#I suppose there’s not an official answer to that but I imagine a lot more than I was expecting

[quibbs126]

Purple Yam came from another place that Dark Choco later visited and beat him in a fight so PY is looking for a rematch;we certainly need more info of that village though it seems that it's another that values strength and whatnot. As for the anger, the heat gets to his head since it feels CONSTANTLY on fire all the time so to speak (he's also has beserker elements to go along with the DnD-like elements so it's a part of his strength and makes further sense). Being in the Oven gave trauma to cookies who remember it (example being Gingerbrave being the only survivor of his batch and losing his own brother Dozer who got eaten while trying to escape the old Prologue level back in around 2010) so each case is a different response to that (avoidance, constant fight for life state, freezing in place from fear etc). There's also often translations issues that others picked up that show Purple Yam isn't even that angry in those versions. Just the English ones tend to misinterpret characters and their reactions. In all of his anger, Purple trusts his friends and even is shown smiling at times when others aren't looking since he's a sort of "sweet potato" on the inside which his Kingdom costume states he got sweeter thus implies he already had sweetness to begin with~ The majority of the warrior cookies that hold stoicism as part of some "warrior code" or try to not express themselves due to their own horrific experiences (losing those they care for and making them emotionally withdrawn as to not get attached in fear of further loss) often are nicer once their walls are down and around the one cookie(s) who get that softness out.

Ah, that’s their history

Dear lord, everyone’s traumatized in this franchise. Gingerbrave originally lost his brother, and presumably all his other siblings? That’s horrifying. Beneath that smile there is trauma and pain

But nice to know Purple Yam isn’t as angry as he seems

[stupidphototricks]

Dwarf tradition, in The Truth. Long quote but there is so much to unpack here.

"A dwarf needs gold to get married." "What… like a dowry? But I thought dwarfs didn't differentiate between--" "No, no, the two dwarfs getting married each buy the other dwarf off their parents." "Buy?" said William. "How can you buy people?" "See? Cultural misunderstanding once again, lad. It costs a lot of money to raise a young dwarf to marriageable age. Food, clothes, chain mail… it all adds up over the years. It needs repaying. After all, the other dwarf is getting a valuable commodity. And it has to be paid for in gold. That's traditional. Or gems. They're fine, too. You must've heard our saying 'worth his weight in gold'? Of course, if a dwarf's been working for his parents, that gets taken into account on the other side of the ledger. Why, a dwarf who's left off marrying till late in life is probably owed quite a tidy sum in wages—You're still looking at me in that funny way…" "It's just that we don't do it like that…" mumbled William. Goodmountain gave him a sharp look. "Don't you, now?" he said. "Really? What do you use instead, then?" "Er… gratitude, I suppose," said William. He wanted this conversation to stop, right now. It was heading out over thin ice. "And how's that calculated?" "Well… it isn't, as such…" "Doesn't that cause problems?" "Sometimes." "Ah. Well, we know about gratitude, too. But our way means the couple start their new lives in a state of… g'daraka… er, free, unencumbered, new dwarfs. Then their parents might well give them a huge wedding present, much bigger than the dowry. But it is between dwarf and dwarf, out of love and respect, not between debtor and creditor… though I have to say these human words are not really the best was of describing it. It works for us. It has worked for a thousand years." "I suppose to a human it sounds a bit… chilly," said William. Goodmountain gave him another studied look. "You mean by comparison to the warm and wonderful ways humans conduct their affairs?" he said. "You don't have to answer that one. Anyway, me and Boddony want to open up a mine together, and we're expensive dwarfs. We know how to work lead, so we thought a year or two of this would see us right." "You're getting married?" "We want to," said Goodmountain. "Oh… well, congratulations," said William. He knew enough not to comment on the fact that both dwarfs looked like small barbarian warriors with long beards. All traditional dwarfs looked like that.* *Most dwarfs were still referred to as "he" as well, even when they were getting married. It was generally assumed that somewhere under all that chain mail one of them was female and that both of them knew which one this was. But the whole subject of sex was one that traditionally minded dwarfs did not discuss, perhaps out of modesty, possibly because it didn't interest them very much, and certainly because they took the view that what two dwarfs decided to do together was entirely their own business. — Terry Pratchett, The Truth

I super love the footnote, of course, but unexpectedly now I kind of want this version of a dowry to be a thing. I mean, the dowries of the bad old days where the man basically bought the woman from her parents, that's not okay. But this.

I'm a parent, and in no way do I feel like my kid owes me for their upbringing, education, or even (I'm anticipating) a few years of post-college living at home. Not at all. I can't imagine not taking care of them or attaching any strings to that care.

But that's not what this is. Really, ideally, it's a way for parents and children to give each other the gift of the child's independence, their autonomy, their adulthood. To officially and tangibly say that their relationship from this point on is no longer parent/child, but something more on an equal level.

For that matter, I imagine the child is free not to have a relationship with their parents any more at all, if they want. No obligation, no guilt. If parents want to be in their kids' lives when they're adults, they'll need to make sure their kids actually like them as people.

Well. I know that our world of humans doesn't work like this. Even if we put a monetary value on what we owed our parents and paid it, we'd still feel obligated to them, at least a little. Even if our kids paid us back, we'd still feel like we had the right to control them, at least a little.

But man. That g'daraka thing sounds wonderful.

[sourcherryandsprinkles]

2 & 13 for tara x reader would be equally adorable and HOOOT. just imagine her getting all flustered about the question as r just looks down at her with those "answer my question" eyes and later on tara looks up at r with those "fuck me" eyes

GOOOOOD

sincerely, anon ❤️

2. ‘’Did you touch yourself to the thought of me?’’ + 13. ‘’Show me how you do it when you touch yourself.’’

Scream week has officially started!! I had a lot of fun writing for this event and hopefully I get to do it again with other fandoms. I hope you enjoy what I have planned for the rest of the week <3

Warnings: 18+, smut, masturbation

my taglists are here + you can send requests here at any time

—

Finally, you made it up to the fourth floor of Tara’s building. God, you hated these stairs — especially after a long day. All buildings should have elevators. You didn’t tell Tara that you had gotten off work early, wanting to surprise her. She’s been complaining that you hadn’t been spending much time together these past weeks. But with school, work and your parents’ impromptu visit, your relationship with your girlfriend had been neglected. 

 You raised your fist to knock on the apartment door just as it swung open.

‘’Oh, hi,’’ Sam said in surprise, about to go out. ‘’It’s been a while since I saw you.’’

‘’Is Tara home?’’ 

‘’Yeah. In her room. Go on in. And please don’t let her set the place on fire.’’ 

With a small laugh and a nod of thanks, you stepped past Sam and into the apartment. You quietly went down the hallway, where Tara’s bedroom was, and knocked on her door. No answer. Maybe she didn’t hear. Tara often had her headphones on. 

You pushed the door open, expecting to find her reading or watching a movie. Instead, you were greeted by a more intimate sight. 

The curtains were drawn and the lights were off except for the salt lamp on the nightstand. A sweet scented candle filled the air, adding warmth and sultrance to the ambiance as Tara's right hand moved beneath her panties, pleasuring herself on her bed.

‘’Having fun without me?’’ 

Tara's eyes flew open at the sound of your voice, seeing you watching her from the doorway. Gasping, she pulled her hand out of her panties and grabbed the blanket to cover herself. Not because she was shy. Because she was embarrassed that you caught her doing that.

‘’H-how did you get in?’’

‘’Sam,’’ you explained, shutting the door behind yourself. ‘’I came up just as she was leaving.’’ You walked the few steps over to the bed and sat on the edge, right where Tara’s feet ended.

Tara shifted, trying to resist the ache between her legs calling for her attention. ‘’I thought you were busy until the end of the week.’’ 

‘’I got off work early tonight. I wanted to surprise you and spend the evening with you, but it seems that you started without me.’’ You smirked, slowly uncovering one of her legs. ‘’Did you touch yourself to the thought of me?’’

Tara smacked the blanket down and looked away, hiding her flustered face. 

‘’You did, did you? Naughty girl.’’ 

‘’The only time we see each other these past weeks is between classes and that one time at lunch. What am I supposed to do? I have needs too.’’ She sounded defensive.

‘’You’re not using your pink rabbit vibrator?’’ 

Tara shook her head. ‘’I don’t use it when Sam or Quinn are home. I’m too scared they would hear it.’’ 

‘’The toy or you?’’ you teased, already knowing the answer.

‘’I’m not loud—’’ 

You gave her a look, and she sighed with flushed cheeks. She might be shy and quiet at first glance, but once a toy was on her — or in her —, Tara was the loudest whiner. 

‘’No one’s here now, should I grab it?’’ you suggested, glancing at the drawer of her nightstand. 

‘’You’ll use it on me?’’ 

You hummed. ‘’But first. Show me how you do it when you touch yourself.’’

‘’What?’’ Tara frowned. 

‘’You started this yourself, you have to finish it yourself.’’

It was clear in her eyes that she didn’t want to. Getting caught in the act was embarrassing enough as it was, but Tara knew you wouldn’t touch her until you got what you wanted. 

She removed the blanket and you repositioned yourself on her bed to get a better view. Tara propped her back against her pillows and spread her legs under your gaze, flashing the damp spot on her pink panties. She peeled them off her body and slipped her finger between her slick folds. She was so wet from her previous teasing. 

A quiet moan left her lips as she ran her finger lightly over her sensitive clit, her hips jerking slightly before giving herself a little more pressure. Her clit was so sensitive. Your eyes darkened as they flickered down to Tara’s hands, slipping two fingers inside of herself while her other hand drifted up to rub her clit. 

Tara threw her head back, a whine falling from her mouth. 

‘’Look at you, you’re so pretty,’’ you said, watching the glistening wetness coating her fingers as she trusted them in and out. 

You ran a hand up Tara’s thigh, causing the brunette to shudder under the touch. She wanted you to touch her so bad. But first, she had to cum by herself. 

‘’Come on baby, can you come for me?’’ you asked as you noticed Tara’s hips jerking and her breath getting harsher, knowing she was extremely close. 

She gave a needy whine in response, her finger moving faster on her clit until she felt her climax crash. 

‘’Now, get the vibe out. I don't know how long Sam's gonna be out for,’’ Tara said with slightly dazed eyes as she withdrew her fingers from her pussy to spread her wetness all over her folds and clit.

—

Scream taglist: @misfityanii @beautybyfire @iluvscream191 @mariposa555 @bella7866 @o638 @lulubelle14 @luvvtxinityy @frasersgf  @Eddiefrickenmunson @jasperr-the-friendly-ghost @ghostf4cee @thesebitcheslovesosadotcom @wandaswigglywoos @xjennyx2 @jennasslut @thatonesblog  @mikaelsonsstuff @icarly23 @tcddszn  @bt.oliana  @skyesthebomb @a1mzcruml3y @red1culous @iluurmom @popeheywardssecretgf @michaelangdonsslut @byhrxb @kamthecoolest @kattybug @ravenstrueluv @landryslxys @die4niyahhh  @sl4sh3rfuck3r @radiant-whore  @Meadzy21 @luci1fer @nomorespahgetti  @bloodyhw  @depthsofdespairr  @bellysbeach @wilmalovegood @loupiotesworld  @wenvierismycomfort @t-candy  @s-al-em  @darylscvmdumpster  @tommysaxes  @adaydreamaway08 @johannelis2302nely @aqshua @lynbubble @luiise @planetkt @vampyrgoff @adrluvh @mymultiveres  @miqi-16 @not-liah  @lovenats01 @doestalker @lonelywitchv2 @lausley336  @arinexeisnotworking @halforangecuts @l3ndryz  @ilovelandry  @your-platonic-gay-lover @danniackerman  @angelxxrose @lottiefromsam  @thecrowdedstreetin1944 @cinnamonbun222 @angelxxrose @lottiefromsam @zoeynicolas @thecrowdedstreetin1944 @cinnamonbun222 @pumkinnroses @cruzgrecia @sunnysunny133696 @aesthetixhoe  @gizmodecaprio @bingsbitch @buckyswhxre  @emerald-09

All and more taglist:  @kenqki  @hawkegfs  @gillybear17   @black-rose-29 @fudge13 @cece05 @laylasbunbunny @gemofthenight @beautyb1ade   @mellabella101 @vxnity713  @bisexualgirlsblog @queenofslytherin889 @thatbxtchesblog @softb-tterfly @ethanlandrycanbreakmyheart  @xyzstar  @graceberman3   @mikeyspinkcup @jackierose902109 @daisydark @laurasdrey @mischieftom @fanatic4niall @peterholland04 @idkwhattonamethisblogs  @lexasaurs634  @notasadgirlipromise @zoeynicolas @thejuleshypothesis @multi-fandom-bi-bitch @lexasaurs634  @notasadgirlipromise @thejuleshypothesis  @katherinejess  @rafesgirlstuff  @lafleshlumpeater @iamluminosity

[mysecretlittlelibrary]

One Last Lesson

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Reader

Word Count: 3.8k

Warnings: okay so there's some switching on both sides but mostly dom!Spence, oral (f receiving), age gap (reader is over 21), teasing, pet names, marking a lot, p in v sex, praise/minor body worship, yk I love some dirty talk so- that's there, multiple orgasms, riding, marking- I hope I got everything??

Genre: Just fluff, Just smut

Summary: It's been a year, Spencer is yours, but it seems someone just won't back off at the alumni gala

A/N: I wasn't planning on a Pt. 3 for this yall it was a duology lmao- I saw the demand but I had nowhere to take it; so you can thank @shan-yee because their comment inspired the continuation of this saga :)

***

Spencer walks over to you and places his hands on either side of the counter you're sitting on. You're spending the night at his place and right now he's cooking dinner.

"You know, it's been almost a year now." He says kissing your neck.

"Since what exactly?" You ask him.

"Since you graduated is what I meant, but also since we made it official technically." Spencer squeezes your hand and then grabs a spatula from a drawer and walks back over to the stove.

"Oh yeah, we're a few months off from it I suppose." You hum.

"The alumni gala is this weekend. Do you- plan on going?"

"It's this weekend? Really? I didn't even realize."

"Oh." He says, his back is facing you but you're positive he's leading up to something and that answer didn't give him the lead up he was hoping for.

"Why are you asking?" You smile.

"Well I was thinking that if you were planning to go we could go together. I mean I'll be there regardless but like- it'd be nice to go as a couple. If you wanted to do that." He shrugs.

"Do you want me there Spence?" You ask.

"Of course I do. I always want you by my side."

"Then I'll go. We'll go. As a couple."

"You're sure?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" You frown. Spencer turns around to look at you.

"Well you know, I don't want you to be uncomfortable if people say-"

"I don't give a fuck what anyone might have to say. I like you Spencer, I like being with you. Nobody's random opinion is gonna make me stop feeling that way." You shrug. Spencer's eyes soften, adoration shining in them.

"Okay." He smiles.

"Oh, but when we go we should change the timeline a little." You say.

"What do you mean?"

"Instead of telling them we've been together almost a year, tell them it's only been a couple of months." You shrug.

"So if we've only been together a couple of months what's like- the rest of our story?"

"Well we can say we ran into each other at a bar a few months ago, got talking, and realized we had a lot in common- decided to see where things go and it's been great so far."

"Okay." He nods.

"I know you don't particularly like lying but it's for you. I don't want anyone doubting the ethics of our relationship and calling into question your job. So stick to that story and try not to oversell it with details. The more complex the harder it is to keep things straight."

"Well, what if they ask for details?"

"I can't imagine we'll spend a lot of time apart at the gala so chances are I'll be there to handle that for you but if you find yourself alone and they ask you something you don't want to risk complicating- just tell them 'things are still new and you don't wanna risk jinxing anything' and then find a way to change the subject to literally anything else."

"Things are still new and I don't wanna risk jinxing it- okay sure. You're a- good liar."

"I've thought about it before, in case anyone started asking questions- at least for the next few years. After a while, no one will care but you know, for now. I don't want you to lose your job or anything because of me." You shrug. Spencer walks over to you and tilts your head up to look at him. He kisses you sweetly and quickly.

"That's sweet of you to be that concerned about it but you shouldn't stress too much about my job." Spencer says.

"I know, I know, but I care about you, Spence. Of course, I'll worry about that sort of thing."

"You're so cute." He chuckles, returning to the stove to finish cooking dinner.

"Yeah, I know." You say jokingly, making him laugh harder. A few minutes later, dinner is finished and you move from your spot on the counter to the living room to eat and watch TV with him.

~*~*~

When the day of the gala comes around that weekend, you spend more time getting ready than you usually would. Your dress is a gold floor-length number with no sleeves and a dangerously high slit. You pair it with black lace gloves just because you can and your makeup is killer if you do say so yourself. Not that you have to, Spencer's reaction when he comes to pick you up is more than enough confirmation that you look drop dead.

"Woah." He breathes out, his eyes wide.

"Hello to you too Spence." You chuckle stepping into the hall and locking your apartment door.

"I- hey. You look stunning baby."

"Thanks, you don't look too bad yourself love." You wink at him as you loop your arm through his. He's wearing a black dress shirt with gold detailing which you didn't know he was planning on wearing when you picked your dress but how convenient that you match. You notice he's forgone a tie and left the top couple of buttons undone and part of you wants to skip the gala altogether, but you got all pretty so to the gala you will go.

By the time you arrive, it seems the event is already in full swing, the hall is full of familiar and unfamiliar faces between faculty, alumni, and current students- who apparently are welcome and encouraged to attend these things. In fact, you're barely there for 10 minutes before some of your former classmates get a hold of you and drag you away from Spencer. So much for being together most of the night. It's fine, you remind yourself, he's a big boy, plus he's got his script. You focus on the conversation you're part of, a few guys and girls from your department are playing catch up, everyone sharing the most important news from their lives post graduation. 

You find yourself in several more of those kinds of conversations with various groups of people over the next hour or so. Side effect of being half part of so many social groups during college you suppose. Every once in a while you steal glances at Spencer, who mostly seems to be enjoying himself with his colleagues. You know Spencer was expecting this night to be a sort of debut for your relationship at his job so you wanted to be with him most of the night but maybe this is fine, him with his people and you catching up with friendly acquaintances you haven't seen in a while.

Just as you're settling with that idea you catch Professor Greene beelining towards Spencer and you can't help the internal eye roll when she walks up to him with a megawatt smile. You split your attention between the conversation you're currently part of and Spencer's interaction with Professor Greene. With things official between you and Spencer, you're much less worried about her honestly but you watch Spencer for signs of discomfort so you can rescue him if needed. You haven't heard much of her from Spencer since your little stunt last year with the hickeys so you're surprised to see her so friendly with Spencer. When you catch her place a hand on Spencer's arm and he awkwardly breaks the contact you decide to step in.

"I am- so sorry to cut this conversation short, I just- it looks like I need to rescue my date from a conversation he absolutely does not want to be part of but I will find you again to finish this before the night ends okay?" You tell Jordan, a friend of yours who you had classes with literally every semester of university.

"Girl don't even worry about it go save your man." He chuckles waving you off.

"Thank you babes, if I don't catch you again tonight, I'll just text you." You rush out before making your way over to Spencer and Professor Greene. You keep your pace light so as to not look vexed but you reach them rather quickly.

"Spencer! There you are! I've been looking for you." You smile, placing your hands on his arm gently. He relaxes with you at his side, matching your smile with one of his own. You turn to Professor Greene, still tucked against Spencer's side. "You're Professor Greene, right? I'm y/n." You stick an arm out to shake her hand and she takes it albeit a little hesitantly.

"Have we met before?" She asks with a curious frown.

"Not formally." You smile.

"I'm- gonna grab a drink. Y/n, do you want anything?" Spencer asks.

"I'll have a mojito if they can make one. If not then I'll just grab champagne from one of the trays floating around the room." You tell him.

"Professor Greene? Would you- like anything?"

"No thanks, Spencer." She says with a tight smile.

"Okay well you two wait here, I'll be back in a sec." He says jogging off. You can't help but smile as you watch him go.

"He's so sweet." You say before you can stop yourself.

"Oh that's cute." Professor Greene says.

"Sorry?" You turn to her.

"Are you one of Spencer's students?"

"No, I've graduated. Almost a year ago now. Why do you ask?"

"Well, it's just- perhaps I'm assuming but it seems like you have a bit of a crush on him." She says and you can't help the surprised chuckle you let out.

"Excuse me?" You ask with a smile.

"I'm not judging or anything. It's cute and totally not unusual! That's why I asked if you were one of his students, I mean- not that anything would come of it but having a crush on your professor and all is pretty common despite the- taboo around it. I one hundred percent get it." She explains.

"Oh, do you? You get it? See- the thing I get is that you have a bit of a crush on that professor but I'm fucking that professor so I'm not sure you one hundred percent get it seeing as we are not in the same boat." You say, your tone deceptively cheery.

"Excuse me?" She blinks at you incredulously.

"I'm not daft Professor Greene and neither is Spencer- it's quite obvious you fancy him which is totally not unusual and not that anything would come of it but I one hundred percent get it. See you don't need to placate to me because I'm the person he came here with. I'm the person he'll be leaving with." You say. Professor Greene's eyes narrow for a moment before widening.

"Wait no you have definitely been a student of his, I remember you. A plucky thing- sat in the front row."

"Surprised I left an impression." You cross your arms.

"Spencer always seemed particularly concerned with you."

"I was his best student." You shrug.

"Oh I'm sure you were. Extra credit will do that." She scoffs.

"I didn't need to suck his dick to be the best in his class I'm just that good. We only started seeing each other a couple of months ago not that it'd really make a difference he still wasn't interested in you at any point. You'd think by now you'd get the hint." You say and she levels you with another glare.

"Did you know they make flavored mojitos? The guy at the bar asked me what flavor you wanted. You didn't mention a flavor but I know you like passionfruit so I hope that's okay." Spencer's arrival doesn't break the tension between you and Professor Greene but you shoot him a sweet smile as you take the drink from him.

"Passionfruit's perfect baby, thank you." You tell him. "I was just telling Professor Greene here about how we got together."

"Yeah, Spencer, I didn't know you had a girlfriend!" Professor Greene says with a smile that's too wide to be genuine.

"Oh! Well, yeah things are still pretty new, I haven't made it a point to go around announcing it. Plus it's not like we're close or anything." Spencer shrugs and puts an arm around you casually, pulling you closer to him.

"Well yeah I know I know it's just- well that's kind of a big deal, isn't it? A girlfriend. You've got a bit of a bachelor reputation you know." She says and you let out a sharp disbelieving laugh.

"Do I? That's news to me." Spencer looks at you with a chuckle.

"Oh you know what I mean Spence."

"Not really but I guess it doesn't matter. I'm pretty private about these things, even though I'm obsessed with her."

"Aw you're so cute." You gush with a hand on his chest.

"Well you do make quite an interesting pair. If you'll excuse me, I see Darla and I've been trying to track her down all night so I'll leave you to each other." Professor Greene dismisses herself and rushes off to start another conversation elsewhere.

"'I didn't need to suck his dick to the best in his class'? Are you insane?" Spencer turns to face you with an incredulous smile on his face.

"To be fair it didn't start there!" You say.

"Oh yeah? Give me the breakdown."

"You left and she made a snide comment about me having a crush on my professor that 'wouldn't go anywhere', I got a little snippy with her and then she implied the only reason I was one of your favorite students is because you were screwing me but like I'm smart I don't need to fuck you for an A I already had one before you even touched me so- I was basically just telling her that."

"When you say a little snippy-"

"I honestly don't think you want to know." You shake your head.

"What did you say to her?"

"TLDR, I told her she has a crush on you and I am fucking you so we're not really in the same boat which was- probably escalating but she started it by trying to patronize me." You shrug and Spencer sighs though you can see his shoulders shake in silent laughter.

"You are-" he stops to laugh again. "Incredible."

"Thank you baby." You smile.

"Honestly that was very uncomfortable but I will admit there was something... captivating about that battle of wits you had going on." His head dips to press a kiss to your neck.

"Captivating huh." You hum.

