#I bought a clay pot full of clay

[rrrrinmaru]

picasso (marius x fem!reader) (nsfw)

wc: 5.7k rating: E warnings: nsfw, vaginal fingering, handjob, squirting, they're both freaks for each other

“I think it’s pretty,” you say plainly. “I like the look of it. I’ve always had a soft spot for ink wash works.”

The exhibit is held in a famous glass museum in downtown Stellis. There had been a controversy about the full glass walls and privacy issues a few years ago (you had read this case once, out of curiosity, and never again), but that was eventually resolved and now the first floor of the museum was regularly used for art exhibits. 

Before you knew Marius’ secret identity, you had invited him to visit one of Z’s exhibits. And Marius, the most shameless man to ever walk this Earth, had agreed. 

Fortunately, you learnt about this secret before you bought tickets for the exhibit. Not that you wouldn’t want to see his works displayed in the gallery, but the thought of you gushing over Z’s artwork in front of Marius without knowing the truth… 

It’s embarrassing. 

Today, however, it’s a different artist’s work on display. Thomas Mikeden, a foreign painter who’s been going on an exhibit world tour. Stellis is his latest stop, and everything just lined up. Both of you had the day off and tickets were on sale. You had invited Marius to the exhibit, excited to hear his artistic insight about the paintings, but Marius has been… a little petulant.

“I can’t believe we’re looking at a Mikeden painting,” he mutters, arms folded across his chest. “The first time you invite me to an art exhibit and it isn’t even mine; I can overlook that, but Mikeden?”

“What do you have against him?”

“We’re friends,” Marius says solemnly, looking like he doesn’t even believe the words coming out his mouth, “but we suffer from creative differences. Severe creative differences. If I ever have to see the way he mixes his oil paints again, I’d end up on the news for criminal activity. And he said if he ever had to see me try to sculpt a pot again, he’d wring my neck himself. He said my clay pots were an abomination against God.”

You blink at him. “You know how to do pottery?”

“According to him, I don’t.”

And suddenly, you get it. Creative differences, more like a bunch of children arguing over who does something right, or who does something better. Like kindergarteners fighting over whose parent made them the better lunchbox. 

“What are your thoughts on his ink wash painting?” 

Marius gives you an appraising look. “Not his worst work. He’s alright with ink wash. I've personally dabbled in ink wash before. It’s not my preferred medium, but we learnt it as part of our curriculum.”

You turn to look at him, eyes bright. “Really? Do you still have those ink wash paintings hidden away somewhere?”

“Of course. I never throw my works away. I’ll bring you to one of my storage warehouses one day.” 

One of his storage warehouses? It never occurred to you that painters would need a lot of space to store their paintings, even more so if they were particularly diligent and practiced different painting techniques often. With how many easels and canvases were strewn about Marius’ house, you suppose you should have made the connection.

“I’m looking forward to it.” 

The next few works are insightful, to say the least. Marius gets up close and personal with one of them to sneakily point out to you a place where Mikeden allegedly made a mistake and had spent hours trying to cover it up. 

“This is from when he tried to lean into the Baroque style,” Marius says, using his thumb to frame certain parts of the painting to draw your eye to them. “The colors here, see, the stark contrast between the light and the dark? That’s the use of tenebrism, popularised by Caravaggio.”

“Hm,” you note, eyes wandering around the painting. It’s a stunning piece of work, and Mikeden captured the likeness of the male form well. The extreme contrast almost seems to frame the figures with a halo, a light that blooms from their very center to strike at the viewer’s attention. “They’re quite handsome.”

Marius makes a sound at the back of his throat. “You’re more into modern men, jiejie.”

You hide your laugh behind a cough. He’s like a needy kitten pawing at you for attention, and you’re helpless against someone this cute. 

“Yes, yes, look at how handsome you are,” you say, turning around to face him head-on. You reach out, smoothing the non-existent creases away from his button-down. 

Without really thinking too deeply, your fingers linger on the stretch of the fabric across his chest—the thought that you can see them if you squint hard enough comes unbidden to your mind. The small bumps under the fabric, stiff from the slight chill of the room. 

It’s the kind of thought that grips you by the throat, sitting in your mind and taking up space, holding you captive until you do something about it. 

You brush your thumb against one of them, just because they’re right there, because you can, because Marius’ hands are on your hips and you’re feeling a little… playful. 

Immediately, a hand catches your wrist. It doesn’t stop you from pressing the pad of your thumb lightly against that raised bump, and Marius’ breath hitches. His fingers flex against your wrist, hard enough that you can’t help but smile. 

He’s usually the one making you flush in public, so you mark this as a victory. The sight of him, red-faced and pouting, heart pounding so desperately you can feel it through his chest—you pull your hand back, and he lets you go. That hand drops back to your waist as you bring your thumb to your lips, and you hold Marius’ gaze as the tip of your tongue darts out to lick your thumb.

Marius goes still. It’s as if he’s nothing more than one of the paintings hung up on the gallery walls, with how still he is; his pupils are blown wide and he gives you this shaken look, as if you’ve completely disarmed him. Swept him off his feet and left him grasping at straws to find the words to say. 

Eventually, you go back to smoothing out his shirt. Properly, this time. No messing around.

“You’re driving me crazy,” Marius murmurs, his breath puffing against the curve of your throat as he leans down. His voice is soft, barely louder than a whisper, but it somehow feels deafening in the quiet of the room. 

Your hands tighten around the front of his shirt. “Marius?”

“Be quiet for a moment,” he says. His fingers rest on your hips and you swear you can feel the heat radiating off his palms. It makes you want to shuffle away, pull back and put some space between the both of you—he doesn’t do anything, doesn’t tighten his grip, but his hands somehow get heavier. Like a weighted blanket resting around your waist, shackles holding you in place without really holding you at all. 

Your heart kicks in your chest. It isn’t often that Marius gets this way, so quiet and possessive, like he has to cage you in a small corner and watch you to make sure you don’t get away. His forehead rests against your clavicle—it’s not a comfortable position, not when he’s so much taller and he’s pressed up so closely against you that you can feel the way his chest shivers when he drags in a long breath. 

“Jiejie,” Marius whispers, voice quiet. “Sometimes, I wish I could wrap you up like a piece of art and hang you on my wall.”

He’s crazy, you think, and you realise even your subconscious thoughts have taken on this air of fondness when thinking of him.

“Is that so?” You reply, voice just as hushed. From the corner of your eye, you can see another patron glance at the both of you—they glance away, then look back, as if doubting their gaze. Yes, you think weakly to yourself, Marius is indeed clinging to you in the middle of a public gallery for expensive artworks that easily go for three times the price of your apartment. “Which wall will you put me up on?”

This time, Marius’ grip tightens imperceptibly on your hips. “Any wall that jiejie wants to be put up on,” he says huskily. His voice has dropped an octave, and the tone he takes is one that you’ve become very familiar with when you tease each other. Never enough to really commit to anything, not yet, but enough that Marius gets that look in his eyes like he’d very much want to stop being a gentleman about things. 

Abruptly, you notice the double entendre. “Marius!”

“You asked,” he says smugly, lifting his head so you come face to face with the smirk pulling at his lips. He tugs you in to press your body fully up against his, hip to shoulder. “Is jiejie shy now? I can tell you about which walls I’ve thought about you up on—my bedroom, naturally, but the living room is a strong contender.”

You gape at him, too shocked to say something smart in return. “You—! Not so loud, we’re in public!”

“No one’s listening.” Marius tilts his head, giving the surroundings a cursory once over before catching your gaze. “They’re busy looking at the art on display. I’m looking at a different kind of art on display.”

He’s so shameless that it makes you want to burst out in laughter. A different kind of art on display? Who does he think he is, a host from a host club? Where did he learn these phrases from? The Internet? His brother? Worse, Vyn? 

The thought of Marius asking the one and only Vyn Richter for advice on how to pick girls up makes you laugh. 

“You think you’re so smooth,” you say helplessly, lips curving up of their own accord as you reach up to loop your arms around Marius’ neck. “You think I’m going to fall for that?”

“I’m not a gambling man,” Marius tells you, a confident glint in his eye, “but I’ve always been lucky.” 

He puts up a strong front, but you know better. The back of his neck is hot from embarrassment. The tips of his ears are flushed red. You brush a stray strand of hair past the shell of his ear and pinch the crimson tip along the way. 

“Jiejie,” Marius whines, caught in the act. “Come on, let me pretend for a bit. Don’t you want to come home with me and have a better time?” 

He gives you this beseeching look, brows furrowed and lips turned down. You’re weak to that look—it’s suckered you into agreeing to far more things than you normally would have agreed to. But how can you say no to a face like that? To a man built like that, shoulders so broad they could dwarf you in a hug, fingers so long they could encircle your wrist, a face like God himself came down to carve it from marble—when Marius looks at you with that pleading gaze, millimeters away from begging, how can you say no to anything he asks for? 

Perhaps a stronger man would be able to resist the power of Marius’ visual attack. But you never proclaimed to have a strong willpower, and you fold like a castle of cards in a stiff breeze. 

“Let’s finish looking at all the works first. And no, just because you know who the artist is and insist that you could bring me over to his studio to see his other works—that doesn’t mean I don’t want to see the works exhibited here.”

“His art isn’t even that good,” Marius says, just to be contrary. “If you really wanted to see something from him, you should see his sculptures. I’ll admit those are impressive.”

“Finish the gallery, and then we can go home. You get to pick dinner.”

He perks up. “Italian or Chinese?”

“Later,” you insist. “I want to see this painting—” you glance at the title, raising an eyebrow when you catch sight of it, “—Lotus III.”

“Inspired by the same lotus garden that was featured in Lotus 0, Lotus I and Lotus II,” Marius grumbles as he takes one hand off your waist. You slide your hands down his shoulders, his chest, and furtively pat him on the ass before letting him go. 

He jumps, eyes wide as he swivels his head around to look at you. You give him an innocent look in return. 

“If you insist on being naughty, jiejie, don’t be surprised if I snatch you away and kidnap you back home.” The hand still on your waist squeezes in warning, and heat slithers down your back at the tone in his voice. 

You put a hand over the one on your waist, sliding your fingers in between his. “Be good.”

“Good boys get rewards. Is there a reward waiting for me later, jiejie?”

Naughty, you think to yourself, side-eying him. There’s a charming smile on his face, not even bothering to hide the playfulness lurking beneath his eyes. He’s testing you, pushing and pulling at your limits to see how far you can bend over backwards. 

“Maybe,” you reply. It’s never a good thing to reveal all your cards too early when dealing with a von Hagen in a playful mood. 

Marius laughs, leaning in to press his lips against the side of your head. “I’ll be good, I promise.”

The way he practically attaches himself to your hip, thumb rubbing possessively over your waist—you can’t help the flush crawling up to your cheeks, or the heat that flares between your legs. His hold on you isn’t tight, but it isn’t loose either. It reeks of a promise, and you can’t help but look forward to what that will happen once the two of you get back to his house. Or what will happen once you get into his car, when Marius has you right where he wants you to be and there’s enough privacy for something to happen. 

You shift, thighs rubbing together involuntarily at the stray thought. Desire slips through your body like a snake coiling in your veins; if you cling a little tighter to Marius in return, your mind only half-focused on the works displayed on the walls, well, no one will know. 

You think Marius might suspect something, though, going by the way his smirk grows larger with every glance he shoots you from the corner of his eye. 

Like he’s found something he can’t take his eyes off. Like he’s found something he likes. 

You fail to give Mikeden the attention his works deserve for the rest of the time you spend in the gallery, but he’s truly friends with Marius then you think the man won’t mind too much.

==

To your surprise, Marius doesn’t immediately scoop you into his lap when you get into the car. 

He leans over to help you pull the seatbelt, and very conveniently buries his face in your neck for half a second before he pulls back. Long enough for him to press his lips against your collarbone, the tip of his tongue swiping wetly against your skin; short enough for you to wonder if you hallucinated it.

But the smug look in his eyes as he pulls the seatbelt over your chest to click it into place tells you that you most definitely did not hallucinate it. 

“Home first,” Marius tells you, pretending to be casual as he leans back in his seat and does his own seatbelt. “If you keep looking at me with those eyes, jiejie, I can’t promise I’ll keep my hands to myself while we’re on the road back.”

Right, you think dazedly. You’d forgotten Marius had decided to drive the both of you here—it wasn’t far from his place, and the both of you typically take a chauffeured car, but Marius wanted to do something special today. You haven’t been on a date in a while due to your unfortunate work schedule, and it definitely surprised you when Marius pulled up to your apartment in the driver’s seat, the window wound down, sunglasses sliding down the bridge of his nose as he grinned at you. 

“What a shame,” you murmur under your breath, watching as he does his own seatbelt before pulling out of the parking lot. 

Your words make Marius stiffen. He glances at you from the corner of his eye, one hand resting lazily on the steering wheel as the other finds its way to your knee. 

Again with that loose grip that feels like a shackle holding you in place. Marius isn’t doing anything more than just placing his hand over your knee—there’s not even any real pressure behind, no force or flexing or tightening of his grip, but you feel weighed down. You feel held down.

You wonder, a little stupidly, if Marius would do something if you spread your legs apart. 

But you’re on the road. Despite the heat flaring insistently in your gut, you’re not actually ready to risk it all while Marius is behind the wheel. It would have been a different story if the both of you were in the back seat with the partition drawn up. The ride back is what, ten, fifteen minutes? There’s a lot you can get done in that period of time.

Right as you resign yourself to a normal, quick ride back home, Marius’ hand slips a little.

Just a little. It’s so subtle that if it weren’t for the heat practically bleeding through his palms, you think you wouldn’t have noticed. 

His hand goes from right above your knee to cupping the inside of your knee. 

You eye him speculatively. Was it inertia? The car made a turn and his hand simply slipped with the centrifugal force? 

His lips quirk up. “I’ll get shy if you keep looking at me, jiejie. I need to focus on the road.”

“Hm,” you say, feeling your cunt clench involuntarily when Marius’ hand moves further up your thigh. It’s not in direct contact with your skin, not when there’s your silk dress in between, but the material is thin and you swear you can feel the calluses from Marius’ fingers rubbing gently against the sensitive inside of your thigh. 

Fifteen minutes, you think. Surely you can’t die from a little fun on the road. 

“Your hand’s on the wrong place,” you murmur, gently placing your hand over his. 

Marius hums at the back of his throat. “Ah? Sorry, I—jiejie.”

You lift his hand off your thigh for a quick moment, draw apart the slit of your dress, and slide his hand under the fabric.

Directly on your thigh. You even curve his fingers back down so he can maintain that grip on you.

You can see his fingers flex. They’re stiff, knuckles tense as if he doesn’t know what to do with himself. When you peek at him, his ears are flushed a bright red and his Adam’s Apple bobs furiously, like he’s swallowing desperately. 

And right between his thighs, you can see a tent in his trousers. You kind of want to reach out to touch it, but you hold yourself back. 

“Jiejie,” he whines, and chances a glance at you before reluctantly dragging his eyes back to the road. “I was joking—you can’t distract me while I’m driving.”

“I’m not doing anything,” you say mildly, burying the laugh that threatens to escape when his fingers squeeze pointedly around your thigh. The grave you dug is for both of you; his hand is higher now, on your thigh, so close to your core that one road bump would probably be reason enough for his fingers to slide right home. 

You almost want to pretend to jerk forward. But you have enough of your wits about you to recognise that if Marius felt the heat of your pussy through your panties press up against his fingertips at this moment, he would probably drive the car into the nearest building. 

“I’m trying to be good,” Marius complains. His fingers keep twitching against your skin, as if he’s really, physically holding himself back from doing something. 

“Good boys get rewards,” you echo, patting the back of his palm. “We’re almost home, see the gates up in front?”

He clicks his tongue. “As if I can focus on anything right now.” To prove his point, he speeds up, leg bouncing impatiently as he turns into the driveway. “Park, I have to park…”

The whole time, his hand doesn’t leave your thigh. And there’s something really sexy about it, you can’t help but realise—the slant of his jaw from the side, the way driving comes so easily to him, where he only needs one hand to maneuver the wheel. Even the way he looks over his shoulder as he eases into his parking spot makes you want to press your thighs together in a useless attempt to stave off the heat building in your core. 

“Good enough,” Marius declares, switching the engine off. “Out, out, come on—”

He snaps the seatbelt off and practically flies out the car. You’re so taken aback that you’re still in your seat when he comes to your side and yanks the door open, petulance written all over his face when he finds you still strapped in. 

“C’mon,” he whines, reaching over to unbuckle your seatbelt. “Jiejie, come on, come on—”

“Impatient,” you chide, even as you reach out to steady yourself while you exit the car. “Hold on, my heels—”

“Jiejie,” Marius says, and he seriously sounds like he’s about to burst. 

In that split second, you make a decision. Your panties are ruined as is, and you really, really want to be filled right now. You’re not sure if you can make the distance from the car to the lift, especially when the garage is so fucking huge—

“Backseat,” you murmur, and Marius reacts much faster than you expect. He pulls you up and into his chest, making you let out a sound of surprise at how aggressive he is, but he’s surprisingly gentle when he cups your jaw and slants his lips over yours. 

It’s a desperate kiss. Marius licks into your mouth, hands tight around your waist as he pulls you in close. The bulge in his slacks feels like it’s burning a brand into your hip—you want to skate your hands down, cup that swollen cock and rub your thumb over the tip. You’ve never seen it, not yet, but the two of you have fooled around every now and then so you’re somewhat familiar with the curve of his cock through his pants. 

It’s a hefty weight in your fingers, and Marius always makes the most delicious sounds when you rock your hips against him, squeezing around his thigh between your legs as you trace over the outline of his cock. 

“Fuck,” Marius curses. His fingers dig greedily into the sides of your body—the grip now is entirely different from the one at the museum. The positions are roughly the same, but this time he holds you like he’s trying to burn his brand into you, leave an imprint of bruises around your waist so you ache every time you move tomorrow morning. “Fuck, jiejie, your mouth—”

“Mmhmm,” you hum into his mouth, shoving one thigh between his legs so you can get a good seat on Marius’ thigh. It’s as if Marius has a direct line of sight into your mind—he hikes you up on his thigh so the hard line of his muscle presses right into the swell of your clit, and you groan out loud as you start rocking against his thigh. 

Fuck, you think you could cum like this. Marius’ hands have dropped lower, cupping the curve of your ass and every squeeze he makes goes straight to your cunt like there’s a livewire connection. He pulls you so high up that you’re struggling to keep your toes on the ground, and Marius is practically pulling you back and forth on his leg, helping you rut against him. 

His breath is hot. His kisses are searing, and it feels like there’s a nonstop feedback loop where your arousal pours into each other over and over again. It’s a fire in your gut, threatening to eat you alive, and when he pulls back to catch his breath, he immediately bows down to lick against your jaw. 

Marius sucks at your skin, bullying a bruise into the underside of your jaw. He isn’t satisfied with just one, and he just keeps going down the expanse of your neck, biting at any patch of unblemished skin. 

“Baby,” you whisper, one hand trailing down to press your palm over the tight bulge begging for attention. The lightest touch is enough to make Marius groan, hips stuttering as he chases your touch. “Can I—can I touch?”

Marius freezes for a heartbeat. Before you can second guess yourself, he moans into your neck, hips jerking as he pushes his clothed cock into your palm. “Yes, yes, yes,” he chants, nodding while avoiding eye contact with you.

His ears are crimson. So cute, you can’t help but think through the fever in your mind. It’s almost too easy to find your way around the button in his pants, and there’s some trouble with getting the zipper down from how hard he is. His briefs get caught for a moment, long enough to make Marius groan from frustration, but you shush him with another slide of your hips, cunt wet enough to drench his slacks, and Marius shuts up. 

“Good boy,” you murmur breathlessly, arching your back so you get a better angle to grind your clit against his thigh. “Be good, come on, let me—”

Unfortunately, there are no flaps in briefs for you to pull his cock out from. You reach in instead, shivering at the proper weight of it in your palm—skin on skin, you think deliriously to yourself, cunt clenching at the feeling of Marius’ cock in your hand. His cock, so thick that you can’t even really wrap your fingers around it properly, and the head is dripping. 

Marius sucks in a tight breath, cursing as he cants his hips up, almost bouncing you on his lap from the force. 

“Jiejie,” he begs, plaintive and desperate. “Nngh, please, the tip, you need to—fuck, I’m not going to—I’m going to cum, jiejie…”

And you stop thinking. You grab one of his hands and drag it to your front, so commandingly that Marius’ head flies up. His eyes are red, lips parted as he sucks in a shaky breath every time you swipe your thumb across the sensitive slit at the head of his cock. 

“In, inside,” you whine, rising as high as you can go on your toes. It’s not very high, given how far up Marius has pulled you onto his thigh, but it’s enough for your to drag his long fingers under your skirt and press them up against your cunt. 

Marius’ eyes are blown wide. “In-inside?” He stammers, fingers crooking automatically to press against the throbbing bud of your clit. Such clever fucking fingers, already familiar with the shape of your cunt to know where your clit is. 

Without needing much direction, he uses two fingers to drag your soaked panties to the side and rubs the knuckle of his index finger against your pussy. 

“A-ah,” you cry out, hips jerking. Fuck, you understand now why Marius reacted like that when you got your hand on his cock—there’s something about the texture of his skin, the calluses on his fingers that’s stroking the sides of your pussy, the sheer heat radiating off him—and the knowledge, the knowledge that it’s his hands on your cunt. After months of frotting, the most you’ve done being Marius’s palm flat against your cunt while you held eye contact and grinded against his shaking palm until you cummed—

“Inside, baby, come on,” you plead, rocking your hips insistently against his curious fingers. 

Again, it’s like Marius gets you. He sinks his index finger in; you think he wanted to go slow, because he tentatively pressed up into your cunt, but you’re greedy and you’ve been thinking of being filled since Marius made that joke about putting you up against a wall and you whine, rocking forward until you sink down, down, all the way down to the base and Marius’ breath is hitching in his throat. 

