#I was worried that Ky wouldn't have enough interest for his to get made

[broken-clover]

Plushie Sol is currently only around 50% funded while Plushtemkin is already almost double the minimum needed and climbing every time I refresh the page. I never thought I'd see the day where Potemkin is the popular character and it's fucking hilarious

[cottoncammi89]

XO Story Time : Caila's Diary Pt. I

01/19/2021

Just to start this off, my name is pronounced as "kay-la", not "ky-la". That aside, I feel as if I'm in a weird place right now. I kept thinking about that one time when Alex (and yes, I do mean "black atlass" Alex) had warned me about talking to one of my exes, Abel (The Weeknd) to be exact. Also, the photo we (Abel, Alex and I) took together before heading off to college after graduating from high school. It was back in 2010 when we had that "first day of summer " party at his house. I was with Abel at the time. I thought that once we, Abel and I, had graduated from high school, we will still remain together. Like old times. we wouldn't have to worry about anything other than going to college, graduating from there and starting our new life together, regardless of the differences in occupation. I was wrong. Fast forwarding to now the first month of this year, I had changed my college/career choice from majoring in Graphic Arts to majoring in Business (Office) . I had even landed a full-time intern position at the Milton Tech Office Firm. The first day there was ....interesting. I was hoping that with the skills I had accrued over the years, from taking up jobs/classes similar to the one I'm working in, it would be easy and people would be just a bit nicer, just in case I had made some minor mistakes. My bad. That aside, I had come across my other old friends, Cammie Pink and Raven during my lunch break. They asked me if I had talked to Alex for the past couple of years that I had been in college. I told them that I haven't due to the fact that I had been busy trying to reach out to Abel. Plus, I was too busy trying to focus on both college and work, long enough to keep him out of my mind. Both of my friends hesitated to tell me that Alex was going to be performing live at some fancy Inn, or hotel that I can't remember the name of at the moment. It's starting on the Saturday afternoon, the week after next(in June to be exact). The thought of seeing him filled me with dread because I know I had left him without saying a single word and sadness because I don't know if I could go through with this knowing he might abandon me just like I had abandoned him. To top things off, Cammie announced, with an engagement ring on her ring finger, that she's getting married to Abel. I asked her if he was more than willing to go through that plan with her. Then, she looked at me like I was making an insinuating statement that he was drunk when he had decided to propose to her, or if I was trying to recite a spell that will keep the two from being together just out of pure spite. I had to clear some things up with her in order to let her know that I want the best for her and to see to the fact that I want her to be happy with him, without worrying about being thrown back into the arms of her shady, toxic ex-bf Drake. That said, I'm tired and I don't to talk about any of this anymore. Plus, I'm starting to feel a warm and strange sensation every time his name is being mentioned in the conversation. And by him, I mean... Alex, going by the stage name "Black Atlass").

[spookysanta]

daddy’s girl. (e.d.)

Summary: he's been watching her and she knows it. He's yearning for her, and he’ll have her, but she has to finish high school first. 

Pairing: Ethan Dolan xReader

WARNINGS: age gap (38 vs 18), creep shit

SAY NOTHING IM WRITING A NEW SERIES JUST READ IT AND TELL ME IF IT SUCKS 

DISCLAIMER! PLEASE READ: in this, the girl (cairo) is of LEGAL age. he (ethan) refers to her as a child bc yanno.... he's almost 40 here. this isn't on any pedophile stuff, okay? just for clarification. AND as i was writing this i got jake gyllenhaal vibes from this, but then i figured ethan could be the “sexy dad” in the future (so to speak)—which is what i was kinda going for; like a man that’s older but is so irresistibly gorgeous, even young girls swoon over him.

UNEDITED

****

******

She'd caught his eye. 

And he doesn't know how it came to be this way; he thought he was done messing around like this ages ago. But here he was, a thirty-eight-year-old man, watching an eighteen-year-old girl cheer at his neice's high school's football game. 

She sees him though; as if he's staring into her soul. As she finishes her tumbling routine in the halftime show, her eyes dart in his direction and his never leave her. She shivers slightly--

Who is that man? she wondered, walking away from the field to distract herself. 

**

She stands at the cash register, swiping his items across the scanner. "Did you find everything okay?" she asked in a monotone voice, looking at the clock on the register's screen. 

"Yes, I did. Thank you." the man responded, fishing in his wallet for cash as he already knew how much two bottles of red wine cost. "Do you need to see ID?"

"Yes, I--" she paused, looking at the man for the first time during their interaction. This was the man from the football game! She couldn't have forgotten those pearly eyes that bore into hers, and definitely didn't forget the way he ironically made her feel when their eyes locked. "I-I do."

"You okay?" he asked with a chuckle as he handed her his driver's license. He knew exactly who she was, and after a bit of research, he knows that she's what he wants. And, likewise, he knew that she remembered him. That in itself was exciting because now he knew where she was from 9-2 every Saturday--which meant he'd be seeing her a lot more. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

She glanced at the line forming behind him and shook her head at the idea of her confrontation. She took the card and read the birthdate carefully. "1980." she muttered, handing it back to him. "Your total's $18.20."

He handed her a $20, grabbing the bottles of wine by their necks and smirking. "Keep the change."

"Thank you." 

"You're welcome, Cairo. See you around."

