#I thought it was cool so I drew them all being used in the beginning of a battle

[heartfullofleeches]

[Angst]

Childhood Best Friends with a small age gap- two or three years, nothing crazy- but it means everything as they age.

It was hard for them to make friends their age when you first met. They liked things that were too "childish" for their peers - things another child who lived not to far away adored. They'd seen each other on the way to school, but they didn't interact frequently due to their difference in grade.

Until that day-

"Whoa...Cool backpack. You like that show too?"

"Thanks... I'm thinking of getting a new one though... Do you want me to ask my parents if you can have it?"

"What?! It looks fine to me... Why are you getting rid of it?"

"My friends called me a baby... I won't be able to go back to class without everyone laughing at me unless I get a better one."

"That's silly!.... It's on right now... Wanna watch it with me?"

The two were inseparable from then on- School hindered the time they had to see each other each morning, but as soon as it let out - both ran to meet with their new best friend. The elder of the pair was often mocked and teased for their choice, but they could hardly care anymore. They had someone who'd stick by their side to the very end - childish fixations and all.

Years went on and they made new friends. It happens. More obstacles began piling up throughout - chipping away at the few hours they scarcely had to begin with. Studying, Hobbies, balancing days between hanging out with other friend groups and the person who once meant the world. They tried to make things works, but nothing went to plan-

"Is it alright if Y/n comes with us tonight?"

"Y/N? Aren't they're too young to see this movie? We shouldn't be responsible if they have night terrors or something.."

"They aren't that young... Are they?"

They never thought about it before. You were so close in age as kids it never hit them that as you grew that little gap drew a bridge between you - and it was easier to let you go than finding an alternative.

"Hey, Dude! Are we still on for this weekend? I can't believe they're making a reboot after all this time!.."

"Are my messages going through? You haven't responded in a while... I saw you outside school yesterday and yelled your name, but....."

"Did I do something wrong?"

"Hey."

"You're hanging out with them today? Did you forget about my birthday?...."

"You removed me off your list of friends...We're still friends, right?"

"Let me alone. I'm sick of being your babysitter. Go find friends your own age and stay away from mine."

And that was the end of things.

College cames around and their live became relatively tame. Their thoughts drifted to that childhood friend of theirs every now and again, but between school and partying with the new friends they had made - those memories faded to the back of their mind.

An acquaintance asks them to help show some new faces around the campus. One sticks out to them amongst the crowd. It's you. What do they say to you after all these years? You don't look sad to see them. Nor angry. Intact - you look..

Relieved.

Pulling them aside at the end of the tour, you free yourself from the burden that's weighted down on you since they left you.

"I'm sorry."

"It was never my intention to hold you back. Overtime I realized I was just that annoying kid who clung onto you because I thought you were my first and only friend...When you never felt that way about me. I'm sorry for taking that away from you. If our paths cross again, I promise I won't even look at you."

After being abandoned by your best friend- the person you looked up to most, you matured well beyond your years in hopes that would make you like them again. Overtime, you gave up that goal, but others could see how you've changed.

"Isn't that.... Y/n?.."

"Oh, man- It is! You guys were glued at the hip before we became teens."

"They're..kinda cute... Do you still have their number?"

All this time apart, a feeling long forgotten resurged inside them. The need to protect you. You didn't know these people like they did. You shouldn't be going to parties with them, getting to know and befriend them. They'll only hurt you - worse than they had. They never should have said goodbye to you- They should have allowed the feelings they were so scared to have, but had always been there develop and blossom naturally until you both were adults ready to move on to that stage in your friendship.

They know you best. No matter how much you grow as a person, you're still the same.

"That's a cute Keychain, Y/n!"

"Thanks! I've loved this show since I was a kid!"

They'll prove it to you.

[fushiguruuzzzz]

OUT THE DOOR, INTO THE LIGHT.

you hated missing osamu miya. what you loathed even further was him being just out of reach.

a request for my 700 event from @cherrysurf but I got a little carried away and decided to format. exes to something anew. sort of hurt/comf but not entirely. not proofread. first time writing for osamu. word count of about 1.1k.

a/n: okay now I work on mattsun texts and school work.

missing osamu miya was the most agonizing thing you had ever had the misfortune of experiencing. what was once a sunny world, filled with rapid heartbeats and the nearly imperceptible smell of cooking that seemed to cling to the cotton of his t-shirts, was now a dreary nothingness filled only by the aching of your heart. it was louder than any sob you had allowed to tumble from your lips, those that were once pressed to his but were now left in solidarity. you did not let yourself cry over him, no, choosing to grasp desperately to the last crumb of composure you had access to, but the wails of your soul rang louder in your ears than any verbal expression. the yearning was a wicked spirit, seeping into your skin and invading your nerves with messages that chanted his name. that and some other profanities directed at yourself for causing it at all, but that was not the most haunting sensation.

thanks to the curse that seemed to have doomed you from the very beginning, you had a rather awakening discovery: missing osamu miya was agonizing. having him close was much worse. as you sat in the passenger seat of his car, the cool press of leather on your bare thighs the only piece of you that was not burning up in pure shame and self-loathing, this was more prominent than it had ever been. it baffled you, the mere concept of hurting even more when he was right beside you than you did the first moment he was not. disoriented, you were, but aware nonetheless.

the ache in your chest drew attention to itself, leaving you defenseless to withhold as the words tumbled from your lips. “i’m sorry.”

each syllable cut through the moonlit ambience of the vehicle, burying deeper and deeper into the silence until it shattered under the pressure of unresolved turmoil. his eyes flicked to you, and they looked more gray than you had ever seen them — or were you forgetting his face already? that was a thought you were unready to face head on.

“don’t be,” he murmured, the simple, withdrawn answer packing more material onto the wall that had risen between you. he was silent again. he was always, as restricting as it was, always silent. his fingers flexed around the steering wheel, the action such a subtle display of tenseness that you would not have noticed, had you not felt the exact same way.

he paused as you came to a halt, the crimson glow of the red light casting over his features. softer than those of his twin, worn by taste tests and his deep rooted love that led him to his career, but alluring all the same. “why’d ya’ call me?”

barely a whisper, as if he could not resist asking. you felt embarrassment pump through your veins as you tried to think of an explanation that seemed at least relatively normal. any sort of answer that was not sorry, it was late and I knew you would be up because you watch television on fridays as a treat for yourself or I simply remember your routine, because I used to share it with you, and remembered you were in the area. instead you said something far less extravagant, but still lacking the nonchalance to cover up the meaning.

“figured you’d be awake,” you replied.

“ah.”

it was the truth. you needed a ride, and the convenience of calling osamu was your only source of reasoning. not because you wanted to see him.

another gaze that seemed to bore heart shaped holes in your head, and you were starting to wonder how long it would take for the light to be green. was traffic always this slow so late at night?

osamu took a breath, the air pouring into his lungs and filling his chest for a long moment. the subtle movement was not lost on your eyes, for despite being fixed on the road ahead, they simply could not resist analysing him.

“i’m glad you called me,” he said.

for someone so steady, so calm, he had a way of taking you by surprise. there were many things you had expected him to say to you. you expected him to lecture you, to bring back the sorrowful memories of how things had been — actually, you had not expected to find yourself this near to him at all.

“you are?”

he nodded, a strand of hair falling into his eyes and curtaining him in gentle shadows. he had let it grow out, never really bothered to follow up with his barber as often as he once had. he looked good, really, just… tired. as though he could not be asked to care anymore. “yeah.”

you let out an exhale. you had been almost sure you had misheard him, but the confirmation made something content and nostalgic bubble in your chest.

for the first time that night, you lifted your eyes from the dashboard and looked at him. really, truly looked at him in the flesh. it was a refreshing change from the fuzzy lenses of your memory, contorted by longing and the dread for the next day set to be lived alone. he looked much more real like this, much more human. his eyes met yours and there was something that clicked, the tension in the air fading and melting into blissful nothingness. a clean slate, possibly.

he hesitated before he continued, but decided to go for it, and chalk it up to exhaustion in the morning. “missed seeing your face.”

a small smile pulled at your lips, and you had to bite your cheek to refrain from letting the satisfaction bleed any further into your face. “did you, now?”

he shot you a glance as the car began to move again, unimpressed. “don’t push it,” he replied, but there was a hint of fondness concealed beneath the stubborn command. in truth, he was just happy to see a bit of your spark again.

he let out a small huff of amusement, breathing into the car and ridding it of any tethers to the past. the crushing pressure weighing down on your frail heart seemed to lift, eased by the simple sound of his voice. every passing streetlight felt like a step closer to something different, something more right than fleeting moments and the knowledge of the end. it felt familiar, and yet entirely new at once.

missing osamu miya was agonizing. having him close felt worse, but ultimately, was all you had ever yearned for.

🏷️. - @sh0ot1ngst4r @Azinniya @Kashee-h @fiannee @bubybubsters @lizbix @mayyhaps @adoresia @gumims @cinnamxnangel @sickpatientt @aldebrana @cancelledkat @wizzzierr @jadeyaps

[idksmtms]

Silver Springs (Rockstar!Harris Dickinson x Rockstar!Reader)

A/N: I know I should be working on my Poseidon series but I saw this moodboard by @24kmar (I’ve screenshotted a portion of it for the thumbnail image) after watching Babygirl and I just needed to write this. Plus I’ve been listening to a lot of Fleetwood Mac recently sooooo. Anywayssss! I hope you enjoy it! I was trying to capture like IDGAF-esque vibes for Harris in this. (And yes, I thought I was being clever by putting Drew Starkey in the band and calling them Not Twins). Also, I love MARINA and I love that she used to be called Marina and the Diamonds so that is officially Reader’s band. I make the rules so… deal with it. 

Summary: Filming has begun for a new documentary on the members of the band ‘Not Twins’. Everyone is particularly interested in the tumultuous relationship between their leadsinger Harris Dickinson and his girlfriend, the lead singer of ‘Marina and The Diamonds’. Sex, drugs, rock and roll, mystery, love, and intrigue of the highest order. The hottest documentary to hit the screens for a long time… 

Note: This is written as mostly just dialogue so I have listed the different fonts/formats for the different people - 

Reader  Harris Dickinson  Drew Starkey  Reporter/Interviewer

Word count: 8,425 

Trigger Warnings: she/her pronouns, AFAB reader, depictions of mental health issues, depression, slight mentions suicidal thoughts/ideation, slight Drew Starkey x reader (I’m sorry, I couldn’t control myself and the self-indulgent + horny thoughts came out), characters + reader smoking, angst, toxic jealousy with hints of possessiveness, cheating allegations, hint of cheating thoughts, anger issues, anger issues related to toxic jealousy, (please let me know if I missed any) 

Disclaimer: This is written purely for fictional purposes and for the sake of writing. No disrespect is intended to the real people portrayed/concerned in this scenario. 

I also reference some real songs in this, a comprehensive list will be provided at the bottom. 

Always appreciate comments, likes, and reblogs :)

“Could you say a few words into the mic? Just to test the sound.” 

“Testing, testing, Universal Studios are wankers, testing. All good?”

“Hahaha, yup, all good, thanks. Ok, so… are you alright to talk about Y/n?” 

“Yeah, if that’s what you really want to know about.” 

“Well, your relationship was a huge influence on your music - for both of you. It’s been plastered all over the news and social media. If you’re ready to talk about it, the people are willing to listen.” 

“Yeah, I have nothing to hide.”  …  “Are you interviewing her for the documentary as well?” 

“...Yes.” 

“Cool.” 

“Are you alright to talk about you and Harris now?” 

“Yeah, I guess. Might as well talk about the guy in a documentary about his band.” 

“Heh, yeah, probably. Alright, so, let’s start at the beginning I suppose. How did you two meet?” 

“It was the 2nd of February.” 

“It was the night of the Grammys.” 

“We had been making music for a couple years but we only started hitting the spotlight that year. It’s funny thinking about it now, that Marina and the Diamonds and Not Twins were gaining popularity around the same time. Anyway, it was our first year actually being recognised as musicians and going on our own tour, everything suddenly moving fast, you know?” 

“Both the bands were nominated for best rock performance that night. It was the first time either of us had been nominated for anything. We were doing our first international tour, but we were already famous. Sold out venues, adding extra shows and then selling those out. A couple of our songs go viral on TikTok and suddenly we’re sensations.” 

“It’s a room full of the top artists in the world. These are the people you’ve looked up to your entire life, and now you’re in the room with all of them at once, trying to act like you belong there and that you have somehow reached their level by being nominated. The girls and I weren’t important enough to have a central table or anything of course, we were off to the sides somewhere, which made it easy to slip in and out even when the awards were being given out.” 

“You’ve just been on this red carpet, showing yourself off, giving interviews and trying to act like you give a shit about any of it. We were excited at the time but it’s fucking exhausting. We were led into the hall and to this table off to the side. It was still, like, visible enough, but we obviously weren’t the most important people there. Which was really good to be honest. Meant the cameras weren’t hovering around us all the time and the spotlights stayed away. I found this door a little closer to the back. It led to like some service corridor or whatever and then straight out to the back of the building that was totally desolate. I think I went out that door like 10 times that night for a cigarette.” 

“I found this door in the back of the hall when I was coming back from the restroom like a quarter of the way through the event, and I was feeling so overwhelmed and in desperate need of a cig, I just followed the hallway until I was like spat out into this little brick loading bay type thing. It was bordered by the backs of other buildings, so it was all very industrial, and it was night time after a rain so the tarmac was all black and shiny and a little yellow from the street lights outside. I was rummaging around in my clutch for my cigarettes and my lighter. I managed to find the cigarettes and get one out, but I almost hurled the stupid purse onto the floor because it was somehow so full but so small and useless at the same time. I still hate clutches. 

I didn’t even realise it but then I saw this shadow come up behind me and I hear this click, like one of those old fashioned type lighter clicks? You know the sound I’m talking about? The little metal click as the lid comes up and the flick as it lights? That. And suddenly someone’s just pressing this lighter to the end of my cigarette and I’m whirling around just to end up staring at this guy’s bow tie.” 

“I was just leaning against the wall smoking a cigarette. I was trying so hard not to untie the bow tie and throw it away in the bin. Our manager had gotten us the suits and told us we had to wear them and Drew had to do up my tie for me. I’m more of a jeans type of person, so that was physical torture for me to be honest. Anyway, I’m trying not to scuff up my shoes too much or undo the bow tie or get rain water on the fabric or basically mess anything up in any way, when the door just flies open and this girl walks through, hand shoved into this tiny little clutch bag thing. She’s cursing like, every living creature on the planet earth, cigarette dangling from her mouth. She’s literally starting to lift up the bag to heave it across the road and I’m a bit shocked from this sudden entrance, and then just thinking about how I felt the exact same way about ten minutes ago, so I just walked over and lit it for her.”

“I mean, obviously I was shocked. This random dude - in like the creepiest setting ever by the way - has just come up almost from behind me to light up my cigarette without me asking. I almost hit him at first, just for having way too much audacity, but then I had like a drag or two and started to calm down so I just said thank you and moved with him to lean against the wall and just kind of stare into space and ignore the thumping music from behind us. Someone had been performing so I knew no one would freak out that I wasn’t there.” 

“We were both just kinda leaning against the wall, smoking our cigarettes in silence. Hers is burnt like halfway through when she lazily turns her head to me, kind of just letting it drop to the side so she’s looking up at me, raises her eyebrows, and says “so you’re the competition.” I just burst out laughing. Like, folded in half, wheezing laughing, because what was I supposed to say to that? I feel like no one ever acknowledges the actual desire to win. Everyone is always all like “oh I respect the other people in my category so much, we’re all winners, bla bla bla.” You may respect them, but you also want to beat them. You want to win. Plain and simple. So her just being there, like, calling me the competition… I don’t know, it just made me laugh. And she started laughing too and-” 

“And he just stopped laughing and was like ‘can I record your laugh for a song?’ I mean what the fuck dude? So random. I kinda just stared at him and was like, “are you serious?” And he just nodded, no smile, nothing, just focus. It’s the look he always gets when he’s building music in his head. There’s a couple pictures out there you can find on the internet, just google pictures of him in the studio or something. He gets this hyper focused look on his face, like his mouth is set straight and his jaw is just shy of being clenched and his eyes are so sharp and like you can almost see his pupils just dilate on command or something. It’s kind of a scary look, I won’t lie. Anyway, he had that look and he just goes ‘yes. Can I sample you laughing for a song?’”

