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notlongtolove · 14 hours ago

Text

the garden is growing

"you live together, work together. doesn’t it all get a little boring?" there’s a weight to her observation, something invasive, like she’s pulling out weeds that you never asked her to tend, tilling through soil that’s been left unbothered for too long. the cups of tea, the folding of blankets. you could never call that boring.

pairing: spencer reid x fem!reader (second person, no y/n)

genre: fluff! maybe angst if you really really squint

content: after catching up with an old friend, bau!reader and bf!spencer have a contemplative talk about their relationship as they walk home. domestic... mentions of marriage... lurve in the air...

word count: 2.2k

note: a post finals treat to myself! leaned heavy into the garden imagery for this one lol, this was heavily inspired by the poem linked, i highly recommend it! o i also added some song recs below for this one :P (ps i did not mean to compare spencer's eyes to PEBBLES but it was either that or a random brown flower... sorry.)

a line: The perennial pushes its way through the cracks in the concrete—small, steady, and undeniably alive. It’s there. It’s growing.

If you ask me 'What's new?', I have nothing to say Except that the garden is growing. - wendy cope

When you were younger, you had a garden. A field just a stone's throw from your front door. Not the kind in a backyard, fenced in and manageable. No, it was wild and uncontained, the grass alive beneath your feet. They used to say love was like a garden. You'd think about that sometimes—how you were supposed to tend to it, rake and comb and pull out the weeds before they strangled your beautiful flowers. And when it rained, you just had to let it. Let the downpour come and see what survived.

You’re standing under the awning, shaking droplets off your jacket. You mumble a thanks to the doorman as he holds the door open, offering a silent nod in return. The door opens to a polished, marble lobby, and suddenly you’re acutely aware of how out of place you look. You’d come straight from the office, having dwindled your stack of case files from a grand total of 26 to a modest 19. The grand mirror to your left does nothing to help. If anything, it’s magnifying the creased fabric of your trousers and the damp strands of hair stuck to your cheek. You shift uncomfortably, tugging at your sleeves and smoothing your hair out in a futile attempt at order. It was urgent she’d said. A matter of utmost importance. You’re not sure why you’re here, but you know with certainty that you’d rather not be.

She sees you before you see her. She calls out for you, the nickname wrapping around you like a sweater one size too small—warm but suffocating. It might as well be. You haven’t seen her in nearly a year—maybe a year and a half? You shrug, suddenly missing Spencer’s precision, his ability to pin things down to the day, the hour.

"Hi," you manage, sliding into the seat opposite her. “I’m really sorry. Work was crazy—" you start, but your words dissolve the moment she thrusts her hand forward. A diamond—no, a boulder—catches the light, dazzling and deliberate. You nearly choke on the glass of water you’ve just picked up.

"Let me tell you about crazy," she says, her grin sharpening.

Oh, the yacht! And don’t even get me started on the violins, can you believe it! The sea was just gorgeous—Did I mention it was on a yacht? Her words tumble out as you try to follow along, but you can’t quite keep up, only noting it definitely involved an abhorrent amount of Dom Perignon.

“I wish you could’ve been there to see it,” she says, her voice tinged with what you hope is nostalgia and not pity.

“I’m sorry I missed it,” you murmur, and you mean it—sort of. You used to be close, but since starting at the BAU, everything else kind of took a backseat. It had to. “I wish I could’ve too. Work’s been—”

"Crazy, right," she cuts in, waving it off. "Big fancy BAU," She winks. "That job’s gonna be the death of you one day y’know, all those hours." You force a laugh, but her words hit a little too literally, heavier than she knows. You don’t think she quite grasps the reality of your work.

“So,” she says, leaning in now, her chin propped delicately on her hand, her diamond ring catching the light. You can’t help but think it’s mocking you. “How’s things going with Spencer?”

"Oh, they’re going fine."

"Fine?" She raises her brows. "Trouble in paradise?"

“No, not at all,” you insist, your voice instinctively rising in defence. “We’re—fine. You know, same old, same old. We just wrapped a big case actually. This guy—” You cut yourself off, realizing mid-sentence that the story of a guy meticulously collecting hair from women post-mortem doesn’t feel like the kind of story to share during dinner under a sparkling chandelier—Not that you’re doing much eating anyway. The menu was a labyrinth of fancy salads, obscure cheeses, and entrées described in French that you’re only half sure translate to lamb. You’d settled for pushing a few greens around your plate, making a mental note to stop by the bodega later.

Her laugh pulls you back to the table, "I don’t know how you do it."

"Do what?"

"You know… Live together, work together, day in, day out. Doesn’t it all get a little..." She trails off, letting her expression finish the sentence.

"A little… what?"

"Boring?"

You blink. "Boring?"

The word tastes bitter. You don’t like it. The way the dog always chases the cat? Boring. The way the cat always seeks shelter in the same tree? Boring. But the way they both come running home every time you call? That’s never boring. Spencer in the quiet mornings—hair tousled, voice soft and sleepy as he murmurs a 'good morning.' The cups of tea, the folding of blankets. You could never call that boring.

She laughs lightly, the sound cutting through the restaurant’s hum. "Not in a bad way! I just mean... do you guys even go out? Like, for fun? You guys have been together for, what like, years now?” Three years and 4 months, you think to yourself. You’d never need Spencer’s eidetic memory to remember that.

"Well, yeah, sure we do…" you say finally. "Um, we went to a museum recently." You don’t tell her it was to interview a suspect. Her smile tightens, like she’s not sure whether to believe you or feel sorry for you. You take a careful sip of water, resisting the urge to shift under her gaze. There’s a weight to her observation, something invasive, like she’s pulling out weeds that you never asked her to tend, tilling through soil that’s been left unbothered for too long. Outside, the rain keeps falling.

By the time you part with polite hugs and hollow smiles, the downpour has softened to a drizzle. Spencer is waiting by the curb, hair slightly damp. His eyes light up at the sight of you. Under the glow of the streetlight, they remind you of the pebbles you used to collect by the garden path. You’d carry them home, pocketful by pocketful, washing and scrubbing at them until they shone. Only your favourites made it to your shelf. Tiny, perfect trophies.

“Hi, honey.”

"Hiya." You lean into his chest, a tired smile tugging at your lips as you manage a strained, “I’m starving.”

“Hi starving. Care for a burrito?” he asks, tilting a takeout bag toward you with a small smile.

Your eyes meet his, and there’s something in his smile—soft, understanding, familiar—that makes your chest ache. “How’d you know?” you ask, practically tearing into the bag.

“Searched the menu after you left,” he says simply, falling into step beside you as you start walking. “Figured you wouldn't have liked much in there," he shrugs, casual. You feel your cheeks warm. Two hours away from Spencer Reid is two hours too long.

The walk home is quiet at first, the two of you picking your way around puddles reflecting neon signs. The burrito’s long gone, leaving your hand free for Spencer to hold, fingers interlocked.

“She’s engaged,” you say eventually.

Spencer furrows his brows. “Already?”

“It’s only been like, what, eight? nine months?”

Spencer frowns, pauses then says, “256 days”, the precision drawing a faint smile from you.

“Crazy isn’t it?”

“I guess. Some people are like that,” he says, “Did you know statistically, couples who get engaged within the first year of dating are 20% more likely to divorce within the first five years?”

“With that prenup incoming she’d better hope they’re the exception then…” you murmur, not really listening.

There’s something in your chest, persistent and heavy. You can feel its roots stirring, working its way beneath the surface, threatening to loosen the earth that keeps you grounded.

A few more steps in silence. Then, quietly, “Do you think we’re boring?”

“Boring?” Spencer tilts his head slightly. “Do you think we’re boring?”

You hesitate, suddenly self-conscious. “I don’t think we’re boring, but you know, we don’t do much.”

“We’re in the FBI, honey. I’d argue we do a lot.” He smirks, the corner of his mouth twitching playfully. You try to laugh, but it comes out forced, brittle—like a flower trying to push out a bloom that's not quite ready yet.

Spencer notices, as he always does. “Is there something you want to do?” It stirs in you again, something tender and uncertain. You don’t know if it will be a flower that blooms or a weed that chokes out everything else.

“No,” You say a little too quickly, “Nothing really, just... Other than work and home—”

“What’d she say?”

“Hm?”

“You love work, you live for it—I practically have to drag you out of the office most days,” he reasons, tone calm and steady. “And, if this is something that was bothering you… I’d have known. So it must’ve been something she said.” You stop walking, the words catching in your throat. It bothers you—how her vines have crept into your garden, straight through to the soil beneath. Flowers rarely thrive in foreign soil, you think.

“Not really,” you lie, biting your lip—a tell Spencer surely catches. “We just talked about the engagement. Well, she talked.”

He doesn’t press, though you can tell he doesn’t believe you. His gaze lingers, but he chooses to give you space. “How was it? The engagement.”

“Something about a yacht,” you reply with a shrug.

“I thought she was afraid of water.”

“Not when it’s on a million-dollar vessel, apparently.”

Spencer chuckles. You continue to walk. Your feet do their best to trace the familiar trail, trying to find the garden path that takes you home. Left. Right. Left. Right. But your thoughts snag, tripping on an unseen vine, and you stumble.

“Do you ever think about it?” you ask.

“About what?”

“Like... if we ever get married and stuff.”

Now it’s Spencer’s turn to stop mid-step, rooted to the spot, his body going still. You freeze too, breath trapped in your chest, a flush spreading across your cheeks. “I’m sorry,” you rush to say, the guilt sharp and immediate. “That was silly, I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

You tug softly on his hand trying to pull him forward, but he doesn’t budge. His brows knit together as his gaze locks with yours.

“When.”

“When what?”

“You said if. I’m saying when. When we get married.”

“When we get married?” you repeat, your voice barely above a whisper, as if speaking any louder might shatter the moment.

“Yeah,” he says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “When. Not if. I don’t think really of it as a hypothetical possibility.”

Your chest tightens and you don’t know exactly what to say, but your fingers instinctively tighten around his. Spencer senses your silence and rushes to fill the space.

“Do you… not think that?” he asks, a hint of uncertainty creeping into his voice.

“I do! Of course, I do.” Your voice falters. “I just… I didn’t know you thought about it that way too.”

Spencer hums, soft smile on his face. “I know I tend to look at things in terms of statistics, probabilities—But us? There’s no ‘ifs’. Not with you, honey. Never with you.”

And just like that, the earth beneath you shifts, breaking apart to reveal a bud. Not a flower but a fruit-bearing tree. You try and fight the urge to throw yourself into his arms and kiss him, but he’s already leaning in, his lips warm and familiar against yours. As you pull back, eyes locked, you think back to the pebbles you used to collect. Your tiny, perfect trophies—Spencer’s eyes are far better, you think.

“You smell like burrito,” he teases. You laugh, the sound light and easy. “You love burritos.”

He brushes a stray curl from your forehead. “I love you.”

Through the clearing, you see it. The vines have receded, the rain has come and gone. Your feet step off the garden path with certainty. It’s safe now. It’s here.

“So,” you say with renewed excitement, your steps light as you glance at him, “Beach wedding?”

Spencer wrinkles his nose. “Do you have any idea how much fecal bacteria there is in beach sand?”

“Blegh.”

“No, seriously. Beach sand has 10 to 100 times more fecal bacteria than seawater.”

“How about we don’t throw around the word ‘fecal’ when my burrito is still working its way through me,” you reply, grimacing. “What’s your genius idea then?”

He grins. “Barn wedding?”

“Spence, I love you, and I know you’ve always wanted to be a cowboy, but I’m not walking down the aisle with hay in my hair.”

He laughs, shaking his head as you walk side by side, hands swaying between you. Spencer spots a perennial growing out of concrete cracks by the lamppost 2 steps ahead of you.

“What about a garden wedding? In spring?”

“A garden wedding,” you say, a soft smile spreading across your face, “Yeah, I’d really like that, spring’s nice.”

"Okay,” he says, hand warm in yours, “in spring then."

There’s no towering oak tree, ancient and steadfast, to mark this moment, no circle of wildflowers dancing wildly around with their colours. But still the perennial pushes its way through the cracks in the concrete—small, steady, and undeniably alive. It’s there. It’s growing.

They used to say love was like a garden. When his drought comes, silent but devastating nonetheless, you quench it with your rain—soft, temperamental. And when your rain changes its tide, thrashing and wild, he shelters you beneath his leaves, vast and unyielding. Together you prune the dead parts, plant anew, and marvel at what thrives.

The next time someone asks you how things are going, there’s no pursed smile or hesitant pause, distant in thought. You just smile and say it's going. It's going alright. It's going great. It’s going fine.

Because all that matters is that it's going.

Your garden is growing.

⋆✴︎˚｡⋆ hi if you're here! thank you for reading! feel free to like or reblog or comment or reply!

song recs if you feel like it: nothing by bruno major love letter from the sea to the shore by delaney bailey you’re here that’s the thing by beabadoobee

#spencer reid #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid fic #spencer reid imagine #spencer x reader #spencer x self insert #spencer reid x reader #criminal minds #criminal minds fic #criminal minds x reader #criminal minds imagine #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid x you #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid x reader fluff #spencer reid x bau!reader

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feeder86 · 4 hours ago

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Guy Again and Again

Hyde Park was incredible during the Fall. Guy couldn’t imagine wanting to be anywhere else when the leaves started changing colour. He’d lived in London for three years now and had happily started to put down roots. Like any major city, he’d paid an absolute fortune for his house, but it had been necessary to set himself up and enjoy all that the city had to offer. There was always something happening, always new folks to meet and beautiful people to seduce. When he’d been offered a role back home for even more money, he’d declined it, using it as leverage instead to climb even higher up in his company and then side-step into yet another high paying position at another firm. His ambition was celebrated here and Guy earned himself the cringe-worthy reputation of being one of the city’s most eligible bachelors.

“Guy, won’t you come and meet my young lad?” called Sheridan, as Guy was strolling through to his large office.

Guy sighed and glanced quickly over at the others in the space, knowing that they were all feeling exactly the same way. Whilst this was an incredible company to work for, the nepotism involved in the majority shareholder inserting his twenty-two year old son into such a major position, straight out of university, had frustrated them all.

Following the company’s owner into his office, Guy plastered a happy enough smile onto his face and held out his hand to shake the young man’s hand. He’d seen pictures of Robert in the past, on his father’s yacht and throughout the tabloids as he dated London’s latest ‘It Girl’ setting all the fashion trends. They’d also briefly crossed paths the summer before last, when using Robert’s family’s private box at Wembley Stadium. Soccer was a huge game over here and Guy had found himself quite captivated by it.

“Nice to see you again,” Guy offered, shaking the handsome boy’s hand.

“Robert is very keen to get started!” his pompous father announced happily. “I’m sure he’s just what this company needs: a bit of fresh energy injected into it.”

Guy nodded, despite feeling that Robert was going to be nothing more than dead wood for them all to carry. “We’re all delighted to have you here!” he lied.

“My father says you’re the absolute best,” Robert chimed in. “I think he seriously believes you’re going to rule the world one day! I’m definitely looking forward to learning from you this week.”

Guy knew he had been stitched up straight away. “Let me guess. You’re shadowing me this week?” he asked tentatively.

“That’s the plan!” Sheridan nodded, already grabbing his jacket to leave for his golf match at ten.

Guy looked outside into the corridor to see all the sly, grinning faces of his colleagues. They’d all known he was about to be saddled with the new boy, even before he did. Leading the way down the corridor, he noticed an additional computer had been set up at his enormous desk, with space for Robert to work alongside him; typical Sheridan making ridiculous calls yet again.

Robert was generally pretty intelligent and seemed to pick up on what Guy was saying with little effort on his part. Professionally, he appeared no different to the genuinely ambitious young interns they had on the floors below. But, in reality, he was so far removed from them, starting a job at the same level that had taken Guy ten years to even qualify for; not to mention all the incredible hard work and many, many promotions and job changes to get where he was. Indeed, Robert’s privilege was obvious by the way he talked about his travelling and the numerous powerful people he had known ever since he was small. Perhaps, in some ways, that did make him better suited to fly up the ranks early. Robert wasn’t daunted by the bigger clients and there was a sharpness to his mind that was sometimes quite surprising.

“How’s the babysitting going?” asked Angela slyly during the brief time Guy was on his own.

Guy smiled back. He wanted to joke and tell her off for not giving him the heads-up about being stuck with Robert this week. But, to be fair, everything was going fine. “No complaints from me!” he replied, reminding himself that complaining about something that couldn’t be changed was a fruitless exercise at work.

They both stopped talking, watching as handsome Robert emerged from the bathroom looking as sharp as ever: the beautiful hair, the eyes, the strong jawline. Behind him, the female staff couldn’t help but get a peek at those tight glutes and imagine being the lucky lady who would one day get to marry such a fine, well-bred specimen as him. “Are we ready?” he asked Guy, pleased to be heading out to meet clients again; knowing that this was where he could excel.

Getting around London could be a nightmare at times. Occasionally, it was genuinely faster to walk; exactly what ended up happening after roadworks had made it likely for them to be late otherwise. The client was a man called Mr Geoge Evans, owner of an events space that the company wanted to acquire. He was tall and broad, with an immense, solid and rounded gut pushing against the large shirt painted across his torso. It was the feature that most people noticed first about him and the one thing Robert couldn’t seem to stop staring at the moment they started their meeting.

Guy remembered feeling embarrassed and wanting to kick Robert hard for the way he was looking across at the gaping buttons on George’s shirt. After everything he had said about being okay with having this young upstart shadowing him that week, the boy had to ruin it almost instantly. Guy thought on his feet, finding a reason for Robert to need to leave the room and contact the office. Then Guy quickly rounded the whole thing up as fast as he could.

“What the fuck was that?” Guy grumbled as soon as they were walking to the tube station, given that their car had still not been able to reach them.

“What?” Robert asked, trying his best to keep up as Guy stormed on. He didn’t lack self-awareness; he knew exactly what he had done and why Guy had felt the need to remove him from the meeting. “I wasn’t expecting him to be so…”

“Fat?” Guy finished for him. “That’s so ridiculous! You know that right?”

“I was just a little surprised, that’s all. When we spoke on the phone…”

“This is business!” Guy began lecturing him. “You can’t fall to pieces just because some guy doesn’t fit into your perfect world-view of what everyone should look like. You need to get your head out of those glossy magazines you and your girlfriend seem to spend so much time in!”

“Look, I’m not like that!” Robert tried to counter his mentor. “That’s not why I got a bit flustered.”

“Whatever,” Guy sighed, racing down the steps to the tube station. Ultimately, he wouldn’t be able to hang onto this misstep. Robert’s family were the majority shareholders and, no doubt, the twenty-two year old would one day take the reins of the entire company. “Look… there’s no harm done. Just… just don’t ever let that happen again, alright?”

Robert nodded, tapping his card to head down to the Central Line. “I promise!”

Guy didn’t mention the staring incident to anyone when he got back. Robert had been exemplary the rest of the time and it was clear that he had a talent to make it far; especially given his Oxford education. As the weeks progressed, he began to shine more and Guy learned to genuinely appreciate his insight into certain things. Sometimes British etiquette eluded Guy, especially with the types of folks who had been born into extreme wealth, like Robert had.

Likewise, Robert appeared to be impressed with Guy’s talents in return. “You’re pretty smooth when it comes to the ladies,” he laughed as they came out of one meeting.

“Plenty of experience!” Guy joked back.

“I’m guessing that’s why you work out so much?” the pretty boy asked. “It’s not as easy to sweet talk a female client when you have a giant gut spreading into your lap,” Robert chuckled; not realising that his joke would fall so flat.

Guy tried to bite his tongue. It had been the second time Robert had been casually sizeist. “Actually,” he shot back, “some of the most successful business leaders feel being larger gives them more presence to take charge of things.”

“That’s not what my father says,” Robert replied.

“Well, your dad doesn’t know everything,” Guy grumbled back, deciding to shut down the conversation before he started getting annoyed.

At the end of that first month, Robert had offered Guy to come along and watch the international football match in the private box at Wembley Stadium. He would be there with his girlfriend, of course, but Guy was also welcome to bring along a date as well. Martha had been Guy’s instinctive choice. She was loud, greedy and extremely overweight: the perfect choice to annoy someone so superficial and quick to judge others for their weight. Guy called her up, pleased with his plan, but was disappointed to hear that she was back home in Glasgow that weekend. He needed to find someone else - fast!

Ben had been the next choice for Guy. Somewhat smaller and more reserved, but always fun to be around. They had met at a club night for bears about two years earlier, when Guy had been intrigued by the little chub’s confidence to stoll about shirtless through the crowds. Happily, still single, Ben agreed to the date and Guy was delighted to find the man looking so much heavier by the time he went to pick him up. “Look at you!” he marvelled, getting out of his sports car to open the door for the large man waiting outside his apartment block. “Someone has been eating well!”

Ben blushed a little. He knew that for many chub-lovers, seeing someone they had slept with getting even bigger was bound to be a turn on, and he patted his large tummy proudly on the vast shelf that had developed. “I’m pleased that you approve,” he smiled, knowing that he was always in for a fun night whenever Guy asked him out.

The young couples’ faces had been a picture when Guy strolled in with such a large bear as Ben. It struck him that perhaps Robert hadn’t realised Guy’s bisexuality, making it a rather more educational experience for the boy that he had perhaps expected. Ben played his part well, naturally gorging himself and failing to notice his belly peeking out of the bottom of his shirt as he got up and down to cheer at the performance on the pitch. As such, Guy lavished him with attention, proudly driving him back home for his reward. He’d more than made his point, hopefully putting an end to the way Robert would try to casually fat-shame others around him.

Back at work, Robert’s new office had been decked out just as he had requested, shunting Angela down to the floor below. Despite the slow start last month, even Guy winced at how much the new recruit was taking on.

“Wendy has come to me asking to negotiate her pay,” Robert explained, walking into Guy’s office and closing the door. “I’ve been told pay reviews only happen in April?”

“That’s bullshit,” Guy replied, trying to get on with his own analysis work. “That’s just a standard line that is thrown out to try and delay these types of things.”

“Well, either way,” Robert continued, sitting himself down in front of Guy’s desk. “Paying her more is going to dent the progress towards the quarterly profits.”

“Then what does your gut tell you to do?” Guy asked, determined not to spoon feed Robert out of these awkward situations.

Robert paused for a second. “I think we need to give it to her.”

Guy looked up and smiled. It was the call he had never expected Robert to make. “Exactly right,” he nodded. “Wendy is an asset. I know Wendy. She deserves it. And, if you didn’t give it to her, she’d be straight off to another company. Finding a replacement for someone with her responsibilities is time-consuming and costly.”

“I knew you’d view it the same way as me,” Robert smiled. “You always see the bigger picture. Sometimes I feel like my father can’t.”

Guy nodded gently, not wanting to commit to badmouthing the major shareholder in front of his son, despite all the many things he could have said.

“You see people for who they are. And you have the sort of relationships around here that most bosses would kill for. They all respect you and want to work hard because you inspire them.”

Guy almost felt embarrassed at the open compliments and he wriggled in his seat. “Thanks,” he shot back quickly. But there was something in Robert’s eyes; a look, or a feeling. Was the boy developing a little crush on him? All the signs were there and Guy had been in this situation many, many times in the past. He watched Robert walking away, unable to stop himself from checking out the handsome glutes and allowing his mind to imagine what it might be like to fuck the guy. He wasn’t above Robert in seniority around here; there was no major conflict to overcome; especially since he only saw himself staying for another year at the very most. But could he really go there?