“You’re—” his finger bends, the tip brushing against this spot inside you that makes your entire body shiver, threatening to bend in half from the electricity that surges through you. “Shit, you’re—fuck, jiejie, you feel fucking incredible.”

“One more,” you beg, holding his wrist in place while you clench around his finger. Christ, you didn’t think it could feel this good. It’s so foreign, so much longer and thicker than your fingers—and again, the knowledge that it’s Marius’ hand, Marius’ finger is enough to make your gut tighten and sparks burst at the very end of your fingertips. “One more and my—”

You break off, thighs trembling when he swipes against your swollen clit with his thumb.

Marius groans at the sight of you, leaning in to bite at your lips. “One more and my thumb on your clit? Is that what you want, jiejie? Is that what you need?”

“Mmhmm—ahhhhhn, fuck, Marius—please, please, I’m so fucking close—!”

You’re not even sure if you’re still stroking the length of his cock. All your senses have narrowed down to your cunt, the pressure on your clit and the way his fingers have gained confidence with every stroke—he fucks up into you with such surety, so certain that he knows exactly where to hit to get that same, body shivering reaction from you.

The worst part is, he does. It barely takes one, two, three strokes while he whispers filthy things about how hot and wet and slick your cunt is, about how it’s soaked through just for him, about how he wants to bury his face in it, please jiejie, please let him put your thighs around his ears and eat you out, and you’re gone. 

It hits you so hard you think you almost pass out. The ascent comes too quickly; it almost feels like the orgasm is ripped from you from clever hands that know you better than you know yourself. It leaves you breathless, your entire body jerking uncontrollably as you whine, pussy clenching around those two thick fingers buried in your cunt. You’re mumbling nonsense, not even sure what you’re saying as your cunt gushes around Marius’ ruined pants and when you resurface, Marius looks at you like you’re the second coming of Christ.

It takes you both a while to get your breathing under control. Marius recovers first, gently sliding his fingers out of your cunt. You’re a little embarrassed at the absolute mess you’ve made, but Marius eyes the wetness dripping over his palm, down his wrist, and decides to drag his tongue along his skin to lick it all up.

He even looks right as you as he does it. The sight is enough to make your clit throb, as if gearing up for a second round. Oh, you could definitely do a second round, but you think you’d prefer for it to be in a room with a bed and not a garage.

Almost absentmindedly, you start to rub your thumb against the cockhead in your grip.

“F-fuck,” Marius groans lowly, free hand reaching out to grab your wrist. “Wait, wait—nnngh, sensitive. Give me a moment.”

You pause. You look down.

His briefs are stained. There’s a massive wet spot at the front, and when you drag your fingers out, they’re coated in a sticky, white fluid. 

You look Marius in the eye as you, too, lift your fingers to your lips. You stick your tongue out, wiping the threads of cum on your tongue so Marius can see how white looks in your mouth—and he flushes even redder than he already is, eyes darting away before darting back, as if he can’t decide whether he wants to look or not—and then you swallow. 

Marius is speechless for a while. 

“That was really hot,” he says eventually, voice hoarse. “I—fuck, jiejie, I can go again. I’m serious, just give me a minute.” 

You suck on your fingertips for a moment. You’re clearly ready for a second round, but you know he gets more desperate when you keep him hanging. And a desperate Marius is always a delight to work with. 

“Bedroom?” You suggest, and your cunt tightens at the way his eyes immediately go dark with desire.

==

© rrrrinmaru 2024 | no unauthorised publication or reproduction allowed

[rainbowjay20]

Arts &Crafts were always a thing in my family. Both Grandmothers were artistic. My Mom's mother painted. Very well.

My Dad's mother threw pots. Like she had a wheel and kiln in the basement in the 50's. I don't remember much about that or doing art with my Dad's mom. I do have some of her art somewhere. Some holiday decorations and all that, but it is properly put away.

But with my Grandmom Beautiful, (that's what we called her, my cousins and I) we were always doing a project. I took a painting class with her at the local college. That's where the beach painting that's in my front room came from. I entered it in a festival in high school and won third place.

(Top two: Grandmom's Bottom:Me)

We also did other crafts too. Rubbing stamping. Clay. Reverse painting on glass in a class at A.C. Moore's (A.K.A. A.C. Morons but only when we spent too much money!) I also never had a store bought costume and a few clothes that were handmade too. (At the time, however, there was in my head, too fine a line between making clothes because you wanted to and making clothes because you had to. We financially fell somewhat to the red sign of the line.) I did have some ideas for dresses and clothing but I had trouble getting what was in my head onto the paper. No one had ever formally taught me figure drawing, so I'm suprised I even managed something human looking! My mom was handy with a pattern but without she couldn't sew much without one.(There was the ice cream cone...)

I did learn cross-sitch and crochet though. I was good enough at cross-stitch that I remember selling a large Bug Bunny pattern to one of my classmates.(prior to Etsy!) I'm sure I way undervalued it. (This looks like the one I remember doing. About 10x 14?)

I also crocheted. I would have learned knitting but my mom didn't know how. There was a simple reason. She was left handed. No one she knew was able to teach her backwards. LOL This was prior to the internet and everything being on YouTube. Now if there is something you want to learn, just Google or Youtube it! She did know how to quilt but I stayed away from the sewing machine.

My Dad used to say, I told you that to tell you this.

In the process of cleaning the house, I have been coming across old art projects half finished. I don't think I have ever finished a full blanket. I did a baby blanket once.

Here are the ones I found.

I decided to try and finish them. I may run into problems matching dye lots but I have to run out of these skeins first. So I started with the rainbow(jay!) blanket. I decided to unroll the skein a bit so it would be easier to work with... It went all over the place. Then it got horribly tangled. I've been untangling for four straight days.

I finally figured out what part of the problem was. I was getting these snags. I was pulling and it would stick. The yarn wasn't knotted just stuck together. It was this.

Frayed pieces of excess yarn. I think I may have to unspool the other skein as well before I start working on it to avoid getting caught on those tangles. I'm wondering if they were there when I bought the yarn or if the yarn was just sitting too long.

We shall see what comes of this.

If. I. Ever. Get. This. Damn. Yarn. Untangled.

*sigh*

[kuroimarzipan]

i think that it is quite fun that you cannot decide what a plant wants to do really. my mum took up gardening proper as a hobby a few years ago, and bought a bunch of garden beds she filled with potting mix full of vitamins and such, because our backyard’s dirt is mostly hard clay type dirt that isnt particularly conducive for growing fresh fruit and veggies and herbs.

her little garden beds flourished with lettuce and silverbeet and tomatoes and daikon and chives and thyme and mint and strawberries and zucchini and squash and even corn, one year. now, aside from the ones that need to be rebought and planted annually, the plants are pretty low maintenance. and on top of that, they’ve breached containment.

perfectly edible lettuce springs up between the cracks of pavement like a weed, and we pick it for our salads. a silverbeet next to the washing line has sprouted nearly a metre tall. the previously thought unoccupied garden bed, which was currently being used to process eggshells into compost, is now taken up by mysterious mushrooms that do not pay rent.

[misspickman]

5 for the ficlet prompts thing? 👁️👁️

5. sickly / sweet <3 this feels a bit like cheating but i wanted to write this for you (ao3 link)

Summer is the worst season to be hopping across rooftops in a tight and sweaty suit, no contenders. And this being Gotham, the world's favorite horrid weather magnet, the humid summer storms are frequent and unpredictable. It's easier—smarter, and safer—to assume there will be one than not. 

Yet for all the years of his life that he's spent here, Tim hasn't learned that lesson. Not that there's much to do when the sky breaks open mid patrol other than swear and complain while Barbara laughs at him, but it pisses him off how he still manages to get surprised each time. 

It's July and the summer is in full swing, and Tim feels like a heavy, wet rag left to dry out on the sun, except there's no sun and he's climbing up a slippery wall with the heavy cape dragging behind him like a weight. He reaches for the railing of his balcony and pushes himself up and over it, and falls unceremoniously on the wet surface. He gives himself a moment or two of pitifully staring at the bottom of a clay pot (used to hold a lemon tree, a liven-this-place-up gift from Bart, but it hasn't agreed with the Gotham weather, either) before scrambling up. It's a humiliating picture he paints, but thankfully it's close to midnight and the street isn't lit and no one seems to be around and Tim doesn't remember leaving the lights inside the living room on. 

He panics for a second before he recognizes her. Rather, he goes through the mental list of people who'd know how to dodge or work through his alarms without a hitch, and then sees her face illuminated by the laptop screen and thinks, Jesus fu—

“What the hell?” he yells, loud enough for it to be heard through the glass. She doesn't even twitch. Tim swears again and starts taking off his drenched suit. One of his boots ends up thrown next to the balcony door and he's dragging his leg out of the sweaty leggings and it's a pain in the ass and she's just sprawled across his couch like she owns the place—and technically, he guesses, she does. 

“What the hell?” he asks, again, as he limps in. Might be a rude way to greet a person he hasn't seen in a year, but it's the nicest thing he could think of beside You're the last person I wanted to see here tonight. Should I order Chinese? 

Though it seems she's taken care of that already; there's a bag of takeout on the coffee table and there's… a cheap looking store-bought cocktail right next to it. She pays no attention to him, apparently busy with Tim's work laptop that she must've gone downstairs in the cave for, bypassing all alarms—that at least is evidence enough that it really is her. 

She shrugs. It's nonchalant with the ease of the movement, but he can see the barest hints of tension in her shoulders, in the permanent crease between her brows. When she speaks, her voice is deeper than he remembers it. He can't tell why that catches his attention. “Thought I'd stop by. A no-occasion visit?” 

Right. Right. Dammit. 

Tim puts one foot atop his other and drags his leg out of the second boot, wincing as he shimmies his bad ankle through it, and she picks that moment to look at him for the first time since he walked through the balcony door. One quick up-and-down that leaves him feeling naked and open like a cracked egg. 

Something must show on his face because she adds, quickly, “We figured out a way to pull this smoothly since the last time. Don't stress about it.” 

That's extremely not what he is stressed about. Mostly. It's good to know, still, and he can read between the lines and recognizes this as a thinly veiled promise that she'll be getting out of his hair by tomorrow morning. He would prefer it right now, actually, so he can shower and bury himself in a pile of pillows and blankets and sleep through the whole night like a baby as was his plan. It could have been wonderful. It could have been majestic. He's been daydreaming about passing out throughout the entirety of tonight's patrol—Bruce even let him off thirty minutes early, something Tim would usually scoff at, but tonight he took it for the gift that it was. 

“You smell like a wet rat,” she says, like Tim needs more reasons to not want her here. “Look like one, too.” 

Tim flips her off. She laughs, which is a whole and solid reaction if nothing else. The sound fills the room and the dumb, childish part of him preens with pride at the knowledge that he got that. 

She turns back to her—Tim's laptop, and takes a sip of her drink. “You really know how to make a girl feel welcome.” 

“You're not welcome.” 

She might be, on some other, sunnier day. Not tonight though, because Tim knows exactly what her presence tonight means and what she's trying to pull. And it won't work. You can't magic everything that's been said and done by doing one single thing right. Tim would know; this is precisely the sort of thing he'd try to pull too. 

He does desperately need a shower. A guy got in a good kick to his jaw, dragged his brass knuckles hard against his skin, and the blood from it has been slowly drying and sticking to the edges of the cowl, and he's two seconds away from tearing the suit in pieces to get it off himself from how overheated it's getting beneath it.

And he really, really doesn't want to fucking deal with this. 

He kicks himself into motion; routine movements, one leg, the other, cowl off—hurts, stupid—drops the whole thing on the bathroom floor to be dealt with later, walks around the flat half naked for a minute or two to breathe and not steal glances at the person on his sofa in his stolen clothes that actually fit her, which bothers Tim in that way an irrational annoyance in the back of your head does. 

She pays him no mind, one hand on the touchpad and the other drumming fingers against a plastic bottle in her hand. There's fruit drawn on it. It doesn't look familiar, not something Tim would have seen around Gotham grocery stores. 

“I'm gonna shower. Don't touch my stuff,” he says, mostly out of habit. It's what he'd say while pointing a finger at Damian or Cass at times when they crash at his place, and would get an unimpressed look or a vaguely mocking yeah, yeah in return. A scoff from the living room doesn't reassure him any more—it's actually worse. He'd give everything for a Damian in his kitchen right now instead. 

It's a longer shower than he usually takes. The steam fogs up the bathroom, and he gets a blurry view of his face as he wipes the mirror with his hand; a bit too sunken, angular, and yet exactly the same as before. He doesn't feel a day older and he feels a hundred years old and he supposes he should be glad he's lost any soft edges, as it makes him look more like an adult—finally growing into yourself, is what he's heard people say—but mostly he just feels like it's betraying him. 

There's a spattering of dried blood at his temple that he missed, somehow, and he scrubs at it slowly, not in a hurry to deal with not having his apartment to himself even more than usual. There's something especially terrifying about knowing he has nothing to hide and still feeling cracked open by the middle with all his messy insides on the display for her to inspect and prod at. She's the last person who has the right to judge him—she's also the person who can do it the best. 

Tim doesn't like admitting when certain circumstances or people get to him, but he can't lie to himself; her presence rattles him thoroughly like he's nothing but a bag of bones. He just folds.

She must have showered here too, before he arrived, because his towel is damp when he reaches for it. He stomps down the spike of anger that rises at that thought and pulls out a fresh, dry towel. It's not like she did it to annoy him. She totally did it to annoy him. He can't tell exactly how self-absorbed that makes him. 

It's still pouring outside when he emerges from the bathroom, rain kicking against the windows loudly She pulls her feet to herself as Tim sits down on the other side of the sofa, hair still wet and dripping down his shirt. The sense of déjà vu is so strong it's ridiculous. He doesn't point it out because he knows they're both thinking it. 

Like she read his mind, she says, “We gotta stop meeting like this,” between two sips of what Tim can now see is a smoothie. The click-clacks of the keyboard don't stop or slow, her eyes don't move an inch from the screen that illuminates her face in a way that makes her presence seem… bigger, genuinely imposing. But it makes her look more tired, too. It accents the dark bags underneath her eyes and the slight creases by the edge of them that Tim doesn't have yet. There's a tiny pale scar across her upper lip that wasn't there the last time they bumped into each other. 

Which, Tim is pretty sure they gotta stop meeting at all, full stop. They're definitely breaking like a minimum of ten protocols by simply being in the same room together. And usually Tim cares fuck all about protocols but this—this scares him, still. There's a thin line between a presence soothing and nauseating, and twenty-nine year old Tim Drake is standing directly on it. 

He always has this nagging feeling that she's laughing at him, even at times when she's clearly not. She's half-lying next to him with his laptop on her lap and not even paying attention to him—has barely moved since he came in, and has even given him the bare minimum of dignity and not gone through more of his stuff, which is miles better from how their first meeting had gone. 

He doesn't say anything, exhausted and still reeling a bit that he has this to deal with on top of a bad night, though she doesn't seem to expect him to. Deal or reply. A good thing about this is, he can at least trust that she has a pretty solid rundown of what's going on in his head. That had been a difficult truth to come to terms with. 

She offers him the bottle of her blueberry and banana smoothie. It feels like a sort of placating gesture he's only getting because she can feel his discomfort no matter how hard he tries to keep his face blank; he gives himself away just by being and well, Tim has always sort of wanted to be anyone else. 

The drink is a gross purple-ish color when he squints inside. He's never seen this brand before, so he figures she must have been holding it when whatever threw her here from the future struck. The label on the bottle insists that it's fresh fruit but the taste of artificial sugar leaves Tim sure that it hasn't been fresh for a day of its sad sugary life. 

If ten years from now he turns into a person who willingly drinks teeth-rotting sweet smoothies, maybe he's fine here as he is, actually. He downs the rest of the drink. 

There's a brief moment where Tim thinks that maybe he's managed to get under her skin, but the hint of annoyance that crossed her eyes is gone as quickly as it appeared. This, among many others, is one of the reasons Tim can't stand her: she's near impossible to shake up and it's almost as infuriating as the knowledge that he'll never grow past 5'6.

The aftertaste is pretty bad, makes his mouth feel like it got an instant coating of sugar all over, but it's certified future-beverage and he can appreciate the novelty.  The bits of fruit are scarce and tiny enough to swallow and ignore which he does appreciate. Another thing he's not growing out of anytime soon, it seems. 

“God, I forgot how shitty laptops were at this stage,” she's muttering as she works and it hits him then why her voice struck him as weird at first: it's closer to his own than he remembers. He wants to ask about it—knows that it's invasive as hell but what stops him in the end aren't his good graces but the knowledge that she wouldn't tell him anything about the future, even such inconsequential detail that concerns them and only them. 

(For what's not quite the first time, but a rare occasion certainly, he finds himself wanting to know this person. Wondering who she is on a daily basis and if she still prefers scrambled eggs to omelette. Their hair is pretty much the same length but she wears it better—carries herself better, even dressed in his own clothes in a place out of her time, there is a base firmness to her every move that Tim feels he lacks. When he'd borrowed her staff to parry a blow mid fight, it weighed the same.) 

He taps the top of the laptop and asks, “Which one should I get?” and watches her almost answer before she catches herself and kicks him in the thigh instead. 

A loud alarm blares from underneath a pillow where she tucked her phone away. She swipes it away and gives him a look. Tim, determined to pretend there's nothing worth paying attention to, stares at his own phone and ignores her as she fills them two cups of the cocktail she brought. A text from Dick, two from both Cassie's, Bruce—he puts his phone down just in time to be handed a drink. 

He wraps his palm around the cool, almost too full glass, debating just throwing it all back and going to sleep when he catches her looking at him expectantly, holding her own glass to him. Tim stares at her for a moment before clinking his glass against her and taking a sip, too thrown off to remember his initial plan. He grimaces; she grins, eyes crinkling with what Tim can't deny is joy. “Cheers.” 

It's worse than the smoothie, somehow it tastes sticky and he can't sort out the ingredients except something citrusy, but he drinks it out of some sense of dignity or whatever. The realization of why she's here has sunk in and he's… feeling sort of detached. He's been pointedly not thinking about it. Now, it's impossible. There's cheap alcohol in his hand and she's pulled out a bowl sized cake from behind one of the takeout bags and put it between them, two forks stabbed in the top of it. 

“How's it feel?” she prods. Tim rolls his eyes. It's a stupid question that she knows the answer to. “Being twenty?”

“How's it feel being thirty?”

She stuffs a big piece of cake in her mouth. “Pretty alright, honestly.” 

God, Tim hopes he gets there. He bites his cheek at the thought alone, feeling uniquely ridiculed and ashamed, even though he knows that's not the point of this visit. It's just—it's hard not to feel inadequate next to her. Even though he's seen her get beat and yelled at and watched her yell herself hoarse in a voice that sounded a bit too close to someone else, but through it all she carries herself with an air of a person who's got it. Has cracked it. 

Tim—present time, newly twenty years-old, a tangled up mess of too sharp corners—hasn't cracked shit and he doesn't know shit. If anything, he feels like he knows less with each passing day. 

The cake at least is pretty good, if a bit unbaked in the middle. It's more of a bigger brownie in a bowl than it is a cake, which makes sense, as he's never been much of a birthday cake person. “What's with all the sweet stuff?” 

“I know you like it,” she says, and when Tim doesn't reply, adds, “You'll learn to appreciate it.” Shrugs. “Or not, I don't give a damn.” 

Except she clearly does, at least enough to come all the way here. 

“You jumped through time and space,” he sighs, stabbing at the crumbling remains in the bowl, “To give me a cake.” 

“A reminder.” 

He scoffs. “Of what?” 

She only looks at him, but Tim can tell what she's thinking. You are here, you are alive, breath after breath, and you will be so for many years to come. 

She says, “I couldn't remember shit from my twentieth birthday. Wondered why.” She tilts her head. The hair tucked behind her ear curls as she does so, a bit frizzy from how it's been left to dry on its own. “I think I got it now.” 

There's a smugness in her voice that doesn't come through the expression on her face. Quieter, she adds, “And… I guess I wanted you to remember it.” Tim gets that; it felt like an opportunity to mend something. Who wouldn't jump at the chance of making amends with the past? “You'll appreciate it one day.” 

“You know, each time I think you've said something nice to me, the condescension bleeds through and kind of ruins the effect.” 

“You're too easily condescended to.” She knows him too well. 

Tim falls asleep with the sickly sweet taste of the shitty cocktail in his mouth, and by the time the sun comes out he has his apartment to himself again, and there's a message left in his laptop's notes app that he won't read until curiosity eats him away. 

[tigerstrikesasteroidnetwork]

PHL / Meoto Yunomi

Meoto Yunomi December 9, 2023 - January 13, 2024 Tiger Strikes Asteroid Philadelphia

2nd Thursday Receptions: December 14th, 2023 January 11, 2024

Closing Reception - Soup’s On / empty cup / bowl January 13, 3-6 p.m. @TSAPhilly - All are Welcome Give a $20.00 donation and visitors will receive one surprise cup/bowl. Surprise Cup Package Limited to 50 people

Proceeds split between The Mazzoni Center & WIlliam Way

[Catalog of Works]

A “yunomi” is a handle-less Japanese teacup used for daily tea drinking. The tradition of making Yunomi has evolved since its conception in the 16th century and contemporary artists have expanded on the variety of styles and shapes, departing from the traditional footed, cylindrical style.

Artist/Curator Terri Saulin sent out invitations to a select group of artists during 2023’s Pride Month to honor our LGBTQA+ friends. Using “Meoto Yunomi '' as a vehicle to challenge heteronormative power dynamics, artists were asked to create two cups that absolutely have to be together…. or not.