“I don’t want to say some meaningless shit like ‘ohhh I’ve never heard a laugh like that in my life’ because maybe I have, I don’t know. She laughs really loudly and fully, like it comes from her chest and her throat and it makes her entire body shake. And her face scrunches up a little, like, like she can’t control herself or something. And in that moment, it was the perfect laugh. In that moment it was… inspiring. So yeah, I asked her if I could use it for a song because suddenly I had all these ideas for music that started with that laugh or matched that laugh or even used that laugh and I just wanted to be in the studio writing and crafting.” 

“How did that make you feel?” 

“I don’t know. I said yes, of course I said yes. It’s flattering to inspire someone just by being yourself. There’s something special, almost magical, about being yourself and someone seeing that and feeling the need to create art. I guess that’s how past boyfriends must have felt when I told them I wrote a song about them. Well, until we break up and I write a song calling them dickheads of the highest order.” 

“Yeah, anyways, so I finished my cigarette and gave her my phone so she could give me her number and then I invited her down to the studio like two days later so we could sample it. She just nodded and smiled at me, crushed her cigarette under her heel and went back inside. I still remember the shoes she was wearing that day. They were these blood red stilettos, like bright, fresh-blood red, and the heels were so sharp. They were basically knives she was standing on. It’s kinda funny when you find out how much she hates wearing heels ‘cause she has the balance of a baby deer.” 

“Neither of us won that night. Can’t even remember who won it to be honest with you, because by the time I came back in I was focused on something else.” 

“Do you guys know who won in our category that night? I won’t lie, I did not pay attention at all after.” 

“Hahaha, we can find out for you.” 

“Did you go to the studio to record your laugh?” 

“Heh, yeah I did. I felt really stupid, but we had started texting already beforehand. He even called me a couple of times, and it was… really nice. People I know who are watching this are probably gasping in shock right now. I would do anything to avoid a phone call. But… It was nice to talk to him. I liked his voice, even when he wasn’t singing. Especially when he wasn’t singing. Everyone loves his singing voice and, yeah, it’s absolutely amazing, but when he speaks… yeah. Anyway.” 

“How did it go?” 

“It was really fun. The first twenty minutes were just me trying to fake my laugh for the recording but it always sounded wrong and artificial. Then for the next forty minutes he did literally every single thing he could to try and make me laugh. At first I was too conscious of it to be sincere, but then he told me we would stop recording for a bit, to just sit around and relax, but he had the sound tech still keep the mics on. We just talked for a while, and… he’s always been good at making me laugh. I was just giggling and cackling and… just laughing really. He got the recording he wanted.” 

“People have always wondered if it was your laugh at the beginning of ‘i hope that you think of me’. 

“Yeah… it is. I didn’t know which song he was going to use it for. I was happy to give him the sound bites and move on. He didn’t even tell me he had written it. When it came out, we had already been dating for a couple months. He just sent me the Spotify link in a text that just said ‘listen’. I still love that song. I listen to it pretty frequently actually…” 

“Had you heard her music before you two met?” 

“Yeah. Drew was a fan from their early days, so he played their music sometimes. I won’t lie, I didn’t really give it the time of day until ‘Messy’ came out. I fuckin’ love that song. Still do.” 

“What was it like to be in the studio with her when you were recording the laugh? Did you guys play or write something?” 

“Recording the laugh was really fun. I wanted it to be authentic, I wanted the real sound, but we obviously couldn’t get it on command. It was a good excuse to just hang out together, get to know each other better. After we got the recording, the sound tech left and it was just the two of us. We just sat around strumming the guitars, playing the piano, just fiddling about really. She had brought her guitar with her. It was a present from her grandmother, getting kind of old, even back then, but she loved that thing. It was precious to her, she wouldn’t even let me touch it.” 

“Is that the guitar you were using on the tour before it ended?” 

“...Yeah.” 

“She hasn’t used that guitar since the tour. Did you know that?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Di- 

“Can we talk about something else?” 

“Yeah. Yeah, sure.”

“So when did you actually start dating then?” 

“I mean, we never made any official declarations or anything. One day we just… were. I guess you could count the first kiss as our start.” 

“What’s the story behind it?” 

“We didn’t call them dates, but we would spend a lot of our spare time together. Between travelling and days in the studios and commitments and stuff, any spare moment really when we were in the same city, we would find a way to spend time together.”  … “Anyway, it was this one night. Probably a Sunday. It’s like 2am, it’s just rained, no one is out and about. One of those slow and quiet nights where no one had bothered to leave their house even before the clock had hit twelve, let alone after it. I was feeling a bit restless. I wanted to go out and walk or something but like, I’m a girl on my own in the city. Can’t really do that. Suddenly my phone is ringing and he’s asking if I wanna go walking around the city. Says he’s been sitting and staring out of the window for the past hour and he desperately wants to go out for a walk or something. I still remember the way he asked, it was so serious, like he was asking me to marry him or something. He said that he really just wanted to be with me then, and… it just made me feel really special. I felt giddy too, like I was back in school and my crush had asked me out for the first time.

So I said, yeah, of course, and then he showed up at my building. He smiled when I opened the door, this soft, small smile that was like… I don’t even know, it was like soft yellow light, and I felt my entire chest just fill up. It felt like my ribs were going to slowly curl open then pop out. He reached out and waited for me to grab his hand and then we walked like that for a while. Just through neighbourhoods and past shops and restaurants and just wherever we wanted really. Holding hands. 

It was like an hour into the walk, we’re just leaning against a wall by this alley, sharing a cigarette and just resting for a little bit. I was standing so I was basically pressed into his chest. I was cold and we were sharing one cigarette between the two of us, so I was just like curled onto him. His jacket was open so I wrapped my arms around his torso and just laid my head there. He was really nice and warm and smelled really clean. He always smelled really clean, like freshly showered and fresh linen, even when he didn’t wear cologne. 

He would bring the cigarette down to my lips, wait for me to take a drag, then pull it away and bring it back up to his own lips. We were stood there like that for like ten minutes when he flicked the cigarette away and pushed my chin up so my head tipped back. I was just staring into his eyes. It was weird, it wasn’t like the world had gone silent or anything, but it felt like I was suddenly… lifted into a different body. I could hear him breathe, soft little whooshes, and I could feel the skin of his hand on my face like I had never felt another person’s skin before. And he just kissed me. Full on. Just closed his eyes and pressed his mouth to mine. I could feel the tip of his nose press into the crease between my cheek and my nose. We were literally wrapped around each other like those hugging salt and pepper shakers.”  …  “It… it was nice.”  … “I don’t know. Maybe it was the undiagnosed depression, but for a week after that night I used to think “this can’t last, this is going to ruin my life.” And… I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like my thoughts were right and I was wrong to ignore them because if I had listened to the darkness I would have saved myself a bunch of heartache. But other times… other times I’m really happy that it happened because regardless of everything else, I knew love.” 

“I think that was the happiest I’ve ever been. Those moments with her.” 

“Was that inspiring for you? Finding her?” 

“Are you joking right now? Of course it was. Every sappy lovey-dovey song I’ve ever written came out around that time. I was surprised people didn’t seem to notice the sudden tone change.” 

“Is ‘Must Be A Dream’ about her?” 

“Yeah, of course. I… every time I woke up beside her, I would say ‘this must be a dream’. She always used to laugh, her super duper tired, ‘I can’t believe you’re joking with me at 8am’ laugh. I was in love with that laugh.” 

“So, how did you two meet?” 

“Yeah, uh, Harris and I met when we were both already kinda on the music scene. We were trying to start solo careers and this tiny magazine, I’m pretty sure they’re out of business now, that interviewed independent and kinda indie artists had us both for an interview to promote new artists. We did this interview together and people kept commenting on how similar we were and laughing that we were just the UK and USA versions of each other, heh.”  …  “We got along pretty well at the interview and decided to book some studio space and just play some stuff together, you know? Like just bounce ideas, get some vibes, and just kinda enjoy music with someone else who enjoyed it. It wasn’t supposed to be anything big. We went and got coffee together before going to the studio and like three different times we had to be like “we’re not twins”. Anyway, we played some music and we just got each other. Like he would play something and I would know exactly how to continue it. Our minds just worked really similarly so like an hour into the session ‘Not Twins’ was born.” 

“When did you first meet Y/n then?” 

“Uh, lemme think for a minute. I think it was a couple weeks after Harris first asked her out. I knew she had been by the studio to work on some stuff with him, but I hadn’t ever been there at the time. He had written some songs that were tinkering around with, just trying to get some melodies going, see what notes might go where, you know, just rough stuff. Anyway, he told me he invited her around to just hang out for lunch or something. I thought it was cute. He wasn’t really someone who acted like that about his relationships. He wasn’t really someone to get into relationships anyway, if you know what I mean… but it was obvious he liked this girl. He wasn’t like a nervous jittery virgin or anything, I think he has too much confidence for that, but he was just like, I don’t know, smiling at his phone all the time or like going out for hour long phone calls, always face-timing and stuff. It was obvious he was invested in her.” 

“So she came by the studio?” 

“Yeah, sorry, got side-tracked, heh. Yeah, she came by the studio and it wasn’t like one of those awkward introduction moments where he’s standing next to her and just gesturing between us two. It was like we clicked right from the start. We just chatted about music and made stupid jokes and just got along really well.”  …  “I think we’re pretty similar, you know? Her and me? Well, not a lot, we do disagree about stuff, but like… I don’t know, is it stupid to say we live on the same wavelength? We just understood each other without needing to explain anything or do anything. She would strum on the guitar or hum a melody and I knew exactly where to go on the bass. It was kind of like how I worked with Harris but it was also different. I don’t know, I’m kind of shit at explaining this stuff, but it was just something different… something softer. 

I mean, even aside from that, she’s such a sweet person, so smiley and just easy to get along with that if those elements hadn’t existed, I’m sure we would have been good anyway.”

…

“Had you listened to her music before?” 

“It’s funny, I was actually the one that introduced Harris to Marina and the Diamonds. I had known about her and the band for a little while, I liked their music, and I thought their live band interactions, the way they worked together on stage was awesome. Like, have you seen some of their performances? Her stage presence is just immaculate and then just the music itself is so good that it was a recipe for success from the beginning.” 

“So you were a fan before they even met? Did you ever feel… I don’t know, regret, I suppose, that they met before you two did?” 

“I, uh, I haven’t really talked about this before, to be honest. I don’t know why I’m even telling you guys this, Harris’ll never forgive me when he watches the doc, but like, fuck it, I guess.”  … “Yeah. I was a bit sad that they met before she and I did. It was childish to be honest with you. It was one of those things of like “I was a fan first!” you know? It felt like a sick joke that I had been a fan for a while and he just kinda bumped into her and managed to shoot his shot. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I didn’t resent him for it or anything, and it wasn’t even like I knew her well enough to be that annoyed or anything. Plus, after meeting her, we had such a good friendship and like… everything that happened, and I don’t know. I guess… for me, it was the right person, wrong time. For her, it probably wasn’t anything…” 

“Are you alright to talk about when everything started, uh, I don’t know, going ‘downhill’ I suppose?” 

“Yeah, I mean, fuck it why not? I’m already exposing my entire life to the internet, might as well keep going.” 

“Well, thank you anyway, hahaha. So, well, I mean, before we get into that, why don’t we talk a little bit about the good times? Just before the issues started appearing, what was it like?” 

“I… It’s weird, the way I view it. It’s not like the issues just started appearing or anything. I just think there were things we didn’t know about each other that were only revealed with time and we weren’t really ready for it. I don’t think he and I were wrong for each other. I don’t think we even found each other at the wrong time. I just think we hadn’t reached the same place in life at the same time. Like- ugh, I don’t know what I’m saying. I think we both should have worked on ourselves a little more before committing to a relationship.”  … “Sorry, wait, you asked about the good times. Of course there were good times, we wouldn’t have been together for as long as we were if there hadn’t been good times. I don’t really know how to pick out specific ones. I guess I remember the bad times a lot better…” 

“What’s your best memory with Harris?” 

“It was the album release show we played in London. It was a very small intimate venue, the audience was basically sat on the stage with us. Harris came down and played a bit of guitar for some of the songs, and… it’s difficult to describe the memory even though I remember it so vividly. 

We had just finished playing ‘Your Best American Girl’. The lights were dipped down to this dark pink with these really soft yellow spotlights on us. I was at the standing mic, and he was somewhere on my left. The music began for ‘Pink in the Night’, it’s probably the slowest and softest song we’ve ever recorded but at that point it was the song that best expressed the emotions I felt being around Harris. It was this fearful declaration of a desperate love. I loved him so much but at the same time it felt like I was constantly doing something wrong or something. 

Anyway, the atmosphere was just so heavy and quiet, it was like everyone was holding their breath as I sang, and I couldn’t help but watch him. The music just poured out of me like breathing and my eyes were so focused on him, the way he was strumming the guitar, the way he was standing. And I looked at his face and he was already watching me, like he knew the song off by heart and didn’t need to bother looking at the guitar, and it was this intense moment of just… being connected to each other. We just looked into each other’s eyes for the entirety of the song, felt the music through each other, just… I don’t know. It’s as close as humankind can get to magic. 

“Wow. That’s… intense.” 

“Yeah… it was. But, I don’t know, I guess we didn’t know how to be anything other than intense.” 

“The first time the public became aware of the… tumultuous aspect of your relationship was when you were arrested. Could you tell me about how that happened?” 

“It was the stupidest shit ever.”  … “We were at a club, it’s a saturday night, everybody’s at their fullest shithead behaviour, you know? I won’t lie, I was probably on something by then, aside from the alcohol, maybe ket or even coke if Lenny - uh Lenny, the bassist for Marina and the Diamonds - was there. 

Anyway, I was at the bar trying to get a drink, just chatting to some random man nearby, when I look over to the crowd, and I see some fucker trying to dance up on Y/n. I just… I stood there and I saw red. I couldn’t even tell if she was in distress or not, if she even noticed or not, but I saw him trying to press up against her and I… I won’t lie, I went feral. I left my body. I was controlled by the blood rush and the anger. 

I flung him off her and shoved him through the crowd. I was trying to get him to the door because I knew they wouldn’t let me fight him in the club, but obviously he began struggling back. I just punched him in the face. Full on. It hurts like hell by the way, if you were wondering, but… I won’t lie, it’s also kind of satisfying when you’re angry. 

The bouncer came in and tried to separate us but I just shoved him off and kept on going after the idiot. Eventually the other bouncer came back from the bathroom and they hauled us outside and held us there until the police got there. The man, bless him, wasn’t even going to press charges. I was gonna get away with assault, but they searched us and they found a little baggy of coke in my pocket and hauled me off to the police station.” 

“So you weren’t actually arrested for the fight?” 

“No, the man didn’t press charges. I was taken in for minor drug possession.” 

“How did Y/n react?”

“Well, right after the fight, when we were sitting on the pavement waiting for the police, she called me a twat, a wanker, and a right cunt. All well deserved. She couldn’t believe that the reason I was fighting was because of some petty jealousy. She told me she hadn’t even noticed the man.” 

“Are you the kind of person that gets jealous easily, then?” 

“I don’t know, maybe. All I know was that back then, despite everything, over and over again, I couldn’t believe she had chosen me. I could never quite believe that I was worth the love she was willing to give me. I guess I was always paranoid it wasn’t real. Or that she could be easily pulled away by someone else.”  … “No wonder she was upset. I was basically telling her I didn’t trust her.” 