It came as no surprise that Robert’s relationship with his girlfriend came to a sudden end very quickly after that. He’d been complaining for some time about the toxic ideals of social media and the constant requirement to be ‘seen’ out in public as often as possible in order to boost her career. “She’s more suited to some actor, or someone who does publicity for a living,” Robert had explained as he shook his head over the fact that their break-up had made it into the middle sections of the national tabloids.

“You’re young, free and single now!” Guy had smiled. “You can take some time for yourself instead.” He hadn’t meant to sound flirtatious, but he didn’t seem to be able to help himself once he knew someone was into him. It was the way he had always been, and he didn’t suppose he would ever change.

“What can I get you gentlemen?” asked the attendant, heading over to their table in the small cafe where they were debriefing after a client meeting. The man was large and broad, with a giant stomach that pressed out of his shirt in a way a lot of the men from Guy’s past would have loved.

“Just a mineral water for me,” Guy answered first. He looked across at Robert and sighed in frustration as the boy stared rudely at that large gut.

This time, Guy didn’t waste any time, giving Robert a quick kick under the table.

“A latte!” Robert shot out, realising immediately that he’d been gawping. “And, uh… have you got any of those brownies left?”

“What the fuck is up with you?” Guy asked the moment they were alone again.

Robert shrugged as if he genuinely failed to understand why he fell to pieces around such obese men. “What do you think it’s like, carrying all that weight around?” Robert asked, still transfixed as the guy headed behind the counter. He glanced back at Guy who was dumbfounded by the question. “Oh, come on…” he sighed. “I saw you with that big guy that time. You must have asked him what it feels like to be so heavy?”

“It’s not something I think about,” Guy replied, seeing that Robert looked unlikely to drop the question unless he gave a more considered answer. “But, I guess I wouldn’t date someone unless they liked their body.”

“Really?” Robert asked. “You date people who actually like being overweight?”

Guy didn’t mind discussing his sex life, but it felt strange to do so with someone from work; someone he wasn’t completely sure he could trust just yet. Back in the early days of his career, it had been slyly advantageous to impress other guys with tales of his sexual conquests. However, as he rose up the ranks, he’d learned to keep these stories to himself, knowing that the expectations were very different up at the top. Now he shrugged, taking his time to reply and only say what he needed to. “There’s nothing sexy about dating someone who hates their body. When I’m with larger folks, it’s usually because they want to be that way. They get off on it.”

Robert sat up a bit and leaned in closer, stimulated by the conversation. “There are people who get off on being fat?”

Guy chuckled. “Of course there are!” There was still so much he could tell Robert; about the gainer boys he had fallen for in the past, and the multiple kinky encounters he had had with guys who were actively trying to fatten themselves up.

The water, and Robert’s brownie arrived at the table and the server promised to follow with the latte shortly. “How do they do it?” Robert asked, eyeing his freshly delivered treat. “How do they let themselves go like that?”

Guy frowned slightly. “Well, what you may see as someone ‘letting-go’ may actually be them building something better for themselves: a body that feels right for them and turns them on. It’s actually very empowering if you think about it.”

“And you think that’s sexy?” Robert asked earnestly; a sweet innocence shining through his bright eyes.

“Of course!” Guy nodded. “Someone loving the skin they’re in - there’s nothing sexier!”

Life at the office suddenly became a lot more relaxed as Sheridan started to take even more of a step back. Guy found himself with a lot more power to persuade the board without the older man’s old fashioned points of view tainting things. It also helped that Robert was so much more in-tune with him; they could present a united front and, although most of the others on the team still grumbled about Robert’s injection into the senior management team, they had to admit that things were running a lot smoother with him around.

Guy had seen so much more of the world since he had moved to work in the UK. It seemed like nothing to pop over to Italy to secure a contract, or fly over to Dubai to capitalise on a lucrative opportunity. Six months after Robert began at the company, the pair found themselves in Sweden, leading part of a business conference. At first, Guy had been frustrated to have Robert coming along, given that it was such a good opportunity to network and find his next career jump. However, it had also been easier having him to share the workload with.

“I didn’t know you were coming down here,” Guy smiled as he saw Robert arriving in the spa changing room just as he himself was dressed only in his tight speedos and pushing the last of his things into the locker. He saw Robert check him out and smiled sweetly to himself. He’d known for a couple of months now that if something was ever going to happen between them, then it probably already would have happened by now. As it was, Robert was very much in the friend-zone. “Are you here to use the pool?” he asked.

Robert shook his head. “I just wanted to try out the sauna,” he replied.

Guy scowled a little as Robert turned his back to start getting changed. In the last few weeks, he’d noticed a little softening of the guy’s jawline and, although it wasn’t always easy to tell under a shirt and dress pants, it did appear as though Robert had gained a few pounds since he’d started full time work. Guy should know, he’d seen more than enough pictures of Robert’s body in the celebrity gossip columns, back when he was dating socialites. So when Robert removed his shirt, Guy could immediately see that his suspicions had been spot on.

It was most obvious when Robert leaned forward to strip his pants; the way his stomach rolled up with fresh fat. He had love handles coming in, clear to see once he turned his back. And those glutes… well, they seemed a little more full that the pert buns Guy had admired when Robert first started at the company. Guy had to say something. He’d been staring too long. He reached out a finger and poked Robert in his stomach. “What’s all this?” he playfully teased.

Robert chuckled nervously and shrank away, turning back around to put his stuff into the locker.

“No, seriously,” Guy pressed on, poking both index fingers into the softness at Robert’s sides now. “Where’s all this come from?”

“I’ve just… not had much time for the gym lately,” Robert replied, stacking his clothes up.

Guy looked at Robert’s butt from behind and nodded in agreement. “Well, that’s pretty obvious!” he agreed. He’d seen lots of guys at the gym start to pack on a few pounds over the years. Often, all they needed was a reality check to get them back on the right path. “I think you need to start doing a little more cardio, buddy,” he declared, turning to walk out and into the pool area.

After a few decent laps, Guy pulled himself out of the water and headed into the sauna, finding Robert still in there, alone. His skin had turned glossy and oily, shimmering as his little roll of stomach fat started to peek over the waistband of his undersized swim shorts.

Guy knew how imposing his own body was: his large frame and well-trained, muscular physique. Even in his early thirties, there wasn’t an inch of fat to spoil his enticing abs and, if anything, he’d only become stronger as the years went by. He flopped down opposite Robert, unable to take his eyes off how chubby the pretty boy looked without his shirt on.

“So, when did all this start happening?” Guy asked, knowing that he needed to address what he was seeing.

Robert wriggled awkwardly and pulled his rolled up towel to cover his crotch and lower half of his softer midsection. “A few months,” he mumbled. “I’ve just been enjoying my food a little more.”

“No kidding!” Guy chuckled, surprised now by how much he could see the extra weight, even in Robert’s chest. “What’re you going to do about it?”

“Nothing,” Robert shrugged. “I don’t have the time to go to the gym now I’m working so much.”

Guy smirked at this and shook his head. “You mean you don’t want to make time for it?” he asked.

Robert flushed with a little embarrassment. “I’m okay with how I look,” he replied. His attention seemed to turn to Guy’s body instead, given how much scrutiny his own had been under. “Frankly, I had no idea you were so extremely toned,” he nodded at Guy’s torso. “Obviously, I knew you were super fit, but…”

“You’ve never seen me without my shirt on before?” Guy asked, intrigued and surprised at how aroused he was suddenly feeling to be gazed upon by Robert. He sat up straighter and leaned on one arm, posing slightly. There was something so sexy about this dynamic, making Guy feel more powerful and dominant. “How come we’ve never fucked?” he asked, knowing that it was always best to be blunt with the boys who were a little more shy.

Robert’s eyes widened and he stuttered awkwardly, like the overeducated, pompous boy he could very often be. Guy had always loved Robert’s upper class, bumbling English accent and the uptight manners that had been trained into him. It made it all the more fun to tease and flirt with him so blatantly. But with a larger company openly trying to poach him at the moment, Guy knew there wouldn’t be many opportunities like this left to have some fun with the boy. After all, the full benefits package was going to be presented to him as early as next week. He could be gone by the end of next month.

“Well?” Guy asked, pretending to be impatient for an answer. “Do you want to fuck?”

Within ten minutes, the pair were upstairs in Guy’s hotel room, kissing and undressing each other once more. Now that the barriers had been smashed down, Guy was surprised at how keenly Robert’s hands wanted to rub up against and stroke Guy’s erection. The moment the pants were down, the cute boy sank to his knees and took as much of it into his mouth as he could.

Guy exhaled in delight. It was always apparent when someone was genuinely into giving the best blow job they could. It was obvious now just how much he had underestimated Robert’s quiet attraction to him all these months. Like a tightly wound spring, the boy had energetically set to getting them both off the moment the bedroom door had closed, lustfully thrilled by how thick and heavy Guy’s hardness was.

The pair fooled around some more, Guy enjoying the reflections in the large mirror as the pair kissed in front of it. Those doughy little glutes of Robert’s looked so good, Guy knew he needed to take them as soon as he could, squirting lubricant into his hand and sliding it up between Robert’s butt cheeks. He spun the boy around in front of the mirror and gently inserted himself. He knew Robert wouldn’t be fully ready to take him today. It was a gift and a curse being so well endowed, with lovers needing at least two or three sessions to be properly broken in. Instead, Guy contented himself by getting as much in as he could and holding it there, training the hole to stretch. Submissive Robert appeared to love every second as he was held there, in front of the mirror.

“Does this feel nice?” Guy asked the boy, reaching around Robert’s hip to stroke his concrete erection; Robert watching himself getting taken by the older jock in the mirror.

Robert moaned back, his G-spot stimulated, sending his arousal into overdrive.

“Look at us…” Guy whispered, nodding towards their reflections in the mirror.

“I’m so chubby compared to you!” Robert quipped back, making a huge surge of blood pump through his boner, held firmly in Guy’s hand.

Suddenly, it all felt so very familiar to Guy. Robert’s fixation with larger guys had never been about looking down on them. Yet again, had the universe delivered another kinky fat-lover? Guy pressed his oversized erection in deeper, making Robert’s knees almost buckle underneath him. With one hand working Robert’s hardness, Guy used the other in a more experimental way, wrapping his fingers around as much of the fresh blubber in the boy’s stomach as he could, then whispering “It’s a good job you know I like fucking fatties, huh?” he teased. “You’re going to make such a cute chub…”

However close Robert had been before, a surge of pleasure seemed to rip through him. Great jets erupted from between his legs, making Guy chuckle at just how much of it there was and how forcefully it was being expelled from his body. He could always tell when he had just given someone the best orgasm of their life. And, for the first time ever, Guy felt that he didn’t need to climax himself in order to feel completely satisfied.

It was sweet how Robert fell asleep next to him afterwards. Sometimes when the sex was too good, Guy found that whoever it was would tend to imprint on him and become a little possessive. Usually, this was a warning signal for Guy to detach himself as fast as possible. However there was something too intriguing about Robert to give him up just yet. At 5am, he woke Robert with a kiss to let him know he was going down to the hotel gym and promised to meet him for breakfast at 6.30.

“No wonder that ass is so fuckable!” Guy teased, gazing at the plate of fattening meats and carbs Robert returned to their table with. He slipped his hand under the table, rubbing Robert’s knee. His intentions were clear: they were going to go back up to the room before the first session that day. He watched the greedy boy eating, wanting nothing more than to stick his hardness into the salivating mouth. For the first time, he found himself almost captivated by it; the act of eating. Robert definitely had some little hidden kinks when it came to the diet that had added a few pounds to his frame, yet it wasn’t yet clear how conscious he was of them.

Back in Guy’s bedroom, it was obvious how much Robert had overeaten and bloated up his stomach. Despite wanting to get rough and dominant with him, Guy took it slow and made it sensual, noticing how much Robert seemed to love it whenever Guy’s hand drifted onto his rounded middle. The eventual climax was as good as it got, ensuring that Guy broke all his own rules and brought Robert back to his bedroom a further three times before the end of the conference.

Robert’s butt was becoming quite the distraction back in the office. With the guy’s pants getting so tight, the swollen glutes pressed with devastating allure to the material: wider, under-exercised, softening and expanding - was there a more fuckable butt than this in the entire world? Guy knew he was in trouble when Robert bought concert tickets for them both for that weekend. They were slowly morphing into a ‘couple’ despite the secrecy that surrounded everything. It was the point when Guy typically made his excuses and cut things off. Yet something kept him from doing this. When Guy’s job offer came in, he convinced himself that it wasn’t a big enough deal to leave London for; getting his teeth stuck into another major project that would see him wanting to remain in his current job for at least another six months.

“What’re you all laughing about?” Guy asked, diverting into the little kitchen area whilst he was seeing someone on the floor below.

A small group of six people suddenly looked alarmed and stared at him nervously. Guy had had to accept that his seniority in the company meant he would never again be invited along to nights out with the other staff, or be included in the way he had been when he was just starting out. It was just the way these things seemed to work; those nervous eyes looking up at him whenever he ventured out of his lavish office on the top floor.

“Nothing,” shrugged one of them, who seemed to be in the middle of it all.

“Oh, come on!” Guy smiled back. “I could do with a laugh today.”

There was a sigh. “Alright,” the lady shrugged, stepping closer and holding out her cell phone so that Guy could see the screen. “It’s an article about that jumped-up little Oxford graduate upstairs,” she grumbled, referencing Robert; the nepotism of his hiring still failing to impress those lower down in the food chain; those who had to work for everything they achieved.

Guy stepped in to see as she scrolled down a celebrity-obsessed tabloid webpage that Guy had never paid much attention to. He scanned the text briefly, but it was obvious that the pictures were the main focus. There was Robert of one year earlier, looking toned and athletic as he shirtlessly strolled about on his father’s yacht. However, it was the pictures from only last night that provided the entertainment. Robert had been attending a socialite party with some friends, dressed in an unwisely tight shirt that failed to stretch with the addition of a couple of bloating beers. His pants had been a poor fit too, pinching in at his hips and accentuating new love handles that looked particularly unflattering from the angles they had taken. The double chin on Robert also came under scrutiny, with a close up shot from a low angle making it seem more developed than it actually was.

“I didn’t think fat-shaming articles like this still existed,” Guy exhaled in frustration.

“That’s the British press for you,” one of them chuckled; another American, like him. “Fucking ruthless!”

Guy scowled. He wasn’t laughing. He raced back up the stairs and tapped on the window of Robert’s office, beckoning for him to follow. Once inside, he rolled down the blinds and immediately jumped on his computer. “There’s something you need to see,” he declared to a bemused Robert. Once uploaded, he rolled his chair back and allowed Robert to step in front and see the screen for himself.

“What a bitch!” Robert laughed, recognising the name of the journalist. Everyone seemed to know everyone else in Robert’s world. “This is one of the most vicious things I’ve ever read about myself,” he smirked.

“Aren’t you pissed about it?” Guy asked, feeling exasperated at Robert’s laid back attitude. “We can send it to the legal team; see if there’s anything we can do to have it taken down.”

“And then sue them? For what exactly?” Robert asked back. “There’s nothing that’s not true in there. I really have gained about 50lbs since last year,” he pointed at the text on screen.

Guy sat back, staring at Robert’s chubby butt as the boy continued to lean down at his computer right in front of him. Having initiated a ‘hands-off’ policy at work, Guy was finding it hard to resist touching that big, bloated butt that had been captured so magnificently in the pictures. Robert was smelling great and his fresh love handles seemed to be pushing out even more than Guy had seen them before. He was turned on. For the first time in his life, he felt aroused in a way that he was unable to put into words. Despite his outrage at seeing the cruel article on Robert, he couldn’t deny the fact that it had turned him on. It was a feeling he disliked in himself and he had wanted to push it away. Sure, he had dated guys in the past who would have enjoyed the very much public disapproval of their weight gain, but how was he to know that Robert would appreciate any of that? Had dating those gainers warped Guy’s brain into finding all that public humiliation irresistibly arousing?

“At least the firm got a mention,” Robert smiled, stepping away from the screen at last. Was that a bulge he was trying to conceal? “You know what they say: all publicity is good publicity!”

Guy stood up and placed his hands on Robert’s rounder butt, pulling him into him. Fuck the self-imposed rules about not kissing in work; he was horny and so was his cute little chub. “You’re amazing, you know that?” Guy whispered seductively, safe in the knowledge that the blinds were closed.

“Even though the whole of London is laughing at me?” Robert teased back.

“Fuck everyone else!” Guy shot back. “You know I’d never ask you to diet,” he whispered alongside another kiss. “In fact, why don’t you let me take you out for dinner tonight; someplace with the lovely, greasy, high-carb junk food you can’t get enough of…”

Robert cooed with interest, allowing Guy to kiss him over and over again. “And I can eat as much as I want?” he asked, continuing the flirtation.

Guy smiled proudly and bounced the doughy glutes he was going to pound later on. “You bet!” he nodded. “You won’t hear any complaints from me!”

Guy wondered how much longer it would be until the all important conversation with Robert would happen. It had been almost five months since they’d hooked up on the business trip and, despite the secrecy around their relationship, neither of them was seeing anyone else. For Guy, it was a huge deal to have committed to sleeping with only one person in that whole time, yet it had all happened quite naturally. Sexually, it seemed that the pair of them were very compatible. Guy would swiftly move from a romantic, nurturing lover, into one with the fitness and stamina to fuck Robert all night long. In return, Robert liked to be seduced and tempted. There was a submissive side to him and he enjoyed being pampered and taken care of. Since getting together, it was obvious that his weight gain was speeding up and he’d pushed out quite the beginner-belly in that time. It was sitting, round and tempting in his shirts, making Guy appreciate how lucky he was that Robert felt so comfortable with him to just…let his appetite go like he had. The extra pounds felt like their own, quiet love language, despite the fact that it was clearly symptomatic of something much more erotic.

“Quit staring!” Guy laughed as a fat guy waddled into the restaurant behind his similarly obese wife. In the past, he’d found it embarrassing how much Robert would ogle; his fascination towards those extreme bodies getting the better of him.

“Sorry!” Robert replied, trying to refocus on his menu. Freshly shaven, his new double chin always looked so adorable when his head was in that position. Only a few minutes earlier, they’d bumped into a few friends of Robert’s ex; all of them staring disapprovingly at the little pot belly that was starting to make itself very well known.

Guy reached his giant hand under the table and stroked Robert’s knee, not quite knowing what was going through his head. “Order as much food as you like, okay?” he smiled sweetly.

Robert nodded and didn’t disappoint.

“You’re doing it again,” Guy laughed later on, as the pair of them were sitting in a bar near Soho, enjoying the buzz of the evening. “I’ll have to take you home to the US sometime. We have some of the fattest guys around, especially where I’m from, in West Virginia.”

Robert shook his head as if he was trying to restart his brain, apologising once more. “I don’t know why I do it,” he sighed. “I just…” he began, before sighing with frustration at being unable to put it into words.

“You just need to know what it feels like,” Guy finished for him.

Robert turned his head to look at Guy properly. “Yeah, that’s exactly it,” he nodded, seemingly delighted that his lover knew him so well.

Guy slipped his hand onto Robert’s little pot belly, rubbing it back and forth. “I saw the little boner you got, reading that mean article about yourself,” he teased.

Robert looked around, checking that no one else could see them. He smiled, turning back to Guy and allowing himself to be seduced; Guy’s lips getting aching close to his own. “Oh, yeah?” he whispered excitedly back.

“I’ve known for a long time,” Guy smiled, slipping his fingers under the slight overhang of belly fat and jiggling. “You want to be a real fat boy, don’t you?” His voice was almost cracking with arousal. He loved kinks in all their different forms, having experienced so many with the great variety of sexual partners he had had over the years. But this weight gain kink seemed like so much more; the physical transformation, the contrast; the confidence, combined with humiliation and submission. It ticked so many boxes for him. Best of all, Guy had had the time of his life these last few months, trying to gently tease it out of Robert. “It’s the reason why I’m taking you for more food after we leave here,” he smiled. “I know that you need to experience what it’s like to carry a much larger gut than this.”

Like putty in Guy’s hand, Robert kissed him. “I can’t believe you’re willing to put up with this,” he chuckled, lifting his arms higher so that Guy could jiggle his stomach even more. “Most people would just think I’m a freak!”

Guy smiled back. “Maybe I’m enjoying it,” he teased, grabbing a full wedge of Robert’s belly fat and just holding it still for them both to see. “Maybe I’m a freak too...”

Robert grinned with lust. “I ate so much before at the restaurant!”

“You did,” Guy smiled. He’d never particularly enjoyed waiting around as his lovers overate to satisfy these types of kinks. However, he at least understood how it all tied in with the erotic process of gaining weight; the greed, the gluttony, the deliberate bloating with calories. “...And you’re going to eat even more shortly,” he whispered back.

Robert raised his eyebrows. Was Guy really serious about that?

“You’re a gainer,” he stated frankly to Robert. “You do realise that, yeah?”

Robert looked around once more, checking that they were still unobserved. Somehow, putting a label on all this had suddenly solidified everything in both their minds.

“I’ve seen all this before. You need to keep pushing; keep overeating, again and again. Otherwise your weight will plateau and your belly will stop expanding.” He looked at his lover seriously. “And you don’t want that, do you?”

The chubby boy stared back with absolute lust. He shook his head, picked up his beer and drained the remainder of his pint. “Come on then!” he grinned. “What are we waiting for?”

The prospect of moving in with a lover was something Guy had never believed was right for him. Yet, there he was, unloading all his things into Robert’s city apartment, whilst the rest of his stuff had gone into long-term storage. It had been quite the gamble, releasing the equity in his home to further invest in the start-up AI company he had sunk a vast amount of cash into three years earlier. However, it was now or never if they were to corner the market like they needed to. Robert had agreed and been the one to suggest the cohabiting solution; his business advice being the one Guy trusted more than any other, having worked so closely for months now. As a couple, they worked well. They understood the joy they both got from their work and shared a similar mindset when it came to almost all other things. Stil, moving it had made Guy nervous, and it had taken him longer than his rational business brain normally operated in order to make a decisiona bout it. However, in return, Guy now had a majority 62% share in his own company, and had found that he could live more than happily alongside his doughy lover in North London.

With Guy around, Robert had seemed to double down on his weight goals and recommit in a way he had never allowed himself to before. Just like Guy was pouring protein shakes into himself after the gym, Robert was doing much the same with his own fattening concoctions; his kinks developing in all new ways. Within a couple of days, they had fucked in every room; Guy being unable to resist the fresh, plump broadness of Robert’s once toned and slender butt cheeks.

Now that Robert could be so open about his desires to gain weight, he actively enjoyed listening to Guy’s past experiences. Unlike most people, who didn’t want to hear about their partners’ previous lovers, Robert wanted to hear tales of Mikey and Dillon over and over again, and how Guy had sat back, excitedly watching them growing fatter and fatter.

“I don’t know what my parents are going to think about us being together,” Robert fretted, knowing that his family were soon returning for the holidays from their villa in Italy.

“Why?” Guy asked. “Because I’m the first man you’ve dated?”

“No,” Robert smirked cheekily back. “Because you’re an American!” he teased.

The pair laughed and Guy launched into tickling him for his playful rudeness. “Seriously, though. Your dad loves me. Before he stepped back from the business, we used to get on great.”

Robert nodded, but there was a worry in his eyes that didn’t abate as the big day arrived. Guy should have been aware that something was wrong the moment Robert slipped on the giant sweater that morning; the one with the huge roll-up neck. Black and loose fitting, it was clear that the man was trying to conceal the extent to which he had fattened up in the last twelve months. But in so doing, what he actually became was a dark, thick, shapeless block, with chubby thighs that strained against the smart pants he wore below.

