrs-delaney]

Hide | The First Date | Chapter Three

Summary: Riley Carter doesn’t get nervous about dates—until now. Dinner with Joe Burrow was supposed to be simple, but from the moment she steps into his apartment, she knows this is something else entirely. The conversation is easy, the chemistry undeniable, and before she knows it, she’s sharing pieces of herself she doesn’t usually give away.

But reality lingers in the background. Different cities. Different careers. Different worlds. She’s done long-distance before, and she knows how it ends. So why is she still sitting on his couch, laughing over shared stories and stolen glances, feeling like something about tonight just fits?

Maybe it’s the wine. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s him.

Pairings: Joe Burrow x Riley Carter (OC)

Word Count: 7.7k

Requested: No | Yes

Warnings: Mild language, flirty banter, excessive smiling at phone screens, mentions of past toxic relationships, one overly charming quarterback, and an increasing risk of catching feelings.

A Few Quick Notes:

📌 This story is ONLY posted on Wattpad and Tumblr under miss_delaney. If you see it anywhere else, it’s been stolen.Do NOT copy, repost, translate, or distribute my work on any other platform. Please respect my writing.

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📌 Requests: Open

Author’s Note:

Finally—the first date! I loved writing this chapter because it’s all about those little moments that make a connection feel real. The easy conversation, the unexpected confessions, the way one glance can make everything shift.

Joe and Riley have undeniable chemistry, but what really made this fun to write is the push and pull between them. Riley isn’t someone who gets swept up easily, and Joe isn’t the type to chase what doesn’t feel right. But something about this—this night, this moment—feels different for both of them.

This chapter really sets the tone for what’s to come, and let’s just say… things are about to get even more complicated.😉

Let me know what you think! 💛✨

Taglist: @wickedfun9

"This is ridiculous," she muttered to herself, smoothing her hands over the high-waisted brown and black checkered pants she'd paired with a cropped white t-shirt with "SALT" printed across the front. She tugged lightly at the hem of the shirt, exposing just the right amount of skin—not too much, but enough to feel playful.

She'd spent an embarrassing amount of time deciding what to wear. The black dress had felt too formal, the ripped jeans too casual, and the jumpsuit too trendy. After trying on practically everything she'd packed for her week in New York, she'd finally landed on this outfit—something that struck the perfect balance between effort and effortlessness.

The brown and black checkered pants were a statement piece she'd bought on a whim during a shopping trip with her bandmate Andy, who'd insisted they were "totally her." The loose-fitting cropped SALT tee was casual enough to balance the bold pattern, and she'd added a delicate gold necklace that drew attention to her collarbone. Her blonde hair fell in loose waves around her shoulders, styled to look like she hadn't actually spent forty-five minutes on it.

She stepped back, tilting her head. The pants hugged her hips perfectly, the tailored cut accentuating her legs in a way she knew would draw attention. Her black Converse grounded the whole look, adding an effortless edge that felt like her. It said, "I care, but I'm not trying too hard."

It wasn't like she hadn't been on a date before. She'd had her fair share of first meetings over drinks or dinner, especially in the year since she'd finally ended things with her ex. But this wasn't just any date—it was a date with Joe Burrow. A man who'd chosen her over Kendall Jenner and Zendaya on national television, whose genuine smile made her stomach flip, whose text messages had become the highlight of her days in New York.

And as much as she hated to admit it, she cared what he thought. She wanted his eyes to drift to the curve of her waist, to notice the way she'd tucked her hair behind one ear, leaving her jawline bare. She wanted him to look at her and think she was worth choosing again, off-camera, when it was just the two of them.

Why am I doing this? she thought, staring at her reflection. Why was she putting so much pressure on a dinner that would be over in a few hours? They were only in New York for a few more days. This was temporary—a fleeting connection that geography and careers would inevitably complicate.

She took a breath, smoothing her hands over her pants one last time. "It's just dinner," she told herself firmly. "With Joe Burrow. No big deal."

But even as the words left her mouth, she knew she didn't believe them.

Joe wasn't her usual type. She'd spent most of her twenties in an on-again, off-again relationship with the same guy. A musician in a rival band, who ran in the same circles and understood her world. The kind of man who lived in the moment but never had a real plan for the future. They had history, passion, and just enough toxicity to keep pulling each other back in. She'd written her best songs in the aftermath of their fights, poured her heart out on stages across the country with lyrics he'd inspired.

Joe was the opposite. Steady. Focused. A man who knew exactly who he was and where he was going. He didn't need chaos to feel alive. He wasn't chasing the next thrill or trying to outrun himself. He was just... comfortable in his own skin. There was something grounding about him, like he was anchored in a way her ex never was.

And that confidence? Yeah, it didn't hurt.

Neither did the fact that he was ridiculously good-looking. Strong jawline, sharp blue eyes, and a body built for power and precision. But it wasn't just his looks. He was funny, kind, and had this way of making her feel like she was the only person in the room when he looked at her. Their text conversations had revealed a thoughtfulness she hadn't expected—he remembered details, asked follow-up questions, seemed genuinely interested in her world beyond the surface level.

Riley grabbed her bag, a vintage leather crossbody she'd found at a flea market in Nashville, slipping her phone into it before taking one last look in the mirror. The outfit was casual but deliberate, playful but grounded. It felt authentic to who she was, not who she thought he wanted her to be.

With a deep breath, she headed for the door, a flutter of anticipation settling in her stomach as she called for a car.

The ride to Joe's temporary apartment went by in a blur of city lights and second thoughts. What if the easy rapport they'd established through texts didn't translate in person? What if the Tonight Show connection was just a fluke, a moment of chemistry manufactured by the surreal circumstances? What if she was setting herself up for disappointment?

But before she could spiral too far, the car pulled up to a sleek high-rise in Tribeca. "You've arrived at your destination," the driver announced, snapping her back to reality.

Riley stepped out onto the sidewalk, taking in the modern glass building towering above her. Of course Joe would stay in a place like this—upscale without being flashy, convenient to downtown without being in the middle of the tourist chaos.

After checking in with the doorman, who seemed unsurprised by her arrival (had Joe mentioned she was coming?), Riley rode the elevator to the twenty-second floor. Her heart hammered against her ribs as she approached apartment 2204, hesitating just a moment before knocking.

When Joe opened the door, the easy smile on his face faltered for just a second. His eyes dropped—first to the playful sliver of skin where her cropped shirt ended, then to the way her checkered pants hugged her figure.

Riley saw it.

It was subtle—the way his jaw tightened briefly before he caught himself and looked back up at her face. But it was enough to send a flicker of warmth through her. That look—that momentary slip in his composure—told her more than words could have. He was affected by her, even if he tried to hide it.

"Hey," he said, his voice easy, but his eyes lingering just a fraction longer than necessary.

He looked good—really good. Black t-shirt that fit just right across his shoulders, light wash jeans that had probably cost more than they looked like they should. White socks peeking out above his bare feet, as if he was completely comfortable in his space and wanted her to feel the same. His hair was slightly tousled, like he'd run his hands through it recently.

"Hey yourself," Riley replied, a smile spreading across her face.

Joe stepped forward, pulling her into a quick hug, his hand warm against her back. She caught the subtle scent of his cologne—something clean and masculine that made her want to lean in closer. As they pulled apart, he pressed a brief, casual kiss to her cheek. The gesture was friendly, welcoming, but the slight pressure of his hand at her waist suggested something more.

"Come in," he said, stepping back to let her inside. "Dinner's almost ready."

The apartment was exactly what she would have expected from a high-end New York rental—open floor plan, sleek furniture in neutral tones, and stunning floor-to-ceiling windows that framed the city skyline. The space was beautiful but impersonal, with nothing to suggest it was anything more than a temporary stop. No photos, no personal touches, nothing that revealed anything about the man staying there.

"Nice place," she said, taking in the modern lines of the apartment.

Joe shrugged, dragging his hand through his hair. "I'm working on a brand deal and told them I didn't care where I stayed but I wanted a nice view and this is what they got me."

Riley smiled, the response so perfectly Joe. Direct, unpretentious, focused only on what mattered to him. She moved toward the windows, drawn to the panoramic view of the city below—a mesmerizing tapestry of lights against the darkening sky. "Well, they nailed the view part. This is incredible."

The rich aroma of tomato sauce and garlic filled the air, making her mouth water and reminding her that despite her nerves, she was actually hungry.

"Is something burning?" she teased, turning back to him with a playful smile.

Joe laughed, moving toward the kitchen. "Not yet, but no promises. I'm more of a 'follow the recipe exactly' kind of cook."

Riley followed him, leaning against the kitchen island as he stirred something on the stove. The kitchen was spotless except for the evidence of his cooking—a cutting board with a few stray herbs, a unopened bottle of wine, two glasses waiting to be filled.

"Which means you can cook, just not freestyle it," she observed, watching him move confidently between the stove and counter. There was something undeniably attractive about a man who knew his way around a kitchen, even if he was just following instructions.

Joe glanced at her, the corner of his mouth lifting in a half-smile that made her stomach flip. "Let's see how dinner turns out before you give me too much credit." He picked up the bottle of wine opened it, and poured her a glass, the rich burgundy liquid catching the light. "Wine?"

"Please," Riley said, accepting the glass with a smile. Their fingers brushed lightly in the process, and she felt that small point of contact like an electric current running up her arm. Ridiculous, she thought, how such a tiny touch could affect her so strongly.

The wine was smooth and rich, clearly chosen with care. She took an appreciative sip, the complex flavor lingering on her tongue. "This is good."

"A friend recommended it," Joe admitted. "Said it would pair well with pasta."

"Your friend has excellent taste," Riley said, watching as he returned to the stove, stirring what looked like a rich tomato sauce.

"To not burning dinner," he said, grinning as he clinked his glass against hers.

Riley smirked. "I'll drink to that."

As Joe continued cooking, Riley couldn’t help but notice how little of himself he’d brought into the space. Where she would have unpacked fully into even a temporary rental, arranging her things to make it feel like home, his possessions were nearly invisible—a phone charger plugged into the wall, a few essentials on the kitchen counter, a single sweatshirt draped over a chair. It was as if he was just passing through, careful not to leave any trace of himself behind.

“That smells amazing,” she said, tilting her head slightly. “I thought we’d be getting takeout, but this is way better. I’m already impressed.”

