#I’m a professional keep things running nerd

[footygirl114]

Estrellas (Alexia Putellas x Reader)

Sooo part # 6, thanks for sticking with me for this long (if you made it this far lol) This one is basically fluff and it gets a bit spicy - 18+ if you squint.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

As the time ticked closer to 7pm, the more your nerves grew. You were so excited to take her on a proper date, but you were also so nervous that you would mess things up. You had ran around all afternoon getting thing together, that you barley had time to shower and get ready before you needed to be out the door. You had texted Alexia earlier and told her to dress warm and comfy as you’d be outside, and asked her to meet you at the car in the garage. 

You were standing there 5 minutes before 7 running through the mental checklist you had going on to make sure the date was perfect you almost missed Alexia getting off the elevator walking up behind you. It’s like you can sense her, he nerves in your body were ignited and as you turned toward her, the nervous butterflies disappeared and were replaced by excited ones. She smiles softly at you and when she’s in range you softly say “hi beautiful.” 

She steps up right in front of you and you run your eyes down her body, noting the black leggings, comfy sweatshirt and trainers on her feet. “hola hermosa, I missed you today” she says and reaches out to squeeze your hand. 

“I missed you too” you whisper into her hair as you pull her into you and wrap her in a hug. 

She squeezes her arms around your waist and you take a moment to savour it, before you pull away and open the front door for her. With an exaggerated bow you say “your chariot my lady.” 

She chuckles and moves to get into the car, leaving a kiss on your cheek and whisper of “you are a nerd.” 

You chuckle along with her and move to close the door, jogging around your side to get into the driver seat. Turning towards her as you put your seat belt on you ask “are you ready to be amazed?” 

“Amazed?” she asks with a smile. 

“It has been a long time since I had someone I wanted to impress, but I am confident you will still like me after this date” you finish with a wink.

She chuckles and asks with a smile “how long has it been?” 

“Since I’ve been on a date or had someone I wanted to impress?”

She shrugs and says “both.” 

“Over a year and a half since a terrible blind date, and the last girl I tried to impress was in the 10th grade, but she was dating the quarterback and I never had a chance” you finish with a wink. 

She laughs and says “well I feel lucky to be the one you now want to impress.” 

You lean closer and press a kiss to her cheek and say “i’m the lucky one cause you’re letting me Ale.” You lean back and start the car and say “lets get this amazing date started.” 

The drive to the date is filled with comfortable small talk, and Alexia’s pestering about where the date is. She keeps asking and when you finally pull into the parking lot and turn off the car you simply say “lets go gorgeous.” 

You hop out of the car and move to grab two backpacks from the back seat, and you meet her at the back of the car. She asks “where are we?” 

“My spot. Now I can carry both bags, one on the front and one the back, or the professional athlete I am taking on an amazing date could carry one for me?” you ask her with a smile. 

She chuckles and holds her hand out and says “this professional athlete can carry a bag for you.” 

You move to help her put the bag on her back and once she’s secure and you hold your arm out to lead her towards the trail you are walking on. When she walks by you smack her on the ass and  say “we don’t have much time so I hope you can keep up” and you take off at a slow jog towards the trail and she chuckles but you hear her footfalls fall into step behind you. 

A few minutes into the short hike you slow down and turn around and ask her “I thought you were a professional athlete Ale.” 

“You are going to get it Hermosa, you better know who your teasing” she says as she moves to pass you up the trail. Before she can walk by you grab her hand and press a kiss to her cheek and then move to follow her. “Letting me lead?” she asks over her shoulder. 

“No I just want to watch your cute butt babe.” you chuckle and keep pace behind her, her chuckle making your smile grow bigger.

The last few bits of the trail are completed in comfortable silence, and when you break into the opening and you notice that your timing is perfect and the sun will be setting in about 15 minutes. You pause and let her walk a bit closer to the edge. You have been here many times, you found it on one of your first runs in the city, you liked the quietness and that you can see the whole city over the edge. The sun sets behind the city and it makes the scene even better. 

“Its beautiful” she says as she keeps looking out over the city and the sun. 

You move closer to her and you say “you’re beautiful.” 

She turns towards you and smiles and hold her hand out for you. You chuckle and move closer and pull the bag off her arms. She watches as you pull a blanket out, and spread it out on the grass. Then move to grab the container of cheese and crackers and the container of sandwiches you had prepared and place them on the blanket. Last you move to grab the bottle of champagne, and when you dig you cant find the glasses you knew were on your list. 

“fuck, where are they” you are talking to yourself as you dig into the bag. “They must be in the car, maybe I can run down quickly, I’ll be right back” you say as you look up at her. 

“whoa whoa Y/N, hold on” she stops you and places both hands on your cheeks making you look at her. “Whats going on beautiful?” she asks you. 

“I wanted this date to be perfect, and I forgot the glasses for the champagne and now its not gonna be perfect. I need to run down to the car and hope they are there or this date will be ruined.” You can feel the anxiety building in your body and you dig your nails into your palm trying to ground your self. 

“hey look at me” she says to you “Hermosa, I am right here look at me.” When you meet her eyes she smiles and says “this date is already perfect cause I am with you Y/N, glasses aren’t going to change that. We could have had Mcdonald’s in your car and I’d be happy beautiful, I just want to be with you.” 

“really?” you ask her.

She nods and moves to grab the champagne, she opens the bottle and then takes a swig straight form the bottle and says “anyways who needs glasses.” 

You chuckle and step closer to her and press a kiss to the corner of her lips. You pull back and ask her “Shall we watch the sunset?” 

You both sit beside each other on the blanket trading sips from the bottle of champagne, eating the food you bought. You both keep the talking to a minimum enjoying the silence and the sunset, when the sun finally disappears and the champagne is gone she gets up and moves to start packing up, you let her put the empty containers away and then you move to lie on your back. 

“come lie with me Ale” you tell her patting the blanket beside you. 

She smiles and says “okay.” She moves and lies beside you both on her back your hands tangled together, you can feel her head against yours. After a few moments she asks “what are we looking at?” 

“the stars, I love looking at the stars.” you say quietly. 

She squeezes your hand and asks “why the stars?” 

You take in the moment and keep your eyes on them as you tell her “When I was over there, I would lie awake at night, listening to distant gunfire and explosions, but I was able to focus on the stars. No matter where I am I know the stars are the same ones, and they’re always going to be there. It helped me sleep knowing that the stars I looked at every night where the same ones that the people I was protecting here were seeing.” 

You feel her turn on her side beside you, and when you turn your head towards her she meets your eyes and says “My father loved the stars, and he always said the same thing.”

“Yeah?” 

“Yes, i have always loved them.” she says with a smile. 

You keep your eyes locked on hers and you whisper out “Kiss me Alexia.” 

She smiles and leans down over you, and presses her lips to yours. When your lips meet its like something inside you shifts and feel the tight coil of control you always have relax, and you let yourself feel her and enjoy her touch. Moving one hand up you cradle her cheek and pull back smiling at her. 

“wow” she says with a smile. 

You smile and lean up and press another kiss to her lips, pulling back and asking “want to get out of here?” 

She nods and moves to hop up and holds a hand out to help you up. She pulls you into her when your standing and you wrap your arms around her and squeeze tightly. She pulls back and says “Let’s go before it’s too dark to get back.” 

The walk down is quiet and you both walk together hands intertwined, with soft smiles exchanged along the trail. You help her in the car again, and before you start the engine you lean in and kiss her again. You both have to pull back when you cant stop smiling into the kiss. 

The ride home is soft and filled with laughs and her hand on your thigh. When you get back to your building, and you pull into the parking garage, when you cut the engine, you smile at her and ask “so was it an amazing date?” 

She smiles softly and leans closer to you and says “It was okay, It could be better.” 

“Oh yeah?” you ask and lean closer placing a hand on her cheek.

“It’s getting better” she smiles. 

You smile and press your lips to hers and when you pull back you ask “better?” 

“Its getting better” she smiles. 

Chuckling you hop out of the car and open the door, and hold your hand out to her. She takes it and hops out of the car, you pull her with you to her elevator and scan your pass and push her into it. You crowd her into the back wall, pushing your body against hers, you connect your lips and when you feel her tongue tangle with yours, you can’t help but let out a soft moan. The dinging of the elevator breaks you apart. You pull her off it and ask “better now?” 

She smirks and pulls her hoodie off leaving her in just a tank and she walks backward and says “It’ll be amazing soon beautiful” and holds her hand out for you to follow her. 

You smile and slowly follow her step by step until she has her knees against the bed. You stop right in front of her and push her back onto her bed. You pull your hoodie over your head leaving you in a t-shirt standing over her. You smile at her and raise an eye brow watching her. 

She chuckles and undoes the button on her pants, pushing them down past her hips. You move to pull them off asking “Will this make it amazing babe? or should I work a bit harder?” 

Throwing her pants across the room you move to kneel over her “I think you are doing just fine gorgeous.” 

You straddle one of her legs, settling your weight on your hands on either side of her head, you press your thigh to her covered core and ask a hairs width from her lips and ask “how are you feeling now?”

She lets out a low moan, moving her hips to find more friction against your thigh and she warns “y/N, don’t tease me.” 

You move to press harder against her core, and you ask again “tell me how your feeling babe.” 

She moans and says “so good, I am so wet Y/N.” 

You lean in and connect your lips with hers, and you press your tongue into her mouth at the same time you press your thigh harder into her core, using your hands to encourage her to grind on it. You slide a hand down and move it under her shirt and push her bra to the side, you find her nipple and twist it and the moan she lets out makes you even wetter. 

You pull your mouth back from hers and lean into her ear asking  “can you cum from this babe? I want you to feel so good for me pretty girl” Finishing with a bite to the bottom of her ear.

“fuck Y/N” she moans out and grinds hard against your thigh, “i am close.” 

You tug her ear again and press your thigh harder into her core as you tell her in her ear “cum for me pretty girl, let me make you feel so good.” 

She lets out a loud moan of your name and you can feel her body let go, you pull back and watch her face as she cums with another moan of your name. When you feel her body slow down you pull back and move to lay beside her leaning on your arm, with one arm on her stomach you press a kiss to her temple and let her settle down. 

When she’s come back down she turns to meet your eyes and says “holy crap babe, I have never done that before.” 

“done what?” 

“orgasm with my clothes on, but this whole night has been amazing” she says with a smile. 

Smiling you ask “so it was amazing?” 

She smiles and before you can blink she’s straddling your hips and has your arms pinned behind your head. “You are amazing, and this date has been amazing. But its now time for me to show you how amazing I can be” she says with a smirk and leans down and presses her lips to yours.

[mcdonaldsnumberone]

LOVE ME HARDER!

you swear your favorite color has nothing to do with kaiser. but unluckily for you, the boy’s fallen madly in love with you and has somehow convinced himself that he can connect the dots to make you fall madly in love with him. when you meet his flirting with a tough front though, kaiser has a secret weapon up his sleeve (or under his uniform collar).

gender neutral reader

content warning(s): reader’s favorite color is blue, kaiser’s tattoo isn’t super visible with his uniform in this fic

You loved blue.

You still do. And for the foreseeable future, you weren’t going to ever stop loving the color. It was a color so dear and special to you, and as much as you loved all the other colors, there was something indescribable about the blue hue.

It was everywhere. The color of the sky. The ocean. The small Google Docs icon while you scribbled down notes on your computer. A stray car in the distance while you crossed the road. It was the color of loyalty and knowledge, the cool tones even embodying the mystifying feeling of melancholy. And, if you allowed yourself to get a little pretentious and philosophical, probably the color of the universe. 