Guy had had relatively little to do with Robert’s family since they had started dating. The pair had both had the sense that their relationship wasn’t being taken all that seriously. Robert had not long turned twenty-four and his dad had openly referred to his son’s romantic attachment as a ‘phase’ that Robert was going through. As such, Guy dressed smartly, cancelled all his plans for Christmas Day, prepared suitably expensive Christmas gifts and drove himself and Robert to the family home in Kent; a lavish country manner, handed down over generations.

Despite everything Guy had anticipated, he hadn’t been the focus of the day whatsoever. Gasps and horrified looks greeted them as Robert strolled in and removed his large winter jacket. The comments hit hard and fast. They were harsh, fatphobic and unjustified, setting Guy at odds with the family each time he called them out, unprepared to let their prejudices slide.

“I thought you guys video called every week?” Guy whispered to Robert the moment they had a second alone.

Robert seemed drained and exhausted from it all. “I may have told them my camera has been broken these last few months,” he replied.

Guy exhaled, now realising the absolute shock everyone must have felt. Despite the relatively good job the sweater was doing at masking a lot of the blubber, since September, Robert’s cheeks had been blowing up in a way that had altered the entire shape of his face. The gains had been further documented in a second critical article about his appearance back in October, however Guy suspected that such garbage hadn’t reached the family, safely tucked away in Italy, upon the shores of Lake Como.

“Mum and Dad are going to remove me from the company,” Robert fretted on the way home. “Especially now you’re leaving.”

“No they’re not!” Guy replied, trying to calm his boyfriend’s melodrama. “Even your dad can’t argue with the share price since you started running things. He’s just pissed and lashing out.”

“Dad doesn’t want ‘a fat guy’ to be in charge,” Robert grumbled next, quoting his father’s words exactly. “I was hoping today would be about them getting to know you properly, but…”

Guy sighed. The day had been disastrous. He could tell that he was going to be at odds with Robert’s family until he agreed to do what they wanted and insist that Robert dieted. They both felt flat for the remainder of the evening, making Guy wish he had cancelled his flight home to see his folks that week.

Upon his return, a very different Robert greeted him. A new personal trainer had been appointed and, together, the pair of them had cleared away anything in the cupboards that she felt was contributing to Robert’s ‘weight problems’.

“You’re not cross, are you?” Robert asked.

“Cross?” Guy echoed. “Why would I be cross?” he chuckled, hugging the man he had fallen so deeply for. “Gaining is your thing, not mine. If you want to quit, I’ll support you however I can.” In truth, he had never expected Robert’s gains to last forever. Sure, the man had caught the gainer bug, but it wasn’t quite as extreme or important to him as it had been for someone like Mikey, in Guy’s past.

Robert hugged him sweetly back, having made up his mind that a new year demanded a fresh start. He began eating better and taking Guy’s advice on nutrition; even joining him for a round or two at the gym. Robert was soon pulling out his older clothes from the back of his closet, replacing the large winter sweaters with more fitted t-shirts in time for the Spring. Yet, two cute and stubborn love handles remained at his sides; a testament to the kinky fun that he had once enjoyed so much.

Guy had never enjoyed work so much since he’d left Robert’s family firm to head up the AI company he had invested so heavily in. Now he was no longer just making money for other people, he could work hard, put the work in, and reap the rewards tenfold. There was so much potential with the technology, and he had been working closely with the British Ministry of Defence to showcase how they could use some of their adapted systems. It was exciting, that buzz of adrenaline from making things work, capitalising on successes and carving out new opportunities for an increasingly valuable and influential company.

Robert was busy with his work too. With his father and Guy out of the way, things actually became easier to manage and there was a clear leadership structure in place.

“Off out for lunch with clients again?” Guy teased him, looking over Robert’s shoulder and seeing the calendar on his cell phone screen. “Careful! You’ll be getting all chunky again!” he joked, sliding his hands over Robert’s chest and down to the small, remaining store of belly fat that refused to budge.

A bulge in Robert’s pants jumped to attention whenever Guy joked about his yo-yoing weight. Now that Robert had relaxed a little, he’d wanted Guy to start the kinky talk in the bedroom once more, telling him how fat he could be and the things he would do to his body once he was round and blubbery. This was the thing Guy liked best about dating those with kinks; it was just so easy to turn them on and have them pumped up and ready for some sexy action. There were trigger actions and words that could flip any boring situation into something exciting and arousing, all with so little effort. And, once again, Robert was nursing quite the erection.

“For my birthday next week, I want to try pouring double cream down your throat,” Guy whispered to him. “Like we used to in the old days.”

Robert moaned in pleasure at the thought, clearly replaying those kinky memories from the past.

“You’d forget about your diet for one day, wouldn’t you?” Guy asked, sliding his meaty hand over Robert’s crotch.

Robert nodded submissively. The old habits were creeping back in; the longing to feel his body holding more weight again. The instances where he was willing to forgo his strict exercise regime were increasing. Guy knew that it was only a matter of time before the gains began anew. Perhaps it would be a fun life, this continuous cycle of weight gain and loss.

Taking Robert over to visit Guy’s family had been considerably less stressful than the Christmas in Kent. Guy’s mother had long accepted that her handsome son was a law unto himself, living a whirlwind existence that she could hardly comprehend. She liked Robert, thinking him handsome and much like the typical romantic, bumbling Englishmen of the many movies she had watched over the years. Guy’s aunts had agreed, never noticing once how much Robert was overeating the entire trip.

Surrounded by tempting, tasty foods around every corner, as well as fascinating specimens of obesity in Charleston, Guy’s home city, Robert had carried a lust about him the entire week. For Guy, it reminded him why he loved dating gainers so much. As Robert gorged himself on take-out in the hotel room, Guy could hold the man’s impossibly hard shaft, playing with it as gently and delicately as he could, for fear that it could, and would, explode at any second.

“I want to be a fat boy!” a horny Robert would exclaim, right before climaxing, time and time again.

Guy would then chuckle, nodding his head in agreement. “I know you do!” he’d shoot back, his eyes dancing with delight; the greatest of all pleasures seeing his boyfriend overtaken by his own lust. In truth, it would be easy. Robert had already fucked up his metabolism last time. The pounds failed to shift like they should in a normal, athletic, mid-twenties male and they packed back on with shocking speed. But when Guy told him that, there was no stopping the sudden surge from Robert’s groin, and the complete mess that was made all over the bed as jets flew in every direction. A simple week away had spiked Robert’s weight by an incredible fifteen pounds.

“You look so fucking sexy!” Guy growled, admiring the large butt that had reappeared on his lover, filling his work pants right back up again.

Robert twisted his hips in the mirror to get a good look, smiling proudly. “I wish you were a proper feeder,” he sighed. “I know I would go so much further if I knew you were going to get off on making me gorge myself.”

Guy tried not to show how cut up he felt. He remembered how he had lost previous lovers for the exact same reason. They wanted more from him than he felt capable of giving. Sure, he loved bringing Robert to the absolute heights of lust, but he wasn’t in the habit of devising a food schedule, nor engaging in endless calorie counting; the true nuts and bolts of gaining. Guy considered how best to remedy this. No longer having an office to travel to each morning, he used the time to stock up the cupboards with all the things he knew Robert liked to feast upon when he was horny. And boy, during this most recent gainer phase, those fresh pounds certainly caused Robert to be horny! It was like a self-propelling cycle of lust, overeating and pleasure. In the time since Robert had last gained, Guy had developed a better knowledge of the kinky little pet names his lover enjoyed: Piggy, Fat Boy and Porker. He could throw them in whenever he wanted, and enjoyed messaging Robert at work to ensure he was wound up and horny by the time he got home, ready to eat.

The results were inevitable. Sexy, undiluted fat slid back onto Robert’s body with ease. His butt blew back up even more, but he was undoubtedly carrying more on his belly this time, making even his largest shirts requiring upgrades.

“Are these new trousers?” asked Robert one morning as he trotted about to get ready.

Guy, who had already returned from an hour-long session at the gym, smirked and nodded his head. “With a little extra growing room for my Fat Boy!” he whispered teasingly back. In truth, he knew that the same thing would eventually happen as last time: Robert would get put off and start his diet all over again, making himself miserable in the process. What he needed was a lover who would ease him into the changes smoothly and be there to show him how sexy his swelling body could be; similar to how a true feeder would; the ones who consumed Robert’s fantasies as he watched his body swelling up.

Now that Robert had been at his family’s firm for over two years, he didn’t worry about suddenly being replaced by his disapproving family. They needed him, as well as his sharp business brain, to keep bringing in the flow of wealth. Likewise for Guy, things had continued to go from strength to strength and there had been some decent press coverage of the technology his company was developing. They’d bought premises in North London and were expanding into the north with further development centers. The success was intoxicating, and when Guy felt happy, he certainly became hornier and hornier.

“Head back!” Guy ordered his boyfriend as he held the pot of cream aloft. He smirked, looking at how insanely hard his blubbery boyfriend got whenever Guy treated him to a feeding like this; never failing to explode at the prospect of greater amounts of deliberately fattening calories.

Down they all went, time and time again; the fat building into his waist, puffing up his arms and broadening out the glutes; each pound making Robert hungrier for more. Hitting 270lbs had been a huge thing for him, but Guy wasn’t sure the boy could make it to the full three hundred. Already, he had started to complain about how much he was sweating and a couple of his friends had dropped him from their groups. He now looked so contrasting in appearance to Guy. Whilst this was thrilling and exciting on good days; bad days, he felt self-conscious and low.

Guy had been thinking about it for some time as he set his computer up in his hotel room. Being so far away from Robert for six weeks had been challenging, but the business opportunities in California were unrivalled. Guy could see how much further ahead his own company’s technology was to any other. Of late, all they had to do when encountering issues was to question the technology itself, leading to massive creative growth, developing at a faster pace than any of them had ever anticipated. It was the whole reason why he knew it wouldn’t fail him with Robert that evening. The computer knew the objective: getting Robert as horny as possible by making him eat the most calories that it could.

The deep-fake version of Guy came on the screen. It really was remarkable seeing Guy’s own mannerisms and voice reproduced so flawlessly. “Are you ready to eat for me, Fat Boy?” it asked.

Immediately, Guy could see the naive Robert responding. He began to eat to the gentle teasing of the software. As Robert replied to it, the computer seemed to learn more and more about him, soon branching off-script and generating its own responses that it knew its target would better appreciate. In a matter of minutes, it was speaking to Robert as if it had an even more in-depth knowledge of the man’s kinks than Guy had acquired in the last three years. And just look at Robert go! He was gorging himself like an absolute pig, rubbing his fattening belly and jiggling it in a way that Guy had never witnessed him doing before. He didn’t need to track the calories that Robert was eating, the computer was scoring it all at the bottom of his screen; the number steadily increasing towards the target. “Come on, Fatso!” the software teased, prompting whenever required. “Get it all down for me!”

By the time Guy got home, he knew that Robert’s pants were going to be completely busted. There was no way the man could cope with encouragement like this every evening and not pack on a staggering amount of fat. How exciting it would be, knowing that his lover was about to be a lot softer the next time he touched him…

Looking at the data from these sessions, Guy picked up a lot of tips by the time he made it home. He reconfigured the software, generating full reports and connected up the bathroom scales into the system so that he could gather even more information. It was clear that the trial was making a huge impact, especially when it started messaging Robert at work, reminding him of the importance to eat; using the trigger words it knew to be the most effective. When Robert’s watch would feed into the system that he was feeling stressed or low, the software would generate further kinky messages and even purchase food to be delivered that it knew would spike Robert’s dopamine. But in the monitoring of what Robert ate, the computer soon learned which foods promoted Robert’s weight gain the most. Unlike many fatties, heavy carbs, like pasta, failed to have the impact that meats and cheeses appeared to generate.

With such immediate effects, Robert had rapidly surpassed his previous high weight, entering into all new, blubbery territory. For Guy, it was incomprehensibly erotic to be able to touch or grab any part of his lover’s body and have the man turned on to such a wild extent. Using buzz words or phrases from the software reports made Robert instantly hard. Wafting a sugary treat under his nose, or commenting on the disastrous fit of the man’s clothes created a sexual arousal like nothing Guy had seen before. It was as if Robert’s entire sex drive had been trained to activate upon even the gentlest jiggle of his fleshier body. In Robert’s own words, the system had been ‘the best gift’ he had ever received. Even as he surpassed 300lbs, all thoughts of dieting appeared to be completely off the table.

“That’s Rachel Rivero,” Robert pointed out a few weeks later as he and Guy attended a charity event in The City.

“So, that’s her!” Guy smirked, gazing upon the journalist who had written all the critical articles about Robert’s weight gain. The most recent piece, only last week, had been the most savage of all as she even chased up quotes from members of Robert’s family to comment on how significantly obese he had become. “She’s hardly slim herself!” Guy grunted disapprovingly at the middle aged woman sipping champagne by the large ice sculpture.

Guy bided his time, leaving Robert with some mutual friends before he slipped back to find the journalist in question. He had the instinct to try and protect his lover, wanting nothing more than this fatphobic, judgemental woman to simply back off from picking on Robert.

“My name is…” Guy began, holding out his hand the moment there was an opening to introduce himself to her.

“I know who you are,” the lady sighed back, as if she already knew everything Guy was going to say. “The answer is ‘no’. I get good numbers on my articles about your little boyfriend.” She eyed him suspiciously. “Although, maybe the real story is why such a handsome man as yourself would even go after someone who struggles so much with his weight?” She eyed his powerful body up and down. “You are quite the specimen!” she smirked, as if smelling a potential story.

“Or, maybe the headline should be about you,” Guy stated, smiling confidently. “Picking on Robert by writing mean articles about him, simply because you'd ended your secret, extra-marital affair with his father… it doesn’t exactly smack of professional integrity, does it?”

Rachel stiffened, sensing a challenger. “Darling, no one’s going to believe that!” she smirked, starting to walk away.

“They will with all the evidence I have saved on here,” Guy returned with an equally condescending smile as he lifted his cell phone. “Pictures, documents, receipts, CCTV footage,” he nodded. “It’s amazing the things you can dig up when you set your mind to it…”

The woman glared, understanding that this was no bluff. Ten minutes was all it had taken for Guy to access the software to complete a deep dive into everything about this woman. What would have taken a personal investigator five years to amass had been automatically downloaded onto Guy’s cell phone, all whilst having a glass of mineral water at the bar.

“You don’t want to start something with me,” Rachel warned, retreating nonetheless.

“I’m sure I won’t need to,” Guy threw back, smiling victoriously. “Just leave Robert alone!”

Pleased with himself, Guy walked back over to Robert, gazing upon that thick, chubby ass with pride. Ever since he’d introduced the virtual feeder tool, Robert had been piling on the blubber like never before; those soft, squishy glutes showcasing every last calorie that had been desperately consumed. Robert never would have worn pants so snug to come to an event like this before; having also chosen a shirt that stretched so unflattering across his love handles. To Guy, it seemed so thrilling; like Robert’s kinkiness was being harvested and controlled; he desired food and sex in equal measures and had become more submissive to his lust for Guy than ever before. When he held the fat boy's little dick in his hand, it was so devastatingly hard, and always pathetically easy to bring keep it teetering on the very edge of an extreme orgasm.

Guy snuck up behind him and rested his strong arm over his lover’s shoulders, turning and seeing Rachel eyeing him coldy from afar. She really had been a hateful presence these last couple of years. Although the AI software had recently seemed to find a way to make Robert enjoy the humiliating content and pictures in those articles, letting her know that she couldn’t push them around had still felt every bit as satisfying as Guy had hoped. Now they could at last live their lives in peace.

“Oh my goodness!” Guy exclaimed four weeks later, seeing the article the moment he woke up, having had it sent to him by three different people in his circle. He could feel the dread consuming him as each paragraph made for more and more damning reading. Not only was this new article providing the most extreme pictures of Robert’s over 360lb body to date, but that disgusting journalist had clearly set out to ruin Guy himself. There he was, being outed as: ‘The world’s most prolific feeder.’

For the first time in years, Guy’s first love, Mikey, was staring up from the screen at him; comparison pictures of them both from when they’d started college, alongside a recent picture of Mikey with an additional four hundred pounds filling up his body. There were quotes from people Guy had known in college, twisted to back-up the case that Guy had fed and ‘destroyed’ a promising young academic with his devious kink.

Quite a few paragraphs were devoted to Dillon too. That bastard had even provided Rachel with quotes, speaking openly about how much Guy had enjoyed his greedy appetite and lust for his expanding body. “Without him, I never would have ended up at 500lbs,” he’d stated, right before the article went on to detail, in quite devastating detail, the timeline of Robert’s own transformation; gaining weight pretty much as soon as he had met Guy and started dating him.

It didn’t take a genius to work out that Guy’s reputation was in tatters. The comments section alone was enough to show just how cleverly Rachel Riverto had twisted all those little facts to make him seem like the most evil being to have ever walked the Earth. The timing couldn’t have been more disastrous. It had been a sting operation, ensuring that the Ministry of Defence would pull out of the major deal they were about to sign with Guy’s company that very afternoon, destroying years of work that had led up to this moment. Guy felt sick to his stomach. In his whole career, he’d never experienced such a personal, calculated attack.

It was ironic; in all those years, Guy had never considered himself a feeder. He’d simply enjoyed sharing in these guys’ kinks and admired their confidence as their bodies expanded in ways that most of society disapproved of. There was no crime in that; was there?

Having built up more and more shares over the years, Guy was able to refuse the wishes of those in his company who wished for him to step down; though he had to fight hard and argue well for that privilege. With every setback came a further opportunity, Guy had decided, looking at his enormous, lardy boyfriend getting hard by reading all the comments on the new pictures of his 360lb body. With the complete shit storm that had consumed Guy’s life, it was cute how Robert seemed to care so little, and how incredibly hot he appeared to find it all instead. The Robert of old would have run a mile the second a scandal like this broke out. Now, it was all part of the erotic play that was his life.

“So, what are you going to do now?” Robert asked, feasting upon a large pizza and stroking his giant, fat-filled stomach in front of the TV, much like he did every evening.

Guy smiled, feeling, in a strange sense, like a heavy weight had been lifted from his shoulders. There was no way he could have watched Robert grow like he had in the last six months and not realise that there was a serious business opportunity in all this. However, he never would have had the confidence to go for it had his name not been dragged through the mud like it had been that week. He rubbed his finger proudly across his lover’s enormous double chin. The AI had prompted Robert to keep it well shaved and it really had helped to make him look more obese than ever before.

“I may not be a feeder,” Guy began. “But I’ve somehow created the most effective motivation tool in the world,” he smiled. “And I imagine that’s not the only thing this technology could do,” he nodded, enthused by the untapped potential of what he had developed. “I believe that there are billions of people with other fun, playful kinks; just like this, too embarrassed to share it with another human being.”

Robert pulled a sceptical face, like he hadn’t even realised how much his own behaviours and physical appearance had been transformed by the technology that had been brought into his life by Guy.

Guy grabbed a giant wedge of Robert’s belly fat as he continued to make his point. “The technology was already good, but you realise you’ve packed on almost 40lbs since we introduced your brain scan data into the system six weeks ago? You wake up in the night to eat ice cream, you can’t seem to get off unless you’re stuffed! You’ve turned into this great big, fat ball of kink!” he nodded proudly. “If I market this slowly, collect more neural data…” he explained, more to himself than anyone else. “I could get better at mapping these kinks; all the different fetishes out there! Then I could provide people with the most erotic experiences of their lives; unlock desires they never even knew they had!”

“It’s still only a face on a screen,” Robert replied, seeming to cautiously accept some potential in what Guy was saying.

“Then we take it off the screen!” Guy smiled. “We put it in ear-pieces for bored husbands and wives, wanting to spice up their love lives. We use it to create bespoke AI erotic movies for folks to enjoy. We develop androids that can pleasure their targets like nothing else on the planet. By the eightieth generation of this software, the possibilities will be limitless!”

Robert stacked another two slices of pizzas and bit down on them both, nodding. “Alright,” he nodded. “It’s a pretty lucrative idea,” he agreed.

Guy smiled proudly and kissed his fattening lover, admiring the vast contrast between their bodies as they made love later that evening.

“Do you think this is going to happen to more folks then?” Robert asked as he pinched his belly fat. “Your AI systems have learned so much about my fat kinks, it’ll uncover it in more people?”

“Without a doubt!” Guy grinned back, taking hold of Robert’s fat himself and jiggling it joyfully. “Hundred of them. Thousands. Maybe even millions! Delicious, kinky little fuckers, growing their bellies out, just like you!”

“That journalist was right,” Robert smiled, feeling himself starting to climax at the touch. “I really am in way over my head!”

“You think so, Fatty?” Guy asked, having learned from the neural data how much Robert’s arousal spiked at that name.

Robert nodded, his eyes rolling back into his head. “...I really am dating the world’s most prolific feeder.”

Guy smiled, watching as Robert could hold back his orgasm no longer. He was about to bring this pleasure to everyone, across the entire world. Again and Again. After all these years, perhaps he was feeder after all…

#gainerstory #gayfeeder #gainerfic #gayfeedee #gainer stories #gainer story #gay feedee #gainerstories #gainer fiction #gainer fic

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happyyyandcrazyyy · 2 days ago

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love and tattoos (kaz brekker x reader)

summary: in which jesper has a theory and kaz might be the matching tattoos kind of guy.

it’s two small words, a raven and a crow, a broken lock and a key, and a band around their ring finger.

“He has to be drunk, or high, or something, because there is absolutely no way he’s just seen a band of ink around Kaz’s ring finger.”

warnings: brief panic attack (not detailed), mentions of wounds and blood (not detailed, canon typical), set in the future, kaz has worked on his touch aversion

kaz taglist: @the-tpd-bau @ellievickstar @thestudiouswanderer | soc taglist: @ancientbeing10 (if you want to be added or removed from the taglist just dm me!)

a/n: here i am, once again, because apparently im incapable of stopping myself from writing for kaz brekker. i have so many wips but kaz always calls to me😭😭 this one was so much fun to write, it just flowed, and i hope you enjoy it just as much as i did!!

i. a band of ink around his ring finger, part one.

Jesper must be hallucinating, he has to be. He blinks once, twice, looks down at the drink in his hand, briefly wonders if it’s been laced with some sort of drug powerful enough to have his brain imagining things— because Jesper does not have the imagination to be making this up, he wishes he did —and then looks back up. The ink remains in place. Nope, no way. He shakes his head, presses his eyes shut. He has to be drunk, or high, or something, because there is absolutely no way he’s just seen a band of ink around Kaz’s ring finger.

It’s not the tattoo itself that shocks Jesper. Although, maybe it does freak him out a bit, a band around the ring finger can only mean one thing, and Jesper has never believed Kaz to be the marrying type. (Then again, he never thought him to be the matching tattoos kind of guy, and the last couple of months have had him discovering that Kaz very much could be.) No, what makes Jesper spiral is that he’s seen that exact same tattoo on (Y/N)’s own ring finger.

ii. you break, i mend.

Jesper has seen the tattoo on the inside of (Y/N)’s left wrist more times than he can count.

The word ‘mend’ in all lowercase, the typography delicate and elegant, the font somewhat rounded. Jesper has never asked what it means— because everyone in the Barrel has been branded, either by choice or against their will, and Jesper knows the black ink carries memories, promises and pain, he knows better than to ask —but he thinks it’s fitting for her, both the word and the style. Because (Y/N) is a gentle force, someone who provides emotional care to those close to her, a fixer. She loves proudly and deeply, and Jesper has never met someone in this wretched place that is so unafraid to be kind. He doesn’t know what she does to remain untainted, to keep her soul so pure in spite of their line of work. He envies it, sometimes. But then he’ll hear muted sobs through the thin walls, wake up at the sound of screams caused by nightmares, and he’ll wonder if feeling and caring that much is even worth it.