Joe glanced at her, amusement flashing in his eyes. "Like I said don't get your hopes up. I had to call someone earlier to walk me through this recipe."

"That's fair," Riley teased, "but this looks really good—and pasta is one of my favorites."

Joe chuckled, turning back to the stove. "Well, then, I guess I made the right choice."

There was something surprisingly intimate about watching him cook for her. It wasn't a grand gesture, but it felt personal in a way that dinner at a restaurant wouldn't have. He was inviting her into his temporary space, making an effort that went beyond simply making a reservation.

"Can I help with anything?" she offered, setting her wine glass down.

Joe shook his head. "Just keep me company. Tell me about your day."

So she did. Riley found herself talking about the recording session that had gone unexpectedly well, about the weird interaction she'd had with a fan who recognized her at the coffee shop, about the frustrating call with her team about tour dates. As she spoke, Joe listened, asking questions that showed he was genuinely engaged, not just waiting for his turn to talk.

"Is your band all here in New York with you?" he asked as he drained the pasta.

"Yeah, we're together a lot, working or not," Riley said with a fondness in her voice. "We've been inseparable since we were, what, fourteen? Fifteen? That’s my family."

"That's a long time," Joe observed, glancing at her with interest. "You must have grown up together in a lot of ways."

Riley nodded, a fond smile tugging at her lips. “Yeah, I met Pete the summer before high school at a drama competition, and he eventually introduced me to Andy and Nick. We just clicked—four drama and band geeks with messy home lives, spending entire weekends writing terrible songs and talking about touring the world. When everything else felt like chaos, we had each other. We still do, in a lot of ways.”

Joe smiled, his eyes softening at her obvious affection. As he stirred the sauce, he glanced over at her, his attention fully on her despite the task at hand. “That’s really incredible—you don’t see that kind of bond last so long very often.”

There was something about the way he looked at her—focused, interested, like he wasn’t just listening but really hearing her—that made her stomach flip. She shifted slightly in her seat, tucking a stray curl behind her ear, suddenly hyperaware of the warmth between them.

By the time he plated the pasta, Riley realized she'd been rambling for nearly twenty minutes, and he hadn't seemed bored for a second.

Joe grabbed two plates and gestured toward the dining table, then hesitated. “The table’s kind of ridiculous,” he admitted with a small grin. “We’d have to yell to hear each other.”

Riley laughed, glancing at the sleek but oversized dining setup. “Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.”

“Island?” he suggested, nodding toward the kitchen island with its barstools tucked neatly beneath the counter.

“Island,” she agreed.

They settled in side by side, their plates in front of them, knees nearly brushing in the close space. The island felt more casual, more natural than the oversized dining table, and Riley liked that. Close enough to steal a bite off his plate if she wanted to. Close enough to feel the occasional brush of his arm when he reached for his glass.

Dinner was simple but good—pasta with a rich tomato sauce, salad, and fresh bread. The warm glow of the pendant light cast soft shadows across the marble countertop, the city skyline stretching out behind them. It was quiet, comfortable, the kind of setting that made conversation easy. A far cry from a fancy restaurant with stiff white tablecloths and carefully curated small talk. This felt better. Warmer. Like they weren’t just sharing a meal, but actually getting to know each other.

Riley took a bite of the pasta, savoring the tangy sweetness of the sauce. "This is really good. I thought you said you weren't much of a cook?"

"I said I could follow a recipe," Joe corrected with a grin. "And I might have gotten some coaching over the phone from my mom."

Riley laughed, genuinely touched by the admission. "That's adorable. My Papa was the cook in our house growing up, but I picked up a lot from him. Cooking's kind of my therapy now—when I actually have time to be home."

"Oh yeah?" Joe raised an eyebrow, looking impressed. "What's your specialty?"

"I would say stuff that's fried and will stick to your ribs—hearty Southern stuff," Riley said with a hint of pride. "Gumbo, jambalaya, red beans and rice, fried chicken. Comfort food with history behind it. The kind of dishes that taste best when you're making them with people you love, music playing, wine flowing."

Joe looked at her with newfound appreciation. "Now I feel like I should be embarrassed about serving you pasta."

"Don't be," Riley smiled, taking another bite. "Sometimes simple is exactly right. And this is really good."

"So what do you do with your time when you're not playing football?" Riley asked, twirling pasta around her fork. The texture of the al dente pasta and the smooth sauce created a perfect contrast that she savored as she waited for his answer.

"UFC is big for me," Joe replied, his expression lighting up. "Been following it for years. There's something about the strategy, not just the physicality. I read a lot too—mostly history and biographies. Something about understanding how other people think, especially leaders or athletes who've overcome odds. And..." he hesitated, then admitted with a self-deprecating smile, "I spend more time than I should rewatching 90s cartoons."

"Wait," Riley leaned forward, genuinely surprised. "Like what?"

“SpongeBob. The early seasons—elite TV. Best way to shut my brain off.”

"No way!" Riley said with unexpected enthusiasm. "My grandparents raised me, and I basically spent half my childhood parked in front of the TV. SpongeBob was my religion."

Joe's laugh was immediate and genuine, his eyes crinkling at the corners. "I didn't expect you to be a SpongeBob fan."

"The inner machinations of my mind are an enigma," she quoted in a perfect Patrick voice, complete with the milk carton motion.

Joe nearly choked on his wine, setting the glass down as he laughed. "Okay, that was scarily accurate."

"Years of practice," Riley said with a playful wink.

The conversation flowed naturally from there, covering everything from music (he admitted to having a playlist with some of her band's songs) to football (she confessed she'd watched highlights of his games on YouTube before coming over).

"What about when you're not recording or touring?" Joe asked, refilling her wine glass. The smooth sound of the wine pouring into the crystal, the subtle clink as he set the bottle down, added to the intimate atmosphere. "What does Riley Carter do for fun?"

Riley smiled, leaning back in her chair. "I have these friends in Leadville," she explained, a fondness creeping into her voice. "Mark, his wife Amy, and their two kids—Evie and Olive. They're like my second family. Whenever I can get a week free, I crash with them. This past summer, we went on this overnight rafting trip down the Arkansas River. Nothing fancy—just set up camp, built a fire, and completely disconnected. It was exactly what I needed."

"That sounds amazing," Joe admitted, a hint of something like wistfulness crossing his features. "I haven't done nearly enough of that stuff."

"No?" Riley asked, finding it hard to imagine a life without spontaneous adventures.

Joe shrugged, his expression suddenly more vulnerable than she'd seen it all evening. "Football's been pretty all-consuming since I was a kid. My idea of adventure is mostly finding a decent restaurant in whatever city we're playing in. My friends tell me I need to broaden my horizons more," he added with a self-deprecating smile. "On my time off, I'm still prone to staying in, playing video games and studying film. Not exactly the experiences you're talking about."

Riley studied him for a moment, seeing beyond the confident quarterback to the man who might have missed out on certain kinds of experiences. "Well, Mark and Amy would love you. They're always looking for new people to drag on their adventures."

The way she included him so casually in her future plans caught them both by surprise. Riley felt her cheeks warm slightly, but Joe's smile only widened, his eyes holding hers with unexpected intensity.

"What about internationally?" Joe asked, genuinely curious. "You tour a lot, right? Do you ever get to actually see the places you go?"

Riley's face lit up. "Last year, after our European tour wrapped, I took three weeks and just traveled through Eastern Europe by train. No schedule, no real plan. Just a rail pass and a backpack. Ended up in this tiny Hungarian village for their wine festival, then a thermal bath in Budapest that's been there since the 1500s. I slept in a converted monastery in Poland." She smiled at the memory. "It's the best kind of freedom, just going wherever looks interesting that day."

Joe's expression showed both admiration and perhaps a touch of envy. "That's... I can't even imagine doing something like that."

"You should try it sometime," Riley suggested, her voice warm. "There's something about just going where the day takes you."

Joe took a sip of his wine, considering her words. "I think that's where we're really different," he admitted. "I like having a plan, knowing what's coming next. Structure has always been my thing."

“And I get bored if I know exactly what’s happening,” Riley countered with a mischievous smile. “Half the fun is the unexpected. Last year I missed a flight because I got caught up exploring a street market in Barcelona, ended up crashing with locals I’d just met, and had one of the best nights of my life.” She laughed at the memory. “Honestly, I’m lucky my team’s as laid-back as they are, or they probably would’ve killed me. But some of my favorite memories come from those kinds of detours.”

Joe's eyes widened slightly. "That would stress me out so much."

“For real, one of these days, you should give it a shot,” Riley teased, her tone light but sincere. “There’s a certain thrill in ditching the plan and seeing where the moment takes you.”

Joe studied her, the corners of his mouth tugging upward. “Maybe one day,” he said, his voice warm, a hint of something unreadable in his expression.

Riley arched a brow, her lips curving into a playful smirk. “Maybe?” she echoed. “That doesn’t sound very convincing.”

Joe swirled the wine in his glass, watching her over the rim before taking a slow sip. “I guess that depends.”

“On what?” she challenged, tilting her head.

His gaze held hers, steady and unwavering. “On whether you’re willing to show me how.”

Riley’s smirk softened, her gaze flicking over him as she rested her chin on her hand. “You sure you can handle that, Burrow?”

Joe didn’t answer right away. He just watched her, his blue eyes steady, thoughtful. Then, slowly, he set his wine glass down and leaned in, his voice lower now, quieter. “Guess there’s only one way to find out.”

Something in his tone sent a shiver down Riley’s spine—not just the usual flirtation, but something more deliberate, more serious.

She swallowed, suddenly hyperaware of the space between them. Or rather, the lack of it.

“You might regret that,” she said, but her voice had lost some of its teasing edge.

Joe held her gaze, his lips twitching slightly like he knew exactly what he was doing. “I doubt it.”

The air between them felt charged, the sounds of the city outside fading into the background. For a moment, neither of them moved, both caught in whatever this was—whatever it was turning into.

Riley exhaled, tilting her head as if considering. “I’ll think about it,” she said, dragging out the words just enough to tease. Then, with a playful smirk, she reached for her wine glass. “But I make no promises. You might be a lost cause.”

Joe chuckled, shaking his head. “You seem like a girl who likes a challenge.”

Riley smirked. “Guess we’ll find out.”