What a dignified color. You would never stop loving blue. Not ever. Certainly not now. And you would never extinguish your love of the color because of a man.

But boy, was someone making it difficult.

You always heard him before you saw him: the rumble of footsteps, Ness gushing incoherent praise, the shrill trill of German words hanging in the air. Like an overture before a grand opera, except those thirty seconds were the only prep time you’d get to turn on your heel and book it out of there if you didn’t want to say hello to your biggest headache.

“Oh, daaaarling! There you are! Hey- Don’t run away!”

An outstretched pair of arms materialized on either side of your body, and you let out a loud yelp before you were pulled backwards into a tight hug. You screeched like a feral cat, clawing helplessly at the air while a loud haughty laugh rang out against your eardrums.

It was only when you turned around that the sense of hearing gave out to the sense of sight. Beautiful strands of blond-blue hair swept across your eyes, the twinkle of his golden locks not too unlike the catlike gleam in his pupils. Speaking of his eyes, you hated the stupid bastard for how much blue he had on him and more importantly, how good it looked. Even the smug azure of his crinkled eyes made you stop breathing for just a split second, and your lips parted unconsciously as your hatred momentarily dissipated into wonder at the delicate hue.

“Staring at me? Awwwww, do you think I’m handsome? Of course you do. You wouldn't be so starstruck otherwise,” he chuckled. You instantly snapped out of your stupor, and you twisted your face into a disgusted frown.

“Take your hands off of me, you idiot,” you snarled. “I’m not in the mood to talk to you.”

“Oh? Perfect. I think that’s perfect timing to talk to you.” Kaiser kept one arm slung firmly over your shoulders, expertly placing himself at your side. You dug your heels into the ground and kept your place whenever he tried to edge you closer to his torso, egging you to relax into his touch. “Busy being a little color nerd again? I think it’s adorable that you’d pick your favorite color after me-”

“-I did not pick my favorite color after you,” you huffed. You crossed your arms, and you glared directly up at him (this time, you took extra care not to get lost in his eyes). “Do you really think I don’t have a personality or something? To pick a favorite color after a man?”

He shrugged. “Hey, I’m a pretty charming guy, if I do say so myself. Just now, you couldn’t keep your eyes off of me. I’d say I wear the color well. Say, if I swapped my red eyeliner out for a blue one, would that make you stare at me even more?”

You wanted to push him off, but you knew better than to engage a professional athlete in a half-wrestle-half-run-for-your-life-thing. “In your dreams. You’re an atrocious mix of colors.”

“Sure.” He easily brushed your words off. He broke out into his usual smug grin, chuckling at you as if he were a cat toying with a mouse. If he could, you swore that he’d gobble you up in one bite and leave no crumbs. “But I’d say blue is totally my color.”

Red hot annoyance flooded your body. This was so unlike you, to be moved to such anger that you’d be thinking of any color other than your favorite cyan hue, but something about this man made you want to beat him to a bloody pulp until he truly was nothing more than a mix of crimson and black and white broken bones. 

“Blue is MY color!” You grumbled. “I liked it even before I met you! Hell, I probably understand it better than you do! Dipping your hair in Kool-Aid and being born with blue eyes doesn’t automatically make blue your color! It’s my favorite color, and me liking it has nothing to do with you! Not everything revolves around you, Kaiser!”

You fumed at him, having blurted out all of the tension mounting inside of your chest. You stood there, wanting to claw off the weight of his arm across your shoulders. You wondered if Kaiser would yell back at you, if those beautiful sapphire eyes of his would narrow into small slits before he’d wind up for the pounce, if he truly would swallow you up into a void of blue nothingness just to prove you wrong.

But instead he threw his head back, and he laughed heartily.

“You’re too funny for your own good.” He pretended to wipe a tear from his eye with his other hand, and he barely held himself together long enough to look at you. “The world? Revolve around me? Maybe to all those other stupid commoners. Those brainless fools need a stunning star to guide them. To give them any purpose in life.”

You grimaced, skin crawling with disdain as he yanked you closer. His free hand caressed the outline of your cheeks and jaw, and you let out a small “eep!” as he hooked his fingers under your chin to gingerly lift your face to meet his. You held your breath as the German prodigy leaned in, until the silhouette of his peach-pink lips were much too close to your mouth for your liking.

“But, darling… Oh, my sweet, stupid darling…” His voice was far too smooth for your own liking. Like the lining of a regal blue mink-fur lined cape, the kind you’d see in a 1700s painting of a king, the edge you get from swallowing down a mouthful of ice water. He looked too pleased with himself, having you ensnared perfectly in his arms like this. The thick tension that hung between the two of you felt like poisoned honey, and he shook his head at you mockingly. “If anyone were to pay attention closely, they’d know that the script is much more different for you than it is for those everyday fools.”

“Don’t lump me in your weird fantasy.” You blinked at him defiantly. He pursed his lips slightly, but Kaiser didn’t waver even once. 

“All I want to say is that there’s nothing wrong in admiring beautiful things. If you like blue that much, nothing wrong with admiring the blue on me, is there? It’s unhealthy to deny yourself the things that you love so much.” He let you go finally, and you practically leapt out away from him. “If you don’t want to throw yourself at my feet and beg to play the role of my dedicated love interest, that’s fine too! Although, I don’t see why you wouldn’t want to. Anyone would be honored to have my attention the way you do.”

“You’re a self-centered prick. I don’t want to give you any more attention than what I’m already wasting on you.”

“That’s what I’m saying! If you let down your high walls and properly let yourself admire me for the beautiful, charming, handsome guy I am, then it wouldn’t be a waste of your time.” He expertly flicked his hair over his shoulder, winking at you as some of the strands tumbled down his collarbones and back. As atrocious of a haircut as it was, you did have to admit that the color of his weird gradient was very pleasing to your eyes.

But you’d rather eat knives than admit it out loud. 

“You’ll have to try harder than that. Anyone can dye hair,” you muttered, thoroughly unconvinced. “And before you ask, I’m not interested in staring at your eyes either. Blue eyes mean nothing to me. And I can always go buy color contacts off the internet and stare at those instead if I really want to.”

“Boo! That’s so boring! Wouldn’t you want a real living person? Someone with personality?” He pouted.

You rolled your own eyes. “Yeah. Someone that doesn’t have a stick stuck up their ass.”

Kaiser pressed his lips into a line, suddenly lost in heavy thought. He knew your patience was already running thin with him, and while it was frustrating that the typical antics he’d lavish onto his fans wasn’t netting him the reaction he wanted from you, it still thrilled him the same. You were so tough to crack! He knew deep down that you had some heart for him and that you loved admiring beautiful things! And was he not the most beautiful thing of them all? He was skilled, talented, the kind of guy anyone should be flattered to have. All he needed was to convince you with something unique, something that no other groupie or fan of his couldn’t have, and maybe that would be the key to luring you over.

To turn that burning red hatred of yours into a calm, placated blue interest.

“Well, what if I give you something truly special then? If I could show you something that you have to admit is beautiful, would you admire me then?” He offered tentatively. You sniffed, keeping your head held high, but he took your silence to mean that it wasn’t a complete refusal.

He broke out into the biggest grin you had ever seen. Your confidence wavered slightly at his smug smirk, and nervousness prickled over your skin. You held your breath as Kaiser slowly raised his hand to his neck. Two fingers hooked onto the golden collar of his Bastard Munchen uniform, which covered a generous portion of his neck.

He yanked down. 

A flash of deep, royal blue stunned your vision, and your eyes instinctively widened. Kaiser tilted his neck to the opposite side, making sure you could catch a proper glimpse at the part of his throat that was normally concealed by his uniform. You felt like something inside of your brain had violently hit the brakes the moment the color hit your eyes. 

Roses.

Beautiful, beautiful blue roses. 

You’re automatically entranced by them. They’re tattoos, each expertly painted on his skin with a careful hand. The black outline makes the rich hues pop even more against his body, and while you tiptoe forward to catch a better view, you can only make out the better part of one of the bigger roses. The rest are covered by his uniform, and you can see the hint of inked thorns traveling away from the flowers and towards his arm. 

Kaiser instantly caught the shift in energy from you. He wisely kept his mouth shut, but some prideful part of him was celebrating inwardly. He let you step closer to admire the handiwork on his body, your curiosity delighting him to no ends.

You wanted to touch them. To touch him. Oh, you could imagine the feeling of soft rose petals under your fingertips while you were utterly mesmerized by his tattoo, almost forgetting that it was just an inked drawing rather than real flowers.

“Well? Isn’t it lovely?” 

You flinched, snapping back to life. Dumbfounded, you were at a loss for words. It was completely unlike you to not have some kind of mean comeback to snark at him with, but the secret weapon Kaiser had on hand was too much. His tattoo had overwhelmed you in a heartbeat, the artistic touch only making you want to see it again.

But unfortunately for you, he adjusted his uniform back into its regular position with a cruel smile. “See? I knew you’d like it. Do you want to look at it again? Oh, I know you do. C’mon, tell me. Tell me you want to see it again. It’s not like I’m going to refuse.”

You bit the inside of your cheek, and very hesitantly, you swallowed back your pride. “Can… Can I see your tattoo again?”

“With pleasure, darling.” He cooed. He paused for a moment, and he pulled you closer towards him. You gulped nervously when he peered down at you, clearly savoring the victory he had earned by pulling wool (or in this case, a lovely tattoo) over your eyes. 

“But why don’t I take you to my room instead? I’ll take off my shirt for you. That way you can see the entire thing. And then you can fawn over me properly. You just said you wanted to see my tattoo again. Those pretty roses,” he leaned in, tempting you over and over with the fleeting memory, “Those pretty, pretty roses that are in your absolute favorite color.”

You were torn, and Kaiser reveled in that tormented expression of yours.

He held his hand out. “No need to be shy. Let me show you all sorts of beautiful blue things, my darling.”

x

[shinelikethunder]

Hello there! I hope you don’t mind me just dropping into your asks like this, but by all means def feel free to just delete this if so, it is kind of a weird ask.

This is the anon from the computer blog asking about a private laptop for collage! After doing (a small amount of) research into Linux, one thing that’s super confusing to me, is… how does one know which distro to use? You mentioned in the replies of the post that you use Ubuntu Linux, which seems to be one of the more popular ones. Would you recommend — and if so, why? Is it good for privacy, do you think? The best? Does the user need to have a good deal of experience with computers to keep it running? (I’ve never used a laptop before but I don’t mind trying to learn stuff)

Also this is an EXTREMELY stupid question my apologies, but how….. exactly do you put Linux on a laptop? OP from my ask said to buy a laptop with no OS but is that something you can do? I’d think so, since 0P works with computer and stuff as their job, but Reddit says that it’s not really possible and that you should just “buy like a Windows laptop and scrap the software”??? Is that… correct? How did you install Linux on your laptop — did y ou have to remove software off it or did you, as OP says, manage to find a laptop with no OS?