“Meoto Yunomi” are often given as wedding gifts in Japan, the larger cup symbolizes the 'husband' and the smaller cup the 'wife.’ Traditional partnering ideas are firmly rooted in misogyny and oppression, a system that denies power to women and overall devalues effeminacy or anything viewed as submissive, diminutive. Why not find value in powerlessness? Tradition is tricky. Sometimes the wife is taller than the husband, sometimes the Mx’s are the same size. Sometimes, one feels they must stand alone. Why not decide to stick with love?

I began my love affair with clay circa 1990, after a long and loving relationship with Printmaking, as a student at Moore College of Art & Design. In a few years, I wanted to go to graduate school and continue teaching full time. In preparation I bought a subscription to Ceramics monthly and started taking classes at The Clay Studio in Philadelphia. In 1997, David Gary Wright wrote an article called “The Provocative Cup.” The article hit deep and immediately became part of my teaching practice.

In the article, Wright shares several experiences of how magical and compelling a cup can be. The encounter that resonated with me was with a cup by Clay Mobile Founder Kathryn Narrow. Wright talks about a time in his life when he was traveling, feeling remote and lonely. He visited a craft shop and found a cup made by his old friend Kathryn. Feeling the cup in his hands brought back the sweet, warm memory of being safely back at home. Wright describes this revelation as experiencing “…a profound emotional and spiritual connection between Kathryn (the maker), the earth and myself. Looking back at that moment later, I realized that the cup is clearly the most intimate, timeless, useful pot; it is the one pottery form that transcends time, culture, class and tradition. That encounter with Kathryn's cup marks the first time I recall a pot having had that effect on me. I soon came to the realization that pots can have a powerful emotional impact on potters and patrons alike. Making and using pots helps keep us all closer to those things that are "real" and important in this world.”

Each time I return to this article, I remember the loneliness and fear I experienced when I went back to Grad school and took some life changing risks, from partnered to single to married to single. The moment I began my relationship with The Clay Studio I felt the same wash of safety and comfort. Kathrn Narrow sold me my first bag of clay. I still have a few awkward forms made from that earth and I just can’t part with them. As soon as I was able, I purchased one of Katherine’s cups. A gorgeous porcelain round, on a high foot, blue green, pregnant bud, with a hint of yellow. Imagine drinking from an almost open magnolia blossom, cupped between two hands. I was hooked. I began a life of stewardship, adding special new friends as often as I could. If I had the fortune of selling a piece, the gift came back in another treasured cup for the collection. Then the internet happened… and I acquired an “Accidental Meoto Yunomi.” Mimi Logothetis and Harris Deller got married, well, the cups did. Guess who is taller?

All proceeds from Workshops, Tea and Wine Sales and IG Auctions will be split between The Mazzoni Center & WIlliams Way

No. 5 Butchie Alley - 12/02/2023 - 02/03/2024 Opening Reception - December 2, 6-9 p.m. Featuring live music w/ J Strings - Tea Sale

Closing Reception - February 3, 6-9 p.m. Open to all - Soup & Mulled Wine - Register for $20.00 in the shop & receive a surprise cup or bowl when you visit February 3rd Closing Reception. Limited to 50 people. Ceramics Workshops / TBA

Tiger Strikes Asteroid Philadelphia - 12/09/2023 - 01/13/2024 2nd Thursday Reception - 12/14/23 Teasale 2nd Thursday Reception - 1/11/24 Teasale

Closing Reception - Soup sale/empty cup/bowl January 13, 3-6 p.m. Open to all - Soup & Mulled Wine - Register for $20.00 in the shop & receive a surprise cup or bowl when you visit February 3rd Closing Reception. Limited to 50 people.

All Proceeds from cup/bowl/tea/IG online auction sales will be split between The Mazzoni Center & WIlliams Way.

[inhernature]

The Bluest Nude

1.

When my mother was pregnant, she drove every night to the Gulf of Mexico. Leaving her keys and a towel on the shore, she waded into the surf. Floating naked, on her back, turquoise waves hemming her ears, she allowed the water to do the carrying. It isn’t true. My mother lived hours inland

and her doctor prescribed bed rest. I want her to be weightless, belly up and moon-lit or filling a bathtub with hot water and stepping gingerly, so as not to slip, easing herself into the cramped tub, rimmed with dirt from her husband and son, soaking for as many minutes as she could, savoring the water as it turned cold.

2.

In the news, there was another incident . . . If I describe how

the officer treated

the young woman’s body,

I am also describing

the color of her body.

Let me refuse simile.

I do not wish to write it.

3.

In the flower of my body—    blossoms belonging,                at last,                           to me,    sovereign    place, where I am no one    but myself: peony and cracked vase,                           weeping beech and spiraled shell,                           siren, matron, Jezebel—

a rush of bees enters me, and I am not stung;

petals unfold in night’s bluest hymn.

4.

The blue swimming pool. The blue in a record’s groove, revolving. The pink hydrangea turned powder blue. Glory-of-the-snow blue. Blue-black blue. The blue of a bruise. Wild blueberry blue. The blue you pick. The blue you choose. The blue that bucks us like a bull. The blue bowl full of lilacs. The blue that falls as tufts of hair from the barber’s chair. The blue sun makes. The blue shade of a yellow pine. Television blue. Cadmium blue. Blue twisted into the spools of your DNA, forking into two directions. Blue darkening your knees. The blue you miss because—though it almost killed you—blue was, for a season, your home.

5.

There was another . . . incident.

If I describe how the officer treated

the young woman’s body, I am also

describing the color

of my body.

6.

Then the last piece, a solemn veil lifted    and tossed to the floor. I know the history of my body is a pair of hacked off hands

playing the piano. Day after day in the artist’s    studio, I smell the melon’s ripe decay. I draw a second body, then a third, and so on.

My bodies reveal nothing and conceal    nothing. Pin-up beauty, runaway, Venus of the Circus Act, nightwalker, wet nurse,

odalisque, reclining nude. The women are me    and are not only me. Ours are the only eyes. We construct our seeing as clay or wood

into figurines of air. We perceive their shapes    and uses just as wind is seen by watching leaves. These are the paintings I make of myself.

Art is drawn on the cave of my body.    There are as many walls inside me as there are bones at the bottom of the sea.

It matters little how small I am in the pool    of another’s eye. It’s awe or indifference I crave. I want to be seen clearly or not at all.

The moon is an eye flung open, useless    without a pupil. It soothes me, this not seeing. Painters have gone blind staring at the sun.

At the center of a hurricane is an eye,    in the midst of which one believes the storm is over. A woman’s face can break,

fall as quickly as night. Sometimes, when I cry,    all of the eyes which are mine—painted, sketched, photographed—begin to shed blue tears. I catch them

in my hands or with pots and pans. Or let them fall      as drifts of snow. I eat them by the fistful. When you look at me, in our most intimate

exchanges, you drape my nakedness    in a fabric I neither sewed nor bought. You pin my beauty with a tack against the wall, or me against

a four-poster bed: thighs splayed, nipples spilling    spoiled milk. In every light, the fact of history strips me blue. These are the conditions. The point is

to go on. Drawing myself, as water from a well,    I can no longer believe in an innocence that was never mine. It is impossible to draw

a self-portrait without the other women figured    onto my flesh like barnacles fixed to a gray whale. I am rough to touch. I am the yellow song

of a blue pain. The women and I walk    a tightrope of night. Our eyes adjust to growing darkness. We make of our vision: knowingness.

It’s love the women and I make. Love fashions    our sight. We drink from the Waters That Were Once Snow. We are quenched and we are thirsty.

BY AMA CODJOE (SOURCE: THE COMMON)

[carryforthtradition]

What to do with your Dahlias in the UK at the end of the growing season

I say pot ay toes and you say patatas…

Ok so maybe “I say ‘Day-lee-as’ and you say ‘Dar-lee-as’ doesn’t quite fit into the song but I looked up the lyrics and the words “But oh, if we call the whole thing off then we must part

And oh, if we ever part then that might break my heart” certainly would ring true for any keen or certainly passionate grower of these diverse and sometimes exquisitely beautiful flower group.

I have always admired and respected those that could grow Dahlias successfully as mine always died off or failed to flower.

My interest started with a visit to a family friend’s garden with my Mum and my mother exclaimed at how beautiful the Dahlia ‘Bishop of Llandaff’ was which triggered my emotional tie to the flowers.

I remember all those years ago having a pop of the crimson flowers of the Llandaff in my garden only to find they didn’t reappear for me just like that the next year. So, I deemed myself a dahlia failure until I realised through my gradual understanding of horticulture and husbandry that we all have different soil types and conditions - even in the same town or village and that each and every plant had specific requirements.

So, I realised that Dahlias can be grown in clay soils provided that they are treated a little different and definitely lifted at the end of the growing season and I would say that I would lift Dahlias in heavier wet conditions a little before the heavy frosts start - just when the nights are getting colder.

Some people leave their Dahlias in, including my Mum in the Northwest of England. She has lighter, sandy loam and they are obviously protected but I am not going to take that risk - not since I took the plunge and bought some tubers this year and have been rewarded with beautiful flowers.

They are currently in the greenhouse drying off waiting packing into shoe boxes and taken to the top of the wardrobe - this is the advice from my elderly client who has wet heavy clay that waterlogs in the rain and cracks in the dry spells, and she has the same tubers flower year after year!

One more thing to add is they do like some room and full sunlight, but I will cover the growing conditions towards the late spring when it is time to wake them from their slumber. So, this is the knowledge I pass on to you and I hope that it is of some use.

In the video below, Paula describes one particular method used in the UK for lifting and storing Dahlia tubers to protect against winter wet and frosts

[mainshype]

White in lets create pottery

#WHITE IN LETS CREATE POTTERY HOW TO#

#WHITE IN LETS CREATE POTTERY SKIN#

#WHITE IN LETS CREATE POTTERY FULL#

Coil PotsĬlay can be rolled, cut, or extruded into long rope-like coils. These slabs can be cut into shapes, joined together, or altered to form vessels or sculptural pieces. Slab PotsĬlay is rolled, cut, stretched, or pressed flat to create slabs. After the pot is formed it is usually cut off the wheel to dry. Clay is attached to the wheel head and is shaped with hands or tools as it spins around. A pottery wheel is a device that spins around at various speeds. Making pottery on the wheel seems to be the most recognizable forming technique. Continue to pinch and press the clay into a cylinder or bowl shape. Then pinch the clay lightly between your fingers all the way around the side. Press a hole down into the middle of the ball. The most basic technique for making pottery out of clay is to pinch the clay between your fingers. But throwing, trimming, glazing and firing large jugs would require a pottery wheel, throwing tools, a large kiln and plenty of space to work and store the jugs. Making small pinch pots requires minimal space, few tools, a small place to let the pots dry, a small kiln and some glaze. What you need will depend mostly on how you make your pottery. This could include a non-stick surface to work on, water, clean and sharp tools, plastic to cover work, a place for work to dry, etc. When the clay is prepared check to make sure your workspace is ready too.

#WHITE IN LETS CREATE POTTERY HOW TO#

Learn how to prepare your clay with 3 different types of wedging Preparing Your Space

measuring devices – including scales, rulers, calipers.

sponges – natural sea sponges, special pottery sponges, cheap rectangle sponges, etc.

brushes – a variety of shapes, sizes, and materials.

stamps and texture tools – including pattern rollers, rubber stamps, handmade bisque stamps, etc.

carving and cutting tools – including fetling knives, cut off wire, loop/ribbon tools, needle tools.

ribs – wood, metal, rubber, plastic of all shapes and sizes.

Clay A substance made of natural materials which, combined with the right amount of water, is soft and plastic, and when heated to a high enough temperature, becomes hard and glass-like. boxes but can also be dug or mixed yourself. Minimum: clay, often bought pre-mixed in 25 or 50 lb.

#WHITE IN LETS CREATE POTTERY SKIN#

dry skin – okay, not exactly dangerous, but the clay does seem to suck the moisture out of hands, affecting some people more than others.Īnd of course, use common sense! Don’t put plastic bags over your head, don’t drink the glazes, don’t leave broken pots strewn across the floor of your work space, etc.

toxic chemicals – keep yourself and the users of your pots safe by understanding or avoiding toxic materials.

#WHITE IN LETS CREATE POTTERY FULL#

lifting too much – heavy clay, buckets of glaze, boards full of pots, etc.

unhealthy ergonomics – bending over a wheel or work surface for hours is not good for your back.

sharp tools and equipment – be careful not to poke, cut or smash any part of your body as you are working.

hot kilns – kilns get extremely hot and should be treated with caution.

Mop, don’t sweep sponge, don’t brush, wear a respirator when exposed to dust of any kind.

clay dust – avoid breathing clay dust at all costs to avoid lung damage from the silica.

Just like anything else, safety first! Pottery making isn’t usually considered a highly dangerous activity but there are some things to watch out for. So when we talk about making pottery, we will be thinking in terms of making clay vessels by hand. For this article though, our definition will look like this: Pottery pots, usually functional vessels, that are made by hand out of clay that must be fired. Some simple definitions: Pottery pots made of clay – “I could spend all day looking at pottery in this museum.” the act of making pots – “He enjoys painting, pottery, chopping wood, and cooking.” the place where pots are made – “She plans to move up north and open her own pottery.”įrom there you can get much more specific. The term pottery is pretty vague and has several meanings.

[jocotheoddity]

   Half of the DND campaign I’m in is experienced, the other half isn’t. I’m one of the “isn’t” half, and have managed to keep my child alive. One of the experienced and the other two newbs have lost their original character of the campaign, and the only one who wasn’t actively trying to die was the fucking noob dwarf called Bush. Fucking Bush outlasted a DRAGONBORN and a bear. 

   We call the dwarf Bush because, in our first encounter, he chased some bad guys into the woods. He ran out of movement but could do a single action, so he yelled “I’m a bush!” and fell backward into a nearby bush. He kept this bush until we entered the town we were headed to, because they have a rule of “No outside shrubbery.” It was very sad.  In that first encounter, the only thing I managed to do was set loose the horse which then proceeded to kick ass.

   The Dragonborn was an experienced player, but he fucked around in an antique shop, threw potions at me, and got taken down by an old woman named Tina of unknown age. We love Tina, I bonded with her while the others were trying and failing to kick ass and she gave me candy and a kiss on the forehead. So, the dragonbitch goes to jail and is presumably killed. 

   Then, we go to this swamp town area and, with Bush in a storage hole the carriage, the bear above him sitting on the door near our best healer while the rest of us are talking to locals and shopping. At this point we’re overthrowing the government of the town Tina lives in, but healer doesn’t know that ‘cause he’s Lawful Good and the others are idiots who didn’t think to tell him the why. Bear tells healer the plan but not the why, they try to take off, get knocked in the water, and it ends with Bush having gotten stabbed (which punctured a lung) and nearly drowned, healer just cowering in the water because we’re on You Fucked Up Mode, and the dragonbitch’s replacement having poured WAX DOWN BEAR’S THROAT. Suffice to say we got healer on board with the plan, the locals got some nice bear fur, I got some bear meat, and we continued on with life. 

   THEN, for a trial, we have to find and stop a fucker who SET TINA’S STORE ON FIRE. So, I bring Bush with me into the store to save Tina, which we do. She’s fine, some locals end up helping her more than I could ever hope to. Bush gets the idea to search the sewers for the culprit. He finds rats. Large rats, normal-size rats, all of them diseased. He fails so many rolls that, by the end of the chase and murder of the perpetrator, his body has disintegrated because of all of the diseases shoved into it at once. His bones were claimed by healer to be used as a skele-slave, I absolutely annihilate the bad guy with the power of heaven and hell, we all head to a lake following Bear’s replacement, and we get sucked into a training dimension because we suck too much to take down a government. 

   In said training dimension, we get taken down immediately. Bush’s replacement shows up, gets knocked out too, and we all wake up in a pit with our money and magic stuff stolen. Except for the goddamn saddle I stole from a dead guy’s skeleton horse (it’s ok they were trying to kill us but we befriended the guy. I exploded the horse, and one of our players lost his head to the guy so it’s an even trade. Newly headless guy got a new pumpkin head). This saddle starts floating away, so I hop on and it heads on top of a fucking house, which then also starts moving. The gang all head into the house and get ambushed by a fucking weird worm thing (think SUF wormy boy), Bear replacement and Bush replacement (who is a halfling) getting swallowed. Bear replacement is dead. Halfling is not. I can tell the worm to do one-worded actions. It’s a mess. 

[angelisverba]

thinkin’ bout you

in which harry owns a flower shop and has a major crush on a girl who comes in to buy flowers every once in a while (and he’s too shy to ask for her number) 

word count: 17.3k

paring: florist!h and y/n

warnings: just some pinning and lustful yearning. m for mature...

author’s note: i’ve been working on this forever. not to pick fav’s but i think florist!h comes second to sl23... hes just so.......well, you’ll see!!

*    *    *    *    *    *

When Harry was given the option to go on a playdate with his car-loving and dirty-nailed schoolmates or spending the weekend at his nan’s house, he would often pick the latter. 

He preferred to spend his afternoons frolicking with her Siamese kitty in her wild-flower filled garden, sunbathing in the open grass, or napping on a quilted blanket under the large, round oak tree, with the kitty nestled into his tummy, keeping him warm. When he woke in the arms of his nan as she carried him inside the house for a glass of cool lemonade, he bore a band of pink sunburn over his button nose, and the blue and white striped Mickey shirt was sticking to the areas where his furry friend had provided an extra heat. 

So, it was safe to say that from the start, Harry’s tastes weren’t what could be considered ‘average’ or ‘normal’ or ‘straight’ for a heterosexual male of his age in current society. 

Not that he ever valued those opinions, but their impressions rang in the back of his loving head when the women who he brought to the comfort of his home made hurtful ‘joking’ comments on how ‘peculiar’  his choice of decor was or giving him prolonged strange looks before shaking their heads and yanking their clothes off so that they landed in a forgotten heap in some unimportant corner of his room. 

Granted, he still got a good shag, but it wasn’t enough to fulfill his desires regarding any actions associated with relationships. He wanted someone warm and soft and kind. Someone who wouldn’t judge his home, his music choices, his clothing, or anything else about him. A girlfriend, not a fuck. 

Long ago, he’d stopped caring about what others said about him. Adopting this mindset had given him some of the happiest and healthiest moments of his life (albeit occasionally, doubts merged with the ghastly shadows of his loneliness). Business at his flower shop increased as his charm increased with positivity, and a new life within him bloomed like a baby rose bud when he accepted that being single was okay. The ribbons of his bouquets bouncing with an added umf and the mist that landed on his skin when he changed the water in the flower buckets only enhanced the golden hue of his skin. 

Harry even took to renovating his home a bit. 

 Coincidentally, his apartment was located on the floor above his flower stop, and contained a significant amount of singular flowers in vases or bouquets in empty corners to prove it. An array of pastel colors smeared on the once blank walls. Bambi pink in his bedroom, sage green in his kitchen, and a French blue in his living room. The couch was a suede papaya three-seater with black and white checkered pillows, and the coffee table was an emerald-tiled piece standing on top of a geometric lavender carpet, a soft contrast against the dark oak of his floorboards. Harry’s taste in pop-culture, art, and literature was displayed on the frames hanging off his walls. Pictures and posters of his favorite pieces like Matisse’s Blue Nudes and Goldfish and The Dance II. An enhanced, enlarged photo of maraschino cherries and a raven haired pin-up girl. Another glass table by the end of the couch held a silver candlestick and a small statue.

Sometimes, the miniature Greek statue he bought at a thrift store of a man with his nakedness pure and unobscured to the viewers' eyes made his dick bloat against the seams of his pants. If he stared at it for too long, his eyes drawn to the softened cock between thighs that looked so flesh-like even though it was carved out of some clay or ceramic material, his mind would travel to sensual, honey-red places that he hadn’t been in so long. Harry’s imagination explored- as cheesy as it sounds- the sexual aspects of the male genitalia, and therefore his own sexual expeditions and how much he missed giving or receiving a good fuck. More often than not, he ended up with himself in his fist, forehead sparkling with perspiration under the candle lights in his room as his thighs and abdomen clenched with every buck of his yearning hips. 

The doorknob of his room was in the shape of an eye, the iris colored a brilliant blue. His king bed- no, frame, just a minimalist white base, pushed up against the wall with two tables on either side, both of them loaded articulately with vintage trinkets and ceramic ring trays shaped like seashells to hold his jewelry. His bedsheets were a stylish combination of pastel colors; lilac comforter, mint and sky pillows. Previously, they had been snow white sheets with strawberry print, but a woman he brought over said they looked like the sheets her five-year-old niece had. 

He changed them the week after that.

On the windowsill, a pot in the shape of a white, blue-eyed kitty with vines of string of hearts kissing the floor. A mirror in the shape of a heart with a pink trim besides the lightswitch, above his brown dresser. In the corner, a bookshelf stuffed with books that spilled over the seams, and perpendicular to it, the home of his pet chameleon, Owen (he wanted a cat, but when he went to the pet store and saw the dehydrated creature, he couldn’t leave him there). A 16 x 16 x 30 inch tank filled with a branch that cut across halfway. It was full of all the things he might need, maybe even too much of it, but it didn’t matter because when Harry was home Owen spent most of his time hanging off the collars of his shirts or snuggled in the ruffles of his hooded sweatshirt on his shoulder. The small, color changing friend adored his owner, and only morphed into a mild red color when Harry didn’t feed him more mango. 

The renovations occurred in his bathroom; a cherry-red covering the walls because it looked boring before (at least in his opinion).  The gold piping of the sink accentuated nicely with the darker color, and the sun seemed brighter when it streamed in through the window above his ceramic claw-footed tub. Owen particularly liked the misty showerhead stall in the corner, and as long as he kept his eyes to himself, Harry didn’t mind it if his green friend wrapped around the showerhead and enjoyed the mimicked tropical atmosphere. 

For awhile now, it had been just him and his chameleon (and maybe his mum’s cat if she was going out of town and needed a sitter) but he didn’t mind it. 