“That wasn’t even the first time he had gotten jealous. It was just the first time he had gotten into a fight over it. I always knew he had a little bit of a possessive streak. I didn’t mind, I kind of liked it actually. Made me feel like he really loved me if he was that protective over me. Like it was some twisted way he showed he cared about me. But when he attacked someone… Now I think it was just because he was so insecure about himself that he couldn’t trust I wouldn’t leave him for someone else. That’s shit only therapy can fix, though. I know. I speak from experience.” 

“You were arrested once yourself, weren’t you?” 

“Yeah… um. Yeah. That was… that was bad. It was… I’m actually insanely embarrassed about that. It fills me with shame when I think about it now. I don’t really want to talk about it.” … “I’ll give you the quick run-down version. This is like night three of the tour.  Basically, we had gotten into some stupid petty argument about something or other. He was down at the bar for a bit while I was slowly working my way through the entire mini bar in my room. I went downstairs to get hammered at the hotel bar when I saw him and Lenny sat together. They were both at the bar, on swivelly bar stools, turned towards each other, and their knees were touching. I don’t… I felt this anguish in my chest, like someone was reaching through the gaps in my ribcage and squeezing the flesh of my heart until it squelched out between their fingertips. 

He was smiling at her the way he smiled at me. The really pretty smile where his eyes look all mischievous and the right corner of his mouth lifts up a little. It’s his flirting smile. And seeing him direct it at Lenny…

Anyway, long story short, I got super duper wasted, caused a bit of a ruckus, refused to return to my room, and was arrested for being drunk and disorderly.” … “Harris came and bailed me out at like 3am and… I literally sat on the street and heave-sobbed for like fifteen minutes.”  … “Sorry, can I just… can I have a quick break? Just to run and get some water?” 

“Yes, yes of course.” 

“Was there ever a moment where it hit you that something was wrong? A moment where you could feel everything tip over?” 

“Uh, yeah, yeah, actually. The first time it really hit me that ‘something is wrong here’…  Like a month before the tour, Drew and I were in the studio working on some new music. Nothing big, we just had a bit of free time and were fiddling around with some ideas and tunes. I invited Y/n around to just hang out, you know? She could just sit and read if she wanted, but I knew she would end up joining us. She could never help herself. And I wasn’t going to deny any ideas or help, I appreciated it, she has a good ear. 

Anyway, she told me she was on the way, and I realised I was out of cigarettes. I thought I might as well run down to the off-licence, grab some snacks as well. Drew was in the studio, he could let her in if she got there early. She must have arrived just as I left. When I got back in, just humming along down the corridor, feeling a little jolly or something, I got to the door, and I heard her laughing. I paused there, hand on the door knob, and looked through the little glass window in the door. 

She had pulled one of the stools up close to Drew’s, and they both had guitar’s on their laps. Realistically they couldn’t have gotten that close together, but… I don’t know, every time I picture it, they’re sat as close as humanly possible, even with guitars on their laps. Both of them had their heads leaning forward, so close to each other, and they were smiling. They both had on this smile like they were sharing a moment no one else was a part of. Like… I don’t know, like it was just the two of them and the world was secondary. It… felt horrible. 

I mean, it was just dreadful. For like, five whole minutes, I hated Drew. I wanted to punch him in the face. I wanted to kill him. He was my best friend, and that’s how I was feeling about him… I never wanted to feel that way again, but once that seed was rooted in my mind, it always came back up. Any time they were alone together, even for a moment, I couldn’t help but think they were just creating more connections, sharing more secrets, and soon, I wouldn’t have those with her anymore. They would all go to him…”  … “Nothing had ever felt that wrong at that point.”

“It was a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy thing, I think. It was only after he started mistrusting my friendship with Drew that I started, I don’t know, feeling kind of interested in him. Nothing ever happened, and the little crush fizzled out but… I don’t know, funny, isn’t it?” 

“Alright, so it was kind of a steady downhill climb until the tour?” 

“Yeah, I guess so. I mean, we were just so shit at communication and we felt too much. I felt like we were partying too much and he was too into it. He loved partying but didn’t want to do it without me. Neither of us actually talked about why we felt these things. And eventually we felt like we couldn’t trust each other about anything, but we were also too selfish to let each other go. That’s why I was so shitty about Lenny. That’s why he couldn’t handle me being friendly with Drew.” 

“Let’s move on. Let’s talk about that last tour.” 

“Yeah.” 

“Sure”

“What happened?” 

“By the time the tour started, we had entered this vicious cycle of horrible, unhinged, scream-fighting, just to slam the doors and walk away, only to get drunk or high, get depressed and lonely, just to crawl back to each other and have these intense reunions. It was… frankly, it was sick and twisted.” 

“I was a piece of shit.” 

“The tour had your two bands scheduled for almost 50 shows over 5 continents. You played 5 shows before the tour was cancelled. Neither of you have spoken about what happened, and to the general public, it still remains a bit of a mystery as to why the tour was cancelled. Are you willing to share the story?” 

“...” 

“...” 

“I couldn’t… I couldn’t ever look at him again, let alone speak to him again after night five.” 

“Night five of the tour… I will never forget that night. It was the worst moment of my entire fucking life.” 

“In an attempt to, I don’t know, somehow salvage our relationship, I wanted to show him I trusted him, so… I offered to let him use my guitar during the shows.” 

“I… I hope she knows how much I appreciated that gesture. Regardless of anything else, I hope she knows how much that meant to me… that she trusted me to use it. I know how precious it was to her.” 

“That guitar was my single most prized possession. I protected that thing with my life. It got its own seat on the plane next to me. It was my everything.” 

“Why was that guitar so special to you?” 

“That guitar used to belong to my grandmother, and she loved it. She had once wanted to be a musician herself but she always said she wasn’t good enough to actually get anywhere with it, and her family wanted her to get a real career or get married and have a traditional family, bullshit like that. But every time we had a big family gathering, she would break it out and play music for us. Anything, everything, but… you could see the joy on her face, the way she felt the music. Her not being able to pursue music was one of the greatest losses of the world, I think….”  … “Anyway, um, where was I? Yeah, so, when I started pursuing music seriously, she gave it to me, she said I would at least be able to use it. She always told me to chase my dreams, to never let myself think I wasn’t good enough, to never let anyone stop me. It was the thing that connected us, you know? As long as one of us played on that guitar, we would be alright.” 

“On the fifth night of the tour, we got into an argument backstage. It was the worst argument we’ve ever had. I accused her of having an affair with Drew, I told her she was ruining everything, her career, our relationship…”

“I told him he was crazy. I called him pathetic. It was… it was ugly. Every possible horrible thing we could have said to each other, we did. And we refused to stop. We were just up in each other’s face, screaming. And… and I said ‘maybe I would be better off with Drew.” 

“When she said that… my entire world felt like it had collapsed around me. The very thing I had been trying to avoid, her seeing that she would be better off with someone else… it was happening in that moment. I felt everything. Every possible emotion, but… I chose anger.” 

“He was seething. I could see it. It was almost like his eyes were actually on fire. Harris is not someone you want to see angry. It’s like a forest fire, it’s frightening.” 

“And I turned away from her. I started walking away when I saw the guitar sat on its stand in the corner. I turned back to look at her, and then the guitar. I think she could almost tell what I was thinking.” 

“I saw him looking at my guitar with that blazing anger and everything was suddenly closing in on us. I put up my hands like some fucking hostage or like I was trying to calm down a bear or something. I was just whispering, ‘no, don’t you dare’.” 

“I just reached over, grabbed the guitar from the stand, lifted it over my head, and I smashed it against the floor. Again. And again. And again. I could hear her screaming, but it was so far away. Like I was underwater. The only clear sound was the smashing of the guitar.” 

“I was screaming at the top of my lungs. I was on my knees, head in my hands, absolutely wailing. I began grabbing for the pieces and he only stopped when he saw me there, crawling in the wood chips.” 

“She looked so small. She was curled up on the floor, her hands shaking, picking up all the wood in her little fists, trying to put the pieces of the guitar back together.” 

“I got so many splinters, I cut up my palms horribly. I screamed so much I basically shredded my vocal chords and lost my voice.” 

“She looked up at me, her eyes all puffy and red and full of tears… her hands were bleeding… and she just whispered ‘I hate you’. Over and over again.” 

“I don’t… I don’t know if I’ve ever felt hatred like that for someone before or since. In that moment… I loathed him.” 

“I’ve never forgiven myself for doing that. I never will. I fucking… I fucking hate myself for doing that. I hate myself for taking her trust and shattering it like that. I hate myself for hurting the one person I ever loved like that…” 

“He walked out of the room after that, just left me there on the floor. My manager came in a little while later, we sweeped everything up, didn’t talk about it. I don’t think anyone else knows what happened in that room. Not Drew, not Lenny or anyone else in Marina and the Diamonds.” 

“I walked away. I couldn’t face it.”

“After that you refused to finish the tour?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Yeah.”

“I couldn’t even look at him, let alone stand next to him on stage and be all happy. I told my manager I was dropping out, I refused to do anymore shows. I told them I would pay for anything that needed to be paid for, whatever needed to be done so I could fuck off back home and never think about that stupid fucking tour ever again.” 

“I couldn’t believe I had done that, I was in a deep pit of self-loathing and I knew I couldn’t face her. I told my manager that I quit, that I was going home. He didn’t know what was going on. I think he probably spoke to her manager later. But… yeah, I was a coward. I couldn’t face her so I ran away.”  … “I… like a week later, I tried to write her a letter. Tried to say sorry, just… anything. It was so shitty, but I sent it to her anyway. No response.” 

“Yeah, I… I got the letter.”

“You didn’t respond?” 

“No. I wasn’t ready then.” 

“Has… that changed?”

“Well, must have done if I’m participating in this, heh. I… yes. I don’t hate him anymore. I mean, I might have hated him in that moment, but… it didn’t last. I don’t know if I can ever truly forgive him for destroying the guitar, but… I’ve forgiven him for everything else. Too little time on earth not to, I suppose. ” 

“Let’s talk about everything that happened, Drew.” 

“How much capacity does that camera have? If we talk about everything that happened, we’re gonna be here a long time.” 

“We have backup cameras as well.” 

“Then I have all the time in the world.” 

“You and Y/n…” 

“...Are you trying to ask if she cheated on Harris with me? Or if we ever dated after they broke up or anything like that?” 

“...Did you?” 

“No. Look, I won’t lie, I… I did have feelings for her, even when they were dating, and even when all that shit was happening. I was in love with her. I won’t ever deny that. We never talked about it, sometimes I thought she might have feelings for me too. But nothing ever happened. Those two had other problems to deal with, more than any jealousy or possible feelings between her and me.” 

“Did Harris know you had feelings for her?” 

“No.”  … “I never wanted to be the reason they imploded. It was incoming anyway, but I didn’t want to be the reason. Cheating is… that kind of break of trust is something you don’t come back from… At least, to me.” 

…

“You said you were in love with her?” 

“Yeah… I was. It… that was probably the best and worst time of my life. The good moments were so good. I got to write ‘I Wanna Be Yours’ during that time of my life.” 

“You wrote ‘I Wanna Be Yours’ about Y/n?” 

“Have you ever felt that? Being in love with someone who’s so wrapped up in someone else?” 

“Can’t say I have, I’m sorry.” 

“Nah, no need to be sorry.”... “It… it sucks man. It’s the worst feeling you could experience, I think.” … “Yeah… I, uh, never told her either.” 

“You never told her how you felt? Never?” 

“Never. She didn’t even know the song was about her.” 

“Silver Springs is one of the most successful pieces of music ever released. I mean, it’s still breaking records. Despite all of this, you barely ever talk about that song. You haven’t told anyone about the writing process, the idea, the inspiration, nothing. But everyone has speculated that it was about your relationship with Harris. Is this true?” 

“I… I don’t really like talking about ‘Silver Springs’.” 

“Why?” 

“I was in a horrible place when I wrote that song. I was… I was feeling every bad emotion you could possibly think of. I was filtering through all these different emotions. I mean, one minute I wanted to end it all, and then the next I was filled with this all-consuming, fire-breathing, rage where I wanted to smash everything around me.” … “I wrote Silver Springs in one of those in-between moments. I was so… angry, but I was so tired of being angry. I didn’t want to be angry but I didn’t know how to stop. And… in my head, at least, I blamed him for everything. Everything.”  …  “Look, now I obviously know I wasn’t some innocent victim in that relationship. I could be just as horrible as he was. I gave as good as I got. But in those moments I was so angry and feeling so selfish and… I don’t know, I guess I wanted him to know. Without telling him, I wanted him to feel my rage. That’s why I wrote ‘Brand New City’. Why I wrote ‘Dreams’ and ‘The Chain’. I guess I also wanted to somehow confirm to myself, truth or not, that I had affected him just as much as he had affected me.” 

“You had a minor style change at one point, after that era.” 

“Yeah, I was listening to a lot of old music, just trying to like mentally transport myself to anywhere other than where I was, I suppose. We recorded ‘Silver Dagger’, it was just a Joan Baez cover, but it… weirdly it was another perfect song for the anger I was feeling then.”  … “It’s funny, so many of my favourite songs that I’ve written have been inspired from that period of my life. I wrote ‘Guy on a Horse’ when my friends were trying to hype me up and the only thing they could think to do was say how much better I was than him. And later, when I started feeling more… ok, when the hate and anger simmered out and I began to, I don’t know, heal? ‘I Don’t Want to Know’ was born. If nothing else, all that pain was good for music, heh.”  

“Can I ask you another question?” 

“Sure.” 

“I noticed you haven’t said his name once during this interview.” 

…

“Is that the question?” 

“Was it a conscious choice?” 

“I don’t know. I guess it’s still a little difficult to think about it all. If I say his name, he becomes real. It’s not just some insane dream I once had and can’t get over…”

“In her interviews, Y/n spoke about how a lot of her songs have been inspired by that period. Can you say the same?” 

“Yeah, of course. The album we released a little while after the tour fell through? ‘Prisoner of Desire’ and ‘True Love’s in Decline’ are basically the exact words to describe how I was feeling. Lyrics wise, they probably capture the hopelessness and agony the best, I guess.” 

“When was the last time you saw her then?” 

“That night. I mean, I still see her on social media and stuff. Can’t really escape that. But, uh, we haven’t seen each other since… haven’t spoken to each other since…”  … “Still listen to her music. Might be a form of self-torture or something. After the breakup, I couldn’t listen to anything from them, it just hurt too much I suppose… Now I guess I like the fact that it hurts…” 

“Can we take a break for a bit?” Harris asked, rubbing at his face. His hands were itching and he got up without waiting for an answer, patting down his pockets for his cigarettes and lighter. Just as he began walking to the door to leave the studio they were filming in, the door flew open and someone rushed in. He flicked his eyes up, a cigarette already pressed between his lips, and paused. His mouth dropped open a little more but the cigarette dangled precariously off his lip, stuck with the saliva. 

He was staring at a whirlwind of a human being, her head turning this way and that. She finally spotted him and halted, like someone suddenly pressed pause on a tornado. Her chest was heaving, all visible skin slightly shiny with sweat. He could see her hands shaking at her sides. She was staring at him. He wasn’t surprised, his own eyes were rather unabashed in their assessment of her. 

“Harris…”

Song List:  I hope that you think of me - Pity Party (Girls Club), Lucys - it doesn’t start w/ a laugh tho lmao  Messy - Lola Young  Must Be A Dream - Tempesst Your Best American Girl - Mitski  Pink in the Night - Mitski  Silver Springs - Fleetwood Mac  Brand New City - Mitski  Dreams - Fleetwood Mac  The Chain - Fleetwood Mac  Silver Dagger - Joan Baez  Guy on a Horse - Maisie Peters  I Don’t Want to Know - Fleetwood Mac  True Love’s in Decline - Tempesst  Prisoner of Desire - Tempesst

[funkii4-blog]

SMG34 In 2024: A Recap Essay

(all text, no images aside from cover below)

This is extremely long since we got fed pretty well this year, so be prepared to read 3000 words of pure insanity from my silly little brain :))

14x01: Mario Opens A Can Of Beans

Not much to begin with as 3 appears very little in this episode, but about two thirds of the way through he's seen stopping by the castle to ask 4 if he can borrow some sugar. Which is funny since he literally owns a cafe next door to the castle lol

14x02: You Used To Be Cool

Oh boy, this one was a real kicker for being so early in the year, specifically for its second half.  

