#I also need to delete all the caption screenshots off my phone

[shikai-the-storyteller]

Accidentally saved this as a draft yesterday instead of posting it, but here are some timestamps from Pac's 10/9 stream for folks who missed it:

—

As usual, please remember that I'm not a Portugese-speaker so I rely a lot on timestamps (and sometimes I'll add comments I see from native Portugese speakers)

54:00 - Pac talks about coming back to Twitter and Twitter vs. BlueSky

57:00 - Pac looks at Fit's Twitter (lol)

58:45 - Pac sees the pão de queijo Fit made and says even his mother would be proud of that cheese bread, meanwhile he buys the frozen kind from the store. Pac: I just don't know how to cook properly, unfortunately. You know?

1:04:30 - Pac looks at some old Arkanis videos and posts by the official accounts.

1:24:00 - Pac sees the "Pac e Mike" video on Prefeito Jota's Twitter. Pac: I just remembered, I'm going to kill Jota, I just remembered I don't like him anymore, I can't believe he's done this. (Pftt)

1:40:00 - Pac starts looking at Arkanis fanart

1:47:00 - Pac sees a handsome drawing of Prefeito Jota

2:03:00 - Pac meets Mona, the cat - Mona is giving Pac decoration tips for his house. - Pac asked Mona to make a suit for him for the elections - Mona apparently lives in Paris and knows about high fashion - Mona and Bia apparently know each other

[Missed Timestamp] - Au Au arrives and chases off Mona. - Apparently both the rat and Au Au hate Mona. - Au Au is jealous of Pac with Mona saying that now Pac only thinks about Mona and that Pac is his friend not Mona's friend - Au Au said there is something in his house he can't find, but it smells of Arkania, and he asks Pac to come back with friends sometime to look for it. 3:10:00 - Pac sees that Arkanis is trending on Twitter in Brazil

3:12:00 - Pac shows off his Arkanis screenshot folder

3:24:00 - Pac meets up with Coreanowo to admire the dragon he built and the temple

3:27:30 - Pac says he's going to play Ariana Grande and blow up the factory because Mona likes Ariana Grande

3:58:00 - Pac is given some magical Arkanya Monster (which is almost immediately taken away from him again)

4:25:00 - While retelling the story of Mike clogging the plumming at a rich man's house, the gods send another thunderbolt down and give him a book, which says: "Sorry I don't have much time… do you want to find out more about your true destiny?"

4:31:30 - Pac finds a beautiful lush cave, and when he calls out asking if anyone is there, more thunder rumbles. - He finds some large black human-like monsters called "Ladrão Diluído" (Diluted Thief?)

4:33:45 - He finds a chest with two books.

Book 1: - Page 1: The balaclava has now became more than just a mask, the symbol of who I chose to become. Robbing that merchant's house was the beginning, but today, as I walked out of the bank with my heart racing and my pockets full, I realized the power I can achieve. - Page 2: The world does not belong to the obedient, but to those who dare to shape it. While the city sleeps, I plan. This is only the beginning, and they will know me not by my name, but by the fear my work will leave in the streets. - Page 3: bank robberies (central was the biggest so far, but something changed. I felt a (presence, as if the (city was hunting me. Everything went according to plan, (but I can't (ignore this instinct that tells me the end is near. - Page 4: The balaclava weighs heavier (each day, and the cold of Valigma seems to seep into my bones. Maybe (it's time to (disappear, let the mystery speak for me. For now, I watch, unseen, (hoping that silence will be the answer I seek. I'm looking for.

Book 2: - You will know everything one day… I will tell you the whole story. And as L told his story through Valigma… - Pac thinks it's related to Leo (?)

4:39:00 - He finds some more books (in English this time) and a giant Pit. He takes the warp stone and warps back.

4:51:30 - Pac finds another Shiba and names it "Au Au Jr."

4:57:45 - Pac shows Au Au Au Au Jr, and Au Au kills him, saying he's the only one and Pac just found some dirty mongrel.

4:59:50 - Au Au says "Goodbye cruel world" and throws himself out of Pac's window. Pac tells him to stop being dramatic and that he wasn't trying to change or replace Au Au. - (I missed some context here but chat calls Au Au homophobic, pft). - Au Au apologizes for acting impulsively, and Pac gives him a hug. - Au Au says that maybe living in the ruins of Arkanya is messing with his head. He plays with the other dog in Pac's house (the gray one, idk the name).

5:04:00 - Pac gives Au Au a talking to about learning and growth (?)

5:05:00 - He gives Au Au another hug.

5:09:00 - Pac goes to Au Au's (?) house, and finds purple Arkanya markings all over the walls.

5:16:30 - Milo wakes up!

5:18:00 - They try decoding the symbols, and discover one is "Ladrão" (Robber) and "Ladrãozinho" (Little Robber)

5:33:30 - Pac watches Au Au and Milo joke about impeaching him

6:13:45 - Pac, Au Au, and Milo all take a nap together

6:22:30 - Guh shows up

6:36:00 Gris shows up! She's wearing a black shirt, and Pac considers dressing Milo up

6:37:30 - Quel says she doesn't know if she likes white Monster and Pac pretends to drop dead from shock.

6:57:30 - Pac jokingly tells Guh Guaxinim died while they were play-wrestling (???)

7:01:00 - sus

7:19:00 - Pac hears something strange

7:24:00 - PAUSED

I missed the rest of stream OTL

[echoalyssa]

Hi! I wanted to ask you if you could rewrite the Cheating Chase request a made a little time ago but with Jaden with the reader being famous just like him and the whole situation havin' an impact on internet and with their (shared) friends or you could write a part 2 for Cheating Chase request but only if it's not gonna bother you in any way...

❤Thank you!❤I LOVE YOUR WRINTTING❤

Warnings: Some naughty time is inferred in this!

Jaden’s music is pounding through his surround sound speaker system. He’s throwing another party. One of his signatures. Bryce is chanting “Shots shots shots!”

Jaden’s busy making out with his girl. He’s got her pressed against a wall.

“Wanna ditch my own party?” He murmurs into her ear. 

She giggles and begins to lead his girlfriend to his bedroom. A girl bumps into his shoulder hard but he barely notices, just continues steering his girlfriend to his room.

When they’re done and getting dressed he wonders where his phone has gone. It had been in his back pocket before...

A knock on the door startles him. It’s the girl who had bumped into him earlier. At least he thinks it was. He’s really not sure. He doesn't look at anyone who isn't his girl.

“You dropped this. Bryce said you were up here.”

Jaden vaguely notes her creepy smile but quickly forgets once his phone is back and his girl calls for him.

~~~ You’re barely home from Jaden’s party when your phone begins to blow up. IT vibrates almost continually, calls and texts filling up the screen. All want you to check Jaden’s instagram.

You plop down on the couch and answer the call from Mads, your best friend.

“Have you checked!?” She shrieks, loud enough that you have to take the phone off of speaker-phone for a second.

“I’m checking now! But what can possibly be so urg-”

No. This can’t be right... it can’t... there, one of his most recent posts, theres no way.

It’s a set of nudes, captioned ‘my beautiful baby girl’ with a kissy face emoji. Except.. those aren't your nudes which means... not that you'd want your nudes posted but...

Mads, taking your silence as an answer whispers, “Y/N I am so sorry.”

You can't speak, your fingers go numb. Your phone falls from your grip and clatters as it hits the floor and bounces.

Mads is speaking but you can't hear her. Your heart feels like its beating a mile a minute.

There had to be some sort of explanation, if you just called him he would be able to clear this up. Right? Right!?

So you pick up your phone, Mads is saying that she’ll make the friend group unfollow him. You excuse yourself, hang up, and dial Jaden. It rings, and rings, and rings, Then, “Hey it’s Jaden. Hit me up later!”

You try again. And again. And again. You get his voicemail every time.

Somehow you’re all the emotions at once. You pull up his instagram, and this time your notice your name is no longer in his bio the way it had been for so long.

‘That’s it.’ You think. 

You unfollow him on instagram, remove his name from your own bio, and delete all the pictures of the two of you together. 

Then you go to Snapchat and un-add him. His contact gets deleted, you unfollow him on twitter and delete his face from your camera roll. 

Satisfied as you can be, you fall into bed and let the tears come.

~~~

By the early afternoon of the next day the gossip is at full roar. You venture on to youtube, and right there, the first video you see is by ‘annaoop’ who is almost the most well known gossip youtube channel focusing on tiktokers.

‘Jaden Hossler cheats on Y/N L/N’ the title reads. Something within you compels you to click on it. 

Her voice rings, talking about ‘tea’. She shows the censored versions of the pictures from his instagram. They’re basically just one blurred skin colored square. 

“How dare he? He hasn’t commented on it at all... Y/N deleted photos of the two of them such as this one from their trip to Bondi Beach.”

The series of photos she displays make your heart clench. ‘Annaoop’ then begins to pull up the followers page on Jaden’s instagram. 

She informs you and the rest of her viewers that Mads, Nessa, Thomas, Petrou, Chase Hudson, Charli, Mia, and others have unfollowed Jaden’s instagram, and sided with you.

From the way she narrates you can tell she’s on your ‘side’. Apparently, Bryce has unfollowed you and written on his Twitter that Jaden would not be making a statement until he talked to you. Except he wasn't even trying to talk to you.

Your fans are going after Jaden, and from the screenshots some are getting ruthless. Some fans have even jumped ship from Jaden to you.

And then theres the die hard Jaden fans of his that are trashing you for not being good enough to him. It had already been established that it wasn't your body because it had a tattoo that you didn't.

Your phone is still blowing up but you don't truly want to talk about it. So instead you post a statement to your instagram and twitter. 

‘I haven’t been able to reach Jaden. We are no longer together because of the incident. Just because this happened does not mean I want or condone you attacking him or any of his friends and family. I love y'all and I will be okay <3 Y/N.’

No sooner than you had posted the statements, theres a loud pounding at your door. Very reluctantly, you open it.

It’s Nessa, she rushes in gushing. “Jaden’s coming here. I heard from Josh who heard from Blake, who heard from-”

“Nessa!” You interrupt, “When?”

“Well you know how bad at math I am but hypothetically, I mean technically he should be here soon!”

And as if right on cue, there’s the sound of your doorbell followed by rapid knocking by a heavier hand.

“I’ll go out the back door so he doesn't see me. Good luck, I love you! Call me if you need anything!” She gives you a quick and fleeting hug and then darts off.

He’s still pounding at your door. And having no other choice, you let him in. As soon as you do he's speaking so quickly that you can barely understand him. 

“Y/Nwhyhaventyoubeenansweringmeivebeencallingandcallingandcallingyouandyouhaventansweredandisawyourannouncementthatwerebrokenup-”

“Did you also happen to see the pictures you posted on your instagram?” You cross your arms.

“Ofcoursebutisweartoyouandeverythingreally-”

“Slow down or we can’t have a conversation Jaden.”

He gives you one sharp nod and takes a few big breaths. “Do you remember at my party when I got knocked by some girl?”

You frown, “No, and I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

“Well, thats the thing. It was orchestrated to look inconspicuous. She must have taken my phone then because after we were alone... y’know... well she showed up. Gave me my phone claiming I dropped it and Bryce told her where to find me except he didn't. She’s been stalking me Y/N. That’s how she found my room, knew my password. You know I have more respect for women than to post their nudes. You have to believe me! She blocked you from my phone, thats why nothing went through!”

It made sense... and you should believe him but what if he was just a really good liar? So many people were involved in your relationship and now this drama. You’d always tried to keep the private details of your life well... private. But life in the spotlight often prevented that. Maybe the damage had been done. Maybe it was too late. You just didn't know.

“I need to think about it Jaden.”

[stargirlwnchstr]

I have a visual to share with y'all. Say welcome to my long ass 'The Foxes + tiktok' headcanon

@ nickythefox_es (part 1???)

Basically Nicky gets tiktok but all of the foxes show up eventually and just use his profile.

• Most of the videos are with nicky and allison, also matt and dan and occasionally neil.

• Allison and nicky learn so many dances.

• Their duet of make his pockets hurt with Mariah and Zane from the vlog squad is the first one to go v i r a l.

• Yeah most of their followers know them but some and a lot of the comments are non exy fans that just watch them because they're cool

• So many of the "what is exy" "stickball game??" "dont even bother explaining to me what is the sport they play I dont care I'm just here for neil." And related comments get a liked from creator (andrew told nicky to like them)

•The "Oh my god she's coming." "I'm so afraid of her." Audio are the twinyards and nicky shows up, he had to bribe them to be a part of that one.

• They post another version but it's Kevin that enters and Allison and Nicky talking

• So many comments thirsting over them and calling matt and dan parents

• "the real bisexual struggle is simping for matt and dan in the same tiktok." -> liked from creator nickythefox_es commented/replied: ASDGFKSSDWADKWB

• Someone makes a 'put a finger down: Neil Josten edition' and nicky drags him to do it. They both smile as they listen to the prompts and Neil obviously puts all his fingers down but they're like "put a finger down if you clapbacked/if you bad mouthed someone (bonus points if it was on national tv)" "put a finger down if you're under 6 feet" "put a finger down if you love exy" and the last one just says "put a finger down if andrew minyard." Neil does and smiles at someone off camera. Needless to say it goes viral as well. A few weeks after nicky gets verified.

• Allison becomes friends with thenavarose and wisdom sorry I dont make the rules (they're fashion tiktokers)

• They make a series of rating each of the foxes throughout the day, including one of Wymack.

• They do receive bad comments, from bitter ravens fans or just recalling their pasts and nicky sits down and makes a video telling everyone about how they do this videos for fun they dont need hate and negative comments on their videos and all that

• Then another one posted minutes after, neil comes in and nicky says "okay neil you have one minute. Rant off." And neil goes on this rant like how they already hit Rock bottom a single comment is not gonna hurt them and "do you get how insignificant and meaningless your lives must be? You took the time to write and post a comment that you thought was gonna cause an impact and failed. Also thanks for the comments though it helps nicky stay on the algorithm." NICKY SCREECHES AND THE VIDEO ENDS WITH THEM SMILING

• Allison vlogs neil and her going shopping or thrifting also cutting Neil's hair

• *neil walks into the room wearing his orange bandana* *camera moves and zooms on Andrew's face* he doesnt lip sync but the song sings "oh noo I think I'm catching feelings" andrew tells him to delete it "but it already has thousands of likes andrew"

• They post some of their work out routines per request

• One of them is the fast and "I'm spinning like a ballerina" chill of neil just running on the treadmill and doing sprints and squats and leg stuff while it cuts to allison doing a bit of everything but looking like a queen on a matching set.

• A fun one that goes viral for "vine energy" is: it's very quiet on the court and Kevin, very in the zone, throws the ball to the goal, which Andre's catches easily and almost without moving. The camera goes back to kevin as he screeches and let's himself fall on the ground. Neil is standing beside him shaking his head and looking at the goal with a smile on his face.

• They try to teach neil the dances but while filming one of them he just leaves. They post it either way.

• They're in the bus, nicky is on selfie mode and says "it is game day my dudes" he turns and shows the whole bus S C R E A M S, in the corner Wymack is covering his face.

• The iconic "they say drunk thoughts are sober words" or something like that and it cuts to a series of videos of the foxes drunk af. Example: Nicky grabbing Allison's face and saying 'Remember. Bread. Head. Leave.' And allison nodding.

• Nicky films kevin standing up and put the "do you ever wonder what is going on inside their head?" And it cuts to pictures of racquets and exy and Jeremy Knox and one that says history stuff.

• Another one that goes viral is kevin very seriously and p e r f o r m i n g, rapping Jefferson's side of the cabinet battle #1 from Hamilton then towards the end andrew stands up in front of him and with his iconic bored expression he starts rapping Hamilton's part. Behind the camera there's a soft "...oh my gOD" and kevin is shocked eyes widen open and then the camera zooms on Neil who's mouth is open in shock but GRINNING and ~impressed~

• Dan and matt do The challenge, you know the one that like has to flip them over and all that and they ace it, nicky points the camera to where andrew and neil are stating and Andrew says no.

• A few minutes later another video of the challenge is posted only this time is matt and neil.

• Nicky and allison are in full gear filming a dance video (maybe savage or captain hook) on the court and someone films them filming that and then Wymack looking at them SO disappointed cut to Wymack with nicky's phone, having confiscated it and nicky besides him "coach, it's cardio!"

• Hours spent trying trick shots

• Foxes: "get back! Move!" Ravens: "Let me in! I be the I g g y!" Trojans: "Oh my God do no let her in" Foxes: "I am trying!"

• Nicky lying down: "okay but someone needs to tell me how old is the shirtless pottery guy. I can't be part of another controversy. It's for science c'mon. *debby Ryan's*"

• Someone comments "he's eighteen. Simp away, nicky." And he makes a video with his feet swinging and smiling. Aaron gets on the frame and says "we are deeply in need of some bowls." The caption: hi @ papapots

• They are verified so obviously he gains a couple of thousands followers and he duets smiling and with a package in his arms. Text: thanks for the support (and hi new followers from sport side of tiktok hope you enjoy my pots) caption: hi @ nickthefox_es I got you aaron.

• After the package comes they duet it with nicky screaming and showing off the goods and then he moves stop show andrew eating ice cream out of one of them. Caption: AJSNEPWLDKSS THANK YOU DAX

• Allison and nicky do the "I love you!" "No you dont topper! You love the idea of me. You love being seen with me but you dont love me." But nicky is Sarah and allison is topper. Next day the obx ig page reposted it "we stan the psu foxes pogues for life." And chase stokes posts it on Twitter saying "yoo the palmetto foxes watch??? my show???" Nicky takes a screenshot and on green screen he says "hi chase!! We do! The whole team binged it. Currently we've been debating who of us is going to dress up as pogues for Halloween." A lot of voices start arguing and as nicky is gonna enter the debate the video cuts.

• Allison does the facetime *deep male voice says hey* prank on them. Neil doesnt react. Nicky doesnt look up from his phone but does the finger thing and says "get that d, allison!" Dan and renee look at each other and then at allison and she bursts out laughing.

• aaron studying to be a doctor: *two plus two is four etc sound* andrew (eating pretzels from the bag while watching a game show lying down in a bean bag) and his eiditic memory [basically not needing to study]: *three is a magic number sound*

• Nicky runs through the court and enters the lounge beside the photo wall there's a poster he shows the camera as the sounds says it "alive ahaha fuck"

• Somehow they convince all of them to show up and do the wipe it down trend that ends up with wymack throwing the towel at the mirror.

• Comment: so how many members of the team listen to girl in red or sweater weather? Nicky stands there with the color filter: 👁👄👁👉👈 caption: yes❤

• He gets neil to duet to the whole "british people be like". "Neil I'm not british." "Part of you is so just read the tweets." He does and the comments are all thirst and simping

• Comment: raise your hand if you've been victimized by neil josten. Where my fellow Simps at? (The comment gets hundreds of thousands of likes) they make a video, everyone on the team except aaron who walks out raises their hand as the sound says "welcome to simp nation" kevin rolls his eyes but raises his, says something that nicky captions "i simp over his exy skills". andrew doesn't at first, but next to him neil whispers something and after andrew says yes, neil grabs Andrew's forearm and raises it. Andrew looks away and neil smiles.

• Nicky lying down: okay but what if Jean moreau traded places with the french guy from here you know who, david.

• Comment "ugh your mind nicky" reply video: right? Big brain, many thoughts, head full all the time. But like actually the idea of david playing exy and Jean hanging out with ducks and making viral tiktoks just-

• Comment "i feel you and @ austincantdrive would make the best chaotic duo" reply: we would be too powerful together. Austin replies too: agree.

• Allison makes a sports jersey/comfy wear but make it fashion and she styles herself. Everyone on the comments d i e s for her.

• Comment "okay but what about the boys. help allison." She makes a video too with matt and nicky and at the end neil wears an orange crop top and the internet b r e a k s

• Comment "allison do you listen to girl in red?" video reply: her winking at the camera and lip syncing as sweater weather plays. The comments a lot of them liked by creator: a win for the girls (and the boys)

• Upperclassmen Back in 2003: okay but hey do we always have to be involved? Can we do normal stuff that normal people do, like, go for brunch? Us (aaron, andrew, kevin and me): what the fuck is brunch?

• Of course they do the mr blue sky trend. Nicky: drunkenly goes to flirt with a guy. Aaron: drunkenly follows to get away from kevin. Kevin: drunk on pure vodka reminds us we have practice in the morning.

• Or another one all of them. Neil: ready to insult a reporter. Dan: tries not to laugh on camera. Matt: gets ready to hug him afterwards Allison and Nicky: Filming everything. Wymack: the only one trying to stop it from happening and failing.

• Dan and matt duet their reactions to every video edit of them, smiling and saying "your parents love you guys!".

• Comment "literally what is wrong with the ravens/ravens fans?The foxes are such a nice group of people and they're doing great in the sport y'all worship just shut up you cult-y athletic hype house." video reply: "ladies and gentlemen. The volume inside of this bus is A S T R O N O M I C A L."