Again, feel free to ignore if you don’t wanna put in the time/effort to reply to this, I absolutely don’t mind — it’s a lot of stuff I’m asking and you didn’t invite it all, so ofc feel free to delete the ask if you’d like!

ha, you've zeroed in on one of the big reasons Linux is kind of a contrarian choice for me to recommend: the wild proliferation of distros, many of them hideously complex to work with. luckily, the fact that most of them are niche offshoots created by and for overly-technical nerds makes the choice easier: you don't want those. you want one of the largest, best-supported, most popular ones, with a reputation for being beginner-friendly. the two biggies are Ubuntu and Linux Mint; i'd recommend focusing your research there.

this isn't JUST a popularity-contest thing: the more people use it, the more likely you are to find answers if you're having trouble or plugging a weird error message into google, and the greater the variety of software you'll find packaged for easy install in that distro. some combination of professional and broad-based community support means you'll find better documentation and tutorials, glitches will be rarer and get fixed faster, and the OS is less likely to be finicky about what hardware it'll play nice with. the newbie-friendly ones are designed to be a breeze to install and to not require technical fiddling to run them for everyday tasks like web browsing, document editing, media viewing, file management, and such.

info on installation, privacy, personal endorsement, etc under the cut. tl;dr: most computers can make you a magic Linux-installing USB stick, most Linuces are blessedly not part of the problem on privacy, Ubuntu i can firsthand recommend but Mint is probably also good.

almost all Linux distros can be assumed to be better for privacy than Windows or MacOS, because they are working from a baseline of Not Being One Of The Things Spying On You; some are managed by corporations (Ubuntu is one of them), but even those corporations have to cater to a notoriously cantankerous userbase, so most phoning-home with usage data tends to be easy to turn off and sponsored bullshit kept minimally intrusive. the one big exception i know of is Google's bastard stepchild ChromeOS, which you really don't want to be using, for a wide variety of reasons. do NOT let someone talk you into installing fucking Qubes or something on claims that it's the "most private" or "most secure" OS; that's total user-unfriendly overkill unless you have like a nation-state spy agency or something targeting you, specifically.

how to install Linux is also not a dumb question! back in the day, if you wanted to, say, upgrade a desktop computer from Windows 95 to Windows 98, you'd receive a physical CD-ROM disc whose contents were formatted to tell the computer "hey, i'm not a music CD or a random pile of backup data or a piece of software for the OS to run, i want you to run me as the OS next time you boot up," and then that startup version would walk you through the install.

nowadays almost anyone with a computer can create a USB stick that'll do the same thing: you download an Ubuntu installer and a program that can perform that kind of formatting, plug in the USB stick, tell the program to put the installer on it and make it bootable, and then once it's done, plug the USB stick into the computer you want to Linuxify and turn it on.

Ubuntu has an excellent tutorial for every step of the install process, and an option to do a temporary test install so you can poke around and see how you like it without pulling the trigger irreversibly: https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/install-ubuntu-desktop

having a way to create a bootable USB stick is one reason to just get a Windows computer and then let the Linux installer nuke everything (which i think is the most common workflow), but in a pinch you can also create the USB on a borrowed/shared computer and uninstall the formatter program when you're done. i don't have strong opinions on what kind of laptop to get, except "if you do go for Linux, be sure to research in advance whether the distro is known to play nice with your hardware." i'm partial to ThinkPads but that's just, like, my opinion, man. lots of distros' installers also make it dead simple to create a dual-boot setup where you can pick between Windows and Linux at every startup, which is useful if you know you might have to use Windows-only software for school or something. keep in mind, though, that this creates two little fiefdoms whose files and hard-disk space aren't shared at all, and it is not a beginner-friendly task to go in later and change how much storage each OS has access to.

i've been using the distro i'm most familiar with as my go-to example throughout, but i don't really have a strong opinion on Ubuntu vs Mint, simply because i haven't played around with Mint enough to form one. Ubuntu i'll happily recommend as a beginner-friendly version of Linux that's reasonably private by default. (i think there's like one install step where Canonical offers paid options, telemetry, connecting online accounts, etc, and then respects your "fuck off" and doesn't bug you about it again.) by reputation, Mint has a friendlier UI, especially for people who are used to Windows, and its built-in app library/"store" is slicker but offers a slightly more limited ecosystem of point-and-click installs.

(unlike Apple and Google, there are zero standard Linux distros that give a shit if you manually install software from outside the app store, it's just a notoriously finicky process that could take two clicks or could have you tearing your hair out at 3am. worth trying if the need arises, but not worth stressing over if you can't get it to work.)

basic software starter-pack recommendations for any laptop (all available on Windows and Mac too): Firefox with the uBlock Origin and container tab add-ons, VLC media player, LibreOffice for document editing. the closest thing to a dealbreaking pain in the ass about Linux these days (imo) is that all the image and video editing software i know of is kinda janky in some way, so if that's non-negotiable you may have to dual-boot... GIMP is the godawfully-clunky-but-powerful Photoshop knockoff, and i've heard decent things about Pinta as a mid-weight image editor roughly equivalent to Paint.net for Windows.

[pynkhues]

Okay here is my argument for Kim Possible being satire so sorry for how wordy this is in advance. This is based off of the four techniques of satire being exaggeration, incongruity, role reversal and parody. I think Kim Possible uses exaggeration, parody and a little role reversal within those.

Kim Possible would be parody of most superhero shows with slight role reversal in the parody. Most superhero shows with teenagers have them being much more adult than the average teenager. Kim Possible is very rooted in her being a regular teenage girl. Her power is that she’s an insanely good cheerleader and smart which is implied to be a genetic gift from her neurosurgeon mom and rocket scientist dad. Typically these teenagers are plagued by emotional turmoil by feeling the weight of saving the world, often in secret, while a running joke on the show is Kim seeming to find the insane things she does not a big deal or emotionally damaging. Kim relies on emotional support from her parents and talks out problems with them. She doesn’t keep it a secret and asks for understanding from her family, friends and squad when saving the world interferes with her life. She attends school which also never seems to actually happen in superhero shows. Kim isn’t treated any differently by her peers and is even consistently fighting to be seen as cool by Bonnie. She doesn’t fit the weird nerd (Spiderman comes to mind) or effortlessly always on trend (Alisha from Misfits) that teenage superheros often seem archtyped into.

There’s also an episode where Ron gets studied bc they think his “Ronness”is the key to Kim’s success. They don’t believe that Kim could just be that competent without a secret advantage which they first think is Ron and later Rufus. It shows that adult professionals are literally more willing to believe in the skills of a naked mole rat than a woman.

They also exaggerate the typical male/female hero dynamics with Kim and Ron’s relationship, as discussed earlier. I think their relationship really showcases how often we force women into being the mature ones by making her so competent and him so goofy. However, they also subvert this by having Ron be genuinely emotionally supportive and intelligent. There’s episodes where he encourages Kim to be more authentic to herself. He also never belittles her achievements and is truly her loudest and proudest supporter. He frequently sincerely compliments her. He listens to her issues and is emotionally vulnerable with her. There is some role reversal here with Ron almost playing a typical damsel in distress by needing saving from Kim, being her biggest hype man and by being the person that in many ways keeps Kim grounded. I think the episode where Ron moves to Norway shows how much Kim depends on him to meet her emotional needs and without him doing so she’s unable to focus as completely on the mission at hand.

Anyways. I may be completely wrong or off base. I’m in no way an expert on heroes, narratives, gender, satire, tv or even Kim Possible. Just some high thoughts that I really hope somebody out there will enjoy, lol! Very sorry if this was dumb or disappointing but I love your blog so much and always enjoy your takes on everything. 🤍

(x)

It's not dumb or disappointing at all, anon! I loved this analysis, and particularly loved the way you unpacked a range of superhero tropes and looked at how Kim Possible subverts them. You're really making me want to rewatch the show, haha.

It's an interesting one to look at too, because there have been a lot of superhero parodies and satires out there, but they tend to lean hard into a really mean humour. Like stripping the polish from characters like Superman and Batman can only be done through exploring the toxicity of fame and power, and I love your point about how in many ways Kim Possible does it by instead exploring the space for emotional vulnerability and honesty in a way that most traditional superhero narratives eschew. It makes it feel a lot more unique and in many ways more original than shows that have even come after it, and it'd be a really interesting exercise to compare it broadly to other parodies.

Thanks for sharing!

[lucky-clover-gazette]

things that happen in original wip:

- a massive corporation five seconds from overthrowing the emergency government (the corporation caused the emergency) is defeated by a not-tiktok-but-obviously-tiktok trend

- the main character fights and kills a corrupted monster version of herself from another timeline in the first chapter. this monster also kills the secondary main character, whose disembodied soul lives inside the main character’s iphone for the first act. the main character works retail and was literally just trying to close the store two minutes early

- they defeat the final boss, who is the actual boss (ceo) of the evil corporation turned into a big scary monster, by hitting it with a car

- online community of hyperfixated nerds who edit a wiki about the overworld for fun serve as integral sources of information and plot development

- the premise is transparently a metaphor for graduating college/being in your early 20’s during the pandemic. also losing interest in passions from adolescence bc of capitalism and depression and failure and grief

- main character keeps doing damage to herself with bombs, bc the entire thing is very zelda tropey and i strive for realism

- that super cringe oc you made with your bestie at 14 years old is real and she “died” for your sins (the sins are hers. she’s not real. she’s not dead. you made her real. you let her die. she’s your friend, and she’s not gone, but neither of you know it. you betray each other at the end of the second act. she dies at the end. you ride off into the sunset together. it’s complicated)

- there’s a big worm monster in the desert section, naturally. it’s your transmasc online friend and he is saved by his own need to correct people who are wrong about his big worm monster hyperfixation. i’m obsessed with this minor character. i just need to mention him whenever possible

- imagine the health potions from zelda are sold like monster energy drinks and also responsible for mass terror and death but everyone is too busy doomscrolling to figure it out. that’s fucked up

- heroic influencers exist and they fight ar monsters (think pokémon go) on instagram live bc no one is allowed to go outside and fight real monsters anymore

- the two main characters are so in love it transcends memory and physical form. i am still not sure if i will make them kiss

- your overbearing pretentious conservative-leaning 11th grade ap lang teacher who definitely clocked your undiagnosed adhd, the weirdly professional and mysterious thirty-something running your preferred fandom discord, the ceo of an evil corporation trying to control the world, and botw dark beast ganon are all one character. she is betrayed and destroyed by your best friend, the brilliant young person she once groomed and manipulated into dooming the world. you kind of take a back seat for that one

[taylorthrift]

Taylor Made: Me a Rockstar

I promise that the details may be boring but that’s why the lesson is worth the read.  I believe strongly that the goal of art is not to entertain but to move the receiver and evoke change.  This is a story of one of the many times Taylor Swift’s music changed my life in a real real way.

Back in 2015 I had a problem of engaging some very serious people with a topic that they were not going to care about.  

I was responsible for delivering an IT speech at a poli sci conference run by the nonprofit that I was a part of. In attendance were academics, activists, journalists, and wonks from the national political scene. Very much not what you would picture as an IT crowd-let alone a Taylor Swift crowd.  These were a few dozen bright minds in the field of political science, studying democracy and the threat of money in politics.

So 8am, Sat May 30, 2015-day 1 of a 2 day conference of very serious people talking about very serious things-none of whom care anything about technology-have to listen to some nerd talk about data.

I started by reading from my notecards: “They say you are supposed to open a speech with an inspiring quote.” I nervously turn the notecard over-feigning public speaking anxiety for the punchline-”Haters gonna hate hate hate hate hate and the Fakers gonna fake fake fake fake fake.  I’m just gonna shake shake shake shake shake-Shake it off.  Shake it off.”

The gathered attendees who moments ago were barely keeping their eyes open, their faces filled with the dread of a school day lecture, were now bursting in laughter.  I threw the note cards away and started my presentation...

Fast forward to the end:The energy level of the audience is so great that I ask of them to let me do a running high-five-and they grant it excitedly.  Afterwards, all these important people come to talk to me about job ideas and my presentation style and wanting to get me in front of lawmakers to explain things to them.  Two things stand out about the compliments I receive.