During the scene where 3 is attempting to torture Depresso, we get a short sequence of him thinking back on memories with his friends; playing Garry’s Mod with Mario, Meggy’s heart-to-heart with him in IGBP, and with 4... Snowtrapped?! This is of course the infamous episode from all the way back in 2016 in which the two got rather intimate with each other, so it’s wild that that is what he thought of with 4 first after everything they’ve been through together.

A little later, in an attempt to get 3 to show he’s still a villain (which he isn’t), Eggman tasks him with killing 4 as his final test. When 3 is told to do this, we can instantly see the unease and regret in 3’s reaction; and it’s made clear that he doesn’t want to do this. Over the last year's worth of episodes up to this point, 3 and 4’s bond had improved drastically; it’d been long established by this point that the two are friends now. 

We then see him in his room holding the gun shakily, visibly terrified; he knows he can’t do this, but he also wants to prove himself to Eggman and is torn. He has another sequence of looking back on memories with 4; the moment he finally declared they were friends at the edge of the Demon Pit, their sweet moment under the sunrise (sunset? Idk I just say it’s the morning following the casino heist) as he drew the two of them in his notebook, and as far back as during the Cosmology saga when they only first started to bond. 

He hits a practice target on his wall and starts boasting about how he “finally has a reason to kill that bozo”, but Eggdog is quick to confront what we already know: 3 cares about 4 and doesn’t actually want to hurt him. And while we can’t understand what Eggdog is saying, I think it’s pretty likely he was giving 3 a hard time about how he actually has a crush on 4, to which 3 ignores and leaves the room. 

Cut to the next day when 3 goes to perform the act; he walks into the kitchen where 4 is, raising the gun and saying a dark monologue (presumably knowing Eggman is listening in). He apologizes for this (something I highly doubt he would have done just a year before), and we get a cut to the window being splattered. We of course know he didn’t actually do it, but they still pull this fakeout on us; 3 actually shot the tomato meme that 4 had on the counter to trick Eggman. 

He says he was actually considering killing him “like usual” (which we know isn’t true anymore), to which 4 cries. Eggman then tries to attack the two of them; he initially aims at 3, who is unfazed by this. However, he switches his aim to 4, causing 3 to immediately panic and take down Eggman himself to avoid 4 getting hit. 

The episode ends with 3 setting his hand on the back of the still-crying 4, who is mourning the death of his tomato meme, as he monologues again; this time it’s about how he’s realized he doesn't need to prove how evil he is and that he’s happy with the people around him. 

14x03: CEO Of Rizz

4 doesn't appear in this episode, but I still wanted to note something in this one to come back to later. This episode is about 3 helping Boopkins with his televised date while trying to boost the cafe’s popularity, and there’s a scene early on where 3 goes over gift ideas. He ultimately settles on a creepy Mickey Mouse sculpture, claiming it to be a perfect gift to give a date. 

14x06: Trash Friends

This one also has a lot to cover, so buckle up ;)

3 is currently under a lot of stress, as his recently opened cafe is having a rough start and seemingly failing. 4 runs to him, also upset about supposedly losing an important endorsement he received. When 3 is confused, 4 proceeds to grab him by the face and pull him close in order to use his powers & project a memory of him losing the endorsement onto 3. He begs 3 for his help, claiming it’s because they’re friends and friends help each other.  

4 then urgently claims he needs this endorsement to become popular; we then see 3 getting an idea to take the endorsement for the cafe, but I also like to think he wanted to get it out of 4’s hands to keep him from growing power hungry over his popularity again. He did put a camera in 4’s room to make sure he didn’t go insane again after the whole perfect video fiasco, after all; he wants to look out for him and make sure there isn't a repeat of that. 

Getting this idea, 3 gets 4 to warm up to him via the “buddy chum pal” bit (the exact same way 4 did to him all the way back in Are You Okay). The two of them along with Mario then go to the trash dump to retrieve the endorsement, and classic star trio chaos ensues. 

The two guardians split up and spend hours trying to find Mario, having walkie-talkie conversations in between. 4 asks about the business, to which 3 lies and says thing are going well. When they join back up and 4 sees 3 trying to open a blocked door, 3 panics and says he’s just trying to open the door for him. 

Something interesting happens after that: when 4 is talking, 3 dissociates and ends up imagining 4 belittling him in a way that expresses 3’s fears: specifically, his fears of being inferior to the other (“worse version of you”) and being forgotten. This isn’t confirmed, but I've seen it theorized that the only opinion that matters to 3 is 4’s (with vice versa also possible). 

Once they find Mario, they fight over him as they both try to claim the drive with the endorsement on it, 3 avoiding telling 4 the truth as long as he can. 

The fight eventually goes too far, with 4 calling 3 selfish since he doesn’t understand why 3 wants it so badly. This causes 3 to snap and have a breakdown, admitting his business is struggling severely and how he feels as if he’s the worse version of 4. This makes 4 realize that 3 is struggling a lot more emotionally than he let on, leading to him deciding to give 3 the endorsement willingly.

14x08: SMG4 And SMG3 Rank SMG4 Characters

And here we are, the first of the 3 & 4 improv episodes. I know it’s debated whether these can be considered, but since they consist of Luke & James (4 & 3’s VAs) having in-character improvised conversations, I still want to bring them up. 

A general frequent aspect of these episodes is the two joking around and generally getting along better, which is nice to see. Usually aside from serious moments, we just see them bickering like the rivals they used to be to each other. We also can see loving glances exchanged from time to time in these episodes’ animation portions. 

14x12: Once Upon An SMG4

I only have one note for this one and it won’t make sense unless you’ve watched The Cuphead Show since it’s a parallel to a scene in that, but I still want to talk about it.

After 3’s song at the beginning, he asks aloud “whoever shall be my sugar daddy?” (yes, that’s actually what he said word for word). There proceeds to immediately be a cut to 4 in his lair. This instantly reminded me of the scene in the Cuphead Show episode “Down & Out”, where King Dice claims there's just one thing missing from the revival of his career; there proceeds to be a camera pan downward to The Devil going about his business in hell. Another thing that likely won’t be known by non-Cuphead fans is that the ship between King Dice and The Devil (at least within the show, idk about the game) is semi-canon: They don’t get together in the media itself, but the team behind the show as well as the two’s voice actors have repeatedly expressed their support of the ship. And based on various events the ship between 3 and 4 can easily also be considered semi-canon... :3 

S14 Movie: Puzzlevision

I think it’s safe to say all the good stuff from this chapter of the PV saga was reserved for this movie, because there’s once again a lot to cover here. So here we go! 

The first of many parodies covered in this movie is of SpongeBob with, pretty fittingly to their characters, 4 as SpongeBob and 3 as Squidward. I know this was likely just done to fit the character roles, but you know I can’t help but note that the ship between SpongeBob and Squidward is also very popular within its own fandom. 

Throughout the movie, the two are seen being notably defensive and protective of each other in the presence of Puzzles, moreso 3 of 4. 

Once the gang is split up into different channels after the song, 3 and 4 are of course put together. The first parody they have to face is Rugrats. When 3 is grabbed, 4 doesn’t hesitate to spring into action and save him. 3 responds with a vulnerable “You saved me!” before going tsundere and calling 4 a baka (surprisingly the only time this running gag was used this year). 

After escaping that channel, they land in a parody of the Titanic film. They spot the portal to the next channel high up in the air above the ship, but neither can reach it on their own. 4 suggests he lifts 3 up to reach it, which 3 hesitantly agrees. The two proceed to reenact one of the most well-known romance scenes in all of cinema, with 3 becoming entranced by the beauty of the view around them as he’s held up by 4, embracing the moment before 4 throws him into the portal. 

14x15: SMG4 And SMG3 Design A Mascot Horror

When discussing game genres to implement, there’s a visual at around the 7:30 mark where 3 (dressed as their game’s mascot) pins 4 against a wall in a flirty manner. 

A bit later when narrowing down mechanics to use, for a split second after 3 & 4 agree to keep the romance aspect, Mario holds up a sign that says “Hi Twitter”. 

14x16: SMG4 Doesn't Meme For 1 Second

I’m not a fan of revisiting this episode, but I’ll do what I must in this case... 

After 4 is sent away, 3 is one of the first to acknowledge that he misses the other’s antics, looking on fondly as he says it made the gang’s lives more exciting. He is also the one to initiate a plan to retrieve 4 from the facility, aggressively knocking on the door when they get there to reach Mr. Niceguy. Much like everyone else, 3 is horrified when he sees how different 4 is when they see him again, attempting to snap him out of it with memes,

14x19: SMG4 Simulator

In the fishing minigame scene, when 4 fishes up 3, it says 3 is worth –100 points; however, 3 has a gold & sparkly aura around him that’s typically reserved for the best items in those types of games; additionally, the 0:34 mark on the minigame timer is skipped. I’ve also seen it theorized that this moment could represent 4 pushing away potential romantic feelings he may have for 3. 

Shortly after, 3 is seen sitting next to 4 as he grows sad over not having the reality from the ASMR video he’s listening to, telling him to do something productive before walking away. 4 contemplates briefly before deciding to listen to his advice. 

Toward the end of the episode, he’s shown to have a bootleg plush of 3 in his inventory. 

14x20: Mario's Plane Trip

3 doesn’t appear in this episode, but this is where my note from CEO of Rizz comes in! 

When 4 is getting his luggage scanned, it can be seen that one of the items inside is the creepy Mickey sculpture from before, that 3 described as a great gift for a date. One of 3’s signature bombs is also inside the suitcase. 

In a scene much later in the episode, 4 and Swag have a heart-to-heart about loved ones back home; in this conversation, Swag mentions his spouse. 4 then pulls a locket out and says he has someone waiting back home as well, but the scene is interrupted by Mario before we can see the picture inside. As you can imagine, a lot of people have theorized that 3’s picture is in that locket.

14x27: SMG4 And SMG3 Shop For Cursed Items

It’s a small visual detail but when settling on a gift for Tari, they do a cute high five. 

14x28: Mario Gets Stuck as a GIF 

When Mario loses control and starts to spin around the cafe, 3 quickly pulls 4 under the front counter with him to keep him from getting hurt. 

When 4 is scanning data of 3 in the HQ computer, 3 takes note of how 4 makes the model of him (“Do I really look like that from the back?”), even checking himself out to compare after. 

14x33: Mario Loses His Mustache 

Before the competition, 3 and 4 attempt to conspire to rig it in Mario’s favor; however, this is quickly shut down by Puzzles. 

14x34: SMG4 Theory 

Barely worth noting, but 4 is seen imagining Snowtrapped as he asks if every episode is a dream. 

14x35: SMG4 & SMG3 Come Up with an Episode 

The episode begins with 4 bursting into 3’s room while he sleeps, asking if he’s ready to “make magic”. He then proceeds to ask afterward what he’s doing in 3’s bed (which, mind you, was an improvised line from Luke). 

When 3 asks why 4 needs his help making an episode, 4 responds with telling him that his videos need spice that he thinks 3 can provide, even calling him the rosemary to his bread.  

This is definitely purely coincidental since this line was also improvised, but the rosemary plant has represented love since ancient times, being believed to reveal a person's true love. 

When 4 agrees that 3 should be a main part of the episode, the official sticker of 3 blushing is stuck onto his face. 

The episode they come up with was eventually made, but no, I won't be covering it. 

14x38: Welcome to Puzzle Park 

When Mario is thrown back by the force of Leggy’s yells, it almost seems as if 3 and 4 are leaning on each other on the sofa. 

When 3 sees Luigi get pulled into a portal and realizes something is wrong, his first instinct is to find 4 & Mario and tell them to run. He fails to reach them before getting taken himself, but texts 4 a warning in the last moments beforehand; it’s also seen they both have joke-insult nicknames for each other in their phones. Just a couple years prior 3 would never have taken time to warn anyone and would just have saved himself, showing how far his development has come. 

On top of that, I've seen it guessed that the reason 3 looked so mortified when he saw Luigi get taken was because it gave him flashbacks to seeing 4 get pulled back into the castle in IGBP, hence his immediate action to help 4 get away. 

14x42: Mario Gets Stuck In Traffic

Though they are seen bickering on their way, it’s commonly joked by fans in the shipping community that their trip together to the forklift convention could be seen as a date. 

14x43: The Mario PC Virus

Okay, there’s only a couple notes for this one, but they’re big and important ones. 

When the Crocker virus entities are scavenging through 4’s computer, one of them digs through a folder on his desktop titled ‘Super-Secret Spicy Memes’. It pulls one out, showing 3 traced over a Grimace meme with the text “what’s the matter smg4-kun"; it proceeds to scream the “I know what you are” line from the English dub of Chainsaw Man at 4 over it. It should be noted that that audio bit is commonly used as a joke to tell someone that you know that they’re queer. On top of the meme bring flirtatious in nature and being in a secretive folder, it’s entirely likely that this goofy five-second bit actually indirectly confirms 4’s already-suspected crush on 3. 

When Bonzi’s power destroys the computer’s data, the video projections of 3 and 4 hug somberly as they’re erased; this is the first time that they've been seen emotionally hugging. It’s notably much more romantic in nature compared to a normal hug too, with their foreheads touching and one of each of their hands interlocked. 

Ben, the show’s thumbnail artist, also followed up with a tweet saying “they gay fr :3"  

Late addition, but in the merch sale community post video the day before 14x45, 4’s drawing could be seen taped to a page of 3’s notebook. 

14x46: Luigi Doesn’t Need Mario 

In the scene where the gang is at the hospital, the angle at which they’re shown makes it look like 3 and 4 are holding hands at Mario’s bedside. 

And that's everything! This year may have been a really rough one for the show, but I think it's safe to say the shippers were done a great service throughout. Hopefully the hints keep coming in 2025! (and possibly even them finally becoming canon? please?? it's clear the team loves to play with their dynamic in a romantic way, if they truly want to make it happen then just do it!!! /silly)

[targtowerxstark]

Exploring Lord Stark-Part two

Part two (can be read as a stand alone)

plot: y/n targaryen becomes bored of everyday castle life and reads about the North. She goes on a journey to explore the North but the first thing to catch her eye is Cregan Stark

The sun hung low beneath the clouds in the sky, casting a soft golden hue over the Godswood as Lord Cregan Stark and Princess y/n Targaryen settled on a moss-covered stone. The air was cool, filled with the scent of damp earth and the sweet fragrance of blooming flowers. y/n, with her playful spirit, leaned back against the stone, her silver hair glinting like spun moonlight.

“Cregan, tell me again about the direwolves,Are they really as big as you say or do you lie to humour me ?” she teased, her violet eyes sparkling with mischief.

Cregan, ever the formal lord, straightened his posture, a slight smile tugging at his lips. “They are,Your Grace. It is said that a direwolf pup could bite a man’s arm clean off.” Yet, as he spoke, he felt the rigid formality of his demeanor begin to fade in her presence.

y/n giggled, her laughter echoing through the trees. “I bet they are as sweet as a newborn babe, I’d love to see one up close.” She leaned forward, her excitement palpable, and Cregan found her enthusiasm refreshing. It was the same old North to him, but through her eyes, it felt alive and vibrant. “Seeing as you wield a dragon as a pet princess, i doubt you’d find them too vicious, should you plan to travel to the wall you will cross paths with one” he said with amusement in his voice. Cregan found his thoughts were drifting, this conversation was unlike his usual day to day ones he found himself enjoying the light and unserious side she brought out of him. He hadn’t felt like this with the noble ladies he had conversed with before but, he could get use to it.

“come with me” y/n said, eagerly awaiting a reply.