"Yeah, you're hot when you get all territorial." He smiles down at you.

"You're saying that now because this time I didn't take it out on you." You chuckle.

"I mean, I certainly wouldn't have been against walking in tonight covered in hickeys like last time." He mutters.

"Naughty boy. Keep that up and we'll have to leave early you know." You muse.

"I mean I've spoken to everyone here I need to talk to." Spencer's hand slides down over your ass for a moment.

"So worked up so quickly."

"Come on princess, let's get out of here. I owe you one hell of a thank you for dealing with Professor Greene." Spencer mutters in your ear trying to sway you.

"If we're going to leave early, you'd better make it worthwhile professor." You tell him pulling him through the party towards the exit. He stops you just outside the hall to pull you into a kiss.

"Don't I always?" He winks at you and takes the lead then, walking you to his car and helping you into the passenger side. Once he pulls out of the parking lot, you put a hand dangerously high on his leg, rubbing up and down his thigh 'absentmindedly', watching the way his fingers grip the steering wheel tighter with each passing moment. At red lights, you lean over to kiss and nip at different spots on his neck, you didn't mark him up before going out but there's no reason you can't do it now. By the time you're back at Spencer's apartment, you can tell your teasing did exactly what you wanted when he rushes you through the lobby and into the elevator. He hardly lets the elevator doors close before he corners you against one of the walls. Spencer kisses you, rough and hot, his hands gripping your upper arms.

"You'll be the death of me one of these days." He breathes out. The elevator doors open then and you drag your fingertips up his thigh with a dangerous smirk before getting off. You can hear him let out a harsh breath before he follows you to the door. Spencer unlocks the door and lets you in, barely shutting the door before he pulls you against him in another searing kiss. One of your hands tangles in Spencer's hair tugging lightly which he rewards with a grunt and a nip at your lip. Eventually, you pull away from him, grabbing his chin a bit to tilt his head out of the way of his neck.

"Hm- they're not great but- by the end of the night I'll mark you up so well it'll be like a signed my name on you." You hum kissing him again.

"Whatever you want princess. Tonight's about thanking you, any particular way you want me to show my gratitude? Because personally, I'd like to peel this dress off of you and bury my tongue between your folds." Spencer mutters, trailing soft kisses across your neck and shoulders.

"That- that sounds like a great way to start." You say.

"Perfect." Spencer pulls you down the hall into his bedroom. His hands drag down your arms, pushing the sleeves off and subsequently dropping your dress to the ground. He lets one hand grab onto yours to help you step out of the dress and immediately drops to his knees in front of you. Spencer pulls one of your legs onto his shoulders, grips the back of your thighs tightly, and buries his head between them. You jolt forward as his tongue swipes through your folds, catching your clit and you tangle your fingers in his hair to steady yourself.

"Oh god." You gasp as Spencer pushes his tongue inside you, thrusting in and out, caressing your walls all while moaning at the taste of you and the feeling of you pulling his hair. Spencer can feel your legs start to shake and tightens his hold on your thighs when he drags his tongue up to focus on your clit. "Fuck!" You squeak, actually squeak, when Spencer flicks at the bundle of nerves with practiced precision that has you trembling in his hands. 

"Spence." You moan his name in warning, your orgasm building quickly. He increases the pressure slightly, just enough to push you over the edge with a cry, your fingers tightening in his hair, holding him against you as you ride out your orgasm against his mouth. As the aftershocks of your release ease, Spencer eagerly laps up the juices flowing from you, his nose brushing your clit with each draw of his tongue. You gasp when Spencer hooks his arm under your leg still draped over his shoulder and presses his hand at the small of your back as he wraps his lips around your clit and sucks harshly on the little button. You jerk against his ministrations but his hold is steady- even as he releases your other leg to bury two fingers between your walls. He pumps the digits quickly and you can feel another orgasm building.

"Holy- shit that feels good." You whimper and you feel Spencer smile around your clit for a moment before he continues to suck on it feverishly. Spencer pulls your second orgasm from you so quickly that you don't even realize how close it is until you're screaming from the force of it. Spencer works you through it, his fingers slowing but not stopping until your walls ease up against them. He gazes up at you as he licks his fingers clean before kissing just below your belly button. He kisses his way up your body, hands trailing over your skin until he's at his full height.

"One hell of a thank you baby." You say breathlessly. Spencer laughs and leans down to kiss you, cupping your face with his clean hand. You use the time to pull his shirt free and undo the buttons, then focus on his pants, tugging off the belt and shoving the slacks down his legs. You let Spencer walk you back towards the bed and lay back when your legs hit the edge of it. You watch as Spencer finishes undressing himself and crawls over you.

"I'm not done thanking you yet princess." Spencer says kissing your neck. He lines himself up with your entrance and sinks in with one thrust. He groans against your skin at the feeling of your wet heat engulfing him. "If I believed in heaven this would be it." He breathes out and you giggle a bit. That is until Spencer cocks his hips back and rocks them into you pulling a moan from your lips effectively ending your giggle fit. Spencer sets a dangerous rhythm of sharp, deep thrusts that have your back arching off the bed.

"So good- Spence, feel so good inside me baby." You moan, your nails marking angry red lines down his back as he takes you.

"I know princess- fuck I know." He grunts reveling in the sting of your fingers clawing at him. Spencer can feel his balls tightening as you drip down his shaft and he leans back to toy with your swollen clit. The sudden extra stimulation has whines and mewls falling freely from you as your third orgasm rushes you. The feel of your walls spasming around him sends Spencer into a frenzy, his thrusts becoming erratic as he chases his own release. Your mind clears just in time to catch the signs of his impending orgasm and you muster enough strength to flip Spencer onto his back. He blinks at you in shock but only for a moment as you start riding him and his face scrunches up in pleasure. Spencer throws his head back and you lean forward to darken the hickeys you left earlier and add more as promised. He lets out a string of curses and grips the sheets so tightly you think he might tear them as you bounce up and down his length. When you feel his muscles clench beneath your hands you sit up, examining the marks now covering his neck. You're more than satisfied with them. You thread your fingers into Spencer's hair and tug, forcing him to look at you.

"I wanna watch your face when I make you cum Spence. Don't look away." You tell him sharply. Spencer tries to nod but your hand in his hair stops him.

"O-Okay. F-fuck, whatever you want- please just let me cum." He begs.

"Go ahead baby." You tell him and that's all it takes for him to let go, hot ropes painting your inner walls.

"I was supposed to be expressing gratitude here." Spencer says after a few moments of silence, when his breathing is settled.

"I feel plenty thanked don't worry love. It's way more fun having you beg me to cum anyway." You say turning your head where you lay just enough to kiss his chest. Spencer lets out a small disbelieving chuckle and you can feel him shake his head as his hand strokes down your back.

"I love you." He says.

"I love you too." You say with a smile. How lucky you are, to have your crush work out so perfectly. Although if you ask Spencer who the lucky one is he'll surely say it's him. Luck is the only explanation for him to now have the object of his desires for months in his arms like this every night. Thank goodness you called him out that day in his office, or he'd have never gotten this far.

***

Part 2

Tagged Users: @regulus-black-223048, @perkypink19-blog, @p0ssywhippedcream

[altruistic-meme]

skk fic rec time !!! 🖤🖤

okay i officially have more skk fics bookmarked on my ao3 than my sister has fics in general bookmarked on hers. so. it is time for another ficrec list by abram, bsd/skk version this time!!!

i have no idea yet how many fics will be on this list. i will go until i decide to stop. but as of right now i have 124 bsd fics bookmarked and i definitely won't be listing all of them so if anyone wants a pt. 2 then i certainly have the material to do that.

i'm not putting warnings with the fics, but bc this is BSD please do take note of tags and warnings that are given! i read a lot of fics with darker material so do be cautious!

One-Shots:

keep you alive, set you on fire by flyby @orbitalflyby (Explicit, 23k) Dazai steps out in a dress and heels for a mission, since the gown won't fit Yosano. He's only supposed to spend an hour or so leading their targets on a dance around a charity gala, but the unexpected arrival of a certain Port Mafia Executive threatens to disrupt all his plans. And when he and Chuuya find themselves finally face to face, they end up entwined in a tense game of mutual provocation...

~

Don't Pull Your Punches by kanekei (Teen and Up Audiences, 5k) Everyone thinks that their partnership is a series of Dazai being a troublemaker while Chuuya is helplessly dragged along for the ride. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. Some days it feels like Dazai is the only one aware of how insane Chuuya actually is. OR: 3 times Dazai cleans up after Chuuya + 1 time he doesn’t bother

~

The 5 Elements of an Apology by artemisiatea (Teen and Up Audiences, 6k) in which dazai learns that change is hard, but accountability is harder

~

Tea Over Rice by the_most_happy (Teen and Up Audiences, 8k) “Oi, Dazai— what would people say if they saw us?” Dazai gave him a puzzled look. “That we’re happy,” he answered. He made it sound simple; he made it sound pure. “They would say we’re happy.” They never stopped being Double Black — just different clothes and less blood on their hands. [Or: What if Dazai and Chuuya escaped the Port Mafia together?]

~

Lost All Judgement by todxrxki (Teen and Up Audiences, 12k) “Uh, sorry, but unfortunately I already have a date to the dance.” “Oh, really?” Tachihara says, sounding disappointed. He pauses for a second, clearly processing what Chuuya’s just told him, and then says, “Who is it?” Chuuya certainly hadn’t budgeted for this. Panicking, he tries to think of the people that he knows that are single, and before he knows it, the first name that comes to mind is slipping out of his mouth. “With Dazai.” / After a momentary lapse in judgment, high school student Chuuya ends up having to pretend to date his enemy Dazai to get Tachihara off of his back - and quickly finds it's nowhere as bad as he'd imagined.

~

oh darling it's alarming to think of us apart (you know you've got me in your pocket) by interludewings (Teen and Up Audiences, 20k) “Okay so if we’re both still single when we’re twenty two,” Dazai’s smile grew even wider. “Let’s marry each other.” By the time Chuuya’s twenty two, he’d probably be in a relationship with someone else, and the possibilities of them even remembering each other were slim to none. And so, Chuuya gave his answer. “Fine, let’s do that.” In short, fifteen year olds Dazai Osamu and Nakahara Chuuya made a stupid promise one day in their school library out of boredom, which leads to the next seven years of their life filled with fighting, burnt notebooks and late night conversations.

~

The Undercover Mission by OldSauk411 (Teen and Up Audiences, 16k) It all started when Atsushi was sent to drop off some papers that the Port Mafia had let them borrow. That was when he saw her, the woman with orange hair and blue eyes standing in the Port Mafia's hallways and talking. She was beautiful if he was being honest. However, after he left, he forgot about her- at least until a few months later, when the ADA and the Port Mafia teamed up for an undercover mission. One that was led by said 'woman'. Aka, Chuuya Nakahara. _____ Or: Atsushi sees a woman from a distance and thinks she's beautiful, up until the Port Mafia and the ADA team up for an undercover mission and it's revealed that the woman was actually Chuuya Nakahara.

~

Nothing but your spine by osamuchuu (Mature, 6k) “Oi, Dazai. We’re here.” Chuuya reached into the car to shake Dazai’s shoulders a bit, rearranging his coat to lay over the man’s back. Dazai swayed and blinked up at him. Whatever painkillers he’d been given had stolen the sharpness from his face. Dazai looked fifteen again, wide-eyed and vulnerable. And then he smiled. He smiled and Chuuya’s heart stuttered because it was so fucking real, so small and different from all the painted faces he wore now. This was dangerous.

~

strange loyalties by finalizer @tarmairons (Mature, 13k) “The Agency dorms are being fumigated,” Dazai explained cheerfully. “So, I offered—Atsushi can stay with us.” Or: Atsushi's observations from inside Yokohama's strangest household.

[sidenote: this is actually a sequel fic and while i loved the first one, this one really just took me to a whole other plane of existence which is why it's the one on the rec list. i do also rec the first one though!]

~

Yokohama public High School- almost as crazy as their pep rallies by BlowingYourMind (General Audiences, 20k) "The slacks! They're way too tight on him! Exactly no teachers ass should be like that, the students may be offended-" "Dazai, I think you're the only one that notices, and maybe refrain from eyeing up your co-workers like that-" "But how can I not!" Dazai huffed "It's right there in front of my face, it's hideous!" Oda sighed. he was just an average man with an average job gaining an average salary, but he would need to find a way to help Dazai and his obvious crush on Chuuya Nakahara before he lost his sanity. Or The story of how Chemistry teacher Dazai Osamu fell helplessly for coach Nakahara Chuuya, and the student body's many attempts to get them together.

~

If you refuse to listen I'll say it twice, love of my life by olympiansally @olympiansally (Mature, 15k) There’s Atsushi, Dazai’s star pupil. There’s Fyodor, arguably Dazai’s soulmate, a single mind in two bodies. There’s Kunikida, Dazai’s partner. There’s Oda, the reason Dazai wants to live. And then there’s Chuuya. If he asked Dazai to define him, to name his purpose, Chuuya already knows what he would hear. Chuuya is his dog, Chuuya is a slug, Chuuya is a chibi. And sure, maybe he is. But none of that is enough. Or, Chuuya can’t figure out what he means to Dazai exactly, but if he would only listen, he would realize that Dazai has been telling him all along.

~

In the throes of Corruption by BlowingYourMind (Teen and Up Audiences, 7k) Dazai’s ability ‘No longer human’ ironically made Chuuya human. It stripped him of the god that set his insides to flame and wreaked havoc. Corruption was terrible to Chuuya but Dazai’s touch never was. Or Five times Dazai helps Chuuya through the throes of Corruption.

~

hide the truth by writingfromtheshadows (Not Rated, 24k) When Chuuya wakes up in the middle of an ongoing fight without any memory of how he got there or what happened to him, he ends up turning to someone saved as 'bandage-waster' in his phone. Somehow, it just feels like the right decision.

~

Dream a little dream of me by BlowingYourMind (Teen and Up Audiences, 9k) "What would you like to dream of, Chuuya?" Dazai asked, and his partner shifted in the bed before settling down. "I dunno idiot, you pick." Dazai hummed, "I believe I can arrange that." Chuuya's eyelashes fluttered against Dazai's palm as Dazai continued to speak, voice turning into a whisper as he spoke late into the night. Or Chuuya can't dream, and Dazai has a soloution that quickly turns into a routine between the two of them.

~

Multichapter fics (all complete)

in the mirror, i bloom by ephemeralis (Teen and Up Audiences, 12k, 2/2) It twists him, turns him, curls in his chest like something alive, something he knows but can’t dare to name. Chuuya curses the red-black petals that fall from his lips, these nearly rotten things that tear him apart from the inside out. Part of him wants to rip his own traitorous heart out, through a ribcage shattered by feelings he can’t contain. Anger is easy, a thing he’s learned to control. This— whatever the hell this is— is not. Or at least it’s easier to feel as though this is beyond his own control, because Chuuya is not in love. (It feels like a lie even to himself.) After he's hit by a strange ability, Chuuya is forced to consider truths he'd much rather keep hidden- but not everything is as simple it seems.

[sidenote: this was the first bsd fic i ever read and HOOOOLLY CRAP what a beautiful way to join the fandom. i've reread this fic several times since. stunning.]

~

where your loyalties lie by writingfromtheshadows (Explicit, 163k, 20/20) Loyalty is the foundation of the yakuza code, something that was drilled into Chuuya at an early age. However, his lessons did not cover how to manage a political marriage with his organization's oldest rival.

~

Inseparable by milwritsecausewhynot (Teen and Up Audiences, 107k, 21/21) Best friends is too simple a term to squash the entire dynamic of Dazai Osamu and Nakahara Chuuya within. Sure, they’ve known each other since they were children, and they’re each other’s #1 on their best friend lists on Snapchat, and Chuuya’s been seen one too many times in his hoodies. People have also noticed how Dazai’s main muse for his volunteer hobby of polaroid photographer is the redhead himself. But the pranks they pull on each other isn’t much of a ‘best friend’ thing to do. Especially when one of the pranks get pulled so far, That Chuuya is forbidden from seeing Dazai ever again. And though he sees no good coming from such a forced separation, the one thing that can enhance their futures together is propelled forward at a faster speed than either of them could have ever imagined: Coming to terms with their unusual feelings for each other.

~

Do I Get My Worthless Reward Yet? by World_Ender22 (Teen and Up Audiences, 40k, 10/10) Chuuya has always been certain of two things: he is going to die young, and it will be Corruption that kills him. So when the Boss orders him to use his Corrupted form without an out, he is neither surprised nor distressed. He simply does what he's told. When Dazai learns that the whole thing is a ploy to make him rejoin the Mafia, he plans to beat Mori at his own game... starting with convincing Chuuya to join the Armed Detective Agency. / Soukoku

~

When I Awake by wildflowertea @wildflowerteas (Mature, 235k, 23/23) Dazai Osamu has been in a coma for exactly one year, seven months, and twenty-two days. But Death still refuses to take him. Trapped in the space between worlds, and unable to die, Dazai waits, killing what precious time he may have left and hoping—praying—that his family will pull the plug and move on. He doesn't expect someone to move into his old apartment instead. Nakahara Chuuya, two-time Grammy awards winner, and freshly unemployed pessimist, has never believed in fate—much less the supernatural. But the lively—if a bit annoying—ghost of his apartment's previous tenant, might just change everything.

~

hopelessly devoted by soukocacola (Explicit, 188k, 18/18) "Get your grades up." Oda tells him. "Then we'll talk." Well, Dazai thinks. If he's going to be miserable, the least he can do is make Chuuya miserable, too. Maybe then Chuuya will ditch him and Dazai can fail out of college with no regrets. 

~

His Prized Experiment by fauxtales @fauxfroot (Mature, 94k, 18/18) "As terrifying as it could be, there was something just so freeing in using Corruption. It is, after all, his strongest state. No one can harm him when he uses Corruption; he is all but invincible. There are days when he lets himself dream. There is the part of him wondering if that’s just the god or his instincts trying to convince him to unleash pure chaos and destruction on the world, but that thought is easy enough to push away. He has no control in that state after all." As a teenager, Chuuya is subjected to experiments at Mori's hand in an attempt to find a way to control Corruption. Now, years later, Mori has decided it's time to revisit the experiments. Dazai is having none of it. But can they really leave their entire life behind?

~

death offers no absolution by Zairielon (Mature, 62k, 10/10) After so many years in the Port Mafia, Chuuya thought he couldn't be phased by anything - that he had carried out the worst orders that would ever be given to him. Then he sees things he never saw before. He sees horror, cruelty, needless suffering. He sees death in every step he takes. Chuuya is only human, too. Eventually, he breaks. OR, Chuuya leaves the Port Mafia and attempts to escape his bloodstained past.

~

from a to o, i love you so by anticide @anticidic (Explicit, 22k, 3/3) Here they were dancing a dangerous tango and crossing lines and blurring boundaries that neither Fukuzawa nor Mori would take kindly to. Dazai was supposed to have gotten over Chuuya, not melted in his embrace and bound them together for an eternity. (Or: Dazai and Chuuya's unconventional relationship sparks a radical change within Dazai when he wakes up one day under the weather and feeling very, very off.)

~

My Body is Your Body (I Won't Tell Anybody) by thereweregiants (Explicit, 26k, 2/2) Thanks to a rogue ability user, Dazai and Chuuya find themselves switching bodies. ...yeah, there's no way this ends well.

~

Mission - Entrancing Armed Detective Agency by cocktailjjrs (Teen and Up Audiences, 105k, 12/12) “Charming? Have you finally started dreaming now?” Dazai turned to face his longtime partner again “Say what you want, asshole, but people like me better anyway” Chuuya ignored the jab at his lack of dreams, only shrugging in response. “I can bet anything in this world that you can’t be liked by everyone. Your efforts will be fruitless by the end of the day” “Wanna bet?” Chuuya smirked “You’re on!” Dazai returned the smirk “I’ll tell you who your target will be” . . . In which, Dazai and Chuuya are upto their old shenanigans and make a bet. As a result - Bonds are formed, secrets are revealed, money is spent, devious plans are concatenated; someone gets drugged, someone gets punched, someone gets a wakeup slap. And Chuuya's 'brute' image is at imminent risk. All of this - to with the bet!

~

Prey to Your Instincts by skylorr (Mature, 98k, 8/8) He was a beta. He was normal. Barely any scent, no cycles, no mating instincts. Just plain old normal. At least, that’s what he thought. He thought he was normal. But instead, Dazai is currently curled up on his single mattress in the shipping container that he calls home as he sweats profusely and struggles through cramps, pains, and the desire to nest. His mattress has a single thin blanket, which apparently does not satisfy the omega instincts trying to claw their way out of his mind. He was so close, too; days away from his 17th birthday, the birthday that would have officially made him a beta. Hope is a killer disease.

[sidenote: there is also a sequel to this fic that i recommend just as much! it's still a WIP <3]

~

Illustrations of Lying by writingfromtheshadows (Mature, 49k, 20/20) It is more difficult, perhaps, to bear with fortitude the little daily trails of life, than great calamities, because we summon up all our spiritual and moral strength to resist the latter...  Upon faced with the culmination of Mori's plan, Dazai does not go to Odasaku's side. Instead, he relieves Mori of his duties.

~

i'll bleed out for you by StarshipDancer @neonganymede (Mature, 75k, 7/7) What a shitty way to die.... Less than forty-eight hours ago, they’d been impaled together, and Chuuya had feared that the broken metal pole had pinned him in place against a corpse. Now, he worried that a corpse sat next to him, nothing more than a poorly-crafted imitation of his ex-partner. ... And what an even shittier situation to be stuck in. Or, A mission goes wrong, and Soukoku die together. Except, they don't, but now they're stuck in a safe house pretending that they did. And if Chuuya wants to find out what went wrong with Dazai's plan, he'll first have to find a way around the wall of silence that his former partner has built to keep him out.

~

Cigarette Game by chowderpuff (Teen and Up Audiences, 9k, 2/2) Chuuya has a crush on Dazai. Dazai knows this, and he thinks it’s a prime opportunity to mess with his partner a little. After all, why not? Chuuya’s reactions to his flirting are priceless, a new little bonus feature to the game between them, and Dazai actually starts to find it more entertaining than outright arguing. It’s all harmless fun until Dazai realizes that he has feelings too. Then it's decidedly not.

[ author's tumblrs are tagged when i could find them! if you know one who wasn't tagged or if you're an author and would like to be untagged, let me know! ]

[mypimpademia]

— The Teacher pt. 3 (final)

Single dad! Gojo x Fem! Preschool teacher! Reader

Synopsis: Gojo is yet to make a decision on where your relationship will go. But after a long time of thinking, and a conversation with Megumi, he comes to a conclusion

TW: None

Note: Click/tap here for part 1! Or Click/tap here for part 2! Tysm for all the love y’all have been giving these, this was not at all meant to be a series but I’m glad y’all are enjoying it (I am too dw)😭💀. This is the last part of the series, thank you again!

⇶ After your date, you were scared about where things between you and Satoru would go

⇶ It wasn’t the date itself that made you question, far from it. The date went great, or at least you thought so

⇶ But you had so many anxious thoughts, all of the worst case scenarios running through your head, and every “what if” scenario imaginable

⇶ But thankfully, all of your worries were quickly washed away, and you instead started questioning why you even had them in the first place

⇶ After putting Megumi to bed, Satoru called you in hopes that you were still awake

⇶ You answered fast, and your sweet voice came through the phone as you said hello

⇶ He thanked you again for coming out with him, and you of course thanked him for the date

⇶ You began grading papers since you were already up when you were supposed to be sleeping, and stayed on the phone with Satoru while you did so

⇶ He watched tv, randomly telling you about random funny things that happened in a scene, and you’d tell him about funny answers your students put on their papers

⇶ You eventually lost track of time, and you didn’t know how long you’d been on the phone with him, but you felt like a giddy teenager talking to her crush

⇶ The call went on into late hours of the night, so late that you were both in and out of sleep mid conversation, but denied it anytime the other said something about it

⇶ Satoru completely succumbed to sleep over time, and you hung up to get some sleep yourself

⇶ After that, Satoru would call, or at least text, you multiple times a day

⇶ He’d text good morning, and call if you happened to be up as early as him, text you when he knew it was your lunch break, call you when he knew you were getting home from work, and call you to say good night

⇶ You were a normal part of each other’s routine, and a lot of times you’d text him during class about something Megumi did, but for the most part you talked about anything with each other

⇶ Satoru even talked a little bit about work and complained about his “boss” and ppl he worked with

⇶ You grew to not care so much about what he did for a living and more things about him that were still unknown to you

⇶ It felt odd to not care at first, because most people would

⇶ Because what if he was seeing other women? A killer? Loving a double life?