Riley cleared her throat, breaking the moment slightly. She shifted in her seat, offering him a casual smile. “So,” she said, steering the conversation to safer ground, “you’ve been single for about a year?”

Joe nodded, leaning back slightly in his chair. "Yeah. My ex and I were together for a long time—since college. She's a great person, but we just grew apart."

"Was it hard?" Riley asked gently, genuinely curious about how someone like Joe handled heartbreak.

"It was," Joe admitted, his expression thoughtful. "Not because there was bad blood or anything, but because we'd been such a big part of each other's lives for so long. I never wanted to make things harder for her than they needed to be. She's a good person, and I wanted to be respectful about how we ended things."

There was no bitterness in his voice, no lingering resentment. Just a mature understanding that sometimes relationships end, and that's okay. It was refreshing to hear someone speak so kindly about an ex, especially compared to her own experience. The contrast wasn't lost on Riley—Joe's measured, respectful approach versus the explosive, public mess of her last relationship.

Riley nodded slowly, her fingers tracing the rim of her wine glass. "I get that. My last relationship was... the opposite of amicable."

Joe tilted his head, his brow furrowing slightly. "What happened?"

She let out a small breath, leaning back in her chair. This wasn't something she usually discussed on first dates, but something about Joe made her want to be honest. "It's kind of a long story. We were together on and off since I was sixteen—so, way too long. He was..." she paused, choosing her words carefully, "another musician. Talented, charismatic, and completely unpredictable. The kind of guy who'd show up at my door at 3 AM with tickets to Paris for a flight leaving in two hours."

"And you'd go?" Joe asked, a hint of wonder in his voice.

"Every time," Riley admitted with a self-deprecating smile. "That was the pattern. Chaos, excitement, massive fights, tearful reunions—the whole toxic cycle. By the time it ended, it wasn't just messy—it was headlines. The internet had a field day picking sides."

Joe reached for the wine bottle, refilling both their glasses as he considered her words. "That sounds brutal."

"It was," Riley said, accepting the wine with a grateful nod. "It took me a while to get my footing again, but I've been single ever since. And honestly? It's been good for me. I needed that time to figure out who I was without the constant drama."

Something about Joe's careful responses, the way he maintained a polite distance even as they connected, nagged at the back of Riley's mind. He was present, engaged, clearly interested—but there was something guarded about him too. A wall she couldn't quite see beyond. She'd been drawn to unavailable men before, mistaking their reserve for depth. The difference was, this time she noticed the pattern.

Joe nodded, his expression thoughtful. "That makes sense. You seem like someone who knows exactly who she is."

"Most of the time," she said with a small smile, touched by his perception. "But it took a lot of trial and error to get here. I've been through some wild phases—there was definitely a time when my idea of problem-solving was to drink too much tequila and make impulsive decisions. I'm not gonna lie sometimes I still drink too much, smoke too much and make impulsive decisions."

Joe laughed, his eyes crinkling at the corners. "I partied a pretty good bit in college, but now I prefer more chill things where I can drink a bit and maybe smoke a bit in the off season." Riley tilted her head, intrigued. “So you’re saying you can let loose every now and then?”

Joe smirked, taking a slow sip of his wine. “I mean, I’m not out here causing scandals, but I like to unwind like anyone else. A few drinks, a little smoke—helps take the edge off, especially in the off-season.”

Riley grinned, resting her chin on her hand. “Mmm, good to know your not a saint.”

Joe chuckled. “I think the people close to me would laugh at the idea of me being a saint.”

She studied him for a moment, tapping her fingers lightly against her glass. “So what does unwinding look like for you? I can’t picture you in some wild club, bottle service and all that.”

Joe shook his head. “Nah, that’s not my scene. I’d rather be at a house party with people I actually like, or catching a fight, or hanging out at my house playing video games.”

Riley’s lips quirked. “Honestly? That all sounds like a good time.”

Joe raised an eyebrow, amused. “Even the fight?”

“Especially the fight,” she said, grinning. “I love that shit.”

Something shifted in Joe’s expression—a softening, a flicker of surprise, like he hadn’t expected her to get it. “Sometimes I do wonder what I’ve missed while I’ve been so focused.”

Riley studied him, her fingers tracing the rim of her wine glass. "Missed?" she echoed, genuine curiosity in her voice.

Joe leaned back slightly, running a hand through his hair—a gesture she was beginning to recognize as his thinking move. “Football has always been everything. Every decision, every sacrifice—it’s all been for the game.” His eyes met hers, flickering with something raw. “Sometimes I wonder if I should’ve… I don’t know. Lived a little more.”

Riley tilted her head, considering him without judgment. "You mean like the whole reckless, 'young and wild' phase?"

“I don’t know,” Joe said with a small shrug. “Just never really had the time for all that.”

She let the thought settle between them for a moment, swirling her wine gently before a teasing glint sparked in her eyes. "Well, if you ever feel like making a few questionable decisions, I'd be happy to be a bad influence."

Joe laughed, the sound warm and genuine. "Oh, you're gonna be trouble. I can already tell."

Riley's smile widened, a hint of mischief dancing in her eyes. "You say that like it's a bad thing."

"No," he agreed, leaning forward slightly, his gaze holding hers with newfound intensity. "It's not."

The moment stretched between them, electric with possibility, until Riley broke it with a playful sip of her wine. "At least I'll make sure you have fun along the way."

The conversation had been effortless, filled with laughs, thoughtful exchanges, and a surprising ease that felt almost too good to be true. As they finished eating, she leaned back in her chair and sipped the last of her wine, her eyes drifting toward Joe as he cleared their plates.

As she looked at him moving around the kitchen, Riley found herself wondering if there could ever be a real future here. Cincinnati and New Orleans might as well be different planets for all the practical challenges they presented. Her life was constant movement—touring, recording, the obligations that came with her career. His was just as demanding, but in a completely different way. How would they even begin to navigate that?

She'd been in this exact situation before—the excitement of connection followed by months of trying to align schedules, of disappointment when plans fell through, of relationships that existed more in text messages than in real life. Intense connections that burned bright then faded when real life intervened.

And yet something about Joe felt different. More substantial. Worth the effort, maybe.

The thought brought a slight tightness to her chest that she tried to ignore. Tonight wasn't about practicalities or logistics. It was about connection, and that was something they seemed to have in abundance.

"Do you want dessert?" Joe asked, glancing over his shoulder as he moved toward the sink.

Riley smiled, shaking her head. "I shouldn't. I'm already too full, and you've set the bar pretty high with dinner. I don't want to ruin it."

Joe chuckled, rinsing the plates and setting them in the sink. "I'll take that as a win."

"Definitely a win," she replied, her lips curving into a grin.

As she stood to help him clear the island, Joe waved her off. "You're my guest. Sit. Relax."

Riley laughed softly but sat back down, watching as he moved around the kitchen. There was an ease to his movements, a quiet confidence that was more appealing than any over-the-top charm or swagger. "You're a lot more laid-back than I expected," she admitted, her voice teasing but sincere.

Joe glanced at her with a curious smile. "What'd you expect?"

"I don't know," she said, tilting her head thoughtfully. "Maybe someone a little more... intense? With the way you are on the field, I figured that might carry over."

Joe smirked, drying his hands on a dish towel. "Don't get me wrong, I can be intense when it comes to football. But I'm not trying to bring that energy to dinner."

"Well, it's working for you," Riley said, leaning forward slightly. "Though I wouldn't mind seeing that intensity in the right context," she added with a small smirk, unable to help herself.

Joe smiled at her, his eyes warm. "Good. I'm glad."

There was a moment of comfortable silence between them, the kind that didn't need to be filled with nervous chatter. Riley found herself studying his profile as he finished tidying up—the sharp line of his jaw, the concentration in his eyes, the way his mouth curved slightly upward even in repose.

When he caught her looking, she didn't glance away. Instead, she held his gaze, a small smile playing at her lips. Something shifted in the air between them, a subtle change in energy that made her pulse quicken.

After they'd finished cleaning up, Joe suggested they move to the couch, where they could see the city lights better. Riley agreed, settling onto the sleek gray sofa while Joe dimmed the overhead lights, enhancing the glow from the cityscape outside. The fabric of the couch was soft against her skin, and she could feel the slight warmth where Joe had been sitting before dinner.

"This view is seriously incredible," Riley said, looking out at the panorama of buildings and twinkling lights. The distant sounds of the city—car horns, the occasional siren, the constant urban hum—filtered through the glass, creating a soothing backdrop to their conversation.

"It is," Joe agreed, but when she turned, she found him looking at her instead of the window.

Her breath caught for just a second, the weight of his gaze stirring something in her chest. The way he watched her—like she was something worth looking at, worth remembering—made the cityscape outside feel insignificant in comparison.

The moment stretched between them, charged with something neither was ready to name. Riley felt her pulse quicken, her skin warming under his steady gaze. She'd been looked at by plenty of men before, but rarely with this quiet intensity, this focused attention that seemed to see past her surface.

Finally, she arched a brow, aiming for lightness despite the sudden shift in the air. "The view's that way, Burrow," she said, nodding toward the window.

Joe's mouth curved into a slow smile, unapologetic. "I know."

He held her gaze for another moment before shaking his head slightly. "My friends are already giving me hell about tonight, you know."

Riley tilted her head. “For what?”

Joe huffed a laugh. “My buddy Ja’Marr sent, and I quote, ‘You better not fumble this.”

Riley’s lips parted in surprise before she laughed, warm and genuine. “Oh, hilarious.”

Joe shook his head, amused. “Not to me! If they think I’m actually into someone, it’s game over. The whole Fallon thing and tonight has definitely made the group chat.”

Riley bit her lip, fighting a grin. “And does it deserve to?”

Joe’s eyes flickered with something unreadable as he studied her. “That depends.”

“On what?” she challenged softly.

His voice was smooth, teasing, but something in the way he looked at her made her breath hitch. “On whether I’m fumbling.”

The space between them felt smaller. Riley swallowed, her voice quieter now. “I don’t think you are.”

Joe’s fingers drummed once against the cushion beside her, contemplative. “Good.”

Neither of them moved for a long moment. The outside world—the buzzing of her phone, his teammates’ texts, the city humming beyond the windows—faded away, leaving only the two of them in the quiet charge of something unspoken.