• comment video reply: okay so we're not gonna talk about nicky at the gym?? Bc C A K E. nicky lip syncing "I'm glad you brung it up because I've been dying to talk about this for a fucking hot minute. First of all-"

• Colin uses one of Neil's or Andrew's interviews replies as one of his sounds and nicky fanboys a lot

• Allison and nicky do the Kardashian sound compilation.

• Nicky with a picture of Erik on green screen: "hi I just wanna say if you look anything like this please contact me. Thank you." Caption: miss u baby. And Erik watches his tiktoks and he facetimes him immediately. Nicky takes a screenshot and duets his own video crying with the screenshot caption: SKALSBSKAJSL Erik comments: stop making tiktoks and answer the phone, hemmick. Nicky replies: yessir everyone below comments keyboard smashes and you got a good one. Goals. Lmao kids that's what we call bottom panic. We stan one healthy long distance relationship and after that a bunch of long distance relationship questions that he makes another video on.

• A video of Katelyn and neil chatting and it pans to the twins watching them with the *when worlds collide sound*

• He reposts a snippet of one of his interviews post game where he grabs the mic from the reporter and nicky: can I say something? Reporter: sure, go ahead. Nicky: thank you. *looks straight into the camera* all the birds died in 1986 due to Reagan killing them and replacing them with spies that are now watching us. The birds work for the bourgeoisie. Thank you." And leaves. IT GOES VIRAL INSTANTLY.

• Comment "is everyone else gonna forget that tiktok where he said he was already part of a controversy? We stan a problematic icon?" Video reply: guys I might have been part of a whole Twitter beef thing against my little hoodie and Bruce hallway but c'mon, like, c'mon you can't blame me.

• Comment "for neil: does the carpet match the drapes 👅😍?" Video reply: neil on selfie mode. "Allison gave me her phone, told me to answer this and ran away so umm." He reads the box on the screen and frowns he walks and stands next to the window, where Andrew is sitting down and is barely seen on frame. "uhmm, the internet is confusing. Our carpet is like this" he turns the phone and shows the floor (grayish carpet) and then back at him "but we don't have drapes so, technically they don't match, I dont know." Andrew's head goes up and simply says "Neil." Neil turns "what?" And the video ends.

• of course nicky and allison do the WAP dance, on the court, when they should be running drills.

[storiesforallfandoms]

private ~ eminem

word count: 1445

request?: yes!

“hellooo🥺i was wondering if i could request an imagine for eminem. Maybe where the reader (female) is also a singer and she posts a cute picture of them together by accident and fans go crazy since she’s very private and tells Em and so they reveal they‘ve been dating for like two years. feel free to change it if you need to. Love your writing, i hope you have a nice day 🤍🤍”

description: in which they’re both very private about their personal lives, until she accidentally posts a picture of the two of them

pairing: eminem x female!reader

warnings: swearing

masterlist

Before my career took off, I had a personal Instagram account that was private. It was for my friends and family and that was it. When I started to really become famous, and people started looking up my social media, I decided to make a public account just for fans to follow.

I wasn’t a very public person. I liked my privacy, but I also liked to share some of my personal life with friends and family. One of these things that I liked to share was my relationship with Marshall.

We had met through mutual friends and hit it off immediately. He met my family, I met his daughters, and within a few months, we were basically living with one another. I loved Marshall, and I loved to show him off. However, we were both very private people, meaning any showing off I did was always on my personal social media accounts, not my public ones.

On a rare night that we both had off, Marshall decided to make dinner for the two of us as a stay at home date. I was trying to take a picture of the meal with Marshall in the background, but of course he refused to take a good picture.

“Why do you have to be on your phone right now?” he asked. “We’re trying to have a nice date, no phones.”

“I want to take a picture of what you did for us,” I argued with him. “I want to show my family, is that okay?”

He playfully rolled his eyes at me, but didn’t say another word. I held my phone up again to take another picture, to which Marshall held up his middle finger just as I took the picture.

“Charming,” I said and rolled my eyes.

I figured it was the best I was getting, so I decided to quickly type a caption and post the picture before turning my phone off.

“It’s off,” I told him before showing him my phone. “Look, off. I’ll put it on the counter, you have me all night.”

“Thank you, that’s all I ask.”

We finished dinner and ended the night in the bedroom, as to be expected. When I woke up the next morning, I was still cuddled in Marshall’s arms. I couldn’t help but smile as I placed a gentle kiss on his cheek before slowly wiggling out of his arms.

I pulled on his discarded shirt and made my way to the kitchen to make breakfast for the two of us. As I began to cook, I realized I had left my phone off in the kitchen all night. I turned it back on, hoping that I didn’t miss anything too important the night before.

The moment my phone turned back on and connected to the wifi, I was bombarded with messages. Numerous mentions in tweets and Instagram comments, people trying to DM me on both social media platforms, multiple text messages from friends of mine all saying the same thing, “Did you mean to do this?”

I was confused. I couldn’t understand what was happening. For a moment, I started to worry that some tabloid had decided to write an article about me, or someone was trying to spread some sort of rumors about me. It wouldn’t be the first time. It wasn’t until I read the name Paul Rosenberg, Marshall’s manager, on my screen and the text message he had sent me.

“I don’t think this was on purpose, but it’s been up too long for deleting it to do anything. You and Em are about to have a field day. I’ll let you break the news to him”

Attached to the text was a screenshot of the picture I had taken of Marshall the night before, along with the caption I had written, “Date night in with my love”. It wasn’t until I read the username, “(Y/F/N)official”, that I realized I had posted it on my public Instagram, not my private one.

My eyes widened as I fumbled to try and unlock my phone. “Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck, no!”

And there it was, the picture of my loving boyfriend with a caption that confirmed our relationship. I scrolled through the comments to read everyone’s reaction. Most people were shocked, very few of my fans were aware that I even knew Marshall. Many were very happy for me, and for Marshall. And then, of course, there was a small fraction of both of our fan bases that were unhappy with our relationship.

My DMs were filled with people reacting to the picture, and my Twitter notifications were bombarded with tabloid accounts posting stories about the “surprise confirmation”, and people’s reactions to it on there.

I felt myself becoming angry and frustrated. I locked my phone and threw it onto the counter, burying my face in my hands and starting to cry. I couldn’t believe I had managed to fuck up the one private thing I had in my life. When Marshall woke up he was going to be pissed. He wasn’t one to share his personal life, and now I had outed the both of us. We’d never get privacy ever again, not from fans and definitely not from paparazzi.

I heard footsteps approaching the kitchen and quickly wiped my eyes with the sleeves of Marshall’s shirt. He appeared in the doorway of the kitchen moments later, stretching his arms out as he did so.

“Good morning,” he said. “Are you burning something?”

I remembered then that I had forgotten all about the omelette I was making. I raced over to the pan and tried to flip the, only to find it stuck to the pan, and anything that wasn’t stuck was nearly black. I turned off the stove and threw the spatula I was using in frustration, exclaiming, “God fucking dammit!”

“Hey, hey, it’s fine,” Marshall said, wrapping his arms around me. “It’s just one omelette, we can make another. We have plenty of pans.”

“It’s not just that,” I sighed, turning to face him. "Remember that picture I took of you and the dinner you made us last night?” He nodded. “I thought I posted it on my private Instagram, but I was posting so quickly that I didn’t double check before I posted it and turned off my phone and I...I posted it to my public Instagram account.”

Marshall looked at me for a moment, his face confused. The longer it took him to realize what this meant, the more I found myself bracing for the moment he realized.

“Okay?” he said. “What does that mean?”

“It means I accidentally outed our relationship, Marshall,” I said. “Everyone knows. Nearly half the tabloid news sites have written fucking articles about it at this point, my social media has been bombarded with messages, I’m sure yours has too - ”

“I don’t give a fuck about being all those messages,” he said with a shrug. “I have my notifications off, and you should, too, if it’s going to bother you that much.”

“The messages aren’t bothering me!” I snapped, my frustration with myself erupting once again. “What’s bothering me is the fact that I outed our relationship by accident. Marshall, I fucked us over here! Because of me, we can never have any privacy ever again. We can’t go out on the down low, fuck, we probably can’t even leave the house right now cause there’s probably people outside! And it really fucking sucks cause...I felt so normal in our relationship. For a while, I forgot I was under everyone’s watchful eye and all I cared about was you.”

Marshall took me in his arms and held me tightly as I began to cry. He ran his fingers through my hair, kissing the top of my head as I let out my frustration.

“You haven’t fucked us over,” he told me. “Yeah, I wanted to keep this private, too, but I don’t care if the world knows about us. We don’t have to share every detail of our relationship, but I don’t mind if we get caught holding hands, or even just spending time together. At least everyone will know that you’re mine.”

I pushed away from his embrace to look up at him. “You’re not mad at me?”

He wiped away my tears with his thumbs and cupped my face. “Of course not. You didn’t do it on purpose, it’s fine baby. We’ll get through this, it’s not the end of the world.”

I smiled and leaned forward to kiss him. “I love you so much.”

“I love you, too. Let’s go get some breakfast, I’m starving.”

[makeusfreefromthisfandom]

How They Snapchat

A/n: yes I did everyone bc why not 😌✨ long post ahead but I had a lot of fun doing these! I hope you have just as much fun reading them!

❥Iwatobi

Haru

Is he even on Snapchat?

Lmao

He was forced to by Rin before he left for Australia

Haru forgets about it. The only time he posts are when he’s out with Rin and it’s Rin who’s the one posting for him

Makoto

Cats!

Omg he’s going to be posting snaps of him and the neighborhood cat

But he’s also posting snaps of him and Haru

most of the time it’s a Nagisa take over and Makoto’s memories are FILLED with Nagisa’s snaps and random videos

He won’t ever delete them ahaha

He’s the type who’s snap is always messing up lolol and he starts panicking about it too 😭

Never the one to leave you on read. A true king.

Nagisa

Ooffff

Yk those people on snap who have like 5 different private stories and are CONSTANTLY posting on ALL of them and somehow you are also on ALL of them

Yeah...

That feature on snap where you just swipe up to be added to someone’s private story? Nagisa is always doing that

There’s no point of calling it a private anymore

Also a spammer, doesn’t care if you do streaks or not

He’s the type who posts videos and pictures of his friends OFF GUARD OMG HES THOSE TYPE OF PEOPLE AJSJSJJSJS

And he gets it at JUST the right moment

poor Rei

Filters. Not the ones that make you look good. The weird ass ones.

Oh also that big mouth filter is his fav (yk the one that everyone uses when they need to rant ajsjsjsjsj)

Can you imagine him on tik tok LMFAO

Rei

Aesthetics ✨

Sunset/sky pics

Also it’s basically Nagisa running his snap too

Selfie e’rryday (courtesy of Nagisa ofc)

Gou

Selfies with the galsssss😆😝

So many swim team memories 🥺

Nagisa likes doing the whole “amosc” thing on her story too without her knowing xb

Has a private story but Rin’s not apart of it 😌🤚🏽

He gets super butthurt when he finds out tho bc the rest of the guys are

Why hasn’t she blocked Momo yet?😭😭😭

SHE DOESNT WANT TO SEE YOUR BEETLE MY GUY

I feel like she rants but she doesn’t even use that one filter to do it. The gorl says what she’s gotta say

But she still likes using the cute little filters tho <3

The group chat maker.

❥Samezuka

Rin

11:11 snaps

He has a whole separate private story for his sad hours and quotes

Late night workout/gym pics. With the time sticker

Also he’s the type to be posting selfies of him and his buddies too :b

snaps of his music

sad playlists

Thinks streaks are stupid but probably does them anyways ajsjsjjsjsjs especially if it’s someone he’s crushing on

ALWAYS checking Gou’s stories bc protective brother things

Always flashing his signature sharky grin

Those people that are confident and intimidating on snap but in reality they’re baby and soft🥺

Sousuke

Black screens.

Ceiling snaps.

leaves you on read

but it’s bc he doesn’t know what to even reply with

Doesn’t really snap like that, he mostly just has it so that it’s another way to keep in touch with acquaintances and friends

Will once in awhile get snaps from Aii and Momo which he’ll just laugh and smile to

Aii

He has a group chat on there for the swim team

He’ll send snaps to Rin and Sousuke sometimes

Cant quite get out of Nagisa’s snap spamming tho, he’s considered blocking

Momo

Do I even need to say anything?

Pyunsuke.

Period.

ITS JUST HIS FREAKIN STAG BEETLE

captions the snaps with things like “isn’t he precious 🥺” “GUYS PYUNSUKE LEARNED A NEW TRICK!!!”

Has a whole story dedicated to “Pyunsuke’s Adventures”

Please all the boys have left that priv story

Aii stays tho bc he’s nice like that

Regrets it everyday.

Also big bro Sei likes to take over his snaps from time to time

Seijuro

He’s got all the fan girls yo 😎🤏🏽

Work out snaps

Swimming snaps in his speedo

Face snaps

He also succeeds in getting selfies with Haru as they’re on the same swim team now 😎🤏🏽

Exposes the younger mikoshibas’ baby pics

NEVER lets the chance go to take a snap when all the mikoshiba siblings reunite

❥Highspeed+Hiyori

Asahi

Inspirational quotes on his mirror selfies

Ooooof Kisumi takeover 24/7

I feel like he’s into aesthetic snaps and phone photography too so yeah lots of coffee shop aesthetics

He still does streaks :b

Forced to have one with Kisumi

Never snaps him back tho

He likes posting his nephew too 🥺

He ends up getting a kick to the face right when he snaps the pic tho

The type to be like “dhmu”

“Only the real ones know”

Kisumi

Has to document all his coffee/food runs

His “vlogs”

Kisumi. Omg KISUMI. He’s that ONE friend who has embarrassing pictures of EVERYONE

Omg you cannot tell me that he’s not a little blackmailer with a smile plastered on his face 24/7

Jkjk

You sly little fox

The exposing type aksjjsjsjsjsjs also my fellow key smasher 😎

That one person who’s always recording at just the right moments

He does streaks too! Although the one with Asahi was completely unintentional and now they’re over 300 days

Pretty selfies all the time! 💖

Has like 1000+ friends and claims to know them all

What can I say, he’s a popular guy~

Ikuya

s t a r s

Askskksksjs

Not the type to really post, more of the type to just watch

An occasional selfie with Hiyori

Sometimes he’ll be sitting at the park or smth with a nice view and he’ll decide to snap a pic

Always has swipe up on Asahi’s stories to remind him of his stupidity

A lot of snaps from Natsuya of his travels or what he’s doing atm

The only person he’ll actually regularly snapback to

Those late night snaps/texts from a special someone never fail to bring a small smile to his lips tho🥺

The type to watch his monthly recaps and 1/2/3 and so on year agos

Natsuya

T r a v e l s

The airport at 4am

The plane

MIRROR SELFIES 🤤

FACE SELFIES 🤤🤤

lots of Nao snaps haha, most of them are saved in his memories tho

He actually has tons of selfies with a bunch of new people that he meets in his travels like Rin!

He also gets Ikuya into taking a selfie with him ;b

HIS SMILE 🥺 omg he’s always flashing a smile in his snaps 🥺

Also doesn’t really do streaks, but he likes to let his close fellas know what he’s doing and where he’s currently at so they unintentionally start anyways

Gets asked for his snap a lot- too bad he’s claimed me as his wife 😙

Nao

Doesn’t really use Snapchat that much unless he’s talking to like the 4 closet people he knows including Natsu

Also more of a watcher than a poster

Wait that sounded wrong akskksks-

Like I mean he watches others’ stories rather than posting stuff on his own

Wait why do I feel like he actually watches those snap stories yk like the buzzfeed ones and dailymail, etc 😭😭

Tends to leave Natsuya on open

Hiyori

Stalks Ikuya on maps

Ok but he doesn’t really post on his story unless it’s a selfie with Ikuya

Or he just wants to share his coffee shop/library aesthetic akaksksksk

More of a memory keeper

Like his memories are definitely filled but he doesn’t always post them

Never leaves you on open. Thinks it’s wrong. Will always snapback/reply 🥺

OH OMG YK WHEN U ACCIDENTALLY POST SOMETHING ON YOUR STORY AND IMMEDIATELY REGRET IT LIKE YK THOSE MOMENTS?

That’s literally Hiyori but he would d i e

LMAO

Too scared to screenshot anything too

I think he also secretly watches those subscription and publisher stories

Taglist: @starbornecentral @enai-jigoku @allieturs @syrenblubs @todominica @kkbear @thatfreeshit @lowkeystasha @animatedarchives @cha0tically0rganized @ourfallenthoughts @akaashirin @ever4wolf (let me know if you would like to be added or removed!)

[breadclubrising]

Why do you believe another gl reunion would make Ibushi fulfilled? Bc last time he seemed pretty annoyed by the end of it, saying he was just being tossed aside as "Kenny's replacement" and "I have nothing else to do in this tournament" and ofc the "I've always been alone". Why would it be different now?

wellllllllllll because the GL story has a surprising amount of nuance for a wrestling storyline, and has kind of deliberately mixed kayfabe with real life in such a way that you can’t talk about them separately a lot of the time.

i DEFINITELY didn’t say he ‘needs’ it to be ‘fulfilled’, because that is a thing that would give me hives to say. i have many times said he doesn’t need Kenny and that’s been the point, is that they both totally can be great without each other, but they keep choosing each other and even if they’re successful in their careers, they are unhappy when they’re apart. if you find that disagreeable, please email kota (i know for a fact he does not check his email because of course he doesn’t). What I said was: it is how their careers will play out because they literally say that will happen and they have gone to LENGTHS in real life to make it happen.

i saw someone on twitter who bothered to take a screenshot of some galaxy brain on reddit finally figuring out that ibushi and omega see each other as endgame, and captioned it something like ‘golden lovers is the worst story in wrestling please stop.’ which is totally an opinion you are welcome to have but also, the part about them being each other’s endgame is a thing they both have said and kenny in particular will never let anyone forget. i do not understand why people give it the ‘lol shut up fangirl shippers’ treatment when it’s a thing that has been telegraphed since the beginning of time, unless you are calling ibushi and omega fangirl shippers, which you actually probably should bc no one ships GL more. anyway, i actually completely get why people who don’t like the storyline, or don’t like kenny, or whatever, have a different reading of the actual events that took place. but it means that you asking me this question isn’t going to get you a satisfying answer, and that makes me feel like you’re just asking me this to make me feel bad for liking a thing incorrectly. 

but you did ask, which is totally on you, so: Ibushi said (explicitly, in interviews, and on twitter) that he was frustrated with himself for not Reaching His Potential. He never expressed frustration with Kenny, or even with NJPW’s booking. He wasn’t even officially signed until a couple months after Kenny left. 

It was like this: he was an outsider in the company. He was always paired with the guy who is like, certified by the belt to be The Best Wrestler In The World. That guy had a problem like the bus in Speed, except instead of having to maintain a speed of 60mph to avoid exploding, the bus has to constantly say its boyfriend is the coolest. So Kenny, the best wrestler in the world according to kayfabe, is like ‘actually my mans here is the best wrestler in the world’ and kota’s like ‘thanks i love you too but i’m pretty sure you’re the one with the belt and the pwi cover and 437 meltzer stars you fucking labradoodle.’ (I’d bet money Kota does not know what a labradoodle is.) Kenny’s stanning was sweet and well-intentioned but to Kota it only highlighted the achievement gulf between them. And it did not help that his mentor Tanahashi was like ‘allow me to highlight the achievement gulf between you and your genetically inferior labradoodle boyfriend, whomst i don’t like for Reasons.’

And that made Ibushi be like ‘i’m 36 (at the time) years old and I have every muscle and yet, no accolades. the fact that i have not yet managed to be the unequivocal best and that i foolishly had a body and feelings is shameful and weak.’

That’s how he is: he beats himself up about stuff like goddamn taking time off to heal from neck surgery and a mental breakdown, and the unforgivable sin of not being quite sure what direction he wanted to take his career. It felt really bad! It deffos did! But his frustration was not directed where you think it was! But that’s the part I said you’re not going to agree with me on, so!

There was so much going ON in this story and it was really GOOD! Like all the stuff with Tanahashi was incredible and heart-wrenching and you just wanted to both smack and hug all three of them and it was a really good story! 

Sometimes I just need to remind myself of that bc people who dislike the Golden Lovers are very reductive about why they assume people like the thing they do not like. But yes, it actually is a good story, now that I type a tiny part of it out like that; not my fault some people seem to have missed the epic heroes’ journeys forest for the gay love story trees. Not that there’s anything wrong with gay love story trees; also very much part of the forest.

Anyway Anon, part of the reason earlier on I speculated that you just came to my inbox to try to make me feel sad for liking things in a way you did not was that... honestly. HOW did ANYONE watch Ibushi say “I was always alone, before” after he won the 2019 G1 and go “king said ‘new career who dis’ and deleted kenneth’s number from his phone! 👏always 👏alone 👏before 👏!!!’ 

Like yeah those are the words he said but, you know, words can mean a lot of things! and personally, I think it’s relevant that those words were enveloped by a heartbreakingly pained smile that says ‘GREAT question Tokyo Sports, i WILL cry RIGHT here at this FUCKING folding table if you do not IMMEDIATELY pretend along with me that my existence began earlier this evening when I entered this arena. thanks in advance!’ Like!