“Forgive me princess, what are you asking” he replied

“Travel with me to the wall, As the princess of the seven kingdoms I shall relieve you of your noble duties and ask you to be my guide to the North. Should you be hesitant I shall throw myself on my knees infront of you and beg Lord Cregan, I’ll only take no for a challenge” she laughed.

“Well if they’re my options princess, I shall be hesitant and then get the honour of both hearing a princess beg and serve as a guide for her too” Cregan would never try be as bold as to pass a comment like this but being around her brings out a different side of him.

The Princess could only blush in reply. Lord Stark seems so old in comparison to what he really is. Only one and twenty and yet you’d think he’s ruled for a lifetime, forgetting he is only a young lad. “Thank you Lord Stark”.

“Cregan” he whispered back

“Thank you Cregan” she said with a smile.

The Godswood was a sanctuary of ancient trees, their twisted branches reaching toward the sky like gnarled hands. The heart tree stood proudly at its center, its red leaves whispering secrets to the wind. Cregan glanced at y/n, her expression filled with wonder as she took in the beauty around them.

“Isn’t it magnificent?” he asked, his voice softer.

“It’s enchanting, I thought the red keeps garden was wonderful but this is something else” she replied, her gaze locking onto his. In that moment, the world around them faded, and all that mattered was the connection forming between them. Her playful nature drew him in, and he found himself leaning closer, the distance between them shrinking.

“Would you like to see something truly special?” Cregan asked, a spark of determination igniting within him. He rose and gestured for her to follow him to the ancestral hall, where the legendary sword, Ice, rested.

As they entered, y/n’s eyes widened in awe at the sight of the massive blade, its double-edged steel glinting ominously in the dim light. “That’s Ice?” she breathed, stepping closer, her fingers itching to reach out.

Cregan nodded, pride swelling in his chest. “Yes, it belonged to my father, and before him, to our ancestors. It was forged from the finest Valyrian steel.” He carefully lifted the sword, its weight familiar and comforting in his hands. “I won Winterfell from my uncle in a war, and this was my true prize. It symbolizes our house’s strength and honor and it means a lot to know my father once yielded it.”

Y/n felt all of Cregains pain, the faint smile as he spoke about his father made her heart hurt for him. “I’m very sorry for your loss, He’d be truly proud to see what you’ve done since he passed. Him and your brother”

“Why thank you Princess, to receive praise from a member of the royal family means a great deal” Cregan face was stern and his voice steady.

Y/n’s face was stern too but it quickly started to wrinkle and a smile formed on her face. “We both know you Northerns think the southerners are drunk, lazy fools who wouldn’t survive down here, but thank you for your kindness” Lord Stark she chuckled.

“Well that may be true princess” he laughed in return. But you are not of the South, You are of Valyria, and praise from a brave dragon rider like yourself truly does mean a lot.”

As they laughed, he noticed y/n leaning closer, her breath catching in her throat. The way she looked at him, filled with awe and respect, made his heart race. He couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps, in this moment, they were forging something new together—something that could withstand even the harshest winters.

“Cregan,” she said softly, her voice barely above a whisper, “May you show me to the crypts?”

He felt a warmth spread through him, it is obvious the princess wants him specifically to guide her, she could’ve chose anyone or nobody at all but she chose him, and for the first time, he allowed himself to believe that perhaps he could be more than just a Stark—he could be someone worthy of the Targaryen princess beside him.

And off they went to the crypts…..

[wooahaes]

the (not-so-subtle) doting kind

pairing: non-idol!mark lee x fem!reader

genre: fluff. established relationship au.

warnings: food mentions. mark being a very doting bf on his gf's bday.

word count: 2.4k~ dont look at me when u compare this one to all the other bday fics

daisy's notes: what if i want him :(

For whatever reason, your birthday wasn’t a happy day for you… So Mark resolved to treat you normally. And if “normally” involves him doting on you the way he does when you have bad days, then so be it.

He tucked stray strands of hair away from your face when he saw you begin to stir. He’d say one thing to you, just to show you that he remembered. So he leaned in, lips pressing against your own. “Good morning. Happy birthday, baby,” he said, voice still a little hoarse from sleep. “Are we still going to get breakfast?”

“Mmhm.” You drew him back in for another sleepy kiss, only to draw him closer. You snuggled in, eyes fluttering shut as you dropped your head into his shoulder. “Morning…”

He giggled. Most mornings, he’d tease you a little with some sort of “my sleepy girl,” but he settled in instead. He peppered your skin with kisses, just to hear that slightly-annoyed groan as you finally opened your eyes. His lips pressed against yours one final time before drawing back. 

“Good morning,” he said again, thumb grazing the apple of your cheek.

Despite the slight annoyance at being woken up fully now, you sat up and stifled a yawn. The moment you went to move out of bed, you felt Mark’s fingers poke into your sides. You let out a strangled grunt, playfully shoving away at his hands as he giggled. He came up behind you, pressing a long kiss against your neck before moving to search through the closet. It became obvious soon enough what he was doing, always trying to find a way to tease you to make you smile. Eventually you swatted him away from you, and he laughed that goofy laugh before getting dressed, too. He kept waiting around, watching you as you looked through your options before settling on something. Of course, it was one of the things you owned that Mark didn’t have something he could use to match with you… But he could improvise. He stood back, watching you (half-admiring, half-studying) before going into his side of your shared closet. 

When he stepped out in a patterned shirt that mainly featured the same color as the shirt you were wearing, he saw the way you gave him a little once over before going back to packing your things into a bag. “You look cute.”

Mission accomplished. Mentally, he put a little sunglasses emoji guy right next to the thought. 

After a quick breakfast out, the two of you ended up wandering around the mall for the day. He held your hand the entire time, always pointing out something cool or something he thought you’d look good in. Today was your day, which meant he couldn’t play. You wanted something? He was already getting his card out. He’d been saving specifically so that he could spoil you on your birthday, and he was intent on carrying that out.

“Don’t worry, baby,” he said with this cute smile, “I got you.” 

It always earned some sort of playful eye roll or snort as you thanked him, always drawing out the words to tease him. He was obvious, but that was fine with him. What was the point of days like birthdays and holidays if he couldn’t spoil you a little? He carried your bags for you, too, ever the gentleman. Yet he was the one who slowed down, hand holding yours tight enough to tug you back, when the two of you were outside of a toy store. He pointed out two little lion plushies right next to one another.

“Babe. Baby.” He didn’t take his eyes off of them. “It’s us.” 

You’d giggled a little over it. “Pretty sure those are two male lions, Mark.” 

He turned back to you. “What?” Then he looked at them again, fully registering the bright orange manes that both of them wore. “Right. Still… We could still find a lioness. C’mon.” He tugged you toward the entrance, only to stop. “Unless you don’t wanna—”

“We can go places you wanna go, Mark,” you said, already making your way into the store. “Let’s go find a lioness.” 

You’d been insistent on paying for and carrying that bag, and Mark let the issue drop. Gentlemanly as he was, his hand was getting a little tired carrying all your bags… and it’d be rude to turn it into an issue when it wasn’t. You did end up taking the bags from him when you stopped to get lunch, saying you would go get the table while he grabbed the food. When he asked you to pick a place, you’d just shrugged it off.

“You know what I’ll eat,” you said. “Just pick somewhere.” 

Again, he’d almost pushed back on that. Today was your day, even though you weren’t treating it like anything special. But he knew how you felt, and he bit back any disagreement. He looked around the food court, picked two places, and asked you to pick from those under the guise of him being indecisive. You hummed to yourself, genuinely considering the two options before picking, and then left him standing there as you went to snag a table for the two of you. He went off to order your food, and soon enough he was sitting across from you, listening as you rambled on about something that happened at work the other day. Eventually, you pushed the conversation onto him as you nodded along to his own stories… all while sneaking little pictures of him. He smiled for them, and eventually got you to squeeze into frame so he could snap a picture of the two of you together.

The rest of the day was scaled toward him. You would push for him to pick places to go, things to do. The bookstore the two of you frequented became one of your stops, and he saw the quiet way you bought a book he put back alongside with another bookmark for him (sometimes he lost them, but he’d always take extra care when someone gave him one) without saying a word. A few other stores, too: you’d ended up buying him a few things, insistent on carrying his bags for him with this knowing smile that told him you knew exactly what he’d been doing all day. 

Then when you were leaving, Mark saw it. The way you’d been walking a step ahead of him for a minute, talking about finding a place to sit for a few minutes before you actually went back to the car. You’d slowed to a stop outside this chocolate place the two of you had sampled forever ago, watching in the window as a tall, handsome man was making them in view of anyone passing by. The guy looked up, flashed you a smile, and then went back to his work. Mark slowly made his way over to you, watching the magic happen for himself.

“We should get a box,” he said after a moment. He looked at you, practically glowing with excitement. “We can split it, if you want?”

For a few seconds longer, you just watched the man on the other side of the glass continue to work. Then you met Mark’s gaze, genuinely smiling that same smile he fell in love with years ago, and nodded. “I’d love that.” 

The two of you went into the shop, picking out flavors for your big box of chocolates. When Mark paid this time, you didn’t push back or question or tease him. You just leaned against him, still smiling that pretty smile, and thanked him in a soft voice that felt so genuine this time around. He tucked the box into one of the bags he was carrying, pressed a kiss against your cheek, and took your hand again as you left.

By the time the two of you got home and started sorting through everything you’d bought, it was late. When Mark looked up, asking if you felt like going back out for dinner, you’d shaken your head. You had sprawled out along the couch at that point, visibly sleepy from the long day as you abandoned the work of sorting out new clothes to be washed. He just crawled over to you, pressing his lips against yours.

“You wanna go take a bath? I’ll order dinner when we get out.” He pressed another kiss against your lips. “We can watch movies,” another kiss, “and then bust into those chocolates,” and another, “and it’ll be fuckin’ great, baby.” 

You agreed to it all too easily. The two of you ended up snuggling in the hot water for a while, talking about whatever came to mind. By the time the two of you were cuddled up on the couch again, dressed in matching pajamas (“Because we’re cheesy like that, you know?” was what Mark said to you when he bought them forever ago), he’d decided to apparently kill you with a thousand more soft kisses. The jerk was giggling the entire time, too, squeezing you in his arms and he peppered said kisses alongside the side of your neck—right where you were tickling, he’d learned back when the two of you were first dating.

“Mark!” You’d squealed at one point, nose crinkling as he mumbled something about how cute he found you. “You can stop. I know what you were doing today.” 

“What?” He played dumb. “Appreciated you? I’m always appreciating you, baby,” he giggled, kissing the spot where your neck met your jaw. “I’m lucky to have you, y’know?”

With a sigh, you pulled away from him. Ah. Shit. You’d been planning for a serious talk, then. “I mean it,” you said, taking one of his hands within your own. “I know what you were doing. And… I think it was really sweet.”

Wait, what? His voice grew softer now, heart racing in his chest. “So you aren’t mad?”

“I…”  You trailed off, turning away. “I thought I would have been. But… I dunno. I think when you walked up to me and said something about buying that box of chocolates, it just kinda hit me that you weren’t just spoiling me today because it’s my birthday. You were doing it because you love me.” For a moment, you tried to blink back tears. “I mean… I know you love me. And I knew that on the birthdays before—but I always kinda pushed people away because I felt like I wasn’t worth it.”

“You are, though.” The words fell from his lips before he could even think twice. Maybe if he did, he would have apologized for interrupting you, but some things were just too vital to hold back. “You’ll always be worth it, y’know?”

The tears you’d been fighting finally ran down your cheeks, and you nodded. “You made me feel special,” you said. “And not just because it’s my birthday, but because you actually care.” 

Something ached deep within his chest at that. Did that mean you had people who didn’t…? Yet he left the question unsaid. How long had he been dating you, and he still didn’t know everything he thought he should? Not because you were supposed to bare your soul to him—never that. But because he was your boyfriend, he felt that he should have noticed sooner. You told him that your birthday hadn’t been a happy day for you in a long time, and he’d accepted it at face value without pushing. If you wanted to tell him, you would, and he would listen the same way you always cared and listened to his problems. The same way you did today when you pushed him to open up, to talk, to share the day with you so it wasn’t just him doting on you endlessly. 

“Hey…” He reached up, wiping your tears away. “I’m sorry I went behind your back to try and spoil you today.”

You stared at him. “Mark, it’s okay—”

He shook his head. “I should have asked you first,” he said. “But I like celebrating you. You know I was kind of a mess when we first met, but I wanted to be better for you. Chenle can tell you how bad this place used to be,” he chuckled, hoping that you would laugh or giggle or something too. “So I like getting the chance to celebrate how much I love you. You still make me wanna be a better guy, y’know?”

Sniffling, you dove forward to hide your face in his shoulder. He just laughed softly, rubbing circles onto your back as you cried. He loved you, and he knew how easily you could get emotional in vulnerable moments like this. Always diving forward and hiding your face because no matter how many times he told you it was okay, you’d be embarrassed that you were crying on him when you were supposed to be happy. 

“We can have more days out like this, if you want,” he said, hand cradling the back of your head. He drew you back, just so he could see your face, watery eyes and all. “Today just needed to be perfect because I think you’re perfect, even with all the imperfections we both know we have, we’re kinda perfect together.” He paused, wondering if he’d talked himself in a circle again before settling on something simpler: “I just think you’re really cool.”

That had finally earned a laugh out of you, so endeared to him and the way he spoke. “Yeah?”

He nodded eagerly. “Yeah!” He smiled at you. “You’re pretty sick. I love being your boyfriend, y’know?”

You just drew him in for a quick kiss after wiping your face with your sleeve. When you pulled back, you just smiled at him. “You’re pretty cool, too, y’know.” With a clumsy kiss against the side of his mouth, you finally drew back and out of his lap. “Thank you for a really fun day, by the way.” Snuggling a little closer to him, you rested your head against his shoulder. “I had fun. I always do when I’m with you, but you know what I mean.”

He just chuckled, turning his head so that he could kiss the top of yours. “Yeah, of course. Happy birthday, baby.” He snuggled in for a cozy night with you, head resting against your own. “I love you a lot. Let’s do something cool next year, alright?”

You just let out a soft chuckle, too. “Alright.” You shut your eyes. “If it’s with you… I’ll always be happy.”

taglist: @twancingyunhao

[ninainthetardis]

Given that it's completely beyond me how a character like Jason Grace can be hated by so many people within the fandom, I've decided to try and figure this absurd bullshit out. It turns out it's not just an unnecessary desire to boost Percy by diminishing Jason's character. A thing that I hate, because I think that diminishing/bashing some characters to appreciate others is quite the opposite of validation, as I believe a character can only be truly defined by their own actions/words/personality and hence, should be appreciated for those aspects, not by unnecessary/non sensical comparisons with other characters.

So I'm currently rereading HoH, and I've just noticed that, basically, all the Jason haters simply use Piper's words about him and take them for granted. Which speaks volumes and is also one of the reasons why I've never liked them together.

And no, it's not that "she knows him better than anyone else" because that is bullshit. She never even bothered to really get to know him. All she wanted was to make that Mist induced fairytale their reality, mainly because she thought he was hot, and strong and cool, and liked the Mist version of Jason. A version that was not even real. She knew that, yet she was constantly making comparisons between that and reality, and whining about it. And this in particular would be even fair if she wasn't the one out of the two of them who was completely obsessed with getting together for real in the first place, despite knowing he might have someone waiting for him at Camp Jupiter. A thing Jason constantly thought about in TLH.

We don't get to see how they really start their relationship. All we are shown is Piper threatening Drew - and by association anyone else in cabin 10 - and saying that "Jason was hers even if he didn't know it yet" (seriously, what would you think if their roles were reversed?).

But somehow, they got together later on. We don't know what made Jason change his mind about them. Piper gave a tantrum every time he mentioned Reyna (even when he was just talking about information that was useful for their quest and hence, you know, saving the world). And then we even get the "boys are so stupid" line when it's actually Piper who is being unreasonable here, letting her own insecurities put their mission to save the world at risk. Insecurities that are legit and prove she is aware that she pushed things between her and Jason when she should have just realised the damn memories she had were fake and let go. And that's on her, not on Jason. She was pushing from the very beginning. He was holding back because he wasn't sure it was the right thing to do, considering he didn't remember anything.