Everyone loved the Taylor Swift quote

Everyone loved my willingness to be a parody of myself and not take things so seriously-even when everyone else was.

(Low key though-I learned #2 from Taylor too (Blank Space/Shake it Off))

Fast forward a few months and the Board of Directors awards me a new job title.  It’s a job title I’d been seeking for years 

Rockstar

Literally Rockstar.  Rockstar of the National Institute on Money in State Politics. 

Taylor helped me feel like a Rockstar, and her music showed me how. Even back in 2015 Taylor’s music was changing us-changing me.

I was someone a decade older than her-and I was listening and applying her brilliance to my own work and becoming better for it.  Taylor was never JUST a popstar.

I just want people-but especially Taylor-to know that this happened in the world.

That all these self important political wonks were swifties too.  

That using what her music and attitudes taught me helped give me the biggest win of my professional career.

That she’s more successful as an artist than any award, accolade or fortune will ever EVER reflect.

[captain-kit-adventuress]

I like that there’s nuance being introduced to this, so I’m going to bring some more for everyone to enjoy.

Climate change is definitely about warming, to be sure. But it’s not the only thing that’s going on. One of the ongoing challenges is that US weather event reporting hasn’t really been widely standardised except in the last 70 years or so, maybe a bit longer depending on where you live. That doesn’t mean anything before that isn’t reliable—weather nerds like meteorologists (professional or not) have been collecting great data for centuries—but it doesn’t always mean it’s covered in the same way we would today or that the same emphasis would be given to the same events. Sometimes it’s a tech issue, too, where we just didn’t have the equipment or the techniques to record the data in the first place.

A feature of global warming that doesn’t get mentioned nearly enough is that the planet isn’t just getting warmer, it’s that the climate is becoming more extreme. So, climate change is causing obvious seasonal changes in a lot of places, but it’s both that the hots are getting hotter and the colds are getting colder. Snow events that used to be steady and small might now be dumping feet at a time and then melting right away, only to repeat itself a few times a season. Billion-dollar weather events that used to be rare are becoming suspiciously common.

The person who pointed out about Australia isn’t wrong, either. The rest of the world is super impacted by climate change, but not in exactly the same ways as in the US. Most of the rest of the world is getting noticeably warmer and having more extreme weather events become quite common, at a much faster rate than in the US and sometimes without the social and physical infrastructure to support it—though I would argue that’s actually the same in the US, but on a different scale.

This year (2023) might seem especially potent in the US because of a weather phenomenon called El Niño, which is exacerbating already-warm conditions and making them warmer.

There’s also the idea of how long the timeline of climate change really is. When did it actually ‘start?’ I don’t think we can exclude the idea that style of industrialisation specific to the global northwest might have been some sort of mini kick in the pants, and as that style was adopted elsewhere, it spread those changes wider. Though there is no doubt that the US in particular has been a shameless catalyst of climate change via corporate industrial practice, corporate actors in other nations around the world have certainly done their part to make it worse.

I live in an area which regularly sees a lot of snow pretty evenly spread throughout the winter, and it is absolutely not normal for us to have a span of 60-degree days in December. I know there are plenty of years with outliers, that’s just how statistics works. What’s most concerning to me is that when we’re breaking those records, it’s not decades apart anymore, or even one or twice in the same decade; feedback loops in weather patterns are pretty common. Instead, it’s becoming a long run of consecutive years. What the data appears to suggest, in both my home state and across the US, is not so much that outliers exist but that they’re closing the gap between common and and less common. Our outliers, on the other hand, are becoming more extreme. Where I live, the chance of even a single 80-degree day in November should be as close to zero as is possible barring freak events, and yet, the last few years have had just that, or temps close to it, and this year had a span of them.

All it really means to have been in keeping within normal weather averages is that maybe the climate isn’t changing quite as fast in that particular locality. This is demonstrably not true in most of the world, as pretty much any climatologist will tell you. Moreover, if we are talking local, most of what climate scientists have predicted both for my state and my region has come to pass, and my region was predicted to change one of the most since 2013, I believe—I unfortunately can’t remember precisely when I read that particular set of articles.

I don’t think it’s simply nostalgia for something specific in a carol or depiction of the holiday season. And quite frankly, while I’m a big fan of accurately representing the world as it is, I’m not certain a little more alarmism isn’t warranted if it ushers in more change. Good things are happening. But we need even greater participation, both in the US and around the globe, and I’m not seeing nearly enough resources being put toward cooperative efforts to rein in this very manmade acceleration we’re seeing.

That said, I understand why you said what you did, Marzi, and you’re right, it can feel completely overwhelming. It is an overwhelming thing to consider. I’m not trying to ‘dunk’ on you or invalidate anything you said. But I also don’t want people to downplay what’s happening, either. Outliers in weather are a lot more common than people realise, for sure. It’s more that the outliers are changing in nature, too, and I think I can pretty safely say that we both agree it’s important to recognise everyone’s feelings.

It’s okay to take a breather from this stuff if anyone needs to, absolutely. It’s so hard to reckon with and stay even a little optimistic for the future, and there are reasons to be optimistic! But as I said, I like nuance, and this is my very, very, very long-winded way of showing that.

Christmas as a cultural icon is starting to get really dystopian in a climate sense, december has historically been a time of year in which there would be snow in a significant portion of europe and north america, and the fact that its not even icy this time of year and all the christmas songs and decorations reference a time of year that will likely never exist in the same way again in my life time is so strange.

[privateanxieties]

stability, reciprocity and a romance for the ages

Summary: Peter Parker seems to be made of sunlight and comfort, and she seems to know just how to love him. Both sides of him.

Pairing: Peter Parker x Reader (she/her pronouns); fluff, romance, just so much sentimentality, happy ending.

Warnings: allusion to past abuse/abusive people, but no details are given, it’s not glamorized - there’s a focus on healing.

Words: 8k

-------------------------

Peter feels like such a cliché, letting the thought of the pretty girl who just moved in next door twist his attention and occupy his mind to the degree it does.

The degree in question being mortal danger coming much closer than usual to finally putting a nail in his coffin.

He finds it hard to stomach, while staggering home, that he was almost disemboweled by a crane hook while thinking of the cinnamon rolls she left on his doormat that evening.

He isn't nineteen anymore, and he isn't even among the most youthful twenty-somethings. At twenty-seven, with everything he's seen, being so distracted by her makes him feel like a hormonal teenager, and he doesn't long for those days at all.

If anything, Peter Parker keeps dreaming of stability in every aspect of life, but especially where romance is concerned. He's grown tired of the thought of going on dates with strangers, even if he's realistically only done it three times in three years, all of them single dates. As in, he met them once and then never again.

He wonders, and often, if he's just too picky, but whenever he finds it in himself to be brutally honest, he knows he's a sucker for pretty eyes and kindness.

He likes intelligence, of course, but he recognizes that he needs a good level of differences between himself and a potential partner. So far, the only people he's found attractive who also happened to be nerds, well, they all had their lives together. At this point in life, people were aggressively competing on the corporate ladder, fighting over research grants or taking the tech world by storm with some innovation or other.

Peter is a journalist on his best day. His biggest professional accomplishment to date was getting a full-time job at the Bugle after nearly eight years of independent contractor work, and Jameson still has him occasionally investigating the top ten patriotic recipes for the 4th of July.

Yeah, Spider-Man definitely made sure Peter Parker would always take a backseat to his own life.

He's proud of all he's done as his alter ego, but he'd also like to crash into someone's arms when he comes home. Have his significant other run a hand through his hair. Maybe a forehead kiss wouldn't hurt, either.

Peter is lonely, and those warm cinnamon rolls help immensely as he scarfs them down straight out of the pan. He keeps thinking he should go over to say thank you in between bites, but the exhaustion keeps erasing his mind like a goldfish every few seconds, and the cream cheese frosting certainly doesn't help.

So he passes out on the couch, still in his suit, crumbs all over his chest and her little note grasped in his right hand.

'I hope this isn't too forward of me, but I wanted to say hello properly. Hopefully you like these and you're not offended, but if you are, I'm sorry.'

He hopes she's not offended that he dreams about her that night.

--------------------------------

The next week, he's wallowing in shame.

He still hasn't said thank you, and with each passing day, he feels like he's left it too long to still be viable. He knows it's ridiculous, but the solution he finds is returning the clean pan with a thank you note of his own, sticking it to her door with the tiniest bit of webbing, enough that you wouldn't be able to tell what it is.

And then he realizes it looks suspiciously gross, so he tears it off and uses a sticky note like a normal person.

'The only thing offensive about these is how quickly they disappeared. I wanted to say thank you in person, but I chickened out after day 4. Welcome to the neighborhood, Ms. Baker.'

He goes about his day before he can cringe at himself too much, and when he turns in for the night at 2 a.m., the note on her door is gone and his is sporting a new one.

'You're always welcome to stop by, with or without chickens. Sorry, that was terrible. If you can handle more lackluster jokes, my door is always open. Thank you for the welcome, Peter.

P.S.: Mrs. Dalton from 18b told me your name, I promise I'm not a stalker.'

He smiles when he sees that his roundabout way of finding out her name worked, as she signed it at the bottom.

He doesn't know what comes over him two days later when he shows up at her door, rotisserie chicken in hand that Dean & DeLuca charged him an arm and a leg for, but her laugh and brilliant smile are definitely worth the hole in his pocket and attempt at avantgarde humor.

He feels comfortable inside her home, and her demeanor encourages him to relax. She makes fries to go with the chicken, and they eat more messily than either would in the presence of a stranger.

He volunteers a world of information he normally wouldn't, and his heart is soothed by her reciprocation. He learns that she's not just new to the neighborhood, but the city, and chokes very casually when she offhandedly mentions the resident superhero.

Apparently, she feels safer just knowing Spider-Man exists, and Peter doesn't like the feeling in his chest when her eyes avoid his, but he doesn't press the question.

Later, when she offers him blueberry pie, he smiles like a doofus at her confession of having come to New York to open a bakery someday, and pledges his patronage with equal parts mirth and seriousness.

He drags his departure and she allows it - or maybe it's the other way around. All he knows is he doesn't want to go back to his empty apartment, much less back to the dark streets of the city, but he's reassured by the promise to hang out again.

She thanks him for his company, promising to cook next time, and they exchange numbers just for… reasons. Who knows when you need to let a neighbor know some vital piece of information. Yeah. That was why.

That night Peter has a pep in his step, and even the feral cat he rescues from inside a lead pipe can't ruin his mood, even if it does leave a nasty scratch on his temple - so far, the only villain this week who managed to draw blood.

She spots him when leaving for work the next morning, and though the scratch looks much better, she frowns upon seeing it, retrieving a band-aid from her messenger bag.

They're both too old to have a favorite cartoon, but what is even more ridiculous, is that they share one.

He wears the Pingu band-aid for far longer than necessary.

 ---------------------------------------

After that, it's all about sporadic encounters around the neighborhood, and sometimes even randomly around the city. Peter is surprised by the amount of times they seem to bump into each other serendipitously. His favorite one happens at the supermarket, where they proceed to shop together and she chastises him for the amount of sugary snacks in his cart.

"Oh, I'm sorry, mom, I'll put them back right now," he mocks with a shit-eating grin.

She scoffs, insulted, before tilting her head in defiance.

"Do you know how much insulin costs in this country, Mr. Parker?" she counters with a light tone, playing into his game.

"Is it a gazillion dollars?" he ponders innocently.