Yep, look at that smug fuck pretending not to know who his shitty ex is! Prolly thinking of some good labradoodle jokes.

(On the real i know that not everyone is good at ascertaining emotion from facial expressions. I get that, and I’m not gonna dog on anyone for it, because I myself am often not great at it. And honestly? If he meant this in the “I don’t know her” sense, I would probably have loved it, bc I am a Kota Ibushi fan first, a human second, an antifa supersoldier third, and then a Golden Lovers Scholar like somewhere in the low 20s. But... I can’t even pretend that reading works for me. I hate looking at these gifs. That’s how much this reads to me as Having A Bad Time, like this man’s face is among my favorite things to view on this horrible planet and my heart feels like it’s being poked with a broken toothpick every time these gifs loop.)

And finally, because of the thing I said in the first paragraph that I wrote when I was like “i’m just gonna write a quick answer to this ask” like some kind of fucking fool who has never seen my own blog: it would not “be different now”, it has always been this story, and both Kenny and Kota say that when they are able to. It mixes kayfabe with real life, and in real life it’s really clear that it’s endgame for both of them, and I’m very sorry to GL haters but please direct your displeasure with the narrative to the two nerds who are determined to continue it across decades and oceans.

[bawkrya]

ok so im just gonna pick at fr from a web designer pov because looking at this site on mobile will drive me into madness if they don’t fix it at some point. The rest of this post will go under a read more because it’s both super long and image heavy.

before i hit mobile though, I’m going to point out some things i just don’t personally like in general with the site design (and yes i am conscious that they are slowly updating to a new look)

this will come as a shock to no one, if you’ve seen previous web design related posts by others anyways, but i cant. stand this menu

[ID: A cropped screenshot of Flight Rising’s Main Menu]

fr, understandably, has a shit ton of links. it’s a petsite with lore and all that, whatever. The thing that bothers me specifically is the length of links and where some are placed.

1. i BELIEVE this counts as an accessibility issue where longer links kinda trap shorter links, goes into misclicks to other pages in the site, etc. etc.  2. i don’t think. the search link should be under library personally ? Maybe make it its own category. 

Dev Tracker & Media could go under this category, possibly add separate links to forum, player, and dragon searches with updated formatting

Dressing Room and Scrying Workshop could go under the “Play” category 

Forums can be it’s own category with possible subcategories being: Announcements & News, Help Center, and Flight specific discussion forum, maybe more 

Library category could then just be: Which Waystone, World Map, Game Database, and Encyclopedia.

Support should be it’s own category.

One thing on the shop category, and i hesitate to say this because im not CONFIDENT on this one, but I’m not sure Custom Skins exactly fits? or at least, it should be Purchase Gems -> Marketplace -> Custom Skins, not between crossroads and festive favors

Merch should probably go under purchase gems, and they should maybe uhh..... i guess change the name for it overall? because 1. “merch” alone does NOT look good with its placement, 2. its another actual money purchase thing and I think those should go on the same page

Along with that, in putting merch under that page, they could put previews of the merch with a button to go purchase instead of immediately going to their merch site (which to begin with it should open in a new tab if its going to a separate site?!!)

then this is a mix of both not liking it on laptop OR mobile, 

[ID: A cropped image of Flight Rising’s Clan Home page. The Bestiary link has a bright red box highlighting it]

Obviously these pages are old, but the graphics need to be updated, and there needs to be graphics for every link in the category-- seeing with this category alone there isn’t a graphic for the Bestiary already. On top of this they need to be in link order preferably. if they had a normal dropdown menu for mobile, mobile users wouldn’t be able to access the bestiary unless FR wanted to be STUPID and do further dropdown menus w their 200 links which would be STUPID and CLUTTERED

also in my opinion the Messages link isn’t necessary since we have the button at the top. If they put it there as an excuse for accessibility, they can just. add text to the buttons. like here’s a scuffed mockup but. 

[ID: Screenshot of Flight Rising’s Messages, Friend Requests, and Alerts icons edited to have Messages, Friends, and Alerts written next to the icons]

for the friends tab, they could prolly add friend requests at the top like they do for baldwin alerts, then have an online status thing for friends below with buttons to PM, trade, delete friend, etc. I think you’re already able to disable the online status thing with page visibility? but like, make those options separate if you dont wanna block off your entire page, but dont want to be seen online.

For mobile, they can just make the icons bigger.

then. i THINK. last thing on laptop site. 

[ID: A screenshot of Flight Rising’s Social Media links with old Logos to YouTube, Tumblr, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, and DeviantArt]

update these fucking icons they are personally killing me, none of these logos are in use anymore (ALSO UPDATE THE TUMBLR THEME JESUS CHRIST)

ok now for mobile. what this post was originally for.

-

as you all know, if you visit this site on mobile, there is literally no form of a mobile version for it. It is just a condensed version of the computer version of the site which is...Very Bad! 

Most of a sites visitors are going to be through mobile, i forget the exact percentage, but like it’s almost a given that people more readily have their phones with them than their laptop or tablet (which. im not going to bother with the tablet version, you can apply both computer and mobile criticisms to the site). in fact a lot of my time on FR is through mobile since I’m not at home 24/7 and I don’t tote my laptop around. Playing this game through it’s mobile site is Not Fun! 

I like, won’t be too pissy or anything bc like. it’s a petsite and I’m making this post for fun. but also like it was made in 2014? 2013? so I’m not going to be u kno. angry. but it nearing the point of ten years with this site and there still isn’t a mobile friendly version. that is lazy. If anything, if they wanted a site update to be the anniversary thing, they should’ve made that update be

Mobile update as primary thing, because designing the site for mobile is a shit ton of work with the amt of pages they have to work through.

Dragon Profile page update (*LOUD SIGH*)

Clan page update

Hoard update (i have thoughts on this too but i wont dive into it this post)

Purchase Gems page update

Dev Tracker update

Forums update

“but that’s a lot to update” well. that wouldve made the anniversary being a website update considerably more worth it, because in my opinion having the dragon profile pages be the ONLY thing to happen during the anniversary was a waste and a bad decision, because other website updates are just. normal whatever updates. it made the anniversary SUPER underwhelming especially bc the past ones (to my knowledge) have only been major game mechanic updates like the eye & ancients update and i believe? the color wheel expansion was an anniversary thing? someone can correct me on that I haven’t played this game as long as most LMAO

as for how i personally would situate the mobile site. shitty graphic time, bc im not putting too much effort into this (warning this will be LONG)

[ID: Image 1. A crudely put together screenshot of the top half of a Mobile View of Flight Rising with comments on either side. It ends with the Latest News segments “Riot of Rot” and “Hoard & Vault Revamp”

Comment 1, Left side: “no banner make it a solid color that matches the burger menu. size the logo correctly etc. Comment 2, Right side: “burger menu w ONLY the categories, goes to the homepages of the categories” Comment 3, Right side: “TWO latest news posts, maybe a button to go see earlier news (which may b something to add to comp too)” Comment 4, Right side: “center dates and comments maybe idfk”

At the bottom of the image there is an added “button” that says “more updates button”]

[ID: Image 2. The bottom half of the mobile view with comments on the left side. There is a put together white box that has the Plague Flight Logo and “plage dom !” written in it. Below it are the Site Status, Random Dragon, and Exalt Bonuses boxes from the site. Underneath that is a red box with “ad space” in the center, with a red footer at the bottom.

The footer contains, “social media! (specifally made icons for site)”, “better formatted links”, and “copyright”.

Comment 1: “idk what they would caption it but the flashy can go here.” Comment 2: “ONE site status update if they keep this format” Comment 3: “probably center these links. i dont know what they use to build the site but im sure you can make icons for social media on just about anything unless this is all handcoded. just. make small icons it takes two seconds and you can copy+paste”]

i dont even want to THINK about how the lair and all that would look on mobile, it was a chore doing the home page alone SOBS

anyways, in ref to these images though--

this is just slapped together and definitely wouldn’t be a final draft, it could use some tweaking

the flashy i refer to is the box that’s above the user box that says what flight is in dom, what festival is going on, etc.

when i mention building the site and “you can make icons for social media on just about anything” im referring to wordpress, wix, whatever is used to format the site. I really only have experience with wordpress thru elementor and divi (so far) so im not CERTAIN about other places but I feel it would be pretty common to have that tool. if not, making icons (or snatching some) is rlly not that hard, probably only costly depending on what their webdesigner(s) charge for icons

I’m not like certain on who does what, how the webdesigner(s) work with/price this site, etc. etc. this is just. going off of my own knowledge. and in general this whole post is my own knowledge abt shit i did no further research to FRs team specifically 

i think this is basically it, i’ll reblog with more if i think of anything, but feel free to add things yourself or in general discuss things. again this post was made for fun so im not taking it seriously or demanding for these changes to be made, just personal annoyances and preferences.

This is also my first time doing picture IDs for a post so if I need to correct anything or the like let me know and I’ll edit it in the post!

[colbybrocksmolder]

Tumblr – Colby Brock x Reader

Tumblr is…a mixed bag. You’d made some of your closest internet friends on this poorly run website, but you’d also received more than your share of crazy fangirl hate. What’s crazy though, is how easy it is to make friends in the Sam and Colby fandom on Tumblr. 99% of everyone you’ve met is super nice and the group kind of shuts down the haters pretty quickly.

This last round of drama kind of wore everyone down. It all started with a hate anon that your friend DaddyDobrock received. “If Sam and Colby saw half of what you guys wrote on here they wouldn’t want you as fans 🙄.” She handled it well. She laughed and told the anon to lighten up and fuck off. You guys were pretty used to petty hate anons and rarely answer them, but boy was this asshole persistent.

Absolute-randomness-forever replied to a similar message with “If you don’t like what we post, don’t follow us?” Again, not really feeding into any drama.

Sp00kybrock got one trying to get her opinion on the whole thing. “Don’t you think most of the Sam and Colby tumblr fandom is toxic? Like, I bet Colby would cringe so hard if he went on this site. 🙄” She defended her friends, laughing it off. “My friends and I aren’t toxic. We post memes and joke around, but we support the boys 100%.”

Jakeywebber commented on a few of the new posts. “Does this person even watch the boys? They obviously don’t know that their sense of humor is exactly like ours.”

The anons continued to come in, a few other people getting them but not replying. They always ended with 🙄. The problem with one toxic anon is that they attract others that want to feed into the drama, and soon the hate is taken too far.

Someone got an anon telling them to kill themselves. Eye rolling emoji included. The blog posted the anon with no comment other than “deleting now” and went offline. To say that the rest of you were up in arms is an understatement. Lightenupbrock, that-one-brock-boy, badassbrock, the-sun-is-dark, colbyjacksmack, rewindfridaynight, xplr-lurker, brockboytrashz…you all jumped in and defended your friend. You sent them messages making sure they were okay, trying to convince them not to delete.

*Twitter notification* Colby Brock Tweeted : “FYI we see more than you think we see. Don’t pretend to be our fan and then treat other fans like shit. Especially anonymously. 🙄”

Daddydobrock posted “Anyone else see this?” with a screenshot of the tweet.

A few of the others reblogged it, adding comments. By the end of the thread, your group of friends was convinced that Colby either had a tumblr or occasionally lurked on it.

*tumblr messages*

Xplr-lurker : Hey, have you heard from the girl that got the kys anon?

You and Xplr-lurker had been tumblr friends for about 6 months. They messaged you after they saw how you interacted with the other blogs. You were always helpful, kind, encouraging…You had a reputation for being a sweetheart and Xplr-lurker had messaged you thanking you for it. You two became friends pretty quickly, asking how each other’s days went and such. Neither of you ever really posted your personal info on your blogs, but you knew a bit about each other. You both lived in Cali, you were about the same age, and you loved sending each other super emo tumblr posts when you were bored. Usually hella late at night. He knew you were a girl and you knew he was a guy. Other personal details kind of trickled through in your everyday interactions.

Y/n : Yeah. She doesn’t want to be online for a while, but she isn’t going to delete her blog. I gave her my phone number just in case she needed to talk.

Xplr-lurker : I figured you would 😊 I’m glad she’s okay.

Y/n : Me too.

Y/n : Hey, did you see Colby’s tweet? I think he saw all of this go down. I mean, maybe I’m just assuming too much, but he ended a tweet about anon hate with that stupid eye roll emoji just like the anon does.

Xplr-lurker : I mean, he said he checks his dms all the time. Maybe someone sent it to him?

Y/n : Maybe.

Y/n : Honestly, I’m just as mad for him and Sam as I am for the girl. How shitty is it that they have to watch the people who call themselves fans treat other fans like garbage? And they can’t do a thing about it.

Xplr-lurker : That sounds like it would suck.

Y/n : Right?

You had written a whole big post about how hypocritical it was for this toxic anon to accuse everyone else of being bad for the fandom when they were so willing to go out of their way to harm other fans. You reminded them about the videos Sam and Colby used to post about being confident and helping others. Their entire YouTube career started with them making videos wanting to help people. Just like every other post, you signed it with two black heart emojis. 🖤🖤

You had continued talking to xplr-lurker as you wrote the post. Venting a little bit about how frustrated you were.

*Twitter notification* Colby Brock Tweeted : “Don’t worry, we know there are amazing fans out there, too. 🖤🖤”

Y/n : Dude. I think I’m paranoid, now.

Xplr-lurker : What do you mean?

Y/n : Nothing. I’m exhausted. I just need sleep, lol. You do too, nerd. You said you needed to be up by 9 and it’s already 4am.

Xplr-lurker : Holy shit, my friend is going to kill me if I’m falling asleep tomorrow, haha.

Y/n : Haha, good luck! I’ll talk to you later.

Xplr-lurker : Thanks. Sweet dreams.

See, it’s pretty common for social media influencers to have secret accounts. It gives them a way to like posts and follow fans without starting drama. After collabing with CrankThatFrank, Colby was convinced to make a tumblr. He picked Xplr-lurker so that it made sense for him to interact with his own fans. He mostly just reblogged cool edits and funny traphouse memes. He’d comment on funny posts and throw his two cents in on theories and gossip. For the most part, it was kind of fun. People on tumblr were brutally honest but fucking hilarious. He never planned on talking about tumblr or letting anyone he interacted with on tumblr know that he was behind the username…but then he found your blog. He’d contemplated telling you for a few weeks now. The two of you talked almost every night and he felt bad. He felt like he was lying to you.

He’d first messaged you just to say a quick thanks for being so positive in the fandom, but the more he talked to you the more he kept wanting to talk to you.

The 🙄 anon stopped sending people messages after Colby’s tweet. Your friends on tumblr were able to go back to posting ridiculous screenshots and cool photo edits over the next week or so. You’d reblogged a gif of Colby about to lose his shorts on a waterslide with the caption “I feel like Elton has been trying to get Colby naked in vlogs since the start of TFIL”.

Xplr-lurker : *sent waterslide post*

Xplr-lurker : This is a fat fact. Lol.

Y/n : Right? Hahahahaha

Xplr-lurker : I think he does it for views.

Y/n : Probably. It’s the same reason Colby gets shirtless in his own videos. He knows people will click the thumbnail, haha.

Colby sat on his balcony laughing. You were absolutely right.

Xplr-lurker : Is that why you clicked?

Y/n : Haha, nah. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a beautiful human being. You’d have to be blind not to see that. But I found Colby through TFIL.  

Xplr-lurker : What made you keep watching him then?

Colby felt bad for baiting you out, but his curiosity got the better of him. As far as you knew, he was just another fan. This is when he’d get your most honest answer.

Y/n : A lot. First, he’s a huge goofball. Watching him and his friends do dumb shit to make each other laugh is the best.

Y/n : And everything him and Sam have done together? Those two dudes are fearless. They just remind me that I’m the only one holding myself back, you know? One day I’ll actually get out of my own way and make something of myself.

Y/n : He also seems super genuine. He never seems afraid to speak his mind or call something like it is. It actually bums me out watching some of his “friends”, If you know what I mean. I know that not everything they put out there is 100% accurate to how they actually are in real life, but I hate that slimy feeling I get knowing that a lot of them use Sam and Colby and don’t actually give a shit.

Y/n : I know I sound like a massive fangirl at this point, haha. I think I just needed to get that off my chest.

Colby sat there trying to figure out how to respond. He had a huge grin on his face seeing you spill your guts like you did.

Xplr-lurker : Haha, don’t worry about it. You just sound like you care. That’s not a bad thing.

Over the next few weeks, you guys continued to talk like normal, but it got a little more personal. He wanted to be able to call you a friend, but he was still afraid to tell you who he actually was. You two talked more about your passions and the things you struggle with. You’d always sent each other music to check out, but he’d confessed that he’d been dabbling in trying to write lyrics. He needed to find a way to talk to you as COLBY and not xplr-lurker.

*Twitter notification* Colby Brock Tweeted : “You feel so close but in reality I’m sitting here on my balcony alone.”

One of your tumblr friends had screenshot the tweet, adding the caption “This is how it feels to have better friends on the internet than in real life.”

You reblogged it and tagged xplr-lurker. You added “I wouldn’t trade our late-night talks for the world.”

Xplr-lurker : *sent tagged post*

Xplr-lurker : Yeah?

Y/n : Duh. You know that.

Xplr-lurker : Same.

Colby sat there, his fingers hovering over the keyboard on his phone.

*Twitter notification* Colby Brock Tweeted : “1 like = 1 ‘don’t be a pussy’ whispered in my ear.”

Xplr-lurker : Not to sound like a creepy internet person, but have you ever met any of your internet friends in real life?

Y/n : Haha, I don’t think you’re creepy. And yes! I’ve met a few of them. Why?

Xplr-lurker : I know we live in the same city and I’ve always wondered if you’d want to get coffee or something.

Y/n : That would mean that you’d get to see how awkward and clumsy I am in real life. I don’t know if I’m willing to put you through that, hahaha.

Colby laughed. That response was better than the “fuck off, creeper” he expected.

Xplr-lurker : Oh, shut up. You’d be the one dealing with me being awkward.

Y/n : Suuuuuuure. You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.

Y/n : I’m actually walking home from my favorite coffee shop right now, haha. It’s called 101. They’re open until 3 am and they have the best food.

Xplr-lurker : WHY ARE YOU WALKING ALONE SO LATE AT NIGHT?!

It was well past 2am and the thought of you walking the streets of LA by yourself kind of had Colby on edge.

Y/n : I live like 5 minutes away. Don’t worry.

Colby pulled up 101 Coffee Shop on his phone. It was less than a 10 minute drive from his apartment. *We actually live pretty close* he thought, switching back to the tumblr app.

Xplr-lurker : Tell me when you make it home safe. LA is scary at night.

Xplr-lurker : Also, that coffee shop is not far from me. If you ever want to meet up there, I’m down.

Y/n : I just walked in my front door. Stop worrying, mom.

Y/n : And I’ll be headed back there tomorrow around midnight. My roommate’s boyfriend is obnoxious and he comes over every night around then. I usually hang out at the coffee shop and work on stuff on my laptop for a few hours.

Xplr-lurker : I’m glad you’re safe. I’ll definitely try to make it there tomorrow.

Y/n : I’ll be the one with the messy bun, laptop, and baggy Y&R hoodie, lol.

Xplr-lurker : If I don’t chicken out, I’ll wear an XPLR hoodie.

Y/n : Well I need to go to sleep. If I don’t see you tomorrow, I’m sure I’ll still talk to you on here.

Xplr-lurker : For sure! Have a good night!

Y/n : You too. 🖤🖤

“Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.” Colby said, sighing. This was it. He was either going to walk into that coffee shop and blow his cover or he was going to chicken out like a little bitch.

The whole next day he had a hard time paying attention to anything or anyone. He was too busy trying to figure out the best way to tell you who he was.

“Colby!” Sam laughed, waving his hand in front of his friend’s face.

“What? Sorry.” Colby said, shaking his head and turning towards Sam.

“You okay?” Sam asked. Colby just stared at him for a minute. “I’m going to take that as a no?”

“I’m not, not okay.” Colby answered, sounding cryptic.

“Okaaaayyy.” Sam said slowly. “Care to explain?”

“I’m just nervous to meet up with someone later.” Colby tried to sound casual. “It’s nothing big. I’m just anxious, I guess.”

“Who?” Sam asked.

“A girl I met online.” Colby said, waiting for Sam to tease him.

Sam furrowed his brows. “Like on a dating app?”

“No.” Colby shook his head. “She’s a fan.”

Sam made a confused face. “Not to make it sound like I think you’re stupid, but are you being catfished again?” He laughed.

Colby couldn’t help but crack a smile, hiding his face behind his hands. “No, actually. I don’t even know what this girl looks like.”

“What?!” Sam asked, confused.

“That’s not the weirdest part.” Colby said, peeking through his fingers at his best friend. “She doesn’t know I’m me.”

“Is this for a video or something?” Sam asked, not understanding at all what was going on.

“Nope. I made an account to interact with fans and we just kind of clicked.” Colby tried explaining. “We’ve been friends for like 6 months, but we only ever talk through our usernames. The more I say this out loud the crazier it sounds.” Colby laughed.

“Sooooo, you’ve never seen a picture of her?” Sam asked.

“Nope. Not for sure. I THINK I found her personal blog, but I could be wrong.” Colby answered. “I only know her name because it’s in her profile, but she’s never asked me mine.”