Then Joe reached for his glass, breaking the moment just enough for them both to breathe again. “So… your bandmates do they know about us?”

Riley smirked. “Oh, absolutely. Andy’s probably picking out my wedding dress as we speak.”

Joe chuckled, shaking his head. “Ja’Marr is already picking out my tux.”

Riley lifted her glass in a mock toast. “Here’s to our wildly overinvolved friends.”

Joe clinked his glass against hers, his gaze lingering just a second too long. “I’ll drink to that.”

"Good to know we're providing entertainment," Riley said with a playful roll of her eyes.

"So..," Joe said, shifting the conversation. "I've been listening to your music a lot this week."

Riley felt a flutter of pleasure at his admission. "Yeah? What's your favorite?"

"'Gasoline,'" he replied without hesitation. "There's something about it that's...very real. Raw. Like you're not holding anything back."

Riley blinked, genuinely surprised by his specific observation. "That's from our first album. Most people don't even know that song. I wrote it after a particularly wild weekend in Austin—I'd actually gotten kicked out of a bar because I was underage and ended up sleeping on a stranger's beanbag chair." She laughed, then caught herself. 

Joe’s brows lifted, amusement flashing across his face. “Wait—what?”

Riley grinned, leaning back against the couch. “Oh, it was a night. Lost my fake ID, got caught sneaking back in, and instead of calling it a loss like a normal person, I tried to argue my way past the bouncer. Spoiler alert—he did not find me charming.”

Joe chuckled, shaking his head. “And the stranger’s couch?”

Riley exhaled dramatically. “Yep. Woke up on a beanbag chair next to a guy named Sparrow—who I’m 99% sure was actually named Todd.”

Joe let out a low laugh, shaking his head. “That sounds… chaotic.”

“Oh, it was,” Riley said with a smirk. “But chaos breeds creativity.” She tilted her head slightly, eyes playful. “Look, I was young, reckless, and very committed to bad decisions.” She lifted her wine glass in a mock toast. “But hey, at least it made for a good song.”

Joe huffed a laugh, shaking his head. “That’s one way to look at it.”

“Anyway,” Riley said, tilting her head. “I’m impressed you know that song.”

Joe’s lips quirked into a smirk of his own. “I gotta admit, I’ve been a fan—mostly the radio stuff. But I’ve been doing my research this week.”

Riley arched a brow, intrigued. “Research, huh?”

He shrugged, his grin easy. “Professional habit. I like to know what I’m talking about.”

Joe exhaled, stretching an arm along the back of the couch as he studied her. “You surprise me, you know.”

Riley tilted her head, intrigued. “Yeah? How so?”

He smirked, shaking his head slightly. “I don’t know what I expected when we started talking, but I don’t think it was someone who writes songs about waking up next to a guy named Sparrow.”

She laughed, shaking her head. “I like to keep people guessing.”

Joe chuckled. “That, I’m starting to realize.”

A comfortable silence settled between them for a beat, the kind that didn’t demand to be filled. Riley let her gaze drift toward the window, the lights of the city sprawling below them.

Joe was still looking at her when she turned back. His voice was quieter when he spoke again. “What about now? What kind of stories do you want to tell?”

Riley hesitated, caught off guard by the sincerity of the question. Most people wanted to talk about her old songs, the chaos and recklessness, the wild nights and heartbreak. But Joe was asking about now. About her.

She let out a slow breath, tracing the rim of her wine glass. “I don’t know yet,” she admitted. “I think I’m still figuring that out.”

Joe nodded like he understood. He didn’t push for an answer, didn’t try to fill the silence with empty words. Instead, he let it sit, as if giving her the space to figure it out for herself.

Riley appreciated that.

But as the quiet stretched between them, another realization settled in.

She understood all too well the constant pull of professional obligations. She thought of her own schedule—the studio sessions, the meetings with the label about the upcoming tour, the media commitments that seemed to multiply daily. The practical reality of their lives hit her suddenly—how rarely they'd be in the same city, how different their demands and schedules were, how complicated it would be to build something real between Cincinnati and New Orleans.

For a brief moment, she wondered if this was worth pursuing. She'd made that mistake before—trying to force a relationship to work despite impossible logistics, ending up with stolen weekends and late-night phone calls that only made the distance harder. She'd promised herself she wouldn't do that again.

But as Joe looked back at her, that focused intensity returning to his eyes, Riley found herself reconsidering. Maybe this was different. Maybe he was different.

When she finally glanced at her phone and saw it was nearly midnight, she sighed. "I should probably go. Early studio session tomorrow."

Joe nodded, though she thought she caught a flicker of disappointment in his eyes. "Let me call you a car."

Riley raised an eyebrow. "You really don't have to do that."

"I want to," he said simply, already opening the app. The gesture was old-fashioned, gentlemanly in a way that felt both unexpected and completely in character for him.

Joe confirmed the ride, then turned back to her. "It'll be here in about five minutes."

As they walked toward the door, Riley grabbed her bag from the chair where she'd set it earlier.

"Are you staying in the city while you're here?" Joe asked as he opened the door, leaning against the frame to look at her.

"Yeah, I'm in Greenwich Village for a few days," Riley said, shifting the bag onto her shoulder. "It's a cute area—great energy, even if it's a little loud at night."

Joe nodded. "That's a good spot. You like New York?"

"I do," Riley said, smiling. "But it's not home. I'm based in LA for work, but I have a place in New Orleans that I love. I'm never there, though."

"Why not?" Joe asked, his brow furrowing slightly.

"Work keeps me away," Riley said with a small shrug. "I have to be in LA for studio stuff, meetings, all that. But New Orleans is where I'd rather be—everything feels slower there, more... real."

Joe tilted his head, studying her. “I don’t know if ‘grounded’ is the right word for you, but you seem like someone who needs something real. Something that keeps you from floating away.”

Riley considered that, rolling her wine glass between her fingers. “Maybe. Or maybe I just like knowing there’s something solid to come back to when I need it. What about you? Are you always on the road?"

Joe nodded. "Pretty much. Between the season and off-season workouts, it feels like I'm always going somewhere. But when I can, I like to spend time back in Ohio. That's home for me."

"Ohio, huh?" Riley said, raising an eyebrow. "Why there?"

"I grew up in Athens, Ohio," Joe explained, a fondness creeping into his voice. "After college, I wanted to be somewhere close to my family, close to where I'm from. Cincinnati made sense." He shrugged lightly. "Those roots matter to me."

"That makes sense," Riley said, her voice softening. There was something appealing about his attachment to his roots, his lack of pretension.

A notification on Joe's phone broke the moment, the soft chime signaling that her car had arrived. He glanced at it, then back at her.

"That's your ride," he said quietly.

For a brief moment, Riley considered saying something—suggesting they meet again tomorrow, asking if he'd be in LA or New Orleans anytime soon. The words were on the tip of her tongue, but something held her back. A sudden awareness of the complications, the distance, the different worlds they inhabited.

But then Joe spoke, his voice low and warm. "I'd like to do this again."

Riley felt the butterflies in her stomach take flight at his words, her lips curving into a smile before she even realized it. "Yeah. I'd like that too."

Joe's shoulders relaxed, his smile widening slightly. For a second, neither of them moved. The space between them felt charged, and Riley wasn't sure if it was just her imagination or if he was feeling it too.

"When are you leaving New York?" she asked, reluctant to end the evening completely.

"Sunday morning," Joe replied.

Riley nodded, a small pang of disappointment mingling with the warmth in her chest. "I'm here until Saturday."

For a brief moment, Riley considered saying something—suggesting they meet again tomorrow, asking if he’d be in LA or New Orleans anytime soon. The words were on the tip of her tongue, but something held her back. What was the point in making plans when their lives were built around obligations that always came first? She’d been here before—trying to make something work between tour stops, fitting love into layovers. It never ended well.

Joe must have seen something shift in her expression because he took a step closer, reaching up to brush a loose strand of hair from her face. The touch was light, barely there, but it sent a shiver down her spine. His fingers lingered for just a second before dropping back to his side.

“We don’t have to have it all figured out,” he murmured, his voice steady. “But I know I’m not ready to let this go just yet.”

Riley’s breath caught at his proximity, at the intensity in his eyes that he’d kept carefully banked all evening. Maybe that was the difference. He wasn’t asking for guarantees, for promises she couldn’t make. He was just asking for now.

The moment stretched between them, taut with possibility. Then Joe stepped back, clearing his throat slightly as he opened the door. “Text me when you get back to your hotel?”

Riley nodded, oddly breathless. “I will.”

"Goodnight, Riley," he said, his voice low and warm.

"Goodnight, Joe," she replied, stepping into the hallway with reluctance that surprised her.

As she turned to go, Joe called after her softly. "Hey, Riley?"

She looked back, questioning.

Joe hesitated, like he wasn’t sure if he should say what he was thinking. But then he met her eyes and let the truth slip anyway.

"I'm glad I picked you. On Fallon, I mean."

A slow smile spread across her face. "So am I."

In the elevator down to the lobby, Riley leaned against the wall, replaying moments from the evening in her mind. The way he'd looked at her when he opened the door. The thoughtfulness he'd shown in preparing dinner. The ease of their conversation. The undeniable connection that seemed to grow stronger with every hour they spent together.

The cool night air hit her face as she stepped outside, the sounds and smells of New York enveloping her. As she slid into the waiting car, a text lit up her phone screen.

Joe: Just making sure you got in the car safely.

Riley smiled, her fingers typing a quick response.

Riley: Safe and sound. Thank you for tonight. It was perfect.

His reply came almost immediately.

Joe: I had a great time. We’ll talk tomorrow?

She glanced down at her phone, at his simple "We'll talk tomorrow?" that somehow felt like so much more than just words on a screen. Maybe this would end like all her other attempts at long-distance connection, crumbling under the weight of competing priorities and impossible logistics. Or maybe, just maybe, Joe Burrow would be the exception to every rule she thought she knew.

Either way, for the first time in longer than she could remember, Riley was willing to risk finding out.

[forzaferraris]

UH OH ! — cl16. [ series masterlist . part ii . ]

CHAPTER ONE / gorgeous.