Jesper doesn’t think much about (Y/N)’s tattoo— it’s pretty and it suits her, and, yeah, he gets the desperate need to ask for a backstory whenever he catches a glimpse of it, but never does. There’s nothing more to it. That is until he spies a word on Kaz’s own wrist.

He only sees the tattoo because Kaz takes his gloves off. That doesn’t happen very often, if at all. But it’s the hottest day of summer they’ve had in Ketterdam in years, and they’ve been out in the sun all day, so Jesper is only mildly surprised when they reach Kaz’s office and he takes the black gloves off. What does take him completely off guard, however, is the inked word on his right wrist, partially hidden by the sleeves of his shirt.

‘BREAK’. In uppercase, with jagged and fragmented lettering. Jesper only catches a glimpse before Kaz twists away and the ink is completely sheltered by his clothes, but he’s almost sure the tattoo has some sort of optical effect, makes it seem like the words have been shattered, all sharp and angular lines.

Kaz is saying something and Inej is responding, and it’s probably important and he definitely should be paying attention, but Jesper’s mind is elsewhere because (Y/N)’s delicate tattoo suddenly comes to mind. The similarities are just right there and now all Jesper can think about is how odd of a coincidence it is that (Y/N) and Kaz have mirror tattoos. Same place, but opposite wrist. A single word, one neat and elegant, the other harsh and precise. Jesper does not believe in coincidences, but it can’t be anything else— because believing it to be something else would mean believing Kaz to be a matching tattoos type of person and Jesper would bet his guns against that —so he simply ponders over the possible coincidence, just for a quick second, before Kaz is directing questions towards him and Jesper is forced to shove the information in the back of his mind.

He ends up forgetting about it. Not forgetting forgetting, more so in the way he forgets his debts until there are collectors knocking on his door. The information is there, stored in some corner of his brain, ready to be brought back into his consciousness with just the right push.

The right push comes a Saturday night, two months after he first notices Kaz’s tattoo.

(Y/N) is out on a job. Jesper doesn’t know any of the details— not the target, nor the entry and exit routes, nothing at all —but he knows something is wrong because Kaz has been pacing for the last half hour.

“She should be back by now,” is all Kaz says when he asks. He doesn’t really need to say more. Jesper feels the way his chest constricts, panic slowly building. (Y/N) is never late.

Just as Jesper feels like he’s about to start pacing himself, the door of the Slat opens. She’s got her hood on, doesn’t look up from the floor when she walks in. There’s a certain drag in her limbs, something that tells Jesper that something is wrong, wrong, wrong.

“Where the fuck were you?” The words aren’t directed towards him, but Jesper cannot help but flinch. Kaz doesn’t get like this often, cold and harsh because he’s worried, so the job must’ve been important, high stakes, the type where survival isn’t assured.

(Y/N) looks up, and it’s only then that Jesper notices the blood. It’s everywhere. It drips down the slope of her nose, it trails down her lips. She walks closer and with the change of light he notices that it’s also embedded in her clothes. The most disturbing thing, however, are her eyes. Glassy, distant, unseeing. She’s shaking. Full body tremors.

By his side, Kaz deflates completely at the sight of her. He’s already moving towards her when she whispers brokenly, “I’m sorry.”

The apology goes ignored, “Where are you hurt?” Kaz asks. He reins his panic well enough, but Jesper can still taste the traces of it, they float around in the air.

(Y/N) doesn’t move, doesn’t acknowledge Kaz as he comes to stand right in front of her, trying his best to assess for injuries. It’s hard when all there is to see is blood.

“I’m not hurt,” she responds, and it’s like she’s in a trance, capable of responding but not truly present. Jesper furrows his brows, catches the concerned look on Kaz face. Does she not realize she’s covered in blood? She raises her hand to gesture at herself, and it’s only when she does so that Jesper notices the blade. She waves it around. It’s stained red, all the way to the handle. “Blood’s not mine.”

Jesper freezes. Kaz stops dead on his tracks, too.

Kaz looks back at him and understanding passes through them. She snapped. Something made her snap.

It seems like she’s just processing it, too, because a second after she mutters those words the knife falls from her hand and her knees wobble. It’s like Kaz had been expecting the sudden crash, because he’s quick to help her down. He grabs her by the sleeves of her tunic and sits her on the floor, back against the wall.

Her breathing begins to come out hard and labored, she clutches at her chest, hard.

“Look at me,” Kaz instructs, but she’s not here anymore. Jesper cannot help the way fear courses through him at the sight of her faraway eyes and the sound of her disordered breaths. He’s only ever seen (Y/N) like this once before, and even then, it hadn’t been this bad, she’d been responsive to Kaz, and very much able to breathe properly. Right now, not even Kaz’s words are cutting through the haze.

The wheezing becomes louder, more intense. The more she panics, the less she breathes, the more Jesper feels like he, himself, isn’t capable of getting air into his lungs. Kaz keeps talking, but she doesn’t seem to hear him.

“I can’t—” Her lips are slowly losing color.

Jesper is still frozen in place, and he can tell that Kaz is also beginning to panic by the way he grabs her clothed hand and presses it against his own chest.

“Breathe,” he orders. Insistent, firm. Kaz’s words leave no room for argument and (Y/N) reacts accordingly. Like it’s instinct to do as Kaz says, she takes in a deep breath, ragged.

“Good girl.” Kaz’s hand, the one that isn’t on top of (Y/N)’s own, pressed against his chest, hovers over her cheek. He ends up grabbing the end of the hood that still partially covers her face. “One more time.”

She repeats the action, another deep breath, interrupted by a brief coughing fit.

“You’re okay, match my breaths.” She nods weakly and does as best she can, eyes shut. The hand that is on Kaz’s chest has become a fist, rumpling his shirt. She holds onto him like a lifeline.

“I’ll get her water,” he finds himself saying.

Kaz doesn’t turn to look at him, “Bring a wet cloth, too.”

Jesper nods and slips out of the room and into the kitchen. He feels like he’s having an out of body experience, his body working automatically on pouring tap water in a glass, on finding a clean cloth. His mind is miles away.

Saints.

It’s disconcerting to see someone as serene and put together as (Y/N) so rattled and distraught. He feels disoriented, like the world has shifted off his feet. He’s never seen her snap so badly that she ends up spiraling into a panic attack. Jesper doesn’t know much about her past, but Kaz had once mentioned something about a complicated upbringing, about being raised as a weapon not a child. He doesn’t want to begin to imagine what he’d meant.

The soft murmur of words brings him back to reality, grounds him and guides him once again into his body.

“Are you with me?”

No response, but Jesper imagines that she must’ve nodded because he hears the soft sigh of relief that Kaz lets out.

It’s quiet for a little while, Jesper focuses on the sound of water flowing through the cloth in his hands, the feeling of it getting damper.

“I’m sorry.” The words come out soft, filled with emotion and embarrassment.

“None of that.”

“I didn’t mean to…”

“I know. It’s okay.”

The silence lingers before being filled by quiet noises. Jesper has heard her sobs through his wall enough times to identify them. His heart tightens painfully.

“It’s okay,” Kaz repeats, softer this time. It’s a tone Jesper has never heard him use with anyone else.

“There were children, Kaz,” Jesper has to strain to make out the words, they’re muffled by something, “little kids. And it just reminded me of… I couldn’t...”

“I know.”

A sniffle, “I’m sorry,” followed by a broken laugh, soft and sad. “I’m a mess.”

Jesper turns off the faucet, twists the cloths to remove any excess of water. He grabs the glass of water with one hand and the cloth with the other and then, just, waits. He knows this conversation is not one he should be present for, he doesn’t want to be present.

It’s a good thing, too, that he doesn’t make his way towards them, because he’s pretty sure he would’ve stumbled and dropped everything at the next words that fall out of Kaz’s mouth.

“If you break, I mend, remember?”

(mend

BREAK)

Jesper places the glass of water on the kitchen counter and blinks once, twice.

Saints be damned.

Kaz might be the matching tattoos type of person.

iii. a raven and a crow

The matching tattoo theory, as Jesper likes to refer to it, remains just that, a theory. Because Jesper has no real way of proving it, not unless he finds the will to ask (Y/N)— which he just can’t do, she’s so open about everything that prodding just feels unfair —or unless he brings his curiosity to Kaz— which might just end up with him losing a finger, and Jesper likes his limbs just as they are, thank you very much. So, for now, it’s merely speculation, something that could be played off as a coincidence. And he thinks it must be a coincidence, right? Matching tattoos are too sentimental for someone like Kaz. (Then again, he has always been different when it comes to (Y/N), so maybe Jesper shouldn’t be that surprised.) And they aren’t matching tattoos, not really, they are more like, well, mirror ones. It’s different. Probably nothing. He might be connecting dots where there’s absolutely nothing to connect.

He can’t help the way he begins to observe more, trying to find anything to sustain or disprove his theory. It’s only natural, he tells himself, Jesper is nothing if not a curious man.

It’s only because he becomes so attuned to them, and whatever that thing is that they have going on, that Jesper notices little things.

“Inej?”

“Good.”

Kaz keeps on making roll call, making sure all of them are there and unharmed.

“Jes?”

“Very much alive,” he grunts in response, letting himself flop into the haystack. His heart feels like it’s going to beat out of his chest, but at least it’s still beating. He cannot believe a blizzard of all things is what saved their lives.

He looks to his left. Even Inej looks slightly winded. She pats the pocket of her coat, sags in relief immediately after. Jesper does the same, touches his inner pocket, feels the edges of the glass key, and sighs.

The goods are safe.

“Nina?”

“Here.” Her cheeks are rosy. Jesper isn’t sure if it’s because of the dreadful cold or the exertion.

There’s silence after, the room filled by only harsh breaths. Jesper snaps up, looking around frantically, because Kaz is not calling (Y/N)’s name and that can only mean that she’s not there or she’s…

His mind quiets down when he takes in the sight in front of him.

Kaz is not calling (Y/N)’s name because he already has eyes on her. Probably always did.

And that’s when Jesper sees it, a little thing, something that tilts the scales in favor of his theory; the softness in (Y/N)’s face as she listens to Kaz.

(Y/N) is always kind— with battered gang members and hungry street urchins, with the loud customers and even with those who dare gamble against her —but Jesper is just now realizing that there’s a different gentleness when it comes to the way she takes Kaz in. The look in her eyes becomes quieter, more intimate, delicate. She says something, much too quiet for Jesper to hear, and smiles. Kaz shakes his head fondly, responds with a hushed whisper. It’s tender, precious, private. It makes Jesper feel like he’s intruding.

And then something Jesper has never seen before happens. Kaz takes (Y/N)’s chin with his gloved hand, thumb and index fingers holding her. He moves her face around, looking for any visible injury.

There goes another detail in favor of the matching tattoo theory.

Jesper thinks he might’ve just entered some sort of altered reality because what is he even looking at right now. He looks around but Inej and Nina aren’t paying them any mind, too engrossed in their own conversation.

Great, he’s all alone in trying to figure this thing out.

“I’m okay,” he hears (Y/N) reassure.

For the most part, Jesper thinks to himself, because he doesn’t miss the way she’s pressing her hand to her abdomen. Apparently, it hasn’t slipped past Kaz either, because he hums and raises his eyebrows, eyes pointedly trailing down to the wound.

She rolls her eyes at him, even that action looks fond, “It’s not deep.”

Kaz is more tactile with her, Jesper realizes with a start. It’s not a word he would ever use to describe Dirtyhands, but it’s the only one that comes to mind. (And Kaz has gotten better over the years, he has. It’s been gradual, and Jesper has no clue as to how or what he’s done, but he hasn’t missed the way Kaz doesn’t cringe away from the Crows anymore, how he doesn’t pale when someone brushes against him. He doesn’t seek touch, but he doesn’t lose all semblance of control at it either. Still, tactile is farther from what Kaz is, and this? This is huge. This is the greatest display of touch Jesper has ever seen him do.)

“You’ve got it?”

“Yeah, I’ll stitch it.”

His gloved thumb brushes her skin, briefly, before he taps the bottom of her chin gently, in approval, and lets her go.

“I can help you with that,” Nina pipes up.

Jesper turns around, immediately catches the look in the Heartrender’s eyes. Seems like he might not be the only one noticing things.

(Y/N) nods in agreement and Nina follows after her. Jesper decides, after taking only two seconds to ponder on the thought, to trail behind them. He wants to listen in— because he knows Nina won’t be able to keep herself from commenting or questioning and he’s aching to know —but he’s also hoping the Heartrender will take pity on him and heal some of his bruises.

“What do you want?” Nina asks him as they settle on a small corner of the stable. (Y/N) leans against a wooden post as she begins to undress, untucking her shirt.

Jesper simply points at the bruise he can already feel forming on his cheekbone, offering a cheeky smile.

“I’m not a nurse, Fahey.”

“You’re gonna stitch her up!” (Y/N) is watching with amusement and when Jesper points at her she raises one hand in surrender, the other still pressed against her wound.

“Yeah, well,” Nina shrugs, needle and thread in hand, “She’s my favorite.”

(Y/N) chuckles. There’s a broken-down iron chest and she sits on it as well as she can, leaning back so that Nina can work. She winks at him, “Privileges, Jes.”

He pouts.

“Saints,” Nina mutters when she catches a look of him. She’s decided that kneeling by (Y/N) side will be the most comfortable position for her to work. She cleans the wound, pours water over it, and doesn’t turn to him as she says, “If you stop doing that face I’ll see what I can do about the bruise.”

He smirks to himself, “You’ve got it, boss.”

Jesper can’t see it, but he’s sure she rolls her eyes at him.

“Try not to move,” she instructs (Y/N), voice gaining a softer, less teasing edge. The needle pricks the skin.

It’s not a deep wound, (Y/N) had been right about that. It bleeds, but the flow seems to be slowing down. It’s a little bit over her hipbone, but not quite on her abdomen. Judging by the injury, if Jesper had to guess, he would say it was probably caused by a straight back blade.

He had sort of expected Nina to immediately fire away, to start unabashedly questioning, but she doesn’t. She moves her hands in a repetitive motion, closing the skin. Then, she casually comments, “That’s not a crow.”

It’s only then that Jesper notices the ink; just over (Y/N)'s hipbone, only visible because she’d pulled her trousers a bit down to give Nina more skin to maneuver around.

“No, it isn’t,” (Y/N) confirms. She’s got her eyes closed, looks a lot more like she’s sleeping and not like she’s having her skin stitched back together. Either Nina has an amazing ability or she’s somehow managing to dissociate from the pain.

“A raven?”

“Yeah.”

Jesper leans away from the wall to get a better look at it. It’s small, simple, just the silhouette done in thin black lines. He has no idea how Nina managed to identify the bird.

Nina stays quiet for a split second, musing. She keeps her hands steady, thread pulling skin. Apparently, she decides she does not care about decorum— just like Jesper had expected —because she ends up stating, matter-of-factly, “Kaz calls you that.”

Jesper sort of forgets how to breathe. That’s why Nina hadn’t gone on a tangent regarding the touches and the glances, he realizes in that moment. She’d been distracted by something much more interesting.

And she hadn’t identified the bird, she’d just made an informed assumption. Because Kaz does call her that, raven, and sometimes, when he's feeling particularly fond, little raven. He uses it interchangeably with her name and often enough that when Jesper had initially joined the Dregs, all those years back, he’d assumed it to be her name. He’s not quite sure how Nina, who’s been with them for a shorter period of time, managed to make that connection quicker than him.

(Y/N) lets out a breathy laugh, “That he does.”

Instead of further grilling (Y/N) about the tattoo, as Jesper had expected, Nina changes the line of inquiry.

“Why?” She stops sewing and looks up at (Y/N), eyes filled with curiosity.

Oh, she’s insane, Jesper thinks to himself. He sort of wishes he’d have the audacity to ask such direct questions.

(Y/N) doesn’t seem bothered by the prodding, only mildly amused. She chuckles, “You would have to ask him that.”

Not even Nina is insane enough to dare do that. Probably. Nina is sort of a wild card, Jesper can never get a complete read on her.

She proves her sanity by taking the easier route, she whines and pouts, “C’mon. Tell us.”

(Y/N) laughs, louder this time. The reaction is immediate, the wound oozes more blood, and she flinches, moving her hand towards the injury and managing to stop herself millimeters before touching it. It makes Nina get back to stitching.

“You’re bold,” (Y/N) opens her eyes and looks straight at Jesper. There’s something in her eyes, a glimmer that passes quickly, like she knows something that Jesper doesn’t and it amuses her. “Jes would never dare ask.”

“Hey!” He pretends to be offended but isn’t really. She knows him too well.

“You know it’s true.”

He only grumbles in response, hates that she’s right.

Nina is suddenly tense, as if she isn’t quite sure if (Y/N)’s words are meant as a compliment or a reprimand. (Y/N) closes her eyes again, rests her head against the wall and reassures her, “I like that. Your boldness.”

And Nina preens, subtly, but she does. Jesper understands. (Y/N)’s approval somehow comes to mean everything to those around her. She’s like an older sister you’re always trying to impress.

Jesper thinks she won’t be saying anything more, but (Y/N) does.

“Ravens are softer than crows, more playful,” she mumbles quietly. Jesper, who isn’t even far from her, strains to hear, “Gentler, too.” And it’s like she knows exactly where the ink lays on her skin, like she has it memorized, because she manages to avoid Nina and the needle and trace the outline of the tattoo, eyes still closed, “And yet they manage to survive in the same brutal world that crows do.”

The words sink in. Jesper blinks once, twice, shifts on his feet, somewhat uncomfortable. It feels like he’s just gained insight on something much too private, into the feelings and thoughts of Kaz Brekker. Because what she just explained, vaguely and in simple words, has a much deeper meaning, and Jesper doesn’t miss that. It’s how Kaz sees her, an equal. Someone as strong as a crow, as fierce and resourceful and capable, but softer, gentler. That’s (Y/N) to him.

“That’s it?” Nina sounds perpetually unimpressed, but she doesn’t get it. She hasn’t been with the Crows long enough to understand.

(Y/N) smirks, like she knew the words wouldn’t mean much to her, and that tells Jesper something. There’s even more to the meaning of the nickname and she won’t be sharing.

“If you want more you can just ask Kaz.”

Nina huffs and pouts, pulls at the thread a bit harsher than necessary in retaliation. It probably doesn’t even sting, but (Y/N) plays along.

“Ow!?” The smirk remains on her face.

“Sorry,” Nina says, not sounding the least apologetic.

(Y/N) only chuckles, “I really do like your boldness.”

It isn’t until later that night, as Jesper sleeps in the haystack and shivers from the cold, hoping to the Saints that the smell of horse can be removed from his clothes, that realization strikes him. His eyes snap wide open.

The image of a letter R inked in Kaz’s forearm flashes through his mind.

A Raven.

No fucking way.

He has no evidence of it, no evidence that those tattoos might be complementary, but something in his gut tells him they are, and he decides to listen to his instincts.

Great, that’s yet another circumstantial piece of evidence in favor of his theory.

(Jesper doesn’t know, will never know, but he gets it both wrong and right. The letter R that is permanently etched on Kaz’s skin means something else entirely, but he does have the small silhouette of a crow, different from the one on his arm, over his ribs.)

iv. a broken lock and a key

Jesper and (Y/N) stay behind. It’s Jesper’s fault, he’d landed wrong when they jumped off the cliff, too busy on firing his guns to focus on the landing, and the resulting sprained ankle made it hard to keep up with the rest. (Maybe it was sort of Kaz’s fault, too, because who even decides on an exit route that includes free falling off a cliff. Jesper should be used to Kaz’s antics by now, but the man keeps on outdoing himself.)

(Y/N) had quickly offered to match his pace, to keep him company while the rest went ahead.

After a quick discussion Kaz had agreed to it. Jesper hadn’t missed the way they’d said goodbye. Their pinky fingers interlacing with one another.

He might not be completely sure about his matching tattoo theory— denial, really, he’s in denial, and he’s man enough to admit that to himself —but he has absolutely no doubt there is something going on between them. Jesper hasn’t put a name on it yet, he’s not even sure they have, but one would have to be blind to deny it.

Wylan had volunteered too, but Kaz needed him for the next phase of the plan, so he wasn’t really an option. A shame, really, Jesper would’ve enjoyed some alone time with his boyfriend, but he can’t complain, (Y/N) is good company. She doesn’t whine about how slow they’re going, doesn’t mention the fact that, by now, they’re probably two days behind. She keeps the air between them filled with light chatter and that makes it more bearable, makes him feel less of a burden.

On the third day of their journey Jesper wakes up alone. He’s not immediately filled by dread because he’s a light sleeper, he’s sure he would’ve woken up at the sound of any commotion, and he’s even more certain that (Y/N) would’ve had any attacker down on the floor with a gun to their temple before they even had the chance to breathe too close to them.

So, he’s not worried, but there’s something about not having (Y/N) within his line of sight that feels wrong, partly because he’s got no idea where she is, and mainly because Kaz had given him a cautionary glare when they’d ventured ahead, an easily interpreted warning to keep her safe or else.

It’s only when he begins to look around that Jesper notices her knapsack is also missing. He closes his eyes and focuses. Somewhere in the distance he can hear running water. He follows the sound before he can think too much, limping along the way.

Jesper finds her easily. He sort of wishes he hadn’t found her. Because she is showering in the lake and she is completely naked.

“Saints!” It’s a knee-jerk reaction to turn around, eyes screwed shut. “I am so sorry.”

(Y/N) snickers, unbothered, “Relax, Jes. It’s okay.”

And she’s saying that, but Jesper is pretty sure Kaz would gauge his eyes off is he found out he’s just seen her completely nude.

He shakes his head, over and over. Ah, Kaz is going to kill him. He is a dead man walking.

She must be watching him because she lets out a laugh.

“Oh, please.” There’s amusement in her tone, “Nothing you haven’t seen before,” she teases, and Jesper regrets every single thing he’s ever told her about his sexual encounters.

He huffs out a laugh. It’s got nothing to do with that, Jesper isn’t a prude, he’s just trying to process the fact that if Kaz ever finds out he will more than likely lose a finger, or his life. But he can’t say that, that’s a conversation he’s not ready to have, so he settles for, “You’re like my sister, it’s not the same.”

“Fair enough,” she responds. Jesper catches the affection in her voice. He doesn’t think he’s ever told her how she sees her as family and she must’ve known, their bond runs deep, it goes unspoken, but maybe it’s different to hear it out loud.

“It’s my fault anyways, I shouldn’t have left without telling you where I was going,” she disrupts his thoughts. “But you were finally sleeping.”

“Yeah,” he mumbles. Obviously it wouldn’t slip past her that in between the pain on his ankle and the cold of the night he’s been having a hard time falling asleep.

“You shouldn’t be standing for long,” she points out, and Jesper agrees. His leg is beginning to ache and if they’re going to travel long today, he must rest as much as he can. But the idea of walking back to camp and leaving her alone doesn’t sit right with him— even if he knows she’s capable of defending herself, she would probably do a better job than him, given his state —so he limps towards a big rock, back still towards her, and sits.

“You’re gonna keep me company?”

Jesper hums in response, “Talk so I know you haven’t suddenly been kidnapped.”

She doesn’t talk, instead she sings. It’s an old Kerch song, Jesper knows because of the mournful feel. It builds up slow and steady, flows with the morning air. She's got a nice voice. Jesper never gets tired of hearing her.