“Is she going to be mad?” Sam asked, trying to wrap his head around the whole thing.

“That’s kind of why I’m so nervous.” Colby said, biting his lip. “She told me where she’s going to be tomorrow night and I don’t know if I should just show up or if I should rip the band-aid off and tell her who I am in our dms before we’re supposed to meet up.”

Sam had a blank stare on his face. “I honestly have no idea how to help you.”

“Don’t feel bad. I don’t know how to help myself.” Colby laughed.

“Tell me how it goes?” Sam asked.

“Of course.” Colby nodded, zoning out again.

At around 11:30pm you’d walked to the coffee shop. You ordered a drink and your late dinner and sat down in the corner booth. You worked on some things you were currently writing and gone through and caught up with your emails. At about 1am, you’d convinced yourself your tumblr friend had chickened out.

Right around 12:30am, Colby was stood in front of the coffee shop he was supposed to meet you at. There were only a few people currently in the shop, so it was pretty easy to figure out which one was you. He’d taken a deep breath and walked through the door, darting to the counter when he started to panic. With his back to you, he ordered a coffee. *I don’t even like coffee* he thought to himself. He kept peeking at you from the pick-up counter while he waited for his order. You had headphones in your ears, mouthing the lyrics to whatever song you were listening to. When the barista called out his name, he grabbed his coffee and left the shop.

Xplr-lurker : I’m stuck.

Xplr-lurker : You’re normally the person I go to for advice, but I feel like it’s unfair to put this one on you.

Xplr-lurker : You’re beautiful, btw.

You looked up from your computer, searching for your friend.

Y/n : Thank you? Are you here?

Xplr-lurker : I was. I chickened out. I kind of panicked.

Y/n : Aww, I promise you have no reason to panic. So why are you stuck? I’m always here to listen and give advice when I think I can help. You know that.

Colby sighed, sitting in his car.

Xplr-lurker : I guess it’s better just to come out with it.

Xplr-lurker : My name is Colby.

You waited a few seconds for further explanation.

Y/n : Okay? I don’t get it.

Xplr-lurker : Like, I am Colby Brock. I made this account to interact with fans.

Y/n : Please tell me you’re just fucking with me as a friend and not a delusional fanboy that’s trying to actually convince me he’s someone he’s not.

*Great* you thought to yourself. Not only did you have to walk home at night by yourself in LA, now you had to keep an eye out for a crazy person who wanted you to believe they were Colby. You thought this person was your friend and now you were afraid to leave the coffee shop.

Xplr-lurker : Neither? I know I fucked up by not telling you sooner.

Y/n : Well, since whoever is on the other end of this message knows I’m here alone, I’m going to call my roommate to pick me up. You know, you were really cool. You were my favorite person to talk to. This really sucks. You didn’t have to be anyone but yourself.  

When Colby tried to reply to your message, the chat said that he had been blocked. “Oh, fuck.” He said, jumping back out of his car. When he got to the door of the coffee shop, he could see that you were packing up your stuff.

“Y/n!” he called from the door, walking towards your booth.

Your eyes flew towards the boy walking in your direction, your hands frozen holding your laptop.

Colby slowly slid into the other side of the booth you were sitting in, putting his phone down with the tumblr app open. “I’m so sorry.”

“What the fuck?” you whispered, still not moving.

“You have every right to be mad at me and I swear I never meant to freak you out. I didn’t really think it through when I told you who I was. Is your roommate coming?” He asked, talking so fast you could barely process what he was saying.

You sat your laptop down and grabbed his phone. “My roommate wouldn’t come pick me up even if I did call her.” You said, looking at the tumblr app on Colby’s phone. You were the only person he had messaged.

“You were going to walk?” Colby asked, grabbing his phone when you handed it back to him.

“I was going to order an Uber.” You laughed. “This is crazy. You’re crazy.”

“Are you mad?” Colby’s face was apprehensive, waiting for you to tell him to fuck off.

“A little.” You nodded, laughing. “You asked me questions about yourself! I fangirled to you about you!” You remembered, covering your now blushing cheeks with your hands, hiding your face.

He laughed. “I feel the need to say this in person…You’re beautiful.” He watched as you peeked over your fingers. “And I’m the one that should be embarrassed about that, not you.”

“Why did you ask me to meet if you didn’t want me to know who you were?” You asked, remembering that this whole thing was his idea.

He laughed, reaching to grab one of your hands. “I’ve been trying to nut up and tell you who I am for over a month.”

“Why me? You didn’t even know what I looked like?” You were still trying to take in the fact that Colby Brock was sitting here in your favorite coffee shop holding your hand.

“I didn’t really care what you looked like. You’ve been a great friend to me since we first started talking and I was just some random person you met online…That has nothing to do with how someone looks.” He explained, blushing before continuing. “The fact that you’re also adorable is just an added bonus.”

You laughed, pulling your hand out of his so you could re-do your messy bun that was currently falling. “This is crazy. I want to re-read everything I’ve ever sent to you to make sure I didn’t make a complete fool out of myself.”

“Y/n.” Colby laughed. “You didn’t. I promise. There’s not a single thing you’ve told me that I don’t like.”

You stared at him for a moment, trying to figure out what the hell you were supposed to do now. “I have one question.” You said, leaning your elbows on the table.

“Ask away.” He answered, leaning forward the same way you were.

“What’s the REAL reason Elton always tries to get you naked in his vlogs?” You smirked, hearing Colby bust a gut laughing.

“Honestly, I’ve questioned it myself. The only answer that keeps me sane is clickbait.” He shook his head. “So, we’re good?” he asked.

“I mean, I don’t know WHAT we are, but I hope it isn’t bad.” You laughed.

“Well, we’ve been friends for over 6 months. I’d like to still claim that even though you know now that I’ve been a dumbass this entire time.” He smiled.

“I think I can deal with that.” You smiled back at him.

“Should I push my luck and ask you if I can buy you another coffee?” He asked, a shy look on his face. “I think coffee is disgusting, but I hear coffee shops make for great first dates.”

“You went from being afraid to show your face to asking me on a date.” You laughed.

“Well?” Colby said, waiting for your answer.

You nodded, your cheeks turning pink. “I’d love another coffee.”

I can remove any of the tumblrs I’ve used if you’re uncomfortable being mentioned. @daddydobrock @absolute-randomness-forever @sp00kybrock @jakeywebber @lightenupbrock @that-one-brock-boy @badassbrock @the-sun-is-dark @colbyjacksmack @rewindfridaynight @brockboytrashz 

[horansqueen]

AM Conversations : chapter 20

A Niall Horan fanfiction ; rated MA

CHAPTER 1 || CHAPTER 2 || CHAPTER 3 || CHAPTER 4 || CHAPTER 5 || CHAPTER 6 || CHAPTER 7 || CHAPTER 8 || CHAPTER 9 || CHAPTER 10 || CHAPTER 11 || CHAPTER 12 || CHAPTER 13 || CHAPTER 14 || CHAPTER 15 || CHAPTER 16 || CHAPTER 17 || CHAPTER 18 || CHAPTER 19

NOTES:

-one chapter is her pov, the next is his. -3.9k. -im sorry, i never proofread, i hate it. -there WILL be smut. but not only smut. -this is a romance, comedy, smut story. -for the summary, check my MASTERLIST.

- if you want to be notified when this is updated, please message me or leave a comment!

- nothing really happened in this either? but he’s really thinking tho? next chapter more stuff will happen i promise :) idk when itll be posted because i work the next 4 days but ill try to take some time to work on it.

- thank you so so so so much for everyone who reads this and especially those who comment. honestly it means so much, you guys make me smile. you make me want to update more and faster. so thank you. thank you so so much <33

-please, message me, give me feedbacks, it would mean sooo much to me!

Chapter 20 : His chapter

NIALL

When Olivia left, I waited for Maya to show up. I decided to invite her home but as I was waiting for her, I changed my mind and decided that maybe it was a mistake. I didn't want to give her the wrong impression and I also didn't want to be stuck with her. It was too late though and the more I thought about what she had done, the angrier I was getting. When the doorbell rang, I literally jumped off my couch and ran to the door.

There she was, on my porch, with a large smile gracing her lips, and it made me realize I would literally have to break her heart. I breathed in and sent her a polite smile before moving out of her way.

"Come in." I simply said as she walked inside.

Her eyes lingered on all the bags still laying in the lobby and I noticed she frowned but I just closed the door and walked past her to reach the living room. I moved my hand to show her the couch and I waited until she was sitting down to take a seat on an other couch but still close to her. We remained silent for a few minutes and I looked at her as her eyes roamed around the room.

"Where is she?" she asked without looking at me.

"Who?" I frowned.

"Olivia."

I felt surprised that she asked but I didn't know what to answer. Was that a question I was required to answer?  I shook my head slightly but she finally turned back to look at me, sending me a weird look. She looked a mix of pissed and hurt and I was not sure I really understood her reaction until she talked again.

"Before we left, you told me you wanted to be alone." she added, explaining her question. "But her stuff is in the lobby. Why did you lie to me, Niall?"

I was flabbergasted by her reaction and at the same time, I was getting pissed. I didn't understand exactly what gave her the right to act possessively with me but I was clearly beyond annoyed.

"That's why I asked you to come here."

"So you're breaking up with me? For her?"

I made a grimace and shook my head.

"Wait, what?"

i didn't understand how she came up to that conclusion and I frowned more, trying to remember the conversations we had had in the past few days. I didn't remember that seeing a girl would bring all of these problems but I knew it did. It reminded me most of the girls I used to date before and how hard it was every single time because of the friendship I had with Olivia. I used to get so many questions, get into so many arguments... I knew it would be different if my best friend was a guy but that fact that she was a girl made all of my relationships so fucking complicated.  The only exceptions were girls like Heidi, who didn't see any competition when they looked at my best friend. Perhaps that was why she was the only one I still had something going on with.

"You said you didn't feel like hanging out, yet you're hanging out with her." she repeated. "She's not only your best friend, right? She's not really dating Harry?"

I took a big breath and brought my hands to my face before rubbing my eyes. I was so tired of people expecting Liv and I to be in love, so tired to have everyone telling me how I supposedly feel, so fucking tired to argue and fight about it... I was not in the mood to repeat over and over again that we were just friends and that it wasn't anyone's place to decide for us what our relationship consisted of. Plus, I was already mad at Maya for that stupid picture she posted online and that was the only thing I wanted to address at this moment.

"I am not dating Liv, she's my best friend. You know that."

"Yea, I know that the first time we almost had sex, you left when I was half naked to go take care of her. I know that you and her are close, maybe even too close, for friends. And I know that earlier you told me you didn't want to be around people yet you invited her here."

The memory of that time, a few months ago, when we almost fucked, came back to my mind. I swallowed hard at how wrong it sounded the way she just explained it and I knew I should feel guilty but I didn't. I was fine with leaving her there and yes, maybe I had just changed my mind about wanting to have sex with her but everyone makes mistakes, right? At that moment, leaving seemed like the best solution and I couldn't pretend that running away didn’t seem like a great solution to escape this ridiculous discussion, too.

"I didn't ask you to come here to talk about Olivia!"

"I don't care, Niall, I came here to make love, but clearly now i'm not in the mood anymore."

She inhaled angrily and got up, making me do the same quickly.

"I didn't invite you here to fuck, Maya!" I let out a bit too loud. "I asked you to come here about this!"

Roughly, I brought my phone closer to her face where the picture of us was posted. Her gaze moved from mine and down to the screen of my phone before her face softened slightly, turning into a guilty look.

"I thought we were dating." she explained so low I barely heard.

Her words made me even angrier than I already was and I swallowed hard all the rude words I wanted to tell her. I was not an angry person normally but in the past few days, it seemed like everything annoyed me and I became way more impulsive than my personality normally shows.

"You know damn well we're not dating, Maya." I let out in a lower tone, trying not to sound too mad. "I said I wanted to try. I said we'd start with a date."

"We kissed, too. And held hands... I thought-"

"I know." I cut her quickly, watching her facial expression turn into sadness. What was it with me, recently? Why did I hurt everyone? "I'm sorry if I gave you the wrong impression but you need to delete this picture."

She scoffed and shook her head, avoiding my eyes and I could feel the pain emanating from her body, making my anger decline slightly. I didn't want to hurt her but at the same time, we really needed to make things clear about how we felt and what we expected from this relationship.

"Do you know how many times this picture has been liked, Niall?"

I sighed loud and rubbed my eyes again, letting out a short groan. I didn't know but I could certainly take a good guess. I was also aware that someone probably took a screenshot of it in the next few seconds after it was posted. I hadn't taken the time to look at the comments but I could bet there were many and I wasn't too sure I wanted to read.

"Take the picture off." I asked again, feeling defeated. "Or at least, change the damn caption, Maya."

It took her a while but eventually, she rolled her eyes and took her phone in her purse. I waited impatiently as she typed on her phone and with a sigh, she looked up at me.

"I deleted it."

"Thank you."

I was not sure why but it felt like a weight had been taken off my shoulders and I closed my eyes. I felt lighter, like half the stress I had had just disappeared. My whole body relaxed and it's when I realized how tensed I had been. When I opened my eyes again, Maya was throwing back her phone in her purse, making sure our eyes didn't meet.

"Do you want to talk about it?" I just asked in a calmer way as she shook her head.

"Not now, Niall." she admitted, passing a hand in her hair nervously. "I need time."

"I think we need to clear up what this relationship is exactly." I insisted.

This time, she looked up right in my eyes and I knew that if looks could kill, i'd be a dead man. As I stared back at her, I realized that all these problems and fights were definitely not worth the relationship we could have and the thought made me feel guilty as shit. She stood there in front of me, extra gorgeous and fucking sexy, and I couldn't feel an ounce of regret at the thought of stopping things with her immediately. Even the way she was angrily looking at me should have been some sort of a turn on but I felt nothing and I had no idea why.

"We don't need to clear up anything, Niall." she let out harshly, putting the strap of her purse on her shoulder. "You were very fucking clear."

We stared at each other in silence for about a minute and I knew that her irritated expression hid something else, I could read it in her eyes. She expected me to say something, beg her to stay, tell her I have feelings for her... I knew it. I just didn't want to say these things and lie to her. For a few seconds, I saw sadness in her eyes but she quickly shook her head and pressed her lips together.

"Goodbye, Niall Horan."

I was almost expecting her to add something like 'I hope your dick gets bitten off by a wild animal’ but she just walked past me quickly as I stood there motionless and powerless to the whole situation. Did we just 'break up'? How can you break up with someone you weren't even dating? I shook my head to get out of my thoughts and ran behind her until the front door.

"I'm sorry!" I let out. "Are you still in for that double date?"

She stopped dead in her track and stayed without moving for a while, her back facing me, as i held the side of the door, keeping it ajar. She seemed to hesitate as I asked myself internally why the hell I had just asked that. It's not that I didn't want to try with her, it's just that clearly, we were on a different page. She wanted something steady and I just wanted to have fun.

She finally turned around slowly and I raised my eyebrows.

"!'m sure Liv and Harry are still up for it." I let out, shrugging one of my shoulders.

"But she-"

"She's my best friend." I explained a bit louder, cutting her. "Just my best friend."

I watched as her shoulders fell and she closed her eyes with a sigh. I was not sure why she wanted to try again, or why I even proposed it to her but I felt bad for hurting her and I didn't know how to make things better. The small smile she sent me proved that I did the right thing.

"Alright, call me."

The left corner of my lips raised up and I nodded.

"Sure will." I promised with a small wave.

I was a bit surprised when she blew me a kiss but I sent her a bigger smile and waited until she got in her car and drove away to get back inside and close the door behind me. I breathed in deeply, closing my eyes and leaning against the door before sighing loud. Once again, I felt like I took a wrong decision but if i wanted to be honest, it felt like a recurrent thing these day. I was trying to make Maya happy, to respect Harry and Liv's relationship, to convince everyone that Liv was just my friend and to keep all my bitter remarks to myself. I hit my head gently against the door a few times and groaned, searching for my phone in my pocket.

'I'm done. Come by whenever you want.'

I quickly hit send, not really expecting my best friend to run by my side unless it didn't go well with Harry but I still waited a few minutes against the door, trying to convince myself to move. I ended up back on the couch, laying down, scrolling through social medias when I really shouldn't. I wanted to know who had seen the picture Maya had posted and what everyone was saying but at the same time, I didn't want to.

I went back to the picture Harry had posted on instagram and my eyes caught the name of my best friend in the comments. I couldn't stop myself from reading what people had written and I felt my heart twist in my chest. I was not the kind of person to let what people say affect me but some of these comments could really put me in a bad mood, sometimes.

'Harry is dating Olivia????'

'!!!!! look how he's nuzzling her hair !!!'

'this makes me want to puke'

'I ship it!'

'I was so sure she and Niall would end up dating why is she with Harry and why is Niall with that girl?'

'IS HE DATING HER??? IS SHE A MODEL?'

'OMFG SHE'S SO PRETTY!'

'he's hot and she's hot'

'wow big surprise he's now dating a model 🙄 so predictable'

'i hope she dies'

'you guys need glasses that girl is fucking ugly'

'����😭😭😭'

'Niall and Olivia are literally my OTP this is so fucking sad'

I blinked a few times, staring at the last comment and decided to open google to search for that term I didn't understand. Most of the reactions were not surprising but the comments about my best friend and I made my heart sink in my chest. Clearly, we were doing something wrong if everyone, including people who didn't know us, thought we had feelings for each other.

"One true pairing." I read outloud.

It took me a few seconds to realize what it meant and I cursed low, shaking my head with a sigh. After all this time being friends with Olivia, we had some random people wishing -and expecting!- us to end up together. I placed my phone on my chest and closed my eyes, trying to think of which comments seemed more off to me. The ones about me dating Maya, or the ones about me being meant to be with Liv.

I let my mind wander on some of the memories we had and it made me smile. I couldn't deny that we had amazing chemistry and that we understood each other like no one else did but at the same time, isn't it a fun part of starting a relationship? Getting to know each other? There were definitely some things I didn't know about her but I knew a whole lot and I was wondering if it would make things boring or monotone to date my best friend. There was one thing I didn't know about her but just thinking about it reminded me of my dream and I closed my eyes even tighter, trying to get rid of the images flooding my brain. There was also that time when I caught her masturbating a few days ago that seemed to appear in my mind randomly and although I had found it funny at first, now I couldn't help but wonder why the hell I remembered it so clearly and intensely.

I felt myself get harder in my pants and groaned, annoyed by how easily I was turned on. It was not like me to get hard with random thoughts, especially not about my best friend, and I sighed, passing my hand in my hair, irritated by my own behavior. I heard the doorbell ring and with a lot of effort, I jumped off the couch and walked to the door.

My heart jumped in my chest when my best friend's smiling face appeared behind it and I didn't know why. After all, I did expect her, but maybe the fact that I had been thinking about her naked only a few seconds before she got here was embarrassing me slightly.

"Oh, hey."

Her smile fell a bit and she scoffed, pushing my shoulder jokingly.

"You're the one who told me to come back here." she explained, raising her eyebrows. "I can leave if you want."

"No, no it's not you." I groaned. "Wasn't pleasant with Maya, t's'all."

I saw her frown but she took a step inside and I sighed again, turning around and walking back to the living room. I lied back down and closed my eyes again but I felt her push my legs to sit next to me.

"You're a paiiiiin in my ass." I let out dramatically but jokingly.

"But you wouldn't be happy without me."

"That's right." I confessed with a sigh, searching for her arm and pulling on it when I finally found it. "Come here."

I felt half her body laying on mine and she moved, trying to find a better way to lay with me. She ended up holding herself on my stomach and I groaned again when she hurt me a bit.

"Ouch?"

"Sorry!"

She ended up laying on her side next to me, her arm around my chest and mine around her shoulders. We remained like that for a few minutes until she finally talked.

"Is it weird that we cuddle like that?"

It took me a few seconds to understand what she said but I finally opened my eyes and turned her way, my face in her hair and a lock of it sticking to my lips. I didn't want to answer because I didn't know what to answer. I wanted to say no, and if she had asked me that a few months before, that would have been my answer. But now, everyone seemed to say that things had changed and that our friendship was not normal. Some people even wanted us to be together, which was a new thing for me and kind of hard to assimilate. I was not lying to myself and I had no idea why everyone thought so. I had a few moments of weakness where I actually lusted my best friend, big deal.

"We've always cuddled like that." I just replied, pointing out the obvious.

She looked up in my eyes and I sent her a smile. I was not sure if it was fake or not but she answered it and after a while, I tapped her arm a few times and sat up.

"Come on, I'll prepare some food for us, what do you say?"

She followed me to the kitchen and reached for the fridge, opening it and bending down to take a look inside. My eyes fluttered close and I groaned again at the sight, deciding I had been abstinent for way too long if I was about to think about sex every single time my best friend was bending down. I couldn't get hard whenever I saw some skin, I was not 16 anymore, and the whole thing sounded so juvenile that I was starting to be mad at myself.

"Pancakes night." I just said, trying to think about something else than how horny I was.