⇶ But after growing closer to him, you could feel how genuine he was, and let yourself enjoy the relationship for what it was instead of worrying or prying

⇶ Besides, the mystery was alluring, and he just seemed like someone who doesn’t like to throw out too much information about himself. So you pushed no further and decided that he’d tell you when he was ready

⇶ Weeks passed, and you were going over to Satoru’s for dinner at least once a week, and he’d take you out for a date every once in awhile

⇶ You even went out to dinner with Megumi a few times, and felt like a little family doing so. Even getting comments like ‘You’re such a cute family!’

⇶ You and Satoru always brushed them off, just chuckling and muttering ‘thanks’, but never once denying it

⇶ On one of your dates, he finally asked you to officially be his girlfriend, sputtering and blushing as he tried to cover his tracks with a joke when he felt embarrassed, before you cut him off and told him that you’d love to

⇶ After that, Satoru began entrusting you with watching Megumi, (not that he didn’t before especially considering that you’re his teacher) and when he got too caught up with work he’d ask you to come over an watch Megumi

⇶ You and little Meg would always have fun together, playing video games, action figures, playing outside, drawing, etc. and sometimes you’d take him out to get ice cream or toy shopping if he kept it a secret from Satoru

⇶ One day, Satoru came home a bit later than he had anticipated, and saw both you and Megumi passed out on the couch, cartoons playing on the tv

⇶ Megumi was already dressed up in his pajamas, so Satoru carried him up to his room and put him in bed

⇶ When he came back down stairs, he gently woke you up and offered you to stay since it was so late and he didn’t want you driving back home when you were so exhausted

⇶ You were telling him no, as you always do when he makes such offers, but it was hard to keep up your argument between yawns and going in and out of sleep

⇶ He led you upstairs to his room, where he let you shower and laid out clothes and toiletries for you

⇶ By the time you finished showering and got dressed, you were still tired, but more than awake enough to realize that you were in the main bedroom of the house

⇶ His bedroom.

“Satoru,” you called out as you emerged from the bathroom, steam rolling out from behind you.

You heard footsteps grow louder and louder until Satoru finally got to the room, cautiously opening the door.

“Y/n? Did you call for me? Is everything okay?” He asked, concern lacing his voice.

“Why’d you put me in this room?” You asked him, eyebrow raised as you gestured to the large room.

“What? You don’t like it?” Satoru mused. “The guest rooms are kinda bare, didn’t want you staying in there.”

You kissed your teeth. The gesture was sweet, but you found yourself oddly annoyed at the fact that he so casually disregarded himself.

“And you’re sleeping in the guest room instead of your own room? In your own house?” Satoru shrugged, causing you to sigh. “We’re swapping.”

He gave you a puzzled, yet amused, look. Satoru didn’t expect this type of reaction from you, but he supposed that this type of attitude came from taking care of others for a living.

“Mm, not happening,” he chuckled, making you kiss your teeth again.

“Then we can share.”

Satoru was taken aback. You were just full of surprises, weren’t you?

“Will that get you to stop pouting, baby?” He teased in a mocking baby voice, face inches from yours.

You rolled your eyes, but smiled, so he took it as a yes, kissing your cheek.

“S’good you made me come back here anyways, I forgot my toothbrush,” he said, disappearing into the bathroom.

Realizing you need to brush your teeth as well, you followed behind the tall man.

You unboxed the spare toothbrush he gave to you, applied the toothpaste, and began brushing your teeth along side Satoru.

Looking at him through the mirror, you were able to fully observe him.

His hair was slightly wet from him shower, with a few pieces clinging to his forehead. He wasn’t wearing his sunglasses, and you could see just how long his powdery white lashes really were. To top it off, he had no shirt on with grey sweatpants hanging low on his waist.

You were mesmerized. You couldn’t even believe one man could look so good, you felt like you were staring at a marble statue.

Completely entranced, you didn’t even realize you were gawking at him until toothpaste began dripping down your chin and onto his shirt. Satoru stifled a laugh, leaning down to spit into the sink.

“See somethin’ you like?” He snickered, wiggling his eyebrows at you.

You rolled your eyes, laughing as you spat into the sink and wiped off your chin.

After finishing up in the bathroom, you both finally crawled into bed together.

“Good night,” Satoru chimed, reaching over to turn off his bedside lamp.

“Night.”

⇶ Despite being so tired, neither of you could sleep due to how nervous the presence of the other made you feel

⇶ You both silently tossed and turned before you ended up facing each other

⇶ The room had no lights, except for a window that directly faced the moon, allowing for enough illumination to make out the outline of each others faces

⇶ Satoru silently looked all over your face, almost like he was trying to engrave your features into his memories

⇶ Suddenly you felt something cold touch your leg, making you jump and jerk your foot away

⇶ You heard Satoru laugh, smushing his face into his pillow

“My feet are cold,” he pouted.

“Mine too.”

⇶ You put your own foot against his leg, and he immediately hissed and pulled back from you

⇶ You laughed at him, but were interrupted when he suddenly grabbed hold of your extended leg, pulling your towards him

⇶ You gasped at the action, and he gently placed your leg over his body, then wrapped his toned arms around you

“I’m really cold.” He whispered, minty breath fanning against your face.

⇶ Pressing yourself against his bare chest and snaking your arms around him, he was cold to the touch

⇶ You gave him a gentle kiss, already feeling him warm up as you both fell asleep

⇶ That morning, you were woken up by Satoru stirring and the sound of little slapping noises

⇶ Megumi had woken up before the both of you, and was now waking up Satoru by clobbering him with tiny fists as he repeated ‘I’m hungry’ over and over

⇶ Satoru let out a dragged out groan, making the boy hit him even harder, but not at all fazing the man

⇶ Eventually, he did get up, taking Megumi downstairs over his shoulder

“What d’you want for breakfast Gumi?”

“Pancakes,” Megumi huffed, hauling himself onto the chair.

“Pancakes it is,” Satoru complied, taking out the box mix from the pantry, and quickly scanning over the ingredients list before grabbing what he needed.

Megumi was silent for a majority of the time, still in the process of waking up as his kept his cheek against the cool marble counter.

He was never a morning person, but he was still much too quiet. Satoru knew him better than anyone, and knew that he had something on his mind.

“What’re you thinking about?” Satoru asked, pouring batter into the buttered pan.

Megumi raised his head up, brow’s knitted together and eyes narrowed in deep thought. He stayed quiet for awhile, hesitant to speak his mind.

“Is Ms. L/n my mom yet?”

Satoru wasn’t fully surprised by the question, but the tone of Megumi’s voice sent a pant through his chest. Megumi wasn’t at all a needy or spoiled child, and he rarely ever asked for much. But Satoru could tell this was something he wanted deeply.

Even though he took care of Megumi like a father would, he made a point from the start to at least let him know he was adopted, but was loved like blood. Satoru couldn’t imagine the flurry of emotions the young boy must feel finally having a mother figure, and not just a woman that came and went like Satoru’s previous affairs.

“Is that what you want?” Satoru asked him, flipping the pancake over. Truthfully, his answer could make or break where his relationship with you would go.

On top of him not being needy, Megumi wasn’t an emotional child. He hardly cried or even threw tantrums. The most emotion he’d show, other than being happy, were nervousness and frustration.

“Is that what you want?” Megumi shrugged, slumping back in his seat, avoiding eye contact.

He could be such a mini adult, never fully allowing himself to be taken care of like a child should. That’s a big reason Satoru thought you’d be so good for Megumi, you brought the kid out of him and nurtured him in ways that Satoru simply couldn’t.

Transferring the pancake from the stove to a plate, Satoru slid Megumi his breakfast. He hummed as he did so, still waiting for a proper answer and not a repeat of his question.

“Yes…” Megumi mumbled, taking the plate and grabbing the syrup bottle.

“Yes, what?” Satoru pushed, making the boy glare at him with dark eyes.

“Yes, that’s what I want,” He snapped, cheeks growing pink and slamming the syrup bottle back down.

“Me too, Megs.”

⇶ Just a minute later, you came into the kitchen, gently rubbing Megumi’s head as you walked by him, and kissing Satoru’s cheek while wrapping your arms around his waist

⇶ You apologized for not coming down with them, and said that you were really tired a just needed a few extra minutes

⇶ Satoru assured you it was fine and told you to eat, having already set aside a plate of food for you

⇶ He joined you and Megumi shortly after, and you all ate while telling one another about the dreams you had last night

⇶ All of a sudden, Satoru perked up, remembering something

⇶ He told Megumi to go get “the drawing” from his room to show it to you

⇶ Megumi looked puzzled, cheeks stuffed with pancakes as he looked up, attempting to remember

⇶ When he finally did, he let out a growl and gave a look that could kill to Satoru who simply laughed

⇶ He bartered with him, saying he could have another pancake if showed it to me

⇶ You watched the ordeal in amusement, and after giving it some thought, Megumi begrudgingly climbed down from his chair, going to his room while grumbling under his breath

⇶ After a minute, Megumi came back down, still looking annoyed but with a mixture of embarrassment this time

⇶ The paper was hidden behind his back, and he made you promise to not make fun of him if he showed you

⇶ After a verbal promise and a pinky link later, Megumi handed over the paper, flipped over as he mouthed ‘you’re annoying’ to Satoru, you only snickered at him

⇶ Flipping the paper over, the picture on it made your heart melt

⇶ There was a dandelion yellow sun in the corner, light green grass with a few multicolored flowers

⇶ But what caught your attention was the three stick figures on the page

⇶ The tallest was on the far left, outlined hair sticking up to represent white locks of hair, labeled ‘Dad’

⇶ The smallest was in the middle, scribbles of black crayon to show black hair, labeled ‘Me’

⇶ And the last, mid sized one, had your hair color, sloppily drawn into your usual styled, labeled ‘Mom’

—

Taglist: @goldenglow149 @whats-humanity-lol @pinksilk @gender-queery @dcvilxswish @roaringlion @megurulvr @miirene @planetlunaa @kazuminari + @ryry-rebel

Send in a ask or DM me to be added to all taglists, or fill out my form to be added to select ones.

—

Thank you for reading, comments and reblogs are appreciated!

[jikookuntold]

Jikook and the Untold Narratives

As a hardcore Jikooker who deep-dives into everything related to Jikook, I always have different ideas, theories, and analyses in my mind. But most of the time, I hesitate to contextualize them, develop them into actual essays, and share them in this blog. This post you are about to read was an almost a one-year-old topic running in my head, but I wasn’t sure about writing it until the Bangtan episode for D-Day Seoul concerts came out a few weeks ago, but as a professional procrastinator, it took me this long to write. According to the title this was supposed to be about the narratives related to Jikook, and I tried rooting and analyzing them, but somehow, it turned out mostly as a long rant about hypocrisy and misunderstandings in this fandom. Anyway, these are only my opinions and observations, and I don't claim to be 100% right. I hope you enjoy reading this post.

The Narratives

What do I mean by the narratives? Are there any narratives related to Jikook? Why did I even decide to write about this? Well, at some point I noticed that we, as Jikookers, have always been blamed for falling for "company narratives". It is widely said and believed by Jikook antis that the company wants to represent Jikook as the "couple/ very close and special duo" in BTS to the point that they call the Jikook ship the creation of Bang PD himself. A specific group of antis believe this is for hiding their real relationships, and the rest of them think it's just for fanservice. They think we are fools to fall for it because if Jikook were a real gay couple, they would hide it from us because of homophobia.

I know this is literally a conspiracy theory made by them, but conspiracy theories are also theories, and like any other theory, they have to be based on some external evidence. So, where is the evidence that leads antis to the conspiracy theory of Jikook being the “company couple”? Antis believe everything Jikookers get as moments, is company content, and this content is designed, faked, and manipulated to make us believe Jikook are a couple, and based on their logic, believing the things we see instead of their conspiracy theories means that we have fallen for company narratives. I can’t deny the fact that we get lots of Jikook moments from official content, but this applies to every other duo, not just Jikook. Then what is so special about Jikook that makes antis believe there is a narrative being pushed?

The answer is the nature of the Jikook moments we get. Some of the interactions between Jimin and JK are nothing like the interactions between the other members. The high dosage of couple behavior in these interactions is not justifiable with common excuses like Korean culture, flirty friends, or even KPop fanservice. Therefore, antis need to make up another excuse, which is the conspiracy theory of the company narrative. This narrative contradicts the principle of “Gays have to hide because homophobia, duh!” which their theory is based on. Also shipping culture in other boybands always insisted on the company and management hiding the gay relationship, not pushing it. And this is another thing that makes Jikook different and special.

Let’s deep dive into this contradictive narrative. Being the company couple doesn’t stop in the company narrative and spreads much further. Let’s imagine Jikook is the official couple that the company is investing in, to make fans and the general public believe they are special and gain more money from the narrative. Then the media should follow this agenda and use them together for headlines and clicks. Then fans also have to go with the flow and make their sub-narratives aligned with this agenda. But does any of this happen in reality? The following parts of this post is going to be a long answer to this question.

Company Narratives

Does BigHit/Hybe use Jikook? pairs the two of them together more than others? encourages them to behave in a certain way? includes more interactions of them in the official content intentionally? In order to answer these questions, we need to overview the official content provided by the company. First I have to clarify that not all the official content has the same weight in this examination, and we can classify them into different categories regarding the prevalence and accessibility to the public.

The first category can be called the public content. This type of content is usually free and accessible to everyone online with just a few clicks. These are the things you get when you type the names of the BTS members or songs in a Google search, like official MVs, Bangtan episodes, Run BTS, or live performance videos, that introduced most of us to the Bangtan world. The other category is a part of the main content that is mostly not for free, like documentaries, travel shows, Army zip content, seasonal packages, etc. This content is accessible in its original form to a big group of fans who can afford to pay or know their ways to pirate.

The last category is the content that not all the fans consume despite being officially released, even a big group of them are not aware that this content exists. This group of content might be free or paid, like Behind-the-scenes episodes of the main shows, official DVDs of the concerts, and memories of each year. They are like the leftovers of the main content that for some reason, didn’t end up in the public or main content, and only the dedicated fans or chronically online ones originally consume them.

Disclaimer: This classification was all done by me, and it’s not claimed to be official or accurate. Feel free to disagree and have your own categorization and conclusion. But what is the point of this classification? As I admitted earlier in this post, we get lots of Jikook interactions in official content released by BigHit/Hybe, same as the unofficial content like Vlives/Weverse, social media posts, livestreams, or fancams from concerts or award shows, which gave us so many incredible and unforgettable Jikook moments while they were not released by the company, but my focus is on the official content and how it’s connected to the narrative of comply couple.

If you pay attention to the ship moments, you will notice that they are not equally distributed in the different categories of content I named above. In the first category AKA, the public content, Jikook moments are not much dominant, and all the ships and duos pretty much equally have their moments overall. The second category is almost the same as the first one, maybe the Jikook moments in these two categories still feel more couply and spicy compared to the others but they are still balanced because the editors usually push the extra moments to the last category.

The last category which we can call as “leftovers” is where we get the most of the eyebrow raising moments of the original content, like almost kiss or hickey. It's the content all the extra Jikook moments that had to be cut out of the main content for balancing things up, end up there, and it’s the content not all the fans follow because a big portion of this fandom is not chronically online and do not have stan Twitter/X accounts or care about Twitter trends.  For me, the best example here is the second season of ITS and how all the organic Jikook interactions were pushed to the behind-the-scenes episode with viewers one-third of the main episodes. This doesn’t mean that the main episodes of ITS2 have no Jikook moments, they do, but not more than Taekook or VMin or Jihope, thanks to the modifications done by editors.

So, based on this analysis, can we say there is a narrative going on? I leave the conclusion to you, but I think there is no narrative here other than showing some fun interactions and closeness between the members. They have more of the Jimin and JK interaction moments because Jikook happen to spend more time together and interact more, and these interactions sometimes cross the platonic line regarding the nature of their relationship. I believe if BigHit wanted to palm Jikook off as a couple to the public, they wouldn’t push their couply moments into the content that the vast majority of fans don’t even know about.

Another thing we should keep in mind is that the leftover content is the most organic one, and unlike most of the moments from public or main content (for example the Run BTS episodes or Bon Voyages), there is no script involved. It’s just how members naturally interact and cameras happen to be there to film them. I’m not saying the first two categories are fake. In fact, I believe the majority of the BTS content we get is authentic, and even when there are scripts involved, it’s based on the natural dynamics between the members. If you have been following the members and listened to them carefully in the past decade, you know they are never being forced to do things together against their will, at least not after their rookie era.

Antis also bring up another argument to prove their conspiracy theory, and it is the argument that “Jikook have been paired together a lot”. I don’t have access to any reliable statistical information to confirm that Jikook had the most pairings between the BTS members, but if someone makes this claim, I can partially agree with them. This might not apply in all the eras of Bangtan group activities, but overall, this can be considered as a fact, and it has a simple explanation; Jikook get paired together a lot because they are the main/lead duo, and their vocals match very well, and they can work in sync and communicate perfectly. When a duo can do the job with great chemistry, without wasting time and energy for syncing and communicating, why the company has to give it to any other duo in the group? This is how things work in the entertainment industry, and there are no narratives and forces needed to be involved.

This is mostly about the vocal and dance projects or photoshoots Jikook have done together several times, and there have been no other examples except the potential travel show we know they filmed in 2023 that made antis stand on their conspiracy theory even stronger than before. First of all, we don’t know how and when this travel show will be aired and what agenda it will follow. Will it be this year or the next year? Will it be a whole series or just a 30-minute Bangtan episode? We know nothing until we get an update on it. We are not even sure if they traveled just for the show or if it was an excuse for Jikook to travel before their enlistment. I recommend you to read this post about an interesting theory on the travel show.

Okay, now let’s talk about the other narratives related to Jikook, the ones that were not conspiracy theories and were actually planned by the company. BigHit, as an entertainment label, debuted BTS with a narrative, and Jimin and JK, as the members and a duo, had their designated roles. At first, Jimin got the role of the macho man in the group who had to go through a physical transformation because of it. Fortunately, this harsh role changed after some time, and Jimin got a new narrative. This time, he was the awkward member who became the punchline of the jokes by losing every game, the member who got rejected several times and wasn’t supposed to debut at all.

These parts of the narrative were far from the real Jimin, but some parts were close to his real personality like he is the sweetest member, a hug and gift fairy who is there for the others. But even these positive features were misused and turned Jimin into a cheerleader and outcast who might get “left out by the heartless" bandmates he loves and supports. You may say I’m exaggerating, but these narratives are still going on to this day and feed his antis. These narratives were one of the main reasons Jimin’s successful self-made solo debut became a hard pill to swallow for the majority of fans ad even the company because they expected this triumph from any vocal line member other than Jimin.

As I said earlier, Jikook as a duo also had their narrative since their debut. This narrative was technically a roleplaying between them; Jimin was assigned to show one-sided affection to JK on camera, and JK’s role was to reject Jimin and rank him as the least handsome member. This narrative went on for some time until it stopped around 2014/2015, but the damage was already done. Some people might question this one-sided affection being a narrative by BigHit. I’m sorry, but if you think a teenage rookie idol in KPop can show real affection in public to his same-sex bandmate, the joke is on you. I know most fans believed this roleplaying, and that was where everything went wrong.

Antis may say this narrative by itself "birthed the Jikookers breed", while it did the opposite. Despite this narrative being over for years, its aftermath is still visible in the fandom, and even dramatic Jikookers use it for their “fell first, fell harder” agenda, which I find really toxic and damaging. Other than portraying JK as a mean and insensitive kid, this roleplaying with the help of the narrative of awkward Jimin, turned Jikook into something unacceptable and even cringe-worthy because “how could JK even like Jimin when he hated and rejected him for years? because Jimin is not likable and makes JK uncomfortable”. It’s ironic, but the antis who keep repeating these lies, are in fact the ones who fall for the company narratives.

If Hybe wanted to push the narrative of Jikook being in a relationship, why did they pick such an unusual approach that backfired, and turned fans against them, and drawn them to the other ships? Hybe not only doesn’t promote Jikook more than other duos but also stops them from becoming mainstream by pushing their moments to the content no one sees. Maybe this is their way of gatekeeping and protecting Jikook which I appreciate, but it’s time for this fandom to realize that Jikook has nothing to do with the company narrative, and in fact it’s the opposite.

For example, in one of the recent Bangtan episodes (public content), when JK was resting backstage at his music show, and Tae came to visit, according to the Weverse live JK had before the show, we knew they cut the part where he said “Army” was looking for his whereabouts because otherwise, it would look like he doesn’t care where he was. But in the other Bangtan episode, they didn’t hesitate to keep the part where Jimin sounded like being left out, meanwhile, we knew all of them were headed to the same destination to celebrate Yoongi’s last concert. because that’s the narrative they push, the narrative of Jimin being left alone and Jikook having nothing to do with each other.

If Jikook were the company couple, they would have sat down together to announce their ship name for the official content. If Jikook were the company couple, Hybe would not cut out their moments, and we would have gotten some content from their numerous rendezvouses during the SYS tour in the US and Europe, but we got nothing, not even for the leftover content. If Jikook were the company couple, Hybe would not released their buddy system announcement only in the Korean version of the statement. If Jikook were the company couple, the GCF videos that had started with Jimin, would have been kept that way, and wouldn’t be turned into ot7 videos. If they can’t force JK, then nothing is forced.

If Jikook were the company couple, they would not plan Yoonmin/Taekook's solo debuts at the same time to make them appear in the same promotional activities and namedrop each other. This doesn’t mean Yoonmin/Taekook are the company couple, in fact, the dumbest question is "Jikook or Taekook?" The whole point is, that there was never a ship agenda, they never tried to push any ship as the real one to the general public or common fans. But their bonds have been used a lot for clicks and clout, and as a Jikooker I am confident enough to say I was not the one falling for any narratives or mediaplay by the company or media.

Media and Jikook

It’s a known fact that all different forms of media earn money from public attention, this is what keeps them going on. I said earlier, that if Jikook were the company couple, and Hybe intended to promote them as the official duo, then the media wouldn’t lose this opportunity to chase the clout because in that case, they would have the permission to follow this agenda and use the duo for headlines and clicks, but in reality this doesn’t happen to Jikook.

I’m not saying that Jikook don’t get any media coverage, they do. The media inside or outside Korea make headlines for their duo activities like the Black Swan dance or vocal collaborations, but there are many examples that Jikook didn’t make it to the headlines while another duo did in a very similar situation. I bring an example from Dispatch that everyone knows has the closest connection to Hybe; when Jimin posted the shirtless photo of them together for JK’s birthday, this media didn’t make any headlines for it, not even as the announcement of Jimin greeting JK's birthday.

But when Tae posted the screenshot of his video call with JK the night before his enlistment, while they were both shirtless, it became a headline on the Dispatch website. If you check the Dispatch website for 2023, you will not find anything about Jikook other than their departure and arrival together for the Japan trip, even their trip together in NY was not worthy news for this outlet. Also their joint enlistment in the military, despite being the first and only case of Buddy System in the KPop industry, didn’t get much media attention or specific headlines.

Jikook have never attended any event as a duo, they never had a photocall together as a duo, and since they have never made an official name for themselves, the media can't use a duo name for them. Meanwhile, they can use “Taekook” for the Tae and JK duo in their headlines and tags because the company has permitted by making this duo name official. As I mentioned earlier, I do not believe that Taekook or any other ship is the official one, but the audacity of antis to ignore these facts and label Jikook as the company couple is just ironic.