"And 99 cents, yes. So maybe, it's not a good idea to buy, hmm… let's see: 8 packs of M&M's, 5 boxes of Starbursts, 5 bags of chips and… didn't peg you for a Nerds kinda guy."

"Peg me? You were thinking about pegging me?" he says all-too-seriously and entirely too loudly.

Her eyes widen, and in an instant, her hand is over his mouth, but it does little to stifle his laughter.

"Shh! You can't say that in public!" she whisper-shouts.

"But I can say it in private? Good to know!" he manages through her fingers.

"No! Peter, shut up!" she pleads, but soon, even she can't contain her laugh.

They giggle like teenagers in the corner of the snack aisle, shushing each other with little success and completely ignorant of the dirty looks from some disgruntled shoppers.

The rest of the shopping trip is spent in easy companionship, Peter teasing lightly when he sees her pouting at the empty fish tank, and in a stellar move (if he says so himself), seizes the opportunity to invite her to the NY Aquarium at Coney Island.

Is it a date? He doesn't mention it, not wanting to make her uncomfortable or play his hand too early, but when she accepts with a soft smile and an 'I'd love to', he dares to hope.

A conversation on favorite foods runs in the background of their journey back home, and Peter's stomach is already growling just from her waxing poetic about her love of soup.

He laughs copiously when she refuses to let him carry any of her grocery bags up the stairs, despite the fact that they clearly require two trips. She mutters something about needing to learn her lesson, and how she never will if she gets handsome men to haul her spoils of war up to the tower of greed.

At the top of the stairs, Peter's stomach growls once more, this time embarrassingly loudly, and he tries to hide his warm face by pretending to unlock his door, but she's already ahead of him.

"Hey, so… since I bought an ungodly amount of food… I was thinking maybe I could cook for us tonight, if you'd like?" she asks timidly, pretending to shuffle some of the bags around to avoid looking at him directly.

Peter's sold the moment she says it, eager to spend more time with her and this feeling of walking on air, so he puts his groceries away in his own apartment and wonders if he should change before heading over to hers.

He wonders, and ponders, and turns in a stupid little circle before deciding to play it cool. He puts on a green hoodie, and it isn't because he's been told it brings out his eyes, no. It's just to be comfortable.

He rummages around his cabinets for something, anything he could bring so he doesn't show up empty handed, and he remembers the bottle of wine he received as a congratulatory gift for the full-time job at the Bugle.

He pops open the fridge and retrieves it, hoping it's at least half-decent, and mutters a small prayer to whoever would listen that he doesn't put his foot in his mouth tonight.

With that, he heads over, and when she opens the door to reveal an outfit change of her own, Peter suddenly gains an appreciation of polka dot dresses.

Easy laughs and life anecdotes fill the rest of the night, but it all comes to a screeching halt when Peter drops a glass he'd meant to place on the counter. This was why he never drank wine, or any alcohol really - despite his metabolism, it appeared Spider-Man was a lightweight. Before he can apologize, however, he hears short gasps from the table, and he turns his back to the counter to look at her.

"Hey, what's wrong?"

Still seated, she holds a hand on the edge of the table with a white-knuckled grip, and the other she keeps on the side of her neck, breaths coming in haphazardly.

It takes her some time to gather herself, and Peter remains where he is, knowing instinctively that her reaction couldn't be explained away as an ordinary scare.

Shaking her head, she takes one more deep breath before speaking, but she doesn't look at him.

"I'm sorry, it's… That's just how I am sometimes. I don't really like it when…" she begins, yet can't find the words to explain, to justify what he just saw.

She's already thinking of the worst things, and can't really believe that that's all it takes for her composure to falter: just some broken glass.

"Can I come over?" he surprises her by asking, and it's enough to bring her gaze to him.

He's slouching all of a sudden when she's never seen him do that before, and his hands are in the pockets of his hoodie. His gaze is on her, but it flickers every couple of seconds or so, and it's enough to make her realize that he knows. It's why he's making himself look small and inoffensive, and it's why his words are almost whispered.

Peter Parker is more precious than she gives him credit for, and if the affection she carries for him was abundant before, it's overflowing now.

She nods before she can change her mind, but holding the tears at bay is another story entirely. He approaches slowly, crouching down in front of her so they're at the same level.

"Hey there…" he murmurs and offers his hand, palm up.

She takes it with her shaking one and grips it tightly, the tears that have gathered in her eyes unable to be restrained any longer. She hesitates, but ultimately can't deny herself the safety he offers. When she looks up at him, seeing brown eyes clouded over with sadness and moisture, that's when her head drops onto his shoulder and the little sobs begin.

They sit there, at her kitchen table, no words spoken other than soothing reassurances and blurred apologies.

Later in the night, small, broken confessions make their way past her lips, but she reveals only a part - only enough to make him understand, or perhaps to justify herself somehow. It's an effort he meets with a calming embrace, wishing more than anything to transfer some of the strength he's been graced with to her.

Alas, he cannot, but he tries nonetheless. A gentle kiss pressed to her forehead while they're burrowed into the couch, two arms creating a shield around her frame over the blanket - these are the ways Peter Parker imbues the atmosphere with comfort and security.

Vulnerable words spoken with a calm heart are how she lets him know he's doing a good job. Most of all, they're clearing out a spot in each other's souls and setting it aglow.

It won't be tonight, or even many nights from now, but they'll find their footing around growing tenderness. They've progressed to something unfamiliar and delicate, and Peter, well… he promises himself to bestow it every effort until it blooms into what they both admit craving: stability and reciprocity, and perhaps a romance for the ages.

Leaving provokes a gnawing sensation, but they are both equal parts exhausted and mollified, so sleep beckons irresistibly. She presses a lingering kiss into his cheek at the door, thanking him in a hushed tone, and inspiration, or genius, or madness seems to strike, because he feels he could reinvent the world just looking into her eyes.

They sleep dreamlessly that night, and he awakens to a good morning text that has him springing to work like Jameson has just made him editor-in-chief.

Weeks and weeks pass by in a comfortable dance, and he's beginning to forget what cold sandwiches and tv dinners taste like. Frankly, he's also starting to find it just a little bit tricky to pull together enough willpower to never spend the night over.

They're not ready for that, and he knows it, but he's also giving consideration to his other job - the one with flexible work hours. He doesn't know when to approach the subject, much less how, but it is non-negotiable in his mind that it's done. A life lived with a partner, the kind of life he wants, isn't one he can build out of a lie, even one of omission.

Peter isn't naïve anymore, and he isn't cynical either. He's been done pretending to be the brooding hero for a while now, and he also understands he won't be doing this forever.

He needs to know that when he's done his duty and can give the city no more, there will be someone at home who can love both sides of him.

-------------------------------------

The first time she encounters Spider-Man is not, as Peter imagined, in one of their apartments as part of his confession, but under much more horrible circumstances.

It was one of his only daytime sessions behind the mask, since Jameson gave him the afternoon off - or, should he say, was forced to evacuate the building due to a bug infestation on the first 5 floors.

He's in lower Manhattan, having just barely changed into his suit, when his hair stands on end. His heightened senses direct him where to look, and when he sees it, his heart pauses for just one tenth of a second.

There's a kid in the street running after a toy.

There's a truck without a driver going downhill.

And he is too far away.

He knows it, even if his body springs into action immediately. He pushes himself as hard as he's ever done, and it isn't enough, until a running figure enters his sight, and he wishes it weren't whom he knows it is.

He pulls on web after web with brute force; he grunts and feels a pain blossoming in his spleen when it still isn't enough. The kid disappears from view once the truck gets close. He can't find his breath anymore as he lands in the street a second too late, several cars screeching to a halt at his sudden presence.

It's all over in a long moment.

He moves frantically as the truck crashes into a line of parked cars on the right side of the road, but he can't see anything. There's nothing. There's -

There's a cry, coming from a small boy. The street seems to have come to a standstill, but the cry continues, and he knows where it's coming from, but it's as though he can't coordinate his limbs yet.

Then, a soothing reassurance, but from a different voice; one he knows. It puts him back in motion and sends a strength running through him that he seldom feels.

He plants himself horizontal to the ground right next to the truck, thanking every deity for what he sees.

The small boy, at most five years old, is cradled protectively in the arms of his girlfriend, and they are both extremely shaken, but he can't see any major injuries.

"Hey, hey, you're ok. I'm gonna get you out of there, alright? I need you to stay very still for me, can you do that?" he says.

The little boy whimpers his name and huddles further into her arms, but she nods, unable to speak quite yet.

Peter keeps talking to them while he assesses the situation quickly, and decides it's unsafe for them to crawl out, as the crash has made parts of the truck protrude through the bottom and other jagged pieces explode all over on the ground around it.

As though it weighs nothing, especially with how high his adrenaline is, Peter grabs and lifts the truck, making sure his grip is structurally sound. Clearing them completely, he moves it aside and drops it down as gently as he can so as to not spook them further. When he turns back around, they've barely sat up, and he can't help hugging them both. Checking them over for wounds, he releases a rushed breath when he sees that the boy is unscathed.

Only, he skips the next one when his eyes land on her bloodied clothes.

"Am- Ambulance. We're getting you - " he begins, but is cut off.

"No… no, I'm - I'm fine. I'm fine, it's - it's just a scrape. It's just my - knees and elbows. Maybe my side." She stumbles around her words, voice shaken and grip still on the boy in her arms, who's now burrowing even further into the crook of her neck.

Peter's listening, but he's surely not understanding.

"Ma'am, we gotta get you to a hospital, alright? A doctor has to look at you. There might be more than that, you don't know," he reasons, struggling to find his words as well.

Commotion from the other side of the street interrupts her response, and Peter tears his eyes away from her to see what's going on.

A few people have gathered around a woman lying on the ground. They're trying to help her in hushed whispers, while others are calling EMS and the police.

It takes Peter only a second to deduce that that must be the boy's mother, and he can't imagine a more natural reaction to seeing your child in mortal danger when you know you can't do anything to save him.

Just like he couldn't.

Someone else had to.

The woman he -

The guilt would have to be pushed aside, because he has to make this right, as much as he can.

"Listen, ma'am, you both need to get looked at. Please. Let me take you to the hospital," he tries again, and sees the resolve in her eyes dwindle.

When she sighs, he mirrors the action almost subconsciously.

"I just need to get some… gauze on these and I'll be ok. They can do that in the ambulance," she concedes.

He knows he can't fault her for refusing to go to the hospital. After all, he got bit by a radioactive spider and decided to sleep it off, so this would be a pot-kettle situation if he insisted any further. And so, he waits there for the police and ambulance to show, during which time the little boy - Matthew, he learns - asks to be taken to his mom, and he obliges when he wants to be carried by Spider-Man, even if he doesn't want to leave her side.

It only takes a couple of minutes for the police to show up, and a couple more for the ambulance, as New York has definitely upped its game in the past few years when it comes to emergency responses.

The mom comes to, and her son is returned to her in the arms of Spider-Man, and she can barely find the words to thank him, when he stops her.

"I wasn't the one who saved your son. I'm sorry."

He motions behind him, where his girl, all of a sudden extremely shy, shakes her head discreetly - but it's too late.

The mother goes over to her, Matthew secured in her embrace. With tears in her eyes, she hugs the young woman and whispers a heartfelt thank you upon letting go.

"Thank you miss!" Matthew adds sweetly, much in the way young kids do when they copy their parents' manners.

Unable to say much in response, she nods with a watery smile and wishes them both well, reassured by Matthew's hushed promise to his mom to never run after a toy again.