He got to meet new people everyday within the parameters of H’s Garden, and they all tended to overshare when it came to buying a bouquet. ‘My wife just had our son, want to see a picture?’ or ‘my boyfriend and I have our anniversary on Saturday’ and even ‘my sister had plastic surgery so me and my dad need something that says ‘congrats you look like Kim Kardashain now’ how ‘bout it?’ 

Stories ranged from sweet, to grotesque, to sad, to funny, and sometimes even evil- Harry didn’t like customers that gave flowers as a ‘fuck you’. He thought it was a waste of beauty and sacrifice. Flowers were living things that had their lives cut short in order to provide momentary satisfaction and life long memories to the receiver, not bitter feelings of revenge. Although it was still business, it pained him that such a pretty arrangement be misused. It was one of the cons of his work. He created what he considered to be masterpieces, and had no control over where they would end up, whether it be as a centerpiece for a candlelit dinner, or in the trash after the apology for a strong argument hadn’t been enough. 

However, Harry couldn’t deny that he didn’t love his job, because he did. 

When he turned 16, he’d determined that he wanted a peaceful life with a job that wouldn’t bore him. He wanted to be as stress free as possible, with his spirituality as a prominent highlight in his lifestyle. When he turned 18, he had determined that he wanted to be a florist, and began to save up to open his own shop with the occasional help of his friends and sister. He refused to take anything from his mother because he wanted to be the one giving her gifts and money and everything good after all of her sacrifices in raising him. Call him a momma’s boy. Harry loved his mother. 

Online seminars and college classes became his best friend, teaching him everything he needed to know about accounting, stocks, and how to keep his business going. He was a businessman first, florist second. During the slow seasons (the start of winter and an awkward half-week between summer and spring) he relied on his investments to triple-ensure that he had enough money to stay afloat. 

On his 22nd birthday, as a gift to himself, he signed the lease to the building that housed all of the pretty plants in temporary buckets full of flower food and water, and hired a graphic designer to design the cursive, golden letters that spelled out the name of his shop above the front door. 

 Now, three years later, he lived as happy as can be. 

And he wasn’t lonely anymore. 

Well, if you wanted to be technical, his relationship status was still a checkmark over the box labeled ‘single’, but his heart couldn’t be fluttering any harder at the sight of one of his regular customers, and she was there, creeping around in his brain to keep him company. 

She was the complete opposite of every girl he’d ever been with. She was sweet, kind, funny, and didn’t judge him for the way he dressed, or his profession. In fact, they bonded over things that previous women had… slyly berated him for. The color of his nails, the lace of his collar, the pattern of his flared pants,  and even the sheep on his baby blue sweater vest.  

She stole his heart the moment she walked through his door with a soft smile on her face, a sparkling gleam in her warm eyes, and placed it in her pocket the moment she said, “it smells lovely in here!”

Harry, awestruck and blushing because well, she was pretty and wore a shade of purple that somehow made her hair look so soft. Two strands of hair were pinned at the back of her head, essentially keeping the rest of it away from her face save for the few baby wisps that rested gently against her cheeks like a lover’s caress. The stuttering, stumbling cupid’s-bow-struck fool replied with, “thank you. It would be my pleasure to help you with anything you’d like,” and that had been his name, signed on the dotted line of a soul contract. Only she was not the devil. She was an angel. 

But even then, it wouldn’t matter. If she was the devil, if she was an angel, something in between or something new entirely he wouldn’t care because he was half gone for her already. 

“In that case,” she smiled, and Harry’s heart sang a melody it never had before. It was like the sun beamed from the spaces between her teeth and tickled the fuzzy spot beneath his earlobe. She had the most amazing voice, tranquil and clear and ethereal. “I just moved into a new apartment and wanted the place to feel like home. I thought maybe flowers would give it a little life.” 

He vividly remembers that the color of her cheeks changed to that of what is called a ‘blush’, but he didn’t know if it was a trick under the light, or a product of his wistful imagination. Her fingers gently skimmed the petals of a rose from it’s bucket near her hip, and one of the straps of the tote bag on her shoulder disrespectfully dropped away from her shoulder. He wanted to simultaneously rush over and fix it for her, and yell at the inanimate object for not being grateful of the fact that it had the opportunity to cling to her shoulder.

But, before either of these inner-conflicts met a sound resolve, her delicate fingers righted what was once wrong, and Harry cleared his throat, embarrassed because he’d stared for a little too long. He wanted so badly to ask for her name and how she liked her eggs in the morning, but instead he said, “there’s nothing like a bit of something pretty to brighten your day. Did you have something specific in mind?”

He hoped that the meaning of his words wasn’t caught on her, or that would be totally embarrassing and ‘loser’-like. 

When she walked out the door with a content smile on her lips, his own heart was beating faster than the flapping of a hummingbird’s tender wings. He was sure that he had never laid eyes on a pair of lips like hers, neither the feeling that blossomed in his chest at the thought that she might be smiling just for him to see and enjoy. 

Of course, it was a silly crush. One that clawed and gripped onto his sweaty palms with no sign of letting go. Maybe, Harry thought, it was because he hadn’t wet his wick in so long, and the interaction he’d had with her had sparked irrational, poem-inspiring feelings within the love cavern of his ribs. Because how could he fall head over heels with someone he didn’t even know? Surely, the swarm of hormone-pumped butterflies in his stomach was the beginning of a dead-end infatuation. 

Right? 

Harry went that entire day, appalled at the apparent angel he had the fortune of being in the presence of in her short fall from the tender heavens. He wondered where she placed the flowers she bought (an arrangement he was particularly proud of, full of lilac, delicate stems of lavender, and puffs of baby’s breath wrapped with a white bow) and where that tiny extension of him was. At the entrance of her home, right below the place she rested her hand against as she tugged her shoes off? At the center of her table? Maybe besides her bed? Where she would see the purple petals and white of him as he wrapped it every time she woke up or went to bed? He hoped- as much as it was a romantic thought- that it wasn’t the last one. He’s been so awkward, so pink. A blush on his cheeks he hadn’t remembered being there since the time he yelped, startled, at the unexpected pain of a tattoo needle, the artist pointedly peeved. Acting like such a boy. 

Right before crawling up the steps of his apartment, heart still bleeding with love-blood from the deadly tip of Cupid’s arrows, he made himself a mini version of the bouquet he’d made her, and placed it at the center of his tiled coffee table. 

*********

A few days trickled by, and the memory of her face drifted in and out of his mind like a giant sway of fabric slowly billowing in the wind. He was just so… struck by a slab of awe, stunned by her kind of beauty. Natural, the kind that hooks you in it’s purity, like the golden beams streaming in through transparent curtains on a warm spring afternoon. 

Her strawberry lips curved elegantly under her nose, and displayed a smile that leaked some sort of heady drug into the air because the air was sweet when he breathed it in. And when he handed the bundle of flowers over to her, the pads of her delicate fingers skimmed the rough ridges of his knuckles. He wondered immediately what kind of moisturizer she used, and if it smelled like honey or lavender or peaches. She smelled sweet. Sweeter than all of the flowers in his colorful soul shop put together. The colors that belong to her, on her person and worn by her, were more captivating than any of the tones that painted the petals on his plants. 

Owen got a kick out of this whole ordeal, though. Harry’s passionate mood had him divulging in munching and nibbling on things that tasted the way he felt; ambrosial, fresh and pure. It resulted in the purchasing of endless amounts of fruit, with many bites given to the tiny chameleon. Mangoes, strawberries, oranges, grapes, pears (Asian pears, if the store carried them, they were Harry’s favorite), peaches and guavas. The sudden craving for fruit might be explained as just a casual craving, but deep deep down inside, Harry knew that it was because he wanted to replicate the feeling that coursed through his golden veins when she giggled at something she happened to find funny. 

He wished that he had caught her name. The girl had paid in cash (and left a five dollar tip Harry fawned over), so he couldn’t have read it on her card, and he was halfway between charming and awkward that he didn’t even think of asking for it until the minute the door closed behind her, bells tinkling in announcement of her exit. He wished for a hundred different things, but he was not the type to live in regret. Not anymore. So after about a week of floundering in her memory, he meditated for an hour, tropical incense on one of his bedside tables, and cleared his mind as best he could. 

The next morning, he did the same thing. Woke up with heavy limbs, plopped himself down on his blue mat and stretched in various positions, his white boxers hanging low on his hips. His lips and eyes were sticky with sleep, and the back of his nose ached with cold air that he must’ve breathed in throughout the night after forgetting to close the window (again) but the pleasurable twinge of stretching aches between his joints were the perfect way to start his day. They urged his mind to transform into the still surface of water, clear and collected from any unproductive-pinning thoughts towards a girl he would most likely never see again. 

Even his clothes reflected his refreshed mindset.

Harry donned his favorite pair of flared  trousers in an earthy brown color, nestled snugly on his slender hips and around his thighs. The tight fit accentuated the way his back tapered into his waist, glutes shapely and sculpted. A maroon sweater vest that had a teddy bear embroidered on the middle of his chest, the small latte-toned stuffed animal seemingly childish, but on him it only directed attention to the spotlight daze of the velvety heart sheltered underneath his breathless plate. Underneath, a mustard long-sleeve shirt with tiny cherries printed on them. Some straight, some tilted or lopsided. His shoulders and biceps were hidden in the floofy bunches of cloth, anonymity given to the true thickness of his ink slathered skin. 

He looked like a corduroy dream. A thick milkshake of patterns and colors, but he managed to pull it off.

A tiny gold hoop on his right ear gleamed under the morning sun coming in through the windows and a pearl necklace rested against the downy skin of his throat. Slender fingered tipped with a coat of pure white, with his ring fingers accented in a shimmery pink. Chunky rings adorning the base of his digits; a silver rose, a band of dancing teddy bears (a running theme with him), two gold rings with his initials H and S on one hand, and a simple ruby stud from his graduating class. 

He looked good, he knew that he looked good, and was ready to begin a bright, healthy, non-pretty-girl-thought-polluted day. Even the old woman had pinched his cheek whom he had been assisting- a regular-had said he looked like a proper ‘nice boy’ along with ‘when are you going to her a lovely girl to help you run this place, Harry?’. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that he had momentarily sworn off women until his broken sentiments healed, and they had a long way to go. 

In the middle of wrapping a smashing set of tulips and fern stems with a cherry red bow, the bells adorning the top of the door frame dinges, announcing the entrance of another pleasant customer and giving passage to a gust of chilly air. Harry looked up to greet the customer with his usual pleasantries of ‘welcome! I’ll be with you in a moment!’, but the words died on his throat in a desperate hussle, just as the little mermaid had given up her voice to meet her gallant prince.  

It was his own personal little slice of heaven presented to him on the black and white checkered floors of his shop. Hair loose against her shoulders again, eyes cast downwards to inspect a bucket of fresh daisies that tickled the space above her bare knees. How she could wear a skirt in this biting weather, he didn’t know, and it partially prevented him from continuing his pursuit of admiring her because the first thought his caring mind jumped too was, ‘is she cold? And if so, does she need a sweater? Because I will gladly give her one.’ His second thought, however, was ‘how could someone be that beautiful?’. The third was something along the lines of ‘all my yoga has gone to shit, and I’m okay with that’. 

He cleared his throat, tightened the bow around the stems of the flowers in his hands and said, “I’ll be with you in a moment, love!” His head bowed, looking at his work because he wasn’t sure he could afford the medicals for the paralysis that was sure to take over his meek self if they made eye contact so soon. Harry needed a moment of homeostasis, his soul adjusting to her dulcet presence. 

The woman he was assisting, Edna, spoke, drawing him out of his daze, but he had been so deeply in thought that he had not heard what she said. 

“What was that?” He asked her. He grabbed Kraft paper from the roll by the register to wrap up her arrangement. 

“The girl. You like her?” She was smiling at him, wagging a finger the way his nan used to do when she caught him with his hand in the cookie jar. “Don’t lie to me, I recognize that look. I’ve given and received that look many times throughout my life.” 

The woman was not wrong. With age, comes wisdom, Harry thought, smiling to himself at being caught. A dimple carves itself into his cheek, nestling onto the space above the corner of his mouth as if he had no choice in the matter. The apples of his cheeks were shadowed with a dusky pink, and the tip of his nose was twitching like a rabbit when it stood on its rear and sniffed the air, only he was coy after just being caught and wanted to avoid the question as much as possible. 

“I’ve got no idea what y’talking about,” he chuckled, keeping his voice low so that the intriguing stranger in the store didn’t hear that their topic of discussion was her. He moved over to the register to ring her up, and even slid in a discount he applied to customers he liked. 

“Next time I come in,” Edna said, passing Harry her debit card, “I hope to hear that you got her number, dear. Don’t let these opportunities pass you up. Life is short. And who knows? She could be the one.” Harry gave her the card back after charging her, and handed her the flowers, too. All the while Edna was grinning at him, shaking her head like she knew something he didn’t. 

“Take care, Edna. And don’t forget to change the water every 2 days with the flower packets I placed at the stems,” he reminded her, sweetly wiggling his red-lacquered nails at her retreating woman as butterflies awakened in his stomach in a furious flood of nerves. The girl was looking around, her hands hovering over the up-turned faces of a bundle of lively sunflowers, browsing and quietly humming to herself as she waited. 

There was no backing out of this, even if he wanted to. And he didn’t! He didn’t want to back out. The girl was a customer, and he would have to approach her no matter what. But she was so pretty it was also intimidating. He doesn’t remember ever being this nervous while approaching someone, especially one he harbored feelings for. His heart was pounding so loud, he was sure it was audible. 

“Hello,” he wanted so badly to add ‘love’ at the end of his greeting. “Are y’finding everything a’right?” He asked her, his hands wringing themselves, palms moist with sweat from his unyielding need to impress her. The pink tip of his tongue poked out to swipe across his full bottom lip, and soon after that his teeth sunk down into it, nibbling with uncertainty. Harry made sure that he was standing straight, body aligned to face hers because in that psychology course he took once, he learned that it was a subconscious tactic to engage interest and pleasant replies to attempts at wooing another. 

At the sound of his voice, the girl jumped, startled at the sudden vibrations of Harry’s husky voice. Her delicate feet, he noticed, skittered on the floor from her tiny jump, and her doe eyes widened, shouldered rising and falling at a quicker pace than before from the new rush of light fear. When she realizes that it’s just him her hand flattered over the base of her neck and her collarbone in attempts to soothe her racing heart. 

“M’s sorry,” he whispers, his hand clamping over his mouth, and then lowering to his chin when he speaks again, “didn’t mean to scare y’love.” This time he can’t restrict himself. It comes so naturally, like the endearment was meant for her, and when a flush covers the bridge of her nose his first instinct is to coo at her for looking so cute. The second is a surge of guilt for having scared her to such an extent. 

“It’s okay,” she says, a little out of breath. The blush on her face was partly because she was embarrassed at her own reaction, while the other was that she had let herself act so freely and uncoordinated in front of someone that looked like him. Handsome and sweet and eyes so green they refreshed you upon first glance. Like the cool burn of water going into a mouth that had just chewed a stick of minty gum. “I want to buy these flowers.” 

God help him. Her voice alone was enough to make him melt. The lilts and melodies of her voice swarming all four of the ventricles in his heart with warmth, and every blood cell that passed contained a glowing heat, buzzing with her energy. 

She points to the sunflowers, her gaze lingering on them with longing. A soft smile toying on her mouth, and Harry could see the tendons in her throat stretch as she inhaled to add another thought to her sentence, “Do you sell vases by any chance?” The girl looked at him shyly, her eyelashes almost twinkling as she blinked, and his heart soared, “I had a really nice one in the shape of a big Coca-Cola bottle, and I accidentally knocked it over, so now I have nothing to put them in.” 

Harry is incredibly enamoured by subconscious gestures that take over her hands as she speaks, fiddling as if the vase she spoke about was in her hands, all in one piece before it was broken. He’s quiet throughout her tiny ramble, listening and taking note of her enticing antics. She’s looking down at the floor or the flowers or her hands, and when her eyes dance over to his steady gaze, “I’m rambling aren’t I?” she murmurs bashfully. 

“No, no it’s a’right. I can look in the back for something if y’like?” He suggested, arrowing a thumb to the ‘back’ he mentioned. “Did y’want anything in particular?”  

“Oh, I don’t wanna be a troubling customer!” She squeaked, concerned with becoming a nuisance she didn’t want to be. 

“Y’not a bother, love. M’promise. I’ll go look f’you. What color did y’have in mind?” He asked her, tone calm and soothing to reiterate his sentiment. She was not a bother. The only thing about her that bothered him was the fact that he did not know her name, and even that was his own fault for not asking her. 

His hands rest on his hips, tattooed cross momentarily hidden by the bunch of his sweater vest  as he waits for her to respond, his eyes locked on her mouth, her own tongue subtly licks her lips, adding a sparkly sheen to it that only drove him crazy. Ever the jilted fool, his mind jumps to what it would feel like to kiss her, or what it would feel like if she kissed him in other places. What fruits she tasted like, and what kind of kisser she was. A timid one? With a patient mouth waiting to be broken open with the force of his own? Frugal? Opening her mouth and giving him everything she had to offer. 

“Something pink, please. If you have it.” That smile again. One that told a million apologies it didn’t owe, with her eyes pinching at the corners with whatever nonsense culpability she felt. Her voice was sweet, Harry thought, like wind chimes on a summer morning. 

Feeling guilty for allowing such dirty thoughts to gallop through his mind when she was so… so pure. Like an angel. Even her way of presenting herself was shy and sweet, yet he was thinking about kissing her. Was that perverted? She was a customer he had seen twice, and his mind was already running wild with luscious assumptions; a sunday topped with a red cherry of sensuality. How awfully dirty of him. 

But! But those were not the only thoughts he had. He wanted to ask her what happened to cause her to drop her vase, and where she had bought it. If it was vintage, considering it was a Coca-cola bottle, and if she had any accidents while cleaning up the mess of broken glass. He wanted to hear her thoughts. No, better yet, he just wanted to hear her talk. He wanted to get to know her. To know if she was as nice as she looked. 

“‘Course,” he mumbled, his eyes shamefully downcast to the floor. “Be righ’ back.”

Harry stalked off to ‘the back of the store’. Truth was, there was no back of the store containing vases. There was only a small closet with boxes of items he might need around the store, like flower food, rubber bands, and decorative paper for the bouquets. A crate of bottled water for when he got too lazy to climb up the back stairs and into his home. 

His home. 

Plucking the keys from his pocket, a ring that held a ceramic swan his closest friend Mitch had gifted him with a humble admission of ‘saw this at a thrift store and thought about you, H, I had to buy it’, and five keys: one to the front door of his shop, one to the cash box in the register, one to the mailbox, another to the front door of his apartment, and one to his car. The one to his front door was painted at the head with pastel pink nail polish, so it was easy for him to pick out when he was dead tired after a long day of being on his feet (spunky shoes that he liked to wear sometimes didn’t help ease the ache on his back, and neither did his posture). 

The back door that led to the stairs had locks on both the inside and the outside. A deadbolt and chain on matching sides of the door to ensure comfortable sleep at night, and peaceful work time during the day. Not having to worry about curious children opening doors or nosy customers relieved him. It was a little amatuer, but the door made a loud noise when opened because it wasn’t quite level, and he had a tiny key so he could lock it from the outside, too. 

A loud shucking noise resonated through the store as he pulled the door open, and then again when he closed it behind him. The delicacy of his dainty yet large hands were nearly comical around the tiny golden pin stud that hung from the chain, almost slipping from his hands with nerves as he slid it in place. Harry didn’t think that she was nosy or anything like that, bit if he was going up to give her a vase of his own personal collection, he didn’t want her to find out and feel even more intrusive that she already did. 

He was a huge giver, and upon hearing her say that she broke her flower pot, his mind was already thinking about the perfect one to replace it. It just so happened to be sitting on his shelf with a bundle of dying lavender. Climbing up the stairs (the ache in his thighs was a mere twinge compared to what it was when he first moved here), Harry huffed and thought to himself all the ways he could ask for her name and number. 

Listen, I really like y’and would like to have y’number?”

Do y’wanna have my number so we can go out sometime if y’feel like it?”

“Is it alright if I get y’number so we can go out sometime?”

“Hey, love. What’s y’name?”

Nothing’s making sense to him. The pick up lines he had stored in his head for the rare times he would flirt with a girl were slipping from him. None of them seemed worded right to use with her. Too abrupt or too brisk. Not sweet enough. He wanted to treat her gently and to be worthwhile of her time. Plus, it also had to be smooth enough that it made her forget she was paying him for flowers or it would be awkward. He was a twenty-six man for crying out loud, not a twenty-one year old smile at the bar looking for a good time. This wasn’t a ‘good time’. This was… a courting. An inquiry to a relationship. A rose rose in a candlelit room. 

Harry opened his front door and moved in a quick jog to a table besides his hi-fi that held a translucent pale pink glass, fat at the base before twirling and widening a few inches at the lip. An image of a nude mermaid puffing out at the front like an engraving. Cuddling it into his breast, he grabbed the lavender, speed walked back to his kitchen where his toe banged against the metal of the trashcan as he pressed on the lever to open it. He hissed fuck under his breath and shucked the dead lavender into the bag before turning back to his door, closing it behind him, but not locking it because he didn’t want to keep her waiting. His feet moved quickly down the stairs, the one hand not holding onto the vase cupping a hand over the side of his hips that held his keys so they didn’t make much noise. 

The button on the chain slipped from his fingers a few times from their repeated clamminess, and when he was ready to finally twist the knob, he paused to take a breath and collect himself. Harry ran a hand through his hair, fixed his collar, and dusted off his pants legs. He wanted to look perfect for her. 

“Don’t be stupid,” he murmured to himself. He had a good feeling about this. About her. And if he messed this up because he looked bad or said something weird he would kick himself into a muddy ditch. 