I’m not really interested in giving examples from Taekook, but I have no other option. Everyone remembers the premiere night of the movie “Dreamers” in April last year when Tae and JK attended together and had their photocall moment. Like any other movie premiere with big stars, this event also was covered by the media, but they got the biggest attention and social media engagement because of Taekook appearing together. Even though the reports of JK being shy and having a feminine haircut caused Taekookers to think they were being announced as a couple lol, in general, it was a pleasant moment until it wasn’t anymore.

A few months later, in August, a similar event was about to happen, and the media announced that Tae was going to attend his friend’s new movie premiere along with JK. As expected, a big wave of social media engagement started, but JK didn’t show up. I don’t know if he never intended to go or if he changed his mind just before the event because according to Dispatch, his name was in the guest list. All we know is that he logged into the Bangtan official Twitter account after years and posted some random photos just an hour before the event and logged out.

After that embarrassing moment for the media, I was expecting them to stop using Taekook for mediaplay, but they didn’t stop, and again in November, the media outlets reported that Tae would attend JK’s solo concert while we knew he was busy recording his Running Man episode the same day. I’m sure the media knew it better, but chasing the clout was their priority. There are many other examples of how media doesn’t work in favor of the “company couple narrative” for Jikook, but I will stop here because this post is getting too long.

Fandom Agendas

When there is a successful narrative launched by an entertainment label, the fandoms go with the flow, and alongside accepting the main narrative they make their own sub-narratives aligned with this agenda. But in the case of Jikook, this is far from the truth. When I say fans, I mean the collective representation of a group supporting an artist, something non-fans see from the outside, not just a focus group. Yes, we Jikookers exist but we don’t represent or control this fandom. According to some unofficial polls, we are not even between the top three of the biggest groups of shippers. So, it’s safe to say the so called narrative of Jikook has not been successful. 

It’s not a secret that this fandom is against Jikook, but the discussion doesn’t end here. The sub-narratives made in the fandom have their own story. This opposition with Jikook contradicted their observations of them being close and always together, and they had to make the sub-narrative to justify it. But since they had already accepted another narrative made by BigHit, it wasn't a hard one. They decided that "Every interaction between Jikook is initiated by Jimin because he has always been in love with JK, and anything JK does is forced because he has always been uncomfortable with Jimin." This narrative and its sub-narratives caused Jimin to be labeled as the intruder and much worse names I will not mention, and it caused him to get so much hate, especially after every interaction he has with JK. It's true that he has the biggest fandom and the most devoted and supportive fans, but his anti-fans are also the biggest and the vilest ones.

JK also had his sub-narrative made by fans, and according to the vast majority of them, he is a straight playboy. I don't know where this sub-narrative comes from, maybe confessing to having a girlfriend as a teen or naming himself the "international playboy" did it for fans and made them ignore all the queerness in his personality and behavior, but this is the reason this fandom treats his "dating rumors" very differently even by his gay shippers. Army joke and say he is scared of girls, but they never make stories up about him being uninterested in women like they did for others (for example: an influencer asked Tae for his phone number, and he gave his manager's number, 100% fictional, but vastly believed as fact).

It’s actually quite funny when we see a local Youtuber is able to guess Jikook are the closest just by watching a few minutes of content, but the fans who have been here for a decade can’t and don’t want to see it, they can’t even let go of the 2013 jokes of “JK hates Jimin”, let alone accepting that they are close. They do any mental gymnastics they can to normalize, delegitimize, or ot7ify Jikook moments, meanwhile, when JK and Tae, themselves talk about drifting apart, fans dismiss it and call it fake. For example, last year, when Jikook were in Tokyo, JK was seen leaving the location of his shooting, which was a hotel different from the hotel where Jimin was staying, antis said: “They hate each other, to the point they can’t stay at the same hotel”. While a trip would have been solid proof for any duo in BTS to be close and in love, for Jikook, it becomes the reason for being distant and despising each other, and this is the hypocrisy of our fandom.

Maybe we get lots of Jikook from official content, it’s the outcome of Jikook’s closeness, but in the end, it’s Jikook themselves who confirm it with their behavior. When antis were celebrating Jikook not interacting, amid their lack of public appearance, it was JK who showed his love and support for Jimin by streaming his videos on YouTube. When antis claimed they don’t spend time together, it was JK who begged Jimin in his half-naked live to join him. He went live at his place right after the movie premiere, and musical theater, and explained the situation after Vhope did a live there. He explained Tae's claims about recording Layover at his place and talked about his delightful alone time when he was at the ski resort with Tae and his friends. He read JeonJimin comment out loud and announced that he wouldn’t stop holding Jimin. Maybe an older example is his post on Weverse right after the 2020 Taekook live apologizing for not talking much, and then a month later, when he went live with Jimin, he made it clear that he had a great time just doing the live.

These examples are countless, but there is no hope for the fans who even label the moments from unofficial content like lives and posts as planned or even forced by the company. If you think antis will let us have a happy day and enjoy the legit Jikook moments, you are mistaken. If there is Jikook, they always find a way to ruin it with their toxicity, and if there’s no Jikook, they use it to hurt us and spread their lies and fake moments on every social media platform.

Antis have the upper hand in social media because Hybe failed the so-called Jikook narrative, and it not just didn’t become the mainstream ship of Bangtan, but also fans turned against it. Despite this failure, Jikook still bothers antis so much, and they try hard to fight it and its shippers, but these fights and attacks are limited to social media. Whatever they do on social media, the hashtags they trend, the lies and hateful tweets and comments they leave out, are not gonna affect what Jikook have in real life because Jikook are real people, and against all the odds and real struggles, they are together and closer than ever.

[1d1195]

Love and Dryer Sheets V

Read the rest here: Love and Dryer Sheets

The good news if you're still liking this story: we're gonna squeeze one more part out of this series. Hope you're still enjoying. Thank you for reading.

~7.5k words (she's a bit longer. Got a lot going on and I think she gets kinda messy like all the relationships here.)

Warnings: angst, toxic relationships, maybe a little fluff.

“Here,” she offered appearing at his side as he started to fish his stuff back out of the washer. He turned to her and she thought she might melt. Harry was so beautiful. His eyes, his mouth, his skin. He was tall and she knew he was warm and strong. She knew what his lips tasted like. It was so unfair and yet, she couldn’t stop herself.

Good. Her heart was practically giggling with delight.

She didn’t tell Niall about the kiss. She thought it wouldn’t do any good at all. Especially because Niall would threaten to kill Harry and she wasn’t fully sure he even knew how to make a fist. Plus, with his impending year-long move, it seemed like too much to put on his plate at the time.

But when he eventually found out, she imagined he would be pretty mad at her. So, it took her a really long time to decide not to tell him. Especially while they were spending practically every waking moment together. Fortunately, that allowed her to refrain from think about Harry for seven days straight.

Or...more so... not think about him that much. With eyes the color of muted emeralds it was like her mind was on a yellow brick road right back to him whenever she had a moment of time to think about something other than her unending heartbreak.

She was careful to rearrange her laundry schedule so as not to run into him. She took the stairs instead of the elevator. Once she saw him coming in from the rainy wind and she darted into the mail room just to avoid him. It was childish and stupid, running from him like that. But she couldn’t help it. Seeing him would make her cave.

But you want to be friends with him. Her heart reminded her.

I don’t care, she responded internally.

Even I know that’s a lie, her brain grumbled in response.

Work provided her great distraction as well. Sad, of course— because what else was supposed to happen in her life these days? —but it was a distraction, nonetheless. Sighing, she rubbed her forehead looking over her schedule for the next day, thinking about what needed to be accomplished, what activities she needed to print in the morning, and priorities she needed to complete.

She really needed to go grocery shopping.

She had spent most of her last nights with Niall eating out or getting takeaway while they packed his stuff. He was subletting to a friend for the year. Mostly to hold his place. The Missus would be traveling overseas to be with Niall by the end of next month, which was extremely exciting for their relationship. “Looks like I’ll be all by myself at thirty-five,” she joked in with him labeling cardboard boxes as kitchen.

Niall smirked. “M’sure I can convince her that we can be a throuple,” he winked at her.

“Sorry Ni, I hate sharing,” she smirked knowing the idea was truer than he would know for a while. She planned on telling him within the first couple of months—once he was a little settled and she was surely over it.

Plus, she wanted to be sure that he wouldn’t come flying back before he unpacked.

But Niall was officially in flight. She was watching her phone making sure his flight didn’t suddenly fall off the radar or that it didn’t indicate it was exploding mid-flight. He was going to call her as soon as he landed. She was third on the list after his girlfriend and mother and was not to panic unless it approached an hour of waiting for his call. Those were her instructions.

Timing her grocery shopping was exactly what she needed at that moment.

If she had gotten the parking spot she wanted, it might not have happened. If Niall had called two seconds earlier, she would have been answering her phone outside instead of in the lobby. She would have been in the elevator. Or she would have stopped for the mail and wouldn’t have been juggling the bags and her phone.

But instead, everything happened at once. She wanted to ensure Niall was there safely, so she struggled to answer her phone with the groceries attached to her arms.

“Hey, Ni! How was your—”

Before she could finish her question, the phone was knocked from her hands almost violently along with the bags of groceries she was carrying. Naturally it contained her eggs. She stumbled a bit nearly sliding ungraciously in the cracked egg mixture on the floor. Her phone skittered across the floor near the entry way to the mail cubby’s.

“Jesus, watch where you’re going,” it was the beautiful woman who felt she was in the way in the mail space back when she first moved in. She was just as beautiful as the last time she ran into her. Her hair was long and flowing, her eyelashes would make an angel jealous, if she smiled—and she realized it seemed like it would take an act of God to get her to smile—she imagined she had perfect teeth that were hidden behind her pretty full lips.

She scrambled to get to her feet, her leggings getting egg yolk on them. Thank God she bought paper towels as well.

“Ava! What the fuck?”

It was pathetic that she knew Harry’s voice without looking. She was struggling to get the paper towels out of the plastic. She could hear Niall calling from her phone a few feet away from the mess as she struggled to get her items that weren’t broken back into the bags. She desperately wanted to answer Niall, but she was practically mute. “She was in the way!”

“Ava!” Harry hissed.

“For God’s sake Harry. You’re always worried about everyone else around us but me.”

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

Harry turned from Ava to glare at her. She swallowed the lump in her throat feeling like she had done something bad. It was the first time she had seen Harry in a week, and he looked...

Exhausted.

She wished she could ask him a thousand questions because even though she felt terrible about what she had done, she missed Harry more than she could ever describe. Niall was no longer yelling. She wondered if he hung up. At least she knew he was alive. Hopefully he wasn’t boarding a plane right back.

“I’ll be right out,” Harry snapped as Ava rolled her eyes and headed out the door. It could only have been a total of two minutes, but it felt like hours between the moment Ava bumped into her and the present. It felt like a front of cold air left the room the moment Ava exited. She nearly breathed a sigh of relief—almost the same one that Harry released as she left.

The room was silent. She heard Niall calling from her phone again and she finally grabbed it, trying not to get more egg yolk on her hands and none in her hair if she could help it.

“Hello?”

“Are you okay?” Niall asked, his voice hitching nervously.

“Niall, I’m so sorry. I’ll call you back in like...half an hour,” she whispered.

“Are you telling me that the Wicked Witch of the West is Harry’s girlfriend? I cannot believe you apologize to her,” he spoke without answering her statement. “No wonder he spends all his time doing laun—”

She hung up before he could say anymore just in case Harry could hear. She hadn’t mentioned the break they had embarked upon to Niall. If he said anything, she could easily say that his move had monopolized the entire week and it worked because she found out he had a girlfriend. She just wouldn’t say how she found out he had a girlfriend.

Of course, someone as beautiful as Ava would be with someone like Harry. Someone equally beautiful. They would make gorgeous children. Take the most perfect pictures. It made sense that the pair of them would be in a relationship.

Except Harry is nice and she is wicked. The voice in her head and her heart agreed.

“Christ, love. M’sorry,” he whispered softly.

It was the first time they had spoken since she told him they couldn’t see each other for a while. That they couldn’t be friends. His voice was so gentle and warm. She couldn’t believe that in just over a week she craved hearing it. It felt like she was basking in the sun. But she shouldn’t have been thinking like that. It was also...jarring...to hear the difference in his tone between how he had spoken to Ava compared to how he was speaking to her.

“It’s okay,” she murmured finally getting a swath of paper towels to clean up the mess. “I was in the way.”

Harry knelt beside her pulling the roll of paper towels from her hands with an exasperated sigh, leaving his lips again as he started to help clean up. “Y’weren’t, though,” he mumbled.

She shrugged trying to ignore the crazy beat of her heart being so close to him again. It was just a week, but it felt like years since she had seen him, but also like no time had passed at all. As if they hadn’t stopped speaking and this was nearly normal.

“You don’t have to help,” she said. “I’m sure she’s waiting.”

“She can wait,” he grumbled.

“Harry.”

“I’ll get y’some eggs while we’re out,” he promised.

“That’s not necessary,” she shook her head, her cheeks warming.

“Yes, it is, I would buy y’some new leggings too if—”

“I’ll just wash them, seriously.”

They were quiet. Harry grabbed the trash can that was over by the elevator and dumped the paper towels in. They cleaned up the rest of the mess in silence. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. But she could tell from the tone in his voice that he wasn’t apologizing for just the spill.

“It’s alright. It’s not your fault.” He sighed the frustration evident on his face, in his body language, and in the way he was breathing. “Harry,” she whispered quietly pressing a hand to his arm. “It’s alright,” she promised. It was ridiculous she was comforting him. She doesn’t even know how Ava bumped into her. She knew it wasn’t her fault, but she didn’t like how guilty Harry felt. He looked at her hand on his arm for a moment and she pulled it away after a gentle, comforting squeeze. “You should go,” she smiled gently at him. A slight wrinkle of her cute nose.

“M’really sorry.”

She shook her head. “It’s just eggs,” she shrugged. “It’s okay.”

He nodded. They both knew it was more than eggs. It was kissing in the laundry room behind Ava’s back. No matter how wicked she seemed, it wasn’t okay.

Even if she’s the worst? Her heart asked internally.

I’m on your side this time. Her brain answered.

She ignored them both. “M’sorry,” he repeated. “See you around...I guess,” he murmured. Just like before.

Her heart felt a pang of sadness course through her and she watched him exit, glancing back just once to give her a tired wave. She felt tired, too. Tired of hiding her emotions and tired of missing Harry.

But that would have to wait because she really wanted to get out of her clothes covered in egg yolks.

*

“I can’t believe you apologized.”

Niall’s face was backlit by the dark evening of his surroundings. His new place was sparse since none of his stuff had arrived yet. But somehow his move was overshadowed by the insanity that took place that afternoon.

“I don’t know, Ni...” she sighed.

“I...I don’t think you should count Harry out yet... Obviously, he’s doing laundry because he’s miserable.”

“That’s not an excuse for flirting,” she grumbled. Maybe Niall wouldn’t be upset with Harry when she told him.

“No of course not, princess. But like...” he sighed. “That girl is a witch. I wasn’t kidding...I can see why he would want to flirt with someone pretty and nice like you.”

She felt her face warm at Niall’s assessment when there was a knock on her door. “Hang on.”

“The theme for today.”

She went to the door just in time to see the elevator closing. On the floor mat was a paper bag. A frowny face was drawn in black marker. She felt her heart flutter already knowing what was inside the bag. She opened it anyway. There she found a dozen eggs beneath a pair of folded leggings with the tag intact and a receipt. She sighed looking at the elevator already long gone.

She returned to her phone call. “S’that Harry?” Niall asked.

“Probably,” she muttered.

“Probably?”

“He left a bag of eggs. And a new pair of leggings.”

“Wow, he guessed your clothing size. He must be in love with you.”

She shook her head wishing what he said was true. “Niall, stop.”

He sighed. “I miss you already, darling.”

She smiled weakly. “I miss you too.”

“You should come visit before the year’s out. Show you around my old neighborhood.”

She nodded, wishing she could hug her best friend right then, through the phone screen. “I’d like that.”

“Have a good rest of your day, princess.”

*

It was a public space. Unavoidable. They were definitely going to run into each other. It was a matter of when not if. When Harry arrived, a full basket on his hip, he turned at the sight of her. The hammering of her heart didn’t stop her from sighing deeply.

“Wait...It’s a free country,” she mumbled and shrugged her assent. No use in monopolizing communal space. She was an adult and could handle the pair of them doing laundry at the same time. As long as she didn’t think about his mouth and how it tasted like mint gum and heaven.

Hesitantly, he picked a different washer than he normally did, a few spaces down from her rather than across from her.  They didn’t speak. They didn’t even look at each other. Her heart rate felt like it was a hummingbird’s wing. It felt so warm in the laundry room.

Talk to him! Her heart was whispering.

Do not talk to him. Her brain protested.

She was fortunate the laundry covered her awkward huff of laughter listening to the battle she was feeling internally. Harry didn’t seem to register it. Maybe they would just never speak again.

*

It seemed like that would be the case as far as she could tell. She had lost count how many times they had sat silently reading and waiting for their laundry loads to finish.

Harry was once more in the laundry room at the same time as her. She essentially ignored his presence for the sake of her heart and mind. Although, she felt her heart would be grateful if she started talking to him again. It had been two weeks since the eggs incident. Three weeks since they agreed to not see each other anymore.

The only chattering interaction they had was a few days ago when Harry obviously forgot laundry detergent after he had thrown all his stuff into the washer. Naturally, the little dispensary was empty, again. Unlike the last time he checked it, he didn’t punch the side of the machine. Instead, he just sighed heavily, grumbling to himself.

“Here,” she offered appearing at his side as he started to fish his stuff back out of the washer. He turned to her and she thought she might melt. Harry was so beautiful. His eyes, his mouth, his skin. He was tall and she knew he was warm and strong. She knew what his lips tasted like. It was so unfair and yet, she couldn’t stop herself.

Good. Her heart was practically giggling with delight.

“Oh...thanks, love.”

She wondered if Harry felt the spark of electricity that pierced her skin when Harry’s hand touched hers grabbing the jug from her.

He did.

*

“You probably think m’an idiot.”

She was literally trying to reach into the dryer to grab the sock that had clung with static to the back of the machine when she heard his voice. Her heart skipped a beat as it always did when she heard him. There was no denying how excited she was to hear his voice. She pulled herself out of the machine and turned to him. “What?” She asked her eyebrows pinching together. It was a weird way to enter a room, let alone start a conversation. Especially after what she would have to call a breakup for lack of a better term.

“For being with someone like Ava,” he started to pace along the length of the machines. He ran his hands through his hair making a mess of the curls. She thought her heart might break. She had experienced this kind of frustration firsthand. “Everyone says it. That they think m’stupid. That she’s awful and I should ‘ve broken up with her ages ago...” he mumbled. She frowned. “But...we’ve been together for s’long and—"

“I don’t think you’re an idiot,” she interrupted quickly. Her voice was even, and he nearly bumped into the back wall as he spun to look at her. She was holding a pair of sweatpants in her hands, but she was making specific, intense eye contact with Harry. Even if she shouldn’t be talking to him. She didn’t want him to think that she thought poorly of him.

“Y’don’t?” He asked quietly.

She shook her head. “It’s no one’s business but yours and Ava’s,” her name tasted bad in her mouth, but she knew it was because it was coated with jealousy. She didn’t have to like Ava, but that didn’t mean that Harry couldn’t. Harry also liked her. It seemed pretty obvious. She can’t imagine him not liking her and nearly ruining his relationship with Ava. She knew she was different than Ava. Maybe she was willing to believe that Harry saw good in people. She did the same thing. It would be hypocritical of her to not understand Harry’s plight when she suffered from the very same thing for nearly three years as well.

He stopped pacing and moved to his regular washer. He perched on top and watched her fold her laundry for a few moments. It was like before he ruined everything with a kiss. He wished he had listened to the little voice in his head all those months leading up to the kiss. Of course, it was right. Of course. She didn’t pay mind to Harry sitting there.

“Can we be friends?” He asked quietly. “Please?”

Niall had left for a year. Her family didn’t really live all that close. Her coworkers, while great people, were work friends. Everyone she worked with dealt with very sensitive cases and that had a lot of emotion. If they saw each other outside of work, she worried it would carry over too heavily, all that weighty emotion.

She could really use a friend.

But she wasn’t sure Harry wasn’t the right friend. She messed up, even though Harry had owned up to the mistake. She was part of it, and she worried that if she was friends with Harry, it would be a slippery slope to fall for someone she shouldn’t.

“I promise I won’t kiss y’again,” he murmured. As if he had read her mind. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Mistakes happen,” she shrugged. “I just don’t—”

“Sunshine,” he interrupted. “I shouldn’t have kissed you. But it wasn’t a mistake. I shouldn’t have called it that. Kissing you was like...breathing fresh air for the first time in...years.”

She closed her eyes, wishing she could do something about it. “You can’t stay stuff like that.”

There was an antagonizing pause while he thought this over. “I won’t bring it up again,” he promised.

There’s no harm in being friends. Her heart was whispering to her. You’re a great friend.

She looked at him for the first time, head on. He was already looking at her. His pretty green eyes. She knew his pretty pink lips were soft and warm. She knew his skin was warm too. Her heart skipped a beat. “We can be friends,” she said softly.

He sighed with relief and hurried over to wrap his arms around her. He squeezed her tightly. “Missed y’so much,” he mumbled into her hair.

Oh, this was a mistake. The voice in her head tutted.

Let it happen. I miss Niall. Her heart reminded the voice in response.

She closed her eyes, breathing in his scent and dropped the pair of socks she had in her hands on the floor so she could hug him back. Please don’t let this be a mistake.

*

They resumed their reading and chatting relationship as if the few weeks spent not talking hadn’t happened. Harry watched her fold laundry as if it were the most amazing thing in the world. It didn’t help that he thought she was the most amazing thing in the world.

You need to relax.His conscience was back, analyzing his every movement and every word he spoke to the pretty girl.

I have a handle on it. He thought back to the little voice. It was just the laundry room. At most it was an hour of a day that they spent chatting together. Or even not chatting when they had books.

“How’s work been?” He asked, trying to fill the silence for a moment.

He also wanted to fill the silence so he wouldn’t hug her again. He refrained from touching her after that because it felt so right and good. It made him feel whole. So maybe, Harry refrained from it. She seemed to have no problem compartmentalizing the moment that nearly ruined their friendship.

Which would have been a travesty because she was a really good friend. “It’s good. One of my patients got some good news so we’ve been navigating that, and it’s been really exciting because they’ve been dealing with struggles for a super long time,” she explained.

“That’s great,” he smiled. It felt nice to talk to her again. He was glad she was doing okay.

Harry was doing alright too. Work was normal and good. But he and Ava seemed to be fighting less and less. Which was great for his anger and his psyche. It allowed him to think about how he shouldn’t have kissed this lovely girl too. Even if he couldn’t tell her that.

Harry wasn’t intentionally mean-spirited. So, he didn’t bring up Ava unless she inquired.

“Can I ask a question that’s been bugging me?” She asked. He nodded. He was an open book with her. He had to be now. “Did you tell her?”

It was no use lying, but Harry kind of wanted to lie to her. He shook his head. “No.”

She waited for him to elaborate, but it seemed that Harry didn’t want to. He didn’t want it to be a thing. “Are you...going to?”

He shook his head silently. He knew that was wrong. Of course, he should have told Ava. But what good would come from it? Telling her that she made him miserable. Especially when they had been getting along better than they had in months...maybe even years.

“Harry,” she said softly.

“I know, love. I know...s’jus’—”

“I’m not judging you, I’m sure you have a reason. I don’t have to know it, but...I think it will eat at you,” she reminded him. “I didn’t tell my ex-boyfriend I wanted out of our relationship for over a year, and it made me...a mess,” she explained. “I know it’s hard, I just don’t want you to...be a mess.”