It’s as he listens, slowly being lulled into a peaceful mindset, that the memory of the ink flows through his mind. It’d been the thing his eyes had zeroed in, the black mark on the back of her neck.

Maybe it’s the soothing music, or maybe he’s slowly becoming more daring, but the words slip out of his mouth without thought, “Is it a key?”

(Y/N) stops midway through the bridge of the song.

“What?” she asks, confusion permeating the lone word.

“On the back of your neck,” Jesper clarifies, gesturing to his own neck.

There’s silence, long enough for Jesper to start thinking that maybe this wasn’t the best idea, before the air is filled with laughter. She chuckles as if he's just said the funniest thing.

She’s still giggling when she says, “I can’t believe you caught sight of it.”

He’s confused by her reaction and settles for responding with a teasing, “I’ve got a great vision.”

“That you do,” she replies. "It is a key," she confirms and then the singing starts again, more of a humming this time around, a much brighter song.

And Jesper must be really really losing the filter between his mouth and his brain— he blames the pain and the lack of sleep —because he finds himself asking, “Does Kaz have a lock, by any chance?”

He’s teasing, but not really. It’s a good enough question, not truly invasive. It gives her room to answer as she wishes.

To his surprise, she says, “Yes, he does.”

His head snaps towards her, momentarily forgetting that she’s naked and that Kaz will definitely kill him for seeing her naked twice. To his luck, (Y/N) is already getting dressed, water dripping down her hair and staining her shirt.

“What?”

There’s a sharp glint in her eyes, knowing, almost playful. A smirk tugs at the corner of her mouth, just enough hint of mischief to make Jesper doubt the truthfulness of her words.

“Yeah,” she repeats in mock seriousness, “he’s got a small lock around here,” she points the area around her collarbone, close to where her heart is. “It’s very pretty.”

“You’re fucking with me.”

(Y/N) snickers, “Maybe I am.” She ruffles his hair as she walks past him.

Weeks later Jesper realizes that she had been fucking with him, but not lying. Kaz’s shirt rips during a heist and Jesper catches the briefest glimpse of the image of a broken lock, inked right above his heart.

v. a band of ink around his ring finger, part two.

As if summoned by his thoughts, (Y/N) materializes by his side. She takes a look at his face, follows his line of sight, and snickers.

“Did you finally figure it out?”

He turns to her. Blinks once, twice.

“What?”

She looks highly entertained by the evident confusion on his face.

“I caught you staring at my tattoo sometimes,” Jesper follows the movement of her fingers, watches as she rubs the mend on her wrist absentmindedly. “And then you would get this constipated look on your face.”

Jesper sputters, “I do not look constipated.”

“Only when you’re thinking too hard,” she teases, her smile bright. “So, I figured, well…”

“That I might be losing my mind trying to figure out if Kaz is the matching tattoo kind of person?”

“Yep, something like that,” she takes a sip of her drink. “He is, by the way.” (Y/N)’s not looking at him anymore, her eyes have drifted. He follows her sight and isn’t surprised to find her looking at Kaz. She softens immediately. “All the tattoos were his idea.”

Jesper feels like he’s really entered some other reality. He can’t believe she’s just telling him all this. Does this mean that he could’ve known months ago if he’d just asked?

“And,” he dares ask, because apparently (Y/N) is in a sharing mood, and apparently he's grown bolder. It must be the alcohol. “You’re married?”

He doesn’t miss the way she rubs her thumb against her ring finger, the one that contains the exact same band of ink as Kaz’s.

“Yeah.”

“Actually?”

She pulls her necklace. A wedding band lies there. It’s anything but traditional. Black, probably forged from oxidized steel. Sleek, unadorned and somehow still elegant. There’s something engraved on the inside. Jesper just catches the letter R.

“Got the documents to prove it, too.”

Jesper sighs, astounded, “You never said a thing.”

“We didn’t really keep it a secret, just private.” It sounds like an apology somehow. “It's just, in a place like this," she gestures around, "some things you have to keep to yourself."

Jesper understands.

He shakes his head, still somehow feeling like he’s drugged.

Kaz Brekker, a matching tattoo and marriage type of person. Who would’ve guessed.

“Lovers, huh?”

(Y/N) smiles, before she slips away and makes her way towards Kaz, Jesper hears her whisper.

“‘Lovers’ feels too small a word for what we are.”

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bunnys-kisses · 16 hours ago

Note

https://www.tumblr.com/bunnys-kisses/768349619894861824/im-holding-your-hand-when-im-saying-this-as-a?source=share

people started asking crane (Max’s friend) on stream if Lestappen (Charles and max) is real. I think he was like “I shouldn’t be furthering/entertaining this” (I forgot what he said word for word). People took it as something to be excited about, that the drivers are aware of the ships and all, but idk. I think fandoms are getting too bold for my liking. I have no problem with shipping, but this parasocial behaviour is out of hand. I saw this when 1D was still a group (with Harry x Louis shippers harassing Louis to the point where he got so upset when the ship was referenced in the popular show Euphoria), I’ve seen it with Kpop in which idols have stopped hanging out publicly because fandoms get out of hand (a girl in the group Aespa had a boyfriend earlier this year and fans got very upset because they shipped her and another member and they broke up. A few years ago, 2 members of two different kpop groups (SNSD and EXO) dated and the girl got harassed at the airport even). And now this.

Fandoms get so parasocial so quickly, it’s insane. It’s not new behaviour, but it’s strange.

exactly, this isn't new behavior. but i feel like it's become more emboldened with how much more "online" both fans and companies/groups are.

more under the cut, because this is a long one....

i also think it ties into this notion that i've been seeing online about how fans have this feeling to be "right" both with rpf and fiction as well. that their theories, opinions and whatever else is "correct". i've seen this with like pieces of media like steven universe and even star wars. like fandom isn't fun anymore, it has become this weird one up over each other. i honestly don't know when this changed, my guess is around the pandemic when it seemed like people were more logged into the internet. but, i could be wildly off with that. (if you have an idea, i'd love to know). it just feels stupid in so many ways how fandoms are structured. even if you're not the "best" artist or writer, people can't have FUN in fandom - of course that doesn't mean it has to be absolved criticism. you can have fun and still call out hate within spaces. the issue with formula one (along with k-pop like you mentioned, anon), is that these aren't characters. this isn't arguing in the tags over is finnpoe or reylo is more valid or legitimate within the narrative. these are REAL people, with REAL friends, families and partners.

it's this weird push to have someone's theory - and while i have a soft spot for lestappen, it is at the end of the day nothing more than fan theory - be confirmed. also personally, if hattie (oscar's sister) or crane (max's friend) "outed" them, i would be horribly fucking offended on oscar/max's behalf. to have someone you TRUST just out you like that. it's sick. maybe it's because i worked in queer spaces from high school all the way through uni, and the number one rule no matter WHAT, is you never out someone. even if the question is harmless and the person asking has no ill intention. you never out another person, because it's not YOUR coming out. so the fact that fans are near begging these people to OUT their loved ones, is not only a level of delusion that i can't ever comprehend. but, also it could honestly, ruin that interpersonal relationship.

so like even if a driver is queer, whoever it may be. could be a driver from the 90s, could be a driver today, it could be a driver in five years, i don't want someone else in their life outing them. because that's THEIR story. and fans need to realize that. bothering crane or hattie or alexandra (i've seen that too) - isn't helping anyone and it makes you look unhinged and weirdly alienates not only the driver but their loved ones. YES, they knew it exists, it is EVERYWHERE. but shoving it in their faces doesn't help. and you're never going to get the confirmation because there is a high chance that their not even queer to begin with. and if they are, NOT OUR CONCERN

i don't have a problem writing or consuming rpf, it is not a crime nor do i think it should be stopped. like HAVE FUN. but you have to realize that it's not like debating star wars or marvel or whatever other piece of fictional media. formula one is REAL, they are not actors. they are athletes, and unless you want all rpf to be shut down some how. i suggest the likes of some of ya'll need to understand that there are different boundaries. and respect them.

i know they're all millionaires, but they still breathe and bleed as a friend of mine once said. it's fun to put them in little scenarios in fanworks, but just keep it out of their direct attention. there are unspoken boundaries, that some of ya'll need have said to you apparently.

asking oscar issac if he THINKS that finnpoe is real is VERY different than asking someone's sister if she thinks her REAL LIFE BROTHER is fucking his REAL LIFE TEAMMATE. - people's relationships have turned to ash over insistent rpf in their faces all the time.

my advice at the end of the day is: have fun, don't write or draw it because you want confirmation that it's a real relationship. write or draw it because you're having fun. fandom is about making friends and shipping in whatever context is about finding a slice of community on the vast internet, not cracking the code of if it is a real relationship. - bunny.

#bunny speaks #formula one #f1 #lestappen #max verstappen #charles leclerc #fandom woes #formula 1 #lando norris #oscar piastri #landoscar

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luvismenu · 2 days ago

Text

09 — miss your touch ✎ ,, index

nsfw warnings: kissing.

note: she's not pregnant you guys dw 😭

wc: 3.4k

a week.

it's been a week since you've seen jungkook.

there were a few texts from him, asking if you were okay, but nothing beyond that. you answered with short replies; a yes or a no. sometimes, you asked how he was, and he'd say he's okay. but there’s a clear shift now, an invisible line drawn between you two.

a line you’d already crossed once but now seem to be retreating behind. back to where you started; strangers who just happened to share something.

you might’ve overreacted.

the thought stings, but yeah, maybe you did. he wasn’t even that late. you believe him when he said he had to deal with something. that something being a female, it’s not like he hid it. still, for reasons you can’t explain, just thinking about it makes you roll your eyes.

but he came straight to you after that.

and you know jungkook doesn’t lie. at least, that’s what you’ve learned about him in these two months.

two months.

it’s been two months, and yet here you are, acting as if he’s yours.

he isn’t.

and that’s good. you don’t want a relationship. you never did. relationships are nothing but unnecessary stress or drama. or at least, that’s what you keep telling yourself.

you can’t let jungkook fall into the “relationship” category. but calling him your casual fuck buddy feels off, because you’re both closer than that now. thinking of him as just a friend, though... that feels wrong. unnatural, even.

it’s so complicated.

it shouldn’t be. but it is.

sometimes, it feels like he doesn’t care. you wish he’d show more emotions, something more than his usual calm, nonchalant demeanor.

it feels like you’re the only one overthinking this while he’s just... fine. unaffected.

why do i feel like a wreck? is it just me? you wonder.

you don't wanna miss his touch.

you don't wanna miss him.

but you miss him more than you want to admit.

and now, you don’t even know how to approach him. things feel so awkward. you’re not sure how to cross that line you’ve suddenly drawn.

a week without seeing him feels like forever. especially when, for the past two months, he’s been part of your every day. whether it was texts or calls, he was there.

which is why you’re here. at the business expo everyone’s been working so hard for.

you don’t know much about it, just the bare minimum yoongi mentioned. apparently, other majors can attend as long as they say they’re interested in learning something.

as if. you would never attend something like this.

but for him? for jungkook?

you’re here anyway.

jungkook feels like a wreck.

he misses you.

a lot.

but at the same time, he thinks he needed that break. from everything. a week isn’t much, but it gave him enough space to clear his head.

iseul tried to contact him again. he blocked her number.

then she tried to approach him in person. he blocked her out of his life too.

he knows she’s probably furious, and maybe even hurt, but he couldn’t let her keep dragging him into the same cycle. not anymore.

“jungkook, i’m sorry, honey, i didn’t mean to snap at you that day—” she said, her voice was soft, almost pleading.

but he cut her off, firm and final, his words heavy but deliberate.

“i think it’s for the best if we move on now.”

he couldn’t believe those words came out of his mouth, but for once, he didn’t regret them. saying it felt like a weight had been lifted, one he’d been carrying far too long.

it wasn’t easy, but it was necessary.

now, though?

all he can think about is you.

you told him you were fine now. the conversations between you two since then have been brief, surface level, and awkward. it feels like a wall has been built, and though neither of you acknowledges it, it’s there.

jungkook wishes you’d talk to him soon, break through whatever tension is lingering.

when you told him to leave that day, he froze for a moment. it stung, but he understood. if you needed space, he’d give it to you. the last thing he wanted was to make things harder for you when you were already unwell.

but he feels awful.

all he did was add to your stress, and now the guilt is eating at him. he’s ready to do anything—absolutely anything—to make things right with you, to hear you say you forgive him.

yet, it feels strange.

why does he feel this way about you?

whatever this is between you, it was supposed to be no strings attached. that was the deal. you both made it clear from the beginning. but somewhere along the line, things shifted. you’re not just a hookup to him anymore. you’re so much more than that, though he’s not sure how to define it.

he wonders if he should set boundaries, remind himself of what this arrangement is supposed to be. but it’s hard—impossible, even. every time you’re together, he’s drawn to you. it’s like you’ve got this pull on him, and he doesn’t even want to resist it.

he doesn’t wanna miss your touch.

and right now?

right now, he just misses you. everything about you.

“jungkook, is that you?” a voice cuts through his thoughts, pulling him back to the present. jungkook turns, searching for the source of the familiar voice.

“ah, it is you!”

his lips twitch into a smile when he spots the person approaching him.

“jin hyung,” he says, a little surprised to see him.

jin strides up to him, pulling him into a firm hug and patting his back.

“took you long enough to show up,” jungkook says as they pull apart, raising a brow.

jin lets out a dramatic sigh. “had to deal with things, you know how it is,” he says, waving a hand before flashing a grin. “but hey, i’m here now, aren’t i?”

“yeah, you are,” jungkook replies, shaking his head lightly, though the smile on his face betrays the faint scolding in his tone.

“oh, come on,” jin says, feigning offense. “is that it? is that all the welcome i get? give me a proper one! i am one of the guests tonight, after all.”

his grin grows wider, and jungkook can’t help but chuckle at his hyung’s playful energy.

where is jungkook?

you're in the auditorium, surrounded by bustling booths, neatly arranged tables, and groups of students passionately discussing their projects. you didn’t realize business majors went all out for an expo like this.

you feel like yelling his name at the top of your lungs. you've been walking around, searching through a sea of unfamiliar faces, but you can’t find him anywhere.

“uh, hey,” you say, tapping a guy’s shoulder, interrupting his conversation.

woah, this guy has really broad shoulders.

he turns around, and you’re momentarily taken aback. the man is tall, dressed in a suit that looks like it was tailored for him, glasses framing his handsome face, and hair styled perfectly.

“yes?” he asks, polite but slightly curious.

you hesitate, then decide to go for it. “do you know where i can find jungkook? i mean, jeon jungkook? he’s supposed to be here somewhere,” you say, unsure if he even knows who jungkook is. but you’re desperate now.

his lips curl into a small smile. “why, of course. i was just speaking with him a few minutes ago. he excused himself to use the restroom, so he should be back shortly.”

“thank you,” you reply quickly, already preparing to make your way toward the direction of the restrooms. maybe, just maybe, you’ll bump into him as he’s walking back.

“are you one of his friends?” the man asks suddenly, stopping you from taking a step forward.

you glance at him, unsure how to respond. “uh... yes, kinda. sure,” you say awkwardly. you catch the faint arch of his brow, as if your answer only piqued his curiosity more.

why didn’t i just say yes? you mentally scold yourself, feeling ridiculous.

clearing your throat, you quickly excuse yourself.

"excuse me,” you mumble before turning and walking away, hoping the restroom isn’t far and jungkook will finally appear.

you walk through the rows of booths, still scanning the area for any sign of jungkook. the loud chatter of students and the hum of discussions fill the air, but all you can focus on is the thought of finding him.

as you near the restrooms, you catch a glimpse of a familiar figure standing by the entrance, hands stuffed in his pockets, his posture relaxed yet somehow tense.

it’s him.

your heart skips a beat, and you can’t help the small sigh of relief that escapes you. he looks as good as ever, effortlessly drawing your eyes to him. he’s wearing a sharp black suit that fits him perfectly, making him look every bit as important as you’re sure he is. he must be a key figure in this expo, you think.

all you know is that he’s supposed to give some kind of presentation. that’s it. nothing more. you didn’t bother to find out the details because, honestly, none of it matters to you.

all you want right now is to see him.

you walk towards him, taking slow steps, unsure how to act. you haven't seen him in what feels like forever, and all that awkward tension you’ve been trying to ignore creeps back up.

when he notices you, his eyes widen for just a second before a small smile breaks across his face. it’s a smile you haven’t seen in a while.

“hey,” he greets you.

you nod, trying to keep your cool despite the rush of emotions. “hi,” you say, feeling your heart race. you look at him, searching his face for any clue about how he’s been, but you can't tell much.

“i didn’t think you’d show up,” he admits, his gaze flickering over you. “thought you were gonna skip it.”

“just wanted to see what this is all about.” you say, trying to sound casual

he chuckles softly, his eyesglancing down. “didn’t expect you to be interested in this stuff.”

“well, i’m not,” you say, feeling the need to explain yourself. “but i wanted to see you. jungkook.”

there’s a brief moment of silence as his expression shifts, and you can’t tell if he’s surprised or if he’s just been waiting for you to say something. his eyes meet yours, and there’s an intensity there that makes you second guess every word you just said.

“i’ve been meaning to talk to you,” he says quietly, stepping a little closer. “i know things have been... off. and honestly—”

loud chatter in the background interrupts him, making both of you exchange a quick glance before he speaks up again.

“follow me.”

you follow him without thinking. the sound of people fading away as you walk through the crowd. he leads you to what feels like an empty lecture hall, making sure to lock the door behind you. you stand there, waiting for him to speak, the quiet now heavy between you two.

“i know things have been different recently,” he starts again, his voice soft. “and i honestly don’t know why...” he sighs. “but i want to apologize for that day. i’m really sorry.”

you swallow, trying to steady yourself. “i forgive you,” you say, your voice steady, but there's still an uncertainty in your chest.

“really?” he looks at you, his gaze searching yours for some kind of reassurance.

“yeah,” you nod, “i was just sick and i guess i overreacted a little, i’m sorry for that.”

he shakes his head quickly. “you didn’t. you didn’t overreact.”

a quiet but heavy silence fills the space between you both.

“so, uh, cool event,” you say, trying to break the tension.

“don’t act like you care,” jungkook smiles, the familiar smirk finally making its way onto his face.

you smile too, shrugging lightly. “yeah, i don’t.”

there’s another brief silence. you’re not sure what to say next, the awkwardness still lingering in the air. what if he’s going to end things? what if he’s had enough? what if.

“jungkook, i—”

his lips are on yours before you can even finish your sentence. the kiss catches you off guard, but his arms wrap tightly around your waist, pulling you in, and any hesitation melts away. his warmth seeps into you, grounding you in the moment as his lips move against yours with a desperate sort of tenderness.

you don’t pull back. instead, you let yourself fall into it, let him guide you. the kiss deepens, and with it, the questions and uncertainties that had been weighing you down dissolve, replaced by the overwhelming feeling of him. here, now, with you.

when you finally pull back, your chest heaves as you gasp for air. your mind is racing, your heart pounding in your chest. you don’t know how to respond. a part of you wants to spill everything; how much you’ve missed him, how unbearable the distance has been, how empty you’ve felt without his touch. but the words catch in your throat, like they're stuck somewhere.

“i’m sorry, i…” he begins, his voice barely above a whisper. his hands don’t leave your waist, holding you close as if afraid you might slip away. “i missed you.”

those three words hit harder than you expect, stirring something deep inside you. warmth spreads through your chest, a quiet comfort you didn’t realize you’d been craving.

it’s simple, almost too simple, but it feels like it’s enough. like it’s the answer to everything that’s been weighing on your heart; the confusion, the space, the silence between you two. suddenly, none of it matters.

“you missed me?” you ask softly, your voice trembling just slightly. it’s as if you need to hear him say it again, to be sure you’re not imagining it.

he nods, his eyes locked on yours. his voice is gentle. “yeah, i did.”

you stare at each other for a moment, the air between you thick with many unspoken feelings. then, without thinking, you lean in, closing the distance as your lips find his. your arms wrapping around his neck as if pulling him closer could erase all the time you spent apart. he responds immediately, his lips pressing against yours with equal fervor, like he’s been waiting for this.

your right leg slides up instinctively, brushing against his hip, and he understands your silent request. his hands move to your thigh, gripping it firmly as he lifts you effortlessly. your legs wrap around his waist, and his strong hands shift to cup your ass, holding you securely against him. the closeness sends a rush of heat through you, your bodies fitting together perfectly.

the kiss deepens, his tongue teasing against your lips until you part them, granting him access. his tongue brushes against yours, slow and deliberate, sending a wave of warmth straight to your core. you hum softly into the kiss, the sound vibrating between you, and his grip on you tightens.

he places you on the nearby desk, his lips never leaving yours. his hands grip your waist, keeping you steady. your fingers slide down to his chest, gently gripping his shirt as if holding on for balance. he pulls back for a brief moment, giving you both a chance to catch your breath.

without hesitation, he shrugs off his blazer, carelessly tossing it to the floor. the sound of it hitting the ground barely registers as his hands return to you, cupping your face with a tenderness that contrasts the heat between you. his lips find yours again, urgent yet soft, and you let him take control, your hands moving to cup his face too.

your legs wrap around his hips, pulling him closer, and you can feel his soft bulge pressing against you. the sensation is enough to make your breath hitch, and you instinctively tilt your hips toward him, craving more of the pressure.

he pulls back slightly, his lips brushing against yours as he murmurs, “you drive me crazy.”

oh fuck.

“what—” you start to ask, but the sound of knocking interrupts you.

both of your heads snap toward the door, your bodies tense.

“jungkook!? you in there?” a familiar voice calls out, loud and clear.

jungkook immediately recognizes it and clears his throat, trying to steady his voice. “yes! jin hyung, i’m here.”

“i’m about to give my speech, so you better be there asap!” jin’s voice is full of its usual dramatic flair. “i came all the way here for this moment, and i don’t want you to miss my glory.”

you hear his footsteps retreating, his words lingering in the air.

jungkook exhales, his head leaning slightly forward until it rests against your forehead. his hands remain on your waist, his touch warm, grounding you in a moment that feels anything but steady. he mumbles under his breath, almost as if he’s scolding himself. “of all the times…”

your heart races, and your mind spins in circles. what does he mean by you drive him crazy? the weight of those words presses down on you, heavy and confusing.

“jungkook,” you start, your voice barely above a whisper. “i think you should go.”

he lifts his head to look at you, his brows furrowing slightly. the regret in his eyes is unmistakable.

maybe i shouldn’t have said that. he thinks as he takes a small step back, creating a gap between you that suddenly feels too wide.

“are you going to stay?” he asks cautiously, his voice softer now.

you open your mouth to answer but hesitate. you don’t know what to say. this was never part of your plan. all you wanted was to see him, to tell him you were sorry too. but now, standing here with him, everything feels so much more complicated.

“___,” he says your name gently, snapping you out of your daze. your gaze meets his, and he blinks at you, his expression searching.

“i know things have changed between us, and—”

“what do you mean? we’re fine, though,” you cut him off quickly, the words spilling out as if saying them will make them true.

he lets out a heavy sigh, “are we?”

the question catches you off guard. your frown deepens as uncertainty settles in your chest.

are we?

your silence answers for you, and he notices. he always notices.

“it’s okay,” he says softly, almost like he’s trying to soothe you. “i don’t know how to deal with it either.” he pauses, his voice quieter. “i don’t know what we are right now.”

what are we?

the words echo in your mind, and you hate how much they hurt. it wasn’t supposed to be like this. you never wanted it to turn into this mess.

“i think…” you start, and his eyes are on you immediately, waiting, hoping you’ll say something that will make this all easier.