She giggled and I opened my eyes again, noticing she was holding the milk and flour in her hands. I smiled back and shrugged, not really surprised we had thought about the same thing. We started preparing everything and without any surprise again, she dropped an egg on the floor and spilled floor over it. I hated messes, that was a fact, but watching her face all white with powder as she tried to clean her mess was more endearing that I could admit.

"You're such a clumsy ass." I chuckled, bending down to help her.

"Yea, and you're an asshole." she joked, avoiding my eyes as she used a paper towel to clean the egg. It escaped her fingers and she cursed in a whisper.

"Actually, Maya said-"

"Maya can go fuck herself."

We both stopped moving at the same time, startled by her harsh words and I moved my head up very slowly to look at her. Her lips were parted and I could even swear I saw her bottom one shake slightly.

"I mean..."

Her words lingered in the air, turning the atmosphere upside down until she sighed and closed her eyes.

"I'm sorry, I know you and her have something going on but I just, I don't know. She gives me a bad vibe."

I raised my eyebrows in shock realizing she felt for my sort-of relationship exactly what I felt for her sort-of relationship. It was weird and sad at the same time, especially that we both seemed to enjoy each other's company more.

"You and Harry give me a bad vibe too."

She looked up and her eyes met mine. I didn't know why my heart jumped in my chest again but it did and I just accepted it.

"I know."

We stayed motionless for a while but eventually, we finished cleaning and kept on cooking in silence. It's only when we sat at the table to eat that I dared to look at her. She was sitting besides me and I poured some syrup on my pancakes as she was grabbing the butter, spreading some on hers. She looked sad and I hated it. All I wanted was to see her smile again. i dipped one of my fingers in the syrup and quickly wiped it on her cheek. She held her breath as I started laughing and she finally turned to me, sending me angry eyes. I knew she wasn't really mad but the sight was hilarious and I laughed again.

"Oh hey, Liv, you’ve got something on your cheek." I chuckled, getting up. "Let me help you with it."

Quickly to make sure she didn't have time to react, I bent down and licked her cheek, making her scream in a high-pitched voice. I burst into laughter again as she rubbed her hand on her cheek. I let myself fall on my chair again and when I opened my eyes, she was smiling widely at me.

"Just for that smile, it was worth it."

Her eyes softened and her smile turned into a fond one. At that exact moment, I would have given anything to find out what was going on in her head but I just reached for her hand and squeezed her fingers.

"Come on, eat." I proposed, moving my chin her way.

She reached for the bottle of syrup and put it out of my reach, making me laugh again. I didn't want to hear about what happened between Harry and her, and I didn't want to tell her about Maya and I's conversation. All I wanted was to spend time with her, pretending no one else was important. I just wanted to pretend things were exactly the way they were a few months ago because If I wanted to be honest, that's precisely how I thought things should be: me, her, and no one else.

[nurseydexunsolved]

My first ever nurseydex fic! Please go on ao3 and leave comments and reblog & all that jazz, I’ll love you forever. Also! If you have a prompt you desperately want someone to fill, just send it my way! Okay enjoy :)

//

William Poindexter was wheeling someone, but for the life of them, no one in the haus could get him to confess who.

Nursey noticed it first, entirely on accident. Dex had walked into the kitchen, shoulders at least two inches lower than they usually were, expression calm, and when Nursey knocked over his water, Dex just laughed and said, "Don't worry, I'll clean it up."

Nursey stared at him, shocked. The shock had to be the reason he said something as stupid as what he said next: "Whoa, bro, who took the stick out of your ass? You're acting... weird."

Unfortunately for Dex, Ransom, Holster, AND Shitty were all in the kitchen (preparing for the kegster that night) when Nursey said this, and the way they all immediately stopped their conversation and zeroed in on him was truly frightening. Dex barely had time to give Nurse the stink eye before he was being devoured by their well-meaning but invasive friends. Nursey wanted to join in on the chirping, but he realized he was feeling a little bit sick to his stomach, so he escaped upstairs.

Despite this, or maybe because of it, Nursey was the first person Dex told.

A couple days later he still hadn't cracked, to the endless irritation of Ransom's spreadsheets. They were hanging out in the library with Chow, but when Chris went to the snack shack downstairs, Dex tapped Nursey's foot with his.

"Hey," he said, which made Nurse's heart start thumping a little bit harder, because what could he possibly have to say that Chowder couldn't hear? And Dex's expression didn't help. He looked... nervous. And a bit vulnerable, like he was made of glass, which of course was never a good combination with Derek's clumsy ass.

"Yeah?" he said, trying to be delicate.

"I kind of have a question."

"What's it about?"

"Well, it's about... poetry," he said, looking anywhere but Nursey's eyes."Poetry? Bro, have you been holding out on me?? Do you need me to critique your couplets? I'll do it, I promise, there is nothing I want more than to read poetry written by Mr. Grumpy—"

"Shut up," Dex laughed, the tension eased a little bit. "No, it's not my poetry. It was written... well. It's kind of, um, about me. And I want you to tell me if it's good."

Nursey's heart plunged into a cold lake. "Oh, for real? Well, I mean, there isn't really such a thing as bad poetry, you know. I'm not elitist about that sort of thing." The look on Dex's face told him that was the wrong answer. "But, I mean, I'll take a look. Do you have it with you?"

Dex wordlessly handed it over, and Derek read.

 "I've never been very religious I believe in entropy and science, experiments and evidence, gravity and stars But then I look and I swear, there is something in the glow of your golden eyes and well that is an unexplained phenomena if I've ever seen one And perhaps you were always meant to disprove my hypothesis Because I swear I found Virgo in the constellations on your collarbones And there must be a gravity around you because I feel it like a tug on my sternum when you leave And if there is a God, he must be a sadist Because I am sure he made you and thought, "Here is a smile they will start wars for.""

 There was a lot going through Derek Nurse's head.

First, his English major brain started critiquing it: too short, not a very smooth flow, some odd sentence structures.

Then he thought, God, who could describe Dex in cliches. Gravity? Constellations? I would have said—

Then he stopped himself. And started to panic. And realized this person was really in love with Dex, because duh. They weren't wrong about the smile.

He glanced down and saw he'd been gripping the page tight enough to crinkle, and smoothed it onto the table.

"So?" Dex said, searching Nursey's face almost desperately. "Is it good? Do—do you like it?"

Nurse almost laughed at that. Was it good? Yeah, maybe. Did he like it?

Fuck no.

He focused on the first question.

"Um, well, I really liked the way she tied the subject to her questioning religion and science, almost making him a messiah-like figure, and the continuity of that metaphor—"

"Nurse. This isn't workshop. I asked you if you liked it."

Derek tried to imagine that he'd been presented this piece in workshop, and not by his d-partner, who was currently giving him the most unbearably eager expression. Nursey couldn't imagine why his opinion mattered to Dex, but he glared down at the paper and said, "Yeah, overall, I liked it."

Dex stared at him for another really long moment, and Nursey didn't know what to do with his hands, and then Dex grabbed the paper and shuffled it around.

"So. I mean, not to pry, but obviously—"

"His name's Evan," Dex said. "I met him at that Sunday kegster, the day party. He told me he wanted me to 'look' at his poem, but it's obviously about me, and I don't know. He's really nice and cute and it's just." Dex sighed, avoiding Nurse's eyes. "It's nice to know someone looks at me like that. That someone could, in any fucking universe, describe my eyes as 'unexplainable phenomena.' But I didn't know if it was just bullshit or what, so I wanted to show it to—to you."

Dex finally looked him in the eye again, and—oh. Nursey had been so fucking stupid, he was so mad he hadn't thought of writing poetry about Dex's eyes first. They were so raw, so expressive. He was a tad dumbstuck, until he managed to sputter out, "Well, do you—do you like him too?"

"I think I could," he said, like it was a confession. He looked away, toward the window, and Nursey really wished he was a photographer in that moment, so he could capture that look. "I really think I could."

//

In the end, Evan gave himself away.

Dex and Nursey were sitting alone at the kitchen table, with Bitty humming happily at the counter, when Derek saw it.

Before he could help himself, he whispered to his phone, "Oh, you know not what you do."

This earned him a very confused look from Dex. He simply handed over his phone, watching Dex's eyes bug out, as he raced to unlock his own phone and delete the incriminating evidence.

It was too late. They heard the loud, "Dude!" followed by Holster's booming "DUDE!!!" before Dex had even pulled up instagram. Ransom was on insta almost as much as Bitty was on twitter.

Dex's fate was sealed.

"Ummmmm DEX?" came Holster's voice down the stairs before he thundered into the kitchen. "Who is this HOTTIE commenting WINKY FACE EMOJIS on your selfies??"

"It's not a selfie—"

"Actually Holtz, I believe the comment in question was, 'looking good dex,' then the winky face emoji."

"Oh, of course, how could I be so foolish."

"Did y'all already send the screenshot to the gc?" Bitty asked, looking down at his continuously vibrating phone. "Oh, give Dex a break, will ya?"

"Yeah, I would love to, Bitty," Rans said, grinning at his phone with what could only be called malicious glee, "but it turns out Dex's new boo-thang has been posting delightful candids of our boy here along with captions written in—wait for it—free verse poetry."

"How the fuck did you find--? He's on private!" Dex objected, the confusion momentarily distracting him from hiding his very red face.

"Dude, this kid can write," Holster said. "Are you sure he's not only dating you for an excuse to write autumnal prose?"

"YES!" Rans yelled. "The poetry drew her in! Lardo joined the flaming!"

"GOD," Dex groaned, muffled into his sleeves since he was facedown on the table. "LET ME DIE HERE.”

"Now, of course we all support you and your sexuality, but in the interest of equal opportunity chirping—"

"SHUT UP HOLSTER!"

//

The real problem began when Nursey went to his poetry writing seminar on Wednesday, because now he knew what Evan looked like. He’d put a face to the poem, and discovered the proof confirming Evan’s sadist theory that God was personally TiVo-ing Derek’s Actual Life and laughing his ass off, because Evan?

Evan was in Derek’s poetry writing seminar.

Even better, when the prof counted them off into groups for mini-workshop sessions, Evan was in his group.

Guess which poem he brought to workshop?

Derek would have been the first to admit that he maybe didn’t handle the situation as maturely as possible. He had a reputation in their class of being opinionated, but even he knew as the words were coming out of his mouth that he was going overboard. He talked about this metaphor not hitting just right, that line maybe wasn’t totally accurate? (After all, he did know who the poem was about. He could judge accuracy.) By the end of class, he had practically rewritten the whole thing for him, but to his credit, Evan took the whole thing like a champ, taking notes on everything Derek said.

“By the way, are you married to the whole second-person thing?” Derek said, hating the words even as they came out of his own mouth.

“Um, well, I kind of conceptualized it as a literal love letter. Like, I wanted to evoke the feeling in the reader of like, the person who I love is pouring out their soul to me in an ode, and all that’s missing is some cursive and a postage stamp in the corner,” he said.

“That’s a really cool idea,” Derek gritted out, mostly because he meant it. “Is that why it’s so vague?” he asked, because maybe there was hope. Maybe he really just wanted Dex to read his poem.

“What?” Evan replied, looking surprised.

“Well, I mean, you don’t have any particular details in it: this could be about anyone. Did you do that intentionally so the reader could envision it being addressed to them?” And, honestly. His prying was getting a little pathetically obvious now.

“Oh. Um, I guess you’re right, but that wasn’t intentional. Actually, it is about a really specific person. Ha, guess it’s just the closeted queer kid in me, avoiding any obvious markers of gender or whatever. You’re totally right, I’ll work on that.”

Derek sunk back into his seat, real guilt settling on his chest as their groupmates sent Evan sympathetic looks.

It would have been much easier to hate Evan if Derek didn’t like him so much.

//

He didn’t mean to write the poem.

Honest. It just spilled out of his fingers, typed into a shame-note on his phone, not even titled.

Well, until the third draft. Then he titled the note, “Freckles.” And then he had to transfer it to google docs, where all his poetry went, just to be safe.

And somehow, some way, Derek ended up in the library printing out 20 copies for his entire workshop to read.

It wasn’t that he hated himself; nor even that he was convinced that it was that great of a poem. The whole “having feelings for Dex” thing was too confusing and intense and new for him to be able to be objective at all. It was just, he’d procrastinated the hell out of the assignment, since he'd had two essays due the same week and thought, “It’s a poetry prompt. I have notebooks stuffed with poetry. I’m sure I have something.”

Except, then it was the night before Wednesday, and he realized he didn’t have anything that fit the prompt.

Well. Except one poem.

Which was how he printed out and handed his own ode to Dex right into his boyfriend’s fucking arms.

Oh yeah, because that was a thing.

A couple weeks ago, half the team had “accidentally” run into Dex and Evan on a date, where Dex had introduced Evan as his boyfriend and Evan had tried to chat with Nursey about their seminar and Nursey had excused himself to the bathroom, to quiet his shaking hands.

Since then, whenever Dex went to kegsters and the bars and even a house party at one of Rans's Weird Sciencey Friends's place, Evan was with him. Which like. If you didn't know they were together, you probably wouldn't even guess it. Nursey had never seen them kiss, and the most PDA he'd spotted was Dex dragging Evan out of a kegster by his hand. Technically. But the thing was, Dex was so...different when he was with Evan. Evan made him laugh, like belly laugh, all the time. Dex was constantly smiling or laughing or joking whenever Evan was in the room, and Nursey really just could not deal. If he'd thought he had it bad before, that was literally a joke compared to the sight of Dex animatedly telling a funny story, swinging his arms everywhere, barely able to finish for laughing so hard.

The problem was that he wasn't telling the story to Nursey.

All this, maybe, possibly, Nursey could handle. He could move on. If Dex hadn't walked into their room looking extremely distraught less than a week ago.

Well. Extremely distraught on Dex looked like mildly perturbed on most other people but Nursey could read Dex pretty well at this point.

"Dex?" he said, "Are you alright?"

He expected a brush-off, like every other time Nursey inquired after his emotional state. What he got was, "I don't know."

Nurse swiveled away from his laptop, full attention to Dex. "What's up?"

Dex gave a frustrated huff. "It's just...ugh. It's gonna sound shitty."

Nursey raised an unimpressed eyebrow.

Dex huffed again. "Okay. But I might not say it right. Um, so Evan has some... mental health issues. Which is fine! That isn't the problem. I like all of who he is, not just... ugh. The problem is... I don't think he's really... dealing with it?"

Nursey kept his face impassive. Dex knew about Nursey's mental health struggles as well, and yet he chose to come to him for this. He would withhold judgement until Dex said what he had to say.

"Like he... he makes me happy, and he makes me laugh, and he makes me feel good about myself. But he puts himself down all the time. And I don't think he's fishing for compliments or reassurance or anything, but it feels like, if I don't reassure him every time, I'm just feeding into it and reaffirming those thoughts and making everything worse. And that's like, a lot of pressure? And he has some really concerning symptoms. Like, he'll just casually drop that he had a panic attack in class or that he dissociated for hours this morning and I don't know what to do. I don't know how to help. I can't, I am so not qualified for that. So I'll be like, 'maybe you should see a therapist or get a diagnosis or like...talk to someone'? And he'll just be like 'I probably should' and then do nothing. And I try to tell him nothing will change or get better if he doesn't do anything, and I'm just starting to feel like if I don't make his mental health a priority then no one will, and because I care about him, I want to see him, I don't know, be okay. But that means taking it all on, and I just, I don't, I've been monologuing about this for long enough and please help."

Nursey nodded, face still carefully composed. He'd been in a similar situation with a cousin, and told Dex he was on the right track and had to take care of himself first, and to talk to Evan about it first, and if after that he couldn't prove he was making an effort to improve his health then Dex should end the relationship. All in all, Nurse was quite proud with his maturity in handling the situation, and could sleep well knowing he gave Dex the advice he would give anyone.

Except.

Knowing this was so detrimental to Nursey's dumbass feelings-for-Dex heart balloon, which expanded with shallow, selfish hope with the knowledge that Dex wasn't totally happy and that Evan had, like, at least one flaw.

It was the stupid balloon that had made him write the poem in the first place. He just had to let some of the air out before it popped. How could he have known it would end up like this?

He reread the poem nervously while class was winding down, tuning out the prof's droning about atmosphere.

 i bet you heard that your freckles were constellations, stars scattered across shoulders but i have never heard something so wrong stars are dead things, explosions of heat and gas, and what we see are the remnants of light, hanging on only to the echo but your skin is a living masterpiece a splattered miracle of pigment and sundrops and pointilism you might be the water droplets that bead up on the car ride home, as i watch two drops race each other to avoid looking at your hair or your eyes or your freckled fists on the wheel, because i know if i look i will do something stupid like fall in love— but it's too late. i didn't see it coming because i always thought it would be gradual, but all it takes is for me to see the fireworks of freckles on your sternum, permanently burned onto your skin like the imprint of the sun on the back of my eyes and it explodes in my chest, this thing that i let happen so no, dear, you are not like the constellations so fickle, disappearing every morning, hiding behind the clouds your freckles are like freckles because i have tried and tried, but i cannot for the life of me think of a more beautiful word

 An elbow in his side jolted him back to class. It was Evan's.

"Can't wait to read your poem!" he said.

"Haha, thanks," he said.

Haha, fuck, he thought.

//

"Nurse. I read your poem."

Nursey's eyes tracked slowly up from his reading to the puppy-dog eyed boy in front of him. Evan. Shit.

"I can explain," he said.

Evan slid into the booth next to him at Annie's. "I need your advice."

Nursey repeated Evan's word in his brain once, and then twice, and then a third time, really breaking down each word, and he was still confused. "What?"

"With Dex. I have eyes. You obviously really care about him. Like, you're in love with him, I mean. And maybe that makes me stupid for asking you, but I don't really have anyone else I know who'll hear what I have to say and have Dex's best interests at heart, and so I'm trusting you to be honest with me, because I don't really think I'm capable of being honest with myself right now."

"I'm sorry, are you asking me for relationship advice?" The words left his own mouth but they still didn't make sense.

"Kind of. It's just. Has Dex told you anything about me?"

He knew what Evan was asking. "He told me you had some mental health issues, yeah. And that it's been... well. A support system can't be one person."

Evan nodded, like this was what he had been wanting to hear, which only succeeded in confusing Nursey more.

"Yes. Exactly. So. I wanted to ask someone who actually knew Dex about it, because I don't think he's being honest with me. I mean, I think he's trying to hide his feelings because he's afraid it will like, break me, or make me feel worse, or whatever. I guess my question is... am I hurting him?"

And, fuck. All of Nursey's irrational dislike of Evan flew out the window when he heard that soft little question, Evan's voice almost too raw to bear.

Which was why Nursey knew he was being honest when he whispered, "Yes." He rushed on to amend, "Well, it's not actually your mental illness, whatever that is, Dex never specified. It's that Dex feels like the responsibility for your mental well-being is entirely on his shoulders, which is not healthy for anyone to feel, ever. He really cares about you, Evan. But from what I gather, you're putting a lot of weight on him. You need to have someone else besides Dex: your family, other friends, maybe a therapist. Okay, no, as someone with bipolar, you actually should definitely have a therapist. But it's gonna take a while, dude. And until then... yeah. You are hurting him."

The fucking look in his eyes, man. "I need him," he said.

"I know," Nursey replied. "Which is probably why you have to let him go."

Evan sighed, a release of understanding, of learning something you already knew. "Thank you. I just needed someone to say it out loud to me." He looked down at his hands, picking the skin off the side of the nail. "Um. Do you know how... where would I find a good therapist? Do you think?"

//

Things after that were harder. But also better.

Dex was devastated, he was. But Nursey could also see the relief in the set of his shoulders. That Evan would be okay, or he was on his way to being okay, and it wasn't Dex's job to fix him. Or anyone's job but Evan's, honestly. Nursey had almost forgotten the whole ode to Dex thing.

Almost.

Until Dex burst into their room, paper in hand, yelling, "Hey, Nurse? What the fuck is this?"

Nursey froze at his desk. He didn't have to look. He could feel the words on the paper in the room with them, haunting him. Why did he have to be so melo-fucking-dramatic all the time?

"What's what?" he said instead of all that, swiveling around calmly, thinking maybe if he acted chill his blood pressure would be fooled and decrease.

(Or maybe it would increase just enough that he could have a heart attack and be in the ER and not this room?)

"Nursey. Please don't insult my intelligence."

He risked a glance up to Dex's face, which didn't look mad or embarrassed or any of the emotions Nursey would immediately associate with an unwanted love confession.

"Look, you were never supposed to see it, okay—"

Dex let out a laugh, one of those laughs when there's some sort of emotion in you and you don't really know where to put it and it just bursts out into a laugh. Nursey thought of volcanoes and pillow fights and popped balloons. His fingers itched for a pencil.

"Oh, so you were just gonna let me be ignorant forever? You were really never gonna tell me this is how you feel?"

"I—" Nursey watched Dex's face, but he really couldn't reconcile Dex's tone with his words with his face. They were all criss-crossed, like Dex's eyelashes when he woke up from a nap.

His hand actually made it all the way to the pen on his desk, screaming to write it all down, before he forced it to return back to his lap just to fiddle with. It wasn't his fault Dex looked so beautiful like this. So alive.

"I don't know what you want me to say."