“Little late for that,” he muttered.

She giggled lightly. Harry thought it sounded like angels singing. “I won’t bring it up again,” she shrugged. “Your secret is safe with me, that’s for sure.”

“I imagine Niall wants t’kill me.” The silence was deafening as she ignored the insinuation that she told Niall about it. “Oh?” He smirked in surprise. “Y’don’t gossip over who y’kiss?”

She shook her head. “No... Niall...Niall moved for the year—maybe longer, for work. Overseas. I didn’t want to add more to his plate... and no: I didn’t want him to kill you. Not sure he would know how.”

“Oh, Sunshine. M’sorry,” he frowned. Losing her best friend for a while must have been really hard. He hadn’t spoke to her in three weeks and it felt like death. He had only known her a short while and she had known Niall almost half her life. “When did that happen?”

She smirked. “Uh...the day we stopped talking.” Harry took a moment to process that, and his frown deepened. He knew how sad that day was for him. But he would never forget the tears she shed and the way she looked so upset. Add losing her best friend? The poor thing. Harry’s heart broke all over again. “I do want to tell him. I’m just waiting for the right moment.”

“Yeah,” he nodded. “Don’t blame you.”

It was surreal to talk about it as if it had happened but also didn’t happen at the same time. He thought her brain was much too kind. Letting Harry keep secrets. “How...how is Ava?”

He snorted. “Sunshine, y’don’t have t’do that. M’sure s’hard...I mean I feel—”

“No,” she shook her head tamping down the jealousy that felt like hot air rising from her chest and out of her mouth. “No, this is what friends do. They ask about their friends’ significant others.”

Harry sighed. “Yeah...um...s’good. We’ve been arguing less.”

“That’s great!” But her heart felt like it was severing in half.

“I don’t know what causes the arguments sometimes. Contrary t’some of m’actions...m’a pretty smart guy,” he shrugged. She smiled sweetly at his insult toward himself thinking it was adorable. At least he knew he was an idiot. “S’weird though. I feel like she doesn’t like me the way she used to. But s’like we’re...stuck.”

She nodded. “Well...in my last relationship, I felt like I was stuck for over a year and I just...I couldn’t pull myself out of it. I hit rock bottom, though. Niall had to get me out.”

There was a huge pause. She went back to reading her book. This wasn’t unusual for their conversations. Harry needed time to process, think about what he wanted to say. But he was thinking about this past relationship of hers. In the three or so times she had spoken about it... it didn’t sound like something the embodiment of sunshine should have had to endure. Someone that liked a children’s fairy tale as much as she did, didn’t deserve a crummy relationship. Or a crummy guy like Harry kissing her out of nowhere. “S’horrible of me t’talk ‘bout this t’you,” he mumbled.

She shrugged. “I don’t think so. I did a whole round of clinical counseling on relationships. I’m actually probably the best person to talk about this to,” she smiled behind her book. Her eyes glinted with excitement, like she knew it was torturing Harry a bit.

Good for her. His little voice muttered.

“I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

“Friends talk about their relationships,” she nodded. “It’s okay,” she promised. “I would tell you if I was uncomfortable.”

Harry wanted to tell her he was uncomfortable not kissing her and not holding her right this very second. He knew it was wrong and he was glad that she couldn’t read his thoughts. He knew it wasn’t fair to Ava either. Ava was making serious efforts to be nicer. It was...bizarre.

Explore that. Harry’s heart suggested.

“Listen,” she sighed. “Do you want to break up with her?”

Harry frowned and looked at his lap. He couldn’t look at her when talked about this. No matter how okay she said it was. He shook his head.

He didn’t. He didn’t want people to say I told you so. He didn’t want to think about all the time that he had wasted. But it wasn’t a waste, right? It was good for a while. Even still had good in it, sometimes. Sparingly. Was that a reason to stay? To prove to people it was okay? That he was okay? For the few good times they had together anymore, it didn’t seem like a good idea. But he couldn’t bring himself to think differently.

“Then you’ll make it work,” she shrugged. “If and when you want to break up, that’s when you’ll know.”

Harry nodded. He didn’t speak again for a while. They enjoyed their books. “Y’said your parents don’t love each other,” he murmured randomly.

She nodded sullenly. “I feel that way. I would imagine they do... but it’s hard to see as an outsider.”

Harry thought he knew exactly what that looked like. “Do you want them t’get divorced?” He asked.

She put her book in her lap and looked at the ceiling in thought. She tilted her head to the left and right contemplating such a loaded question. It seemed obvious. Of course, she did. They were miserable together.

“No,” she shook her head. “I don’t think I do...or...I do but... I think I would be really sad if they did. It’s kind of selfish of me. But you know... they have a complicated relationship. They’ve been together for a lot longer than I’ve been alive... I don’t know everything about them. Who knows,” she shrugged. “I think their love language is fighting. That’s all.”

More silence.

When her washer went off and she was switching over to the dryer, Harry thought about kissing her again. Just to make the hurt in her life go away. Even for a minute. She deserved that. “Do you have a fried cauliflower recipe?” She asked.

He looked up and smirked. “Y’gonna be a big girl and try something new?”

She rolled her eyes at him. “Yeah. M’trying something new all the time these days.”

*

Being friends was a dream. Even if their friendship didn’t leave the laundry room. She gave great advice. Even better recipes. Fantastic book recommendations. She even had good recommendations to things in town that Harry hadn’t tried yet. He had no idea there was a mom-and-pop bookstore just two streets over. The late night café had delicious coffee and peppermint hot chocolate.

It was easy to be friends. There was no arguing. Not real arguing. They still argued about her ten-year-old taste buds and his failure to see why Andrew Garfield was better. Their debates while meaningless (she had joked that she was coming up with weird debates for her patients to relieve the seriousness of their situations—so now she had to live with the knowledge that Harry thought cereal was a soup), were fun. It was fun hanging out with her. Not arguing over socks or keys. Or whether they were arguing too much.

She tossed her last pair of socks in her basket with a giggling sigh. They had just finished a fit of laughter after impersonating one of the jokes she heard on a late night talk show. “Okay, well, see you soon. Let me know how you like the bakery.”

He nodded. Biting the inside of his lip. “Hey Sunshine,” he called softly just as she hit the threshold of the room.

“Yeah?” She turned back. She didn’t like the way her stomach flipped over his nicknames but it seemed that her protests wouldn’t stop him. She just had to hope Harry called everyone nicknames. Maybe he called everyone Sunshine and kitten.

But she kind of hoped he didn’t either.

“Thanks for being my friend,” his voice was almost apologetic, like he knew it was hard for her. It was. But she liked to believe she was good at hiding it. But after spending so much time with Harry, it was hard to let him go. He was a really good friend.

“Yeah, of course, Harry,” she smiled softly.

“I miss when y’called me munchkin, kitten,” he frowned looking down at his lap.

She released a long sigh, wishing she could get those days back. “Yeah...” she sighed. “I miss it too.”

*

Harry and Ava fought less, that much was obvious. But granted, if they had one less fight in one day per week, that would have been less than what they had before. However, this was a little more substantial. Ava was snuggling up to Harry again at night and sharing the remote. They watched shows together and laughed. It felt like before...before they fought all the time.

But it was...weird. It wasn’t something Harry could put his finger on. It was just something he felt. Like something wasn’t quite right. In the back of his mind—the conscience that was so adamantly against the sweet girl in the laundry room was silent about the weird feeling Harry had in the pit of his stomach.

It was while Ava slept that he thought about it most. It wasn’t good but the privacy of his own thoughts had to be better than the physical alternative. He thought of that kiss and how perfect it felt. He imagined it a thousand times over. Harry never even thought about how it was nice—it was so intertwined with how wrong it was he didn’t get a chance to think of it as...perfect.

Why do you want to be in this relationship? His heart asked.

Tell. Ava. His conscience begged.

Harry didn’t see the point. They just got back to a good place. He was friends with the sweet girl. Things were going well.

Too well.

*

Again, they were fighting less. They still had arguments that devolved into a thousand other little arguments frequently enough that they should have called it quits anyway—or at least their neighbors should have said something. He guessed that the carpeting and soundproofing must have been much better than he gave it credit for.

But there were some things they would always fight over.

Harry never put the kitchen towel back on the oven handle, Ava was the first one to say something needed to be vacuumed but never did, and that Ava was still keeping Harry away from her friends, coworkers, and even her family.

Right now, Ava was headed out to a night with friends. But she let it slip that one of the other’s significant others would be there. “Y’want me to come along?” He asked. Her hesitation was all the answer that Harry needed. He chuckled dryly. “Great, y’don’t want me there. Fine.”

“It’s not that deep, Harry,” she rolled her eyes, she slid her purse over her shoulder and grabbed her keys off the counter.

Harry stood in front of the door. “Why don’t y’want me there?” He asked shaking his head in exasperation.

“Because I don’t want to fight in public, Harry. It’s embarrassing.”

“We don’t have to fight.”

“I don’t trust us not to. Look we’re fighting now.”

“Because you’re embarrassed by me!”

“I am not! I’m embarrassed by us!”

“Y’don’t want t’be seen with me Ava,” he said listing off the offenses by counting on his fingers. “Ever. Y’don’t take me t’your work parties, y’don’t want t’go out, y’don’t even take me t’your family anymore. Y’don’t want t’go anywhere with me,” he shook his head. “I don’t get it, what happened?”

“Nothing happened!” Her voice was practically hysterical. “I just want to do things by myself!”

“We never do anything together anymore!”

“Yes, we do!”

“No, we stay at home. You don’t want to go out you don’t want anyone t’see us!”

“I don’t trust us not to argue—”

But it devolved rapidly. It turned into the same tired fights about cleaning. The backhanded comments she made when Harry wore a shirt she didn’t like anymore. You’re wearing that? Or the way that they just never agreed on home décor or even where the toothpaste belonged (on the left or the right of the sink).

“I can’t find my phone,” she grumbled amidst the argument.

“For the love of God,” Harry sighed. “How do y’consistently lose these things?”

“I don’t mean to!” She frowned. He pulled his phone out to call it. “It’s on silent,” she murmured.

Rubbing his hands over his face, Harry sighed and tossed his phone on the sofa. “Did y’check your coat pockets?” He asked as he started searching under the furniture. “Or your purse?”

“Of course I checked there!”

“Well last time you didn’t check your coat and that’s where y’keys were—”

“Go ahead, call me stupid Harry. I know that’s what you’re trying to say,” she rolled her eyes, glaring at him. Again, Harry was searching through their whole place while she stood there antagonizing him.

“I don’t think you’re stupid, Ava. I think you’re forgetful and y’need t’put these things in a specific place so you don’t lose them.”

“No, you think I’m stupid.”

“Ava. Do not. Put words in my mouth,” his voice was low and slow as he continued his search. “S’not like y’don’t say backhanded things t’me all the time.”

“Like what?” She snapped.

“Like the whole laundry room makes m’clothes smell bad.”

“You can’t possibly be still on about this! For God’s sake Harry this is exactly why I don’t want to go places together! You hold these grudges and bring them up when it’s convenient for you to—”

If Harry was asked for his thought process, he never would be able to explain it. He was flinging the covers back to their bed. Still searching for her phone. She followed him in the room to continue yelling at him. Then he saw her pull her phone from her purse. The one she assured him was not in her bag. It was simply too much.

“I did something bad,” he blurted. Where did that come from? His conscience must have been excited. The yelling stopped. There was a hum in the air like after an old TV turned off and the picture sizzled off screen.

She grinned wickedly. Harry felt his blood ice over. It was like he already knew what she was going to say. “How pathetic. You fucked someone. Good for you Harry. Honestly.”

“What is the matter with you?” He spat back shaking his head. “I—”

“Well, now I don’t have to feel guilty.”

The ear-piercing silence was as if his ear drums exploded. It was painful to process those words.

Harry stared at her, unblinking. Surely, he misheard her. There was no way she was justifying what Harry said to make herself feel better. He heard her wrong. She wouldn’t do that, there had to be a limit. Their relationship, no matter how difficult it was...it had to be the limit, right?

“I didn’t fuck anybody, Ava.” Whether he wanted to sleep with the pretty girl or not, he didn’t. At the end of the day, he didn’t do it. Thinking about it was wrong. Part of him hoped that if it came down to it, he wouldn’t have. He would never know. There was no telling. But right now, that didn’t matter. He hadn’t done something worse. Divine intervention, clarity, the fucking washing machine timer saved him from having sex. “Did you... fuck somebody else?” The question felt like someone had shoved a handful of rocks into his mouth. It was hard to say out loud.

Ava was no longer beautiful. The scowl on her face made her look nasty. Her nose crooked, her lips curled in a snarl. She was a witch. Plain and simple. The silence was telling. Her lack of a response told him everything he needed to know.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he pressed his hands to his eyes. Exasperated, hurt, heartbroken. Everything. Harry felt everything at that moment.

Holy shit. His conscience agreed with his heart.

“Why would you say you did something bad?!” She practically shrieked. “Who gives a shit about a kiss?!”

“Ava, are y’serious!?” He shouted back. His voice felt raw. The tears pricked behind his eyes. This was bad. So, so, so bad. “It ate me alive!”

“It was a kiss!”

“How. How is this my fault, Ava?!” He shouted. She was silent. Harry rarely reached his full yelling potential. Ever. He knew he was loud—maybe even scary in the right light. So he didn’t like to yell that loud if he could help it. It was rude and he didn’t like the person he was when he yelled like that. But right now...he couldn’t help it. “Y’mad at me because I didn’t sleep with someone else? That I only kissed someone? So that y’can justify fucking someone else behind m’back?” More silence. She simply glared at him. But he watched, her eyes welled with tears. Like she had any reason to take the moral high ground. Not that Harry had much higher ground to stand on, but he hadn’t slept with someone else, at the end of it all. “We’re done,” he shook his head.

Her body deflated. “Harry,” she whimpered. Voice breaking on his name like she had been so faithful and loving for their entire life all and all of sudden it was done; broken in seconds. She reached for Harry and he stepped back shaking his head.

“No, Ava. Done. S’been way longer than it should ‘ve been. We don’t like each other anymore. S’obvious t’anyone but us. This is jus’ proof. We’re done.”

She shook her head quickly, her body looked like it was going to crumple under the weight of ending a long relationship. “But...I love you.”

“No... no, you don’t,” he shook his head, his heart pounding. His throat felt like there were knives dragging along the length of his esophagus. “You don’t fuck someone else when you’re in love.”

Is that why you haven’t slept with Ava in months? His heart wondered in the silence of the room save for the sounds of Ava’s pathetic sniffles.

I’m sorry. The little voice in his head was soft-spoken. Shy and apologetic.

“We’re done, Ava. It’s over.”

*

It took more screaming of course. Harry had rubbed his eyes raw and red. It was nearly one in the morning when Ava finally left the apartment. She would get the rest of her stuff another day. She didn’t apologize once.

Harry, alone with his horrible thoughts and his sadness, was feeling terrible and broken. Maybe he deserved this just for hurting that sweet sunshiny girl. If that was the case, he thought maybe Ava should have been pregnant with someone else to get the right amount of heartache he deserved for hurting that sweet girl.

He didn’t want to ask how long she slept with someone else. He would get himself tested just in case the following morning. But he hoped Ava had enough sense to use protection. He was shaking with anger and heartache.

There was only one thing he knew that would cure him. One person that could fix it.

*

The knock jolted her awake on her sofa. She glanced at the clock. Who would come here at one in the morning? She checked her phone for messages and there were none—maybe Niall came back to visit? No, he would have said something. He was a terrible secret keeper. Pausing the movie she was watching, she wrapped her blanket around her as she hurried to the door. Peering through the peephole, she frowned, then opened the door.

Harry looked utterly upset. Worse than she had ever seen him. His skin was pale. Even his pretty brown curls lacked life. He looked so...broken.

“Harry,” she whispered softly. She put a hand to her chest. It seemed...sinful for him to look this sad. It wasn’t fair. Even if she wasn’t supposed to love him, she wanted to comfort him. Despite his mishap, he really was quite lovely. “What’s wron—”

“I know... I know I messed up... kissing y’when I shouldn’t ‘ve. I know that... I... I don’t know if I would’ve stopped us...but...she...” he sighed heavily. His voice was scratchy sounding. Like he had a bad cough. She wondered how long they yelled for, the poor thing. She could feel her face fall. She already knew what Harry was going to say. She could see it in his rubbed-red eyes and sullen expression. “She slept with someone else... and I know m’not much better... but... we didn’t... we didn’t do that.”

Her heart broke for him. He was right. She doesn’t know if they would have stopped had Harry not stopped to ask about her picture frame. But they didn’t go further, at the end of it all. They didn’t. Maybe what they did wasn’t right, but it could have been a hell of a lot worse.

How could she break his heart?

Harry thought she looked so cozy, wrapped in a soft blanket and her hair a little messy from how she was sleeping. Her eyes seemed wider somehow, fresh from her slumber. She was adorable and as sad as Harry was, just seeing her nearly made him smile.

“Oh, munchkin,” she whispered.

There was a little flutter in Harry’s tired, broken heart at the sound of the name “munchkin.”

Finally. His heart and conscience were once more in agreement.

--

general taglist: @justlemmeadoreyou @daydreamingofmatilda @sunshinemoonsposts @youdontcaredoyou @tiredinwinter @loving-hazz @likeapplejuicenpeach @straightontilmornin @freedomfireflies @littlenatilda @kathb59 @babegoals @angel-upon @lilfreakjez @mleestiles @ameliaalvarez06 @canyonmoondreams @summertime-pills @daphnesutton @l4rrysh0use @perfectywrong @foreverxholland @lolyouallsuck @buckybarnessimpp @stylesfever @harrysxcarolina @haarrrys @lovrave @st-ev-ie @pandeebearstyles

Love and Dryer Sheets: @love-letters-to-uranus

I'm sorry if I missed anyone in the taglist. Please let me know if you'd like to join, if it didn't work, if you no longer want to be included, etc. :)

If you like this, check out my masterlist for more of my writing.

[stylesispunk]

"I couldn't want you anymore" | part 9

Artist!Joel Miller x florist!reader

series masterlist | previous chapter | next chapter

summary: when Sarah's mom comes back into Joel's life to fight for their past relationship, Joel needs to convince her he is in a happy relationship with the florist next to his gallery in order to make her go away. The problem is, that he and the florist can't stand each other's guts or that it's what he thinks.

warning: time jump, age gap (8 years), remember bee is reader's nickname, reader overthinks a lot in this one, unnecessary angst(because sad me, sad writing) fluff.

a/n: Okay, chapter 9 is here! The last chapter flopped so bad, so I hope you like this one because is more than 7k words, so give it love, please. It's kinda sad when there's no feedback at all. Reblogs and comments are appreciated. The next chapter may be the last one. Happy reading.

masterlist

One year later, 

You and Joel have been dating for a year and have lived together for two weeks. You've enjoyed a lovely year together. Cooking together in the kitchen, quiet Sunday mornings with breakfast in bed, and the simple delight of coming home to one another after a long day had become treasured in both of your routines. 

You couldn’t lie. You wouldn’t imagine this thing happening. Five years ago, you and Joel couldn’t even spend a minute together without wanting to murder each other, and now you were so in love that both of your hearts could burst into flames. 

And today, on your first anniversary as an official couple, the day had started wonderfully okay. Joel surprised you with a beautifully arranged bouquet he made himself with flowers from your shop, a delicious breakfast in bed for you, and a promise of a dinner at night in a restaurant he had reserved for you to enjoy a romantic dinner. 

He left a little earlier than you this morning since he needed to finalize some negotiations with some prominent and important painters who wanted to exhibit their work in his gallery. You were proud of him, so you didn't reach for him as much as you normally did because this day was also significant to him. So, you went about your business as normal, selling flowers and delivering a wonderful cup of tea or coffee to passers-by, occasionally stealing glances at the gallery, hoping everything was going well for Joel.

So as the evening started to envelop the clear sky, and you were closing the door of your shop, you noticed Joel’s truck was missing. You thought he had maybe gone home before you to get ready, but as soon as you arrived there, he wasn’t there. You called him, but the calls weren’t answered, and the messages neither. Still, not thinking negatively, you went upstairs to get ready.

You choose a black silky fabric flowing elegantly around you that you bought just a few days ago for this night. Despite the excitement of the evening, a flicker of concern about Joel's absence lingered in the back of your mind. You dismissed it, attributing it to the busyness of the day. As you applied a touch of makeup and styled your hair before heading to the restaurant, perhaps he was already there waiting for you. 

But as night arrived, you were alone in a restaurant where you were both supposed to have dinner to celebrate your anniversary, and he hadn’t shown up. 

The restaurant's ambient lighting cast a soft glow on the empty chair across from you. The anniversary celebration that started with a beautifully arranged bouquet of flowers had taken an unexpected turn as the minutes ticked by, and Joel was nowhere to be seen. The anniversary celebration, which had begun with a beautifully arranged bouquet of flowers, had taken an unexpected turn as the minutes passed, and Joel was nowhere to be seen.

Doubt crept into your mind, and you found yourself checking your phone for any missed messages or calls. The disappointment grew with each passing moment, and you couldn't shake the feeling of being stood up on a day meant for celebration.

The waiter approached with a sympathetic smile. "Is everything alright, miss? Would you like to order or perhaps wait a bit longer?"

You sighed, your faint smile masking your disappointment. "I'll give it a bit more time, thank you."

The restaurant's vibrant ambiance became a backdrop to the quiet anguish within as you waited. Your mind raced with questions: was there an emergency? Has he forgotten? You tried calling Joel, but his phone went directly to voicemail.

The minutes felt like hours, and the celebration, which was supposed to be full of joy and shared memories, became a lonely wait at a table set for two.

You eventually opted to leave, with the burden of disappointment weighing heavily on your shoulders. As you paid for the untouched dinner, the server showed real concern, giving gentle words of comfort.

The city lights seemed to blend as you stepped out into the night, through a mix of crystal tears and unresolved questions. 

You paused at the door when you arrived home, unsure of what to expect.

You looked at your phone, expecting a message or call with an explanation. Nothing. When you entered the house, the lights were still turned off, so you walked to your shared bedroom, but Joel was not there. You took off your clothing, grabbed your pajamas, and walked to the bathroom to remove your make-up and go to bed. Just as you were finishing, the sound of a close downstairs interrupted your thoughts.

Joel entered the bedroom and smiled at you, visibly drunk. 

The air in the room shifted with relief, guilt, and possibly a hint of defiance from your side as he took in your gaze. Joel stumbled slightly as he approached you.

"Love” he slurred; his words not entirely coherent. "I'm sorry. Lost track of time”

Your disappointment transformed into hurt and frustration, and a growing concern for the person before you. The scent of alcohol clung to him, and the Joel you had known, thoughtful and present, seemed distant.

"Why didn't you call?" you gently asked, yet your voice was cold as ice.

He attempted a nonchalant shrug, but it was unsteady. "Phone died. It's just a celebration, Bee. We can have another one."

As you looked at him, all the beautiful moments of the past year felt overshadowed by this moment.

You took a deep breath, trying to find the right words. "Just a celebration?” you asked, clearly hurt. “You understand that we hated each other's guts for years and now we’re together, even living together.”

“Those artists want to display their work on my galley, Bee. I wanted to celebrate because it is important to me.”

“And I’m not?” you asked, feeling small. “Am I not important to you?”

Joel's unsteady behavior appeared to grow worse as your questions hung in the air. Your words sunk into the silence, generating a noticeable tension.

"No, Bee, that's not what I meant," he mumbled "Of course, you're important. It's only... This offer surprised me, and I got carried away. "I made a mistake."

Your heart ached at the disparity between your expectations and the reality of the situation. The celebration you had envisioned, a symbol of your shared journey, now lay in fragments.

"But why didn't you communicate?" you pressed; your voice filled with hurt. "A simple call, a message. I was waiting, Joel. I was excited about tonight."

He ran a hand through his hair, a gesture that usually conveyed frustration, but now it seemed tinged with remorse. "I know, Bee. I messed up big time. I'm sorry."