“...i should go.”

you don’t miss the way his shoulders drop just slightly, the smallest sign of defeat. you hesitate for a moment before sliding off the desk, your movements stiff and uncertain.

you gulp, forcing yourself to meet his gaze one last time. “good luck with your presentation,” you say softly. you linger for a second, watching him, hoping he’ll say something to stop you. but all he does is nod, his response quiet and unreadable.

with a deep breath, you turn around and walk toward the door. every step feels heavier than the last.

behind you, jungkook exhales a long, weary sigh, running a hand through his hair.

did i mess it up? he wonders, his chest tightening with something he doesn’t know how to name.

a/n: um haha.... jin with glasses yay!! 🏃🏻‍♀️

📜 series taglist: @deepikhaprakash @rjooniesdimples @wombatkitten127 @hoseokteardrop

📜 permanent taglist: @lovieku @deluluisdasolulu @ddanasjk @onlyforyoukook @diamondjeon @nnybtitts08 @lil0u0 @butnotmontana @fr0ggieth1nk @minimoninini @whoa-jo @lola75111 @iswearimover5feetall @rispwr @genevieveeeee @kookoo-kachoo @junecat18 @iheartchanelle @internetrando64 @jkvias @134340-kr @mar-lo-pap @fluttershypoo @kyuupii @https-mei @elinaki92 @jungkookmyoneandonlybaby @winterbeartaehyungbestboy @jaykay-world @jmscaffeine @libra04 @beigerin @nikidream24 @svnbangtansworld @mimi1097

#jeon jungkook #jungkook x y/n #fanfic #bts jungkook #jungkook x you #jungkook fic #bts fanfiction #bts fic #jjk x y/n

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portalhan · 18 hours ago

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⠀ꔫ˚　༝　◌ ⌒⌒ three strikes !

↳ jeongin swears on his life that he's seen something odd between you and felix... exactly three times, in fact, but he needs more concrete proof...

PAIRING: felix lee x gn!reader

FORMAT: one shot

GENRE: college au, friends to lovers, fluff, jeongin third wheeling...

WARNINGS: brief mentions of food and being sick (just the flu bug nothing huge)

WORD COUNT: 2.8k

FAE'S NOTES: this is just a little bit half-assed... idk if i have much faith in this and i believe i can do better than this but i'm gonna post it anyway for you guys! please let me know if you have any feedback, my writing muscles have basically atrophied and i need to find my rhythm again TT

jeongin doesn't usually second-guess his closest friends like this, but something has changed. he knows you and felix well enough to know at least that.

you have always been hard to read. you're an independent, reliable sort of person, not outwardly emotional nor needlessly arrogant either—you tend to show your love for your friends through small, quiet gestures. felix, on the other hand, is someone who wears his heart on his sleeve—almost to a fault. always baking extra brownies to gift people, always going the extra mile, always looking on the bright side, even in the darkest of situations. he is as fragile as he is affectionate.

yes, affectionate. that's the word he's been looking for to describe the changes in your friendship with felix. you've been more affectionate. jeongin has always chalked it up to felix's own proclivities rubbing off on you given the sheer amount of time you spend together, but now... he's not so sure it's that simple. there have been three strikes jeongin has kept score of so far.

STRIKE #1

jeongin remembers it was a tuesday, because that's the only day of the week where all three of you shared classes. you would always sit in a row near the back of the class. he has made it a point to memorise both yours and felix's timetables this semester—as do the both of you with him—so he knows you don't usually have prior arrangements before coming to campus. you've always had a tradition of meeting in the lobby before walking to class together as a result.

so, when his phone pings with a message from you saying 'sorry innie, we're gonna be a bit late! pls go to class first, just save us seats', he is immediately struck with confusion. what did you mean, "we"? felix, uncharacteristically, hasn't said a word and it's already 5 minutes shy from when class starts. he always arrives at least 10 minutes before. how strange, jeongin thinks to himself as he trudges up the stairs to class, incredibly unfamiliar with the circumstance of having to do so on his own for the first time. he just brushes the nagging suspicion off, telling himself it was probably because of some public transport situation that's delayed you both—not something entirely uncommon.

it's about 15 minutes into the class before he sees you. the second he spots felix and you stumbling through the doors, profusely apologising to the professor for your tardiness, though, is when the same sensation of suspicion comes back. as you and felix shuffle to make their way to the seats jeongin saved for you, he can't help but notice your attire. you're wearing an oversized black shirt with some graphic of an anime printed on. jeongin's eyes squint as he stares at it, assuming it must have been a new purchase of yours. but he swears he's seen it before.

when you and felix take your seats and the professors picks up where she left off, felix turns to jeongin and apologises for being late. "we're really sorry jeongin, we owe you one," he quips, before he fishes his laptop out of his bag. the younger boy just shrugs it off as no big deal. plus, he had something else on his mind to worry about than harp on the two of you being late to class.

the dots quickly connect a few moments later in jeongin's head. felix has a shirt just like the one you're wearing. he swears he's seen him wearing it before, just last week when the three of you had gone out for dinner. it's been a shirt of his for years now, so worn down by so many uses that it has bleach stains on the sleeves, despite how much care felix puts into his clothing.

jeongin leans back in his chair and slowly, subtly pushes it back. he steals a glance at your side profile, thankfully without either you or felix noticing. there they were: bleach stains on the sleeves. upon further inspection, the shirt you were wearing looks way too worn out to be a new shirt—he concludes it must be felix's. but why would you wear felix's dank shirt to begin with? it would be weird to ask if that's his shirt you were wearing, so he decides to keep his silence for now.

STRIKE #2

this time, it was jeongin's turn to be late. the three of you had planned a picnic to celebrate the end of the gruelling semester—an idea felix suggested. he wanted it to be a potluck, so the each of you planned to bring something of your own making along.

jeongin wanted to go all out with his: he wanted to bake cupcakes, something felix had recently taught him how to. he wanted to show you his latest endeavours, baked fresh, but he didn't expect it to go sideways so last minute. he ended up showing up almost half an hour late, hair sticking to his forehead from all the sweat and cupcake frosting smeared all over the tupperware he placed them in out of haste.

when he finally spots the two of you amid the grass field at the park, he notices something... odd. he stops in his tracks to catch his breath and squints his eyes to get a better look. if he didn't know any better, he'd have thought you two were... holding hands? the sun was glaring directly in his face, obscuring his vision, so jeongin couldn't be 100% sure. but what he does know is that your figures were so close to each other they were practically shoulder-to-shoulder. this isn't exactly beyond felix, who is notorious for his habits of physical affection. but it is most certainly out of character for you, as someone who prefers to keep most people at an arm's length.

jeongin shrugs it off. he guesses felix nor he would be considered "most people". perhaps it was a trick of the light. he also doesn't have good enough reason to find it entirely strange—perhaps felix had gotten through to you in that regard. he had bigger things to worry about: your dinner getting cold.

STRIKE #3

the legitimacy of the third time is still up for debate, jeongin surmises. this time it wasn't your behaviour around each other, instead more so about how felix in particular reacted.

this happened over summer break. he remembers the sun being more unrelenting than ever—40 degrees celsius to be exact, he saw on the news—so you three had just decided to hang out in your bedroom, where the air conditioning is the coolest and crispiest (according to you). jeongin vividly recalls you lying on your stomach atop your bed, while the two boys were sprawled on the floor. that is, the carpet that laid over the spot where they would usually sprawl on the floor.

it was one of those 'parallel play' days, as you liked to call them. not necessarily doing things together, but doing separate things in the presence of each other, you said one time. felix was busy on his switch playing some pokemon game, you were scrolling on your phone and jeongin was just seconds away from drifting off to sleep on felix's lap.

it's been silent for, what, almost two hours now? but you end up breaking it first. "woah," you suddenly exclaimed, brows furrowing as you read something on your screen. "do you guys remember seungmin? from calculus?"

jeongin does not move an inch aside from nodding his head, and felix just lets out a little "yeah?" though his eyes were never once peeled from the console screen.

"i think he just asked me out," you tell them, bewildered.

this, of course, elicits reactions of surprise from jeongin and felix. the former lifts himself and sits up to ask details, while the other just turns the switch off—did he even save his progress on the game?—and sits there in silence as he silently watches you and jeongin discuss your classmate's... proposition. jeongin makes a playful jab at how you could have given him the wrong idea by flirting with him, which you immediately shut down. "i've never done anything suggestive to him, i swear!" you exclaimed in full defense.

seungmin has only ever made conversation with you once or twice in class, jeongin recalls. you also never really put in the effort to get to know your other classmates if jeongin and felix were in the same classes. jeongin makes a passing comment about how seungmin could pass as your type (if you squint hard enough), but it falls on deaf ears when you and felix meet each other's gazes.

"you're gonna tell him no, right?" felix suddenly chimes in after moments of prolonged silence, raspy voice cracking just a little. jeongin snaps his head to turn and look at his friend, head tilted and brow lifted. you give felix a look jeongin cannot quite describe, and chuckle with a soft smile as you nod. "of course i'm gonna say no," you assure him. he lets out a very heavy sigh of relief, but none of this goes unnoticed by jeongin.

this is very weird, jeongin remembers thinking. you have always been receptive to potential love interests, even if they weren't necessarily people you'd normally be into. so why are you so sure now that you'd reject seungmin without even giving him a chance?

on that note, what's it to felix who asks you out? why does he have a say? plus, he could've sworn he detected some semblance of... jealousy in his question. but he supposes that could be normal considering all three of you are so used to spending time with each other. jeongin does admit to himself that he'd feel lonely if you were to be whisked away by some stranger out of nowhere. it wouldn't be the same.

jeongin has theories, maybe even concepts of a theory, but no concrete enough proof for confrontation—so far. it looks like he has to wait till he does before he can address the massive elephant in the room.

FINAL STRIKE

it finally happens when he decides to stop by your apartment with take-out. you had told your friends about falling sick the night before—alas, you have caught the flu bug. they were just textbook symptoms like a low-grade fever, sore throat and a runny nose, nothing to worry about in particular, you told them. but jeongin just so happens to pass by your neighbourhood on his usual route home from work, so he decides to drop in with some chicken soup for you as a small surprise. you had already been texting the group chat the entire day about how exhausted you were to make yourself a half-decent dinner, so jeongin thought this would be a nice way to take care of his friend.

he knocks on your door multiple times to no response. maybe you're sleeping? he looks around the potted plants sitting outside your door and lifts the snake plant up, grabbing the rusted spare key tucked away from prying eyes just underneath. he quickly and quietly unlocks the front door and lets himself in. i'll just go in, check on y/n and put this soup on the table, he tells himself as he enters. maybe text you to let you know he got you dinner.

that is, until a warm aroma of what he believes to be fresh bolognese wafts to where he is at the front door. he hears the distant clanging of pots and pans coming from the kitchen, and—strangest of all—he hears... conversation? he can definitely hear you talking and even giggling, but he can't quite make out who the other person was. he's about 99% sure there was someone else in here, but could it be just a phone call? he sneaks down the hallway to the kitchen, the noises getting clearer as he inches closer. when he sticks his head out from a blind corner to peek into the kitchen, he sees it: felix plating a fresh bowl of spaghetti while you're sitting on the dining table engaged in idle chatter. a lump catches in his throat—what is felix doing here? and most importantly, why didn't he know of this? he felt momentarily betrayed.

jeongin just stands there in silence, unsure of how to confront you, while you and felix continue chatting. it's only when felix sets down two plates of pasta and goes in to plant a peck on your cheek does jeongin yelp in shock, which frightens all three of you.

felix squints his eyes, which widen in utter disbelief when he recognises the familiar facade lurking by the corridor. "jeong...in?" he asks, voice trembling a little from disbelief. when he says jeongin's name, you shoot him a similar look, but this one is more panicked and afraid. jeongin awkwardly steps out within view, but he puts a hand up to cover his mouth to prevent himself from screaming. he raises the other arm to point an accusatory finger at the both of you. you swear you just heard felix gulp next to you.

"i..." jeongin sputters. "i knew it! i knew something was going on between you two idiots!"

the verbalisation of his revelation is what completely opens the floodgates, causing the entire place to erupt in complete and utter chaos. jeongin paces back and forth with the chicken soup still dangling from his fingers as he rants about how he's caught you doing "weird stuff" a couple of times but couldn't have known, about how he's been feeling a little left out recently, how you have been looking at felix funny sometimes. meanwhile, felix just begins to talk over him with near-equal (if not more) amounts of sheer panic and distress, reaching out to him to get him to calm down while explaining that this wasn't how they had intended for him to find out.

you, crippled by the shock from jeongin's unexpected appearance, just sit there, unable to do much of anything what with your flu, just silently watching felix and jeongin form a panic attack circle jerk in your own house.

"enough!" jeongin raises his voice, which immediately shuts felix up. jeong has never raised his voice. you shoot felix a nervous look.

"i thought we were best friends," jeongin utters, the slightest hint of melancholy lacing his voice. he looks offended. you've never seen him look this offended, not even when he was accused of academic misconduct that one time. "i'm happy for you, ecstatic even! i swear i am, but really? why would you keep this for me for so long?"

you decide you should talk to him—felix is very clearly out of his depth when it comes to handling intense situations like this and he's only making jeongin feel worse with all the jabbering. you stand up from your seat on the table and walk over to him, taking your hands in his.

"i'm sorry, jeongin. we... we weren't entirely sure of how we were gonna do this," you tell him, almost in a whisper.

felix scratches the back of his neck, avoiding any and all eye contact with either of you. "we wanted to keep it quiet," he admits. "at first, at least."

you nod in agreement, and turn back to look at jeongin. "you were going to be the first person we would break the news to. not even our own parents, i swear," you divulge, while you spot felix in the corner of your eye making a silent crossed hearts gesture to double down on his sincerity. jeongin's once-tense features start to ease up a bit, but not entirely. "you are our best friend. we never want you to feel like this. we're sorry," you assure him, before pulling him into a bear hug. you feel felix join from behind you to make it a group hug.

"i don't care what you guys have going on, but don't keep any more secrets from me. got it?" your friend huffs after you all pull back, feigning some sort of authority. felix chuckles at how ridiculous he sounds—being the youngest of the three, the tone just sounds alien when it comes from him. "we would never," felix tells him, reaching out to give jeongin a firm pat on the back. "i think y/n might like you more than me anyway, they're always going, 'we should call jeongin! we should send him a photo! we should—"

your palm slaps against the lower half of your boyfriend's face in protest. "we might be dating but you're on thin ice," you glare at him, before he raises both hands to surrender.

jeongin jovially chimes in to break the tension: "can i just say, i've always felt like you'd get along. aren't you glad i introduced you to each other? you wouldn't be a thing if it weren't for me, ya know." felix and you just huff in response—he can have this.

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shantechni · 2 days ago

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Natsume's Fear of Thunder

I'm gonna be honest, this can hardly be considered an analysis. It's more of a "sporadic and unnecessarily deep observation" of how Natsume's astraphobia has been presented in the series over the years, both in the anime and in the manga. So, please for the love of God take all of this with a grain of salt.

Yes, I'm using the term "phobia" very loosely, but I'm not about to get into that rn. Natsume has an irrational fear and strong dislike of thunder, that's an undeniable truth.

Before I dive in, I'd like to briefly explain why, of all the little bits of information Midorikawa has given us about Natsume, this one is the one to ceaselessly bump around in my brain like a DVD logo. This series is not in the horror genre (it's serialized in LaLa DX after all), but it does get suspenseful, and pretty disturbing depending on whatever topic it touches or the types of situations the characters may find themselves in. I don't fault anyone, particularly Natsume, for growing up with valid fears and preconceived misconceptions about most youkai; they can sound scary, they can look scary, and they can do some scary stuff if they really feel up to it.

That's why I'm so fascinated to see Natsume develop and still harbor an irrational fear for something like the everyday phenomena of storms. He's landed himself in all sorts of trouble and has come face to face with many beings, both natural and supernatural, who didn't have his best interests in mind, and yet the clap of thunder somehow keeps its spot on the list of things that has him scared stiff.

Aight, spoilers for both the anime and the manga beyond here, you've been warned👏🏽

Our first introduction to Natsume's fear is near the beginning of chapter 42, when he and Tanuma accidentally stumble across Taki's home while seeking shelter from a sudden shower. He questions how Nyanko-sensei ended up at her home as well and the youkai, much to Natsume's visible dismay, cheekily explains:

That doesn't end up happening since the rain remained light until its swift end, and the mention of Natsume's fear is glossed over rather quickly to save him the embarrassment, but it's an interesting mention made by Midorikawa nonetheless since it adds another layer to whatever image the audience has of Natsume and the series itself. Nyanko-sensei, having been around this kid long enough to know a lot of his vulnerabilities and insecurities (even the ones his dreams unwittingly reveal to the youkai), has seen and grown accustomed to a side of him that the audience had yet to be formally introduced to for once.

Right about now, you may be wondering how the anime adapted this scene. It didn't💀.

While the start of the episode (S3 EP5) is a one-to-one recreation of the chapter with virtually the same dialogue and scenery, any mention of Nyanko-sensei following Natsume to pick on him when it thunders is nonexistent and entirely skipped over so the gang can go straight to cleaning out the storeroom.

Most fans who have read the manga will tell you how notorious the anime is for excluding some of the characters' lines or scenes that take place in the manga, or just straight up rearranging or changing up those same factors. Sometimes those alterations work wonders, and other times they leave more to be desired, mainly if you know what happened in the manga counterpart of the episode. This such example is one of the times that'll leave people scratching their heads and wondering what warranted getting rid of a scene so insignificant that it'd have no effect on the plot of the episode whether or not it stayed. The only answer I can think of for that is the directors likely wanting a smoother progression of events to make for a viewing experience better tailored for an anime episode rather than a manga chapter.

Or, they genuinely didn't have enough space in the episode to squeeze in that little bit, which I highly doubt, but what would I know, I don't work for them. At the end of the day, we didn't get to see that scene in the episode.

After some more anime switcheroo shenanigans go on behind the scenes, along with an original episode pulling a retcon during a lightning storm, we receive our next moment in a surprising scene from the anime team in S3 EP10 (adaptation of chapter 28). Though the scene itself is short and not exactly an example of Natsume's astraphobia, I feel it should still be included because of its relation.

The chapter originally starts with Natsume and Nyanko-sensei searching for a tree that was struck by lightning during a storm the night before. However, the anime makes an addition of their own by rewinding time to that very night and showing Nyanko-sensei excitedly watching the storm take place while Natsume is tied up with his homework.

Nyanko-sensei goes on to tease him by suggesting that he doesn't want to watch the storm because he's scared, but Natsume dodges the youkai's mocking and begins to tell him to close the curtain before a crack of lightning cuts him off and illuminates his room.

Not only does Natsume not simply deny Nyanko-sensei's claim of him being scared, but his reaction to the thunder is seemingly more sudden than Nyanko-sensei's. Both of these points could subsequently lead the audience to interpret this entire sequence as the anime's first acknowledgement of his phobia, and it'd make for a very intriguing choice on the anime team's behalf after taking their ommitance of the previous scene into consideration. It could be a stretch though ngl, I tend to stretch like crazy, it makes sense to close a curtain when a pet is being noisy—

Finally moving on from S3, we eventually reach the most overt instance of Natsume's astraphobia, and potential origin or exacerbation of it, in the S4 finale (adaptation of chapter 46). This three episode arc is a largely intimate and heart wrenching one as it focuses on Natsume's journey to revisit his childhood home before it gets renovated by its new owners, a task he initially denied himself the permission of doing before realizing Touko and Shigeru would never deny him something so personal. Of course, he wouldn't be Natsume if he didn't attract a youkai along the way, and he's being pursued by one that seeks to feed on the tragic memories he formed while staying with the Aoi family, who was strongly implied to be the first family (if not, one of the first families) he was taken in by after his father's passing.

One of those memories shown to the audience is a younger Natsume relaxing in a shrine while memorizing where his childhood home is located, all in the hopes of gaining more discernible memories of his father and no longer being a burden to Miyoko and her parents.

Unfortunately, he falls asleep at the shrine and consequently loses track of time before having his slumber disturbed by a violent boom of thunder. He's so frightened by the ordeal that he can't even bring himself to rush back to the Aoi family's place, and his exhaustion puts him back to sleep until he's eventually found by some of the neighbors who went out searching for him.

The anime, with the natural strengths it has over the manga, goes the extra mile by not only keeping this portion relatively untouched, but further setting up the scenery and depicting just how rapidly the area goes from peaceful to turbulent. The character animation and voice acting make for a splendid combination and do a wonderful job of capturing this image of a helpless childhood version of Natsume.

What comes soon after this scene is a depressing sequence of events on its own, even more so when we can see he's still reeling from the storm and believing he caused the Aois to get into trouble by not getting back before dark. The adults obviously don't fault Natsume for getting stuck in the storm, but he doesn't see it that way in his shocked state.

The way Miyoko reacts by throwing her frustrations onto him doesn't help either.

And so, after aimlessly running off in his last unsuccessful attempt to find his childhood home, the memory fades away with a somber note as his present self recalls the moment he finally stopped calling for his long gone father.

Now, one could argue that Natsume had his fear of thunder prior to his time with the Aois since we don't have much reference material to work with when concerning his short period of time with his father, and they could be right for all I know. It's common for children to be startled by loud noises and bright flashes since they just aren't quite accustomed to those loud noises and bright flashes being customary for weather disturbances. Natsume, who we know grew up to be pretty sensitive to the things that go on around him, may have been one of those children who felt apprehension anytime a bad storm rolled in, and his father may have been the one to quell his fears back then. So, if we go with the conclusion that his fear didn't originate here, then this scene likely could've aggravated it. But I'm personally leaning a bit more towards the concept of this being the cause of it (partly due to how appealing that conclusion is to the obsessive part of my brain).

His initial reaction to the thunder is seemingly one of surprise rather than fear, and his behavior suggests that he's more concerned with making it back down the mountain before the thunder halts his progress. Although he's seen trying to talk himself down and fails to do so with how relentless the thunderstorm is proving to be, he doesn't need to have preexisting fears or anxieties over thunder to resort to calming himself down.

The dialogue differences strike me as something to consider too, but they're likely irrelevant.

Setting aside everything I just ranted about in the above paragraph, I should specify that I'm not simply pointing to the storm scene as the singular root cause for his future woes. Many psychological problems often aren't so black and white that someone can definitively point to one person or thing as the sole reason for the existence of their psychological problems. And phobias obviously don't always develop as a result of going through or observing a traumatic event; people can grow to fear or strongly dislike something merely by its association with an unpleasant memory or stressful situation. I know I'm starting to stretch hard rn, and this part of the post is getting awfully wordy, just hear me out—

Going back to that aforementioned short period of time with his dad, it's plain to see just how innocent of a time that was for Natsume. He was playful and affectionate with his dad like many children growing up in a healthy environment would be at that age. He doesn't even appear to have an awareness of youkai (if so, only slight enough for it to not become a problem for him just yet). We're shown later on that he would commonly draw around the house too, as evidenced by the nearly two decade old pieces of artwork his father never removed from the kitchen area and closet.

Natsume even proceeds to make a comment about this childhood version of himself likely being the mischievous type for him to run around drawing on surfaces without a care in the world.

He undeniably had his own troubles at that stage of his life though, with one of those troubles being his mom and the empty spot left behind by her passing away. Apart from his heartwarming portrait of a family with both parents, he's also shown lamenting to Miyoko after the death of his dad about not being able to remember his mom. We've seen with those two examples that her absence indeed left an impact on him early on in his life, but he doesn't stay too broken up over her considering how little he got to bond with her, and he doesn't openly despair about the loss of his dad until his growing sense of loneliness and longing becomes too much for him to smooth over.