Taking a deep breath, he opened the door and calmly walked back, “I’ve got the last one,” he said, tapping the tip of the vase with his pointer finger. It was a lie, right through his teeth, but he was happy to tell it in return for the way she was looking at him in that moment. His eyes rounded out as he approached her, like the curves of hearts that made up the heart-eye emoji, or the puppy-dog face. Just another physical display of his growing affinity towards her. 

“Oh my god!” She said,  “It's so pretty!” The trapped crystals in her irises twinkled with bewilderment at the treasure Harry’s presented her with.  She’s got a smile on her face, and he can’t help but think, ‘wow, she looks like a freshly bloomed white lily’. 

There’s a vintage print hanging in his corridor, a ‘flower language chart’ with different types of flowers and a sentence beneath them describing the messages they send. For example, red carnations= my heart aches for you. The description beneath white lilies reads ‘my love is pure’. 

She asked him if it wasn’t too pricey, and he made up some fake sale he had going on about a hybrid BOGO in which if she bought an arrangement she would get a vase included in her purchase (he added “I’ve got a shipment of new ones coming in an I need the space cleared out before they get here” just to make sure his fib is believable.) And he explains this so shyly. Harry can’t keep his eyes locked on hers because she’s staring at him with an intensity that lets him know she's really listening, and it makes him squirm.  The tips of his fingers tap against the vase, and he’s tripping over his tongue, which is ridiculous because he already talks so slow. 

“I guess I was right in waiting then,” she said casually, waiting for Harry to finish ringing her up. 

His finger froze over the touch screen of the sleek, modern device (he wanted nothing but the best for his store) and listened to the exciting roar of blood through his eardrums at her words. I guess I was right in waiting then? What did that mean? That she was planning on coming back to see him and didn’t? Of course, it could also mean that she was going to buy something else somewhere else, but he couldn’t stop the vine of ripe hope that swelled around his chest. And she looked so apprehensive while saying it. As if she was walking on glass and was looking for cracks as she stepped. As if she was waiting on him to catch on to something.

Harry cleared his throat and looked at her through the corner of his eye, trying to be as discreet as possible as his fingers continued their deliberate work on the screen, “What d’you mean, love?”

“I was going to stop by sooner, but I just got in my head about it,” the girl shrugged, and adjusted the ends of her cardigan so they wrapped around her torso. She had a different bag this time, one of those reusable market bags that was made up of holes, and it was filled with two books and a can of green tea from the vegan store down the street. Harry thinks he can make out one of the titles on one of the spines, which looks suspiciously similar to something that he has on his own shelf. 

“Why would y’get in y’own head about coming to m’flower shop, hmm? It’s hardly that intimidating,” he chuckles to play off the dashes of pink and red that are painting themselves across the bridge of his twitching nose, “I don’t bite, either.” 

And he hopes that his wistfulness isn’t meddling with his vision because he swears that he can see a matching reaction on her own doll face. “I know! I know, it’s just that I can’t help it sometimes. Talking to other people makes me nervous.” 

Harry could coo at her right now. He doesn’t, though. He nods and smiles at her before reading her total out to her, “That I get, too. But y’doing just fine with me, love.” 

Waiting patiently as she digs through her bag for cash, he tries to not stare. However, it’s impossible. His eyes had a mind of their own dragging against the forces of his will to feast on her image again. Her hands and the tip of her nose. The base of her neck and gentle swell of her clavicles. The swoops of hair that hung in a curtain from her shoulder as her head tilted in search, and the how her teeth bit down into her lip in concentration. Harry counted the amount of times her eyelashes met her waterline in those few seconds of comfortable silence. Three. 

“I thought I had cash on me today,” something in her bag clicks, and she pulls out the rectangular card Harry’s become familiar with, holding it out to him between two deft fingers, painted with red hearts on a white base. “I guess I used my last twenty at the organic food store down the street,” she said. 

“It is pretty easy to get lost in there, isn’t it?” He took her card from her, and tried not to make it obvious that he was eager to read her name off of it as he inserted it into the machine. The embossed letters into the plastic read y/n y/l/n, and when he turns back to look at her, he can’t help the smile that spreads across his boyish features.

Y/n. 

Y/n, y/n, y/n.

This is what it must feel to be let in on a secret that’s worth millions of dollars. It must, because Harry’s heart is soaring with a closure he didn’t know he needed. Y/n, y/n. Her name tickled him. Stroked him. Lathered him with the honey smoothness of the beeswax shampoo he bought at that fateful organic store. It was a fitting name. Sometimes, one could tell a person ‘you know, I actually thought you were a Amy or a Jessica’, because their looks and style just didn’t match the strength or modesty of their name. But not y/n. It fit her like a glove. There was no other way to make sense of the way Harry’s brain was thinking. The name was her. 

“What?” Her lips quirk up into a smile and her eyebrows dip in confusion. Why was he looking at her like that? Did she have something on her face? Here she was, opening up to a cute stranger and she had something on her face? This, she thought to herself, is humiliating. Her finger dusted off non-existent crumbs from the corners of her mouth, “do I have something on my face?”

“No! No, no.” Harry’s careful beam simmered down from it’s previous brightness, and his hand nervously filed through the swoop of chocolate curls sitting on his head like a cinnamon roll. “I just think y’name is pretty thas’ all.” 

He murmured the last part so that it was practically incoherent, and lowered his gaze as a searing heat stretching like saran wrap around his head and the divot on the nape of his neck.  Oh, God. He was fucking blushing. Great Harry. A normally favorite among the ladies had been reduced to murmurs and thick, uncoordinated movements. 

Like dropping her card when she piped up again. 

Voice as small and quaint as his had been, "you think my name is pretty?” Her fingers are wrapped around the frail straps of her bag, tight enough that her knuckles were white and Harry was scared that she’d bury her fingernails into her palm. 

“I think y’very pretty.” He whispered back. He can’t even bear to look at her in fear that he’s totally fucked himself over once and for all. His logic was this: what girl wants to be told by the guy they’re buying flowers that they’re pretty after he reads her name from her debit card? Especially one who (if outside female sources are to be believed) dresses “the way my mother did when she was a girl in the seventies”? Jesus, fuck. He must’ve looked ridiculous. 

Harry opened his mouth to backtrack and apologize for being so unorthodox in his workspace, a breath sitting on his tongue with words ready to spew out, but the bell began to chime and it yanks his head from the register to the front and instead he said, “welcome! I’ll be with you in a moment.” 

Flustered and full of regret, the flower connoisseur returned his wired gaze back to y/n, who… was smiling at him? The kind of smile that said ‘oh my god, I can’t believe you just said that. Now please say it again’? Was he… dreaming? Did he have to pinch himself in order to verify that he wasn-

“Thank you... what’s your name?” Y/n looked at the card from his hands and sunk her hand- carefully, as to not get her fingers stuck in any of the tiny holes- and there was another clicking noise before she took her hand back out. That angel-like smear of girlish happiness was still on her, decadently radiating positivity and secret affection. Goodness leaked from the seams of her bones; through the cracks of her breastplate, radiating from her chest to Harry’s. He could feel it now. He could feel that his previous assumptions about her nature were true. She was altruistic and tender, like the inside of a bird’s wing. 

“Harry. M’name’s Harry.” This time, he didn’t hide his happiness. Even his eyes shone with a heightened, clear and sparkly shade of liquid evergreen. The joy that bounced inside of him like ricocheting metal balls in a pin game machine. His slender hand, fawn-skinned and graceful like the legs of a deer, stretched out between them. His mother had taught him that along with the first introduction of his name, a handshake must be present, always. Dipping his head slightly, and his words spongy with love-ditz, Harry rumbled, “Nice to meet you, y/n.”  

She placed her hand in his, and was practically swallowed by only his palm. He curled his fingers around her, thumb and middle finger overlapping around the clammy center of hers. So she was nervous, just as he was. Y/n was trained on their embracing limbs, and he could feel a spot on his neck where the skin palpated from the rush of blood as she observed their entwined digits. Their hands moved up and down, up and down between them for longer than necessary until her chin twitched back up to meet his, and she blinked mawkishly, slowly, like the videos of rehabilitated barn owls Harry sees on his Instagram. 

Then, suddenly, as if she remembered she was not the only one present, y/n jolts upright and shakes her head dazedly. “It’s nice to meet you, too, Harry. I like your nail color,” she added. 

He’s cheesing. A shit-eating grin too big for his face and it carves dimples into the flesh of his cheeks. His name on her tongue had never sounded so appealing, like it was made for her and only her to say. Not even the turtle-doves that cooed outside his window in the mornings sounded as beautiful as she did saying his name. And she complimented her nails! She hadn’t scrutinized him like others had, instead, she displayed her admiration for them. No one- well, actually he can’t say that without offending Mitch- no female of his age had ever received him with such open-mindedness as hers. If he didn’t have any self-restraint, he would giggle. Instead, Harry pulled his hand back so that their perfect moment wasn’t sullied with bouts of bad timing, “thank y’love. I like yours, too. You’ll have t’come over sometime and paint mine, yeah?” 

Y/n laughed, and he breathed a sigh of relief that he hadn’t been too bold, “I’d love too!” With glee frozen on her, she turned to look over her shoulder at the customer who was browsing the flowers Harry had in buckets, “I don’t want to hold you back from a customer for so long. I’ll stop by again soon, Harry. Thank you so much for your help.” 

The moment her hands reached for the wrapped bundle of sunflowers and the mermaid vase, a metaphorical grey cloud of rain and thunder manifested in the space above his head, and blocked all of the sunshine from spanning across his toned, lithe body. Did she really have to go? He wanted to whine. Maybe even wrap himself around her ankles like a child that refused to leave the park. They were only just getting to a mutual spot of comfort! Forget the other customer, he wanted to shout. Harry would kick them out and flip the sign to ‘closed’ if it meant only a few more minutes in the presence of her candy-coated charisma. 

But he knows that’s unrealistic, and settles with, “it was my pleasure, y/n,” a flirty wink (at least he hopes it is), “I’ll be waiting f’your next visit.” His taffy lips wrapping effortlessly around his smooth words, fueled by her welcoming receptiveness to his advances. It would be easy to be himself in the future, a little smoother and eloquent in his language and feeling. He was usually clear with what he wanted from anyone, and made it a pleasurable experience in all aspects for both parties involved (once it was three). Harry wanted to sweep her off her feet, and he wanted it to be an enjoyable experience for the both of them. Revel in that feeling of blooming emotions in a new relationship. A healthy one, in which he wasn’t receiving back-handed compliments all the time. 

He wasn’t superficial enough to push anyone off the table based on looks alone, but it did help that y/n had the disposition of an angel. An ethereal voice, supple lips that looked so silky and soft they had to feel that way, too, and hands that felt so tender in his. Perfect for holding on a late night stroll, or over the center console of his car when -if they go out on dates. 

What really hooked, reeled, and sinked him, though, was the fact that she was so nice to him. From the start, she’d been nothing but polite and sweet with him. Don’t even get him started on the way he swooned at the tone of her voice when he said that her name was pretty! So quiet and velvety, careful and calculated like she wanted him to know that it was okay. That she wasn’t thrown off by his comment. He nearly toppled over, clutching his heart with his legs jutting straight up into the air like a frightened goat. 

It wasn’t until the bells stopped ringing the sad notice of her exit that Harry realized he passed up the perfect opportunity to ask for her number, and as he kicked himself over it, he walked with the perfect customer service face he could muster to help the other person in his store. 

***

Harry was having a shitty morning. 

Not the kind of morning where every aspect of his routine is a terrible mishap, but like the water being too cold and the stove not working or the bottle of oat milk in the fridge being empty so he couldn’t make coffee. No, everything was fine and rolling smoothly, as it should. 

His water was the perfect temperature and ran down the toned bumps and divots of his muscles like the relaxing thrums of a lover’s caress in the midst of prowling heat. As soon as it hit his back, he released a sigh of contentment, his shoulders hunching and head rolling back and his hands roamed his shoulders and the back of his neck, rubbing away any aches that existed. The branch of eucalyptus that hung from the golden pipe of his showerhead fused a thick minty scent into the steam that fogged the glass wall, and the calming aroma helped the tendons loosen like the deflating limpness of untied shoelaces. He spent a few minutes just standing there, inhaling and exhaling deeply and feeling his lungs open and stretch beneath his rib cage. 

It almost made him wish that he’d opted to use his tub for a hot bath instead. 

He was able to cook an egg just fine on his stove, with dashes of Everything Bagel Seasoning with a side of avocado and a slice of toasted cranberry walnut bread, the same thing he had every morning. The carton of oat milk was brand new from his trip to the market the day before, and his coffee tasted the same as it always did. But… he was just... sad. An melancholy soreness that eroded against the insides of his body, consuming him slowly but surely and leaving him with a lost feeling of emptiness and unimportance. 

He thinks he might know why he’s feeling this way. 

While he’s stirring his scrambled eggs, he’s wondering how y/n likes hers. Over easy? Sunny-side up? Scrambled, like him? Did she even like eggs in the morning? What did she eat in the morning? He knows that some people ‘aren’t hungry’ in the mornings, though that’s only because they’ve gone hungry in the mornings before for an extended time period, and after so long of not feeding their growling stomachs, their brain discontinues the signals of hunger. Harry hopes that isn’t the case with y/n, and that she’s eating the proper three meals a day every day. 

And while he dipped a mini vegan chocolate croissant that he got at Whole Foods, he also wonders what she likes to dip chocolate croissants into, or if she even likes chocolate croissants. If she was a person who likes sweet treats, like strawberry tarts with powdered sugar over them or something lighter, like fruit cut into small squares in a bowl. When Harry was younger and would visit his nan on the weekends, she would pick fresh strawberries from her garden and cut them up for him when he’d woken from his nap. Sometimes, she would even sprinkle half a tablespoon of sugar over them. He wonders if she’d ever eaten strawberries like that. 

It’s been a week and a half, he still hasn’t seen her, and his heart is yearning. 

Harry knows he’s not in the correct headspace to assist other people with a cheery disposition about an hour before opening time, and decides it’s best if he writes a note on the door about how the shop wouldn’t open that day because he didn’t want to taint the reputation of his business by snapping at a customer for the only bundle of sunflowers he had, or dissolve into a puddle of love-sick tears in the middle of ringing someone up. Though really the notice just says ‘H’s Garden will not be opening today. Sorry for the inconvenience!’ followed by a frowning face and a lopsided, filled-in heart. 

Harry drags his feet back up the stairs, his lower lip jutting out in a discreet but depressing pout, and grabs Owen from his tank so that the chameleon could curl into the shoulder of Harry’s hoodie while he moped on the couch to sappy rom-coms that would only make him think about her more. At least there was someone there with him, even if his small green friend only used him for mangoes and papaya. They sit together for the entirety of Romeo + Juliet, and when it’s over, Harry’s sniffly and standing up to return Owen to his enclosure and to clean because the riotous emotions that whirl within him are too much to process while sitting down. 

Cleaning wouldn’t help him solve his problems, but it would help him cram all of his worries into a tight corner at the back of his mind- sort of like when dirty laundry began to overflow in the hamper and it requires extra force to shove it all in, only to come all back out like a memory sponge. His tormented thoughts on y/n could be compared to a dramatic inner monologue, very similar to how Romeo feels about his Juliet. But, soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and y/n is the sun. Harry has the play on his book shelf (the one with the side-to-side modern English translation because he was never quite gifted in the English department) and as he reaches for a bandana to tie his hair back, he finds himself resonating with a particular line: parting is such a sweet sorrow.

There was no need to change any of his clothing, since he was already dressed in one of his more impromptu outfits; grey sweats and a white t-shirt that read ‘women are smarter’ in black across his chest. He tied the red bandana into a knot at the back of his head, and lifted it over his chin so that it settled on his forehead, sweeping his hair back with a final push back. It doesn’t get in his way when he crouches to clean his various tables, spraying cleaning products with his shirt pulled over his nose, another organic product that’s supposed to be less harmful and smells like cinnamon and sandalwood. His shoulder blades begin to ache because he’s being a little more aggressive than he has to be, but the green tiles were sparkling so he was content. 

He washes the dishes, mops the kitchen floor, vacuums the carpets, cleans Owen’s habitat, and tidies the mail that piled up on the table when he finally calls it quits. Scouring his brain for something to do, to keep him busy- his brain busy, Harry settles on the floor with his back to the edge of his bed. He’s shirtless now, and is in need of another shower but he’d rather not because he knows he might end up crying over the possibility that he’s scared y/n off. There’s a book in his hands and a Frank Ocean record playing softly in the background that mentions something about ‘I've been thinkin' 'bout you, do you think about me still?’ and it’s not helping his case at all.    

It’s no use. 

There’s a plague of darkness buzzing like cicadas in his ears. He fears rejection and criticism. That maybe, she was only pretending in order to make the situation more pleasant so it ended sooner. Most of all, he feared that it would always be this way. That he would never find someone who embraces who he is as a person. Always met with mean side-eye glances or second looks of displeasure and confusion. It isn’t always that way, though, because then that would mean he gets absolutely no action, and that isn’t true. 

Harry is very… well-educated in matters that concerned sexual intercourse, but it was always a one-night stand ordeal. It was never ‘I really like you we should go out sometime’. In fact, he noticed that only time his approaches were well received were those in which he was dressed in a calmer manner. Simple, solid colors with sneakers or a t-shirt. Girls would flirt back, make good conversation, allow him to buy them a few drinks, and when he’d take them to his apartment they’d ask why he lived on top of a flower-shop, and if it was his sister or female-friend’s palace that he was crashing. Sex would ensue, but his heart wouldn’t be as present and engaged as he wanted it to be. 

Wrong. It was always so fucking wrong, and God, if he didn’t get out of this apartment he’s going to breakdown and cry and there’s no one to call to come over because Mitch is on a trip with his girlfriend, Sarah, and his other friend Jeff is on his honeymoon in Sweden. They were the only two on his mental speed dial list during the rare occasions he had a crisis, as they were the two that Harry had ever really opened up to. Mitch was a bit closer to his heart. They’ve known each other since their school days and practically grew up together (at one point they had small crushes on each other, which were confessed years down the line). Jeff was the owner of Winsome where… where y/n had mentioned spending her last twenty dollar bill. He didn’t have an issue opening up to them. He liked opening up to them, but he didn’t understand why they were the only two that ever truly opened their arms to him. 

A walk, he decided, would help him… air out his brain. Calm down. Breathe a little deeper, a little easier. 

He threw his white shirt back on, and a forest green sweatshirt that donned the emblem of the school he went to earn his business degree that fit him wide around the shoulders and felt like a marshmallow. Putting on a pair of beat up shoes, he shoved his keys into his pocket, hobbling and nearly losing his balance because he was moving way too fast. The door closed behind him with a slam, and even though he was still wearing the bandana around his head, wispy stray curls framing his face in a wild mane, his distress palpable through his appearance, but he doesn’t care. He just needs to get out and feel the cool air against his skin. 

There’s a backdoor behind the stairs that will take him to a small alleyway that leads to a back parking lot where other shop owners that live at the top of their stores on the same side of his street parked their cars. He unlocks it from the inside, and throws his shoulder into it, desperate to her out. When it shuts behind him, he doesn’t turn back because it’s the kind to lock from the outside when closed. His fingers curl into the ends of his sleeve so that the tips of his fingers (nails now changed to a sparkling silver color) are the only parts of his hands visible. 

Rounding the corner, he whistled the cheeriest tune he can muster. His lips are puckered and his cheekbones high with the extension of his mouth. He’s not very happy on the inside, though he remembers reading something somewhere that if you pretend to be something long enough, you’ll eventually become it. If he pretends to be happy, then he’ll actually be happy. 

Right?

Harry rounds the corner of the parking lot and turns on to the main street. It’s only two in the afternoon, so there's people crawling in and out of shops anywhere. He even sees a man and a woman peeking into the window of his store, and he would feel bad if he wasn’t in a shitty mood already. He’s so out of it, that he nearly yells ‘get your hands off my windows!’. He doesn’t though, because for a moment the woman becomes y/n and the man becomes him, wrapping a ringed hand around her waist and whispering in her downy ear ‘they’re closed, darling, let’s go somewhere else’ and she straightens dejectedly, pouting playfully and standing up and her tippy toes so that she could press a quick kiss to his lips. 

That image fades though, and the couple continues with their stroll, hand in hand, and his heart is wrenching, writhing and trying to yank itself free from it’s place in his chest because it hurts too much to stay. 

Cars whizz past, and he skirts in and out of people on the sidewalk, keeping his pace fast and focused. There’s no intended destination, he’s just moving with the intent to forget the pretty girl who haunts him. Her voice is all he can hear. Her smile is all she can picture. And the rest of her is all he can imagine, which is exactly what hurts the most. Imagination only goes so far, fulfils so much with uncertainty of what the truth was and what wasn’t. Harry could imagine her with her feet up on the lip of a bubble filled tub, a glass of wine in her hands, but then…what kind of wine did she like? Or did she even like wine? And did she even have a bathtub to stretch out in after a long day? 

He curses the crimes he may have committed in past lives to deserve this torture. This unbearable pain that felt like he was being dunked in a slow-acting acid. He can do nothing about it but keep walking with labored will power. He passed his shop, and a bakery and a small thrift store that sells used clothing for way too much money. At the propped open double-doors of Jeff’s Winsome, he decides to talk in and browse. There’s so many items that smell good and taste good, that it was fun to just walk in and look. 

“Back again so soon, H?” 

Spinning on his heel, Harry comes face to face with Niall, a brunette, fit, Irish bloke with a chummy smile and a killer sense of humor. The two have brokered a sort of friendship, considering the amount of time (and money) that Harry spends there. Niall has even started calling him ‘H’ in silent homage to his flower shop. 

“Y’know I can’t stay away,” Harry attempted to joke, his lips pulling up in a weak smile, “plus, I think I needed s’more of the peppermint essential oils f’my diffuser.” 