When her eyes leave them, she notices Spider-Man is staring at her without much motion in his body, but she has little time to dwell on it before a paramedic asks to see her. They're both in agreement that she needs some hydrogen peroxide and bandages she ought to change every day, but when she is asked some basic questions like name and age, she struggles, and it doesn't go unnoticed.

Vigilant and difficult to deceive, the medic performs more checks, and when she squints uncomfortably and can't perform basic math, the diagnosis is unavoidable.

"Miss, you have a moderate concussion. If you still don't want to come with us, you should have someone take you home," the older woman says - more of an order than a suggestion.

"I can do that!" Spider-Man calls from a nearby light pole, from where he resolved to keep careful watch to avoid suspicion. Dropping down near the back of the open ambulance, he stands still as though waiting to be handed over his girlfriend in ceremony. The medic is unimpressed.

"You're going to swing my concussed patient around the city, young man?" she asks with a raised brow.

"Uhh… no?"

"Mmhm, that's what I thought. You're walking her home."

"That's really not necessary…" the young woman tries, but she's ignored by both parties.

"If she can't stand straight, you bring her to us, you understand?" the medic continues.

"Yes, ma'am."

"I'm really ok, just a little dizzy," she tries again, and this time the older woman fixes her with a look.

"You're just a little dizzy, yes, alright. Who was the 3rd President of the United States?"

Blank.

"Um…"

Point proven, the medic once again stresses the importance of remaining on the ground to Spider-Man, gives her patient a list of things to do to care for herself at home, and bids them both goodbye.

As soon as the ambulance drives off, she tries once more to convince the masked hero that she can find her way home just fine on her own, but he declines gently.

"I really can't do that. If that nice lady finds out I let you walk home alone, I'm gonna get in trouble."

She regards him for a few seconds, before heaving the biggest sigh and making him chuckle.

"Hey, come on, I promise I'm not bad company.", he says in amusement.

"Could we at least… you know… what's that thing you do? You know, when you thwip the web?"

Peter tries not to laugh. It's not funny, because she's injured, but it is funny, because…

"You can remember 'thwip' but not 'swing'? Then we're definitely not swinging,” he says, shaking his head.

"Please? I promise I won't vomit on you."

"I'm flattered."

He wasn't going to give in, no. He really wasn't planning on it. But then, she pouted, and he felt cornered. Pretty girl he's head over heels for, bandages on her arms and knees, looking at him dazed and pouting?

Yeah - he ends up swinging her home and she keeps her promise to not throw up on him, but only barely. When he drops her directly on her fire escape, she doesn't even question it, and Peter thanks his lucky stars that she's too out of it to notice his fuck up. She never even gave him her address, let alone her floor or apartment number, but if she suspects anything, she doesn't mention it.

Once safely inside, she thanks him sweetly and absently waves goodbye before he's even finished talking, but he knocks on the window before she can leave. She turns back around quickly and nearly falls over in the process while Peter's eyes nearly bug out of his head.

He definitely couldn't leave her to take care of herself until Peter Parker made it home tonight.

"Ma'am, you should really call someone and have them come over. You don't seem fine," he insists gently but firmly.

She appears to ponder his words, before letting out a small 'oh', but not moving any further.

"Do you have someone who could come over?" he asks again, trying not to sound too desperately obvious.

"I think so."

"You think so?"

Has he not - is the concussion making her believe she can't rely on him, or is that what she usually thinks? Because he's gonna have to remedy either option immediately.

"Yes!"

It's the only thing she says before she plops onto the floor and starts rummaging through her bag, and Peter can't help but stare, incredulous. Maybe he should've taken her to the hospital like the scary doctor lady said, because this is starting to freak him -

His phone rings.

Fuck.

He realizes too late what she was doing, and when the sound of his phone reaches her ears, she looks up at him with wide, innocent eyes.

Peter panics, but her words knock the wind right out of him in a way he doesn't expect.

"I didn't know Spider-Man has a phone."

He can't help the laugh that's forced out of him, but it's more horrified than genuine.

"Well, I think you should take that. It might be important. It might be… hero stuff," she says, waving her hand whenever she has trouble settling on a word.

With a big sigh, she looks back down at her phone and ends the call, not noticing that Spider-Man's phone stops ringing at the same time.

Peter is downright frozen in place, brain a little bit broken by his own ineptitude. He should've taken her to the hospital.

"He's probably busy. I never call him at work," she sighs again.

"Who?" he asks with a slight cringe. This whole thing was getting old. He had to come clean soon.

"Peter. He's my…" she trails off, staring at her hands.

"Your boyfriend?" he says helpfully.

"No."

No.

No??

No?!?!

What the hell did she mean, no?

"Peter isn't your boyfriend?" he asks, trying his absolute hardest not to sound offended. Or heartbroken.

"He's uh… what do you say when you think you want to spend the rest of your life with someone? Not a boyfriend, but a…"

Just like that, she ends him with one sentence. This girl would put his heart in an early grave.

"It's… it's soulmate, ma'am," he stammers, mouth suddenly dry and eyes suspiciously moist.

When she lights up with a smile, he mirrors it.

"Yes, that's it! I mean, he's probably also my boyfriend, but it's weird to call him that. Is it weird that it's weird?"

He needs to leave before she says anything more that has the potential to demolish him where he stands, so he urges her to call Peter, her soulmate, again, because he's sure a soulmate would like to know that she was just injured in an accident.

She hesitates briefly but ultimately agrees, and he leaves before she can ring him again while he's right there.

He says goodbye as Spider-Man, and hello again as Peter Parker half an hour later, which was the most he could pretend to wait in his apartment before knocking on her door.

He finds a half-assed excuse that he was given the afternoon off, which is technically true while not being wholly sincere, and that's how he was able to make it home so fast when she called. She explains her afternoon with some gaps in the course of events, and he's able to hug her properly for the first time since everything happened.

He asks to see the instructions sheet the paramedic left her with, and she pouts for the second time that day when he confines her to the couch for the rest of the evening.

"I'm sorry, baby. Doctor's orders. You go lie down, keep your head elevated, and I'll make us something to eat, alright?" he says gently, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear.

"Mm… alright. Don't burn down my kitchen, I don't think I can afford the… the - what's the thing?"

"Cuddles?"

"What? No! It's the…"

"Bunnies?"

"Peter…" she whines.

"The damages baby. You can't afford the damages, and I can't believe the - frankly, offensive - insinuation that I'm such a bad cook I'd burn down the kitchen."

"Pete, I can smell the Chef Boyardee coming from your apartment sometimes," she says so softly and slowly that it brings a laugh to the surface. It reminds him of the honesty of children who don't yet understand why you sometimes lie to people to spare their feelings.

This lack of filter was turning out to be both emotional and entertaining.

Should he talk to her about the soulmate thing? Or should he wait until his throat doesn't close up anymore just at the thought of it?

The thing is, he feels like such a small person, letting his fear of ending up alone keep him from being truly honest with her. He wants to trust in her love for him entirely, and he wants to believe she'd accept him for all he is, mask included, but it's a simple fact of his being that Peter fears lack of reciprocity more than most things.

He fears filling someone's hands with all his heart and then his own being forever empty.

He does feel somewhat… emboldened by her earlier confession, however unreliable it should be considered.

Soulmates, he thinks. It's a serious thing to say, but it's an even more serious thing to keep private as she has. If she hasn't told him yet, it must be because it's an intimate feeling. He wasn't a stranger to keeping his innermost thoughts hidden, even from someone whom he knew he could trust to keep them safe.

He remembers, while rinsing some basmati rice, her first mention of Spider-Man. He remembers how she said she felt safer just knowing he exists in the same city, and an ugly feeling makes its way to the surface when he realizes today has just proved her wrong. She has no reason to feel safer, given that she almost died this afternoon.

Some hero.

His previous worries of confessing grow exponentially, as the guilt paints the red and blue suit in a different light entirely. What could he say to her now? What would she think of him?

He wallows in his thoughts, appetite nearly lost as he gets close to the final steps of meal prep, when her voice cuts through the silence.

"Baby?"

He moves instinctively at her call, slowing his stirring of the chicken and turning to catch a glimpse of her on the couch, but with little success. He never knows how she manages to entertain a conversation while cooking when she can't see him, because Peter is, above all, a very physical being. He needs to share some kind of tenderness with every word, or it's like it isn't spoken sincerely.

Needless to say, he isn't happy with this arrangement.

"Yeah, sweetheart?"

"Spider-Man brought me home today!" she informs happily, and while Peter's relieved she sounds more like herself, he can feel a layer of sweat starting to form.

She has this uncanny ability to synchronize her thoughts with his at times, and it has never once worked out in Peter's favor.

"Really? You left that out earlier," he probes, trying to keep the conversation steady.

She derails that hope with a well-placed reply.

"I was trying to figure out how he knew where I lived, because I never told him."

Peter's eyes close momentarily as he bites his lip so hard it splits instantly. He curses under his breath, but his brain is not up to the task of diffusing the situation. He finds nothing to say. The anxiety of seeing the rice start to turn brown in the pan further exacerbates the problem. He can't multitask in the kitchen, he knows this. He shouldn't have ventured outside the realm of sandwiches, or perhaps grilled cheese. If he hadn't, he'd now have more brain power to allocate to everything going on. He can smell the burning spices.

"Do you think he can read minds?"

She has to be kidding.

He just about entered panic mode, thinking this would be how his secret finally comes to light, and she hits him with that?

Mind-reading. Your girl thinks you're a mind reader, Parker. Better make it count, he thinks.

"Uhh, I don't know. Maybe he can?" he finally says.

"Can you imagine how hard that must be? Makes me respect him ever more…" she replies, and he must've missed when she got up and came over, because she's much closer all of a sudden.

He's really riled up now, so he keeps his back to her and pretends to focus on salvaging the food.

"You respect him even more? How?" he asks, trying not to let his feelings through in his voice.

He can feel her coming even closer until she's right behind him, and there's a brief pause before her arms envelop his midsection, clasping together over his stomach in a loose hold. Her forehead comes to rest between his shoulder blades a few seconds later, and it's enough to make him melt.

"Is this ok?" her quiet voice asks, and his heart follows swift.

He wants to turn around and reassure her with a million kisses, but he stays put, knowing how important this is for both of them.

"It's more than ok. I'm yours, you know? Anytime you want me, you can have me," he murmurs.

She's been trying more things like this lately, and he's immensely proud of her. Crossing boundaries that were placed there by another person, and doing it of her own accord - Peter understands that each and every time is difficult and special, but he can't help his sadness occasionally. The thought of her struggling to offer affection, thinking it unwanted - or worse, punished - is enough to put a lump in his throat that takes his breath away.

She tightens her embrace in response, placing a small kiss at the nape of his neck.

"Thank you."

They spend the remaining couple of minutes like that, and Peter has forgotten what they were even talking about before. He shuts the stove off and turns in her arms, searching her eyes briefly before leaning in.

He's equal parts surprised and happy when she seems to be on the same wavelength as him, parting her lips almost immediately to deepen the kiss. Peter often holds back the intensity of his feelings for her sake, letting her meet him halfway at her own pace.

His heart swells with pride, both in her and in himself, when he sees her become more comfortable with intimacy. When she nibbles his top lip and runs her tongue over it to soothe the sting, suddenly it's him who needs to slow this down.

Hands on both sides of her neck, he pulls away gently, but when she seeks his lips again, he leans his forehead against her own, lightly brushing his nose against hers.

"Peter…" she murmurs wistfully, making the air flee his lungs.

He tries to keep himself in check, keep his body from responding the way it wants to when she says his name like that, but his self-control goes out the window with a little bit of his soul at her next words.