The point I'm trying (and admittedly struggling) to make here is that after moving in with Miyoko and her parents, the worries on Natsume's plate increased tenfold and weighed him down far more than he was willing to accept at first. Suddenly, this kid had little to smile about in life, taking a glance at his only picture of his parents causes grief and envy to flare up in his chest, he's afraid of being a burden to those who took him under his wing, he's eating less than Miyoko because he's concerned with coming off as too greedy, he feels responsible for Miyoko getting picked on because of his relation to her, he's still learning the way back to the Aoi family's home, and now he's surrounded by all of these weird creatures that apparently no one else can see.

Suddenly, he's no longer that carefree toddler we saw sitting on his dad's lap as the two of them watched over his late mom's garden.

I feel moderately certain about Natsume's experience with the storm, coupled with this pivotal and devastating shift in his life, being the plausible cause for him developing his irrational fear of thunder as a child.

After this arc, we aren't greeted with another scene featuring or centered on his astraphobia until chapter 85 (which doesn't appear to be adapted in S7 judging from the PV😭), and it focuses on Natsume, Tanuma and Taki viewing a limited exhibition at an old inn that has a deep history with youkai. Not too long after the owner engages in conversation with Taki, Natsume and Tanuma briefly comment on how peaceful the inn is making the both of them feel, and a sudden lightning strike cuts through the tranquility of the inn.

It catches everyone off guard and, unsurprisingly, has Natsume frozen in place as Tanuma asks him and Taki if they're alright.

Much like Nyanko-sensei's first time mentioning Natsume's fear, the moment doesn't last long as the gang soon realizes they'll have to spend the night at the inn while they wait for the sudden storm to pass.

By this point in the manga though, Midorikawa has evidently decided to make Natsume's astraphobia a recurring element of the sorts. She could've easily left his astraphobia as another facet of his that we get to see once or twice and never again since it's not serviceable to the story as a whole, but she's started using his phobia as an additional means of displaying his discomfort in any given situation. Having a thunderstorm suddenly appear during a moment of serenity, immediately after Natsume tells Tanuma the place is making him feel strangely good, was a brilliant move of jarring him. And it works especially well here as a sign of the looming threat that'll find its way into the inn over night and slowly creep upon the group the longer they remain there.

Midorikawa pulls this same stunt again to slightly greater effect in chapter 117, where Natsume, Tanuma and Nyanko-sensei happen upon the Kisaragi Manor and find themselves taking part in a ritual for summoning youkai.

It starts with the trio meeting up in the evening to view the bamboo lanterns, but a woman claiming to be in search of a mansion requests their help to find it before it gets too dark, as well as to avoid getting caught in a downpour should the drizzle grow heavier. While Tanuma shows interest in the ritual, and the people they meet are treating them somewhat cordially, Natsume is disconcerted by the arrangement they've found themselves in. He's surrounded by five women he's never met in his life, is once again in an unfamiliar place that feels weird in Nyanko-sensei's own words, and is thrown for a loop by everyone's enthusiasm with the idea of meeting youkai rather than being put off by them.

The group isn't even a minute into their summoning ritual when a huge boom of thunder shakes the room and causes a power outage, sending them into a brief stint of darkness until Hitomi relights the candle.

While waiting for the candle though, Natsume answers Tanuma's question by for once admitting that he's bothered by thunder, leading to Nyanko-sensei characteristically picking on his phobia by calling him a chicken.

Again, the moment is subtle and restricted to one corner of the page, but it sticks the landing. Instead of using the lightning or thunder as a sign of things to come as she's done before, Midorikawa uses them here as an integrant of an already somewhat concerning scene slowly veering towards being disturbing. In addition to selling just how uncomfortable of a situation this is for Natsume, it also depicts how far along he is in his friendship with Tanuma to be honest about an irrational fear we know he'd rather not speak of.

Alas, chapter 117 was our last time seeing thunder scare Natsume, at least until the next time Midorikawa chooses to use his fear to her advantage, unless the anime miraculously surprises us with its own original take as we've seen it isn't afraid to do. What we've been given so far though is plentiful in comparison to many other plot points or quirks that get reused or called back to far less than this one. I won't throw a tantrum if his never gets referenced to or utilized again (which I doubt will happen knowing Midorikawa's writing), but I eagerly anticipate seeing it again should it reappear.

It's captivating to watch this minor detail frequently make it's way back into the story somehow, to the point that it eventually cemented itself as a miniscule yet effective way of shedding different shades of light on the many complexities of Natsume.

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prolifeproliberty · 3 days ago

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10 months on the Carnivore Diet - my results

I know back in January I mentioned in a couple of posts that I was trying out the Carnivore Diet. Back then it was still new, and I was doing a bunch of research. Now I’ve been fully on it for 10 months, and it’s been amazing.

What I’m eating:

Meat (mostly beef and pork/bacon), eggs, butter, some cheese (mostly used as a garnish on eggs). I aim for a fat to protein ratio of between 75/25 and 80/20.

Typical breakfast: bacon and scrambled eggs cooked in bacon fat

Typical lunch: Chomp beef sticks or more recently these Greenridge Farm beef snack sticks from Costco that have really clean ingredients. I’ve also done leftovers and breakfast casseroles.

Typical dinner: Beef burger patties with scrambled eggs

What I’m drinking:

Water with electrolytes, Coffee with heavy cream, occasional low-carb alcohol (red wine, whisky, low or no carb drinks like vodka soda)

Supplements:

Bacopa monnieri (500mg capsule, 1/day) for my ADHD, Codeage beef organ supplement (1 capsule per day) as a multivitamin.

Exercise:

Basically none, outside of some walking and some minor weight lifting (biceps, triceps, squats) - nothing strenuous or consistent. I am working now on getting my walking and weightlifting more consistent, along with incorporating some abdominal exercises.

My results:

Weight lost: 50 lbs

Cycle regularity restored

Significantly lighter menstrual cramps

More energy, less anxiety/depression

Better immune system (still get sick occasionally, but much less frequently)

Biggest victory: my cravings for sugar and carbs went away pretty much entirely after about 2 weeks. I now have no desire to go back to the way I used to eat, making this the first diet I’ve ever tried that I‘ve been able to stick with for more than a few weeks, and certainly the first one I think I could stay on indefinitely.

What made this work for me:

The high fat content of my diet is very satiating, which makes it much easier to say no to carbs/sugary snacks. Also, artificial sweeteners actually make you crave sugar, so I cut those as well when I started the diet in January. I think that made a huge difference.

For context, I had NO ability to moderate carbs and sugar before this diet. I had a huge problem with binge eating sugar, especially if there was “free food” (a party, donuts in the staff lounge, etc). On previous diets, I could always come up with an excuse to eat sugar. Somebody’s birthday, I had a long day, it’s just this once and then I’ll be good, etc.

Now it’s not even a temptation.

How I learned about the diet and did my research:

I started with YouTube videos from people like Steak and Butter Gal. She does a lot of videos with recipes and tips for staying consistent, and she also does a lot of collaborations and interviews with doctors who recommend the diet, such as Dr. Elizabeth Bright. I went into researching the diet more for my hormonal health than for weight loss, and Dr. Bright is the expert on hormonal health (especially for women) and thyroid health.

This lead to more videos from different doctors and reading studies (including studies on the “link” between eating red meat and problems like heart disease and cancer, which were poorly done and don’t show what they claim to show).

How I handle social gatherings and holidays:

Everyone who knows me irl knows about my diet by now, either because they noticed my weight loss or because they’ve seen me eat! This means friends and family who are hosting will often ask me if I can eat certain things they’re planning to serve and will try to accommodate me.

It’s not too tough though because most social gatherings with food include some kind of meat, and it’s often “buffet style” so I can skip things I can’t eat. I generally try to avoid processed foods unless I can check the ingredients and make sure they’re free of preservatives, dextrose, sugar, etc, but one of my “cheats” is eating the meats and cheeses from charcuterie boards at parties.

If I suspect I won’t be able to eat much or I’m just not sure, I’ll often eat before I go so I’m not sitting there hungry. Then as long as there’s something I can eat, I can still participate in the social aspect of eating with friends and family.

Why I don’t eat fruits/vegetables:

I will occasionally have small amounts of vegetables, usually as a garnish (like I do with cheese). I also use medicinal herbs in the form of tinctures, capsules, or teas - though I need them much less often now! However, avoiding vegetables for the most part simplifies the diet, reduces my inflammation, and means I don’t have to count carbs like I would on keto.

The foods I eat all have zero or virtually zero carbs, and I know they won’t mess with my digestion or make me feel bad. It’s simple, it’s easy to follow, and I don’t have any real need or craving for the veggies. Occasionally I’ll have a couple pickle slices with my burger patties at a restaurant or some avocado with my bacon and eggs, but that’s about it. Basically, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Please feel free to ask questions and check out the channels and videos I linked above to learn more!

Starting a new diet is obviously tricky this time of year, but January 1st will be here before you know it. If you’re looking to make a change, maybe this could be the thing that works for you like it did for me!

#carnivore #carnivore diet #weight loss #hormonal health #hormonalhealth #health

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starlightkun · 2 days ago

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finders keepers ⇢ teaser 2

⇢ teaser word count: 948 | full fic: 37.8k total (22.7k & 15.1k) ⇢ genre: sci-fi/science fantasy au, soulmate au, alien!jungwoo, human!reader, slow burn, fluff and angst ⇢ warnings: blood/injury mentions (but like, alien blood, if that makes a difference?), a couple needle/injection mentions, if u get secondhand embarrassment this one might hurt in places, a couple crude jokes about alien stuff iykwim (reader’s friends r kind of the worst), this fic is just a rlly sweet soulmate au i swear idk why these tags look horrendous 😭 ⇢ extra info: this will be released in two parts bc of tumblr’s 1000-block limit that was put in place to hurt me personally :)) BUT both parts will be released on the same day ⇢ estimated release: saturday, november 30, 2024, 3:00 p.m. eastern time (sign up for my taglist here)

The screen of your phone lit up from where it sat on the dashboard of Jungwoo’s spaceship, and you immediately grabbed it. It was Donghyuck, and at this point, you would’ve taken your bestie ‘SPAM LIKELY’ to get you out of here.

“Hey, it’s Hyuck, you got it here?” You asked Jungwoo, already on your feet.

“Yes, I’ll be okay,” Jungwoo confirmed, eyes momentarily leaving the screen to meet yours.

You clambered out of the hatch with haste, taking off into the trees. Hastily sending Donghyuck a text that you’d call him back in a minute, you practically bolted back up the cliffside to get to the road before doing just that.

Hyuck picked up before it could even ring once, not wasting any time, “Hey, how’s our pet alien?”

“He has a name,” you retorted, still out of breath.

“He doesn’t seem to mind when I call him that.”

“He probably doesn’t understand how derogatory it could be. His language might not have a direct equivalent for the concept.”

“Yeah, whatever, how is he?”

“Fine. All of his wounds have healed.”

Your friend’s tone immediately shifted. “You sound weird. What’s going on?”

“Nothing!” You insisted.

“Y/N.”

“Promise not to tell anyone?”

“Sure.”

And so after explaining your situation to Donghyuck to the best of your ability, you waited with bated breath for his response.

“Oh my God, he’s going to lay his eggs in you,” he gasped.

“Hyuck! Gross!” You hissed, half-ready to hang up right then.

“I’ve seen enough alien movies to know where this is going.”

“Or watched too much weird porn.”

“You didn’t laugh at my joke, clearly you’re in crisis, sorry.” His apology sounded sincere.

You sighed, staring down into the trees below you that you knew contained a spaceship and spaceman that weren’t from here, that didn’t belong here. “I mean, he’s still fixing his ship to leave…”

“What if he plans on abducting you and taking you with him?”

“Stop it!” You scolded him again. “Jungwoo wouldn’t do that.”

“You seriously think he’ll just leave his mate behind?”

“You are way too comfortable saying that word.”

“This is not about my nighttime proclivities.”

“If I told him to, yeah, I think he would. He’s been super respectful, all things considered.”

“Okay… whatever…”

You were worried. Jungwoo had continued fixing his ship, but with each passing day, you swore he was looking worse again. He said his wounds had completely healed inside and out, but the pallor of his skin didn’t look right, he was moving slower again, and he didn’t eat as much at meals. You took a risk and took him there during the day today, not wanting to risk drawing out his stay on Earth any longer than necessary.

Just getting him down to the ship today was perilous, as he tripped going down the last of the hillside. A rock had cut his arm, thankfully not very deep, but the sight of the deep blue blood did nothing to calm your anxious mind. He let you take a second to use a first aid kit in the ship on him, but then was right back to business as usual, fixing his ship.

“How’s it coming along?” You asked, hovering over him worriedly as he sat on the floor, working on a panel under the control console.

“It’s almost done,” he informed you quietly.

“Jungwoo, you don’t look okay.”

“I’m fine.”

“Is it the hydrogen? Or something else that you can’t get on Earth?” You went to press the back of your hand to his forehead. It was sticky with sweat, but simultaneously cold and clammy. “Shit, dude, you feel awful.”

“I’m—I’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I just need to get back to-to Galaria.”

“Okay, yeah,” you nodded. “Let’s get you back. You said it’s almost done. What else do you need?”

“One of your friends is a mechanic?”

“Yeah, Yuta. He fixes cars.” You were slightly alarmed that he apparently couldn’t remember which one.

Jungwoo held out a long, thin black tube to you. “Could you ask him if he has something like this? Twice as long?”

“Of course! I'll go right now!” You took the tube from him. “You stay right here. Rest, okay?”

He nodded, leaning against the panel and shutting his eyes.

You ran into Yuta’s auto shop, skidding to a stop and nearly crashing into a bench and toolbox, drawing the attention of everyone in the shop. Every head whipped over to look at you, and Yuta pushed himself out from under a truck on the far side of the shop.

“Yuta!” You dashed over to him, ignoring the attempts at conversation from his coworkers as you ran by them.

“Off-limits, assholes!” Yuta yelled back at them before focusing on you again, grabbing a rag to wipe his hands off. “Y/N, what are you doing here?”

“It’s Jungwoo, he needs something like this, but double the length.” You held the tube out to him. “Do you have anything like it? I’ll pay for it.”

Yuta inspected it with a furrowed brow, and you dropped your voice even lower as the sounds of the auto shop rose again.

“Please, he’s-he’s really not doing well. I don’t know how much longer he can be here, Yuta. Something about Earth, it’s not good for him. I’m really worried.”

“Yeah, I would be if I were you.” Yuta handed the tube back to you, then crossed his arms over his chest. “I gave him a part just like that two days ago. He said it was the last piece he needed.”

“What?!” Your heart fell to the pit of your stomach.

“I gave him a new brake hose two days ago. Unless he blew it up again, this isn’t it.”

“I’ve got to go.” You took off towards the door of the garage. “Bye, Yuta! Thanks!”

“See you around!”

TEASER TAGLIST

@bee-the-loser @ppddpjdr @tearinka @yoursyuno @yutasputa69 @winkeuu

#jungwoo x reader #nct x reader #jungwoo #jungwoo imagine #nct imagine #nct #kim jungwoo #jungwoo imagines #nct imagines #f: finders keepers #writing #text #mine #wooloved #bias tag

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paingoes · 3 days ago

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Crash Out - Sabina

hi. this one is pretty dark. heres some backstory on paris’s parents. it’s about forced marriage and offscreen/implied forced pregnancy and rape. nothing sexually explicit is depicted, just implied. heavy overtones of domestic violence as well.

(Content: abduction, lady whump, forced marriage, physical abuse, familial whump, royal whump, intimate whumper, defiant whumpee, domestic violence, starvation, referenced child endangerment, implied noncon, suicide, poisoning, death, unhappy ending)

“Oh shit,” Paris sat up in the passenger seat, pushing the sunglasses up off his eyes. “I’ve been here before.”

The city below glowed in the early morning light, pale and crystalline. The glass spires jutted out from the soft grass. It looked cold, somehow. Twinkling. Lorelai had never seen a town look so fragile. She’d have never thought to describe one that way if she had not seen it herself.

“What?” she asked. “On conquest?”

“No,” he answered huffily, as if this were an unreasonable assumption to make.

“With my mom,” he explained, looking off into the middle distance. “Her family’s from here.”

Lorelai slid out of the car, slamming the door shut behind her. He followed her out, down the smooth stones that made up the pathway into the city center.

It was a pleasantly cool day, but the architecture made the whole scene feel wintery. She imagined that she was entering into a kingdom of ice. She remembered Thales, how cold it had been on the night of the ball. As she slipped her hand into Paris’s own — the non-dominant, the less injured one — she felt the same chill. It wasn’t all unpleasant. There was a beauty to it.

All it had to be was a supply run. The imperial currency was standardized, good enough for all the planets in its territory. The further out they got, the more open the locals became to haggling. She leaned forward against the counter of the fruit stand. The vendors liked her. Everyone always liked her.

After a while of staring off into the hillside, Paris propped one arm against the barrel.

“You know where I can find a Selene Lucia?” he asked them.

They were nice enough to draw up a map, the pencil carving a path up into the hills. No exact address, but Paris swore he’d know it when he saw it. By her estimate, if he’d come with his mother, he hadn’t been here since he was seven years old.

The pale buildings petered out on the climb, the houses became sparser, more residential. In time, he really did abandon the map, working purely off the distant memory.

The trees shaded the sidewalk. She traced her fingers along the black fence that divided the path from the lawns, listening to the pleasant vibration it made in her fingers. The leaf canopy cleared for a split second as they passed another gate.

“This is it,” Paris said abruptly. He stared at it dumbfounded.

“You think she still lives here?” Lorelai asked, frowning.

“Don’t see why not.”

Neither of them moved.

“Are you coming?” he asked. It seemed like he already knew the answer.

“…If you want,” she offered. He shook his head. The one and only time she had met his father, it hadn’t gone well. She didn’t want much to do with his family.

“Call me if you need help,” he said as he pushed the gate open.

“You too.” She nodded, heading back down the hill. The sun was higher in the sky now. The city reflected it straight into her eyes, nearly blinding her.

“Oh, god,” Selene Lucia said as soon as she opened the door.

“Hi,” Paris said, pleasantly surprised to even be recognized.

She pulled him into the house, slamming the door shut behind him.

“Are you being followed?” she asked.

“Uh, no, ma’am. Don’t think so. Not now.” Paris ran one hand through his hair.

“What are you doing here?” She narrowed her eyes. Her face had creased from years of that same, skeptical motion.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, “I was in the area. I just wanted to stop by.”

He needed to do laundry, too. He decided not to mention that now.

Selene sighed. There was some relief there, he could tell. Maybe she thought he’d come asking for more.

He looked around at the house. It was smaller than he remembered, but still nice. Light filtered in through the sheer curtains.

She led him into the violet-colored kitchen, the dark sharpness of him clashing against the scene. She’d been working when he knocked — and this she resumed. He leaned back against the counter, rocking gently against it, watching the knife cut thin lines through the stalks.

“Do you need me to do anything?” he offered. She shook her head. He shrugged, looking back down at the linoleum.

“You’re wanted in five hundred different territories,” she said.

Five hundred sixty one.

“Yeah,” he said, not looking up. For some reason, he hadn’t thought that’d be her first reaction.

“It’s your father’s fault, you know. Leaving everything in the air like that. It wouldn’t have happened if he-“

“-if he believed he could die?” Paris finished. He’d had the same thought, a million times over.

She made a soft and exasperated sound — and said nothing else.

“You didn’t…call or anything. After he died,” he said tentatively.

“We had no contact,” Selene said.

“My phone number is public record,” Paris said, not hiding the hurt in his voice. He leaned forward, his arms crossed over his midsection. She didn’t turn to look at him.

“I don’t know why you’d expect that from me,” she said.

“I didn’t.” He shrugged. “I just…I don’t know. It would’ve been nice.”

“Would it?” She asked, turning now.

He frowned. What was he supposed to say to that? He hadn’t even realized he wanted it until he entered the house. It hadn’t occurred to him at all.

“I don’t know why you didn’t,” he said. “You didn’t call me when she died, either. You didn’t reach out at all.”

She seemed to lose her resolve then. She signed, nodding her head in the direction of the kitchen table. He sat down where indicated. The whorls of wood grain stared back up at him. Their shapes had mesmerized him when he was little.

“Is ginger tea fine?” She asked as she lit the last of the stove’s burners.

“Yes, ma’am.” He agreed, though he knew he wouldn’t drink it. He tried not to drink from any open containers — and he watched her hands carefully as she prepared it, wary of pills, wary of poison.

She placed two pale yellow teacups down on the table. Powder blue chinoiserie decorated the edges of the saucers. Steam floated delicately off the golden surface of the water.

“Do you know how your parents met, Paris?”

On a morning wet with dewdrops, Selene and Sabina tread happily through the underbrush. The sky was pale and overcast, but the sweaters their mother had knit for them kept them warm and comfortable. Sabina picked at the roses and the sweet briar that bloomed out of the damp earth. Twin blonde braids fell down her back. They were stained with mud at the edges when she’d bent down to touch the grass.

Selene watched the skies with a kind of dormant worry. There was something she was always waiting for, but never really expected. But it had come anyway. It had landed last month.

There was a place the land crested, the point at which the forest gave way to the clear valley. When they were little, they had dragged their sleds out to it on snowy days and laughed as they flew down the hill.

With the easy familiarity of someone who had walked this path since birth, Sabina moved to the top of the ridge. She was startled to find that in the valley below, a large ship was parked. It was more expensive than anything she’d ever laid her eyes on.

All dressed in scarlet against the verdant grass, a man stood tall and impervious. For a split second, his eyes fell on her. And that was all he needed.

The Emperor arrived in fine robes, in the middle of town, all his footmen swarming in droves about him. His color was pale, in a way that is supernatural. Not at all sickly. He was in good health.

In the market, Selene crowded closer to the exit, while all Sabina seemed to want to do was stand her ground. The Emperor fixed his eyes on her, matching her boldness. His hands didn’t shake the way hers did, but the length of her was all resistance.

He liked it.

“Briar Rose,” he said, sing-song, “Was that you in the canyon the other day?”

Unbelievably, his hand moved to trace her braids. She smacked it away, teeth bared, furious.

“Go fuck yourself,” Sabina hissed.

All she got in return was a chuckle. It was the sound birds made when the bullet missed their heart.

The knock came in the middle of the night, with only Selene up to answer it. She peeked through the curtain, and immediately drew far back, down onto the carpet.

“Daddy,” she cried, in a pitch she had not reached since childhood.

He came instantly and sent her back to her room, far from the thin door that separated their house from nightfall. But her room was right by the entrance. She pressed her ear to the ground to listen.

“Would you accept a dowry?” came the low drawl of the Emperor. “For the youngest. The blonde one.”

“She is my daughter,” Father’s voice came out wrathful in return. “You can take the rest of the world - god knows you already have - but you will not touch her.”

“I would take good care of all of you,” he promised. “I don’t mean to distress her. I think it’d be best if we were all on the same page about this.”

Milky, sick. Selene cried until she couldn’t breathe, then cried more. Sabina slept in the next room, fast asleep, unknowing.

Roses. There were thousands of them, clogging up the yard, on each surface of the porch. Roses, roses, roses. The scent was overpowering. It was like something out of a nightmare. When she moved to open the door that morning, Sabina met a stiff resistance. That was thick the petals were stacked.

They came with a note. Father snatched it away before Selene could read, but Sabina had seen it.

She heard her sister crying down the hall. She watched it through a crack in the door.

“I don’t wanna go,” Sabina sobbed, “Mama, I don’t wanna go, please.”