This was clearly not the right thing, because he saw the irritation settle into Dex's face, like tinder on a campfire, before he closed his eyes, leaning back, and breathing in deep.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to come in here picking a fight. I want you to be honest with me. Please."

"I—" Three seconds ago, he'd been composing poetry, prose, metaphors about his feelings. And yet somehow in this moment, he couldn't think of one single thing to say.

"I'm obsessed with you," he blurted. "It's kind of embarrassing, actually. I think about you literally all the time. And I always write what I'm thinking about. So I wrote that."

Dex shook his head, his lips turned up faintly in disbelief, like he was laughing at a joke no one had told yet. "I'm sorry, when did you write this?"

"Um...like... a month ago? I think? Maybe."

Dex's eyes closed, like he was having trouble with the math. Dex was really excellent at math.

"So you're telling me you've liked me about as long as I've been with Evan."

Nursey mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like "maybe."

"What about his poem?"

Nurse blinked. "What about it?"

This time Dex really did laugh. It sounded a bit delirious. "When I showed you his poem! Did you really think I wanted your opinion on his prose?"

Nursey said nothing, but the look on his face probably betrayed that yes, that was what he'd thought.

"For someone who can write such brilliant shit—" he waved the paper around, "—you really are dense sometimes. I was giving you a chance! To say something, to stop me, I don't know. But then you said you liked it, so I thought, 'well, that settles it, he's not into me. Time to move on.' And then I did. And then you have the audacity to write this motherfucking—"

Dex looked like he was edging into full on rant mode, so Derek stood up quickly and interrupted with, "Hey Dex?"

Dex hit the brakes, looking up at Nursey like he very much wanted to finish. "What?"

"Can I kiss you?"

And, man. Dex was so beautiful like this, arms askew in the middle of the point he'd been making, hair mussed, face confused, like his words had stopped but his brain was veering off course. He kind of looked like a mess. Derek's heart swelled.

"Okay," he said.

Derek rushed in, worried if he waited any longer Dex would keep talking.

He didn't.

Dex's hands found Nurse's waist, paper still in hand, gripping at his back and grabbing him, pulling him closer. Nursey framed his hands around Dex's face, dragging him into the kiss. One of his hands gripped at the back of Dex's neck, sliding up over his short hair, like he'd wanted to do for months.

His mouth was so warm, just like the rest of him, but more, somehow. Nursey opened his mouth, sucking on Dex's lip. Dex's hand reflexively squeezed Nursey's waist. Before he could get too cocky about that, Dex caught Nursey's bottom lip in his teeth, scraping slow over it, sending chills down his scalp over his whole body.

"Wait, wait, wait," Dex said, pulling away, kinda, in the sense that his mouth was no longer attached to Nursey's, but he was still pretty entwined all up in Derek. He leaned his head down to catch his breath, his panting blowing over Derek's neck, giving Derek the mental image of Dex kissing him there, which, fuck—

"I was gonna say something," Dex said, eyes still looking kind of scrambled.

"Mm-hmm," Derek hummed, leaning in close again. One of Dex's hands left Nursey's waist and brushed his own lips, and yeah, Nursey knew the feeling. His mouth was literally humming, floating away from the rest of him.

"I can't remember," Dex said, grinning, already leaning back into Derek.

"That's okay," Derek murmured against Dex's pulse, which he could actually feel thrumming rapidly against his lips. "We have time."

And he kissed and kissed and kissed him, until there wasn't a single freckle left untouched.

[polarishpd]

Plance Month Day #2: Together. Garrison Rumours

Word Count: 1514 Author: @HunterWizard on Wattpad (also PolarisHPD on Tumblr) Summary: AKA an AU in which Kerberos never happened, Matt Holt never disappeared, Katie Holt is a new girl genius entering the Garrison, and Lance McClain is completely, totally head-over-heels for her. 

"They're together?"

"No way."

"The class goofball and the genius? You've got to be kidding."

"Check it out."

"No way."

"We are not together!" Katie Holt enunciates for possibly the fiftieth time that day to the gaggle of annoying classmates currently huddled over her school desks. "Look, he's annoying, he only cares about what girls think, and he puts absolutely no effort into whatever he does. We're never going to be together like that, okay? I don't understand why so many people are accusing me like this today."

So many lies spilling out of Katie's mouth so fast. But telling even one person at the amazing school that is the Garrison would result in a plethora of rumors.

Of course she'd only just joined the school as a first year, gained a reputation for either having a too-smart mouth, a capacity for being possibly the most talented pilot slash engineer or being an introverted sister of legend Matt Holt who really refuses to talk to so many people.

Katie slash Pidge was strange like that, you know?

"Then explain this!" one of the guys excitedly holds up his phone, showing a picture.

Shit...is that it?

Lance, hands entangled in Katie's hair, Katie's hands travelling up his shirt, their lips messily locked and bodies pressed up against each other, a picture taken in the dark night behind the school dorms.

...SHIT.

"I-uh-that's not me," she weakly tries, causing an outburst of laughter from the group.

"Yeah, sure, Katie. That's definitely not you making out with Lance McClain, two years your senior, hot and definitely dumb?" another one questions sarcastically.

Ah, yes. Katie's technically in the same grade as Lance, upgraded because of her precocious ability.

They're not together, are they? However uncharacteristically Katie, she had just wanted some fun with a senior, a tall, cute, and surprisingly nice guy that she'd been assigned work with. She wasn't expecting a date, cute hugs and kisses. Just some fun.

They aren't together, she reminds herself.

She reminds herself that she wasn't thinking about how kind and sweet Lance always was, actually intelligent even if didn't appear so, how he always made her laugh. Their little stolen cuddles and kisses when nobody was looking.

Her heart beats a little faster, scaring her.

What does she want?

"How did you get that picture?" she weakly breathes out. The classmate gestures for her to tap at the screen, which she does. A scroll later and she has her answer.

Goddamnit.

~~~

"Lance McClain has done it now," someone laughs, someone sitting right next to Lance. He holds back an annoyed growl. Who the hell decided to hack his account and post whatever the hell that was? Yeah, he's since deleted it, but there's such thing as screenshots and social media, and the FUCKING GARRISON.

"Who in their right mind even does that with Katie Holt? Matt's going to roast him alive when he finds out."

"She's definitely not ugly...I'll say that. I see why McClain went for that."

"But she's like...top of the class with Kogane. Wouldn't they make a better pair than with the class clown?"

"Depends. Lance's got that hot goofball thing going. Kogane's the mysterious one. How about Garret? He's really cute."

"True."

"You guys know I'm right here, right?" Lance snaps wearily, flopping his head down on the desk. The not so well-meaning classmates just snicker.

"We don't really care."

Hunk, sitting beside Hunk, can only give him sad eyes. Hunk has never really a confrontational guy, you know? But they're not wrong; Hunk is really cute.

"Look, Katie's great. But we're not together. That picture never should have surfaced," Lance fights.

"Katie seems to enjoy denying the rumor vehemently," another classmate remarks. Lance nearly wants to break the table. "Understandable. Not like someone smart-and arrogant-like her would go for bottom of the class Lance McClain-"

"-shut up now before I actually feel like punching you for saying things like that about her," Lance threatens, cutting in. Hunk pulls Lance up.

"Excuse me sir, Lance isn't feeling well. Can he be excused?"

Iverson, no stranger to the rumour or to quiet back-of-the-class talks, shrugs and lets him go. Something tells him that the boy needs it.

Lance knows the guy is right. Katie's only meeting with him for her own fun. But how the hell is he supposed to tell her that he actually wants it to be more than just fun?

He wants to believe that Katie wouldn't care about him being a total failure in the Garrison while she's this new superstar. He wants to believe that.

Maybe that's why she wants it no-strings-attached.

With a start, he realises what he wants.

He wants to be together.

~~~

"Why did you post that?" Katie questions quietly, hoping that she's conveying enough seething anger even without explicitly saying so. Lance, looking a little remorseful, sits across from her.

"If it's of any consolation, I didn't actually post that. And once I found out, I deleted it."

Katie seems to breathe out strongly, as if relieved, letting out a sigh.

"Oh," is all she answers with.

Lance is leaning on the ladder of his bunk, Hunk gone off somewhere, Katie sitting beside the ladder, looking up at him.

"Are you upset?" he asks. She shakes her head.

"No."

What's with all the one word answers, he wonders? Is it an insult to her, being found out for their little 'affair', for lack of better word?

"Does anybody tease you about it?"

"Only that I'm apparently 'dating' a guy who's two years older than me, but other than that not really."

Katie finally notices how downcast, disturbed Lance looks.

"Who teased you?" she sighs, looking rather 'done' wth the whole situation. Lance can't blame her; he is too.

"Just a couple of people in my class with Iverson. Said that you must be upset that you'd been found out. That you wouldn't be caught dead with me," Lance spits out, a lot more bitterly than he probably should have. Katie, startled, lets out an audible gasp.

"Who the fuck said that?" Lance is surprised at how vehement that sounds. "Who the fuck decided to declare my thoughts and feelings for me?"

"What, don't you agree with it?" Lance questions. Pidge sharply turns to him, her hair bouncing.

"What?"

"Look at you!" Lance exclaims. "You're pretty, a genius, the most talented student the Garrison has seen in years. You're better than Kogane, goddamnit, because you're actually tolerable-!"

"-no, no, shut up! I know where you're going to go with this," Katie cuts him off, glaring angrily.

"-yeah, because you know everything, and I'm the dumbass who got into your class out of sheer luck-"

"-see, see! Look," she says, standing up and grasping his face between her hands. Lance can't deny the blush that appears. "Look at yourself. You're an amazing, smart, clever guy. The Garrison relies on booksmarts, like me. You're smart in a totally different way; I've never met a guy like you, who's somehow so funny and kind and sweet and-"

Katie abruptly stops, letting go of him and sitting down, shielding her face from him.

"-I never thought I'd admit it, but I want us...I want us to be together. Like a couple. Not some teenagers just making out in backyards and dorms. Hell, I don't care what they say, and I don't think you should care for a second because they're totally wrong-I want the whole teenage lovey-dovey drama romance shit."

Then she stops.

Lance, blushing red, heart beating amazingly fast, can't stop a stupid grin from appearing on his face.

So he slides down, sits next to her, and kisses her. Holds her face in his hands, kisses her gently and not like the numerous makeouts they've had throughout her time at the Garrison. Kisses her like she's someone to him. Not like they're just two people looking for some action.

It's beautiful.

Slowly, Katie breaks off, looking fazed, dazed. Then she smiles, jumping and wrapping her arms around him.

"So yes?"