The distance between your expectations and the reality of the situation crushed your heart.

"But why didn't you tell me?" you pressed, your voice tense. "A simple phone call, a message. Joel, I was waiting for you.  I was looking forward to tonight."

He ran his fingers through his hair, a usually impatient behavior that now appeared tinged with guilt. "I understand, Bee. I made a huge mistake. I apologize."

You didn’t say a word. He knew it was better to have you shouting at him than giving him this cold silence. If he had only told you about it before acting so careless about your feelings. If only he weren’t the person who always messed up with your heart. 

“Where are you going?” he asked, as you grabbed your pillow. 

You turned to face Joel; pain still fresh in your eyes. "I don’t want to sleep next to you tonight.” 

“Can we talk in the morning?” He quietly asked.

The weight of unspoken words and not resolved emotions weighed heavily on the silence that followed. You shut the guest room door behind you, leaving Joel alone in the quiet bedroom.

When he woke up the next morning, the first thing he noticed was the absence of your warmth next to him, and his heart hurt because of how thoughtless he had been the night before. His head was killing him, and when he eventually opened his eyes, he found a glass of water and a pill next to him, along with a message:  

"Take them, so your stupid head doesn't hurt anymore." 

He grinned, knowing that even when you were upset with him, you still found a way to take care of him.

After some time, he was freshened up and dressed. He made his way downstairs, finding Sarah pouring a glass of orange juice, 

“Good morning Dad,” she said.

“Morning baby girl”, he kissed her temple. “Where’s Bee?”

“She left earlier. She left breakfast done for us though, especially for you” she said, signaling at the pancakes and orange juice on the table.

“What did she say?” 

She grabbed the piece of paper with the note you had left for Joel about his breakfast.

Sarah handed the note to Joel, and he read your words:

“Breakfast is ready for you, even if you're a big dummy sometimes. Make sure to eat. We can talk later.

-Bee"

Joel sighed, realizing the gravity of his actions. The note reflected a mix of care and disappointment, a sentiment he knew he had to address.

Joel sighed, realizing the gravity of his actions. The note reflected a mix of care and disappointment, a sentiment he knew he had to address.

"Thanks, Sarah," he said, genuinely grateful for the effort you had made even when upset. "I'll talk to Bee later."

“So, what did you do?” she asked,

Joel hesitated for a moment, choosing his words carefully. "I made a mistake, Sarah. I let something else take priority over what really matters. It wasn't fair to Bee.”

Sarah's expression was a mix of interest and concern. "Is Bee mad at you?"

Joel gave a sad nod. "She is, indeed. She has every right to be so. "I ruined our celebration and hurt her feelings."

Sarah crossed her arms, thinking about her father's behavior. "What are you going to do about it?"

Joel groaned, with an enthusiastic look in his eyes. "I'm going to apologize and make amends." I care deeply about Bee, and I don't want to mess things up."

Sarah smiled encouragingly at him. "Have you noticed she seems more sensitive these days?"

Joel rubbed his brow as he considered Sarah's observation. "Do you think so?" "Why did you say that?"

Sarah shook her head. "I'm not sure, just an observation. Perhaps it's because you and she are becoming more serious, and she is becoming more invested in everything."

Joel nodded "You could be right. That is something I need to be more aware of. Thank you for bringing it to my attention, kid."

"Oh," she remembered, "she was throwing up in the morning, maybe she is sick?"

Sarah let out a sigh. "I'm not sure, Dad. Maybe she didn't want to bother you after last night."

Joel's expression was a mix of concern and sadness. "I messed up big time."

Sarah stroked his shoulder. "Go talk to her, Dad." Make everything right. And perhaps you could bring her some soup or something. Isn't that what you do when someone is sick?

Joel laughed. "Right. Thank you so much, darling. "I'll take care of it." With renewed enthusiasm, he set out to find you and talk. 

Sarah continued, encouraged by her father's acknowledgment, "Just make sure she knows you're sorry and that you care about her." You can't afford to make a mistake here, Dad."

Joel chuckled at his daughter's insight. "You are completely correct. I'll do all in my power to set things right." He then excused himself to find you and deal with the mess he had made.

Joel returned Sarah's smile, acknowledging her perspective. "I am, kid. More than I ever imagined I could be."

Once he arrived at the gallery, he got out of the car. The first thing he did was look at your flower shop. And there were you, outside, laughing at something an old lady was telling you while you were serving her some tea at one of the tables you had outside of the flower shop.

As you were there, he couldn’t help but think how lucky he was you that loved him. You were effortless, beautiful and a kind soul he sometimes thought he didn’t deserve.

Joel took a moment to observe you from a distance, a small smile playing on his lips as he watched the interaction between you and the old lady. He felt a mixture of warmth and gratitude, knowing that you were a significant part of his life.

He approached the flower shop, gathering his bravery. You looked up from serving tea as he cleared his throat, your gaze catching his.

You smiled politely, but your eyes were a little unsure. 

"Who is this handsome man?" the old lady asked, seeing you two connect. 

Joel laughed, enjoying the playful interruption. "My name is Joel. I'm her boyfriend," he said, hoping his introduction wasn't too bold.

The elderly lady's eyes twinkled with delight. "Well, Joel, aren't you a lucky man? This lady has a golden heart."

The compliment made you blush, and you were happy for the distraction. "Oh, Mary, please stop. This is Mary, a regular customer and close friend."

Joel returned his gorgeous smile as he offered a hand to Mary. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mary." Bee frequently mentions you."

Mary placed his hand in hers, shaking it firmly. "Oh, she does? So, young man, you'd better take good care of her."

Joel nodded; his gaze fixed on yours. "I plan to."

Joel returned his attention to you as Mary excused herself. "Can we talk, Bee?"

You appeared conflicted for a moment, then you relented and guided him into the shop.

The aroma of fresh flowers enveloped both of you once you entered. Although the tone was light, there remained an undercurrent of unresolved anxiety. You stepped behind the counter, raising an eyebrow at Joel.

"What kind of flowers are we looking for today, sir?" you asked politely.

Joel grinned, appreciating your willingness to play along. "I'm thinking about something bright that says 'I'm sorry for being an idiot'?"

You chuckled, grabbing a mix of vibrant blooms. "Ah, the classic apology bouquet. Popular choice."

Joel leaned on the counter, watching you work. "So, Bee, about last night..."

You interrupted, holding up a finger. "Let me finish this one, and then we can talk. You're not off the hook just yet."

He nodded, a playful glint in his eyes. "I'm at your mercy, flower queen.”

Once the bouquet was ready, you handed it to Joel. "There you go, the 'I'm Sorry' special. Now, talk."

Joel took the bouquet, his eyes softening. "I messed up, Bee. I should have prioritized you over the gallery celebration. I'm truly sorry."

You sighed, leaning against the counter. “It’s not about that. You could have told me, but instead you treated our anniversary as nothing important to you.”

Joel's expression turned more earnest as he listened to your words. "Bee, you're right. I should have communicated better. I didn't mean to make you feel unimportant. Our anniversary means everything to me."

You looked at him, the frustration giving way to a softer understanding. "I just want us to be on the same page, Joel. We're in this together."

He nodded, his eyes shining with sincerity. "I understand, and I apologize for my error." I promise I'll make it up to you."

You cracked a little smile at him. "Actions, Joel, speak louder than words. Remember? I know that living together is something different now, and maybe you felt a little stifled by my presence at – 

"Don't you ever say that again," he interjected seriously. The increased passion in Joel's voice surprised you. His eyes pierced into yours. "I don't feel suffocated, Bee. Not even for a second. It's what I want to have you here, sharing our lives. It's something I've always wanted."

His sincerity resonated, and you felt a warmth spreading in your chest. You nodded, the unspoken understanding settling between you two. "Okay, Joel. I believe you."

He reached for your hand; his grip gentle yet reassuring. "I love you, Bee. And I don't want you to ever doubt that."

A soft smile played on your lips.

“Come here” he said.

You walked around the counter to be close to him and allowed him to put his arms around your middle, you kissed his neck.

“Sarah told me you threw up this morning, are you sick?” he questioned, worried. 

You sighed, feeling the warmth of Joel's embrace. "I think it's just a stomach bug or something. It happens."

He tightened his grip on you, concern evident in his voice. "Have you seen a doctor?"

"Not yet," you admitted, "but I'll schedule an appointment if it persists."

Joel's fingers traced comforting circles on your back. "Take care of yourself, Bee. I hate seeing you unwell."

You chuckled; the vibration felt against his chest. "I'm a tough. A little bug won't bring me down."

He kissed the top of your head. "Still, let me know if you need anything. And about last night..."

You looked up at him, and he continued, "I'll make it up to you, Bee. I promise."

You nodded, feeling grateful for his understanding. "I know you will, Joel."

A few days later, Joel kept true to his promise. He had planned a surprise meal for you at a nice restaurant, and he led you inside with a slight smile on his lips. The atmosphere was cozy, with soft lighting and a bouquet of your favorite flowers on the table.

As you settled into your seats, Joel took a moment to gaze at you, admiration evident in his eyes. "I've been thinking a lot about us," he began, sincerity lacing his words. "I know I messed up our celebration, and I want to make it up to you."

"It's okay," you murmured as you took his hands in yours as you smiled at him.

Joel had chosen a dimly lit restaurant for your date, with a pleasant setting that set the tone for a romantic evening. You and Joel shared a lovely supper while telling stories and laughing. You couldn't help but feel a sense of warmth and connection as the night proceeded.

Joel made every effort to remain attentive throughout the meal, engaging in significant conversations and making you feel appreciated. You felt a wave of nausea as dessert arrived. Excusing yourself, you dashed to the restroom, hoping to alleviate the bad feeling.

While you were gone, Joel recognized one of the artists he had celebrated with the night before. She was seated at the bar when she noticed Joel and decided to start a conversation.

The artist, an attractive and confident woman, started to flirt with Joel. He tried to keep the talk light and professional, but the girl appeared determined to inject a little humor into their conversation. You came from the restroom just in time to see their conversation, unnoticed by Joel.

As you approached, you noticed the exchange between Joel and the artist. Your brows furrowed, and a tinge of jealousy crept into your heart.

“Excuse me” you interrupted as the woman caressed Joel’s arm, “What’s happening here?”

Joel turned, a slightly surprised expression on his face as he saw you standing there. The artist, still oblivious to Joel's relationship status, greeted you with a friendly smile.

"Oh, hi there! she said, extending a hand. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize Joel was here with someone."

You shook her hand, trying to maintain composure. "Hi. Who are you?"

"I'm Michelle, one of the artists from the gallery," she replied. "Joel and I were just chatting about some upcoming exhibitions.” She smiled at you through her teeth, not happy about the interruption. “Who are you?”

You glanced at Joel, who seemed to sense the tension. “His girlfriend” you said, simply. 

The woman seemed speechless for a moment. “I didn’t know he had a girlfriend” she said.

“Well, you know now.”

“How long have you both been dating?” she asked, mostly to Joel.

“A year” he said, proudly, smiling at you.

“It’s not a long time” she said.

You raised an eyebrow, unamused by her comment. 

"It's long enough for us." Joel said.

“And- “

“Oh my god, if you have so many questions why don’t you sit with Joel and talk” you spoke “I’m going home” you said, already walking out of the restaurant. 

Joel hastily followed you out of the restaurant, catching up with you just as you reached the sidewalk. He grabbed your arm gently, turning you to face him.

"Bee, wait. I'm sorry about that. I had no idea she'd do that."

You sighed, looking into his sincere eyes. "I know you didn't invite that. It's just frustrating sometimes."

"I get it," Joel said, running a hand through his hair. "But you didn’t have to act like a child, bee. She is a really prestigious and important artist for the gallery”, he added, acting angrily.

You felt a twinge of frustration at Joel's comment. "I'm not acting like a child, Joel. I just didn't expect to see you being flirted with so blatantly, especially on our anniversary celebration. It caught me off guard."

"Let's just go home and forget about this, okay?"

“No” he said, grabbing you from your wrist, taking you off guard. “You have been overreacting lately, what’s happening to you?”

You winced at his sudden grip on your wrist, the unexpected force surprising you. Joel's frustration was evident, and you could feel the tension building.

"I'm not overreacting," you said, your voice steady but trembling with your own frustration. "I just didn't like seeing you getting flirted like that. Maybe I didn't handle it perfectly, but it bothered me."

Joel released his grip, "Bee, I just want you to trust me. Nothing happened, and I wouldn't let anything happen. You don't need to get defensive."

You took a step back, rubbing your arm where he had held you. "I trust you, Joel. It's not about that. It's just... I don't know. Maybe I'm more sensitive lately."

“Why?” he continued. 

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me, okay?” you sobbed, ashamed of yourself. “Can we just go home?”

Joel nodded, realizing that pressing the issue any further might not be the best decision. He unlocked the car door for you, and you both climbed inside for the ride home. The mood inside the car was tense, due to a mix of unresolved stress and an equal need to move on from recent events.

However, during the drive, you started feeling a bit dizzy. The events of the evening, the unexpected encounter, and the rush of emotions seemed to take a toll on you. You leaned back in the seat, closing your eyes to quell the uneasiness.

Joel noticed your discomfort and became concerned. "Bee, are you okay? You seem a bit off."

You took a deep breath, trying to shake off the dizziness. "I think it's just everything catching up with me. I'll be fine."

But as the car continued its journey home, the dizziness persisted, and you couldn't shake the feeling that something more than just the events of the evening was affecting you.

Joel's worry deepened, and he reached over to gently place a hand on your shoulder. "Maybe we should stop by the hospital, just to be sure."

You shook your head, attempting to muster a reassuring smile. "It's probably just fatigue. I'll rest when we get home."

However, Joel wasn't convinced. As you pulled into the driveway, he helped you out of the car, supporting you as you walked into the house. The uneasiness lingered, prompting Joel to insist on seeking medical advice.

"Let's at least call a doctor, Bee," he suggested, his concern etched across his face. "I want to make sure you're okay."

“I’ll go tomorrow,” you said.

Joel nodded hesitantly, knowing your hesitation. He led you to the couch and urged you to rest while he went to get a drink of water. The room appeared to spin as you sat there, and the unease in your gut continued.

When Joel returned, he handed you the water with concern in his eyes. "I know you're tough, but this isn't normal, Bee." Please have you checked out by a doctor tonight."

You took a sip of water while you pondered his statements. The dizziness and discomfort were fading away.

"I told you I'll go tomorrow. I'm better," you said with a faint smile.

"Okay"

After a few hours, in the middle of the night, Joel woke up to your absence beside him in bed. Instant worry creeped up in his body. Where would you be at this time of the night? He made his way downstairs, finding the little dim light of the kitchen on with no sign of you.

Joel's worried expression transformed into a mixture of relief and amusement as he saw you on the kitchen floor, eating ice-cream. 

"Love, what are you doing down here?" he asked, a small smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

Caught in the act, you looked up at him, your eyes wide with surprise. A moment of silence passed before you burst into laughter, the sound echoing through the quiet kitchen.

"I couldn't sleep, and I was craving something sweet," you explained between giggles.

Joel chuckled, joining you on the floor. "In the middle of the night? You're a true midnight snacker, aren't you?"

You nodded, still laughing. "Guilty as charged." You smiled at him again. “I didn’t get to finish my dessert at the restaurant.” 

He wrapped his arms around you, pulling you into a warm embrace. "You never cease to surprise me, my love."

With a playful grin, you held up the ice cream container. "Want to join me?" 

Joel shook his head, feigning seriousness. "I'll pass. It's past my bedtime, you know."

“Are you going back to bed?”

Joel nodded, his playful smile lingering. "Yeah, I should. But if you're going to stay up, I might make an exception."

You laughed, shaking your head. "No, go back to sleep. I'll join you in a bit."

He pressed a gentle kiss on your forehead. "Alright, but don't stay up too late. I'll be waiting for you."

As Joel headed back to bed, you enjoyed the solitude of the quiet kitchen, savoring the ice cream. You didn’t know why you have been craving sweet snacks so much lately.

After a while, you decided to join Joel in bed, carrying the warmth of the content feeling you had after enjoying the midnight snack. The soft glow of the moonlight seeped through the curtains as you quietly entered the bedroom, finding Joel peacefully asleep.

Slipping under the covers, you cuddled up beside him, savoring the warmth and familiarity of his presence. As you closed your eyes, you fell asleep into the peaceful dream you have had in a long time.

In the following days, your unease persisted, prompting you to make an appointment with the doctor, as Joel had suggested. The clinic was calm, with the soft hum of medical equipment in the background. The scent of antiseptic filled the air, making you a bit more uncomfortable. 

Joel accompanied you to the doctor, his hand reassuringly holding yours throughout the process. As you anxiously waited for the results, your mind raced with thoughts about what might be causing your recent discomfort. The doctor, a friendly and reassuring figure, led you through the examination.

Finally, the doctor returned, a warm smile on their face “Congratulations, you’re pregnant.”

The news hung in the air, filling the room with a mix of shock and thrill. Tears flooded into your eyes as you realized the new life growing inside you, triggering an eruption of the mix of emotions.

As you left the clinic, a myriad of thoughts and emotions swirled within you. You decided not to immediately share the news with Joel, you were scared all over again. 

You had recently passed your first year of a relationship and you were both adjusting to your life living together. You felt anxious as you walked through the hallway of the hospital 

 the weight of the revelation settling in your mind. The hallway seemed longer than usual, and the white walls closed in on you, echoing your internal turmoil.

Joel, sensing your unease, gently placed a hand on the small of your back as you walked together. "Are you okay, Bee? How was it?”

You forced a smile, though your eyes betrayed some tears. "Yeah, just a lot on my mind. Let's talk about it later."

“Are you sure?” He stopped in his tracks to face you. “Love, don’t scare me” 

You faked the best of your smiles and nodded “I’m sure. Just a stomach bug. Let’s go” you said, walking ahead.

What if he didn’t want to have a baby with you?

Later that evening, as the three of you settled on the couch to watch a movie, the atmosphere was relaxed. Sarah, snuggled between you and Joel, seemed in high spirits.

"This is always fun, guys," she exclaimed, eyes flickering between the screen and both of you.

You and Joel shared a smile, enjoying the simplicity of your movie’s nights together. However, the air started to suffocate you. The characters on the screen welcomed a new baby, forcing Sarah to speak up.

"Hey, Dad," she began innocently, "wouldn't it be cool if Bee had a baby? I'd love a little sister."

You exchanged a glance with Joel, the topic catching you off guard. Joel's expression shifted, his features revealing a mix of surprise and hesitation. You sensed a sudden tension in the air.

"Uh, well, Sarah," Joel started carefully, "I think we're good as we are. Being a father again... it's not something I'm looking for."

Sarah's brow furrowed, processing Joel's response. "But you'd be such a great dad, and I'd be an awesome big sister!"

You placed a hand on Joel's arm, offering silent support. "It's okay, Sarah. Not everyone wants the same things in life, and that's perfectly fine."

Joel's comments had a heavy weight on your chest. Your thoughts raced as Sarah began to explain her naïve hopes for a new addition to the family. You weren't expecting this topic to come up tonight, and Joel's reaction left you crying with the silent secret growing within you.

The movie was playing on the screen, but your attention was wandering. You felt a rush of emotions, including disappointment, worry, and an increasing feeling of guilt for not telling Joel about the baby. The conversation had taken an unexpected turn, and you could feel the weight of the unspoken truth suffocating you.

Joel noticed the change in the mood. He looked at you with concern on his face. You had a decision at that point: tell the truth and or continue to bear the weight of the secret.

Once you were snug as a bug in bed, Joel was finishing putting on his t-shirt to join you in bed. The weight of the previous conversation was still pressing your heart. 

“Would it be so bad, tough?” You asked, breaking the silence without glancing at Joel.

“What?” 

“Having a baby with me” you said.

Joel paused, the significance of your words sinking in. He sat down on the edge of the bed, facing you. "Bee, it's not about whether it would be bad or not. It's just unexpected, and I didn't know you were thinking about that”

You two fell into a tense silence, the weight of the unspoken lingering in the air. You met Joel's eyes, searching for any sign of his feelings.

"I should have told you earlier," you admitted, your voice carrying a tinge of shame "I wanted to be sure before bringing it up."

He sighed, running a hand through his hair. "It's a big decision, Bee. We need to talk about it, consider everything."

Joel looked into your eyes, his expression earnest. "Bee, you're my future. I love you, and I want to build a life with you. But having a baby is a big step. We need to be sure we're ready for it."

There were no more words after that, so you chose to pretend you fell asleep feeling the weight of your thoughts; the words he had told and the secret in your belly settled in the middle of your two bodies. For the first time since you moved with him, he didn’t place his arm around your waist.

The next day wasn’t any easier. You woke up feeling nauseous, as your body had started signaling the beginning of changes. The morning light streamed through the curtains, casting a gentle glow on the room. Joel was already up, preparing breakfast in the kitchen.

As you walked into the kitchen, the aroma of eggs filled the air. Joel turned to greet you, but his expression was a mix of concern and uncertainty.

"Morning," you said, attempting a smile.

"Morning," Joel replied, setting a plate of pancakes on the table. "How are you feeling?"

“Good” you replied shortly, “I think I’m heading out earlier to the shop” you said, trying to escape from the uncomfortable conversation you were avoiding.

Joel nodded, his eyes lingering on you. "Alright, but we can't keep avoiding this. We need to talk about what's happening."

You sighed, knowing he was right but not ready to dive into that discussion just yet. "I know, Joel."

You said before heading out to the shop, you tried to focus on your daily tasks, but the undercurrent of tension followed you. The shop's familiar surroundings felt different, as if the walls themselves were aware of the unspoken secret. 

And the smell of flowers was making you vomit, but you had to keep this hidden for a little bit longer. 

Your thoughts kept returning to Joel and the talk you both needed to have while you arranged flowers and assisted clients, but because you were concealed in your shop, the chiming of the door distracted you from your own demons.

“I’m coming” you said, faking a happy tone. Just as you appeared in sight, you went frozen.

“This place looks as nice as I remember.” 

"Connell?!" you exclaimed; your surprise evident.

"In person" Connell replied with a gorgeous grin.

The doorbell chimed again, and a customer entered, giving you a moment to compose yourself. You exchanged pleasantries with the customer, all the while glancing at Connell.

Once the customer left, Connell took a step closer. "Surprised to see me?"

"More than surprised," you admitted, a mix of emotions bubbling inside you. "What brings you here?"

Connell's gaze travelled around the shop. "Just passing through town and thought I'd drop by. It's been a while." He smiled.

“I thought you hated me” you spoke.

Connell's smile faded, and he looked at you with sincerity. "Oh my God, I could never hate you. You just followed your heart but I never hated you.” A smirk creeped on his lips “Besides, I met someone, you know?”

You felt happiness at his revelation. "Really?" you exclaimed "I'm glad. Lucky person" you replied genuinely. "I hope you're happy."

Connell nodded. "Yeah, she's great. We met at the hospital, and things just clicked. Life has a funny way of working out sometimes."

Connell leaned against the counter. "So, how's life treating you? And Joel?"

A part of you hesitated, unsure of how much to share. "Life's... complicated. Joel and I are okay, I guess."

Connell raised an eyebrow. "Trouble in paradise?"

You sighed, choosing your words carefully. "It's not that simple. We're just figuring things out, you know?"

Connell nodded, a knowing look in his eyes. "Relationships are never easy. If you ever need to talk, I'm one video call away" he said. 

He genuinely cared for you. He had always had, and even now, when you weren't connected in a romantic way anymore, you were still a friend he was always going to protect. 

"Thanks, Connell. I appreciate that," you said, genuinely grateful for his support.

“But you look gorgeous. You’re glowing” he said, happily taking your form. “It’s like you-

Your smile faded a little at that.

“Are you…?” He asked.

You took a deep breath, hesitating for a moment before responding. "Yes, Connell, I am."

Connell's eyes widened in surprise, and he took a step back. "Wow! Well, that's... unexpected."