She hid her face in the fabric of their mother’s dress, bent over on the floor, inconsolable. Already flinching away from any touch.

“You will come quietly,” the Emperor said, “Or you will come in chains. It makes no difference to me.”

Sabina swung at him as if she could knock his head straight off. It took five men to drag her off in those glistening, golden chains. She was soaked with sweat and tears, an awful slickness, a thrashing.

Castle Thales was dark in wintertime — and to her starved body, each room was freezing. Each door had a lock — and she had no keys.

He left her in her own bedroom the first nights. Locked up there, hands bound, until she was ready to *calm down*. He’d thought it would take days. It ended up taking months. It was only when the food stopped that she became handleable.

Sabina glared daggers at him. Her hands shook too much to hold utensils. He thought it was from fear, but it was all just fury.

She dreamt of killing him nightly.

“It won’t be as bad as you think,” Constantine promised her as he lifted the veil. “It does not have to be this hard. You make it this way.”

She glared and glared and glared and flinched as his hand traced her bare arm. She was too pale now. She’d been locked away from the sun for too long. Now her skin was as white as the ripped wedding dress.

“You’re a queen now,” he said, like it comes as an assurance. She wanted nothing more than to beat him until he stopped breathing.

“You could have all you ever dreamed of,” he said. He doesn’t know her at all. Tears formed in her eyes before she could stop them. He moved to wipe them away for her. She bit into his hand as hard as she could and grinned when she drew blood. It was the first time she’d smiled in months.

She was slapped violently for that, which surprised her, because up to this point he had seemed so hesitant to hit her in the face. He threatened to yank all her teeth out, replace them with dentures, and take them out whenever he decided she’d lost the privilege.

This seemed unattractive, which gave her reason to doubt the threat. But she could not call his bluff, so she stopped biting.

One of his men whipped her back until it was bloody. She hated it. She reveled in it. She was making him so mad.

She cried as the maids worked to cover the bruises, the skin still tender even at the soft touch of the brushes. The crying wet her face. They had to keep restarting.

There was no need to cover up the whip marks. The corset did it all on its own — coarse, scratching, irritating the unhealed skin. The maids undid her long braids. Her hair reached all the way to her waist now.

She reached out for the scissors on the vanity and cut it all off.

He was mad he couldn’t pull her hair anymore. He could bunch it up by her scalp, but it wasn’t the same. His was a cold anger. He probably liked to think of it as controlled. He loved to think of himself as controlled.

“It looks good on you, darling,” Nezu said over dinner, just to piss them both off. Sabina made a gagging sound in the back of her throat. She reached for the unused knife by her right napkin and wields it menacingly. As menacingly as she could manage, which turned out to be a lot.

Nezu looked excited at the prospect of getting stabbed by her. In disgust, she put the knife back down.

“Picked a good one,” he said approvingly, just as soon as the Emperor rejoined them.

“Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!” Sabina held the saber in both hands. It was decorative, plucked straight off the wall, but it still held an edge. It could still kill. She meant to. She really meant to.

“You are unwell,” Constantine said. “You don’t know what’s good for you. You don’t know when to quit.”

She lunged at him. He gasped and darted away. She’d only missed him by an inch. She howled in frustration.

If they’d trained her, she’d have been a brilliant fighter. But they hadn’t. And she wasn’t. She left all of herself exposed for the next lunge — and he downed her.

“I’ll kill you,” she swore, with his hands wrapped tight around her throat. “If it’s the last thing I do, I swear, I’ll kill you”

“Sabina,” he cooed sadly. “Rose. All I want is for you to be happy.”

“I want you to fucking die,” she sobbed.

It was a final hurrah, one last gift to herself. When the sobbing died down, there was nothing else left.

The baby came a year later. He’d stopped hitting her while she was pregnant. She did not know if this was temperance, or if it was merely because she’d stopped fighting. They’d both been reluctant to resume the old routine. The baby changed things. It was soft, pliant. So easy to break. Sabina cried when she held it for the first time, cried every day after that. It had kneaded at her chest, half-blind, sleepy. It didn’t know anything.

“Constantine?” She said softly as he swapped out the bandages. The Emperor up in surprise. She so rarely used his name.

But when he did look, she didn’t know what else to say. The terror must have shown through her. She felt all her body was wretched, torn apart, aching. She couldn’t take anymore.

He seemed to recognize this. He never hit her again.

Years passed before she saw her family again. When her son is five years old, she brought him back to that porcelain city, back to her parent’s old house. Both of them dead now, the million wars ravaging even when she cannot see them. She didn’t get to go to the funeral.

She’s stopped crying so much at this point. There’s a dignity to her, one she’s managed to scrape up off the floor of the palace. She was the tough one. She always had been.

She sat up in her sister’s kitchen, drinking ginger tea, manicured nails tapping softly at the porcelain cup. Selene sat across from her, pale, as if she’d seen a ghost.

They wrote letters after that. Constantine had agreed to it, perhaps sensing that his wife had no bone for conspiracy left within her. She was locked into it now, more than she ever had been before.

There’s a desperation to her script. God, she was so unhappy. Selene wrote back just as soon as the mail was delivered, sent it out the same day. It was all she could do. It never seemed to amount to much.

Sabina hinted at it. Selene swore she knew the end.

There’s a flower that grows in the garden of Castle Thales. It is indistinguishable from the heritage rose, but a single blossom could kill when ingested.

When they did the autopsy, they found fifteen of them in her stomach.

Paris stared back at her from across the table, totally frozen. The teacup sat in front of him cold and untouched.

“She died of sepsis,” he said slowly, emphasizing each word.

Selene looked at him with such pity that he thought he might be sick.

“She died of sepsis,” he repeated, “Slowly. In the hospital. She didn’t commit suicide.”

“Paris,” she said softly, “It took a week, didn’t it? Did you see her before the end?”

He propped one elbow up on the table and hid his face in his hand.

“I was at school,” he muttered. “She was already comatose when I got there. She died the next day.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

And of course she said it now, thirteen years later. She wasn’t there when it happened. Nobody was. There was absolutely nothing.

“You understand, surely,” Selene said, “why I was not so devastated to hear of your father’s death.”

There was still something so haunted in her look. He couldn’t bring himself to look up from the wood whorls. He didn’t even hear her standing up. He flinched at the sudden brush at his hand, gentle as it was. She tilted his face up as if to study him.

“God, you look just like her.”

The doorbell rang. Selene startled.

“I thought you said you were alone.”

“She’s my friend.” He stood up quickly. “She’s the only one.”

He opened the door. Lorelai stood cheerily on the step.

“Look what I got.” She grinned. She held up her hand at his eye level and let the necklace dangle from its chain. At its end, the rose charm shined in the dying light.

On an air mattress in the cleared out living room, they laid in a tangle of limbs. Lorelai’s breath was shallow, light, pleasantly exhausted. Paris traced the flesh of her breastbone, intent, almost like he was trying to find something. He had told her the whole story, in hushed tones, in the dark.

“I don’t want to get married,” he said quietly, at the end.

Lorelai laughed under her breath.

“Paris, we were never gonna get married.”

“Yeah, I know. I just…” he trailed off. “l don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“What are you sorry for?”

Oh, what a question. He shrugged.

“…I took you away from your family,” he said it hushed, as if it was confessional.

“Is that how you remember it?” She laughed again. “That’s not what it was. I wanted to go. I asked you first.”

“I just don’t want to hurt you,” he said, finishing the thought. What either of them thought when they first started out hardly mattered anymore. It seemed so far away now.

“Then don’t,” she said.

They left before the sun rose, trudging the long way, past all the grave sites.

“I guess it’s weird for me to keep this now,” Lorelai said as she studied the pendant.

“It’s just a necklace,” Paris shrugged. “It doesn’t have to mean anything.”

But they both knew it would always hold that weight.

The grass was frosty as if it had snowed. There was so much mist in the air. It was cool and refreshing. It was the perfect morning for it.

They passed by another memorial site. Victims of the war that Empire was waged. An orator could list them all day and never run out of names. Paris paused to watch as Lorelai moved up the knoll and placed the pendant by the base of the stone. Not for Empire. Not for Rose. For Sabina.

~~~

tags:

@catnykit @snakebites-and-ink @scoundrelwithboba @whatwhump

@pumpkin-spice-whump @deluxewhump @fuckass1000 @fuckcapitalismasshole @defire

@micechomper @writereleaserepeat @aloafofbreadwithanxiety @whump-queen

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blacklegsanjiii · 2 days ago

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Ooh god, I loved your Shanks x Sora post so muuuuch <3

But, can I dump a little ship here?

Bellmere x Sora. Just. These two raising Sanji, Nojiko and Nami together (and Sanji not being weird about girls bc of that). Or even ALL the 01234ji siblings + Nojiko & Nami bc Sora deserves to raise all her precious babies like she wanted. They winning against Arlong and his crew and living as a happy little family who basically is loved by all Cocoyashi. Maybe even with ZeffSora! Siblings bc him and Bellmere as in-laws would be funny as hell.

Maybe the crew meets Sanji + Nami at the same time, bc both work on the Baratie or whatever. Maybe Arlong tries, after years, to take Cocoyashi and they hear about it so Zeff sends Sanji & Nami and goes, too. The crew (Luffy, actually) goes to help too, afterall these two will join the crew/are crewmates.

Maybe Lusan and Namivivi happens. Maybe their mothers + siblings (or just sister) hear about it and can't wait to know/see again Vivi and Luffy. Maybe WCI hurts deeper, because Nami knows why her big brother is doing this, but hurts her heart all the same. Maybe, she does slaps him, but hugs him right after. Maybe, after hearing about Pudding and the cuffs, she is 10x angrier.

Maybe, their relationship is more. Something happier, just platonic from both sides. Maybe, when Luffy and Sanji start dating, Nami half threatens Luffy to take care of her brother, and Sanji does the same about Vivi and Nami.

Just, maybe.

I'm ALIVE! There's a lot going on in my life but I think I'm back on it as well as Golden being almost done, should be updating within the next couple of months but let's focus on this!

I love this and I have seen some fanart of this ship of dead Sora and Bellemere watching their kids and Bellemere just losing it for Sora. Which is valid. Sora looks like the lipstick lesbian of my dreams sometimes. Bellemere is definitely stares because hot damn, even when she was a marine she's never seen someone as pretty as that. Because this woman and a kid who looks just like her rolled up in Cocoyashi and Bellemere just stopped and Nojiko and Nami are confused about why she's staring at the woman and her son. Bellemere will bring her girls to deliver to oranges to town and collect payments and the blonde woman is now working in the bar. Bellemere will talk with her lightly and listen, she's pretty. She's so fucking pretty. Bellemere tries to keep her cool which she feels like she lost when she got her girls but the woman seems to pay it no mind. (I need oblivious Sora)

Sora introduces herself after a few trips when she realizes that hasn't happened yet and Bellemere introduces herself and her girls and Sora shakes their hands and looks around and calls for Sanji who pops out from somewhere and introduces him to the lovely ladies. Sanji is rather quiet, especially compared to Nami and Nojiko. He's helping around the bar, collecting dishes and cups and he sneaks around like he's afraid to get caught. Nami and Nojiko will come find him on the off days and try to get him to play with them as Sora will collect the extra food the bar didn't use to make something for them. Sora will call to Sanji in another language to collect him and the girls when it's time to eat. She sounds an ocean breeze to Bellemere, a language she hasn't heard since she was in the marines and Sanji starts teaching the girls and hearing her girls speak in a language not their own makes Bellemere swoon a bit as they try to talk to Sora in it with a serene smile and taking the time to help them. Sora asks Bellemere if she'd like to learn it as well and Bellemere hastily nods.

One day a grumpy man with a peg leg comes to buy out most of their oranges. Bellemere can't help but mention how he looks like the barmaid in town and her son when the chef laughs.

"Sora and her son Sanji? Aye, that'd be my baby sister and nephew. They are actually the ones who mentioned the produce here. Gotta admit it's been a while since I've seen this quality." The chef smiles.

"Oh, she hasn't mentioned a brother." Bellemere replies, slightly in shock as Nami and Nojiko look at the man.

"I'm Zeff, Sora is doing well here. Far more than where she was. I best be off though." Zeff says as he loads the crate. "And Miss Bellemere, you have to be extremely blunt with my sister. She ain't been around many normal folk." Nami and Nojiko start giggling as Bellemere gawks at the man as he leaves with the cart full of produce and just leaves. Bellemere doesn't quite believe him until she starts actively flirting and it goes over the woman's head more often than not. Bellemere looks at Sora and says something about Zeff saying she needed to be blunt but she wasn't hoping that blunt and Sora looks at her confused and Bellemere is flushed as she stutters about wanting to spend the night with Sora, alone, no kids, just the two of them.

Sora is bright red. Sanji pulls the girls out to go play in the orchard and run and climb the trees. He boosts Nami and Nojiko up into the trees and giggle with the girls he now considers his sisters and they plot to get them together. Whenever Zeff visits they'll go hide on the Baratie and Patty and Carne will laugh at the kids and Zeff will let them stow away until the morning. Zeff will teach the girls more of the language and hoist the girls to his shoulders and walk them around the restaurant. Sanji tells them what he remembers of the North Blue on the roof top of Baratie and the constellations there. Nami says she wants to go she can draw a map, Nojiko says she wants to see snow. Zeff smiles at his niblings and is proud of the new family Sora has created for herself.

I love the idea that Arlong doesn't take Cocoyashi until later so Sora and Bellemere definitely get closer over all the times the kids disappear to the Baratie until Sanji is gone more often than not because he's working and then Nami joins not long after. Sora and Sanji moved to the orchard not long after the women started dating and Sanji cooks a myriad of orange dishes as Nami and Nojiko make the peels into pinwheels like Bellemere does and Bellemere also provides protection to the town with the sheriff whenever people try to invade. Bellemere watches in awe as Sora manages to end fights quickly between the kids. Bellemere asks the woman to marry her and Sora agrees. At the wedding Zeff told Bellemere to be blunt and look where it got them. Married. Bellemere groans and says she's just so pretty and kind and nice that all she wants to do is make her happy forever. Zeff says that's why told Sora if she didn't marry Bellemere he would never let her live it down. Bellemere stares at him as he pats her shoulder and goes and dances with her daughters.

When Sanji and Nami are working on the Baratie everyone knows they are siblings and there's a third one of them. Sanji and Nami make an excellent team and Zeff constantly tells his sister and her wife that they are never getting those kids back. They're his now and when Nojiko eventually decides to come join the crew they're all his and Sora will argue with him until she's blue in the face and she's yelling in Northern and nothing makes Bellemere want to pin her down more than a pissed off Sora talking in another language. Sometimes Nami and Sanji can calm her down over the denden. Sanji's cooking has only gotten better so he treats his family to it whenever they're home. It's the best times of their lives so far because Nami's map of the East Blue is coming along really well and she and Sanji still somehow manage to share a room and pool their money together to buy gifts for their moms and Nojiko and books for themselves. It's great.

Until Sanji feeds some guy and he leads a destroyed galleon to them and some kid told Sanji he was going to be his cook and Sanji refused questioningly and then Mihawk shows up and almost kills the swordsman and Nami leaves with them to get the guy medical care. Then after they defeat the crew of the galleon, some guy called Don Krieg Sanji gets a phone call saying there's pirates attacking Cocoyashi so he takes the rubber kid with him to get home and is complaining because he's not Nami and he's not the best at navigation and Luffy is giggling saying he found his cook and navigator. Sanji is blinking at him like he's dumb as bricks but he's just so endearing Sanji gives up. Sure, he'll join the crew. He doesn't make a promise about Nami joining because she has her own choice to make. Once they arrive at the orchard he's enveloped in hugs from his moms and sisters and explaining it's a warlord's little brother, his name is Arlong and he's trying to take over the island and Luffy promises he won't let that happen. Nami says he wants the map to the grandline she bought and he took it in exchange for their lives and Luffy says he'll get it back too since she's his navigator and Nami looks incredously at him and Sanji said he already agreed to be the cook. Nami stares at her older brother as Nojiko looks at Bellemere in a 'what are we going to do about this?' way since she was a marine. Sora is losing it and laughing so hard because piracy runs in the family technically. She's losing her god damn mind over it and Zoro and Usopp are worried she might pass out.

After they beat Arlong and Sanji's still soaking wet from fighting a guy under water they go back home and are met with praise and cheers and Sanji cooks for the town and Nami does agree to be the navigator for the crew and they set off, declaring their dreams and becoming the Strawhat Pirates officially with a glorious flag. When they meet Vivi and agree to give her and Karoo passage and help take back Alabasta. Sanji notices how his sister and Vivi keep looking at each other and somehow manages to get them time alone and nicer food. They enjoy it and thank him because yeah, they're getting close and Sanji does want his sister happy. Nami on the other hand watches her brother be obliviously endeared to the captain who clearly has feelings for him and makes bets with Vivi about it. Then Nami gets sick and Vivi and Sanji are worried but luckily the next island has a doctor because she's only been getting sicker. So they make their way to a bitterly cold island that reminds Sanji of the worst times of his life. He hasn't told his moms that Nami is sick so they don't worry about them. Then he kicks his baby sister and captain out of the way and takes the full force of an avalanche. When he comes to he finds his captain staring at him and Sanji is so fucking dazed as Luffy tells him not to do that again because he loves Sanji and Sanji thinks he just loves Sanji as his cook and Sanji promises not to worry his captain again. Luffy nods and holds Sanji's hand before they end up chasing a reindeer and check on Nami. Then they help defend the jolly roger on top of the castle. When Nami finds out as they're escaping Sanji broke his fucking back she wrings his neck and threatens to call their moms because 'I don't care what your dad did, fucking fuck, Sanji!' as he's apologizing but he feels fine. Vivi kisses Nami because she's better and Luffy is laughing because they got a doctor now. And then when they meet Ace who's flirting goes straight over Sanji's head and Ace gets punched by Luffy for even thinking of taking the cook while their captain declares Sanji as his. Vivi asks Nami if this is normal and Nami's long drawn-out sigh that he's just like his mother and when their moms finally got together it's because it took forever for Sora to take the hint. It's a wonder how their moms got married. Vivi and Chopper are looking at her and Nami shrugs and says they should have seen it when he was waiting on Baratie when the other waiters quit and it just those two waiting, she saw so many people get let down by his oblivious antics. It was bad. It was so bad. Nami made so much money off betting on him though. It was great.

Sanji pulls his sneaky shit and Nami looks at him unimpressed after they free Alabasta and Luffy is clinging to him. It's actually fucking adorable and Nami takes a picture to send home, just as Sanji sneaks one of Nami and Vivi being absolutely lost in each other. They send the photo's seperately but they get one letter back with a photo of the photos hanging up and congratulations on bagging the captain and the princess respectively. They look at each other with deadened eyes and Sanji asks when he and Luffy started dating and Nami says at least Drum if not before, that's why he punched his brother over him. Sanji blinks at her before finding Luffy and asking if they're dating and Luffy says 'Duh!' with a laugh and Sanji rubs his temples. Luffy just wraps around him and plants a sloppy kiss to Sanji's cheek. It's rough, especially when everyone laughs at him. Life continues on for the crew as normal, even through Sabaody just with more letters. Bellemere and Sora constantly asking if they're okay and what they can send to help along with pictures of Cocoyashi and Nojiko and the orchard waiting for them at home. But then on Sabaody the crew with more members and more scars is ripped apart and separated. Sanji has failed his captain and his sister and his moms, Nami has failed her captain, and Luffy has failed his family, his crew, the love of his life. Vivi weeps openly at the news of Marineford and Bellemere stares at the paper as Sora screams curses and heaves sobs out of her chest for losing her son again and now losing a daughter as Nojiko shakes with anger. Two years pass.

Two whole years pass. Two years of getting stronger, of worrying about Luffy who watched his brother die. Of speaking in Northern to feel comfort to no one who understands. Nami remembers speaking in it with Sanji when they wanted to talk shit or Sanji got so excited about something he just slipped into his native tongue and accent, he used to sing to Luffy in it after they actually got together. Hearing it in person after so long as they run to each other, and she leaps into his arms and he catches her and holds onto her. The words falling from his mouth like the rain used to pour in Cocoyashi and Robin smiles sweetly at them and Franky sobs about siblings reuniting. Luffy comes barreling after a while and barrels into Sanji when he's getting groceries and kisses him so fucking hard. They depart Sabaody with allies and friends made during their time apart protecting them as Luffy begs Sanji to cook for him, which he does. Nami smiles and Sanji catches it and smiles back, it looks just like his All Blue Smile and she knows he loves with his whole heart, wears it on his sleeve Luffy holds it so kindly. Just like Vivi holds her's safe back in Alabasta. How Cocoyashi also holds segments of their hearts with their moms and sister. They make it through Fishman Island and to Punk Hazard and Law stares at the Cat Burglar and Cook who speak in Northern and when he slips into their conversations they grin at him and warn him to not let Luffy know. Law takes this warning to heart.

Nami stares in horror because her brother is a self-sacrificing idiot, it's just like when he got struck by lightning on Skypeia except he's strung up by a fucking evil moron. She's screaming for him as Law frees him and they send off. Nami's helping bandage him and Sanji gives her that shit eating grin because he would always protect his little sister. He does it all over again with that damned self sacrificing smile as he signs his death warrant basically and Nami is screaming for him as he's promising to come back, and Nami knows he's believing that he'll come back but she figured out that this would either end in him leaving the crew or dying. She screams until her voice is raw and running after them to get him back. When Luffy and them make it to Zou everyone notices the teary eyes of Nami immediately as she latches to Luffy and Chopper hurls himself into Usopp's. Sanji is gone, his father took him to marry him off and if they don't get him back he might die. Luffy is staring at her because of Sanji's promise on Drum Island is ringing through the captain's head.

Sora, Bellemere, and Nojiko are staring at Sanji's bounty poster between working and trying to find news on the siblings. When the denden in town rings and someone comes to tell them it's for them and they all but run. It's Nami, she's sobbing and apologizing because it was the Vinsmoke's that took him. She and Luffy and several others are going after him, to get him back. Sora tells her as much as she can, being locked in medical meant she wasn't privy to as much as she would like, but still, better than nothing. Nami thanks them and says she'll call when they get him back. Bellemere holds her wife and daughter as they start sobbing and when she gets them home and calmed down she decides to cash in a few favors owed from her time as a marine. Several calls later she makes sure that there's back up for her kids, whether they want it or not. Come Hell or high-water Bellemere will not lose any of them. When the rescue team makes it to the carriage. Nami watches in horror at the hold these people have over her brother but steels herself as she marches forward after her captain falls. She marches over to Sanji and his eyes only show pain and sorrow and guilt as Nami slaps him, quickly pulling him into her arms and his whispered apologies but he he has to as he shoves her off. Luffy stands and yells at him, Nami staring after them while clenching her fists, tears spilling down her face because she's so angry. Angry at his dad for taking him away, angry that Sanji feels he has no choice, angry at herself for not fighting for him. Whole Cake continues normally but after though, small group of what seem to be Marines help the Strawhat Pirates on their escape. They're all about Bellemere's age, which confuses the rescue team and Sanji because why? After they make it to calmer waters the marines yell to them to tell Bellemere they're even now and to stop being so much like their mother. Luffy laughs and plants a big old kiss on Sanji's cheek as Nami yells back for them to fuck off essentially. They can't really think of better people to emanate. They go call their moms and sister and calm them down, more or less, they're pissed and rightfully so. They don't know Zeff is standing with them until he says something like 'I'm calling everyone who owes me favors now, your exhusband is dead, little sister' causing a ruckus on both sides of the denden. Don't piss of their moms.

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