Again, think about all this as if their roles were reversed. Doesn't look good, uh?

Piper also knew she was potentially putting an end to something that could be meaningful for Jason, yet she kept pushing anyway despite being pretty clear that she was just obsessed with the idea of him/having him as a boyfriend.

And then she just went and blamed Hera, saying she forced them together because of the Mist thing. Bfr.

She wanted that from the very beginning and during all the time they have been together. Her povs were almost all about that, for most of the time.

She never truly took into account Jason's feelings, or the difficulties he was going through due to his memory loss, completely disregarded his trauma and his insecurities, and she even influenced his thoughts and emotions with her powers because she was scared of his past life. As if him being in a vulnerable position when she did all she could to get together with him wasn't bad enough without her use of her charmspeaking abilities. And she admitted multiple times of using it on him and the other demigods on the Argo II, deliberately and unintentionally. Even Jason, in his own pov, suspected she used her powers on him, making her the only thing he could think of whenever he mentioned Reyna. This isn't normal. This isn't romantic. "He supposed it was not the worst sort of revenge". Boy, you shouldn't even be blamed for having a pre Piper life at all!!!

So yeah, she didn't know him. How could she, when he didn't even know himself?

It's also the way she describes him: boring, distant, rules centred, closed off, always serious. She even compares him to Percy, and their relationship to Percy and Annabeth's. A weird way to describe the guy you claim to love. A weird way to prove your love to someone, complaining about him "being distant" when you know damn well he's trying so hard to retrieve his memories. A way bigger, existential deal to cope with than romantic drama, don't you think? Hadn't she pushed so hard, I'm not sure he would have started their relationship at all.

Anyway, we then move back to Jason's pov and he claims that he doesn't like rules, that they actually annoy him, that he's always tried to change things a Camp Jupiter but had to take it slow due to the Romans' attachment to tradition, that he always does the opposite of what he is told/suggested (except, clearly, when it come to be summoned for a quest). And he claims all that on the basis of the few memories he got back. And he makes jokes, too. He has sarcastic comebacks, too. THIS IS THE REAL JASON, these are the elements that need to be taken into account when trying to figure out who he truly is, not Piper's biased perception of him. And people would know those things, if they had actually read his povs.

Also, I don't think that reading the rest of the books (ToA) will change my mind about any of this. Honestly, it is too much to get past to. And I don't even want to do that. I think it can only get worse, from the few things I know about ToA.

[nyxieinshadows]

★ Death can wait tonight- Rindou Haitani X Reader !

murder was the plan - love was the mistake⊹ ִֶָ𓏲࣪ . oneshot

✦𓂃 There’s a name onher kill list—his. But when night falls and skin meets skin, the lines between murder and love begin to blur 𓏲࣪ .

Warning:Romantic tension, inner conflict, mention of murder, and complex emotional attachment.

★ Bonten Rindou— ꒰ killer y/n ꒱ !

Your breathing had slowed, nearly silent now. The night pressed in heavier with every second. Stars shimmered more boldly than before, stepping onto the stage of the cosmos with quiet elegance. A few of them peeked through the gaps in the curtains and windowpanes, as if offering a glimpse into some secret, celestial ballet. The moon was full—luminous, perfect—shining like a rare diamond against the velvet black sky.

You drew in a deep breath. It was a beautiful night. But not when the silence echoed with a voice you couldn’t forget. A voice that, months ago, bound you to a promise of murder.

“When the time is right,kill him.”

“But I can’t…”

You turned over, shifting your position slightly. The soft wool of the blanket brushed against your hands, comforting and warm. It wasn’t a cold night, but the thought of leaving the covers unsettled you. Staying wrapped up in them gave you a reason to delay. To pretend.

You tore your gaze away from your fingers and let it drift toward the man lying next to you. He looked like he was deep in sleep. Or maybe he just wanted you to believe that.

You exhaled slowly. It was the perfect moment—the ideal chance to end another life. Another name swallowed up in the long list of your victims. If you did it now, no one would know. No one would suspect that Rindou Haitani had been murdered by the woman he thought he loved.

“Why do you love me?”

You whispered the words to the dark, barely moving your lips. As if saying them aloud might summon something you weren’t ready to face. Your hand slipped from under the blanket, touching the cool air. You leaned in slowly, closing what little distance remained. The bed creaked faintly under your weight. You didn’t care. Brushing aside soft strands of hair, you let your fingers rest gently on his neck. The warmth of his blood pulsed beneath your cold touch. His artery throbbed—a quiet, rhythmic beat beneath your palm.

“If you want to strangle someone in their sleep,” his voice broke the silence, low and calm, “you need both hands. One won’t be enough.”

Your eyes widened. You hadn’t expected him to be awake. But there he was, his violet eyes gleaming like distant stars in the dark. You didn’t move your hand. You buried your surprise and replied in your usual tone:

“If I wanted you dead, you’d already be gone.”

Rindou smirked at the irritation in your voice. He placed his hand gently over yours, his fingers warmer, firmer. A teasing smile curled his lips.

“You squirm too much, princess. Makes me want to throw you off the bed so I can finally get some rest.”

“Oh, really? Because when our bodies were all tangled up earlier, you didn’t seem to mind me being your ‘princess’ then!”

Your glare only deepened his grin. He reached for you with his other arm, pulling you closer until your cold body softened against his heat.

“Come here, you little brat.”

“Don’t hug me. I’m mad at you!”

“You don’t want me anymore? That’s odd! just a few hours ago, you were purring something entirely different.”

“You’re using my words against me!”

He bent down and kissed your head. You rolled your eyes, but your fingers began tracing absentminded patterns on his chest, random and soft.

“Don’t kiss me,” you muttered, “I’m trying to stay mad.”

Your voice was stubborn, but your heart wasn’t. You just wanted something—anything—to drown out the voices whispering in your mind.

“Don’t kiss you?” he echoed, amused. “Mm… not sure I can follow that request right now. But if I find the time later, maybe I’ll consider it, love.”

And this time, his lips moved lower, brushing your forehead in a quiet, reverent kiss. You let yourself melt into his arms. You let yourself forget the promise. The pact. The murder. Just for a moment. Your eyes found his again—those violet eyes you could never see as anything but his. It was foolish. You should’ve followed through. But maybe love… maybe he was worth the betrayal.

“It’s cold… so cold. Hold me tighter, Haitani.”

“Haitani?” he teased, “Funny… you weren’t calling me that when I was kissing you.”

“Right,” you said softly, “because now we’re even, Rindou.”

🗒️ Note; well This piece is close to my heart.torn between love and betrayal. Hope it makes your chest ache the way it did mine while writing it.Rindou is one of my favorites so I decided to write something about him too. He is cute ;)

English isn’t my first language, so there might be some grammar mistakes here and there. Still, I poured my heart into this piece. If you enjoyed it, please let me know.it really means a lot!

Cover is not mine

[a-very-sparkly-nerd]

Rayllum Month 2024! (3/13)

he's got hands that make hell seem cold

July 5th - Hands/Touch-starved

~

Callum had grown up affectionate. Hugs traded around like coins, so much love made plain and clear and simple just in the way he ruffled Ezran’s hair, how he tickled his sides, how Ezran would sometimes wordlessly plop into his brother’s lap with a dramatic sigh.

So, Rayla figured–hoped–it would continue. Hoped he wouldn’t mind her… clinginess.

She’d never been one to half-ass things; go big or go home. So she stretched out on the couch in Callum’s room as he sketched, picking up a book and kicking her legs up in his lap as nonchalantly as she could manage.

“Hey,” he said pleasantly, tossing her a gentle smile, and Rayla couldn’t decide whether she liked it or not.

“Hi.”

“How was your day?” As he spoke, Callum took her ankles and settled his arm over them to get more comfortable with his sketchbook, the simple motion sending tingles through Rayla’s legs and all the way up to her spine.

She shrugged, studying the book written in some old flowery tongue. Blech. “Boring.”

He smiled with amusement, lacing fingers through hers. “I would’ve thought your crazy-cool slish-slashing could never be boring.” He drew her closer, looping an arm around her shoulders and letting her head rest on his.

Yeah, it definitely continued. He’d definitely cuddle her, hug her, whatever she asked. Color rose to her cheeks, and Rayla hoped her voice didn’t wobble as she said, “It can get monotonous.”

He grinned. “Hey! You used my big word!”

Suddenly Rayla wasn’t sitting on his couch, but standing back on the Cursed Caldera two years ago with terror snapping her spine straight, cracking jokes and being dumb with him, Ezran, and Ellis and Ava. She smiled, too, carding a hand through his hair. “I figured you could use a win.”

Sketchbook abandoned, Callum turned to look at her with a raised eyebrow and huge, dorky smile. “I’m pretty sure I’m winning right now. A beautiful elf in my lap…”

“Oh, I disagree,” Rayla teased, heart beginning to pound in her chest, her throat, her wrists. “This isn’t in your lap. This”–she shifted so she sat on his lap, not straddling him but sitting sideways and praying she hadn’t gone too far–“is in your lap.”

He put an arm around her waist, head going to her shoulder. “My mistake, then. What are you up to now?”

She turned on the baby-adoraburr eyes, ones she remembered Callum never once being able to refuse in that too-brief time they’d had to be senseless idiots. “Cuddling you?”

Callum kissed her nose, his fingertips skirting under her shirt to hold her waist, so close to her hips that Rayla’s breath hitched. “You certainly are.”

“I missed you,” she decided to comment, hoping against hope it wouldn’t lead to Big Feelings Time. Gods knew they needed it, but she just wanted to sit here and be held by her prince–if he was even hers anymore–until long after she fell asleep– preferably for eternity.

He nodded somberly, twiddling a braid between his thumb and forefinger. “I missed you, too.” A hand found just above her knee, technically her thigh but not quite, not the way she would’ve welcomed. “What’s this about?”

“I just…” Rayla glanced down and shrugged. “Want to catch up on cuddles.”

Body flush against hers, Callum finagled her so her head rested against his chest, hugging and rubbing circles into her back. “Always. I’m always up for cuddles.”

Rayla sighed, settling and letting her weight fall on him. Letting him support her in more ways than one.

Read more on AO3!

[flamingo-writes]

Can you imagine that by being exposed to Hobie's "radioactivity" for so long, the reader begins to have powers? for example of nature,like Poison Ivy. That would definitely be fun to read.

I had to break my head with this idea, but I think it has potential for future fics!

Daffodil — Hobie x Reader

Warnings: cursing, and ai believe that’s all.

Word count: 580 words.

I might do more of these actually.

In the beginning, while figuring out Hobie’s spider abilities was a wild ride. Although, being the two peas of a pod that you were, you helped him figure everything out. Being the only who knew his secret drew you even closer if that was even possible.

What you didn’t consider was the radioactivity. You had theorised what had happened with the spider and the abilities, and while you had brought up radioactivity, you forgot about the tiny detail that radioactivity tended to affect everyone who was close to it.

The amount of time you spent with Hobie and the amount of time you spent tending to your plants, you started noticing weird things.

At first it was as easy and as wonderful as magically bringing your plants back to health. And then you started noticing plants coming out of your fingers.

After you freaked out, it was now Hobie’s turn to help you calm down, just like you’d done it for him back when he was bitten.

The discussion opened again, now trying to theorise now why this was happening to you.

When you finally arrived to the conclusion that it was perhaps because of Hobie’s radioactivity and your plants, Hobie asked you if you wanted to join him, raising the city, helping people who needed it.

“You know how fucking cool would that be?” Hobie said pulling you by the hips, bringing you closer to him. “My spider abilities, your plant abilities…”

“What could I do? Give people skin rashes with poison ivy?” You chuckled.

“You laugh about it, but it’s actually a good idea. My webs, your poison ivy plants…Not only we immobilise them, but you torture them with an awful itch and skin rash…” He said with a cheeky smirk.

“And how exactly would I be called? Plant-Girl sounds lame. Makes me sound like a hippie motherfucker,” You giggled softly.

“We have time to think about that…” He sighed. “How about Daffodil?”

“Are you serious?”

“They’re beautiful flowers, but they are very poisonous if you ingest them…” Hobie said proudly as he caressed your cheek.

“Who’s gonna eat a daffodil?”

“You’d be surprised with how stupid can people really be…” He chuckled.

For the next few weeks, while you learned how to use your newfound abilities, Hobie helped you out. Sadly, the plant-based abilities didn’t give you the enhanced physical abilities Hobie’s spider abilities. So you had a slight disadvantage there. However, you learned that your abilities could be incredibly powerful. Making plants grow everywhere, any sort of plant. You could mimic Hobie’s web.

However you used your abilities for the most part for protests and even art shows.

Hobie loved how you managed to create art out of plants, he thought it was beautiful. The same plants that got out of control when someone tried to cut the down.

“Capitalism is destroying nature, now we have nature taking over,” Hobie said proudly, as he watched a couple of cops tangled in the branches of a tree. “How does it feel to be completely useless against a tree?” Hobie said, poking fun at the cops, his Spider-Man suit concealing his identity.

Eventually people started hearing of Daffodil. Always wrecking havoc along with Spider-Man, although Daffodil remained more hidden, and wasn’t swinging around like Spider-Man. However, Daffodil usually left flowers behind, as a signature. Some bad guy or some abusive cop, tangled and immobilised in plants, usually poison ivy’s.

Hobie was insanely proud of you. And patrolling the city became the times more fun.

[randonauticrap]

A Moment Under the Stars (Chevalier x F!Reader)

Pairing ~ Chevalier Michel x Female Reader

Word Count ~ 820

Author's Note ~ This fic is for @aquagirl1978 's Route Release Campaign event for the lovely Chevalier! 🩵

He sighed deeply, his platinum locks tickling his cheek as the air from the balcony whistled by. Becoming king had been like second nature to Chevalier; the decision-making, the paperwork, the politics. He had eased into the position with all the grace of the born leader he was - a genius in almost every right.

However, even the great Chevalier Michel had his struggles; namely that which stood before him now in the form of finely dressed nobles shaking in their specially tailored boots. Chevalier’s reputation preceded him, and though the severity of such talk had drastically waned since his marriage, many nobles still feared being pinned by his frigid blue gaze.

“A-As you know, Your Majesty, my territory s-suffers from very harsh winters, and last year, a-although we did our very be-”

“You wish for me to send a surplus of grain this year in advance of the colder months.” Chevalier remarked flatly and sighed when the man's eyes grew bulbous and exceedingly more fearful. The king's brows knitted together in frustration, but before the situation could get much worse, his savior came in the form of a woman in a billowing light blue gown with an elegant crown that matched his perched upon her head.

You.

It was as though you'd sensed his irritation from across the room. He smiled. His preternatural senses were rubbing off on you. “I'm sure we can come to an amicable agreement on how much extra is needed. Please schedule a formal audience with us this week via Sariel.” You interjected smoothly and with all the grace of the position you now held as queen by his side. A smile tugged at Chevalier’s lips, daring to match your own, and the nobles visibly relaxed.

“Thank you, Your Majesty's.” The man hastily bowed to you, then to Chevalier in turn. “You are ever gracious and kind.” He scurried away, leaving several others to talk amongst themselves as Chevalier drew his attention to you.

“You noticed.” He smirked, and you smiled.

“I did.”

“You're learning.”

“I have an excellent teacher.”

“Mm.”

You paused for a moment, letting out a breath and allowing yourself to relax momentarily. “Shall we-” but Chevalier had already begun to move, slipping your arm into his and leading you towards the open balcony. He plucked a glass of sparkling water from a tray on the way past and handed it to you once you both reached the cool night air.

“Drink.” He commanded. “You have exhausted yourself this evening. And remove those shoes.” Chevalier reached for the balcony door and closed it behind you, leaving the two of you at peace, alone.