"I think I'm ready."

He really is going into an early grave.

"Baby… you have no idea how happy that makes me, but we… can't. Not tonight, we can't," he says, although her breath hitting his face derails his train of thought every few seconds. Her sweet pout doesn't help much, either.

"Hmm… but do you want to?" she asks quietly.

"Do I - Yes. God, yes. But I also want you to enjoy our first time, and right now you're hurt."

He makes a point of lightly tracing a finger over the bandage on her right elbow, and she understands when even a fleeting touch makes it sting. She just sort of… forgot about those. He always has that aura, that pull about him that makes her head swim in fog and sentimentality.

"And you're concussed, so you could be throwing yourself at me right now and I'd still have to say no," he adds humorously for both their sakes. He needed to cut through the palpable tension before it got to a point where he had to cool off on the balcony.

She chuckles lightly against his lips, placing just one more kiss on the corner of his mouth before putting some distance between them without leaving his arms.

"That's a very respectable statement, Mr. Parker," she teases, looking into his brown eyes with nothing but adoration. Before Peter can say anything in response however, her own eyes light up in remembrance.

"Oh! You asked me how come I respect Spider-Man more now, right?"

Peter almost groans at how swiftly the moment is ruined, even though he knows it's only a problem because he still hasn't come clean. Every mention of his suited-up self is like kryptonite, especially after today.

He busies himself with serving the food before it gets cold, and she clears her small kitchen table and grabs drinks from the fridge while she talks.

"I just think it must be hard to do what he does, but especially - and this is a theory - if he can read minds. Just hearing all the horrible things people think, can you imagine that?"

He doesn't have to. Peter has heard and seen the horrible things people say and do, and reading minds wouldn't provide much more insight into the lives of New York's underbelly. He doesn't know why she zoned in on that specifically, or why it would raise him up in her eyes, and he says as much.

"Well, even if he could, he's probably used to it. Not really praise worthy, right?" he attempts, bringing their plates over and setting them on the table.

She doesn't say anything back for a long enough time that he worries he said the wrong thing, and he searches for her expression, but it's hidden by her hair as she washes her hands in the sink.

"I think it is. I think… it takes a lot to see cruelty all the time and turn it into kindness. I've known people who can do the opposite. It's comforting to… to know he exists."

There's nothing he can do. The force with which those words knock the air out of him can't be fought or resisted. He simply has to sit there in silence and take it in.

He tries to understand how he can feel so reassured with such few words, but the rush of affection is turning his brain inside out. There he was, wondering and questioning and running his mind into the ground with scenarios and consequences that he thought inescapable.

And there she is - unknowingly taking away his worries and replacing them with steadfast resolve, turning all the insecurity he's amassed about his identity over the years into a silly-seeming thing. Her perspective was so uniquely personal, so intimate to her experience, that it touched him to the bone.

What she found good about Spider-Man was entwined with her need to believe, her need for proof that cruelty and kindness alike are nothing more than individual choices.

He realizes this, and the knowledge carves a spot inside his heart where it will dwell for the rest of his days. It was only himself he didn't trust, not her, and it entices long-lost confidence to come to the surface.

The confidence that he will be loved, that he is lovable. That she will know how to love him.

On a shaky breath, he sees her coming over to sit down, taking her hand gently when she's close. With the tears that have gathered in his eyes, he isn't surprised when her brows pull together in concern.

"Peter? What is it, baby?"

"I need to tell you something. Please. And you… you need to let me explain. I need to do this right," he confides, high on emotion he can feel in his trembling voice.

"Anything. Peter, you can tell me anything. I'm right here," she coos, soothing the creases above his left brow with her thumb.

"I love you. You're my person. You are. And I should've done this sooner, but I was scared of… losing a good thing. The best thing. But you… you have this way about you, you know? You say things sometimes that knock me on my ass and you don't even know that you do. So when I say what I'm about to say, I need you to hold onto me, yeah? Just hold on."

Unable to speak, she nods, wiping a tear from his eye first, and then her own.

"I'm the one who brought you home today."

There's only silence, and a tiny escaped breath.

"You mean…"

She doesn't finish, because she doesn't have to. The turmoil pulling at his features, the watery eyes, his soft-spoken plea - they are enough.

He brought her home today.

Spider-Man cannot read minds, because he knows where her home is.

When she called her soulmate, Spider-Man's phone rang, though she was too out of it to notice.

When she spoke to him of the accident, he wouldn't meet her eyes.

He knew about the list the paramedic gave her, when she never mentioned it.

All these things that she would have noticed, had she been more alert, but here they are, flooding back.

Her Peter brought her home today.

"You're Spider-Man…" she whispers in wonder, brushing her fingers through his hair.

She isn't sure what this revelation means for the future, but she can't even fathom being anywhere other than right here, making sure he knows there's nothing to be scared of. All she wants is to chase the unease from his eyes.

"I've got you. I promise… I love you, Peter. All of you."

His intake of breath is muffled into her shoulder, arms searching aimlessly across the expanse of her back, molding her to him but unable to stay still. She finds it difficult as well, only it's her lips that can't help gracing every spot she can reach. Whispers of reassurance fill his ears and settle the rhythm of his chest, sobs winding down. He returns to himself, guided by the safety she provides.

It feels good to be seen and known at last, for all he is, but he worries there are things she isn't telling him.

"Are we ok?" he finds the words to ask, and they're said so faintly she nearly misses them.

"Yes. 'Course we're ok," she responds, punctuating it with another kiss to his cheek.

"You don't wanna… ask me anything?"

She smiles at the uncertainty in his voice and raises an eyebrow.

"I have nothing but questions for you, Spider-Man. But I'm saving them for later, you know, when I'm a little sharper up top," she motions to her temple.

"Oh, you're gonna quiz me. Got it, got it. I'm gonna get my story straight," he says seriously, drawing an incredulous laugh from her.

"Then you better start with what today was all about. You know, with the whole… 'Who's Peter' on the fire escape earlier."

Peter blanks, then gets immediately defensive to a comical degree.

"Well if I have to explain that, you have to explain the whole soulmate thing. Because that - why have you never told me that?"

The question isn't accusatory, but the embarrassment is immediate. She tries to squirm away half-heartedly, but Peter doesn't let up, trying to get her to look at him, placing teasing kisses all along her neck and jaw, knowing exactly what her reaction will be.

Giggles. Small, suppressed and wrapping around his heart like icing around a cake.

"See? That - right there. My favorite sound."

"Peter!" she exclaims in a half-laugh, half-moan.

Tilting her head back when his lips find a sensitive spot right at her pulse point, she decides to give him what he wants. If he was honest with her, showing unprecedented vulnerability, then she could meet him halfway.

"I said that because that's how I feel. I know that maybe… it's early. I know we haven't known each other that long, and we haven't faced that many things together, but that's not how I decided… that I - it's not why I - pff… I can't say it."

"Just say it how you wanna say it. However you feel like saying it."

"I know how to say it, it's just really corny."

"Doesn't matter."

"It's soppy. It's disgusting, actually."

"The worse, the better," he encourages.

"Ha-ha. Seriously."

"I'm serious too. Just tell me!"

"Ok fine! I don't have to wait until I know everything about you, to know how I feel. I just look at you sometimes, and I see… a whole life with you. You know… everything: our own place, our own traditions, maybe a dog, maybe…" she trails off, losing courage and avoiding his eyes, but he leans his forehead against hers, and she has to look.

"Babies?"

Though her face feels like it's on fire, she nods timidly, unable to tear her eyes away. She'd remember the way he's looking at her for a long time.

"Sweetheart… Kiss me," he pleads.

With a final look that imprints this moment in their shared history, their lips meet in a searing kiss, and Peter remembers all he's ever wanted as a manifestation of the present: stability, reciprocity and a romance for the ages.

-fin-

A/N: I welcome any and all feedback, even if it’s just a keysmash!

[disturbedbydesign]

Take Me Home - Part 2

PAIRING: Dennis Baker x Reader

SUMMARY: It’s been nearly a year since your ex-boyfriend dumped you and left you with a laundry list of insecurities, and you haven’t been able to really put yourself out there since. But when Dennis shows up at the adoption fair you’re running for your job at the animal shelter, there’s just something about him that makes you feel like you’re ready to try again.

WORD COUNT: 6K

WARNINGS (more to come): Body Issues (Dennis and Reader), References to Past Animal Abuse, Emotionally Abusive Exes (Dennis and Reader), Eventual Smut. 18+ only, no minors.

Series Masterlist

Part Two

You’re still in shock as you leave Dennis and Jax at a table outside and go in and order your coffees, holding the $20 that Dennis insisted you pay with. Your brain is overloading because you don’t know how you ended up here, using Jax as an excuse to basically throw yourself at this poor guy. You know Dennis is just being nice—it’s just coffee, after all, and he probably just wants to get to know Jax a little better and ask you some questions about him before he brings him home. You need to pull yourself together and start acting professional instead of asking a client personal questions about his dating life and telling him he’s hot. What the fuck were you even thinking?

“Who’s the beefcake?” the cafe owner, Cassie, asks from behind the counter. She waggles her eyebrows at you and you shake your head.

You’ve been coming to the cafe at least once a day since you started working at the shelter and Cassie has become one of your good friends. She’s also a major cat lady and has adopted three of your kitties. She might know more about your life than even Mal does, and she clocked Dennis the second you sat him outside.

“Just a client, Cass,” you say.

“Well he’s a hot client,” she replies. “He’s got that whole sexy nerd thing going on.”

“He’s adopting Jax,” you say and you can’t help the dreamy smile that spreads across your face. Cassie notices because of course she does.

‘Oh, so you’re in love in love.”

“I am not,” you snap. “I don’t even know him.”

“Sweetie, with a body like that, what else is there to know? And he’s adopting your baby boy? I know you’re thinking about it. Don’t even try to lie to me.”

“Maybe,” you admit. “But I can’t just, like, ask him out.”

“Why the fuck not?”

“Because… I- I don’t know. He’s obviously not interested.”

“He’s been staring at you with his damn mouth open the entire time you’ve been in here, sweetie. I think he’s more than interested.”

“He probably just wants his coffee,” you reply.

“He’s thirsty for something,” Cassie says, “that’s for sure.”

The man waiting in line behind you clears his throat impatiently and Cassie scowls at him before getting your coffees. You hand her the $20 but she refuses.

“You’re not paying today,” she says. “It’s for good luck.”

You roll your eyes, knowing it’s pointless to argue with her when she’s got her mind set on something, so you pocket the $20 and grab the coffees. When you turn around, you see Dennis focused on Jax, not you. Of course Cassie was exaggerating, you think to yourself as you walk towards the patio. You hand Dennis his coffee and the $20 back.

“On the house today,” you say. “The owner is a friend.”

“You can, uh, just keep it,” Dennis says, and you furrow your brows at him.

“For what?” you ask.

“I- uh, I dunno. Next time?” He scratches the nape of his neck and shakes his head. “I’m sorry, I just… uh…”

You wait for him to say something else but he doesn’t finish. He turns his focus to Jax and it’s like he wants to pretend you’re not there. You need to fill the silence, so you just start talking—telling him every possible thing he could ever want to know about Jax and what you would recommend for when he takes Jax home. He barely looks at you the entire time, just quick glances out of the corner of his eye, and you feel so incredibly stupid that you thought even for a second that he might be interested. You’d even entertained the idea of asking him out on an actual date? Are you crazy? What the hell has gotten into you?

Dennis clears his throat and you think you must have been rambling on too long.

“Sorry,” you say. “Too much information?”