"Yeah, it is," you admitted, a mix of emotions coursing through you. "I found out yesterday, and I haven't told Joel about it yet."

Connell's expression shifted to one of concern. "Joel doesn't know?"

You shook your head. "Not yet. It's complicated, Connell. I-He said he doesn't know if he wants to be a father again." You felt a lump in your throat, and you started crying without a reason. Connell hug you tightly immediately, without hesitation. 

As you cried on his shoulder, the door chimed. 

“What’s going on here?” Joel’s voice broke at that moment. He wasn’t happy about the scene unfolding before his eyes.

“Is this why you had been acting so weird?”

Joel's eyes narrowed as he took in the scene. Connell released you from the hug, and you wiped away your tears hastily, a knot forming in your stomach.

"Joel," you stammered, "it's not what it looks like."

Connell stepped back, giving you space to explain. Joel's gaze shifted between you and Connell,with  confusion and concern on his face.

"What's happening, Bee?" Joel asked, his tone demanding an explanation.

You took a deep breath, trying to compose yourself. "Connell came to visit me, we were just catching up, and, well, emotions got the best of me."

Joel's expression remained stern, and he crossed his arms. "Catching up, huh?"

Connell, sensing the tension, spoke up. "Joel, I didn't mean to cause any trouble. I was just passing through and thought I'd say hi."

Joel's gaze didn't waver. "I think it's time for you to leave."

Connell nodded, shooting you a sympathetic look before heading toward the door. "Take care, Bee. I'll be around if you need to talk."

"Don't be an ass to her, you promised me that, remember" he warned, before stepping out.

As Connell left, the atmosphere in the room remained tense. Joel turned his attention back to you, waiting for an explanation.

You took a deep breath, meeting Joel's gaze with a mix of vulnerability and determination. "Joel, I didn't plan for Connell to show up like this. We were just talking. I didn't mean for it to become emotional."

Joel's expression remained stern, his arms still crossed. "Emotional? What kind of emotions are we talking about here?"

You hesitated, searching for the right words. "Connell noticed something, something I wasn't ready to share yet."

Joel's eyebrows furrowed. "Share? Bee, what are you talking about?"

You glanced away, a knot forming in your stomach “If I tell you I may lose you.”

“You’re losing me now, bee.” he warned. 

But you didn’t say anything, you were afraid.

“Then fuck you, Bee.” 

Joel turned and left the room, leaving you standing there with a sinking feeling in your chest. The once warm and hopeful atmosphere had turned cold and uncertain, and the road ahead seemed daunting.

Later that evening, you arrived home to find Sarah and Joel sitting at the dinner table. The atmosphere in the room was tense, and Joel's eyes held hurt and frustration. You took a deep breath, knowing the conversation couldn't be delayed any longer.

"Hey," you greeted, your voice carrying a hint of apprehension.

"Hey," Joel replied, his tone not better than yours.

Sarah glanced between the two of you, sensing the tension. "Is everything okay?"

You hesitated for a moment before responding. "Joel, we need to talk."

He nodded; his expression guarded. "Yeah, we do."

"I'm not staying tonight," you informed them. "I need some time away from you, and I'll be at Lily's."

Sarah's eyes widened, and she looked from you to Joel. "What's going on?"

You shot Joel a quick glance before turning back to Sarah. "It's just something we need to figure out, Baby girl. Don't worry"

Without waiting for a response, you headed upstairs to pack a bag for the night. The weight of the situation pressed on you as you grabbed a few essentials, unsure of what was going to happen tomorrow.

Joel followed you upstairs, the tension in the air palpable. As you started packing a bag, he stood in the doorway, unsure of how to approach the conversation. The atmosphere in the room felt heavy with unspoken words.

"Love, please," Joel finally spoke, his voice filled with a mix of frustration and concern. "You don't have to go."

You continued packing, avoiding eye contact. "Joel, I need some space to think. I can't stay here tonight."

He stepped further into the room, his gaze pleading. "I'm sorry for how I reacted. I shouldn't have said those things."

You sighed, pausing your packing but not turning to face him. "Joel, this is bigger than just tonight. We need to figure out what we both want and if we're on the same page."

He took a step closer, his hand gently resting on your shoulder. "Bee, I love you. I don't want you to go, especially not like this."

You met his eyes, seeing the sincerity in them. The conflict within you intensified, torn between the emotions inside you.

"I need time, Joel," you whispered, your voice shaky. "I need to understand why you don’t want the same things for us."

Joel's features softened, and he removed his hand, allowing you the space you needed. The room was filled with an uneasy silence as you zipped up your bag, your mind racing with thoughts and emotions.

"I messed up," Joel admitted, his voice carrying regret. "I love you, Bee. I don't want to lose you."

You closed your eyes, the weight of the situation pressing down on you. "You won't lose me" you clarified.

As you made your way to the door, the heaviness of your decision bore down on you. In your hurry, you stumbled, almost losing your balance. The bags in your hands threatened to spill, but just in the nick of time, Joel's strong arms caught you. His reflexes kicked in, and he steadied you, a mixture of concern and confusion in his eyes.

"Bee, be careful," he urged, his hands still on your arms. The warmth of his touch, even in this moment of tension, sent a shiver through you.

You winced, feeling the impact of the close call. The realization of your vulnerability sank in, and you instinctively placed a protective hand over your belly. Joel's eyes widened as he followed the movement.

Concern etched across his face; he gently placed a hand on your stomach. "Are you okay? What's going on?"

Your eyes met his, and in that shared gaze, Joel sensed something deeper. A silent understanding passed between you, and he connected the dots. It was like all his life passed in front of his eyes.

With a soft gasp, Joel whispered, "Are you...?"

You didn’t respond, instead you hold his hand placed over your stomach and gripped tightly as if this was the decisive moment in the course of your relationship.

but still, his features on his face were unreadable. You knew what those moments meant between you. The words say but nothing back in return. It was like all that night all over again and you couldn't bear silence once again. You weren't alone this time. Unable to endure the quiet any longer, you broke it with a whispered, "Joel." Your voice carried a mix of vulnerability and hope, seeking connection and understanding.

At that moment, Joel let go of you carefully, creating a bit of space between you two. His eyes continued to hold a mixture of awe and realization, and it was clear that the weight of the revelation was sinking inside him.

What he had to say was going to define the rest of your story.

a/n: Reader loves self-sabotaging.

tags 💌: @joeldjarin @borhapparker @fatima-marisa @kirsteng42 @paleidiot @harriedandharassed @runningmom94 @pedr0swh0r3 @ssacharcoalgrey @missladym1981 @littleshadow17 @sevillagrenada

[rockethorse]

Calcinidae Bay Lot Tour: Marine Discovery Centre

I finally got around to picking the terrains I wanted to use for Calcinidae Bay's subhoods, so the Bay now officially has a(n as-of-yet unnamed) Downtown! Yay! Let's take a look through the only currently-finished lot there, the Marine Discovery Centre and Aquarium.

First I wanna shout out @dirtfauna for suggesting I build an aquarium and getting me thinking about this in the first place! As I was putting on the finishing touches I was also inspired by seeing @lolabythebaysims's gorgeous lot influenced by the Belle Isle Aquarium.

Before I get into the lot, I need to show the original Sims 4 shell for reference. It's "what the.. shell?" uploaded to the Gallery by simbellaz, and as you'll see, it was both perfect for and wildly impractical as the basis for an aquarium.

I don't normally go for shell challenges that have so many internal walls, but all those little 1-tile-wide hallways were practically SCREAMING to be made into fish tanks! The external "walls" you see added to my TS2 shell are all either actually half-walls, fences, or just windows placed with moveobjects, all of which are allowed within a standard shell challenge. It may seem like a cop-out, but it's more limiting/challenging than you'd think.

But enough preamble. Let's take a look inside!

The entrance is also a small gift shop. It seems like every aquarium I've ever been to has also sold jewellery. Don't ask me about my tiny penguin earrings.

I really wanted a "fish tank tunnel" vibe, and the effect was... almost perfect, lol. Close enough for a shell challenge IMO. I so so badly wanted to break my CC-free rule to place some fish shaders, but I'm glad I stuck to my guns because I think the solution I came up with looks goofy but effective. (Plus you wouldn't see them in build/buy anyway.)

Ooohhhh jellyfish tank ooohhhhhh they're so lifelike and graceful

I have my fun.

That little "airlock" room is a fun pirate-y undersea exhibit that connects to the outside and is probably where school field trips would loop around rather than heading upstairs.

Through the pirate's cabin is a touch pool and tactile play room where kids can inspect rubber anatomical fish models. I like to imagine the TV plays a short looping movie featuring a B-grade celebrity talking to a cartoon bass about the water cycle, fish spawn, and pollution.

The outdoor area is where the field trip groups would probably eat their packed lunches, fill out activity sheets, and take a commemorative photo with the world's worst greenscreen that's supposed to make it look like you're underwater but just ends up eating half your hair and shirt.

If you're not a student and you're just here for the love of fish, you'd probably head upstairs to get a closer look at the fish tunnel, smaller specialty tanks, and the squid/octopus models. (This room is technically considered outdoors thanks to the shell so tbh I'm not sure how lighting/temperature would behave during gameplay.)

The third floor has more tanks, some hands-on displays about aquatic plants and marine ecology, and finally a room with the actual floor-to-ceiling aquarium objects.

I thought this would be an interesting lot to run as an owned business, so I included a small employee area tucked behind the guest toilet block on the ground floor. It also helped to naturalistically answer "how would Sims feed themselves if their outing wouldn't stop complaining they were hungry," a concern I keep in mind whenever I make a lot I think would be a nice place to take a date.

And here's the floorplan! This lot had a pretty severe ugly stage but I'm really really happy with what we ended up with and the vibe I achieved without any CC. Hope you enjoyed reading this far and that it could give you some decorating inspiration!

[caputvulpinum]

Some of the asks you're receiving are giving me worrying flashbacks to being the only kid in my class arguing that dropping the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was wrong. I hope someone has studied the 'the more unconscionable an empire's actions the harder its people are taught to defend them' effect because it is a doozy. I am also concerned with how many people are not thinking twice before sending messages saying, essentially, 'You're exaggerating the cruelty of the US's occupation of another sovereign nation!' to....a member of an occupied sovereign Indigenous nation. I hope they're not weighing on you too much or dampening your enthusiasm for this project. I am really enjoying your research sauga, thank you for sharing it with us!

Thank you for this ask. I can't honestly pretend that all of this very much has been weighing on me. It's frustrating on a lot of levels but more than that it just kinda sucks and hurts. Especially as someone who is literally Indigenous and doesn't have dark skin? It's a constant battle of trying to not need to prove I'm Native enough versus having to fight for the recognition that I am my culture and I'm not just fucking racefaking, versus the fear that trying to be more visibly Native would just make me look like a racist caricature even though the whole reason I feel that impulse is because to non-Indigenous people, they see Native Americans as a single monolithic caricature and culture. I can't be native because I don't look like the noble savage in their heads. Don't pay attention to history, there clearly has never been a situation where perhaps Natives on the whole got more and more lighter skinned as generations went on. And there's definitely never been any reason for the American government to have extreme incentive in making sure Natives got bred out of the gene pool.

And none of this is actually directly relevant to the pressure, but it's informing how I'm approaching the research, as someone who can empathize with cultural erasure at the hands of fucking taibo, and I think that no matter what, conspiracy or not, cover-up or not, I think that it is incredibly important that more people in the world are aware that leading into the Cold War, Japan was forcibly coerced into giving total power over a significant cultural touchstone/ingredient/way of life to a single foreigner who had a complete lack of respect for what shoyu is, even going so far as to say "I want to change Japan's taste preferences". I cannot imagine a more direct and blunt parallel to settler-colonialism mindset. I truly cannot.

So to be consistently challenged--despite having either corrected or adapted mistakes/misinformation, or on some occasions actually proving that what I am claiming is not a mistake and it was like this--is kind of pinging a bunch of radars. Even beyond the pressure to perform for the sheer volume of interest--I'm used to that, I've not been exactly an unknown figure on this hellsite--there's a pressure to be perfect. To be immediate. I need to give the people the true answers and the end of the story three days ago; I need to give updates; I need to consider whether or not I want to be interviewed by Tech Crunch; I need to do everything except be allowed to let the natural timeline of research actually be its natural timeline.

I can't continue a large portion of research without having received responses back from government bureaus, from research archives, from college professors, from genetic biologisists, from horticulturists, from historians, from translators I'm paying with the money being sent about this project, from the genealogists and archivists and librarians who are also part of it...the list goes on. I can't make official entities of bureaucracy answer me quicker. It just doesn't work like that in real life--but for some unfathomable reason, Tumblr isn't treating what I'm doing like real life. They're treating it like an ARG.

So I suppose all this is to say I'm seriously having to consider going mostly offline for this holiday season. And I'm almost definitely going to try and avoid this project as much as I can during winter break; it's not like I'll be making quick progress anyway, since half of the academic sources I've contacted are already out for winter.

I hope that all of you understand that, for the most part, it's not you all as a group which is so upsetting and frustrating and draining and worrisome. For the most part it is individual responses from individual people, with a background radiation of eyes and pressure and selfishness on top of it, the natural state of existence for being in the spotlight at any given time. And I hope at the same time all of you understand how incredibly grateful, and touched, and honored, and excited I am that so many others are ALSO excited about this project. That all of you are just as eager to get to the bottom of whatever this ends up being as I am. The fact that people are willing to pay attention, even if only for a little while, to someone whose country is being occupied by foreign invaders investigating and finding the truth about what was happening during a different occupation with the same invaders. I think what is being done here is important work. And I'm glad that all of you do as well.

Without your generosity I would not have been able to even remotely gather the strength to push this for the long haul. And I do mean that literally. I started this project with less than $50USD in my bank account and today this is the first time I've ever had more than about $750 to my name. It's not much in the long run but I'm just so used to having nothing to spare that having any feels like the height of luxury. I bought myself a chai frappe today because I was waiting for a meeting to start. And I didn't hardly feel guilty. I can't tell all of you how emotional that made me, but if you've ever had rough times, I'm sure I don't need to.

Thank you all. I'm really excited to see where we go from here.

[maple-the-awesome]

You Sacrifice Yourself for Them Part 1/3

Part 2 || Part 3

Pairings: Legend, Sky, Time x GN Reader

Requested by anonymous: HIIIII OMG I JUST WANRED TO SAY i lovelovrloveloveeeee the way you write so much!!!!!!! ur recent loz post had me kicking and squealing in my sear hehehe T_T could i request a scenario with the chain in a situation where the reader sacrifices themselves to protect the boys? im imagining things begging the enemy to take them instead, protecting them from a hit or even something funny like taking the blame for a mistake they made!!! id love to see some angst from you!!!!! THANK U AND HAVE A GREAT WEEK!!!!!💖💖💖💖

Zelda Masterlist 💙 Fandom Masterlist

Shit. Shit. Shiiit.

This was not how this day was supposed to go. This was not how this dungeon was supposed to go! The group calls him 'Veteran' for a reason. He's done more dungeons on his own than the lot of them combined. He's quick on his feet, able to complete the most complex puzzles like child's play, and barely breaks a sweat against the foes that lurk in every damp shadow. Anymore, dungeons are easy (too easy, maybe, compared to some of the rougher...emotionally draining parts of his journeys). 

This was supposed to be just as easy. He had no shame in bragging or flexing his skills, yet all that has officially flown out the window in a way that one could deem quite literal, actually. A quick whiz of air and an echoed shatter that would've reminded him of the wonderful sound of broken pottery if not for how horrifying it was in true comparison. No, that sound was far from exhilarating, especially paired with the image of you falling sideways like a lifeless doll, pieces of tile bouncing off your head and exploding in the air like fireworks trailed by crimson. 

Legend isn't sure if he managed to catch you in time. He probably did, but in his panic he feared you might've hit your head on the floor as if that's not exactly what already happened to knock you out in the first place. Damn floor tiles! Usually they're just embarrassing annoyances when prepared for them, but that's the problem: he wasn't. When those dangerous squares came flying at him at a blurring speed, he expected to take on the hit, not for you to shield him with your own body. What in Hylia's name were you even thinking?!

For what feels like hours but is really only a few seconds, Legend's mind runs rapidly with petrified thoughts: Are you dead? Did he just let you die for his sake? It's supposed to be the other way around if anything! He's the world's punching bag, not you. You're…too special for any of that…

"Hylia, t-that hurt..." Legend snaps out of it only when you groan, barely able to open your eyes against the blinding light of the torch - the only light in the room - which has long been abandoned behind both of you. 

"Are you kidding me?! Are you stupid or something?! What the hell were you even thinking doing that?! Do you know what could've happened if you got hit hard enough or at the wrong angle?! You could've been given a concussion, put into a coma, o-or -"

"- But it could've ruined your pretty face."

Legend’s words choke in his throat as he stares at you as if you've suddenly grown several heads...that or he has just now realized you're the biggest idiot in Hyrule, who knows? Clearly, you're still in a daze yourself, head wobbling around as you blink rapidly with pupils dilated wide. Maybe the whole concussion thing can't actually be ruled out quite yet.

"...Stupid..." Legend mumbles under his breath with a click of his tongue as he looks away from you, "...What about your face then?"

"Awww. You think I'm pretty, too?" 

He huffs instead of answering, carefully helping you up before draping your arm over his shoulders and pulling you securely against his side where he can better keep you from stumbling off into something or, Hylia forbid, trip face first into the ground, causing more damage aside from the goose egg already bruising your forehead and the line of blood dripping down it, "We need to get you to the Traveler. ‘get you fix up.”

"Huh? But what...what 'bout the dungeon?" 

"We can come back later. The treasure at the end probably isn't worth it anyways if floor tiles are what's guarding it."

You hum distantly, dropping your head directly against his without any notice to the way this makes his cheeks flare unwillingly, "...Hey Legs?"

"What?"

"Can you please not tell anyone I got beat up by pieces of floor?"

Legend snorts and pretends to think your question over, "Hmm…In light of you saving my life, I guess I can keep that promise."

"Thanks, bun."

"You know, on second thought, maybe I won't."

Sky awoke in a pleasant mood that was only made better upon remembering his current whereabouts. He had a wonderful dream about being back home during peaceful times, and while disappointed to leave such a relaxing feeling, at least he found himself still in that cozy little inn the Chain decided to stay at for the night. What was better was that it appeared to be rather early. The sun was barely shining through the window, only barely peeking over the village roofs, and the room itself was silent aside from the sound of some snoring which confirmed that the rest of his roommates were still fast asleep, thus Sky figured there would be no harm in dozing off for a few extra minutes until he hears someone else get up for the day…That was his plan, anyways…

"...Hey Sky?"

"Mmm?"

"You, uh, know there's only ten minutes until eight, right?"

In a blink of an eye, Sky shoots straight up, suddenly not feeling so tired. Rubbing his eyes and bearing through his new headache, he's horrified to confirm that you must be right. The window is now glowing in a bright gold, showing a bustling little village outside. You, yourself, are already dressed in your tunic, hair done and ready to go. Legend and Wind, who had been your other roommates last night, must follow the same status seeing as neither of them nor their belongings are here anymore. It's just you and Sky.

In an instant, he leaps out of bed, nearly tripping yet recovering as he hurries to find his own belongings which seems a lot harder to accomplish in his panicked state compared to any other day. You, meanwhile, replace his spot upon the bed, sitting down there with an apologetic look, "I would have woken you up sooner, but I wasn't sure if you were purposefully sleeping in."

"You're alright - uh, thank you for waking me up at all," Sky backtracks when he remembers he had folded his tunic under his bed, kneeling down to grab it along with the rest of his belongings stuffed under there, "Where's the Vet and Pirate?"

"Already at breakfast. Wild dropped by a little while ago to say that it would be ready soon. I'm sure the others are already digging in."

"Crap."

"I'm sure there'll be enough left for us regardless. He always makes so much whenever we stay somewhere with an actual kitchen..." Despite Sky having worn an undershirt to bed, you still feel the need to awkwardly look away as he pulls the rest of his clothes overhead, "You must have a real talent for sleeping because the rest of us woke up to a loud 'thud' and cursing...'don't think Legend will be taking the top bunk at the next inn we reach."

Fully dressed, Sky's first order of business should really be to rush downstairs instead of testing his luck with angry companions, but he takes the time to spare you a glance instead, "Why haven't you gone downstairs yet?"

The question, once thought of, weighs heavy on his mind. You just said that you awoke with the others, however you chose to stay here and risk getting in trouble yourself for tardiness rather than joining them. 

You merely shrug as if it’s of no concern, "I figured I'd wait for you. Like I said, I didn't know if you were purposefully sleeping in and I would've felt worse if I fully gambled on that, leaving you to sleep until noon and suffer Time's wrath."

Sky fidgets and stares down at his feet, although when he opens his mouth to say something, you're standing again while pushing him towards the door, "But let's not push our luck too far, alright? Time was pretty adamant about getting out of here at a decent time."

Yes, he was. He had made a strict point of that last night which is further emphasized by the fact that he is already standing at the bottom of the staircase by the time you both appear at the top of it. It appears that he was just about to make his way up to scold you, but since you've so kindly met him halfway, he can do that from here, "I assume there's a good reason for sleeping in yet again, Skyloftian?"

Sky gulps under the Old Man's glare, prepared to take on whatever punishment that will soon follow seeing as he's officially reached his limit of making the entire group late, however as quickly as he begins to dread the thought of taking on an extra watch for the night or doing a supply run with his own rupees, you're beating him to an explanation, "It's my fault, actually. I had a rough night and didn't realize what time it was until Sky woke me. If he hadn't waited for me, he wouldn't have been late so don't be too mad at him, okay?"

"That's not -" Sky's head whips towards you in surprise, however he falls silent when you give him a look that commands it.

Time hums, glancing between the two of you without much sign that he believes your lie. He has no reason to considering that Wind had already mentioned you were up and at 'em this morning. Perhaps if you had crossed his path earlier for this conversation, he would’ve been more inclined then to point this out, forcing you to confess the truth, although it’s five minutes till eight now meaning he'd be wasting time none of you have to argue not to mention he really doesn't care so long as everyone’s ready to go.

"Well, since you're both technically down here before eight, I'll let it slide this time," He narrows his eyes at you both, taking some sort of pride in how you each bow your heads shamefully, however that's the extend of it before he turns his heel, "But it's up to you to savage yourselves breakfast before Wild packs it up and I still expect you all to be out in the lobby by eight sharp, not a second later even if it means you have to go without a starting meal for today."

"Yes, sir!"

"I'm okay. Worry about the Old Man first."

"Clearly you're not fine. Your arm -"

"- I've had worst -"

"- That doesn't matter. You're still injured."

This argument isn’t going anywhere. Anyone in the group could see that, but are they brave enough to point it out? Considering the fact that they all stand by in awkward silence, probably not.

The last battle was a tough one which may be a bit of an understatement considering Time and you both walked away with some serious wounds to show for your victory. Time had been knocked in the head by a Moblin club, thrown backwards where he then laid unconscious for several moments only to awaken with a gash in the club’s former place, although still a far less visible injury compared to yours. You didn’t miss the way Sky kept gagging when helping you back into camp, unable to so much as glance at the terrible result of a Lizalfos sword slicing through your arm. Provided the extent of these soon-to-be scars, everyone would expect (and hope) that the two of you would be eager for Hyrule’s healing magic, however they were quickly proven otherwise. 

“So? I’ll live.”

“Not without medical attention.”

“I’ll take a potion.”

“I thought you didn’t have any left?”

You curse to yourself before sticking your nose into the air with a stubborn change of subject, “You know, last time I checked, a head injury is a lot more serious than a simple cut!”

Time ignores your claim, feeling his face grow warm in irritation (or maybe that’s due to the fresh blood dripping down from his hairline), “You call that ‘a simple cut’?”

You merely shrug, readjusting the crimson cloth you currently press to the nasty slice that parts your skin directly down from your shoulder into your bicep. It no doubt burns like the fires of Death Mountain which you don’t hide despite your persistence in turning down any aid. Your face is scrunched into an expression of pain, a hiss leaving your hips whenever you move the cloth or your arm in any way, yet you still meet Time’s eyes with no sign of budging.