❛ you should take it as a compliment, that i got drunk and made fun of the way you talked. ❜

summary : usually, birthday parties are supposed to be a close friend's and family celebration, so why on earth are you being dragged along as your friend's plus one?

warnings : implied references to cheating. food mentions. vomiting mentions but not explicitly written. sexual themes, inuendos. a purposeful choice to refuse to write without capital letters. too many taylor swift references. google translated french. no use of y/n but reader is referred to as soleil by charles and that transfers on through all the fic. charles leclerc's toxic relationship. alcohol consumption, drink responsibly. suddenly charles leclerc is actually decent at flirting. inaccurate storyline of pierre's birthday. 2023's silly season just got sillier. live laugh love kika gomes. word count : 1.7k

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[ caption one: hot girls always do skincare 🧖🏻‍♀️ / caption two: i fear i girlbossed to close to the sun, how did i end up here ⁉️🤨 ]

THE STREETS OF PARIS , were lively enough that you could blend in seamlessly, everyone else dressed essentially to the nines in their finest attire, walking in and out of all the restaurants in the vicinity. you want to cower, wrap the shall around yourself tighter and hide away; you'd never felt more insecure and out of place in the entire month you'd been vacationing in france, until this very moment.

everyone around you exudes the amount of confidence that comes naturally to them that you wished you had, even if you felt genuinely good in the outfit Kika had practically forced you in when you'd briefly mentioned having nothing to wear to the event she'd asked you to tag along to. a part of you wants to remind yourself that you knew better than to expect things to play out differently, it wants to ridicule you for going back on your usual stance of always expecting disappointment to no longer feel disappointed.

you wave off a taxi that pulls beside you, you're already at your destination, and a fleeting wave of nausea makes you want to clench your gut, and hurl what little you'd eaten earlier throughout the day into the hedges beside you; you don't, thankfully. instead, you resort to the safety of your phone, back-and-forth bickering between your best friend and Kika to work up your nerves to get yourself inside the building.

you feel wobbly on your feet, something you will also plan to blame on Kika when you find the courage to get yourself to walk in through the door of the Laperouse, a considerably more elegant spot to eat at than you would have picked, you only dread the fear of looking over the menu and bearing witness to the prices of the food.

the ding of the bell above the door pulls your head out of your phone when you're met with the silhouette of quite possibly the most attractive man you'd ever had blessed your gaze — excluding that one time you'd run into lorenzo zurzolo on a girls trip to madrid and fumbled the whole ordeal so embarrassingly you had to block him on instagram to keep from ever seeing him.

his actions are almost more exaggerated in frustration than you'd plainly described to your friend, his hand is constantly dragging down his face when he pulls the phone away from his ear, promptly allowing you to hear the snippets of french being, basically, screamed through the phone at him. yikes. the phone call seems to drag on and the amount of time you've been staring at this man can be somewhat considered borderline stalking if he wasn't uninterested in the world outside the french screaming match on the phone.

deciding you'd done enough oogling to satiate for the brieft maladaptive day-dreaming you'll experience during mundane errands. with the very little courage you had, you wipe your hands on your dress, pitifully, and tuck your phone into the clutch before making your way inside. you're blissfully unaware of the way the man had turned towards the noise the heels of your shoes had made against the pavement, his attitude doing a complete 180 had him disregarding the remainder of the phone call before finally giving up, a defeated sigh follows the silence of the call being ended.

'i told you so. . .' your brain supplies when you feel even more out of place being inside said restaurant than how you were simply just standing outside of it, you felt both over and under-dressed watching the mass of patrons standing at the front bar along with the glimpses you could get inside the dining room from where you wait at the hostess stand.

"can i help you?" the hostess asks, words sleek with her french accent as she flicks her gaze up towards you before down at the booking book in front of her. you fiddle with your fingers, white-knuckling the black clutch, suddenly unable to find your own words. the woman rolls her eyes, and taps her perfectly manicured finger against the book and you visibly shake.

"elle est avec moi et la réservation Gasly" a voice speaks, standing behind you, close enough to be flush against you, but remaining a finger length away from you, refusing to lift your head, you don't dare look at who's just saved yourself from any more bouts of unwavering embarrassment for the night.

"profite de ta soirée" the hostess grins, it doesn't shine in her eyes and it's clearly a put-on customer service smile, forced to maintain a friendly atmosphere within the restaurant, you're allowing yourself to be lead through towards the private dining room, stepping away from the man, you mumble a simple thank you in your own butchered french pronunciation as you spot kika and find yourself attached to her hip for a majority of the night.

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[ caption one: @yourusername spotted arriving at pierre's birthday party / caption two: @yourusername wearing the monot black maxi cutout ]

now, see if you weren't the type of person to be so easily persuaded into joining in on the drink festivities, you wouldn't have ended up with kika as one of your closest friends. you were never one to turn down alcohol, especially open bar alcohol; which is perhaps why you'd found yourself in a state of being a social butterfly, you'd floated around the room, meals long since eaten and cleared by the wait staff left people standing around and conversing.

mixtures of english, french and portuguese filling the room, bits and pieces of conversations you were picking up, but with your minimal understanding of french you found yourself avoiding anything beyond "hi how are you?" and introducing yourself, aside from that you smile and nodded before politely excusing yourself to float around once more.

"are you purposely ignoring me?" there it is, the sound that would haunt your best dreams and your worst nightmares; the shiver that runs up your spine makes you inadvertently cringe at yourself, how were you this reactive to a voice, you're going to blame the entire thing on the amount of sparkling moscato you'd been drinking by the glass.

"hm? no, no i'm not ignoring you?" you mock his accent, turning around to finally make eye contact with him, lips pursed into a line to keep yourself from giggling, the bubbles in your stomach is either your own nerves, the bubbly alcoholic beverage you'd consumed or a mixture of both — either way you feel content enough to be less than self-aware of the situation.

you can almost see the way he visibly lights up at the interaction, the way can't hold himself back from laughing at your attempt to mock his accent, the way his eyes crinkle and the laughter that follows the expression leaves you virtually speechless, you'd never been in a situation where someone, especially not a man. had ever laughed at you in a way that didn't feel the least bit mocking towards you; his laughter subsides and you feel yourself mourning the noise, head tilting to the side before he's taking a sip from his own glass.

"how do you know pierre?"

"through kika, she's the sole reason i'm here" you explain, gesturing with your hands as you talk, the conversation carries on throughout most of the night, new drinks replacing old ones all whilst the distance between the two of you closing inch by inch and shamelessly, perhaps even a little selfishly you allow it.

you allow more than just close proximity, you allow his knee to knock against your own, the hand to graze your waist as his arm moves around you to put his empty drink on the bar. you allow yourself to meet his gaze, hold it and find yourself lower and lower your own inhibitions. the good, the bad and the ugly of a man who hasn't asked for your name and whose name you hadn't bothered to ask for either.

perhaps, it's the events of the night that led you to here, in this heat of the moment pursuit of pure guiltless drunk happiness, lips against the nap of your neck in the back of a taxi, a hand dragging dangerously up your thigh, closer and closer to a spot you hadn't known longed to be touched until now. you're mutual shouts of laughter are shared through the streets of paris, leading into the hotel room you'd been staying in for the week, you're set to check out the next morning, but realistically, what's one night of parisian fun to end your trip with a bang, literally.

"soleil, fuck, the things you are doing to me right now" his voice comes out like a growl against your ear, his teeth dragging along your ear lobe and further down your neck, never biting, just allowing the feeling to pull the breathless noises out of you. your hand finds its way to nestle into his hair, grip tight and pull him away, the way he looks at you, a gaze you're all far too familiar with, lust.

god, had you wished you knew life wouldn't feel so horribly if you'd felt like this the entire time, the way the man finds himself home between your thighs, even as they clench around his head as soon as his tongue flicks against your abused and overly sensitive clit, fingers working their way in and out of your as you're pushed to complete your third orgasm — your hands griping the pillow behind your head, back arching as you moan out breathlessly, the needy coil in your stomach untangling once more as he pulls the orgasm out of you; your left breathless and shaking as your ride out the orgasm on his fingers.

his face is glistening with your juices; god if you were brave enough to take a picture you would have, he looked effortlessly pretty as he wiped his face with the back of his hand and finally pulled his fingers out of you to lick them clean.

you were royally screwed. even after you woke up in the morning, he was still asleep, but check-out was soon and there really wasn't any need to actively remain in the hotel room bed any longer, even if the man sleeping beside you was dreamy, even asleep, you knew alcohol-influenced one night stands were less than impressive to boast about the next morning. so you do the easiest thing to bypass awkward morning conversations, you leave a note with your number and leave.

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liked by francisca.cgomes, yourbestfriend and 489 others yourusername are you happy to have been in paris? oui! tagged francisca.cgomes

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user girl, what is that on your neck in the second pic?? ⤿ yourusername the question is are you a narc?

francisca.cgomes paris couldn't handle us for longer than a week ⤿yourusername where too next gf x

yourbestfriend i miss you come home ! ⤿yourusername i think i might find a new home ⤿yourbestfriend you're really gonna abandon our kids like that?

user since when have her an kika been friends? ⤿user since like forever, they grew up together

yoursisteruser look at you being a slut pookie, we love to see it ⤿yourusername get out of my comments blocked and reported ⤿yoursisteruser can you answer my facetime now, you got a lot of catching up to do, this is new name lore !!!

authors note : hi oh my god, so i'm absolutely nervous to actually have this be posted, it's not been beta read so i apologise in advance trying to edit this myself was the longest task i've come to find myself tethered to. i really like the plot of this story, the smut a lil dry because my smut writing is dry, we gotta work ourselves up to that, later chapters pookies, later chapters. i would have added more to the story, i'm like super inspired by this, but alas the 30 image limit said, no. so we gotta listen !

add yourself to the taglist here !

taglist : @iluminaya @greenbaby12 @therealcap @marshmummy

[unhappy-sometimes]

a 2024 writing retrospective (for sxf fanfic)

ignore the fact that i’m a few days late. i’ve been unbelievably busy the past couple weeks.

in this post i’ll go over the fics i wrote in 2024 think of it as an extremely extended author’s notes. i love to talk and will do so when given the chance.

i’ll start from my latest fic and work my way backwards. spoilers for everything i’ve written in 2024.