“‘Course ya do! You're worse than the bloody vegan mums that come in asking for gluten free baby powder!” Niall cups a hand over his mouth and loudly whispers to so that only Harry catches his verbiage. There was a woman in the back of the store, looking through soaps in the limited kid’s section, the same exact kind that Niall was speaking about. “Go on and look around then, I’ll be here when you’re finished.” He said. 

Harry only nodded his acknowledgement, and moved in between wooden walnut shelves. The entire store had a caramel brown color scheme, with only the inventory adding color to it. Macramé potted succulents and plants added to the natural, outdoorsy feel. Winsome had an interesting mix of smells from all of the aromatherapy based products it housed, but it only added to the appeal. 

Currently, he held a packet of four lip balms that advertised to be ‘100% all naturally derived ingredients with no artificial additives' infused with ‘healing power of crystals’, two of them ‘citrine cherry' flavored, and the remaining ‘garnet guava’. The brand name is something in Italian that he can’t read, packaging thick and a triangle made of arrows in the corner signaling it can be decomposed and/or recycled. He had the same exact ones at home, only they were all misplaced and- 

“Harry?”

A small, timid voice called his name from behind him, and he froze. He knew that voice. It was the same one he had repeated over and over in his head for the past week, waiting for her promised arrival with a hopeful heart. 

His eyes go wide with recognition, body still and stiff like a deer caught in headlights. His heart begins to rump at a furious speed, loud in his ears like a million stampeding hooves. The packaged products in his hands shake, and then she speaks again, “Harry, is that you?” 

Is this really happening right now? He’s embarrassed at having been caught with lipstick in his hands of all things, but he can’t put them back now. It was too late for that. He lets them hang at his side, and turns around. He hopes there isn’t perspiration dripping from his temples because all of a sudden he wants to yank his sweater off. 

Harry turned, slowly. He feared that if he moved too fast she would fly away like a startled dove. 

“Y/n…” He’s breathless, but he manages a pitiful quirk of the corner of his mouth, which he licks over right after, “hi.” 

She’s wearing a dress this time, frilly at the hem which fell just above her knees. It’s pink and covered and lined with blood red trim at her forearms. A string of pearls glistens at the base of her throat, and her lips are covered in a sheen of lipstick. Her hair, however, is a tousled mess, pieces of it framing her face and untucked from her bun as if she had been jostling around. Her cheeks are flushed with the cold, and clearly that thin beige cardigan hanging off her elbows is doing nothing to keep her warm.

Y/n smiles at him, with the same shakiness, “f-for a second I thought I was talking to the wrong p-person.” 

 It’s quiet again, and they’re both fidgeting. Y/n’s knees knock together as she shifts her weight from foot to food, and Harry idly rubs his finger under his nose and sniffs boogies that aren’t there. She’s staring at the ground and rocking back and forth on her heels and he can’t think of anything to say because he’s so paralyzed by the fact that she’s actually standing in front of him, and looks as gorgeous as ever. Had he somehow manifested her presence? 

While she’s hiking up the ends of her sweater so that they’re situated properly on her shoulders, he says the first thing that comes to his mind. “Aren’t y’cold?”

Her head snaps up and she peeks at him from under her lashes while flattening a hand at her thigh, “a little bit.” 

Harry watches her tuck her hair behind her ears and wonders if she came walking from her apartment again. In the cold. Dress as she was. Not that he had a problem with the way that she was dressed! He understood that sometimes when people grew bored they used the smallest occasions to dress up and have some fun and get out of their homes. He did it too, sometimes. To clear his head. Hell, isn’t that what he was doing now?

“D’you need a ride home?” He stumbled over his tongue to backtrack, not wanting her to think that he was a wierdo or anything like that, “t-that is if y’walking, I wouldn’t want you to get sick or anything like that. S’bit chilly out today.” 

Y/n smiles shyly at him, a blush on the highest points of her cheeks, and rubs the side of her face against the fabric of her cardigan, “thank you, for the offer, but uhm… it’s my friend’s baby-shower-gender-reveal thing today and I came with my other friend to some last minute gifts and some flowers. I was going to buy some stuff from here because she’s crazy about the whole ‘no preservatives’ and all but, and I was also going to stop by your shop to buy some flowers, but I saw you were closed so I…I’m rambling again.” She sputtered out the last bit, and pressed the tips of her three middle fingers to her lips to stop the words from coming out. 

Harry smirked at her antics, but it’s more of a repressed smile, and the rest of his humor gleamed in the sea-glass of his eyes like a message in a bottle. 

“S’alright, love.” He’s still holding the lip balms in his hand, and he can feel the moisture that’s collecting on his palms dampening the Kraft like material as he gestured to her dress with the tip of his chin. “Y’wearing pink. I take it y’want the baby to be a girl?”

“Actually, I know it’s a girl. She told me,” y/n pips, shrugging smugly. 

Harry laughs at her this time, “Did you finish with all your purchases here? I can make an exception and open up f’you.”

“Oh, Harry, I don’t wanna bother you! Because if this was your day off then-”

He lifts a hand to get her to stop, and uses the opportunity to twist around and put back what he had in his hands. The conversation is flowing so smoothly now, that all of his previous worries are gone. He can only focus on her and the way her eyelashes fluttered and the crystalline sparkly in her voice. 

“Y/n, it’s fine. D’ya finish here? We can head over to the shop now if you’d like.” Harry points a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the door. 

“Uh, no. I just got here so I still have to go grab some things,” she said, pushing her hair past her ears again. He thinks that she can probably tell the disheveled state her hair was in, because she begins to pop off a pin in her hair to readjust it. He doesn’t mind it, though. He thinks she looks cute. Angel-like. 

He nods, rolling his hands into fists within his sleeves so that the cuffs hang over his knuckles, and tries not to trip over his legs as he backs away. “A’right. I’ll wait f’you in the front, then. Take y’time, love.” 

“‘Kay,” she gleams at him, biting down on her bottom lip, and Harry turns away fully before he starts whining about how cute she is or before there’s a dent in the heather grey fabric of his sweatpants.  

At the front, Niall has his chin at the palm of his hand, and as he gets closer, Harry lifts his head to see that the brunette is wiggling his eyebrows mischievously. There's a shit-eating grin on his face that clearly points to a mountain of teasing in the near distance. 

“A little love-struck, mate?” He said, as soon as Harry was within hearing distance. At least he had the decency to keep his voice down, he thought. 

Harry flips him off, “oh, bug off.” 

Silver glitter sparkling on his nails, and his gaze strays to the floor, bashful of how clear his affection was. He turns to rest his bum against the counter and pulls out his phone to appear busy as he waits for y/n, mindlessly opening Instagram to have something to do (and to stop him from glancing at her ever two seconds).    

“Yup. I knew it. Have y’asked her out yet?” Niall doesn’t stop to let Harry refute his question, “y’know she comes in sometimes, after stopping by your place? And she just will not stop talking about how nice yeh were to her.”

Harry’s head snaps up from his screen so fast, something at the back of his neck creaks with the force. Instagram is long forgotten.

“What? Are you fuckin’ with me right now?” He doesn’t mean for his words to come as aggressive as they do, but the thought of her speaking to someone else about him is… well, it’s thrilling. 

Alarmed, Niall’s hands come up near his face in the motion of surrender, “no, man! Dead serious. Think she likes yeh, honestly.”

He can only say: “Fuck me.”

Niall is about to respond when a quiet voice breaks their stares, “I’m all finished.” 

“Already, babe? I’ll rig ya up, then!” 

He’s quick to slide the few products over the scanning square, and y/n and Harry stand beside each other silently, their height difference laughable. Niall’s gaze flickered between them with no commentary, and his lips pucker with a wiggling smile when he finally announces her total. A bit too much for a small changing blanket, oatmeal-based baby lotion, pacifiers with a lavender infused towel attached to ‘aid with goodnight night’s sleep’, and a bamboo hairbrush with a tuft of soft bristles. 

Nonetheless, she provides the money with a pleasant smile. Harry can see a bit of tightness around her eyes that suggests discomfort, but he doesn’t say anything. Niall hands her a paper bag with her purchase, “there yeh go! Have a good day now, y/n! And be good, to Harry!” 

Harry’s eyes widen at Niall’s last comment, and it takes every bit of self-restraint in him to not reach the other counter and whack him in the back of the head. Instead, he shakes and ducks his head in near shame.

Y/n, however, quips back with “I’ll be nice only if you’re nice,” and bumps her shoulder against his before walking towards the door, looking over her shoulder at Harry who’s smiling wide now, and trailing after her with no regard to Niall at all. 

He shouts something after them about being rude lovebirds, but Harry doesn’t care. He’s floating after this heaven-sent like cartoon characters being led to a freshly baked pie with their nose on the scent. His rump high in the air like the Lorax disappearing into the light in the clouds, utterly ignorant to everything else. 

When they’ve both stepped outside, they speak at the same time, 

“Let me just-”

“Do y’wanna put-” 

Harry and y/n giggle at each other, 

“You go first.” 

“Y’speak first.” 

And then they laugh again. Harry pretends to zip his lips and throws away the key, and she says radiantly, “I’ll drop this off in my friend’s car really fast and we can walk to your flower shop.” 

Watching her approach a car parked two spots away, a girl with blue, pink, and brown hair leans over to the passenger side, seat belt straining against her throat and when she sees Harry, she waves and it makes y/n push her back to her spot behind the driver’s  side. Whoever this girl is, she and Niall have to meet, seeing as they can’t mind their own business. He chuckled and waved back, that girl laughing along with him and it made y/n cover her face with her cardigan covered hands. 

“I’m sorry about Charlotte,” she said when she got back, “she doesn’t know how to mind her own.”

“A bit like Niall, it seems.” Harry said. He waits for her to catch up before beginning to walk down the street. Side to side, shoulder to shoulder. They’re so close, Harry can feel the warmth of her body heat through the fleece of his sweatshirt. It’s cold, and she’s still this warm? 

“Maybe,” her eyebrows raise, and her head tilts towards him, “they should meet.” 

“Tha’s exactly what I was thinkin’!” His voice rises with his excited agreement, and the tip of his nose wiggles as he scrunches his nose. 

As they get closer, to H’s Garden, Harry reaches into his pocket for his keys, fingering through them so that they wouldn’t have to stand in the cold for so long. He didn’t want her to get sick. 

“I’m sorry, Harry. I feel really bad about this,” she whispered beside him, looking up at him with doe eyes as she worried her lip between her teeth, the sheen of gloss adding an extra allure to her image at that moment. “It’s your day off, and I’m bugging you.” 

They stood in front of the door now, underneath the green umbrella cover that extended from the top of the door and down the side of the window. Harry waited for her to step into the little alcove created by the indent of the door before stepping in after her and jiggling the key into the lock. He resisted the urge to pull his lips down into a cooing frown at the look on her face. She really was worried about disturbing him. If only she knew that he spent the entire day moping (and nearly crying) over her. 

He sucked on his teeth, “oh, love, please worryin’ about it. Don’t wanna see that frown on y’pretty face anymore okay?” His confidence was slowly coming back, “s’not my day off, I just didn’t feel like speaking to customers today.” 

Shrugging, he opened the door, and took a step back to allow her to step through first. Y/n ducked her head as she passed him with a murmured ‘oh, okay’, and he followed right after her, wanting to get away from the cold too because he knew that his nose was probably pink at that moment, but what he didn’t anticipate was for y/n to stop right after breaching the threshold, and bend over at the waist to pick something up from the floor, causing Harry to bump into her at such an awkwardly sexual angle with all of his momentum. 

Considering he was half twisted away from her and in the middle of pulling out the key from it’s slot, the amount of force in Harry’s push from behind was enough to cause her to nearly fall forward, a surprised whimper slipping from her lips. Harry, determined not to see her fall, lets go of the key and reaches out just in time to grasp her hips on either side, pulling her back towards him mid-fall so that she doesn't collapse on her face. 

However, in the midst of all of this Harry forgets himself and uses a bit too much force. Not to mention, the implications of their position makes him hyper aware of every single place their bodies touched, her small frame against his lithe, tattooed body. 

This moment only lasts for a few seconds, but he can feel everything. 

He can feel the easy give of the skin of her hips underneath each finger that touched her, the softness of the flesh on her thighs against his sturdy knees. The fabric of his sweatpants is suddenly non-existent, and it’s almost as if he felt every taught tendon of her legs, frozen with efforts of helping catch or brace herself. The heat of her groin is flush against his, and it makes him want to scream with a sudden sensitivity. Her ass is practically seated on him, full and malleable against the points of his laurel covered hip bones. Harry’s semi-hunched, as her weight also pushed him back, and the position is doing nothing to help his frenzied mind settle. He feels like shit because he’s being a horny, pubescent kid instead of asking her if she’s okay, but then y/n moves back into him to straighten fully and their centers grind. Her dress is semi-bunched at the halfway point of her bum, and he can feel heat emanating from her, radiating back on his bloating cock. He has to stifle a moan when she pushes herself up with the tips of her fingers. 

Just as quickly as it started, it’s over. Y/n is dusting her bum off so that her dress falls and covers her modesty, and she’s beet red in the face, not looking at him. Which was fine by him, he was too ashamed to look into her eyes. 

He clears his throat (something he’s doing a lot around her) and asks if she’s okay. 

“Yes. Yes, I’m okay. This was on the floor,” she squeaked, holding up a neon yellow notice sheet in her hand. That damned thing was what caused all of this?

It’s a notice from the delivery men that said, ‘sorry! We missed you!’ with a time and date messily scrawled on the dotted lines. Harry had forgotten that he was getting a shipment of several plants that morning. 

Cursing, he takes it from her, “t-thank you. Now how ‘bout those flowers?”

It’s awkward, obviously, but y/n is severely silent. Harry’s still stuffy in his pants, but he ignores it and doesn’t add any fuel to the fire because there’s more pressing matters at hand than a boner. Y/n is the most quiet she’s ever been around him, considering all of her word vomits and ramblings, and he’s suffering. Definitely beating himself up in his head for having ruined the moment. He held onto her for a second too long, frozen. She must feel so embarrassed, and he was self-endulging like a fucking asshole. 

Harry asks her questions on what flowers she’d like, and she answers by pointing or bringing a stem to him, laying it on the counter without a word. A mixture of dahlias and baby’s breath with a handful of feverfew to make the pink in the dahlia’s stand out. He lays them out on his work table, cutting the ends at an angle where they need to be cutted and laying them out on a sheet of clear, dusty rose paper. Three packets of flower food are strewn at the corner, and y/n busies herself by fidgeting with them. He grows concerned when he makes a comment on the kinds of ribbons he had stored and she doesn’t say anything. Not even a nod or a hum. 

Eventually, he decides he’s had enough of her neglect, and pauses his work to devote her some attention.  

“Love, I’m sorry about what happened,” he said softly, trying to catch her eyes, “I know it probably made y’uncomfortable, and I didn’t do much to make the situation better, but I just didn’t wanna see y’fall.”

Y/n’s head is already dipped, so he can’t see her face, but when her shoulders begin to shake, he knows he’s utterly fucked. She starts to sniffle, and his eyes go wide. The paper crinkled as he set down the baby’s breath he’s holding in his hands. He hates seeing people cry, not because he didn’t know how to deal with it, but because he often ended up crying along with them. Also, he just didn’t want to see her cry. Harry wanted her to be happy, glowing, and smiling. Not dull with dollops of woeful distress in liquid form.

He rounds the corner and spares a look out to the street, wanting to make sure that there is no strange onlooker eavesdropping on their interaction. His hand reaches out to stroke her back or shoulder comfortingly, but he thinks better of it and drops his arm. She most likely would not like to be touched, considering what just happened between them. He drops his head, seeking face-to-face interaction, and speaks as gently as he can, “y/n, what’s wrong?” 

She avoids his search, and turns the other way while sniffling, “you probably think I’m weird now or something after that.” 

“No!” Harry exclaimed, jerking his head back as if he’d been struck, and her words practically had. He can’t believe that she would think that and even go as far as verbalizing her thoughts when he worshipped the ground she walked on and didn’t even know her that well, yet. “No, no. I don’t think that. Y’tripped, that’s all. Happens to everyone. If anythin’ I’m the weirdo for grabbin’ y’the way I did, and I’m really sorry about it.”

Y/n dig the heels of her hands into her eye sockets, “that was so embarrassing, I should’ve told you I was gonna stop or something. I always embarrass myself in front of cute boys and I never know what to do. I just-” 

Harry interrupts before she can dig herself further another hole. He highlights a segment of her words, dropping everything else in hopes of changing the conversation and taking her discomfort away, and mostly because he was bursting with relief and happiness. She had said that she thought he was cute, just how he thought that she was adorable, and nice, and everything good. They were on the same level, their minds in sync. Did that mean…

His voice is airy and light because of what she had just admitted, “y’think I’m cute?”

She stills with awareness of what she’s just said, and a puppy-like noise seeps from the back of the throat before her hands sink further into her eyes, embarrassed. Harry tenderly wraps his fingers around her small wrists and pulls her hands away from her face, murmuring about ‘don’t rub y’eyes anymore, love, y’gonna hurt’ with nothing but kindness. A millisecond of distraction speeds through his mind at the softness on the inside of her wrists. 

There’s a trickle of blubbering in her part, her bitten lips bumping against each other as she attempts to backtrack, “I mean- I- I-”

Harry decides that it’s now or never. It was a bit inconvenient, perhaps, but with her revelation his confidence soared and he was more prepared now to ask than he ever had been. So, he goes for it, “can I have y’number?” 

A moment of semi-uncomfortable silence as the unknown tips the scale. Would she say yes? Would she say no? His head was spinning and he hoped his nose didn’t start bleeding or something because y/n nods slowly, smiling, and then, “okay.” 

He’s elated. He was the polar opposite of what he had been that morning. If only Owen could see him then. He doesn’t waste any time reaching into his back pocket and handing her his unlocked phone. They don’t share any words, only coy glances and flirty quirks of the lips as the tips of her fingers move on his screen. Harry can’t believe that he’s finally getting her number, after nearly a month of pinning. 

When she’s finished, she clicks it off and sets it next to him with an added pat to the back of his suspiciously clean white phone case while he’s tying the flowers together with a loose rubber band at the ends to attach the food packets. He’s fine with working in silence now that she's not crying anymore. He throws occasional glances in her direction, and catches her watching his hands while fiddling with her own. Her brows were furrowed and her mouth was twitching. 

“Will you text me?” She asked him. 

He’s careful not to bruise any of the petals as he sets them down again, pausing with his ministrations to pick up his phone. He wiggles his eyebrows at her and types a quick ‘Hi. It’s Harry :)’. He hits send, “until you’re sick of me.”

“I don’t think that’s possible.” She shakes her head, and Harry’s reminded Rachel McAdams in The Notebook while she’s in complete denial of her feelings for Noah. The comparison makes his heart flutter, considering the romance of the onscreen couple. “How much do I owe you?” 

Harry waves her off, “it’s on the house.” She begins to argue, but Harry stops her before she starts rambling again, “y’better go or you’ll be late, love.” He holds out the arrangement to her, tufts of baby’s breath poking out from between the vibrant dahlias like fluffy clouds, the feverfew looking like miniature white daisies in the center. 

She looks at it, and back at him before huffing, “fine, but you’ll have to let me return the favor.”

“Of course,” he smirks, “with dinner, maybe?” 

They’re both gleaming at each other now, “okay.” Y/n takes a step back, her body half twisted as she walks away, but it remains like that for a moment as her eyes rake him up and down, a murmur following, “bye, Harry.” 

His veins charge with electricity, and his dark taffy lips part at her actions. Had she just checked him out? He doesn’t recover quick enough to return her goodbye because the previous swirl of arousal in his navel was bristling back to life at the implications of that look. Calm, slow, steady, and her eyes remained doe-like and innocent. 

She had to have known exactly what she was doing, whispering his name the way she had, looking over her shoulder and under her eyelashes the way she did. Deviously provoking his thoughts to begin a new with a reinspired fervor. The space in his underwear was growing tighter by the second, a blissful ache swelling. 

Before any other customer stepped in after her, Harry locked the door, and jogged up the stairs to prepare himself a nice, hot bath, simultaneously cursing and thanking the stupid fucking delivery men.  

********

Harry can’t stop thinking. 

Obviously, this is a huge issue for him. He was constantly thinking, and well, who wasn’t? The process of thoughts wisping around in his brain was one that he often put an unnecessary amount of energy into because he had no one to filter these thoughts onto, releasing them through a conversation to prevent the exhaustion of his brain and heart. A prime example of these mishaps being the depressing slump that occupied his demeanor that very morning. 

This?

This was different.

As soon as the apartment door was shut behind him, Harry pulled the suffocating sweatshirt off of his upper body, fingers hooking in at the collar and yanking it off with a swift tug. It landed somewhere on his kitchen floor, and he didn’t stop to take note of its final destination. Instead, his legs instinctively took him to his bathroom. 

Chest heaving, Harry walked to the small window leaking sunlight and rolled the stick between his fingers to close the blinds. His thumb dipped into the waistband of his boxes and dragged them down lopsidedly, the tiger tattoo roaring as it became exposed. When the blinds are fully closed, the white extension clangs against the shutters from his aggressive release. His body was slowly being consumed by a raging fire stoked by the illicit images his brain conjured of the innocent, unsuspecting y/n.

His inner turmoil consisted of guilt for using her image that way and justification from the conspiring rake of her eyes along the upper half of him that was visible behind the counter. He was so fixated by her, that her look alone felt like a tempting caress along his skin. And it all happened in a matter of fucking seconds. That’s how gone he was. That’s how fucking gone he was. Harry guesses that the easy excitement also had to do with the fact that he hadn’t gotten laid in a while (he only ever gets lucky when he goes out to the bars with Mitch or Jeff, and they’d been gone for a significant amount of time) and the strong affinity he had for the girl who bought flowers from him.  