“Yes, Your Highness.” You chuckled playfully and did as your husband said, knowing he was right. A relieved groan rumbled in your throat when you peeled your heels from your reddening feet and set them aside. “Oh, the cold stone feels incredible.” You said, the lines of tension on the bridge of your nose releasing at last. Chevalier smiled, a soft, warm thing only ever meant for you, and you answered it with a kiss, surging up to your tiptoes to press your lips to his.

His arms wrapped around your waist and pulled you close, and you giggled softly into his mouth, never quite losing that thrill of being held to him. Your husband, your world. He'd learned so much and taught you so much, but it was as though fate had threaded your hearts together from the very beginning: the weaving of a blanket of love that carried you through all the hardships that had passed, and would continue to carry you through those that were to come.

All at once, the music from the ballroom inside shifted to a slow waltz, and you smiled. You would recognize this music anywhere. It was your song; yours and Chevalier’s. It was the first song you'd ever danced to all those many nights ago when you thought he could never be yours, hummed softly into your ear by the prince once made of ice. Wordlessly, he slid the fingers of his right hand down your arm to find yours and link them together, and he pulled you gently into the steps.

You nestled your head onto his shoulder and smiled into the warm skin of his neck as he led you around the balcony to the pulse of the music that had brought you together for the first time. You giggled aloud, unbidden by the need to seem queenly, and let him twirl you around, your bare feet carrying you back to him as soon as they could.

When the waltz was over, the two of you stilled, his hands on your waist and yours linked behind his neck, and simply appreciated one another. You bumped your nose against his gently and he chuckled lowly.

“I love you, Chevalier.”

“And I, you.”

He kissed you sweetly under the stars, and you were reminded that sometimes, fairytales do come true.

~

Tags for the Lovelies: N/A (no tags since I've been gone for so long. No clue who would want to be tagged in my stuff now or not. 😂)

[gunpowdercarousel]

I feel like BG3 has some really interesting themes of emasculation

Throughout the game it's rare to find a major male character that's depicted as traditionally strong or even 'strong' in any way without having some crippling weakness or insecurity. Even just beyond the simple fact that all three male origin characters have EIGHT STRENGTH, there's deeper stuff.

Wyll: The legendary Blade of Frontiers, a folkloric hero and champion of the people, who is powerless before his master - a woman. She literally treats him like a dog - a puppy even - and is always there to drag him back down the instant he gets too confident in himself. His questline is mostly defined by his sense of powerlessness, especially in the face of the seemingly untouchable woman he serves.

Gale: Used to make love to a literal goddess, only for her to dump his ass. He nearly killed himself trying to figure out a way to win her back, only to be left with a curse that's basically ruined his life. And the first interaction between them we see in the game is her telling him via messenger to kill himself for her sake. And he is totally willing to do so.

Astarion: On the surface, he seems like a suave and confident flirt; a rake. He's full of himself, has a zest for life, loose morals, and overall just seems like a debaucherous playboy, when in reality he's deeply traumatized from two centuries of being tortured, abused, and used. He feels broken and powerless, and is so thoroughly desperate for some degree of power that he'll try reading the Necronomicon without a second thought just in hopes it'll help him.

Ketheric Thorm: A man defined by his relationship to the women in his life. He lost his mind when his wife died and somehow lost it AGAIN when his daughter died. He gave up everything he had - his own identity - to try and bring her back, only for her to hate and scorn him. And in the end, his skull is crushed to pulp by his daughter's girlfriend. The same woman who he drew his immortality from. His awesome power - his indestructability - was something he siphoned away from a woman.

Raphael: The scheming, suave, smooth-talking devil who seems untouchably powerful and impossibly smug throughout the entire game. And yet, when you finally infiltrate his House of Hope, you find out he's really completely terrible in bed, has low self-esteem, and is desperate to prove himself. In many ways he's pathetic. Impressive in the beginning, certainly, when you're utterly powerless before him, but by the time you actual visit his manor you see him for what he truly is: an angry, little man full of hot air.

Cazador: A victim of his own master, who's just desperate for power. Despite being a terrifyingly powerful vampire lord and one of the most powerful and influential people in the city, he just comes across as pathetic and whiny when you finally meet him in person.

Meanwhile, if you look at many of the women in the game - Vlaakith, Mystra, Zariel, Mizora, Shar - they're god-like in power, if not the most morally righteous people in the world, to say the least. Hell, the main villain of the game - the Absolute - is depicted with a feminine voice.

It's just kind of interesting to me how the game depicts so many men in the game as being weak, ineffectual, or pathetic. And yet for the Origin boys it doesn't do it in a scornful or negative way. It just depicts them as flawed people and victims, either of themselves or of circumstance. It doesn't try to show the male heroes being especially strong or cool, it's more than happy to depict them as soft and weak and vulnerable.

It's the seemingly impressive male villains that the game likes to tear down and expose for being pathetic weaklings, which - of course - I'm fine with xD

I'm sure I've missed some other characters, like Gortash or whatever, but these are the main ones that came to mind.

Anyway, just a random thought.

[gremnoire]

Nerdy Nomenclature: Calliope Mondegrene

(This is a yap post for Callie, the protagonist of my web novel Antigreen, which concerns transfem girlfailures, eldritch goddesses, New England, etc--for context, lol. Expect much hypertext!)

Calliope's name is first in a few ways: literally, the first words in the first chapter, and the first name I came up with at all! She's the seed crystal around which the entire story's green/growing.

The name itself means "beautiful-voiced", with the Greek root kallos, which has many beautifully derived words (more on those later). As one of the nine Greek Muses, she's often invoked at the start of oral poetry, asked to "sing" through the poet in a kind of creative channeling. She's the mother of Orpheus, notorious underworld double-taker, among others, and her department's specifically epic poetry, the kind of lengthy narratives describing the dealings of mortals with supernatural forces (you can probably see where that's going).

What drew me to the name most was the description of muse-Callie's voice as possessing "ecstatic harmony"--ecstasy meaning an out-of-body-experience (OOBE) here, from which I assume the eponymous drug gets its name. My Callie has nonstop ecstatic experiences from the very beginning, whether chemical or spiritual! She's the Muse and channeling rod for a beautiful, terrifying Presence, after all, in a kind of subversion of the usual channeling direction.

(Kaleidoscopes, from Wikimedia)

The connection with drugs was also kind of an inspiration, though: one of the most well-known calli-words is kaleidoscope, a cylinder of mirrors and colorful fiddlybits that produces a cool psychedelic effect when looked through. The Beatles' song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (LSD, infamously) contains the lyric:

Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly A girl with kaleidoscope eyes

The song's persistently rumored to be inspired by an acid trip, despite denials, so from that: girl gets high, gets possessed by a God that acts out through her eyes follows nicely--eyes and eye contact being a bit of a fixation for me throughout Antigreen.

Let's tackle that smattering of calliclatural allusions now:

caleidoscope, as mentioned, but also the collective noun for a group of butterflies!

calliope hummingbird (suspiciously pink and green), a similarly nervous critter to Callie

calliope steam organ, patented in Massachusetts, often heard at North American fairgrounds, and again serving to channel an external power, in this case steam

calligraphy, 'beautiful writing', which I aspire at least some fraction of my work to be

teocalli, an ancient Mesoamerican temple, literally meaning "god-house" in Nahuatl. A Cyclopean vessel for the divine.

Calliope Beach in Antarctica, not so distant from the Mountains of Madness

callipygian 'having large buttocks', callithumpian 'noisome; riotous'

calembour, of dubious relation, but I can't resist a good pun

...I also recall hearing the phrase "space-time calliope" from the show Bravest Warriors. For a character who's influenced from a Thing outside of space and time, it seems worth mentioning... and wouldn't you have it? 'Influence' originally meant one 'from the stars'

Calliope also has a nice diminutive in Callie, another persistent theme in Antigreen--almost every character has one, and I use that as a way to embiggen/belittle them as needed by the narrative!

So Calliope's a muse, a vessel for a deity, a tiny flitting bird, but firstly an ordinary human: beautiful, though she doesn't think so; smart, with some drive, just dashed by her having to drop out of college; tall (5'9) and willowy and always bumping herself on corners, but stealthy when she needs to be. She sounds a little clocky, but when she's being puppeted her voice would at last acquire that rare, ecstatic harmony... (maybe a voice training braindump could be a birthday gift idea?)

Lastly, of her surname Mondegrene, I've already written a bit, but my thoughts are:

It adds good green down-to-Earthness to her name

A mondegreen is a misheard lyric--a mischanneled Muse, if you will

Vaguely French sounding--generations back, her family were immigrants to Boston from Quebec during la grand saignée

(art by the ever-lovely @koinumilk! Designs take loose inspiration from both generations of Gala/Galli, gender-transgressing priestesses of Inanna and Cybele, respectively)

Thanks for listening; I'll do more of these if y'all like em. In the meantime: chapter 16 and fifth oneshot out soon tm !

[youandmedead]

𝕽𝖊𝖉𝖚𝖈𝖊𝖉 𝖙𝖔 𝖜𝖍𝖆𝖙 𝖜𝖊 𝖍𝖆𝖙𝖊 𝖒𝖔𝖘𝖙 - 𝕬𝖉𝖆𝖒 𝕾𝖙𝖆𝖓𝖍𝖊𝖎𝖌𝖍𝖙 𝖝 𝕲𝕹 𝖗𝖊𝖆𝖉𝖊𝖗

Warnings: Swearing, heavy angst with no comfort, gory descriptions (it is saw, after all)

Notes: So this is chapter one of the Apprentice Adam fic. I decided to post it on here so I have a better chance at gaining feedback from people so I hope everyone enjoys it (this will also be posted on my A03 account @/Iliketomakeyousuffer as many people also wanted me to post this there, but I'm still trying to work out it's layout/set up)

Taglist: @ghustface737

Darkness shrouded the bloodied and germ ridden bathroom. The stench of bodies beginning to enter their decomposition stages and release their bowels, now that there was no use for them, lingered and entwined with the already nauseating stench that the trap had to offer. So many thoughts and emotions ran through Adam's already haywired brain. Was Lawrence going to survive? He was, right? He had to, he just had to! If he was going to make it, would he send help for him? Would he stick to his promise…after all Lawrence would never lie to Adam.

He said so himself.

With what little strength that Adam had possessed, he adjusted the position he currently resided in. He drew his knees up to his chest and hugged them, whilst trying to avoid further agitating the bullet wound around his right shoulder.

He sobbed helplessly - pain, sorrow, fear and anger all melded into one. The only thing stopping him from completely losing it and smashing an object then cutting his lifeout of existence, was the very thought of Lawrence's return or even the presence of another human being showing up, apart from that sick twisted psychopath that threw him in that god forsaken room and forced a man to completely saw his own foot off in order to prove his worthiness of life. As his mind flashed and flickered to the very moment when Lawrence sawed through the flesh, tissue and bone of his ankle in a mad fit of hysteria and rage, Adam's sons became more violent. His eyes hesitantly lingered over to the severed limb where Lawrence was once trapped - he gagged and his gaze hastily rushed back to his dirt covered knees.

-

The decreasing temperatures began to weave its way into the bathrooms foundations. Goosebumps prickled and littered Adam’s skin, his body began to shake and eventually began to feel a biting numb sensation in his feet, hands and the tips of his ear. He assessed the current conditions and assumed that it was night - he decided to try and keep track of the temperatures within the room to help assess what time of day it is, then from this he could potentially estimate how long he has spent in the desolate deathtrap.

The cuff and chain that restrained him to the massive network of pipes began to feel even more uncomfortable than before. The metal was digging into his skin and due to the cold, it burned his skin and thus irritated his ankle more. He attempted to slot his denim trousers in between the cool metal to ease off the sensation, however the material was wrapped around his ankle too tight to do so. He groaned in dissatisfaction and once again laid his forehead on his knees and hugged himself, hoping that someone would eventually come and save him.

-

Time passed at an agonising rate. On top of all of the traumatic events that Adam had been exposed to, the boredom played another factor in his torture. He found himself beginning to turn to hunger and thirst the longer the hours dragged on. Constant growls of starvation echoed throughout the desolate walls, no food was provided to him...except the rotting corpses laid out before him and the tiny bugs scavenging the floor. Would he grow so desperate for food to the point where he'd devour another's life? Well their time was up...

His body ached all over now and not just at the wound site. After crying, screaming and begging for hours on end, his voice grew hoarse and his throat now burned and he slowly began to feel his emotions drifting away from him. There was nothing left for him now. Despite his humanity and sanity still being intact, Adam wondered how long it would be before even those were stolen away from him. He knew that he wasn’t an angel and he knew that he didn’t have the most perfect track record when it came to people, but did he truly deserve this punishment? Was he not aware of how strenuous his sins and the paths he took in life were? The chains he forged in life were now being weighed down by all of his wrong doings and just like the key that was in that rusty, mucus filled bathtub it went down the drain and the possibility of it being retrieved were zero.

He reflected on himself, as a passenger of life and as a person in the lives of others who he cared for. Memories began showcasing in his mind like a presentation at a massive criminal court case - the bad were specifically provided to him in order to prove his guilt and define why he was in the position that he was stuck in now. He had done so many things that he regretted, things he wished he could travel back in time to prevent himself from saying…he should have really thought before he spoke when faced with a conundrum or a situation where someone’s tone seemed off. He always created enemies because of this and it eventually led to a solitary life. As a child, he was too, very much in the same state that he was in terms of a social life now - he only had one or two friends that he stuck to like glue, but he eventually screwed up and pushed them away, he would always misread a situation or go into defend mode when someone provided him with an act of kindness and drove them away through his stupidity and hot headed resolve. Many arguments that he had had with his parents, friends, past lovers and present lover invaded his fragile mind. With a deep sigh, Adam tried to think of some of the positive experiences he had in life. For example all of the memories he had shared with his partner y/n…they’ll be alone now that he’s gone. Will they believe he just randomly disappeared out of cowardice and despise him or will they search for him?

The night that Adam had been drugged and kidnapped, was the night that the two of them had a huge altercation…an argument that wouldn’t have occurred if Adam had just taken a moment to re-evaluate the situation and shut his mouth instead of adding more gasoline to the already blazing fire. A few tears collected and pooled in his eyes, he was such an asshole for leaving them there…and the fact that he was never able to apologise to them before he was led blindly to death's door will forever haunt him, even beyond the land of the living. They certainly were one of the best things that had ever happened in his life but he was such a fool for believing that his happy ending would be closer than he once believed. The two of them will never be able to sit down together and watch a cheesy B listed horror movie whilst taking a drink from a beer every time someone made a stupid decision or broke the rules that almost every horror movie abides by, they’ll never be able to sit on the local park’s bench during the autumn season drinking coffee, admiring and photographing the beautiful scenery filled with crimson, auburn and medallion hues, they’ll never be able to go see their favourite bands together and get absolutely wrecked in the mosh pits.

They’ll never be able to see each other again.

-

“It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay,” he weakly muttered, “I'm going to get out of here…Lawrence will come, h-he’ll get me out of here. He’s alive, he’s alive and not dead. I’m going to get out. I have to get out.” The man began to rock backwards and forwards as he spoke to himself in a poor attempt to warm and soothe himself.

“Think of good stuff, don’t be dragged down by all of the bullshit, just think of the good.”

He squeezed his eyes closed, the pitch black that he saw was exactly the same as the bathroom’s brightness level - there was no difference whatsoever.

He searched long and hard in his memories until he stumbled upon a time where he was at his lowest as a child. He sat in the backyard of his family home with his beloved pet dog crying to him about how much he hated his life. He was absolutely devastated when he died. The first and only best friend he had was now gone forever. In a strange way, it helped him know what he wanted to do in his life. He wanted to help families and children have a longer time with their beloved pets:he wanted to repay animals for what they had done for him.

Suddenly Adam recalled telling Lawrence about it:

“Yep, I think I can safely say that it’s too late to become a vet”

“It’s never too late”

Adam then pointed to the bloodied corpse lying face down on the uninviting floor of the bathroom, with his brains splattered everywhere.

“Well he’s got fuck all chance of becoming a vet.”