(Very) Stupid

Something that I try really really hard to maintain in my writing is believability, specifically when it comes to writing characters. Characters acting out of character is one of my biggest fanfic pet peeves: if I wanted to read about someone’s oc, then I would’ve read a regular book. That being said, I think a lot about how Twilight would actually act like if he were in love. I had an interesting conversation with @cantareincminor forever ago about how he’s so emotionally constipated that it’s kind of difficult to write Twilight in love without making him a bit ooc. Right now in canon it’s hard to imagine him falling head over heels for anyone (in my opinion, anyway).

That being said there are moments in canon where he acts flustered in situations that could be interpreted as romantic. So, for right now, my hypothesis is this: if and when Twilight falls in love, he’s going to be an absolute fool. He’s going to do his usual overthinking and overanalyizing, so much to the point that he starts hesitating over the smallest things.

(Very) Stupid is how I imagine all of that unfolding, although for the sake of comedy I did push things to the absurd. Sometimes Twilight does things in canon with such certainty of “Yes, of course normal people do this, I’m nailing this normalcy thing” that he fails to realize he’s being kinda ridiculous. I also wanted to take that element and incorporate it into a fic.

I also wanted to try subverting expectations (ooh fancy literary term) by having them do romantic things that lead them nowhere. I tried to cram in as many tropes as I could—feeding each other with a fork, only one bed, first kiss—but do so under the guise of Twilight completely missing how dumb he’s being the entire time. He only realizes his feelings until after their first kiss, specifically when Yor surprises him with a quick peck on the cheek. This, of course, was deliberate. I figured that it’d make the most sense if Twilight would only realize his feelings in a situation where he wasn’t the one initiating a (somewhat) romantic gesture because he theoretically wouldn’t be overthinking it. Instead, Yor just sneaks in when his guard is down <3

Endings are usually the hardest things for me to write and (Very) Stupid was no exception. I almost had Twilight pass out at the breakfast table when he kisses Yor but then I realized I’d made him faint in almost every fic I’ve written this year and that felt like a cop out. But I figured it out and I don’t mind the way the ending turned out :D

Also, kind of a random reference, but the title is slightly inspired by VERY NICE by Seventeen lol

Holy crap I’ve written so much for only one fic so far. My apologies in advance.

21 Eden Street

I won’t go into too much detail for 21 Eden Street because it’s still ongoing, but I just wanna brag about how fun it is to write hehe. It’s really enjoyable to write pure crack and come up with stupid and insane ideas with Cantare. You don’t need to have seen either iteration of 21 Jump Street to understand what’s going on. Honestly, we’ve taken very little from the source material and treated it more like a loose guide and a basis for brainstorming.

Don’t worry, we haven’t abandoned it! Cantare is waiting on me to finish writing my chapter (hehe sorry, Cantare!) and soon it’ll be back up and running.

Seeing things

Ah, Seeing Things, my beloved <3

This fic has the least amount of hits out of everything I’ve written (which is not surprising to me) but I hold it very dear to my heart. There’s not a specific reason why other than I just really enjoyed writing it. I also spent a ton of time making supplementary drawings and a whole hype campaign for it, too, so I kinda am obligated to feel some sorta way about it.

Anyway, the way this fic came about is simple; I just had the things I am most afraid of happen to Twilight. Yes, I’m scared of serial killers and my loved ones dying like everyone else, but something I am absolutely terrified of are hallucinations. That and doppelgangers.

Not being able to tell reality apart from fiction activates the flight or fight senses in me. Real life can be scary, yes, but reality is bound by the rules of reality. Literally anything can happen in fiction. The most horrific, awful things are possible in fiction and if those things suddenly become possible in reality???? Girl I am GONE. Passing away. Curling up in a fetal position in the nearest corner. I don’t know if that makes any sense. If I ever start seeing things that I can’t be sure are actually happening or not, I am choosing to die right then and there. Doppelgangers as a concept are also really scary to me. It’s like stranger danger but times a thousand because you can’t tell who the strangers are anymore.

In my initial draft, there wasn’t nearly as much of a tension between Twilight and Yor. If I recall correctly, by then I’d written to nearly the end and realized that for Yor this whole experience has been Loid acting just a little more weird than usual. It might’ve been Cantare’s suggestion (just assume everything after Guy’s Night has been beta’d by Cantare and you’ll be mostly right) but I realized that Twilight probably would start to suspect the people around him were screwing with him. I added the scene where his room was messed up and it all fell into place hehe.

I don’t like writing gore or the like because I feel like typical gore quickly starts escalating into levels of pain that the average reader has no possibility of comprehending and it loses its efficacy. Instead I tried feeding into Twilight’s paranoia, adding things that in isolation are just weird but when put together are unsettling. I shamelessly stole the fourth room hallway from Impossible Landscapes, a Delta Green campaign that I highly recommend you check out if you enjoy surreal horror. I purposefully kept some things vague, like the things Anya sees in Twilight’s mind, the way Handler’s face gets warped, or the description of “the watchers” because I felt like going into detail would lose the unknown-ness of it all. That and I’m lazy heehee.

In some way, canon Spy x Family does deal with ideas of doppelgangers and paranoia. Spies are constantly afraid of being listened in on, they don’t know if they can trust anyone, and they always have to keep an eye over their shoulder. For someone who is always a little scared of being spied on (I cover my phone and laptop cameras for that exact reason), that kinda sounds like torture. Seeing Things was a fun way to crank that paranoia up to a hundred. It was especially fun writing the museum scene because I tried thinking of things that are just ever so slightly off, things that theoretically could exist but clearly don’t.

I also threw in other things I’m scared of, like being watched, being followed, the dark, and the bathroom at night just to be extra mean to Twilight <3

Anyway, I’m rambling and this analysis post will be a novel if I keep this up.

Guy’s Night

I do recognize the insane tone shift going from Seeing Things to Guy’s Night.

What is there to even say about Guy’s Night? I got the idea from Psych (the Last Night Gus episode) who got the general basic from the Hangover movies. I wrote it all out in a few days, one of which I was sick in bed. I don’t know what to say.

Looking back on it, I don’t love the way it turned out. I’m glad I wrote it but where I usually don’t mind rereading my stuff for fun I do kinda cringe at Guy’s Night. It relies on a lot of contrivances which I tried masking with humor but it’s still a bit obvious. If you make a timeline of the previous night’s events, it only kinda makes sense.

It doesn’t help that I went into it with no plan whatsoever. I just sat down and said what happens happens. When I wrote in chapter one that something had happened between Loid and Yor, I didn’t know what that was. When I wrote Loid saying “we need to see what’s on that camera film” I was right there next to him saying “buddy, so do I because I have no idea.” When wrote Franky saying that his friend Marko might have answers, I was hoping he would too because I, like everyone else, didn’t know what was going on either.

The ONE thing I DID know was that Twilight got a tattoo the night before. That was it. That’s all.

I don’t typically plan out everything when I write but I usually have a good idea. For Guy’s Night, I had a bad idea in that I had no idea. It kinda shows. Sorry.

That being said, it was incredibly fun writing their drunk shenanigans and banter. The dynamic between Twilight, Franky, and Yuri was so goofy that I’ve seriously debated writing a sequel of sorts. However that’s incredibly unlikely. If I ever do write a sequel, it’d be a Girl’s Night with Yor and a combination of female characters, probably Sylvia and Fiona.

After Peace (and Glimpses of Happiness)

A quick heads up: I don’t go into detail but I do discuss mental illness in this segment.

I am incredibly proud of how After Peace turned out. Not only did it receive a really good reception for being my first fic ever, but it also helped me work through some things in my own life. It’s important to give some context.

I wrote After Peace shortly after graduating college. I won’t go into specifics, but college was really, really difficult for me. I had been so excited for this next step in my life after graduating high school but instead it turned out to be one of the hardest experiences of my life. Depression came out of nowhere and stomped me into the ground.

I used to have very high expectations for myself; I had a clear vision of what I wanted to do with my life and I was taking steps to work towards those goals. Then my mental health tanked and suddenly everything just felt so difficult and pointless. I’d sleep all day and then hate myself when the sun started to set because that meant I’d wasted an entire day doing nothing when I was supposed to be working towards something. But I just couldn’t do it anymore.

That’s something I’ve noticed that a lot of media gets wrong about depression sometimes. It doesn’t always make you feel sad. Sometimes it just sucks everything out of you—sadness, happiness, anger, everything. I stopped drawing, stopped listening to music, stopped eating, stopped exercising, stopped doing everything that I enjoyed because it felt like the equivalent of doing the dishes. Everything was a chore, even the things that I liked.

What really changed things around was when my poor roommate, who was sick of me sleeping for twenty hours a day, dragged my sorry self to the free counseling services on campus. It’s doesn’t fix everything, but having someone who cares about you and you care about can really help your mental health.

Anyway, let’s not forget I’m talking about an anime fanfiction here haha.

After Peace really did start out as a couple of doodles but as I started to write it, I noticed that there were a lot of similarities between myself and Loid. No, I am not a former spy turned grumpy hermit, but I did once have great aspirations and now have to settle for what reality offers me. Realizing that worth comes from simply existing was something that I had to understand in order to begin my recovery process.

I’ve always found it kind of sad that if you took away the goal of world peace from Twilight that you’re basically left with nothing. He doesn’t really have hobbies, no real friends, and he never takes a day off. That’s hardly sustainable. Would he really be happy when there’s nothing left to do? I’d like to think so, but I wanted to see what would happen if he wasn’t.

I mentioned this in the end note, but After Peace was also influenced by this comic I was working on years ago that had the similar premise of “grumpy man learns to enjoy life with the help of a young girl” (very original, I know). I doubt that I’ll ever release that comic in the capacity I once intended, but it does live on in my secret second tumblr account of you ever manage to find it.

Anyway, I was worried about writing After Piece because Anya plays a big role and I am Not Good at writing children. It was hard striking a balance between making Anya likeable but still realistic. I don’t interact with children often and, as a youngest sibling, I don’t have much experience with them. Anya has so many layers—being a test subject, being a telepath, being a child—that it was hard managing them all. But I’m okay with how she turned out.

There is a slight problem in that she basically disappears once Yor shows up D:

I debated having Yor in the fic at all but then I realized that without her the emotional climax would have to rely on a four year old’s emotional intelligence and then decided right then and there that Yor had to be in it haha.