“Twilight, tell him he’s being ridiculous!” 

The poor farm boy leaps in place when you both end up turning his way. Although not another word is said by either of you, he understands that voiceless command of Time’s stone cold glare: he isn’t to say a word - not a word - that could be taken as a form of agreement towards your cause. He’s to be a good boy and point out that your arm isn’t going to fix itself, thus you should be the first to be tended to by Hyrule. Of course, he cares about your wellbeing and would definitely side with his mentor and his intimating ways if not for how the older male sways side-to-side with the wind, clearly struggling to maintain himself as the effects of a serious concussion start to take its toll on him.

“...(Y/n)...does have a point..." Twilight mumbles, gulping when Time’s glare darkens.

Thankfully for him and all the others who stand by with their heads down, including little Hyrule who’s been stuck between you both too fearful to make a peep, Warrior has finally had enough of this, officially having no problem taking charge with his annoyance made clear through his stern voice, “The longer you both argue about this, the longer you both go without medical attention, so please, for the love of Hylia, will one of you just swallow your damn pride and let Hyrule do what he needs to?”

There’s no instant reaction, neither of being too eager to see Warrior’s very valid point, however after glancing at you once more and noticing how tightly you’re holding onto your arm, Time sighs at long last, resulting in a chorus of others to follow, “...Fine. I’ll go first.”

This satisfies you, allowing you to relax your muscles and focus on keeping that cloth pressed to your arm while Hyrule begins working his magic to fix Time’s own injury, although as always, the Old Man has to have the last word, shoving his pouch towards you with a grumble, “At least take a red potion in the meantime. It should dull the pain.”

Thankfully, you don’t argue as he feared you would based on your initial hesitation. Instead, you huff, but ultimately dig through the pouch to locate the bottle which you pop the cork off of dramatically, “Fine.”

[strawhbrrries]

All That Matters, i.

pairing: cocky!tattoo artist!frank castle x afab!reader

summary: working with a world renowned tattoo artist who knows his own beauty has more cons than pros. the main one being that he's infuriating and it turns you on.

warnings: mentions of female masturbation, general banter between frank and reader, jealous reader??, mutual pining but they're both idiots, cocky frank duh!, tattooed frank with long hair!!, no use of y/n or descriptions of reader, not proofread

word count: 920 words

authors note: this was supposed to just be a fic but i couldn't help myself but tattoo!artist frank is so yummy and I think about him all the time!!

find the masterlist here! read the next part here!

The blacked out camaro pulled into the parking lot, your eyes rolling the instant you could hear the bass from inside the shop. He never even had the windows down, that was the worst part, it was just that loud. He had no care for anyone else, he was arrogant and just overall a cunt. You hated working with Frank Castle. 

You always heard him before you saw him, whether it was his car that gave away his presence or his voice. You were astonished that his hearing wasn’t damaged, if you could hear the bass of his music from inside the shop you couldn’t imagine how loud it was inside the car. Thankfully, his booth was quieter than his car. Aside from his voice. His voice was deep, raspy, and it carried. Carried itself all the way to the reception desk where you sat, annoyed you had to listen to it. 

It was sexy, you couldn’t deny that. You often came to the thought of him whispering dirty things in your ear, calling you a pretty girl. 

“What song is it today?” You asked as the bell above the door rang, indicating the biggest nuisance in your life had entered the building. 

“Pills and automobiles.” He answered, leaning over the counter to try and look at his schedule for the day. 

“Thinking of how many girls you get wet?” You teased, handing him the clipboard of clients he should already know about. 

“You know it, baby.” He winked, scanning the names to see his first appointment and handing it back to you. 

“Fuck off.” You rolled your eyes, kicking your feet up on the desk and watching him walk away. 

You were one of those girls, no matter how much he irritated you after every conversation with him there was a small wet patch on your underwear. Maybe that was why he infuriated you so much, because he seemed unreachable. You were sure most of the girls who came into the shop just wanted to get a good look at him, his clientele was mainly women. Sure, they paid well and he appreciated the attention but nothing got him as hard as the woman who didn’t want him. You.

His cocky attitude was, mostly, a front. He knew he looked good and felt it would be a crime to withhold it from the world, all the ladies seemed to enjoy it. He wasn’t the fuckboy you thought him to be, sure he flirted with any woman who threw herself at him. But he couldn’t remember the last time he had sex, not since you started working at the shop. He’d been trying to earn you over since the second he sat in on your interview and officially became the receptionist. He needed you.

You scrolled the yelp reviews, scrunching your nose at every one that mentioned Frank and how attractive he was. There were so many, you did this almost every day. And for what? To torture yourself. Obviously. What else was there to do when every artist was busy for the next few hours?

“Excuse me.” The voice snapped you out of your annoyed delusion, causing you to snap your eyes upwards to the man standing on the opposite side of the counter.

“What can I do for you?” You smiled, admiring the brown fluffy hair the man had, tilting your head at the red tinted glasses he was wearing.

“Is Frank in? I need to speak with him for a minute.” The man responded, looking right through you. 

“Give me a second.” You smiled, getting up from your seat and making your way to Frank’s booth.

You slid the curtain open and rolled your eyes at the girl who was trying her absolute hardest to get his attention but failing miserably, his expression was blank and frankly he looked bored.

“Some guy with red glasses is here for you, Frankie.” You mocked the girl in the chair, maybe it was because you were jealous of her proximity to him or maybe it was something else.

Frank muttered something about taking ten to the girl and placed his equipment down, giving you a confused expression, and making his way to the lobby. You gave the girl a smile and followed after him. If you couldn’t have him the next best thing was to cockblock him, you were amazing at that. By the time you reached the front the two men were in a deep conversation about something you couldn’t hear, they were talking in hushed whispers.

You sat back down at your desk and busied yourself in busy work, trying to listen in but failing. Every time you looked up Frank was looking your way, turning back to the mystery man every time you made eye contact. You watched him run his fingers through his hair, watching it fall back into place neatly, his tattoos stretching around his bicep as it flexes. 

“Thanks, Matt. I’ll get back to you about it all later. Just give her your number and we’ll be good.” Frank spoke calmly, motioning towards you but you weren’t entirely sure the man could see it, turning away to get back to his work.

“I’m Matt Murdock, by the way!” He introduced himself once he made it back to the desk, putting his hand out to shake after you introduced yourself.

He gave you his number and was on his way back out the door, just as he did your phone buzzed.

He’s blind, quit staring.

[the-pigeon-queen]

Collection of things from my Antichrist Copia AU

Hey, so I've never posted anything like this before, but here we go! I'm actually currently typing a proper fanfic for this AU , so if spoilers for an eventual fic don’t bother you, feel free to keep reading!

Under the read more since this'll probably be long:

Copia is still Sister Imperator’s and Nihil’s biological son – but she conceived him under some fun satanic circumstances (I imagine a scenario like the one in the Dance Macabre music video lol human sacrifice, but throw in some music and an orgy for fun).

So, while Copia isn’t the biological son of the Devil From the Bible, he was still involved in the conception, maybe through Nihil.

Copia grew up in the Clergy – it’s all he’s known, but honestly, he can’t complain! Though he was raised, technically as an orphan, he still got everything he wanted!

Except friends, because those were sort of hard to make…

But still! He’s risen through the ranks with minimal difficulty, and has never really struggled! He genuinely works hard – and he’s proud of himself for it. He’s just unaware of how fixed his path actually is. Since he’s only known success, he does have a bit of an ego.

He’s a nepobaby but he does have genuine talent, and he does work for it.

Ghost is still a band, owned and operated by the Clergy, for the purpose of spreading it’s influence and finances.

Copia, as Cardinal, still takes over as frontman, and becomes Papa when Nihil passes

And he finds out that Sister Imperator is his mom! She’s always been a good boss, how neat is it that she’s his mother, too? It makes all those times he’s accidentally called her mom funny, now, instead of embarrassing.

She had to give him up, you see – but she never let him out of her sight. Even if she never changed any diapers, she was always right there! Always proud of him! That makes it alright, right?

Life goes on at the Ministry after that tour, he grows closer to his Ghouls, he enjoys his success –

But what’s that? There’s one more special ritual that he has to complete in order to officially become Papa? Of course he’ll do it, Sister! Anything you say!

After all, the Clergy gave him a home, and a job, and a life – what’s one more little ritual?

That one little ritual turned out to be rather unpleasant

We’re talking blood sacrifices, immense pain, a forced transformation that wreaks havoc on the body, and the awakening of something, from somewhere deep within him.

He doesn’t adapt well.

As the antichrist/devil warped thing he is, now, he’s a lot more… testy. He’s quicker to anger. He’s moody. He’s horny. All the time. It’s like a second puberty – except he’s in his forties and becoming a demon.

The mental aspect, dealing with new, strong temptations and urges, is hard enough, but there’s also an emotional struggle, too.

The Clergy that raised him did this to him. His mother lied to him. And why? No one will give him straight answers.

There’s the physical side, too – he feels like a freak. He feels wrong in his own skin. His wings hurt his back, he can’t hide his horns, he keeps stepping on his own tail.

He was supposed to have been born with all his demonic features, and grow into them, but he was apparently a late bloomer. And it took a blood sacrifice to crack him open and let out his infernal side.

His Ghouls comfort him and he finds comfort with them.

Eventually he cheers up. He starts making demands of the Clergy, demanding more, demanding better – he’s the antichrist, after all. The Clergy made him, and now it should serve him!

He tries flying! He breaks his legs, but he heals super fast now. So he tries flying again! And this time the only thing he breaks is a window!

He’s starting to feel more comfortable. More right. His urges are easier to handle. He’s singing again. He starts to feel happy again.

:)

The Clergy doesn't like that he's gaining a backbone, so they attempt a binding ritual to force him further under their control.

Said ritual involves crucifying his three brothers.

The Clergy is thwarted, and Copia takes off with his Ghouls and brothers to go do their own thing

And that's the outline I have so far :'] if you have any questions feel free to ask! I'd love to talk about it more lol

Right now the fic is Copia x poly ghouls just cause

[captainnameless]

With all the hate about max not wearing the senna shirt to us finding out today it was stolen, do you have any thoughts on little Max’s reaction? (Very much ignoring that it’s very unlikely he’d be little for an official event…😅) I’m just imagining myself even now, and how much I’d hate standing out like that and then to be criticized 😞

i think (big) Max is very aware that a lot of the stuff he does gets criticized, most of it unfairly so. so mostly i’d say that that mentality that he has taught himself to have transfer onto little Max slightly, where he’s not as worried as to what people have to say. he might seek out a little bit of reassurance, to be sure that he didn’t do anything wrong.

he wore the pin, he held the flag, he showed up and showed his respects and that’s what matters. not what the keyboard warriors with biased agendas have to say.

i do think he’d venture a little closer to Sebastian, seeking his approval more than usual and again, making sure he’s being a good boy and doing what he’s supposed to do.

Sebastian notices like he always does, makes sure Max gets plenty of verbal affirmation, praise, tells him thank you and gives gentle rubs, ruffles Max’s hair when no one’s looking.

Sebastian also definitely alerts Daniel, who has also already noticed, gives Seb a knowing nod when they make eye contact.

i think Max does drop the second he has the chance and Daniel grabs their The Lion Inside Book. it’s one of their favorite books, has been from way early in their dynamic, a book about self esteem and confidence, about a shy little mouse who finds his roar.

Max might be a little pouty when Daniel grabs it, mostly due to the desperate need for a nap. tells him “I know my roar already, Daddy.” but Daniel shushes him gently and tells him it’s nice to be reminded. some of the tension in Max’s shoulders seeps away during the book, and Daniel has to stop multiple times to answer Max’s quiet questions in between. seeking reassurance about everything that happened today.

that’s okay. Daniel’ll do that.

[satansapostle6]

The Man Who Sold The World | Luke Castellan

Spotify Playlist Link

Katherine. She was the one who started it all for Luke Castellan, the reason he did what he did.

Warnings: Mature themes/language. Violence. Sexual content.

Chapter One

Chapter Two: …And Into the Mist

“So, what’s next?” Luke asked, looking to Katherine in the driver’s seat of the stolen Camaro. “Now that I’m officially an accessory?”

“Aw, you’re being modest,” Katherine joked. “Without you, who would’ve been the lookout?”

“You seriously planned that?” he narrowed his eyes at her.

“Of course,” she scoffed, speeding down to the motel.

“But, you didn’t even ask me to come work you,” he pointed out.

“I’ve been doing this a while,” she sighed, pulling into the motel parking lot.

“So you steal cars wherever you go?” he asked, his tone more conversational than accusatory.

“Last one got destroyed in a fight with a griffin, so I needed a new one,” Katherine explained. “I saw the keys locked in this one on the way up here. So, I took the opportunity.”

“You’re very observant,” Luke noticed. “You were never trained?”

“Better; I’ve been on my own since I was twelve.”

“Fair enough,” he sighed, understanding her experiences. “So, are you gonna tell me what this hunt is that we’re supposed to be going on?”

Katherine readied herself for a long conversation as the two of them headed back into the dirty motel room.

“Alright. Lemme ask you this; if you could answer to someone other than the gods, would you?” she crossed her arms.

“What are you saying?” Luke looked up at her as he sat down, bewildered.

“I’m saying… wouldn’t you go for a regime change if you could?” she posed a question.

“Is that even possible?” he asked her.

“Yeah. It is,” she nodded. “You could serve someone who isn’t your father, or Zeus.”

“What makes you think I don’t like my father?” Luke asked cautiously. “Or, Zeus?”

“Well, for one, you’re here,” she pointed out, “And I didn’t even have to take anything off.”

“You’re telling me that was an option?” he raised an eyebrow.

“Look. When you told me you were a child of Hermes, I saw the way you looked, and I filled in the blanks for myself,” Katherine Montalvo stated. “The gods don’t give a shit about us. You went unclaimed, or at least unnoticed. Tell me if I’m wrong.”

There was nothing but a decent pause, as Luke considered what she said.

“Look, I know how it goes. I didn’t know my mother was my mother until I was thirteen. I had to figure out being a demigod on my own,” she frowned. “Even with my father being the asshole he was, she hardly lifted a fucking figure to help me. Look at all the unclaimed, and the shit goes on all over the world; the gods don’t care about us!” she exclaimed.

Luke sat for a moment, listening to her words.

“They don’t care about anyone!” she reasoned. “They’ve never been parents to any of us. They don’t give a shit about us! But imagine if we could get on their level! Imagine if no one could ignore us!”

Luke felt just as broken and downtrodden as she did. He’d known for years, ever since he was a child, that life had been unfair. He’d often wished when he was younger that he could do something about it, and fight for some sort of attention from his father, which was something he’d since given up on.

Not only did he find the prospect of somehow becoming as powerful as the gods to be appealing, but he was also lured by the darkness of Katherine’s eyes. There was something strangely manic about her, a raw sort of energy that he found hypnotic and contagious.

“Listen. I’ve been hearing this… voice. Like how I heard my mother’s, but it wasn’t hers.”

Luke Castellan met her eyes in shock, her words resonating with him.

“Wait. This voice,” he spoke up, “What’s it like?”

“The voice,” Katherine explained, “It’s deep, and… jarring. Like nothing I’ve ever heard before. It… it knows things. And it’s shown me things I could never dream of before.”

“Like, things that could make you more powerful?” Luke questioned. “Things that turned out helpful?”

“You hear him too,” she realized, searching his face in wonder. “Kronos. He speaks to you, too.”

“Kronos?” Luke asked. “The Titan? That’s who it is?”

“Yeah. He calls out to me, Luke. If I’m the one who resurrects him, glory and power are mine.”

“So, he really does speak to you, too!” he concluded. “He wants you to bring him back,” he whispered.

“Luke, we could bring him back,” Katherine scoffed. “Together, we could be the ones who help him rise back to power. Do you know what kind of rewards we’d get for that sort of thing?!”

“So it’s real,” he concluded. “Kronos chose us to be his soldiers.”

“Yeah. He did,” she insisted. “Together, we could bring him back, and be gods in the new world! If we succeed, we don’t have to answer to the gods, we could take their place!”

“That’s what I’ve always wanted,” Luke confided in her. “My whole life, I’ve just been a shadow. Why should my father and the other absentee landlords on Olympus get to stand in the spotlight?”

“Then what’s the issue? Help me find him. There are clues all over! If we listen to the voice, we can find him, and bring him back!”

“Alright. I’ll come with you,” he decided. “When I get back, I’ll tell everyone at camp I was on the quest. What did any of them ever do for me anyways?” he said bitterly.

“That camp is bullshit,” she scoffed. “You think the god of wine cares about demigods? Everyone knows he’s just there on a punishment. I’ve met demigods who’ve left Camp Half-Blood. They’re happier making it on their own.”

“Really?” Luke asked. “Who?”

“I’ve met a few. But I remember meeting Emma Pacheco, and Leo Jordan in Texas.”

“Oh. I remember them,” Luke realized. “She’s a daughter of Athena, and he’s a son of Hephaestus, right?”

“She’s a daughter of Athena, and he’s dead,” Katherine remembered. “He died in a Gorgon attack. I tried to help him, but… I couldn’t. Emma was devastated.”

Luke looked at her sympathetically, realizing that battle scars tended to run deeper.

“I’m sorry,” he said in a low, apologetic tone. “I’ve lost people too.”

“When I was younger, I thought living my life on the road would be easier. I thought I’d never have to know anyone long enough to care, and then, I’d never get hurt.”

Luke thought for a moment, finding that was mostly his experience in the brief amount of time he’d spent on his own as a child.

“But, that wasn’t how it happened?”

“The longer you’re on the road, the more people you meet,” she sighed, “Even if you don’t know them long. Eventually, you see more people die than most people do in a lifetime.”

“I can’t imagine it’s safe leaving the camp for that long,” he reasoned.

“That, and demigods aren’t known to live long anyways,” Katherine stated. “This lifestyle in general, it… it pretty much only ends one way.”

“Then, why do you do it?” he questioned. “Why don’t you, I don’t know… live a normal life?”

“‘Normal’?” she scoffed. “As a demigod?”

“Yeah. I guess we don’t get a whole lot of options,” he agreed understandingly.

“I dropped out of the sixth grade. My dad was an addict. I’m not giving up much by hunting monsters,” she said humorously. “At least this way, I’m helping somebody.”

“I get that,” Luke offered. “I really do.”

“Yeah. We don’t have many options,” Katherine reasoned, “So Kronos is our best bet.”

“So, what’s our first move?” he asked. “Where’s our first stop?”

“In my dreams, I saw the Underworld,” she told him.

“So you’ve had those dreams too?” he questioned.

“Yeah.”

“What else did you see?” he wondered.

“I don’t know. For me, the visions come gradually. I think we need to get on the road,” she thought, “Both of us.”

“You think that’ll work?” Luke asked, frustrated with the vague dreams and voices.

“I’ve never been able to force the voice. I something just has to trigger it,” she rationalized.

“Katherine. This is crazy. I just met you,” Luke thought aloud. “I have no idea how long we’ll be gone. They’ll never believe I’m on the quest. I finished it almost a week ago.”

“I have an idea,” she proposed. “I have a car, I’ll drive you back to New York. You can find a new excuse, and get us some supplies, and we can go off and find Kronos.”

“Yeah, but where?” Luke demanded. “Where do we even start?”

“Well, I wasn’t completely sure, but I was thinking I’d try the Underworld,” Katherine suggested.

“The Underworld? Without a plan?” Luke asked skeptically.

“Despite me carrying you through the woods on my back for two days straight, I think we have a shot,” she frowned.

Luke considered the idea for a moment.

“Alright. I’ll stock up on supplies and weapons at the camp, and then we’ll go to the Underworld. I just don’t know how we’ll get there,” he frowned.

“Easy. There’s an entrance in Central Park,” she informed him.

“There is?” Luke asked.

“Yeah. The Door of Orpheus,” Katherine replied.

“But, don’t you need music to open it?” he recalled.

“Yeah. I can sing,” she nodded.

“Can you?”

“Yeah. I can,” Katherine smiled sarcastically.

Both of them were alerted by a loud, aggressive knock on the door.

“Housekeeping!” a man’s voice shouted.

Luke went to get the door, as Katherine quickly grabbed him by the arm.

“Don’t open the door!” she whispered urgently.

“Why not?” he whispered back.

“That’s not housekeeping!”

“What, you think it’s a monster?” Luke said in a low murmur.

“No. It’s not a monster,” she snapped, grabbing her bag from the bed. “Open the door, and then run.”

Katherine quickly tossed the keys at Luke, as he caught them instinctively. He watched her as she reached for something tucked into the back of her belt.

“Get the car going,” she said through her teeth.

“What are you gonna do?” Luke demanded.

“Open the fucking door!” she whispered.

Knowing not to ask any more questions, Luke threw the door open, rushing the man on the other side of the door and shoving him to the ground. Another man followed. Feeling the need to help Katherine, Luke unsheathed his dagger, only to be interrupted by Katherine herself.

“Go! Start the car!” she yelled.

Luke stared in horror as he heard gunshots, looking to see her holding the gun that accompanied them. Thinking fast, he ran to the Camaro less than ten feet away in the parking lot. He jumped into the car, waiting and on edge as he watched.

It didn’t take many more gunshots for him to see Katherine running toward the car, leaving behind two still bodies on the ground behind her. He unlocked the car door as she jumped in, screaming at him to drive.

Luke pealed out of the parking lot in the Camaro, keeping calm as Katherine sat in the seat beside him, pistol cocked in her lap as she cautiously looked out the window.

“What the fuck was that?!” Luke screamed as he drove their getaway car as fast as humanly possible.

“Just drive,” she muttered. “Don’t stop until we’re out of the city.”

“Okay, if I’m gonna be an accessory to a double homicide you committed,” Luke insisted, “I’m gonna at least need the bullet points.”

“Fine, you women are so needy!” Katherine rolled her eyes. “Let’s just say, I killed a guy in St. Louis, and he’s got family.”

“This guy you killed,” Luke said as calmly as he could, “Why did you kill him?”

“That thousand year-old map I have? The one that I use to try and figure out what actually happened to Kronos? How do you think I got it?” she asked impatiently.

“Why?” he asked subsequently.

“Because. Usually, when you steal artifacts that have survived millennia, you tend to run into some complications,” she snapped. “Besides. The guy wasn’t exactly a pillar of society.”

“Why?” Luke inquired curiously. “What happened?”

Katherine sighed, staring down at the gun in her lap before answering.

“I was dating this rich guy. He owned a museum, and that map came into his possession. He didn’t know what it was, because he didn’t speak Ancient Greek, but obviously, I did,” she explained. “I wanted the map, and I wanted out. The end.”

“Wait,” Luke stopped her, “You… You dated a guy who owned a museum?”

“Yeah,” she responded stiffly.

“How—How old was he?” he asked.

“Thirty-six,” she said.

Luke looked at her as he drove, seeing emotion in her eyes for the first time.

“How old were you?” he asked.

She turned to look at him, seeing that he asked knowing she had no comforting answer for him.

“I was young,” she said simply.

“I’m… I’m sorry,” he breathed, unable to imagine the extent of her pain.

“You don’t know me,” Katherine told him, pushing him away in a way that wasn’t physical. “You don’t know me at all, okay? You don’t know what I feel, and you don’t know what I’ve had to do to survive.”

“No,” he agreed. “I don’t.”

“Trust me. You don’t need to,” she assured him, still unable to remove the gun from her lap.

Katherine knew that she’d never felt an affinity to anyone. Her father, the only parent she’d ever known, wasn’t much of a parent, and no one she’d met on the road since she left home was reliable. But the scar beneath his right eye told her everything she needed to know.

She knew Luke had been broken down the same way she had, which was also the only reason she’d decided he was the one to recruit on her mission to find the Titan of time, the father of the gods. Katherine knew she needed dependability in Luke, and she knew the only way they could both succeed was as soldiers first and people second.

-

Chapter Three