**

She lay in her bed, wondering why this man clouded her thoughts. What was it about him that made him so intriguing? Yes, he was attractive, but he was more than twice her age--shouldn't that mean that he was repulsive to her? Should she shy away from this man and his beauty?

Ethan.

If there's anything she knew about men, it's that older men (well, boys, in her case) don't usually have the girl's best interest in mind. But no matter how many cons appear on this list, the only pro she seems to think of is the fact that he looked at her like he knew her already. His hazel eyes were almost magnetizing her brown ones to his gaze, and the energy was too strong to pull it away.

**

He's come to the realization that he's hooked on her.

He wants her, no--needs her. 

And he knows how crazy that sounds with all of the odds stacked against him (namely, her being a child by his comparison) but he'll admit they'd look absolutely perfect together. 

And there's nothing he won't do until they're in love.

**

day one.

She walked home from school every day. Three-fifteen on the dot, Monday through Friday. Sometimes, she takes the after-school bus after her cheer practices, and that drops her off on the same corner but at five-thirty. He sees her walk down Linden Avenue, then make a left on Conch Street, and then go into the tiny brick house at the end of the lively culdesac. Sometimes he sees her through her window at night, laying in her bed soundly. It takes everything in him each night to not climb up the big pine tree to the second floor, open the already unlocked window—she doesn't lock it anymore because the lock can get finicky at times and it can get quite hot in San Bernadino in May—and breathe in the same air as her.

Just once.

Just once, he wants to be there for her—hold her, kiss her, smell her, taste her.

Is that too much to ask?

Just one more month, he reminds himself as he perches himself on his porch chair, watching her walk into her home with her friend, Janelle.

He does not like Janelle.

Janelle has a tendency to be a bit manipulative when it comes to Cairo; she wants the best for her, of course. But she's always making Cairo go to parties that she doesn't want to go to, or do things that Cairo doesn't typically do.

Cairo's a good girl who doesn't need to be bombarded with social...ick.

"She's a good girl," he mumbled, palms set on his knees with white fingertips. "My good girl."

***

She continued her walk to the store like she usually does on Sunday mornings in the spring. Yes, she does work at the store, but why not stop by and visit her favorite co-workers while she picked up her favorite ice cream?

"Good morning, Edith!" she greeted to the elderly woman stood behind the customer service desk. She resembled Jane Goodall in a way; caring, generous, kind. "How are you today?"

"Hey, sweetie! I'm alright, hope you're doing well. Say 'hi' to Katherine for me!" she replied with a wave, going into the employee's lounge.

"Will do!" she wandered to the frozen food section, her coffee brown eyes set on the cookie dough ice cream in the freezer. With happy alarms blaring in her head, she grabbed a pint from the shelf, going immediately to the checkout line to pay for her dessert. "Hey Ricky." she said to the cashier.

"Hey, Cai." he responded, ringing up her ice cream and setting it on the counter. "$4.68. Got your employee ID on you?"

She fished through her wallet and came up emptyhanded. "Shoot. I must've left it at home." she sighed. "It's cool, I'll pay full price."

"Nah, I got you." he took a card out of his front pocket, swiped it, and put in his pin. "There ya go. $2.27."

"Thanks, Ky. I owe you one." She handed him a five dollar bill, keeping the cash fold of her wallet open so she could put her change in it.

"You know what you could do for me so we're even?" he opened the cash drawer, taking out her change and handing it to her.

"What?"

"Go to dinner with me." he wrote on her freshly printed receipt. "It doesn't have to be fancy, but if you're interested, you should hit me up sometime."

"Sure. I'd love to." she smiled, putting the receipt with her change and grabbing her ice cream off the counter. "We'll talk tonight?"

"Totally. See you around."

"See you!"

**

She entered the house again and put her ice cream in the fridge. "Ma!" she yelled into her mother's office as she passed it. "Ms. Edith at Ben's said 'hi'!"

"Aw, how sweet of her to think of me!" she said with a smile. "I'll have to send you by her house with a plate of cookies this week."

She groaned inwardly. Edith's a nice woman, but Cairo's mother, Katherine, does not conjure up her life-changing cookies on any given day. Which means that she would make a small batch—just enough for Edith and her husband, Clarke—and then, poof! No-one's going to see those cookies until Christmastime. Bounding up the staircase and into her bedroom, practically leaping onto her bed with a sigh.

Meanwhile, he was watching her still. He didn't even think to consider the idea of someone catching him stare at this girl, sat in the rocking chair on his front porch, watching her intently through a pair of zooming binoculars while she boredly scrolled through her phone. Quite frankly, he wouldn't care at all. If someone were to walk by and ask him what he was doing, he'd merely say: "Protecting my girl."

He doesn't give a damn if she took a glance out her window and saw a man—that man—staring back at her. Knowing her, which obviously he does, she'd probably scream for her mom and tell her mom to come and look because "there's a strange man" looking at her through her window. And then her mom would come and look but by then he'd be back in his home across the way from hers, in his bedroom, watching her panic through the telescope he'd set up.

That'd be a gift to himself, really. Because he knows deep within that she thinks about him. Even though maybe the thoughts are of worry or panic and not ones of admiration, all he cares about is the fact that he's invaded her thoughts just like she's invaded his.