Yor’s whole deal with accidentally killing the wrong person was kind of a last minute addition. I do wish I was able to explore that more, but I also feel like she’s emotionally mature enough to forgive herself more quickly than Twilight would. She ends up serving a bit of a role model to him. It was also nice to be able to write them interacting with the truth out on the table and for them to be honest with each other.

Pacing was something that I was very concerned with. Looking back on it now, I’m still worried that things move along a bit quickly. However, I am reminded of some advice my graphic design professors gave me: “Good design is when nothing more can be take away.” And, because I was writing this as fast as possible, you best believe I was taking things away if I didn’t need them. I didn’t want to fall into the trap of dwelling on Twilight’s thoughts for too long so I instead opted for showing him progressing through experiences instead. I think it worked out.

However because I took so many things out I decided to start Glimpses of Happiness, a supplementary fic to After Peace that fills in the cracks, so to speak. I wanted to have more moments between Twilight and the other characters, like stargazing with Anya and growing close to Yor. Right now there’s only one chapter, but I have plans for at least a few more. I also thought it was important to highlight that mental health recovery never truly ends. Just because Yor and Twilight had a nice chat on the roof doesn’t mean that things are suddenly okay. It’s a long process that sometimes never ends and I wanted to show that.

Of course, I can’t talk about After Peace without addressing the Midwest allegations. As I said, yes, this fic was inspired by my childhood in the American Midwest, even though I was nowhere near any mountains. The Midwest is a silly place full of nothing to do but go to your local Walmart for fun, but I think it served a good enough setting for Twilight to chill out and slow down. If I really wanted to do full Midwest, I’d have Twilight watch a tornado touch down on a cornfield from his truckbed, but that feels sort of out of place.

I feel like there’s more to say but I can’t think of anything and I doubt anyone’s actually gonna read all the way down here anyway. But yeah, that’s After Peace.

Oh, and the A.M. AM by Damien Jurado Youtube video currently has nine comments that mentjon falling from a five story building, which I think is really funny.

So now what?

Against my better judgement, I’m still writing. I have a couple projects in the works, especially one big big big one that hopefully I can start publishing soon. Keep an eye out for that.

In the meantime, thanks for a great year! I hope 2025 holds more great things in store for us all!

-unso ^. .^<

[littlemisssatanist]

my acotar unpopular opinions

taking this time to come out as an acotar reader. yes i've read all the books and i've spent way too much time thinking about it. i enjoy the books in the sense that i enjoy hating on many of the characters and loving a few of the others.

be forewarned inner circle fans. you will not like this.

rhysand is not a 'morally grey' character. he's a rapist and a groomer. he sexually assaulted feyre utm, he groomed her (reminder that she was 19 in acotar), and he withheld important medical information from her. 'you'll always have a choice' my ass.

nesta telling feyre about her pregnancy was not a bad thing. why do people act like it is? 'oh she did it to hurt feyre' hurt her by doing what? revealing the lies that her beloved husband had woven? revealing the fact that she'd die giving birth? the fact that rhysand told literally everybody but feyre?

mor is not the champion for women everyone thinks she is. this i will give to sjm it is truly impressive to make a character like women and still be a pick me. i'm not even going to go into her whole weird ass relationship with her dad (i still don't understand why she wouldn't just kill him. 'oh rhys needed the army' rhys is supposed to be the most powerful high lord ever. either admit he's a fucking loser or give me an actual good reason for this) or the fact she's seemingly incapable of doing anything to help the women in the court of nightmares, but everytime she was mentioned, i had to let out a heavy sigh and rub my temples.

on a similar topic. i liked eris. like a lot. out of all the acotar characters sjm has written, eris is by far my favorite.

the inner circle needs to sit the fuck down. they are the most hypocritical bitches i've ever met. they like to think themselves high and mighty. reading them make fun of lucien's band of exiles while their name is literally 'court of dreamers' was the most infuriating thing ever. and then they have the gall to be insulted when called out. don't dish what you can't take.

out of all the inner circle, the only one i don't hate is azriel. this is simply because he is the only one who hasn't opened his big fat mouth and done something bad (except if you maybe count his whole thing with elain). cassian is on my hit list. it's on sight with cassian.

nessian is sjm's worst ship and i will stand by that. lucien/nesta could have been so much. 'nesta would have ripped lucien apart' and cassian was your first choice? not even azriel was considered? like be so for real right now. sjm didn't see the potential of lucien/nesta and i will forever mourn that.

sjm is a terrible writer. i'm not saying this to be mean but she seriously just sucks at it. that being said i admire her ability to still make millions of dollars off her shitty writing. as a woman, i am rooting for her. as a reader, every day i wake up a shoot a prayer to the heavens begging the gods to not let sjm write any more books from the inner circle's pov.

lucien/elain is better than azriel/elain. argue with the wall.

eris/azriel is better than azriel/elain. you can kiss my ass.

NESTA/ERIS IS BETTER THAN RHYSAND/FEYRE. i know this because i have been enlightened.

feyre is a victim to rhysand. that being said, she is also a major bitch. both can be true because these things are not mutually exclusive. i wish she could make friends outside of the ic like nesta did, but i know that's unlikely.

feyre's pregnancy storyline was completely useless and went against her whole character.

acomaf retconned everything about tamlin and feyre's relationship in order to make more money. idc.

tamlin gets a ridiculous amount of hate. rhysand is hypocritical. so tamlin locking feyre in a house because she wants to ride out with him into potential danger is terrible and abusive, but rhysand locking nesta in the house of wind for... *checks notes*... having sex and spending money on alcohol is helping her? what?

[dozing-marshmallow]

Pls i NEED more Chris McLean x reader. I NEED😭🙏 ive read everything of him on here😓

So pretty please something like chris mclean x wife reader and like, the whole tdi cast gets to meet her bc they didnt believe that Chris had a wife at first?😇

TRUST ME WHEN I SAY I feel the exact same way😫 I love Chris so much and it’s such a huge pleasure that I can write for him while having other people who love him enjoy it as welllll. I will be writing him for a very long time so you can always expect something new evolved around him to come up ;)<3

CHRIS MCLEAN X WIFE! READER ONE SHOT

Having your daily hug with Chris, the tender moment reminds you of what he told you earlier.

“Were you being serious when you told me the kids laughed at you when you told them you were married?"

“Mhmm.” he responds from underneath you,“They called it a sick joke and told me that stand up comedy was way out my league.”

“Aw darling.” you kiss his forehead,“I’m guessing you’re gonna ask a favour for me to stop by to prove them wrong?”

He raises an eyebrow,“What do you mean? Stand up comedy is in my league. I just don’t prefer it, doesn’t mean I’m not good at it.”

He can be so silly sometimes,“I meant your marital status, baby.”

“Oh, yeah...” he holds onto your wrists,“Please?”

You let your body relax completely on top of his, still smiling,“Your wish is my command.”

“Aw what’s the matter, McLean? Couldn’t your wife make it?” Duncan was the first to pick up on ridiculing Chris, eyes still puffy from his chronic cries of laughter from last night. On another circumstance, Chris would’ve been fuming, had he not have reason to smirk.

“How sweet of you to worry, Duncan!” the host begins off, clasping his hands,“But she’s made it in one piece!”

On cue, you walk into the mess hall, linking your arm with Chris’,“Hii everyone! So happy to finally see you all in person!”

All conversation died.

Everyone turns to you.

This woman they’ve never seen before... 

His... His wife?

Were they hearing that right?

No way... He was being serious?

Chris was rolling on the inside at the shared alike look of being slapped spread across the contestants, especially of the mocking kind.

“I...didn’t know you had enough space in your heart to love someone else!” Beth’s the first to break out of her ice of shock to chirp.

“Surprised?” Chris chuckled, allowing you to introduce yourself, which was not what you guys decided.

“Yeah, I’m (Y/N)! This hot mess’ wife...” turns out improvising in front of teenagers wasn’t as fun as it sounded,“Sorry, I’m...not too good with words, so...help yourself to these cupcakes I made for you guys. I made them as a way to say how huge of a pleasure it is to meet you all!”

As you turn around to unwrap the trays, Leshawna clears her throat to privately address the cohort,"One of two things are gonna happen. One, those cupcakes are filled with maggots and hair. Or two, it's the first actual food we're gettin’ on this set."

Everybody nods in agreement.

They were right to inspect the wrapping and texture with their noses and eyes.

Yet didn’t expect to have the flavour of delicate buttermilk crumble on their tongues.

Oh my God...

Maybe they were deprived from having treats so long on the show, but it was unanimously categorised as a whole new delicious nonetheless.

The punk delinquent scoffs over,“Yeah... I’m not buying that’s his wife.”

“That evil maniac with a permanent smile is probably holding her hostage!” The ginger geek dramatically pinpoints.

“I can see why, these are too die for!” Owen squeaks, scoffing down an entire cupcake, wrapping included, not comprehending what situation it would mean for you if you really were abducted.

“Hm... Maybe he’s paying her.” Gwen suggests alternatively after taking another glance at you: it was your arm around him. Too touchy to be forced...

“I’d understand if he was hot like me, but he’s not even halfway there! Where would he find someone willing to do all that for him? No amount of money should convince anyone to ever lose their dignity for the likes of him." Justin criticises out of his internal debate of skipping the cupcakes or not.

“You’d be shocked if you’ve seen the fansite.” Noah opposes like it was the most known thing.

Speaking of which,"Sierra.” Heather directs, taking sudden control of the situation and everyone’s eyes to peel towards the superfan whose mouth was staining in the same dye as her magenta hair, perking up from her snacking at the mention of her name,“You know everything about everybody. Say, is Chris paying that woman to pretend to be married to him for laughs?"

The girl whose lifeline was Total Drama quickly swallows the last portion of her cupcake to appease her idols with a packed answer,“Oh, no! It’s all true! Unfortunately. Those two got married way before Total Drama was aired. A lot's happened... My mom waited years for Chris to propose to her and there he goes, chasing after that nobody! Do you have any idea how painful it is to see my mom’s husband having an affair? (Y/N) is nothing but a block of concrete, blinding Chris from seeing his true soulmate! A.k.a my mom!” The last few sentences gradually grazed with personal prejudice, but not enough to throw the next cupcake away.

“Wait, but if Chris did get married to your mother... Wouldn’t that make you his stepdaughter-?“ Alejandro posited, already having a hard time imagining Chris take that role biologically.