"I thought that was obvious."

~~~

"Holy shit."

"No way."

"Are they actually-?"

"I'm pretty sure it's confirmed now."

Katie and Lance on her bed, Katie completely on top of Lance, both of them with messed up hair, askew clothes, lips and bodies pressed together. And like the cherry on top, Katie is sticking out her middle finger for the whole world to see.

The Garrison is scandalised.

"Captioned: I'm with this guy, and the rest of you can all fuck off now."

"It's beautiful."

Lance quietly high-fives Katie in the corner, the two of them grinning like doofuses at each other, doofuses in love, goddamnit, witnessing the chaos going down at lunchtime.

"Well, at least we know one thing for sure now!"

"What? Katie Holt is actually a rebellious badass, Lance McClain is the smoothest bitch we've ever met-"

"-no, dumbass. They're definitely together."

Definitely.

[sheikah]

whoa wtf someone faked their own death just to get you to lose followers? why??? like???

***This post is cutting off halfway through on mobile. You need the full explanation so please view on desktop***

Yeah dude… it was this summer. Basically, as it became clear that Jonerys was in fact canon, some of the antis that had been extremely sure of themselves sort of… snapped. And as a big Jonerys blog, I received a lot of their ensuing tantrums. I’ll tell the story under the cut, or you can see the whole crazy history of what happened here since I tagged it all lol.

So around that time, one person in particular sent me this ask from her fashion sideblog. It’s what started the whole mess. Ten days later, she got on that sideblog to see that I had answered it and gotten over 250 notes on it, and it really upset her that so many people agreed with me that Dany is not, in fact, the Mad Queen. She reblogged it from a sideblog cursing me out, so I blocked that sideblog, not at that moment realizing that the sideblog and the fashion blog were the same person since ten days had gone by since I received the ask. So then she started getting on other side blogs. At first it was just a handful. It was obvious they were all her, though, because they had almost identical content. Just enough posts to keep the URL safe from staff deletion due to inactivity, but nothing more. On these sideblogs she would reblog my content with hateful and harassing captions. Each time she did, I would block the blog, but she would reappear with another one. When I was blocking faster than she could log onto new blogs, she got frustrated and started spamming my notes by tagging me dozens and dozens of times in replies to her posts. She also made a bunch of callout posts about me and reblogged them on all these sideblogs. I also received an anon during this–presumably from her–telling me to kill myself. I blocked the anon (which blocks an IP address) and the attacks from her stopped for a few hours. I’m guessing she went to another internet connection or switched to phone data, and then started doing it all again, but without sending me inbox messages this time so I couldn’t block her other IP. 

I was meanwhile sending her DMs on all these blogs begging her to leave me alone and warning her that I would report her and share her URLs with my followers (so they could also report) if she didn’t. After a day went by and she didn’t heed my warnings, I did those things. That’s what finally stopped it all. Most of her sideblogs were deactivated.

There was literally nothing I could do to make this stop and I counted over 25 blogs from her before I had reported her enough to make her stop. I shared her URLs for these blogs with my followers to get help reporting her.

About a week went by and I thought that it was finally over. But then she made a post on that original fashion side blog (the first time she had used this blog since the original ask was sent, so I didn’t connect the dots and hadn’t blocked the fashion blog). She made a post there telling a fake story in which I was apparently the one bullying her and sicking my followers on her, and she claimed we told her to kill herself. This is an outright lie. She tagged me in this post, citing me as the reason for her own apparent suicide, and then left the blog (that wasn’t very active anyway), trying to make the last post there look like a suicide note. 

This got a lot of attention, because she reblogged it on her slew of sideblogs. Lots of people tagged staff and I’m guessing she got in trouble since I had also reported her before that for harassing me from all of her blogs. While this supposed suicide note got widespread attention, I got dozens and dozens of messages from people imploring me to reach out to her and save her life, or shaming me for “pushing her to suicide.” It’s the reason why to this day I have my IM function shut off for anyone I don’t follow. It was insane how many messages I got. I treated her suicide note as serious and half believed it at the time. I apologized to her (though I’d done nothing wrong) just in case and joined others in tagging staff and trying to talk her down on the post.

A day later I received the asks below from a blog with no content at all (hmmmm. suspicious, no?). These screenshots are actually from that sideblog that sent them because when I didn’t publish them, they just reposted what they sent me on the sideblog so it could still get out somehow.

You can connect the dots here–clearly this is the original person who was harassing me, posing as their own “friend” to try and guilt and manipulate me (I would ask anyone reading this not to contact this person and start shit again, please. I never want to talk to them again). Obviously I didn’t publish it, which is why she reposted them on the sideblog. I responded privately telling the person that I was the one who had been bullied and that I absolutely would not be making the post she requested guilting my own followers for something they didn’t do.

So at that point she had failed at chasing me off tumblr and getting me to post any more about her and give her any more attention or make myself look bad on her behalf. Two days went by and I’m guessing she regretted ruining her fashion blog over her random and inexplicable hatred of me and Daenerys Targaryen.  A new post appeared on the fashion blog (the whole blog is deleted now, probably by staff and not of her own volition). This time she claimed to be her own cousin who had inherited her blog after her suicide. It was an obvious ruse and her own followers turned on her then and scolded her for faking her suicide. Many of the people who had messaged me asking me to help her or fussing at me before reached out to me to apologize, seeing her “cousin” post and realizing their mistake. When she saw that, she said (still pretending to be the cousin) that she would have to delete the blog because her parents found it. That was the last I heard from her for a little while. She thinks I don’t know her main blog, but I do. It’s only out of a strong aversion to confrontation that I don’t share her main. She slipped up and liked two of the posts she made on her obscure sideblogs that had no content or posts other than the hate she was posting at me. So for those random empty sideblogs to have any followers is very suspicious, and her “likes” were the only notes these posts got. And the likes came from a prominent (at that time) GoT blog that had a lot of the same views that she shared in her hate posts to me, and I quickly realized that GoT blog was her main blog, and the only one she didn’t outright attack me from–she just used it to “like” her deranged posts to make it look like someone was supporting what she was doing to me. The last time she contacted me was through about 50, yes 50, anons she sent me while the GoT s7 finale was airing a couple weeks later. She had gone through my personal tag and looked up everything about me she could find, and then sent me extremely personal and specific hate asks about everything. She knew I’d be watching the finale so I wouldn’t be able to block her quickly, giving her plenty time to send me a shitload of stuff. It’s my own fault for being open and honest on this blog and literally showing my face, but what can I say? I love my life and am happy to share it on my blog. Anyway, the stuff she said was pretty disturbing. I think if I had been an even slightly less stable person, such cruelty could have driven me off of tumblr altogether or maybe even to self-harm. But as it is I remembered that she’s an insignificant and hateful person and brushed it off. I just blocked her IP and it deleted them all at once. And that’s the whole crazy story .

[thecupcakeconsumer]

The Numbers Don’t Count

JILY CHALLENGE | @thecupcakeconsumer vs. @prongsfoots

Social Media AU Theme: “shoot, i was stalking you on Instagram and accidentally liked a photo from 235 weeks ago”

Notes: Why is this up early? Well, that totally has nothing to do with my procrastinating on math and english and history homework... featuring it’s an AU so I’ll change whatever I like.

The time, her clock read, was 1:37AM – exactly four hours and twenty-three minutes before the same phone that she held in her hand would blast the same alarm as the default tone and she'd moan loudly, trying to turn it off without opening her eyes to the bright, unwelcome light.

Of course, Lily Evans was a little too busy stalking James Potter on Instagram for it to really register.

His account went years back and it seemed as though he'd never deleted anything – not even, she was finding, the photos of him before he'd started to transition.

She couldn't help it – his account was public and he was cute.

He'd been tagged in the most recent picture of their mutual friend Remus Lupin, and here she was, her curiosity having led her to a picture of the pre-transition boy and Sirius Black with the caption “More than friends? Never – we're both too gay.”

She lingered a little too long, and froze when the familiar heart was filled in with red.

“Oh, no,” whispered Lily. “No, no, no no no.”

It was bad enough that she'd been stalking him.

Now, she'd liked a picture from – what was that date? - March 24, 2013.

Four and a half years ago.

As if that wasn't bad enough, it was of him pre-transition: she'd look like a jerk.

Mary and Marlene would either be asleep or out drinking if she texted them at this hour: thus, asking her friends for advice was out of the question.

Should she like every picture so she didn't look like a bitch? Or would that seem too stalkerish?

Would he even notice?

She scrolled up to the top of the screen: @deerestjamie had 254 followers, and was following 409.

Cool, cool, cool cool cool cool. He wouldn't notice one like out of more than three hundred photos, would he?

Obviously, the best solution was just to leave it be and stop stressing, she resolved, putting her phone on the charger and flipping around to turn away from it.

(And yet all twenty minutes it took her to get to sleep, she couldn't stop thinking about it.)

Light streamed in through the narrow opening between the curtains, a bird chirped outside, the fall day just barely cool enough that one could wear a sweater or a t-shirt – of course, none of this mattered to the iPhone whose alarm was about as welcome to its owner as a sheep in heat would have been that morning.

“Oh my God,” murmured Lily, blindly fumbling for her phone and begrudgingly opening her eyes, her relief at managing to turn it off eclipsed by the Instagram notification – a DM from @siriuslyy.

She opened it, and was met with nothing more than “(ง'̀-'́)ง".

“Yeah, real eloquent, Black,” murmured Lily, before realizing there was also a screenshot that seemed to be taken from James's account of her having liked his picture, the only notification for the entire day.

Well, shit.

“Wait, why does Black have access to Potter's account?” murmured Lily, before shaking her head and rolling begrudgingly out of bed, deciding to address it after she got ready for work.

Sirius glared at his phone screen as he sat back on his chair during lunch, feet up on the break table even if he technically wasn't supposed to be lounging as such.

'I know you've seen this message Evans' he tapped out, sending the message, his lip curling when it registered as read almost immediately.

'Is it usual to have access to your best friend's Instagram?' came the sarcastic reply.

'There's nothing usual about us' Sirius answered, then adding, 'Is it usual to like a picture from over four years ago?'

A pause.

'Okay, listen.'

'Listening.'

Grabbing his water bottle off the table, Sirius easily opened it and started to drink, watching with slight amusement as she hesitated.

'I'll explain, but you can't tell James about this.'

'I can't control what the man does and doesn't notice.'

Not that James really would notice, considering almost a third of the pictures were posted by Sirius and he had turned notifications off so as to focus more on his work.

However, it wasn't as if anything would stop Sirius from standing up for James.

'Okay listen I stg I don't have a problem with his being trans – that's not why I was on his profile. Liking that photo was an accident.'

'Was being 3 years back on his profile an accident?'

Another pause, longer than the first.

'No?'

'Look, I have to go.'

And with that, he knew he'd lost her.

Damn.

He’d been having such fun.

“Hey, Lily,” greeted Remus, looking up from the book he was absorbed in when the bell at the door rung.

“Remus, your boyfriend is kind of an asshole.”

“Sirius? We know that by now, but since when do you know him?”

“You know he helps run James's Instagram?”

He blinked. “Since when do you know James? I mean, we all know by now that they're co-conspirators on about everything, but-”

“He was in your most recent picture. James, that is.”

Remus tilted his head to the side, as if trying to gauge what exactly Lily was on about, before realizing.

“You thought he was cute, didn't you?”

She flushed red.

“N-no, that's not what I – not that he isn't, but-” Remus smirked, which did nothing for her comprehensibility.

“I can't blame you, he's always been fairly attractive. Not my type, of course, but you wouldn't be the first who's fallen for him.”

“I did not fall for James Potter!” exclaimed Lily, flailing her arms and flinching when her hand hit one of the bookshelves in the small store. “Ow. Ow. What was I saying? Oh, right, I'm not falling for James Potter! Please. I don't even know the man.”

“Sure, sure, that's what they all say. You know, he's single?”

“He is?” asked Lily, before smacking herself internally when she realized by the way in which he only smiled wider that she'd managed to play herself. “Not that I care. That's great. Lots of people are single these days. Being single is the new being taken.”

“Played yourself, Evans. Now, what were you saying about Sirius? Wait, don't tell me.”

He put down his book on the counter, before walking around to the other side to examine her more closely. “You mentioned Instagram, and the fact that he's cute-”

“I did not-”

“Oh, please. What would Sirius have noticed, then? You know they both run his account, maybe you left a comment on a photo? No, you're that desperate… but stalking him?” Her involuntary twinge was all he needed. “You were stalking him and accidentally liked an old photo. Classic.”

“That's not fair,” murmured Lily, crossing her arms. “You're not allowed to come in here and smart-ass me-”

“Actually, you're the one who came in here, might I remind you. Not that you're unwelcome – it's been a while, hasn't it? And besides, you wear shame so well.”

“Remus!”

“Fine, fine. What do you want me to do about it?”

Her bottom lip jutted out. “I don't know. What am I supposed to do? Is he going to be upset?”

“Who?”

She raised her eyebrows as if it was obvious. “James?”

“Over… your liking one of his old pictures?” Lily nodded furiously. “James?”

“I don't know him!”

“Okay. Think of it this way. James is like the old man who sits in his chair reading the newspaper, and Sirius is like the overactive dog who barks at every disturbance.”

“So…?”

Remus shook his head with a laugh. “He's unlikely to even notice, and if he does he won't care, Lily. It's not a big deal. But – whatever you do – don't let him find out.”

“Because…?”

“Pretty girl like you stalking his Instagram? The man's ego is already big enough that it's a wonder he can fit through a door.”

She sighed in relief. “Oh, thank God. Thanks, Remus.”

“For?”

“For being the smart-ass you are.”

“Me? A smart-ass?” he asked in a bad impression of offense, subtly pulling out his phone and snapping a picture of her in the doorway, looking askance with a smile. “Why, I never.”

“Hey, Moon!” called out James as he entered the shared apartment, throwing his keys on the table and wincing when they fell short.

“James. Good day?”

He nodded, bending down to pick them up. “Great. Actually, work was pretty boring. Paperwork. Buuuut, I saw a cute girl today.”

“She work with you?” asked Remus conversationally.

“Nope!” answered James. “Actually, I didn't see her. Wait, no, that's not even true. I saw her, but like, not in person? I saw a picture of her, that is, taken in… what's your bookstore called again?”

“Lily?”

“No, no, that's not what it's – wait, is that her name?”

His friend smirked. “You know, I have her number.”

“You do?” asked James eagerly, wincing as his voice cracked on the last word. “Wait, seriously? You're not joking?”

“Do you want me to call her?”

“No!” He froze. “Wait, no. I mean, yes. I mean, maybe – you don't just call someone up. Aren't calls outdated? She probably has a boyfriend. Or a girlfriend. Then again, being single's on the up-and-up again. It's like being single is the new being taken. What was I saying? Oh, right, Lily. Pretty name. Pretty girl. Okay, I'll call her.”

James pulled out his phone confidently, before stopping. “I don't have her number.”

“I know, James.”

“I'm sorry, I'm just nervous.”

“I know, James.” Remus held out the phone with a grin. “Here. It's ringing.”

“What?!” squeaked James, hurriedly taking it from him. “Remus, you don't just-”

“Hey Remus, called to torment me?”

Even her voice had him in love.

“This isn't Remus.”

“Is this Sirius? I swear to God going through your boyfriend to get to me is just low.”

“What? No! You know Sirius?”

“Wait, if it's not Sirius, then who is this?”

He grinned. “It's James.”

A dramatic pause, then, “I hate you, Remus.”

“Oi! I'm not Remus! That's offensive, he has no taste in men.”

“I'm right here,” piped up the man in question, but was quickly shushed.

“Aren't you friends with Sirius?”

“Doesn't mean I want to date the man. Anyway, Lily, Lily Lily Lily, what're you doing this Friday night?”

If Remus had been drinking tea, he might have spit it out.

“This Friday night? No plans.”

“Great. Want to go out with me?”

A high pitched squeak resounded on the other end of the line, making it hard for James to discern whether or not it was from the technology itself or from his contact.

“Er, Lily?”

“That depends. Does Sirius have access to your phone too?”

“Not too often.”

“Give me your number and I'll be ready at eight.”

Waggling his eyebrows at Remus, he quickly gave her the number, unable to stop the corners of his mouth from spreading.

“I have no clue when I became your wingman.”

“Oh, shut up, Remus, you know you love me.”

“And?”

“And I love you too, Remy-poo.”

James sloppily kissed Remus on the cheek with a wet smack, nothing able to dull his mood.

Not even when he walked into his own door and found it closed, hitting it head-on.

“Adoorable.”

“Quiet, Moony.”

[nhlhoser]

On The Rocks- 10

Part 9  Masterlist

Everyone left after Steph and I made the arrangments for her to move in a couple weeks after when her lease is up and Mitch + gang are free to help move what she needs.  I am actually really excited to have Stephanie as my roommate, so far she seems to be a really good person.

My plans for the day weren't much other than laying around my apartment watching T.V. and eating junk food, in the most unflattering sweatpants and hoodie combo in my possession. It was going great too until I remember my job interview tomorrow and I fell off the couch like the memory physically smacked me across the face.

I need to mentally prepare more than anything else, I know I have the ability to do this and get the job, it's just I still feel like I'll mess it up with something i'd say or trip over myself.

"I need to distract myself," I mumbled sitting up, leaning my back again the couch. Scrolling through my phone I have a couple messages from Steph just about moving and stuff but also one from my brother made my grin.

"Perfect,"

"Ah," I grunted throwing my gloved fist at my brother's grinning face, I had put a good amount of weight behind it and I clocked him pretty good. His head flinging back dramatically but raising his fist in time to upper cut my chest making me fall on my ass. I lay on the floor of the boxing ring sweaty and gross but feeling great.

"I tap out," I wheezed dramatically spreading my limbs like a starfish almost in the middle of the ring, where my younger brother Ricky and I were sparring. My brother is just a little bit taller than me and likes boxing because he's a small guy compared to the rest of his lacrosse team. He's never actually been in a fight but he will always say.

"Just in case you know," He'd say with a wink and throwing a couple punches into the air.

"So what's caused you enough stress to agree to come with me? You're usually a solo mission kinda gal,"  Ricky said helping me up, knowing me well enough to know when I'm stressed. Grabbing my water and unstrapping my head gear, making my way out of the ring.

"I have a job interview/ try out tomorrow," I finally said when I had my things gather and Ricky was leaning on ropes staring down at me raised brows. He ducks under and hops down to my level.

"You say that like it's a bad thing, I thought you wanted a new job," His black/brown hair sticking to forehead adding to the confusion in his blue eyes that match mine. I sigh, fiddling with my towel nerves re-entering my body like wildfire.

"It is a good thing! I just feel like I mess it up," I confessed turning away from my brother to head to the change rooms.

"That's just your nerves talking Amelia," Ricky laid his hand on my sweaty shoulder to stop my movement before going on "We both know you're pretty damn great at your job, You have to stop doubting yourself. You'll do great" He pulled me into a hug- a nasty sweaty hug. Pulling away i swat him away.

"I needed that," I smiled at my brother who smiled back before pushing me toward the change room with a 'you stink'.

Waiting for a shower to free up, now feeling a lot better and light hearted I open Snapchat and jokingly take a gym selfies caption 'Better than Marns' referring to Steph at the hotel on the weekend. Sending it off and tossing my phone in the locker I head to the showers.

It was when I was home again that I got the notification.

'SCREENSHOT Stephthechance'

"Oh fuck," I cursed instantly calling the evil blonde I called my friend just hours ago.

"Hello?" Her innocent voice making me scowl.

"Whyyyy???" I whined into phone balancing it on my shoulder as I work my through my apartment dropping my bag in the laundry room and gloves into the closet.

"I had to, girl. I need proof to burst my boyfriend's ego. He's always flexing and being mister manly man," She whined at the end of her statement.  Groaning I readjust my phone so now I can hold it normally.

"Just delete it please," I plead making my way into the kitchen to make something to eat.

" I could, but what's the fun in that" she laughs.

"Me not killing you is fun, Man I don't want the stress of you showing someone on purpose or accidentally. I'm already stressed about a job interview tomorrow," I groaned back to the awkward way of hold my phone against my shoulder assembling my protein shake.

"Oh, where's your interview?" She completely disregarding my threat of her death.

"Some sports team in Etobicoke, Massage therapist," I easily confess as I busily work on my shake and trying to not drop my phone in the sink.

"Going by what Auston told us about you 'Magic hands' You'll do great especially this coming from him." Steph lowered her voice to mimic Auston. My cheeks flare at the thought that they were talking about me.

"Oh god, he told you," My voice cracked. What else did he say? Did he tell them about sharing a bed? Oh god, that's so embarrassing.

" Yeah, He told us how you did some magical voodoo on his back before he fell asleep on the couch,"  Steph oblivious to where he actually slept.

"Oh yeah, That was nothing really," I tried to hold back my sigh of relief, sitting on my couch I relax into the cushions instead a released a tired sigh.

"If that's nothing, You something has to be a thousand times better! Also, Mitch is jealous, he almost made us come back so you'd massage his back," Steph's voice caring a different note at the end.

"Don't work Steph you'll get a massage too" I teased.

"My neck does hurt... and since you offered....." she trails off into a giggle. Shaking my head I finish off my shake.

"Sure thing but you have to delete the photo first," I challenged.

"Well, Will you look at that! My neck doesn't hurt anymore!"

"I hate you so much right now," I groaned over the phone to emphasize my displeasure.

"No, you don't! Well Mitch is coming in the door with food now so I'll let you get to whatever you do,"

"See ya"

Hang up the phone I groan again.

"She's not deleting that photo," I said to no one but my furniture.

~

Sleep came easier than I thought it would of due to my nerves but I was out as soon as my head my pillows. Getting up was a little bit harder than It was going to sleep, My body is that good sore after a great workout but also the hesitation knowing that the sooner I get ready, the sooner I leave for the interview.

I got dressed and ate slowly but by the time I was done it was time I should leave.I got uber and in no time I was the Mastercard Centre. I guess I was so nervous I didn't even notice the logos on the door or on the walls as I made my way to the trainer's room by following signs. I could hear the sound of hockey, hell it even smelt like hockey. When I got to where I need to be I felt the need to vomit I was so nervous but I was greeted by a friendly enough looking man who looks to be in his late 40's maybe.

"HI, I am Todd Bean we talked over the phone. Amelia Ashton if I am correct?" He sticks out his hand for a handshake, I grasp it strongly but not overly strong.

"Yes, That would be me?"

We talked for almost an hour about the job, my job history, and certifications.  He was now reviewing my paperwork with a passive face as if he was deciding something. I just sat for what felt like forever fidging slightly and twirling my thumbs. The longer he went without saying anything only made my nerves worse, the nervous sweat setting in making me feel so gross.

He tilts his head up me and slowly a smile spreads across his face, deepening the slight wrinkles around his eyes and mouth.

"I am willing to hire you right here, right now but" My posture starts to slump, there's always a but.

"I need to test you a little bit, just because you passed your certification doesn't mean you're good enough for me." He's eyes teasing but serious. He writes something down on a notepad before he stands and beckons me to follow him. He leads me out the door and down the hall to another trainer's room, this one has a massage table in the middle with all the needed creams, oils and ointments lining the shelves with towels folded perfectly on the lower shelves.

"I am going to get a test dummy, You just make yourself comfortable," He's back out the door before I could say anything. I take this as an opportunity to check out the oils and such, examine each label seeing all the different effects, one cools or heats and another numbs. I was busy exploring bottles that I almost didn't notice when Toad re-enter the room, this time with another person.

"Amelia, this is Connor Brown," Toad motions towards the very familiar hockey player, this would be the time i finally realized my job interview is for the Toronto Maple Leafs. 'Act cool' schooling myself I introduce myself as we shake hands.

"So, to put it simply, The job is to make Connor feel better and so here is the test," Toad grins now pointing to Connor "Make him feel better,"

I nod turning on my profession mode on I started with the questions to better understand his body to know what amount of pressure would be needed and where to lighten up or press harder.

In the end, Connor fell asleep on the table.

"Well, I say you have the job!" Toad clapped me on the back as Connor release a snore. My eyes widen and all my nerves are gone.

"We will finalize everything in person another day, I'll email you when and where You'll be meeting the rest of the staff. To start you'll be mainly working on practice days to get you into things and before long you'll be game ready!" He voices very cheerily making me smile.

We shook hands and discuss the jobs some more before I was out the door of the room, I was walking down the hall when I heard familiar voices.

"Man, Connor gets to test out the new therapist when he knows I volunteered first," A grumpy voice of Mitch Marner sound around the hall  I was passing when Mitch and who was with spotted me.

"Hey, Amelia, What you doing here?" A still sweaty Mitch asked.

"Well, I guess I work here now" I smiled.

"Oh doing what?"

"I am the new Massage therapist,"I confessed like it was some secret. Mitch's eyes widen and his elbows the guy beside him who turns out to be the very tall enforcer Matt Martin, He looks a lot taller than when I met him at the bar.

"She the one I was telling you about, 'Magic hands' so Auston said," Mitch's whole being oozed excitement. My face turns red instantly as my cheeks burn.

"Man, Now I can see for myself, Come you have to meet everyone else!" Mitch starts to lead me to guess where everyone is, Matt in tow shaking his head.

We get to a door with the Leafs logo posted rather brightly in your face, as Mitch tosses open the door he pulls me into what I am guessing is players lounge because there multiple guys around the room on couches or at tables eating.

"Hey! Amelia!" a voice with a Swedish tinge to it call out from across the room, where William is sitting with Morgan Rielly and James Van Riemsdyk. Mitch leads me over to them with a huge grin.

"Hi" I shyly sit across from the blonde and two others with Mitch beside me and Matt leaning on the arm of the chair to Mitch's right. Before anyone can ask or say why I am here, Mitch does it.

"Amelia here is out new Massage therapist," Which gathers some looks from the guys across from us. I sink into the couch as they stare.

"Ah, you did mention that you're a massage therapist!" William nods at the memory of dinner. A look of confusion washed over Morgan and James' faces. They probably wonder how their teammates know me. William also catches his teammates confusions and Mitch starts the story of the boring Gala then the bar, hotel and temporarily stealing his girlfriend.

"Then Auston and I almost killed her," William stated not explain further which left room for some imagination. William caught that his words could be twisted sexually.

"We accidentally made her fall off a treadmill and she hit her head," William defended. Morgan and James nod.

"So she's the one Auston got the meds from me for," Morgan stated.

"Yeah, whatever those were got me pretty damn high," I blurted out making the guys all laugh, as I get redder and sink further.