Silence reigned through the room for a bit before Adam let out a chuckle and in turn Lawrence did the same till it died down and the two stared at each other.

Adam nodded and looked back at the photos of Lawrence's family, what was so wrong that he had done to end up in the same situation as a no good, pathetic waste of space?

-

Throughout his childhood, Adam was incredibly resilient. It felt as if everyone (including the world) were trying to knock him down to his lowest. As he sat there, he couldn’t help but think about how glad he was that he stayed in a weird sort of way. Yes he was still sick of all the assholes the world had to offer and yes he was still dealt with horrible cards, yet as pathetic as it may seem to some, he was glad he was able to find himself a person like Y/n. However he probably fucked up with them just like how he fucked up with his parents and everyone else.

-

His parents…

His mother left him a voicemail an hour or so before he was knocked out by a stranger in a pig mask and scarlett red cloak in his own home. “Adam, are you there? Please pick up if you are there. Your fathers not angry anymore. We just want to know if you’re alright. Please call honey…..goodbye.”

Adam’s breath hitched and exhaustion wracked through his body.

Perhaps some day he’ll be able to get out.

[valiantphantomangel]

i love your writing !! can you please do a fix where the reader had a bad day and is overthinking decorating a pumpkin and loki tickles bcuz they won't start it

A/n: I hope you enjoy!!

Stubborn thoughts.

A V's scareoween special.

Should I use red diamonds? No red is associated with Christmas, same as for green. But if I put orange ones then they would look boring, oh what if I did purple ones? Nah that wouldn't match with the pumpkin.

That went through your head a million times, each time a different color, different answers, different ideas, different everything and it was infuriating!

"What did the pumpkin ever do to you?" You heard a smooth voice coming from behind you.

You squealed and promptly fell from your chair, disappearing from view.

"God damnit Loki! Don't scare me like that" you said as you climb up again.

"You were so deep in thought that anything would have scared you" Loki chuckled as he sat down next to you by the table.

You grumbled but knew he was right and that it was pointless to argue so instead you focused your attention back on the pumpkin, what if you put some heart diamonds around the eyes? No!

"Are you alright dove?" Loki said slightly worried and pulled you out of your spiraling thoughts.

You and Loki's relationship was an interesting one that's for sure, in the beginning you completely ignored him because some of your friends had gotten hurt in the New York alien attack but when you found out that he was being controlled you eventually grew closer to him and your friendship blossomed ever since.

"Yeah I'm alright, just trying to figure out how to decorate my pumpkin" you sigh and rub your temples.

"Ah, are those pesky thoughts of yours going at it again?" He said with a smile and wrapped an arm around you.

"Yes! I mean I wanna have a cool pumpkin but I don't wanna be a a copycat, Nat's looks really cool and so does Peter's but I can't figure mine out! Like purple doesn't mix with this shade of orange and then the hearts would look out of place!" You rambled as you threw your hands up.

"Hmm you know, I think I can help you with those stubborn thoughts" He mused as he wrapped his arm a little tighter around you and drew circles on your ribs.

"How?" You asked with a nervous giggle.

"by teach them a lesson" he whispered before scooping you up and dropping you on the couch, making quick work of pinning you down.

You were already a giggly mess as Loki put his hand on your rib cage and his voice turned deeper.

"Now listen here Y/N thoughts! Leave!" He said with a smirk as he attacked your ribs making you arch your back of the couch.

"GAHHAHAHHAHHA" you immediately burst into bright laughter, one thing about Loki? He never took it easy on you with tickling.

"You shall leave this beautiful, adorable, brilliant, genius and best person in the whole wide world alone!" Loki continued in his deep voice as he shook his fingers in your ribs and switched to your hips.

"LokiHAHHAHHAHHAH" you cackled widely as you kicked your feet around, a bright blush adoring your cheeks.

"There you are!" Loki laughed as he scribbled over your tummy "I knew you were still there, those thoughts will leave you alone now"

Before long he decided that you were cured and gave you a few more nibbles on your shoulder before getting off of you and settling your head on his lap.

"Now, is that better?" He asked with a smile as he combed through your hair with his fingers.

"Much better, thank you Loki" you smiled brightly and relaxed in his touch.

"My pleasure Love and if those thoughts come back again you can always find me" he smiled back before putting on your favorite Halloween movie and fell into a comfortable silence.

The pumpkin thoughts long forgotten because after all.

It was only just a pumpkin.

[sinning-23]

My Latest crush is an alien car from space Pt.2

Okay so iwasnt expecting so many Mirage smps to like up my post but HEYYY welcome home yall lmao. Heres part two and let me know is yall want like a tag list for the next couple parts. ANywhoo there's some tension that forms this chapter so start getting ready for more flirty and spicyyyy interactions with old boy.

Heres the link to pt.1

Heres the link to pt.3 shawty

ANywho ENJOY!

Pt.2

Touch me softly 

Mirage had allowed you to explore his anatomy, and he was more willing than you thought. You had managed to make a nice little sketch of his body and made 4 separate copies to try and get a placement in where everything was. Then you had 5 more separate sheets just in case there were some more internal systems you wanted to note. He watched as your eye brown pinched and formed a line on your forehead and your fingers guided the pencil to the paper. 

“Wow, you drew me kinda sexy.” He jokes making you draw a breath trying to hold back a laugh. 

It really wasn’t sexy, it was about the equivalent of the Vitruvian man drawing and basic anatomical positioning for a robot. He watches you stand, hair pulled back, yet a couple of braids still fall in front of your face. He’s quiet, looking at the way you focused so intensely on exploring him.

When you gestured for him to move his leg, he did so without complaint, the feeling of your soft, warm hands under his exteriors heating him up from the inside. Of course, you’d never know that unless you kept poking and prodding. 

“Ok so compared to me, and well, other humans I’m sure your overall body parts are called different things. So let’s start from top to bottom, yeah?” You suggest, eager to learn. 

Mirage kneels in front of you, giving you an opportunity to see better. You’re much smaller than him, but he could tell when you stood next to Noah you were definitely average human height. Small to him but normal to everyone else. 

“Alright I hope you’re ready cause there’s a LOT.” He explains, clearing his throat as you move closer to his face just to see better, he blinks a bit, getting used to the feeling.

You smile slyly, placing your hand under his chin to  guide his face, 

“Let’s start with your face. Stick out your…tongue?” 

He opens his mouth and lets the ‘flesh’ inside lol out before speaking 

“Gloth-ah” he announces and you tilt your head in confusion, only for him to repeat.

“Glossa” 

You nod prodding at what you soon learned was his helm and face plates. You brush over his vocalizer for a moment and he hums, high-pitched enough to be a moan but not loud enough for either of you to acknowledge it. You know what you heard though.

“Whoa- lets not touch that alright ma?” He asks. 

Soon enough your trailing downward and when you do he announces each part for you to make a note of. This is the quietest he’s been since earlier today. He lets you work, touch, poke, pull, and press whatever you'd wanted. It’s not like it hurt really, but he’s never had something smaller than him want to examine at such close range and actually touch places he’d never been able to. In fact, it was kind of nice-

He yelps when you slide your hand down his chest plate and even farther under his chassis. You pull away, startled at the noise with wide eyes. 

“OK, that’s enough exploring don’t you think?” The statement is rushed and you side-eye him when what sounded like cooling fans whirred from inside.

Had you gotten him worked up? Maybe those were sensitive spots that had never really been touched like that before? You nod, not wanting to pry and ruin this newfound friendship by being a perv. You collect the papers and paperclip them together as he begins to wind down. It's about 6am now, and the sun peeks in through the garage windows. Your dad should be awake about now and- 

You gasp pushing Mirage back into the space he was originally parked in last night(even though he didn’t budge). Your dad couldn’t know about this! AT ALL! Knowing him he'd stress out and then his pressure would get too high and he’d have a heart attack and-

“Whoa hey, what the rush, mamas? Got something to hide?” Mirage questions, figuring out why you were trying to get him back into a corner. 

Was he being clueless on purpose?!

“YES, YOU! Now go back to being a car! My dad can't know about you, it might just be the death of him.” You huff out, gripping your scalp and pacing back and forth. He gets the idea, chuckling a bit before right back to that beat-up Porsche.

You sneak out the garage, tiptoeing up the stairs and into your room. And the moment your head hit the pillow, not even a tornado could wake you. 

__________

You'd be lying if you said you didn't sleep the rest of the day away. By the time you woke up it was already 3-4pm and sounded like your father was cleaning up the kitchen. You sigh, running yourself a shower considering you didn't get one the night before. Mirage was still in the garage as far as you knew and you were hellbent on getting the rest of those notes.

You step in, the water feeling soothing against your skin, steam filling up the bathroom as you sigh in relief. Thoughts of your apartment fill your head. 

‘Maybe Mirage could help with the unpacking? Or maybe not. He could be spotted and then that’s more problems for us. Mirage…..Miraaaaageee….’

Your turn to face the water, soaping up your towel as suds slide down the drain. 

‘I wonder if a car wash is the equivalent of a shower for him….does he stay a car or like…fully transformed….does he have a-‘ 

Shutting the water off you opt to pull your hair back today since youd being doing more exploring. The steam from the bathroom escapes when youleave and pad downstairs, catching a glimpse at the note you father let you on the kitchen counter

~Working late, leftovers in the fridge~

You smile to yourself, grabbing a bottle of water to try and beat the obvious heat outside and head to the garage. Sure enough, the Porsche is right where you left it. Mirage is right where you'd left him, and when you tap on the window, the doors unlock almost instantly. You flatten the back of your blue jean skirt and adjust the seat. Awfully quiet today?

“Well good afternoon to you too sunshine? You realize it’s almost 5 right?.” You joke, hearing him rev his engine and the radio humming to life with the sound of his voice. 

“You had me up all night! Looking this good doesn’t happen on its own! But how tired can I be when a pretty girl in a miniskirt‘s got her thighs on my seat?” He shoots back, making you gasp. 

“Drive you flirt, I got more notes to take. Wanna go to that garage you took me to yesterday?” You ask, using the garage clicker to leave. 

It was hot, the sun beating down on you as Mirage insisted you keep the windows down instead of running the ac. The streets were somewhat empty on this fine Sunday morning and Mirage’s only response was to drive in what you assumed was the direction to the garage. You fidget with the radio nobs and glance at the aux cord below the cd player. Maybe he did have CDs in here? You open the armrest to find nothing but-

It was easy to be nosy and explore when Mirage could drive himself, youd put that together on your own last night. There was so little you knew about him but his demeanor overall made you feel comfortable enough to ask. He was…charming. You pull the blank CD case out the armrest, and dust it off. 

“MIrage’s Mix (from-)”

The name was scratched off, well more smudged than anything. You crack the case open and slide the CD into the player, the wait for the music to start making you a bit nervous. Had he realized you'd put it in? Was it personal? You begin to regret your decision but before you could press the eject button, it began. N.W.A. blasted from the speakers, startling you for a moment but you're soon amused.  What did he know about N.W.A?

________

It doesn't take much longer for you to arrive at the garage, most of the lot being empty while the two of you enter to complete more of your research. You set your purse down, taking the papers from yesterday out and trying to organize them as he peers over your shoulder.

“Still think you drew me sexy-”

You scoff playfully and push him a bit, not moving him in the slightest but still, but he still finds it amusing. 

“Stop it, I need you to sit so I can finish. You got all squeamish on my last night.” You tease, sliding your hand down the back of his ‘leg’ and he freezes.

He kneels back down, watching your every move. Your fingers hover over his vocalizer, the warning from yesterday replaying in your mind. Right, don't touch. You skip his chest plate and chassis, watching his expression slightly change to disappointment for what seemed like only a second. Again, he announces each part of himself, the air slightly awkward and VERY quiet. Maybe now was the time to try and strike up some more conversation.

“Soooo, where are you really from?” You ask, writing down each part you trace over when he speaks. 

“Cybertron actually. Not in your solar system lil mama.” He flirts, turning his palms slightly open when you tap them. 

Servos 

"Never been?" He jokes again, admiring how small your hand looked compare to his.

'Careful Mirage your size kink is showing' he thinks to himself, avoiding your gaze.

You shake your head in response, looking at the details of his hands, moving back to his torso, purposefully skipping over the plated area between his thighs. Boundaries were definitely not something you wanted to cross, trying not to make him uncomfortable. I mean, he was willingly letting you poke around, and he clears his throat when you skip that spot.

“You, you can look if you want. And touch…ask questions. It's all good babygirl.” He offers, almost melting when you look up from under your lashes at him.

 He could practically feel his pump about to explode. Why did Earth girls look so damn pretty? Mirage couldn't wrap his head around it honestly, the feeling he got when he passes a pretty girl when Noah would take him for drives. How they would gasp if he revved loud enough to embarrass Noah a bit but also score him a couple numbers.

Talk about a damn good wingman. You were different though.

You were a softer kind of pretty…He'd seen you come into the garage so many times before you really met. The day your dad parked him in that spot, he watched you skip in with your little low-rise jeans, the piercing you sported shining in the sunlight. 

You hugged your dad, eyes lighitn up at the new car with a gasp. 

“A Porsche! Dad oh my gosh really?” You ask, seeing him nod. You squealed more, inspecting his paint job, it was just as beat up then as it was before you officially met. 

You chatted on and on about how ‘cute’ he’d look when you finally got to paint him a nice shade of hot pink and added your glitter seat covers. Not so exciting for him considering pink wasn't particularly his favorite but god did you look adorable when you were excited. 

And there was that same look. Pure, unbridled excitement, yet your eyes shone almost darker this time. That look is almost salacious. It makes him swallow hard, legs opening a bit more and you brush your hand over his thighs, sparing one more glance as if to ask, ‘Are you sure?’ He only nods. 

“Mirage, you gonna keep telling me what everything is, or am I to assume on my own?” You question, tracing the skirt plate.

Ita hard to speak, his fans feelijg as if they were working overtime to keep him from overheating. Primus you looked so pretty between him and now he was wondering how would you look riding his-

You stop touching, whistling to get his attention. Damn, he kinda liked that.

“ ‘Rag, we good?” You questions and he swallows hard at his new nickname.

Where did all that slick talk go now? 

“Yeah, y-yeah we’re good ma.” He responds finally, optics low when your light chuckle reaches his ears. 

You slide your hands up and down his midsection plating, teasing at this point. How was he supposed to focus on helping you learn when you touch under his plates like that? When your fingers slide over his thighs and over the skirt plate over and over, the pace only makes him want to thrust into your touch.

He felt perverted sort of, getting off on you exploring him in the name of science. That was such bullshit. He looks down at you, watching you pinch your lip between your teeth. Oh….you liked this. Your thighs pressed together as your tongue darts out to lick your lips. 

You look up at him again, smile mischievous. And before he could ask any questions you slid you hand right back to his chassis and vocalizer. Oh that was a moan without a doubt. You hum in satisfaction, you’re practically playing with him, his body. It wasn’t helping that he hadn’t been touched like this in so long either p.

“Wanna tell me what happens if I keep touching you like this?” You purr, seeing Mirage avoid eye contact. 

“C’mon ma, don’t mess with me like this.” He breathes out, hollow.

You stop your ministries after hearing tires and revving come to a halt. With footsteps approaching you stand quickly, Mirage doing the same. He crosses his arms over his chest and leaning against the wall as if he’d been caught while you shove the papers into your bag and swallow hard. You’d never moved so fast in your life.

Noah enters, feeling as if he’s just interrupted something but panicking once he realizes the predicament you were about ot be in. Why were you two here? Did Mirage even think this through? Probably not.  He glances back at the other 3 bots behind him, trying to find a quick solution to hide you. But, before he could get any sort of plan out, three other robots similar to Mirage walked in, and one of them, was not at all pleased. 

“Primeee, i had no idea youd be back so soon!”

_______________________________________

Lemme know waht yall think in the comments lmao and let me know if you wanna be added to the taglist as well!

Mini Taglist: @gniteruirui @veggiepizzababy panty-h03