"So Chris,” Cody interrupts the impending awkward ambient Alejandro’s phrasing would bring, steering the conversation back, still bewildered,“...really does have a wife."

Bridgette takes her slo mo time in grabbing another frosted vanilla good, rethinking, the same man that laughed at their pain,"I...honestly don't know how to feel about that."

"Huuu... I feel like I went overboard with cupcakes, Chris!” you freak out to your husband, fidgeting with the sleeves of your turtleneck,“Why did I pick to make something so childish? I should've picked something more formal... Like a dish from my home country..."

"Relaaaaax, no one else is thinking about that." Chris assured, biting into one of your delicacies.

You continued to murmur on,“I wanted to make something universal, a collection of sweets so in case one likes a certain flavour more than others... I thought teenagers around here liked cupcakes... I feel like such a fool... I hope they don’t think I see them as childish...”

He grabs one and holds it horizontally to your lips, painting them yellow,“It’s not just teenagers that like them, (Y/N). Besides, they are children. Children like things that are childish.”

That’s true... Your paranoia’s sunk,“Well... They seem to be enjoying themselves. I’ve been worrying for nothing.” you smile, drawing your finger on his stubble to take for licking,“You had some icing there.”

Turns out, you were really nice.

The angel to Chris’ devil.

The sun to Chris' moon.

The calm to Chris’ energetic.

“So (Y/N)... I just...have a quick question on behalf of everyone else.” The CIT girl shields her mouth with her hand, like she didn’t want anyone else to hear.

“Of course, Courtney. Whatever would you like to know?” you welcome her, all kinds of possible questions cloud your mind.

She tightens your shoulders in her palms,“What the hell do you see in Chris?”

...You expected that one,“Why, I see a strong, handsome, hilarious man. A goal-driven, deep down caring, loving, in need of love man.”

Now the only true thing she heard was “goal-driven”- to kill them as spiritually as possible. Maybe even physically.

"You're not brainwashed, are you?" Her eyes widened like your answer had tossed her deeper in her horror.

"Get her to blink two times in a row if she needs help!" Tyler shouts, unintentionally defeating the purpose of being discreet from his clean intention.

"Hm?” Teenagers are so funny!,“It's not brainwash when it's love! After all, wouldn't you say you've found yourself in love with someone you never thought you'd be with?" You smile warmly at the type A when the butterflies fluttered an external reaction across her freckled face.

"Th-That's different!” she impulsively shrieked before closing her mouth in embarrassment. She looks around, and after making sure no one was judging her, she continues speaking, back to her whispering voice,“That’s Duncan. This is Chris.”

“Well, we both seem to have a type for the ones that went to jail, don’t we?” you wittily mention, giving her a wink to the similar parallel.

Leaving Courtney to her common dynamics contemplation, there was no better timing for Owen to ask if you had any more cupcakes to give.

“I’m so happy you liked them! I’ll tell you what, I can make more and send them to you."

“Don’t get too flattered. Bed crusher there would eat anything, even things you can’t call food.” The overruling antagonist scornfully gestures, her hair as black as her heart.

“...Ah, right.” you shouldn't have thought so highly of yourself over baking. To Owen, they probably weren’t good, just something to give his appetite.

“Well... That's not entirely true...” The foodie looks to the side uncomfortably for a moment from Heather’s harsh perspective,“Having eaten a lot of things gives me a solid judgement on a variety of tastes. With that said, I’d specifically be really happy to eat (Y/N)’s baked cupcakes again. You can't buy that kind of quality!"

Aw! “Thanks, Owen!” it’s no mystery why everyone was in his support back first season!

“You didn’t use any store bought cake mix, did you?” DJ asks, his naturally kind pitch of voice crunching up an otherwise accusing delivery his words may have played.

“Nope! If I was gonna have half of the ingredients already done for me, I may as well have just ordered the finish product.” the truth radiates through your magnetism, not as magnetizing as your husband, smothering you away in his arms.

For some reason, no one said anything right away. Like taking an exam, silence had scattered among these group of teenagers.

"I'm convinced she has Stockholm syndrome."

Up till Harold breaks it.

"Stockholm syndrome?! Come onn, you know that’s not a real thing!” Lindsay asserted, turning to Beth,“Is it a real thing?"

The nice-hearted nerd smacks a hand to her forehead. Rather than finding humor in uninformed Lindsay, Trent finds his eyes trapped on the sight of Chris’ hand holding onto yours, fingers locked, palms resting. Above all his faults, Chris...still had you.

That kind of love...hard to find, lucky to have.

[tossawary]

For a while, I kept periodically thinking about F/M Wangxian (Male Wei Wuxian and Female Lan Wangji) without being able to figure out why I kept being distracted by F/M Wangxian. I mean, I think different genderbending AU situations are fun to think about in fanfiction, especially in worlds where gender roles are a problem. M/M, F/M, M/F, and F/F Wangxian all change the story slightly and I think it's neat to explore why and how.

And obviously, F!LWJ would be a total babe, that's nice to think about, but why still M!WWX and not F!WWX? F!WWX would also be a total babe, though of a different type, especially as the Yiling Patriarch. But my brain kept insisting that M!WWX was still crucial somehow and I couldn't figure out why that setup.

I mean, it is funny to think about how M!WWX's unchanged flirty behavior in their teenage years would suddenly set off every single alarm bell in the Cloud Recesses due to people being able to SEE IT thanks to heteronormativity goggles. WWX with a degree of societal permission to be romantically interested in Lan Wangji? Intolerable levels of annoying. Unbearable to witness. Singing love songs under her balcony type bullshit like he wants her to start another fight under the moonlight. He's writing her poetry (clever "joke" poems bordering on innuendo and actual romantic poems) and has the gall to be good at it. Lan Qiren is barely resisting the urge to beat WWX off with a broomstick. Lan Xichen doesn't know whether to be horrified or delighted (LWJ is bluuuuushing).

I do also like the idea of WWX coming back from the dead and finding out that the common people have decided in the past decade (thanks to the heteronormativity goggles) that the noble female cultivator LWJ had a Tragic Romance with the Evil Yiling Patriarch. Poor woman! WWX: "Who had a what now?" (I do also like the idea of Wangxian actually having a Tragic Romance during and after the war. And mutually stated romantic interest and affection still didn't fix anything for them. But it's funny to think about WWX getting completely blindsided by this EPIC LOVE STORY if there was no actual relationship.)

(Sizhui is still adopted here! Noble and pure-hearted LWJ adopted a war orphan because she longed to be a mother but swore never to love again after the Yiling Patriarch broke her heart, obviously! WWX, listening to this gossip: "She what? I mean, Lan Zhan would make an amazing mom, good for her, lucky kid, and no one is good enough for her if she doesn't want to get married, but seriously, I cannot stress this enough, what the fuck. She didn't like me back! Aiyah, I bet she's still so mad at me for ruining her reputation like this.")

Eventually, I realized that the key piece of this AU that I was missing was that I wanted to write F/M Wangxian that turned into F/F Wangxian. Because I think Transfem Wei Wuxian would display (and I mean this affectionately) the most ridiculous trans egg behavior imaginable, especially because it would lean more towards one of those "I was mostly fine living as a guy, but I'm so much happier as a girl" situations. Absurd amounts of queer foreshadowing.

So, Wei Wuxian gets resurrected into a female MXY's body or something and obliviously goes, "Oh! This is nice! I've always wanted to try being a woman! Yes, I can roll with this." And eventually Wei Wuxian has to actually examine the fact that she really likes being a woman and doesn't want to "go back" to being a man in any way, but not before putting Lan Wangji through an incredible amount of new "joke" flirtation. And people who knew WWX before are like... "Hmm. Some things are making sense now."

Things like: 1) As a teenager, WWX insisted that LWJ was such a strong woman that, if they got married, LWJ could be "the husband" and "he" would happily be "the wife". There were lots and lots of "I want to live as Jiejie's spoiled wife" jokes. Consequently, at the Cloud Recesses, at least one outrageously inappropriate joke was made by WWX about LWJ knocking "him" up, because WWX's breeding kink is still very much a thing. WWX didn't know about her breeding kink when she made that joke; both she and LWJ learned something about themselves that day.

2) Wei Wuxian would frequently pull crossdressing-related pranks saying: "Wow, this is crazy. I can't believe you guys are forcing me to put on a dress and all this makeup for this prank! You guys are wild!" And Jiang Cheng would reply: "No one is forcing you to do this. No one dared you. You suddenly volunteered to crossdress for a prank that does not require crossdressing AGAIN. Also, give me that brush, I'll do your makeup because you suck ass at it."

3) WWX would frequently go on rants about how women are so much more beautiful than men, which flew under the radar as a "normal behavior for a lustful young man", but there was always something a little off about it. Like, WWX might say that women are so beautiful and perfect that everyone would choose to be one if allowed to pick before being born just to admire the gorgeous view, and JC might say, "I don't think that's quite right...?" But WWX would just say something like (like an obnoxious teenage sibling), "That's because you know that you'd make an ugly woman!" or, "Are you saying that women aren't perfect? Also, are you saying Shijie isn't the best person in the world?" And JC would have to be like, "I didn't say that! And I'd make a beautiful woman, fuck you! Also, how is that relevant to your point?"

By the end of this AU, there is at least one public love confession that is horribly embarrassing for everyone else to witness, in which Wei Wuxian has finally realized that LWJ used to be in love with "him" and that she loves LWJ back, but tearfully apologizes because she can't be the handsome man that LWJ loved anymore. Even if she could be a man again, she still doesn't want to stop being a woman, even if she's not very good at it yet. She can't perform the required husbandly duties like provide a good home for LWJ! She can't father LWJ's children anymore!

(Jiang Cheng: "Do you have to do this now?! Stop being indecent! There are children here. Also, we're all being held hostage.")

But it's all cool! Because shortly after realizing WWX was back and determined to live as a woman, LWJ speedran a sexuality crisis, flipped a mental switch, and essentially went, "I'm a lesbian now." (Or maybe LWJ was really confused about being attracted to WWX when they first met, because LWJ had only been physically attracted to her fellow female disciples up until then, so WWX seemed like the "exception", until WWX comes back from the dead as a woman and then it's like, "Ah. Not an exception after all.")