"Well, they're  for a grown man," Morgan noted, it made sense really how sloppy I got.

we-they kept talking some more when Matt asked me if I was going to be at the Game Tomorrow.

"No, I don't officially start until- I am not even sure but when i do start with you guys it will only be during practices until I get into a routine," I explained.

"I also have never been to a game," I added.

Williams jaw visibly drops and well as Mitch.

"But how?"

"Oh yeah, Steph was texting me about that,"  Will and Mitch started at the same time.

" Well, I've never had the money or the time," I shrugged.

"Well, Looks like you're coming to the game tomorrow," James said and the rest nod with him.

"I can't-" I start.

"Save it, women, you're going," William said staring into my eyes making me want to look always but I felt trapped.

Looks like I am going to my first Leafs game.

"You'll have to wear my jersey of course, as I am your favorite," William said Arrogantly.

"What makes you think she won't be wearing mine, I too am her favorite," A new voice challenges Williams previous statement from behind me.

I don't have to look to know its Auston Matthews.

NEXT

[bibliosexxual]

accidentally?

Based on this prompt I said I’d fill a few days ago:

boss: “know why I called you in here?” me: “because I accidentally sent you a dick pic” boss: “accidentally?”

yup.

(on ao3)

“You need to stop pining after people you haven’t even spoken to,” Lydia says one day, probably because Derek—er, Mr. Hale, their boss—has just stepped through the front door of the cafe where they’re having lunch, and Stiles has trailed off mid-word to watch him walk up to the counter. In Stiles’ defense, he’s never seen Mr. Hale outside of the office before, let alone Mr. Hale wearing a leather jacket over his dress shirt. God, and Stiles thought the tailored suits were bad enough…

Anyway.

“Uh, I have too spoken to him,” Stiles says indignantly, tearing his eyes away from Derek’s broad back across the room. “One day I was coming out of the break room and I almost walked right into him and he said, ‘Excuse me,’ so then I said, ‘Oops,’ and he smiled at me. Kind of. A little bit. I mean, I interpreted it as a smile. There was some prolonged eye contact.”

Lydia abruptly stops stirring her fat-free latte to stare at him—one of those Oh god, it’s worse than I thought kind of looks. “That’s it?”

“No. I wasn’t finished,” Stiles says. “We also ate lunch together last Monday. I forgot to bring my lunch, so I was just eating a bag of chips from the vending machine and he offered me half his tuna sandwich.”

It had been one of the nicest office lunch breaks he’d ever had, actually. Stiles was sitting on the low brick wall at the edge of the picnic area, and to his surprise, Derek sat down there, too, in his probably-thousand-dollar suit, while Stiles gaped at him a little for doing it. 

Derek had then continued to sit there even after giving away the sandwich. It had been clear from the way he kept glancing at Stiles that he didn’t know what to say but he wanted to say something, so Stiles had prompted, “Got any weekend plans?” and Derek had said he didn’t have any, so Stiles had rambled for a while about his weekend plans, which involved going down to San Francisco for the weekend for a Bastille concert. Derek sat there and listened attentively the whole time, which, in Stiles’ experience, not many people would do. He also said he didn’t know who Bastille was. That was a little surprising, but then again, Stiles supposed Derek didn’t have a lot of time to absorb pop culture, what with running the foundation and owning a dog and all.

He’d obviously had a bit of time at that moment, though, so Stiles had pulled out his phone and played Derek some of their songs, and Derek had nodded his head subtly to the beat and smiled a little and instantly made Stiles’ crush on him a whole lot more intense.

“And that’s it,” he concludes now. “So do you think he’s into me at all?“

"How should I know? I’m not a mind reader.”

“Coulda fooled me,” Stiles mutters, thinking about all the times she’s guessed ahead of time what he was going to get her for her birthday and all the times she’s taken one look at him and known with an uncanny certainty that he’s just gotten laid or, more commonly, that he’s just spent the whole night playing video games and ignoring life’s responsibilities.

Now Lydia sighs. “Look, all I know is, office romances are tricky. Even if he is interested, he’d probably feel like he can’t ask you out because of the power dynamic. You’ll have to make the first move.”

“Yeah, right,” Stiles snorts.

Lydia raises her eyebrows like, I thought so. “Stiles…” she says, “as your friend who’s concerned for your happiness, I’m going to ask you something: Have you gone on a single date in the last month? The last six months?”

Stiles resists the urge to squirm under her knowing gaze. She could be a world-class interrogator if she ever wanted a career change. “Okay, but… I’ve been busy, okay? It has nothing to do with Der— Mr. Hale. As if. That’s ridiculous. Totally ludicrous.”

“I see,” Lydia says, unimpressed.

The next thing he knows, she’s installing a dating app on his phone and filling in a profile that’s a hundred times more charming and put-together than anything Stiles could’ve come up with on his own and finagling a promise out of him that he’ll at least give it a decent try.

Stiles gives his word, but privately he wonders if he can keep it.

It was actually Derek who inspired Stiles to apply to work at the Howls for Change Foundation to begin with. The local newspaper interviewed him a couple of years ago about the foundation, back when it was just starting up. Stiles had been just skimming, not planning to sit down and read the paper for half an hour, but that’s just what he ended up doing, drawn in by Derek’s interview—his enthusiasm and love for wolves, his eloquence in replying to the journalist’s questions, the accompanying picture of him… He was in jogging clothes, crouched on a trail out in the woods somewhere and hugging his German Shepherd while flashing the camera a rare, genuine smile so bright it made Stiles feel warm all over, and yeah, Stiles applied to this job about 75% because he loved wildlife conservation and about 25% because he wanted to see Derek Hale smile like that again, and possibly be the one to make him do it.

The feeling has only gotten stronger since then.

Derek likes to act like he’s just one of the employees, even though he’s not only the boss but also the organization’s founder. He has his own corner office, but he mainly just uses it for meeting with local policymakers and other bigwigs. The rest of the time, he has a cubicle where he plugs away on his laptop or just sits contemplatively, eating an apple or listening to music on an old CD player he keeps in the top drawer. He eats lunch outside in the picnic area with his employees, too, when it’s nice out. He brings bag lunches from home, which Stiles finds oddly charming.

Still, Stiles can see Derek is set apart. No matter how much he acts like he’s just an employee, no one ever forgets he’s the boss. When he walks into the break room, a hush always falls, and if they were talking about something gossipy or off-color before he walked in, they always hastily change the subject to something more workplace-appropriate and bland, like the weather or what’s for lunch, and Derek nods politely at them, gets his coffee, and leaves without a word. Stiles thinks he looks kind of lonely. He always comes off as hardworking and unpretentious, but he also doesn’t seem that fond of small talk or smiling, and it clearly makes a lot of people feel awkward around him.

For all the great work Derek is doing in the conservation world, he doesn’t seem to have a lot of friends.

Even so, the thought of Stiles asking him out and Derek actually saying yes… Well. It’s laughable, really.

So Lydia says, “Promise me you’ll at least try the app?” and Stiles says he will.

*

Two weeks and several mediocre first dates later, Stiles is sitting in a budget meeting at 9 a.m. on a Monday morning, poking at his phone under the table. He doesn’t make any attempt to stay on task first; whenever Greenberg starts talking in these meetings, like clockwork Stiles always gets this unbearable itch to look at his phone or pick at his nails or even just stare blankly out the window, anything but listen to him.

He deletes a dozen spam emails and replies to a couple punny texts from Scott from last night before he finally, reluctantly thumbs over to his unread messages on the dating app. By this point he’s not very optimistic. Turns out he was right to be, because someone has sent him an unsolicited dick pic.

Instinctively he sinks down a little lower in his seat. It turns out to be an unnecessary precaution, though. One glance around confirms it: the woman to his left is absorbed in doodling Power Rangers on her notepad, and the man to his right is gazing straight ahead into space, so zoned out he’s practically comatose.

Stiles looks back down at his phone.

It’s a nice dick pic, objectively. Very artistic, very tasteful. The guy, whose head is cropped out of the photo, is sprawled on his back on a turquoise sheet, soft sunlight falling on his naked torso, one long-fingered hand curled lazily around his erection. A+ for aesthetics.

Still, Stiles did not wake up this morning after only three hours of sleep (what can he say, he got distracted by Wikipedia again) just so he could see a complete stranger’s junk.

The sad thing is, this isn’t even the first time this has happened, or the third, or the fifth… Would it kill these guys to say hello first?

Stiles screenshots it, then pastes it into a new email to Lydia (he’s been keeping her apprised of his dating app adventures, at her insistence). He captions it with a grumpy, “guess how my morning is going.”

She’s the one who thought this app would be such a great idea in the first place. Maybe now, face-to-face with what Stiles has had to put up with on a daily basis for the past two weeks, she’ll finally admit the whole online dating thing was a bad idea and stop shooting him pitying looks whenever the subject of Derek Hale comes up.

After that, he blocks the dick-pic-sender and puts his phone away. Greenberg is still talking, still meticulously going over lots of hard-to-read charts, and Stiles’ gaze inevitably wanders to fall on Derek instead. Derek, who’s sitting at the head of the table, looking at something on his phone and not even trying to hide it.

Stiles supposes if you’re the founder of the company, you don’t have to pretend to be paying attention while Greenberg talks.

Derek’s phone buzzes in his hand; Stiles can just barely hear it. Derek taps at the screen while lifting his glass of water to his mouth, and then he must read something shocking because he simultaneously spits out his water all over his notes and starts coughing furiously, doubling over like he’s dying, his phone clattering to the table.

Greenberg momentarily stops his monotone speech, hovering like he’s not sure what to do, while pretty much everyone around the table freezes up except for the vice president, Boyd, who’s sitting next to him and never seems even remotely fazed by anything. He pounds Derek heartily on the back a couple times.

It seems to help. After a long half minute, the coughing fit passes. Derek looks up, red-faced, and rasps, “I’m okay.”

Hesitantly, Greenberg starts talking again. Derek straightens his tie and puts his phone away, and Stiles’ fellow employees go back to slumping in their seats with blank, I’m-bored-out-of-my-mind expressions on their faces, and that’s that.

Stiles can’t help wondering what it was Derek saw that got such a reaction out of him. Whatever it was, it’s guaranteed to be more interesting than this meeting.

Ah, well. Stiles will probably never know.

Or so he thinks until about half an hour later, when his phone buzzes with a new email from Derek—the only email he’s ever gotten from Derek, not counting the company-wide newsletters and memos.

It’s a good thing Stiles finishes pouring his coffee before taking a look at it, because otherwise he probably would have scalded the skin of his hand off and spilled coffee all over his shoes and the break room floor in the process.

The subject line reads, “re: guess how my morning is going.”

Stiles freezes.

Blinks.

Closes out of his email app and opens it again.

The email is still there. It’s still titled "re: guess how my morning is going.” Stiles didn’t misread it.

He’s pretty sure he doesn’t breathe for a solid five minutes while he lets the mingled surges of horror and adrenaline wash over him. It’s like one of those nightmares he used to have in high school where he’d stand up in class to give a presentation, only to look down and realize he was inexplicably buck-ass naked and everyone was laughing at him.

Finally he sucks in enough air to gasp, "Oh god. I’m dead. I’m so dead.” There’s no one else in the break room, but he still says it. It seems like the kind of momentous occasion that needs stating out loud to the universe.

Then he chugs his entire mug of coffee and speed-walks as casually as possible down the hall. A few people glance at him curiously from their cubicles, probably because he’s blushing so hard he looks like a tomato on the verge of a nervous breakdown, or possibly because no one runs in this office, anywhere, for any reason. Dignity is the name of the game. Stiles has none.

Stiles ignores them all in favor of diving into Lydia’s office and slamming the door shut behind him. He doesn’t care what work she might be doing; this is more important. This is a crisis.

She must get some sense of that from the look on his face, or maybe from the way he’s slumped back against the door and panting, because she doesn’t snap at him or even look that annoyed.

Stiles waves his phone at her and tries, in a rambling and adrenaline-fueled outburst, to explain. He’s not sure how much of it is actually anything bordering on English, but he thinks he ultimately conveys the important bits.

While he talks, Lydia rests her elbows on her desk, steepling her fingers, and looks intrigued. “So,” she says when he finally runs out of breath, “what did Derek actually say?”

“I don’t know!” Stiles says, only a little hysterically.

“You didn’t read the email?“

Stiles shakes his head, sheepish. She’s undoubtedly judging him so hard right now, and he knows, okay. He knows.

Lydia lets out one of her trademark "why am I surrounded by incompetence” sighs and holds out her hand for his phone. Stiles meekly hands it over.

Lydia unlocks it without asking him for the passcode, which suggests either that Stiles needs to make his passwords stronger or that they spend entirely too much time together. Then she reads, and Stiles chews on his thumbnail and practices the breathing exercises his therapist taught him.

Lydia hands his phone back after only half a minute, her expression softening to something almost sympathetic. That’s when Stiles truly comprehends how truly, apocalyptically bad this is. Lydia never looks sympathetic.

“Well?” Stiles croaks.

“It just says he’d like you to come see him in his office as soon as you get a chance.”

Stiles has never heard anything so ominous.

“You shouldn’t keep him waiting,” she says gently. “Go get it over with, and while you’re doing that, I’ll write you a glowing recommendation letter.”

A recommendation letter. To take with him when he gets fired. Oh god.

*

When Stiles edges into Derek’s office, Derek is standing over by the window. He looks stunning as usual, tailored suit perfectly accenting the powerful lines of his body, but his ears are kind of pink. He’s got out a bottle of wine and two glasses on a little trolley table; he must have an important meeting with a big client later today. Stiles will probably never find out about it, though, seeing as he’s about to get fired and all.

“Stiles,” Derek nods.

Stiles would reply, but he’s afraid nothing will come out but an unmanly squeak, so instead he just focuses on perching on the edge of the nearest chair. He’s never actually been in Derek’s office before. It’s very Derek; it reminds him of the woods, lots of earth tones and accents of green. If not for the circumstances, Stiles would probably find it calming. As it is, he’s not sure he would find anything calming right now, except maybe a Xanax.

“Do you know why I called you in here?“ Derek asks.

Oh god, does he have to say it out loud? It’s not like they don’t both know already. Stiles opens his mouth, and no words come out. His mind is one long internal scream. All he can do is clutch the arms of his chair and watch as Derek uncorks the wine and starts pouring it into the first glass with intimidating casualness. He looks like he’s not mad at all. It’s terrifying.

Finally Stiles manages to force the words out. “Because I accidentally sent you a dick pic.”

Derek stops pouring wine into the second glass. “Accidentally?”

“Yes!” Stiles says, latching onto that word like a lifeline. Is it even legal to fire someone for an accident? Well. Probably yes, if it results in somebody’s arm getting lopped off or something, but a dick pic isn’t quite on that level. Stiles hopes so, anyway. “And it wasn’t even my dick!”

Derek puts down the bottle of wine completely. “So… your boyfriend’s…?”

Stiles shakes his head. “Don’t have one.”

“So you’re saying you sent me porn.”

Stiles groans and drops his head to his hands. He can’t look at Derek right now; he’s already reached maximum mortification levels. “No, I, um, so the thing is, I have Lydia Martin down in my email contacts as ‘Divine Goddess,’ which alphabetically puts her next to you, so I accidentally emailed the dick pic to you when I meant to email it to her, and before you say anything, I know I’m not supposed to send explicit materials over the company email and I swear it won’t happen again.” Assuming Stiles ever gets another chance to use his company email, that is, but he’s not going to be the one to point that out.

There’s a long silence, and Stiles risks a peek up through his fingers. Derek is frowning at him, but not like he’s angry. More like he’s confused. “Isn’t Lydia married? To a woman?”

That makes Stiles forget for a moment about being embarrassed. He sits up straight, flailing his hands in a chopping motion. “Whoa, no, it’s definitely not like that. It’s not a flirting thing. We’re just friends, and you’re right, she and Allison are very happily married and I’d never do anything to get between that. Ever. It’s just, she set me up for an online dating profile recently and I kind of hate it because I keep getting dick pics, so that pic you saw was like, like a status update. Like, 'Look how terribly this is going, I hate all of these dudes sending me dick pics because none of them are you'—”

Shit. He bites his tongue so hard he’s surprised he doesn’t taste blood, because nope, what the fuck, that was not supposed to be a part of this conversation, and now Derek’s grip on the neck of the wine bottle has gone white-knuckled and he’s just staring at Stiles, all deer-in-the-headlights.

Not for the first time in his life, or even the hundredth, Stiles wishes he had the power to rewind the last ten or so seconds of what just happened and start over. Unfortunately, no such luck.

“Just to clarify, I didn’t mean to imply that I want you to send me a pic of your dick,” Stiles blurts. “I just meant in a, um, a purely romantic sense, no one on that app is as good as… yeah.” Stiles trails off because Derek’s eyes are continuing to widen, and that’s probably not good. “Oh god, I’m making this worse. I shouldn’t be allowed to talk.”

Derek still doesn’t say anything. Maybe it’s an interrogation tactic or maybe (probably) he’s just in shock.

Either way, Stiles feels compelled to break the silence. “Are you going to fire me?” he asks tentatively, after what feels like the longest and most awkward minute of his life to date.

Derek finally blinks and relaxes his death-grip on the wine bottle. “I’d be crazy to fire you. You’re one of my best employees.”

“Except for the whole dick pic thing,” Stiles points out, risking a smile, and Derek smiles back. Stiles feels a little of the oh-god-I’m-about-to-get-fired tension leave him, and in its place the usual oh-god-I’m-in-the-presence-of-Derek-Hale tension starts creeping back in. That’s a lot more familiar, and a lot more exciting.

“Oh, I don’t know, I didn’t…” Derek starts, looking away out the window and then nervously meeting Stiles’ eyes. “I didn’t mind the dick pic thing so much. Not when it was from you.”

It’s Stiles’ turn to stare in shock.

Derek spins jerkily on his heel and picks up one of the wine glasses and starts chugging it down, and okay. Maybe Stiles isn’t the only one who’s pretty nervous right now. That thought makes Stiles a whole lot less nervous, and he stands up and moves around the desk while it lasts. Derek turns his head a little. Stiles reaches up and takes the glass away and sets it down on the table.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have— It’s not professional—” Derek starts.

“I would send you a picture of my dick if you asked,” Stiles blurts, and it feels like one of the bravest and most romantic things he’s ever said.

“I would send you one, too,” Derek says, blushing furiously.

That basically shreds the last bit of Stiles’ self-control. He grabs Derek’s fancy silk tie and tugs, and, before he can second-guess it, kisses Derek Hale the way he deserves to be kissed, thoroughly and so enthusiastically that Derek ends up sinking back to lean against his desk like his knees just won’t hold him up anymore.

“So, just to clarify,” Stiles pants, resting a hand on Derek’s chest and thrilling that he can do that now, “I’m definitely not fired.”

Derek rolls his eyes and pulls him back in.

(end)

[weightlossfitness2]

Here’s Why I Quit Social Media & What I’ve Learned

I’ll be trustworthy: I’m extra cautious of technological innovation than most. After all, I wrote my school thesis on futuristic dystopian fiction, and assume we’re dangerously near residing in Black Mirror‘s social ratings-driven “Nosedive” society.

Curious to seek out out if analog enlightenment awaited me offline, I made a decision to embark on a 30-day social media detox. The stunning end result? My preliminary experiment has since reworked right into a deliberate way of life option to give up social media completely.

Here’s a glance into my determination, journey, and analysis. Plus: some meals for thought to see if taking a break from social media could possibly be the life hack you didn’t know you wanted.

Why I Quit Social Media

Striving for Authenticity

Ironically sufficient, my first-ever Facebook quote completely encapsulates a key purpose why I give up social media. From the movie Almost Famous, it reads: “From here on out, I am only interested in what is real. Real people, real feelings, that’s it, that’s all I’m interested in.” Henry David Thoreau penned the same maxim that’s additionally profoundly influenced me for years: “Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”

Authenticity and transparency are values I try to domesticate in myself and search in others. Truth be advised, social media is extra aptly suited to mild bites by means of rose-colored lenses. (And whereas there’s been a latest uptick of digital “getting real” moments, Cazzie David and Carrie Battan illustrate that they usually tread a nice line between uncooked honesty and strategic baiting.)

Seeking Validation

The performative facet of social media—parodied as Instagram vs. actuality—by no means sat nicely with me. Somewhere alongside the road, placing your “best self” ahead and staying “on brand” in feed turned a part-time job for on a regular basis folks.

Thinking about my very own social media patterns, I questioned my motivations behind my uploads. What am I looking for with every put up? Do I really want digital consideration and validation? Sure, I prefer to flex stylish outfits, write pithy commentary, and commemorate my travels and particular events as a lot as the subsequent individual. But I’ve come to understand that my every day doings don’t warrant a public discussion board, and there’s a sure dignity to staying non-public. I additionally need to take pleasure in my moments within the second, as a substitute of compulsively refreshing my display to take a look at metrics on how nicely my life performs.

To be truthful, our powers are restricted in resisting these urges. According to a former Google engineer turned pioneer of humane expertise, digital media is designed to perform like slot machines. Platforms mimic the neurological highs and lows of chasing the fun of reward, which may encourage behavioral dependancy.

VALUING TIME

As I discussed in my meditation problem assessment, I purpose to place my time to good use. It comes as no shock that senseless scrolling is counterproductive to doing simply that. À la Carrie Bradshaw, I couldn’t assist however surprise: If I spend an hour per day on social media, what might I obtain by dedicating that point to a extra worthy pursuit over the course of a month? A yr? A lifetime? Armed with and empowered by this attitude, my determination to give up social media was a no brainer.

Minding My Mood

I’ve been drawn to the concept of quitting social media for years—however I held onto my excuses and caveats for expensive life. For starters, I really like my memes and I’m a tradition vulture. Then, from a sensible standpoint, components of my job usually overlap with social media. And most significantly, social media gives quick access to verify in on household and buddies (which I’ll contact upon quickly). But in any other case, particularly within the weeks earlier than going chilly turkey, the platforms took a critical toll on my temper—and fairly frankly, my sanity.

These frustrations vary from selling eerily unnatural requirements of magnificence, the complicated politics of the platforms, and even its terminology. (The irony of watching “friends” battle by way of Facebook feedback wasn’t misplaced on me. Also, the concept of being a “follower” on Instagram—and particularly having a way of value ascribed to that quantity—are harsh realities I’ve hassle stomaching.) In reality, the time I wasted distressed over these triggers far exceeded the time I spent really collaborating on social media.

By trying on the analysis behind the psychology of social media, I realized that I wasn’t alone in my emotions. A 2017 examine demonstrates that heavy social media use (over two hours per day) is linked to elevated charges of melancholy and perceived isolation. Similarly, one other 2017 examine reveals that total Facebook use has a unfavourable affect on self-reported life satisfaction, bodily and psychological well being, and in some way even your physique mass index (BMI). Hard go, TYVM.

What Happens When You Quit Social Media?

As of this text’s date of publish, I’ve spent a strong three months off the digital grid. Life with out social media has been extremely helpful for me. I’ve observed constructive enhancements in all the areas through which I sought respite and launch. However, I had a couple of frequent considerations earlier than embarking on this journey, significantly when it comes to relationships and connectivity. Here’s what I’ve found.

maintaining in contact with Friends

At first, this concern was my greatest deterrent to taking a social detox. I grew up on the other coast and spent the vast majority of my 20s residing the world over in Tel Aviv. Profile-hopping was a easy approach to verify in on folks I cared about with out utterly staying out of the loop. But as I’ve realized, quitting social media doesn’t routinely lend itself to social suicide. Instead, I’ve been capable of higher give attention to the standard, relatively than amount, of my relationships. Intermittent catch-ups are extra intimate than viewing posts and tales broadcast to most people. And giving somebody my undivided consideration is extra significant than any thumbs up, double-tap, or remark with heart-eyed emojis. I’ve been capable of get a lot extra substance from these devoted interactions, as a substitute of mistakenly considering that passive public exchanges actually satiated my urge for food for connection.

As for main life moments and phases you don’t need to miss? (Think birthdays, betrothals, and infants.) Ask for deets and photographs privately, and I’m constructive you shall obtain. Some buddies, in the event that they actually love you, will even screenshot and ship over these memes you so dearly miss.

Navigating FOMO

Initially, I used to be barely involved about falling prey to the pangs of FOMO. But in all honesty, JOMO is completely legit. I really feel lighter and brighter with out wittily captioned and elegantly filtered photos of celebs, influencers, and sure—even my buddies—taking on useful headspace. Social media envy is an actual difficulty for many, as a 2019 survey from Northeastern University demonstrates. Well over half of respondents reported feeling envious of each informal and shut buddies—considerably extra so than with public figures and even exes—recurrently by way of social media alone. It seems that whereas “doing it for the ‘gram” may look good in your feed, it might probably compromise your outlook on folks you really take pleasure in IRL. And who wants that?

How to Take a Social Media Detox

I perceive that not everyone seems to be inquisitive about quitting social media for good, and even resonates with my perspective. But by talking with buddies, co-workers, and even strangers, I realized that most individuals are at the least intrigued by the concept of a short lived social detox. I extremely advocate making an attempt and seeing what occurs. What do you need to lose? And even better, what extra do you need to acquire? Do you need to be extra current, use your time extra properly, enhance productiveness, or enhance your temper and well-being? If so, think about adopting the next tricks to reap the advantages of digitally disconnecting, even only one step at a time.

For the Aspiring Digital Minimalist

Resist checking your telephone upon waking up, and put your telephone away/on silent by a given time every evening.

Ditch your telephone at meals and whenever you’re within the firm of others.

Reflect in your social media habits and see in the event that they serve affirming, value-driven functions.

Disable social media notifications to keep away from compulsive phone-checking.

Clear your feeds of accounts that induce envy, anxiousness, anger, FOMO, and many others.

Consider taking a “technology Shabbat” in the future per week.

For the Newbie Social Media Detoxer

Set an attainable timeframe to your detox, and write down your intentions and objectives for disconnecting.

Take stock of modifications in your every day habits, mind-set, and high quality of IRL interactions all through the method.

Reintroduce platforms by the top of your detox. (That is, if don’t select to remain off for longer). Devise a method to make sure your renewed social media use gives worth (vs. poisonous patterns and time-wasting) and abides by new requirements for good and constructive use.

For additional inspiration, I extremely advocate studying Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, Silence within the Age of Noise by Erling Kagge, and Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier.

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