Explanation or not, he had to do something about the problem in his pants. He was painfully hard, and when he shucked his pants off fully, his underwear dragged with the movement and pressed against the tip of his swollen prick. A darkened patch of moisture bloomed where the head was, and he saw stars at the short pressure. He wouldn’t take his pants off just then, though. He liked to stall his pleasure as much as he could so that when he finally did cum, his stomach muscles contracted and his toes remained curled for more than ten seconds. 

He twisted the golden knobs of his tub so that the water would come rushing out at a borderline scalding temperature, and opened the small cabinet above the toilet for a bottle of almond and coconut shea butter bubbles. He uncapped it and bent over the edge of the tip, the cool, porcelain lip touching his crotch and provoking a choked whimper to leave him. Jerking his hips back, he poured the soapy liquid into the spot where the water cascaded, and retracted his hand when the beginning of froth formed along the surface. 

The heady sweet smell permeated the air with the rising levels of bubbles, and Harry couldn’t wait any longer. Because he liked to torture himself, he closed his eyes and slowly dragged the hell of his hand over the outline of his cock, a groan ripping though the silence. It’s so painfully good, that he does it one more time, and he jolts forward. He removes his hand, slips his thumbs underneath the waistband of his boxers, and lugs the fabric down his hips at an excruciatingly slow pace. The head of his member smearing precum all along as he moves and when he gets caught in the ripples of his boxers the muscles in his thighs flex at the ripple of pleasure that zips into his nerves. 

“Fuck,” he hissed under his breath. His mind was a spinning vintage reel of slideshow images of y/n. Y/n on bruised knees, her mouth wide open and her own drool on her tits, the tip of his cock flat on her tongue as she pleads with weepy eyes for him to cum down her throat. When he finally springs free of his underwear, a hefty slap rings out as his dick collides against his abdomen, right on the space underneath his belly button. 

There’s a stripe of liquid on the trail left by the mushroom head of his prick, and Harry’s eyes roll to the back of his head, throat straining as he hovers over the bathtub. He doesn’t remember the last time he’s ever been this hard over a girl before, and it’s driving him crazy. He doesn’t know if he’ll be able to last as long as he usually does. As he swings a leg over the edge of the tub, the hot water encasing his calf, he’s thinking about how soft she is. The inside of her wrist and the palm of her hand. If she’s that soft on an external part of her body that’s used everyday, he can only wither away at the idea of what the inside of her thighs feel like. 

Bubbles are swarming up now, swathing his thighs and buttocks as he sinks into the sloshing water. When he’s completely seated and satisfied with the belly-button level of water, he clumsily throws a hand in the direction of the knobs to shut them off, and reclined his head against the curved end of the tub with his eyes shut. 

He hikes up his knees so that they’re resting against the porcelain walls, and mindlessly ruts up into the water at the filthy images he’s picturing, white foam collecting in sparse clouds over the math on his chest. He doesn’t know what’s gotten into him. It’s as if his body is being transported back to the moment his hips clashed with y/n’s. At the recollection, his mouth drops and his eyebrows pinch in a silent moan. The feel of her flesh underneath his fingertips has him bobbing in the water, and the next ideation has him gripping the base of his cock. 

Vividly, he pictured her on all fours, keening back onto him as her pussy enveloped him in warmth, a warmth that is almost replicated by the temperature of the water, dripping and making a mess of him but what’s turning him on most of all is the easy flushness of their bodies. He had felt the way her bum gave way under his hold, and he imagined the bounce of her flesh as he thrusted into her. 

He moaned a broken call of her name with his eyes still shut, and heard the trickling of water as his fist rolled up his stiff prick, squeezing at the tip so that a few more droplets of precum dribbled out. With his thumb, he rubbed over the red mushroom head and lathered it in slow, leisurely circles, a throb pulsating with the beat of his heart as he returned to flicking his wrist over himself. 

The way that he looked at him and the sound of his name on her lips seared into his memory. Airy and willowy, similar to it resonated in his brain with the fantasy of sinking into her for the first time, stretching her and having her preen and arch with desperate whimpers of his name for more. Harry considered himself to be ‘well-endowed’ and his size was a factor of what sent him careening over the edge as girls mewled over his size after he’d bottomed out. He wanted y/n to mewl under him, both of them falling apart at the seams at the mutual pleasures because if Harry’s this broken over just the thought of her, then he’s sure he’s going to lose himself beyond recognition after he’s buried himself into her velvety walls, slick with her arousal and so fucking warm. 

Just as she had been earlier that day. There had been two layers between them- the fabric of Harry’s pants and her panties- yet, he was still able to feel an immense heat from the apex of her thighs against his cock. He needed more than this. He needed her, not just his hand driving him closer to the edge. 

His jaw clenched as he bit back on a particularly loud moan, for no reason other than he enjoyed self-sabotage from time to time, and the speed of his jerking hand increased. His other hand gripped the side of the tub, and his legs flexed as he began to thrust up into his own fist, a trail of bubbles sticking to the tanned muscles. The cut rectangles of muscles of his abdomen glistened like freshly chopped cubes of apricot with the droplets of water that remained clinging to him. His breath came in labored, strained puffs as the palm of his hand twisted, tightening at the tip and loosening at the base. 

For a moment, he paused and cupped his balls, massaging them as the fantasy in his head continued. His mouth wrapping around y/n’s nipples, her eyes glazed over from previous orgasm that he wanted so badly to give her. She’d whine something soft and quiet to match her personality, ‘please, Harry, please I want more. Need another Harry, please’, and he’d speed up the movement of his hips, driving deep into her and cooing into her ear about, ‘c’mon, darling. Give m’another then. Y’want it so bad, yeah? Give me a’fucking ‘nother’, and she’d release a peircing moan that explodes in his eardrums while arching into him. She’d squeeze impossible tight around him, gushing with her own cum. 

The water in Harry’s tub sloshes around his ankles, and the muscles of his abdomen clench so that he’s closing in on himself, sputtering on an outrageously loud cry that he can’t contain and his hand increases the speed of his filthy ministrations because he’s right on the edge. He’s about to fucking cum and the back of his eyelids burns with the possible variances of y/n’s face in ecstasy provided by him with his nose deep in her cunt, lapping at the sweet honey that spills with every whimper of, ‘please let me cum, Harry. I’ll do anything, I’ll be good, please let me cum. 

He tensed violently, his face contorted painfully as white ropes spurt from the tip of his cock over his fist and onto his chest, blending with the white almond foam. His feet are braced against the edge of the tub and his head falls back and his stomach tenses even further, the final leaks of his cum dribbling out. 

With the fuzziness that comes after an orgasm, his body melts back into the water that’s still warm, and his jerks with a pant as he allows his softening prick to sink into the water. The head on his hair is matted in a chocolate smear across his forehead, and his lips are a raging heart of cherry blossoms, parted with arduous gasps of recovery breath. His hands fall into the water at his sides, and with the lapping movement of the liquid against his sensitive member, he ruts into nothing again. 

Reclined with his eyes closed and heartbeat slowing, Harry murmurs a final, “fuck me,” at the extreme sensations that had raked through his body. 

Somewhere in the muffled distance, his phone dings with the notification of a text message, and with a tired noise of resentment, he sits up and reaches for his sweatpants that lay in a messy puddle besides the tub. His fingers drip darkening spots onto the grey material as he rummages for his phone, and then he finally clicks it on...

It’s her name, lighting up his screen, and the text reads: 

y/n <3 : so… dinner? 

Harry doesn’t think he’s ever crushed on a girl this hard before because even though he’s just completely physically spent himself, there’s something stirring in the depths of his tummy just at seeing the heart she put next to her name. 

He couldn’t be happier. 

*    *    *    *    *    *

and here he is!! what do you guys think?? pls pls pls leave your feedback in my askbox! i’d love to hear your thoughts! and if you really really loved it, don’t be afraid to press that reblog button <3333

[lokisprettygirl]

Patience is a virtue (Loki x Wife Reader) (Smut with fluff)

Summary : Loki teaches you a lesson in the importance of patience

Warning : 18 + , Smut, mud gets involved, loki is a good husband

Note : A little something inspired from the the movie ghost, and a dream I had recently

Loki watched you intently, entirely amused as you groaned and got frustrated because you couldn't just get it right. The pottery making, you found a new hobby to pass time with but it wasn't as easy as it seemed on YouTube. You were trying to make a flower pot but you couldn't just get it right, sometimes the head would mess up or it would crack from the center .

"Arrrghhh I am gonna give up I'm done" you groaned and he walked over to you, when you told him about this new hobby he bought everything you'd need and he made the whole set-up in the basement of your house. He sat behind you, you were wearing just one of his shirts with a shorts underneath, your hair in a bun, you're a beautiful art yourself

"Oh darling I can't let that happen now can I?" He whispered in your ear and you pout in response which made his heart so full. He loves you so much. His beautiful wife.

"First of all, my darling love your movements are too harsh, so be gentle" he whispered in your ear as he turned the wheels on again and splashed a bulk of clay in the center of it. He dipped his hands under the water and then placed your hands on the clay, with his on top of yours, you started to give it a shape again like the previous million times "Gentle love, be soft, like how you're with me" he whispered and you bite your lips to stiffle a moan, you already have a faint idea where this is going.

You didn't realise when the half of the pot was formed, he took your fingers and placed it inside the hole from the top to smooth the curve and give it a long shapely neck, it seemed oddly sexual "if you want to master in a form of art, you have to be patient my love, it's going to be hard, and slippery sometimes, you would want to give up but never ever give up my love, because you know you can be the absolute best if you keep going" he mumbled again and you look at him. He's the kindest sweetest man you have ever known, sexiest too.

"Focus on the pot my darling" he gave you a look and it sent shivers down your spine, it was finally starting to come up so well but than it cracked from the center as you got distracted, that made you groan so loud, even frustrated you looked adorable, you smashed the half broken pot, and he chuckled before he helped you in taking out your frustration on that poor thing, his hands on top of yours, he helped you squeeze it into a mush.

"That makes you feel better love?" He mumbled in your ear and his lips trailed over the side of your neck

"Mmmm it sure did" your voice came out all breathy as you moaned

"I know what else would make you feel better" he whispered and you bucked your ass into his crotch

"Mmm our hands are dirty loki, we should wash them first" you whispered and he stopped you as you were about to get up

"That would be no fun at all, stay still" he told you sternly and you relaxed in his arms, he brought his hands up and unbuttoned your shirt one by one, then he slid them off you slowly, his muddy prints visible on the ruined shirt, your skin felt good against his bare skin "Turn around little pet" he told you and you did instantly, he made you stand up so he can take off your shorts, you wore no underwear, and you were starting to drip already. You have never had sex in the basement yet, the house was still new.

"Look at you, I haven't even touched you yet and you're soaked" he placed his lips on your clit as he sucked and nibbled, you didn't want to dirty him but that's exactly what he wanted you to do so you held onto his shoulder and your muddy hands left a fine print on his smooth pale skin, this was truly erotic.

After torturing you with his mouth for minutes, he waved his hands and got completely naked himself, then he made you sit on his cock slowly, nestling himself deep inside you. You wrapped your arms around his neck dirtying him up further, then your hands ran down all over his chest, covering all that smooth skin. You moaned and threw your head back at the fullness from his cock.

He held your head with one hand, you could feel the wet mud soaking in your hair as he did, then he ran his finger from your neck to the valley of your breasts, drawing a smooth straight line "Ohhh godd fuck loki" you mumbled as you felt the cold air hitting your bare skin, the mud starting to dry on them.

"Ride me little pet, fuck me" he groaned and you followed almost instantly, you grabbed onto his shoulders again as you hopped up and down slowly, taking your time, enjoying how good he felt inside you. But you could feel yourself getting closer to the release.

"Are you going to cum soon little pet? I can feel it" he mumbled, he picked up the residues of wet clay from the wheels and smeared it all over your back very slowly, and that made you moan his name loudly

"Immmm closse lo..baby please" you begged, his hands kept rubbing against your back, covering each n every inch of your bare skin with the clay.

"But you can't, you know that right?" He told you and you nod in yes, he was too turned on from this but he also needed to teach you a lesson, a lesson in patience.

"Why won't you do that pet? What makes you hold and be good for me?" he asked you as his hands grabbed one of your breasts, he squeezed and covered them with his wet hands too, his other hand caressed your head and you could feel it sticking on your scalp, god he was turning you into his own little piece of art.

"Because when I'm good and patient, you reward me with the best orgasms and your cum" you mumbled and he smiled, such a smart good girl, his darling wifey.

"Exactly my love, patience is a virtue isn't it? That's how you have to treat this hobby of yours too love, be patient, keep going like this and I promise you, you'll be rewarded, I promise you love, I'll help, I'm always here to help" he mumbled as he kissed you, your hands cupped his cheeks and he did the same, covering each other's faces in the wet clay, you increased your pace and he moaned loudly, his own patience faltering at the sight of you.

"You look so sexy like this, all covered in this filth, like an erotic piece of priceless art" he mumbled and you moaned loudly at his words.

"Goddd loki please I need to cum" you teared up, he felt too good to be true, he picked up some of the clay and ran his hands from your upper thighs to straight down your shin

"I'm done with my little project, my own personal blank canvas, you look divine, you allowed me to paint you so good and you learned your lesson so well like a good girl, cum now sweetheart, soak my cock" and you did , you let go instantly as soon as you had the permission, he held your shaking body so tightly and came inside you as he felt you clutching him so tight, milking him for all his worth so good. His hands found the blank areas of your skin and he ran his fingers over them, he was enjoying this way too much.

When you both calmed down enough you blushed as you looked at yourself and then him "What did you learn princess?" He asked you as he kissed you softly.

"That I need to be patient and not give up and keep going" you told him and he smiled

"Good fucking girl"

"This was hot we should do this again, this time however you can tie me up as you paint me" you winked and he giggled, the thought made him hard though.

"Let's get showered?" You asked him and he shook his head in no

"You're going to make that pot for me love" he turned the wheels on again and you started to work on it, this time truly focused, you failed ten times but succeeded on the 11th.

"Look at that, so beautiful, you did it my love, I'm so proud of you my little artist"

You giggled and he took the pot carefully to place it in the kiln so it would harden and maintain its shape. The first thing you successfully made, he would cherish it and protect it forever just like he would protect you.

"Thank you lo, I love you so much" you mumbled as you teared up and he kissed you so long and deep, pouring in all his love into you.

"I love you too my darling wifey"

[nix-writes-mcyt]

Your writing is so gorgeous, wow- uhm, could I ask for Scar (from any season, I don't mind!) with a GN!Reader who tends to notice smaller things about everything, but mainly about him and his builds? I watch him a lot and notice he kind of hums after he laughs and it's incredibly endearing <3 And all of his builds and character designs are so intricate, I can't help but get excited about the details! I don't mind if it's platonic or romantic, just wanna show Mr. Goodtimes some love!

I don't mind what format, headcanons or fics, everything you write is super :D

I hope it's alright, I took it in a slightly different direction but I do hope that you still enjoy it!

Little Things

Drabble Contains: Fluff -------------------------------

With one last pat to the dirt you sit back, happy with your work so far.

You admire the small but messy tree, wiping the mud from your hands as best you can. Today you'd repotted your bonsai, it needed a little more space for the root system.

The tree had been a gift from your long time best friend and romantic partner, Mr. Goodtimes. Scar had bought you it recently out of the blue, offering you no explanation. You'd taken the gift, and made Scar promise to show you how to take care of it.

Organics are Scar's thing, he has always had a talent for terraforming and shaping plants. While you have some skill you don't meet his level.

And so you had asked for his help to trim the leaves of the tree, which were the only other thing that needed tending to. The tree was still in pretty good condition when you received it, just in need of a little care.

Bang on time you hear the door open, Scar having set this time to come help you the other day.

"What a beautiful job you've done." The smile is evident in his voice, you don't even have to turn around to know that.

Scar comes up behind you, reaching around your body to run his fingers over the pot, the small pattern catching his attention first. "Did you make this?," he asks, feeling the texture of the glazed clay.

"I did. Do you like it?" "I love it, and I love you." You turn your head to look at him, Scar not hesitating to steal a quick kiss before coming to be beside you.

"I love you too, now will you help me with the leaves?" Scar nods, producing a small pair of shears from seemingly nowhere.

"I told you I would show you, so, let's get started." He smiles softly before turning his attention to the tree.

Scar delicately prunes the branches, making sure there will be no growth where it isn't wanted. Shaping the tree is a big part of the hobby after all, he emphasises that point in his explanation.

You watch carefully as his fingers brush over the leaves, the bark, carefully snipping away.

Once the explanation is over he continues to trim the leaves, humming as he shapes. Something he does no matter the project.

Watching him work has always been one of your favourite things. So much so it's hard to pay full attention to what he's actually doing. You're so focused on the little movements his hands are making, how gentle and precise he is handling the tree. How thought out ever little detail is, he never misses a thing.

Your eyes wander up to his face, his eyebrows ever so slightly furrowed as he focuses fully on what he's doing. His green eyes are fixed on the tree, twinkling with a joy you've seen countless times before.

There are so many things you pick up on, when he's tending to the garden or building something of his own.

When he works on something he loves there is always the ghost of a smile on his face. He always uses his hands to feel a surface before and after doing anything. Scar often will hum quietly as he works, sometimes a tune, sometimes in acknowledgement of what he's doing.

He's a wonder to watch work, you often do. Wherever you can.

"Your turn." Scar says suddenly. "I what?" "It's your turn, I am teaching you how to do this yourself. " He chuckles.

Slowly you take the shears from his hand. He keeps his hand over yours, guiding you to a section of the bonsai still needing a trim. The very tip top.

After the first few he lets go of you with a hum, content in watching you try yourself.

Scar still helps you with which branches need to be removed, until the tree is finished. It looks like it did before, just much neater and shapely. Although you can't take credit for its looks.

"It's beautiful, thank you." You beam, watching as Scar runs his hand over the leaves before following the curve of the trunk, some of the visible roots and all the way to the pot you have the bonsai now sitting in.

"I can't take full credit." He smiles, "you put just as much effort into this." "Oh don't be silly."

"I'm not, really, it wouldn't look nearly as good without the pot." He runs his fingertips over the small pattern, before turning to face you. "It's a beautiful tree for my beautiful partner."

"Oh Scar." You sigh happily, watching his eyes gleam with joy. He chuckles quietly, placing a kiss atop your head. It's the little things that make you both happy.

[starbuckie]

𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐡𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐦𝐚𝐬 𝐛𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐨𝐮𝐭

pairing: modern!remus lupin x reader

words: 2k words

warnings: a small injury, stress, tiniest bit of angst (if you can even call it that), just a whole lot of fluff, also remus’ sweaters alone are a warning (they’re so warm and cozy they’ll give you a heart attack!!)

summary: y/n shouldn’t have promised to make holiday dinner for the whole goddamn friend group.

a/n: my first remus fic!! (YAY, yay) im so happy that i finally chose to do this with my moony, because he’d just be the sweet supportive bf as i fucked up christmas dinner for all out friends. also pls im gonna write a headcanon ab thrifting with modern!remus. it’s been so long since i wrote for the harry potter cinematic/literary universe. but please, please do enjoy, and leave a reblog or comment if you do <33

main masterlist || harry potter masterlist

Y/N loved Christmas. She really did, but it was times like these that she wished the damn holiday never existed. Cooking for all the Marauders, especially with their ginormous appetites and their typed out, two page list of dishes they wanted to eat, was a chore itself and she had been friends with them long enough to know that she’d be working in the kitchen for days. Maybe she should’ve started a few hours earlier, because trying to finish fourteen cooked meals in six hours was not faring well for her mental health nor for her body. Two pumpkin pies sat in the oven, a turkey sitting on the counter waiting to go in, with pots of split pea soup slowly boiled on the stove. There were bowls of caesar salad in the fridge, five bowls, to be exact, and platters upon platters of cookies were by the opening of the dining room so her friends could take cookies just in case cooking took much longer than she expected, and by the looks of her roasted parsnips in the clay colander, those cookies would come in handy. The kitchen smelled amazing but Y/N knew for sure she didn’t, feeling the sweat seeping through the thin cotton shirt she wore while cooking. 

“Don’t worry, Mary, I can make it myself! I swear, I can cook fourteen different dishes all by myself, starting just hours before!” She mocked her previous words to one of her closest friends, promising her that Christmas dinner was just Christmas dinner and the tired uni student and mother of an infant had nothing to work about.

She didn’t want to be ungrateful. Y/N was so happy to be making dinner for them, her family that she had found after so many years without one, but it was her first Christmas that she had had with anyone outside of her own self in nearly fifteen years. It had to be absolutely perfect, and in its current state, it was anything but.

“Hello, lovie, things are smelling quite good in here- woah, uh, you’re aware that that pot is boiling over right?” 

Y/N looked up from the potatoes she was peeling to the voice from the door. Remus stood there, dressed cozy in a patterned, forest green jumper and loose fitting jeans that they had bought on a thrifting date the weekend before. His hands were shoved into his pockets, nose and cheeks dusted in a pretty pink blush from the cold of a London winter. 

No matter how long they had been dating, she would never stop admiring Remus. When they first got together she would always call him pretty and gorgeous, and when he asked her why he wasn’t handsome or hot she said, “of course you’re both of those things, pretty, but you’re gorgeous inside and out”. He’d flushed red right after Y/N told him and she knew right then that she’d never get sick of seeing that face.

“Y/N? Darling, the pot is boiling over!” Remus insisted more urgently. Y/N shook herself out of her trance and glanced at the stove, where surely enough, one of the pots full of split pea soup was boiling and spilling over the sides of the metal and into the fire. 

“Shit!” Grabbing a towel she tried to wipe down the pot and in her haste forgot the stove was still on. Tears filled her eyes, spilling out freely as if they had been waiting there for a while. A small whimper left her lips and Remus immediately rushed to turn the fire off and returned to her face her burnt finger. 

“Are you okay, lovebug?” He inspected the burnt skin, his hand cool under her warm flesh. A few sniffles managed to escape Y/N and he pulled her into his arms, cooing, “It’s alright, darling, just let it out. I can tell this isn’t just about the burn ‘cus I’ve seen you take on Sirius in his stupid wrestling matches while have the fuckin’ audacity to smile.” She giggled a little at that and he mirrored her expression, glad he was able to get his girl laughing again. “What’s really bothering you, my little chef?”

Y/N sniffled and laid on the floor, Remus’ arms situated around her hips as he leaned up against the counter. Her mind told her that there was no time to be dawdling, laying on the floor and lazing. But her boyfriend’s arms felt so good around her, warmth radiating off him like he was a damn furnace heater and she found it nearly magical the way he was so warm all the time. 

She could spare herself this one moment with him..

“Remember the last time Mary came over with Dorcas and the kid?” Remus hummed, picturing the small baby girl he’d had to sit with for an hour as the three women caught up on life after highschool. Ever since the crying infant was born, the group had barely had time to get together. Everyone was sort of heading off. “Well, Mary mentioned how Lily said James was getting the whole gang back together for Christmas, and how she was going to have to do so much cooking for the holidays this year because she’s Mary and she always is the best cook and the best host,” Remus agreed with a quick nod, still strumming his fingers up and down his distressed girlfriend’s body gently, “so I stepped in and told her I’d do it so she could have a break for once.”

He nodded and smoothed down her hair as she talked. “And that’s not going so well for you, is it?”

Y/N surveyed the barely half finished Christmas dinner laid out, the soup spilled over the pan and countertop. There were at least several more dishes to be finished, and it was already six o’clock which meant that everyone would be arriving within the next two hours. “No, it’s not,” she admitted with a pout.

“Do you want me to help you, lovie?” Remus knew his girlfriend was stubborn. This was the woman that refused to let him help her with biology homework in year two and would not accept defeat in Monopoly until everyone had counted over their properties and money at least three times. He would not put it past her to insist on finishing the Christmas dinner by herself despite the fact that she had been cooking all day and was clearly exhausted.

But with the smallest voice that he could barely just hear, she asked, “Please?”

So with her little plea of help, that he’d never mention again if he wanted to live, Remus lifted her up by her armpits and together they slowly started to fix up the kitchen. He wiped up the spilled soup while she took the pies out carefully, under his supervision of course, and put the turkey in the oven for three and a half hours. It wouldn’t be perfect timing for the guests, but he reassured Y/N that it would be okay. 

He insisted that she take a shower and get ready for dinner about an hour of starting anew. 

And, oh, she couldn’t be more grateful for her boyfriend as the hot stream of water felt so good on her tired muscles, finally being able to release the tension in her body after hours of working in the kitchen. There was no doubt in her mind that her feet would be sore from standing so long later, but she let herself relax, not thinking about Christmas dinner, or the cooking, or the fact that the new uni semester would start in less than two weeks. Ooh, she still had to schedule her classes for that as well. 

Finally forcing herself from under the hot spray of water, Y/N dried off and prepared herself to look somewhat presentable. The closet in her and Remus’ shared room was large, large enough that it should have held all of their clothes equally, but his sweaters took up a solid half of the space. She couldn’t be that upset though, she’d let the man have as many cashmere sweaters as he wanted, and it didn’t hurt that he looked damn good in them too.

Y/N finally decided on a crushed red velvet skater dress, with bell sleeves covering her forearms in the cold December chill. A dainty gold necklace, a gift from Lily for her birthday the year before, sat on her collarbones, the small jade pendant resting in the center. Slowly, she danced over to the bathroom, humming her favorite Christmas songs as she applied her makeup. Some bold red lip and neutral eyeshadow later, the time showed to be seven-thirty already, and she dashed out of the room in a haste, her heart already racing. She was an hour and a half late to her own damn Christmas get-together.

What she hadn’t been expecting to see however, was every single one of her friends, clapping as she entered the living room, adorning happy smiles and shouting praises at her. Her eyes swept over the small crowd, all ten of her guests, all faces of the ones she loved most, all looking at her like she was the most precious thing in the world. It felt good, having this family.

She made her way through the group of Marauders and her dear loved ones, faintly making out Mary’s words of gratitude and James’ yelling of how good the food smelled. The little ones, the infants Harry and Mary and Dorcas’ bratty little girl, enjoyed slobbering and teething at the snickerdoodle cookies, to her satisfaction, but a cry of relief nearly left her lips when she saw the dinner table. All the food was finished, laid out under a holiday table runner that stretched along the oak wood. Mashed potatoes, salads, green beans, and bowls of soup set up neatly with utensils next to it. It was a food fantasy straight out of her mum’s cookbook, the aroma of Christmas dinner seeming to fit in perfectly with the dimly lit room.

Remus wrapped an arm around her waist as she admired the setting. He too had cleaned up, looking like he walked out right out of one of her vintage Vogue magazines, with his fluffy chestnut hair combed to the side and gelled there with a formal yet warm-looking tweed suit. To say he was looking sharp was selling it short.

“You look good, lovebug.” Y/N placed a kiss on his lips, trying her hardest to not make it more than chaste when he looked so damn pretty. 

“When did you even have time to change? I didn’t notice you coming into the bedroom.” She noted. 

Remus’ cheeks tinted a light pink and he looked down sheepishly. “I had to ring up Sirius for some nicer clothes, I realized halfway through my search that all I have are jumpers and old jeans.”

Resting her hands on his suit-covered biceps, which she felt suited his arms rather nicely, she squeezed making him blush more furiously, a pinky-red flush taking over his cheeks and nose in pretty contrast to his umber eyes. “Really? I couldn’t even tell.”

He laughed at the sarcastic, teasing tone, pecking her forehead. “I hope I did okay with dinner, I was just following out of your mum’s recipe book.”

His arms encased her frame, his head coming to rest comfortably in the crook of her neck. “Oh, my Moony,” she sighed, “it’s just absolutely perfect. This dinner itself has to be the best Christmas gift ever.”

Well, if she thought this was the best gift, then Remus couldn’t wait to see the look on her face when he took out the little black box in his coat pocket.

[comfyswitcherblanketfort]

My Darling Cat Roommate

lmao this isn’t lambden, as the title may suggest. sorry folks

@stinastar hit me with some feels over and modern roommate au where Geralt just doesn’t know what to do to make Jask feel better and this happened. 

Warnings: We go into some Seasonal Affective Depression stuff here so like be careful with that if it triggers you, jask beats himself up a little, mentioning feeling numb at things that usually bring him joy, i swear in this one. I haven’t changed, dont worry lol

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Jaskier trudged home from work on Friday, exhausted but relieved he had the next week off. He wolfed down the leftovers Geralt had heated up for him and almost fell asleep on the couch before Geralt hauled him up and walked him into his room, where he promptly fell asleep on top of his duvet in jeans and his shoes. Sometime around when early morning coffee workers were getting up he undressed and snuggled under the warm blankets. 

When he woke to Geralt making a smoothie he was prepared to launch into a full ‘morning people’ rant, only to check his phone and realize it was 2pm. So, maybe he’d needed rest. 

It was still grey enough out that he shrugged and went back to sleep. 

When he woke up again it was dark and the TV was going. He wrapped up in his comforter rather than putting on sweats and shuffled out to the kitchen only because his stomach growled when he tried to roll over.

“Morning, Sleeping Beauty!” Geralt called over his shoulder as he floated past with the pasta he’d left in the microwave. 

Jaskier just grunted a small “Thanks,” before he disappeared back into his room. He scrolled through various apps as he ate and rolled back into bed. 

He might have fallen asleep, he might not, but he certainly didn’t get out of bed until his bladder absolutely demanded it on Sunday morning. 

Geralt intercepted him in the hallway before he could make it back to his room, “You feeling okay?”

“Hm? Why?” Jaskier took a moment to respond, staring at Geralt like he’d grown a second head. He knew his hair was probably greasy but he couldn’t look that bad.

“You slept all day yesterday.” Geralt looked like he was diffusing a bomb rather than talk to his roommate, “Did something happen at work?” 

Jaskier just shrugged, “I’m just tired.” And a little numb.

Geralt nodded, “I’m headed to the store. You sure you don’t want me to pick anything up for you?”

“I’m okay, Geralt…” he sighed, slipping past his brick wall of a roommate to slink beneath his blankets once again and make himself as small as possible. 

It was late January and the Seasonal Affective Depression was in full swing. He should have bought that fucking happy light when it was on sale. Should have bought the Vitamin D tablets he saw last week. Should have let Geralt drag him to the gym a little more when he felt the initial dip. Should have blah blah blah. He thought over every little thing he knew would have helped that he just hadn’t done and sighed, pulling his blankets tighter around him. He knew he wasn’t going to do any of it until it got bad enough that his hair would stick to his forehead once he hit this point. Might as well hurry it along so it could be over with. 

Geralt knocked on his door, snapping him out of his mini spiral. He hummed, not even bothering to turn over until he heard the rattle of the doorknob. 

“I know you didn’t want anything, but… uh. I was in the bulk section. Got you the peach things.” Geralt’s voice was lower and softer than usual as he raised the frankly massive bag of peach rings for emphasis before he set them on Jaskier’s desk. 

“Than-” Jaskier coughed when his voice came out raspy and broken, “Thank you.”

Geralt leaned against the doorframe for a moment, a curious frown on his face, “Bake Off is on in an hour if you wanna watch it.”

Jask forced a smile and shrugged, “We’ll see.”

Geralt pursed his lips and nodded, pausing a moment before pushing off the doorframe, “Okay.” 

Jaskier stared at the peach rings for a while after Geralt closed the door. Eventually he compromised with his brain and rolled out of bed onto his knees, waddling a couple of steps until he could reach the rings then launch back to bed. 

Normally he would have almost cried with happiness that Geralt had gotten his favorite treat. He loved it when Geralt did little things for him or thought of him enough to give him something, but he felt rather indifferent as he shoved the twentieth peach ring in his mouth. 

Without warning his door opened just enough for a plate to appear and be gently set on his desk.

Geralt muttered, “For the sugar high…” before his hand disappeared and the door once again shut. 

Jaskier almost smiled when he saw the neatly arranged concentric circles of Totinos Pizza Rolls on the plate. He got to his feet to fetch them this time. 

Around ten that night there was another knock at his door that pulled him from an hour long scroll through tiktok.

“Jask?”

“Yeah?”

Geralt held a big grey bundle in his arms, “Do you- Uh. I thought- weighted blanket?” He held his arms out with a hesitant smile. 

Jaskier sat up, “But don’t you use it to sleep?”

Geralt shrugged, unfolding the bean-filled blanket and laying it over Jaskier’s legs, “I’ll be fine.”

Jaskier stared at the ceiling for a while after he left, confused by Geralt’s suddenly attentive behavior. He would have expected the grouchy man to enjoy the silence that came with his bad days. For how much Geralt complained about his loud music, he certainly wasn’t expecting gifts. 

Geralt left a note in the kitchen Monday morning saying he’d made Jaskier a breakfast sandwich with instructions on how to warm it up without it turning soggy. Jaskier stood in front of the panini press reading and rereading the note as he heated his breakfast like it was in Old English. He ate at the kitchen table this time, annoyed with the crumbs in his bed, and counted up all the little gifts he’d been brought. He could come to only one conclusion.

Geralt was part cat. 

He’d stopped functioning and Geralt kept bringing him mice. 

He smirked and sent him a quick text, “Thanks for the breakfast. 👌 V  good.”

After breakfast, he decided maybe he could change his pajamas, but he stayed tucked under Geralt’s weighted blanket for most of the day. Every now and then Geralt would text him something stupid Eskel or Lambert did, or a meme he found on his break, and every time Jaskier would grin and send back an emoji. Words were out of reach but Geralt frequently only communicated in emojis and one-word sentences. He should get the message.

Jaskier fell asleep around two, really asleep not just the fitful light sleep he’d been having the last couple of days. He was rousted from a dream about a talking panini press by Geralt tripping over a pile of laundry and softly swearing as he tried to right himself without crashing into the bed or Jaskier’s lute. 

“Geralt? Darling, what are you doing?”

Geralt finally caught himself and nearly blinded Jaskier with a smile as he straightened up, “Didn’t mean to wake you.” 

Jaskier sat up and scratched at his hair, “Yes, but doing what?” 

“Oh! Yeah. Uh. I-” Geralt, still grinning, pointed to a small fern in a bright orange clay pot sitting on his windowsill. 

“You got me a plant?”

Geralt was practically beaming when Jaskier glanced back at him. 

“Has anyone ever told you you’re a cat?” 

Geralt snorted, sitting down on the edge of the bed, “You’re feeling better?” 

Jaskier tilted his head, “I think so? What makes you say that?”

“You called me ‘Darling’.” 

A hesitant smile crept on Jaskier’s face. There was an echo of the usual all-consuming warmth spreading in his chest that he usually felt when Geralt smiled at him. He may indeed be feeling a bit better. Come to think of it he actually wanted to shower.

“I taped Bake Off. If you’re feeling up for a trek to the couch,” Geralt offered, forced nonchalance dripping from every word. 

Jask nodded, “Let me shower, then we can finish off the peach rings.” 

Geralt’s smile nearly stopped his heart, a sure sign he was nearing the land of the living again, “I got lasagna on the way home too,” he chirped as he jumped up and made his way to the door. 

“Hey, Darling?” It felt a little forced and goofy saying the pet name like that, but Jaskier just couldn’t help himself, “Thank you.”

Geralt’s smile softened, “Anytime.”

[imagine-silk]

Nameless Flowers (Part III)

Luckily Hank’s hangover was gone by Monday. He did wonder about the flowers, the clerk did ask them to come again but he didn’t want to just keep going there to keep checking. Maybe in a few weeks he’ll go back or if he gets another bouquet. 

“Lieutenant.” 

Hank turned to see Connor walking up with a bag under his arm. “Connor? What are you doing here?”

“I don’t have work today.”

Hank scoffed as the young man stopped at his desk. “Of course you don’t.”

“So I brought you food. It’s your lunch break and I was,” His LED spun. “In the area.”

Hank nodded with his lips pressed in a thin line. “Uh-huh. Bullshit.” He moved over, inviting him to sit. “What’s this really about?”

Connor grabbed a nearby chair and started unpacking the food. Much to Hank’s surprise, it was not a salad. “Well, I thought I should convince you to check out the Clay Pot again.” He pulled a small paper bag out of his pocket and popped a fried noodle in his mouth. So Connor has discovered the joy of food, Hank thought. He looked very casual, if it weren’t for the LED on his forehead he’d look like any human, a human on a magazine but a human nonetheless.

“Wait, what? Why?”

“I just think it’s worth looking into.”

His eyes shifted to the left. Hank stopped mid-bite and furrowed his brows at him. “Spill it.”

“Spill what?”

“I know you know something. Tell me.”

“I don’t-” Connors LED flickered yellow for a moment. “I just have a hunch.” He sounded so unsure, like he wondered if he should be saying anything at all.

“Okay. What’s your hunch?”

Yellow, blue, yellow, blue. “The bouquets are most likely from the Clay Pot, it is one of the only shops in Detroit to have all of the supplies. It’s possible someone bought select supplies from different shops but that is highly unlikely. But as it turns out the Clay Pot has a website that people can order from.”

“But wouldn’t the flowers pop up on the computer when the clerk checked it.”

“Yes, but there is also a section on the website to share your flowers. Most of the photos are attached with a review ranging anywhere from a quick ‘These are so pretty’ to a full documentation of their experience. People even leave comments on the-”

“What are you gettin’ at Connor?”

“The Clay Pot has a very tight-knit community, apparent by the comments and a lot of the comments mention the workers by name. It would not surprise me if one of the workers knew who was leaving the flowers and was asked not to document it.”

“So one of the workers knows something.”

“It’s a theory.” His right eye twitched as his LED flickered. “That might be answered soon.”

[fuzzkaizer]

G.S Wyllie is my name - Noise From Maine, March 30, 2021 

[this is a research on G.S.Wyllie, an original pedal and fuzz circuit builder who cast some of his own enclosures, done by Maine Guitars Portland, ME:]

“Where does the name come from? - G.S. Wyllie is my name”

G.S. Wyllie started making pedals in the 1960s, I wish I had known more about him before he died in 2014. I recently took on a quest, if you will, to try and locate his Moonrock Fuzz pedal for Nicholas Kula of Catalinbread Pedals. Although I have yet to locate one I have uncovered a little bit of the fascinating character he was and encountered two of his friends online who cherish his creations so much they wouldn’t sell them to me and I wouldn’t buy them. Some things just belong with some people.

G.S. Wyllie's line of effects included the Fuzzmite (wild, thick, full range strange fuzz), the OZO (dynamic alien octaver), the Moonrock Fuzz (a fuzz that has just one dial for it's fuzz, swell feature, and octaver), the Wylo (a hard rockin' fuzz pedal with drive, tone, and volume controls), the Over-Tron (An overdrive that peaks into fuzz with a switch), and the Rising Sun (shin-ei superfuzz/classic fuzz from yesteryear).

G.S. Wyllie was also know to build guitars, sitars and mandolins.

I uncovered an old interview with the Man the myth himself, G.S. Wyllie:

How did G.S. Wyllie start?

I began making pedals away back in the early '60's when the Gibson Maestro Fuzztone left its indelible mark on my ears with the Stones' Satisfaction song.

My father was an electrical engineer and showed me how to read schematics from when I was 12 or so years old. We borrowed a Maestro from a music store and copied the circuit. (pirates!) We then drove to the electronics store for the Germanium transistors, caps, pots, etc. I took 18 gauge sheet steel, bent it with a hammer and vise into a similar shape as the Maestro, and soldered it together with a propane torch, flux, plumbers solder. Ran into a big problem with DPDT stomp switches. They could not be found anywhere, so I subbed a toggle for the first few I made, then came up with a solution. I could get SPDT on,on stompswitches, so I installed them very close together and soldered on a steel "cap" to bridge the 2 together. DPDT!

Where does the name come from?

G.S. Wyllie is my name.

How do you name your pedals?

A funny story... When I first cast my pedal shells, I used plaster of Paris for the mold, modeling clay for the pattern. I was casting a shell with a smooth surface using molten pewter, but when pouring it into the mold, it erupted like a volcano, spewing molten pewter everywhere. I hadn't dried the plaster enough, and when water turned to steam, BLAM! When I cracked open the mold, I had what looked like a Moonrock, and named it so.

Can you tell us something about the production process?

Nearly everything I make is designed and made by me. Exceptions are the Wylo, a mutated Tone Bender, and the Rising Sun, a Shin-ei Superfuzz with expanded controls.

The Fuzzmite, Moonrock and OzO are very different from other circuits and produce unique sounds. I spent more time developing the Moonrock circuit then I spent time with my girlfriend and she let me know it!

I used to cast my own enclosures, now the patterns are sent off to a foundry where they are cast using a match plate, making 4 shells at once. It takes a lot to make them into pedals, milling, drilling, grinding, sanding.

Which of your pedals is the most popular?

The Rising Sun is a very popular pedal of mine, it has an etched graphic on top. I also offer it with a polyester film image due to the sketchy way the etching turns out these days. I originally bought enclosures from quite a few companies and got excellent results when etching them, but... now they manufacture them using (I guess) recycled scrap metal amalgam. That makes it unknown from one box to the next just how it will turn out. Usually it will have weak areas and odd spots here and there. But the image will never rub off, its there permanently, forever! I guess it's whats inside that counts and that pedal has all the fuzz anyone could ever want.

Who uses your pedals and for which genres?

Mostly all my pedals have been made for each individual, one at a time, on order. I don't usually make up stock and promote them. Tonefrenzy buys some pedals of mine and stocks them, sells to some major artists around the world.

What does the future of G.S. Wyllie look like?

I sold about 10 of those early Fuzztone clones for $15 when a real Maestro cost $36! Way back then you could get the exact transistor #'s, they almost always sounded perfect, and cost less than 50cents. These days I've managed to keep my costs down and most of my prices haven't changed since 1999.

I no longer make pedals that use Germanium transistors due to quality issues.

Are you working on any new products?

I've recently developed an extraordinarily powerful octaver/fuzz, the R.U.X. Right now it's in a plain small Phase 90 style rectangular case. 3 knobs, 3 switches is just too much to cram into the cast boxes. Its available like this now, and I should have more info on it (sound clips, etc.) on my site soon.

[G.S. Wyllie’s site was http://home.mindspring.com/~wylo and meanwhile unfortunately is expired - as I remember it was quite chaotic and crammed with interesting stuff]

[further, there are comments to the blog entry of people who seem to have known the man:]

Edly  February 2, 2022: If you’re going to use an entire article, shouldn’t you include the author’s name? I knew Glenn very well and wrote about him, but if you’re not even going to give an author credit, I really don’t want to share the writing. It’s simply professional courtesy, as well as common decency.

John Oakley  December 2, 2021: My name is Mike Oakley (Mojo), I was a very close friend of Glen’s. He made my first electric guitar witch I had for 20 years. I sold it to Mark Stewart of the Paul Simon band.I also own the first two “Moonrocks” both are prototypes … the very first prototypes.I saw Glen most everyday in the early 90s. He lived less than a mile or two from me and I was on his way to town where he got his supplies. Spoke at least once a week after I left Chapel Hill. So sorry I wasn’t closer when he was ill. Seems like he could have used a friend. Glen or “LG” as we called him the “Lone Guitarist” was a fine guitar player and a very creative guy.I only wish I had met him a lot earlier then 1983. Every time I would go to his place witch was often he had a project going on. When the pedals started happening I had to have one and he needed the money for more supplies so I got the very first two. I still have them both, One works great the other needs work as a wire came loose and I am scared to work on it myself. I will sell one to the right person and if anyone reading this knows someone that might be able to fix the pedal please let me know. thank you and RIP my friend!

davison welch  July 21, 2021: rip glenn—love you man—after all these years your pedals still cannot be beat—fuzzmite and magic stars forever

cred: maineguitars.com/blogs/noise-from-maine/g-s-wyllie-is-my-name