“No, not at all. I just… I was wondering if you’re working on Saturday? Like, if you’ll be there when I take him home?”

“I’m always working,” you reply. “I don’t really have much of a life outside work, honestly. It’s pretty sad.”

Dennis gives you a tiny smile. “Same. I mean, since the divorce…” He trails off and shakes his head and mumbles something under his breath that you don’t quite catch. “Sorry, I’m sure you don’t want to hear my sob story.”

You would actually very much like to hear it and anything else he wants to tell you about himself but you just nod. “You don’t have to tell me anything you’re not comfortable with, Dennis.”

You see his leg bouncing and you want to reach out your hand to still it, to calm him and feel the corded muscle underneath the fabric of his pants. You don’t, of course, because that would be insane and you have to remind yourself that you are not the crazy, clingy, needy person that your ex convinced you you are. He takes a deep breath and he’s about to speak when your phone rings—Mal’s ringtone—and you remember you’ve got dinner plans with her.

“Shit,” you say. “Sorry, I have to take this.”

“Where the fuck are you?” Mal asks, and you can hear the bustling restaurant sounds in the background. “We were supposed to get drinks at 6.”

“I know, I just…” You look up at Dennis and he turns his head quickly to Jax, who is very much enjoying the head scratches Dennis is giving him. “I got caught up at work. I’ll be there soon.”

“I’m starting without you,” she says and hangs up.

“I’m so sorry, Dennis. I totally forgot that I’m supposed to meet my roommate for dinner. I have to go.”

“No,” he says. “It’s my fault for keeping you. We were just supposed to go for a quick walk and I’m taking up too much of your time.”

You smile at him. “Hey, coffee was my idea, remember? I’m the idiot who forgot I had plans.”

He speaks low, down into his lap, and you almost can’t hear him when he says, “I’ll get out of your hair.”

“I’m really sorry about this. I was… this was nice. And I’ll see you on Saturday, yeah? For the big day?”

He gives you a smile but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Yeah, ok. See you then.” He turns to Jax with enthusiasm and tells him, “You too, buddy. I’m gonna get the house all set up for you.”

Watching the two of them together almost makes you lose it. You feel like you could cry happy tears seeing Jax find his person after all this time, but it’s something else, too. You’re really going to miss him, and it’s only just occurred to you that you won’t get to see him every day anymore.

“What’s wrong?” Dennis asks. “Did I do something?”

You realize you’ve let a tear slip out and you wipe it away.

“I’m fine,” you say. “I’m just… I’m gonna miss him.” You feel your cheeks heating up with embarrassment and you sniffle and shake your head. “I should be used to this by now. I don’t know why I’m crying. I’m such a fucking mess. This is… embarrassing.”

“Well,” Dennis says, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. “You’re, uh, you’re welcome to come see him any time you want to.”

You know he doesn’t mean it, that he’s just saying it to make you feel better. After all, Jax is his now (or will be in a few days). He’s going off to start a happy new life with Dennis and he doesn’t need you anymore. You’d just be an imposition, an interruption, an intruder—someone for Dennis to tolerate for a little while until he can politely kick you out of his house and go on living his life.

“Thanks,” you say. “That’s sweet of you to say.”

“I mean it,” Dennis says, and his tone is dead serious. “Anytime.”

You still don’t believe him, but you appreciate his kindness.

“I gotta get Jax back,” you say. “But you can come by any time after 10 on Saturday.”

“I’ll see you at 10:01 then,” he replies.

You laugh as you take Jax’s leash from Dennis’s hand, and when your fingers brush against his, you feel a spark shoot through you, leaving the hairs on your arm standing up straight. You can’t look at him. You’re so fucking touch-starved that just that one brief moment is enough to have your desperation written all over your face. He sees it, though. You know he does, because when you finally look at him, he’s flushed bright pink up to his ears. You’re so fucking pathetic that you’ve managed to embarrass him. You’ve got to get the fuck out of there.

“I- I, uh, I gotta go. I’ll see you Saturday,” you stammer, and you grab Jax and double-time it back to the shelter to put him away for the night.

By the time you make it to the restaurant to meet Mal, you’re an hour late and she’s three martinis in and flirting with some hipster at the bar next to her.

“I’m so sorry,” you say as you rush over to her.

“Don’t be.” She’s wearing her naughty drunk smile and you know you haven’t seen the last of the guy next to her. “I made a friend. But I’m fucking starving so can we eat?” She turns to her friend and puts her hand on his shoulder. “Call me,” she purrs, and hops down off her stool, waltzing over to the hostess without a backward glance.

Mal makes it look so easy. All she has to do is bat her eyelashes at a guy and he’s a goner. Mr. Hipster probably asked her out before she said two words to him, but you… you can’t even manage to make it through coffee without making a complete ass of yourself. After the hostess guides you to your table, you plop down in the booth opposite Mal and put your head in your hands.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“I’m just… I’m so fucking sick of being me. I wish I could be you for a day.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? Why? What happened?”

You sigh and grab her martini glass, taking a big sip before returning it to her. “There’s this guy…”

“Oh my god, fucking finally,” she says. “Show me.”

“I don’t have any pictures. He’s just a client. He’s the one adopting Jax.”

She whips her phone out. “Name?”

“Dennis Baker.”

“Hmm, ok. Lots of Dennis Bakers.” She hands you her phone with the Facebook search results open. “Find him.”

You hadn’t let yourself look for him on socials. You’d thought about it a few times, but every time you almost sought him out, you’d hear Brad’s voice in your head: crazy, clingy, needy, desperate. But now Mal is forcing your hand, and when you see his profile, you click on it and smile. His profile pic is very him—glasses slightly crooked, awkward smile, same fucking polo shirt and khakis he always wears that do nothing to hide the body he’s got underneath it all. You hand her the phone back and she laughs.

“This is the guy you’re spazzing about?”

“What?” you say, slightly offended on Dennis’s behalf. “He’s cute.”

Mal considers him for a moment. “Ok, I kind of see it. He looks like a total dork, but that bod…”

“You have no idea.”

“Ok, so what happened that’s got you all turned around?” she asks, setting her phone down on the table. “I mean, no offense, but this guy doesn’t look like he’s turning women away at the door.”

You sigh. “He came by to see Jax this afternoon and I asked him for coffee-”

“Wait, you asked him?” Mal is beaming as she looks at you over the top of her menu. “I’m so proud of you!”

“Well don’t be, because I was totally awkward, and I’m pretty sure once he gets Jax on Saturday he’s never going to talk to me again.”

Mal rolls her eyes. “You’re doing it again.”

“I’m serious, Mal. It was bad.”

“First of all, I’m sure it wasn’t. Second of all, he wouldn’t have gone with you if he wasn’t into you.”

You shake your head. “He was just being nice. I’m sure he just wanted to know more about Jax before he takes him home, and then my pathetic brain turned it into a date even though it totally wasn’t at all.”

“I really hate that you do this,” Mal says. “You always fucking do this. I don’t know why you can’t just accept the fact that you’re gorgeous and sweet and funny and that any guy would be lucky to have coffee with you. Brad really did a number on you. I swear to God if I ever see that fucker again they’ll be cleaning his teeth off the floor.”

“Well as much as I’d love to see that, it doesn’t change the fact that Dennis isn’t interested.”

“Bullshit he’s not. What did he actually say?”

“Not much,” you reply. “I was rambling on about Jax and he barely got a chance to say anything. I mean, Cassie said he was staring at me but I think she was just saying that to make me feel better.”

Mal scoffs. “Cassie has never in her life said anything just to make someone feel better.”

You laugh because she’s not entirely wrong, but still—if Dennis liked you, he certainly wasn’t showing it. When the waiter comes by, you both place your drink and dinner orders before Mal picks up her phone and resumes scrolling through Dennis’s pictures.

“There’s not much here,” she says. “Kind of a red flag, honestly.”

“He just got divorced a couple months ago,” you reply. “He probably deleted a bunch of shit.”

“He got kids?” she asks, and you shake your head no. “Well then he’s probably lonely as fuck. I bet you a million dollars that if you asked him out to dinner, he’d say yes.”

You shake your head vigorously. “I can’t do that.”

“Why not? What’s the worst that can happen? He says no? Then fuck it and move on.”

“That’s not the worst thing that could happen,” you mumble.

“Then what, then, because I really don’t understand what you’re so afraid of.”

You’re grateful when your cocktail arrives and after taking a big sip, you decide to tell Mal the truth.

“I’m scared of, you know, being with someone again.”

“What, like sex?”

You nod. “I just… I feel like, if he does actually like me and we went out then he’s obviously going to want… you know…”

“To fuck you. Yes. I would think so.”

“I’m just not ready.”

Mal sighs. “It’s been almost a year, sweetie. What the fuck is going on with you? Is there something you’re not telling me?”

There’s so much you haven’t told her and you still can’t bring yourself to go into details but you know you have to give her a little something, if only so any of this makes sense to her.

“I just feel gross. I hate my fucking body. I hate so many things about it and I just… the idea of someone else seeing it makes me sick. I get so anxious even thinking about it. So why the fuck would I go out with him if I’m just going to end up disappointing him?”

Mal reaches across the table and takes your hand and you feel the tears start to well in your eyes.

“There is nothing wrong with your body. I’ve seen you naked, you idiot. You’re fucking hot. Where is this coming from?”

You sniffle and wipe your eyes. “You know where.”

“What the fuck did that asshole say to you?”

“I don’t want to talk about it, Mal. Please don’t make me talk about it.”

She lets go of your hand and takes a sip of her drink. “Fine. I won’t make you. But just know that whatever it was, he’s wrong.”

“Can we talk about something else now?” you ask.

“Of course, but let me just say one last thing. This guy… he might surprise you. I mean, he’s divorced. He might want to take things slow, too. Not every guy wants to fuck on the first date.”

“Just the guys you date,” you reply, and she gives you a wicked smile.

“Yeah, but if I didn’t want to fuck on the first date, most of them would be willing to wait. And something tells me that this Dennis guy would be willing to wait for you. So promise me one thing. I’m not going to pressure you to ask him out, but if he asks you, I want you to say yes.”

You take a deep breath and release it as your food comes. “I will,” you say. “I promise.”

***

Dennis pulls up to his old house Thursday morning before work dreading having to deal with his ex, but he made a promise and he keeps his promises. It feels strange to ring the doorbell to his own home—the home that he paid for and which he should have kept in the divorce if he wasn’t such a fucking pushover. But he didn’t want to fight over money and assets and all of that. By the end, he just wanted to get it over with. He couldn’t stand one more day of her toxicity and constant degradation, his days filled with nothing but her insults and cruelty. In the final weeks of his marriage, he felt more alone than he does now as a single man.

Dennis grips his toolbox tightly as his ex-wife opens the door in her robe, hair all messed up and a smug smile on her face.

“You’re late,” she says.

“Sorry,” he apologizes, even though he’s right on time. “So, uh, what’s the problem?”

“Same shit. It’s not draining right. Just take care of it, will you? I have shit to do.”

Dennis hears a man’s voice call out from upstairs—from the bedroom, his bedroom. “Who’s that, babe?” the man asks.

“No one important,” she calls out to him, smiling at Dennis as she twirls a strand of hair around her finger.

“Yeah, uh, so I’ll just… take a look at it then.”

Dennis heads straight to the kitchen with his head down, not wanting to give his ex the satisfaction of seeing the heat blooming on his cheeks. He knows she did this on purpose, that this is what she wanted. He wouldn’t be shocked to find that there’s not actually anything wrong with the dishwasher (although there is). He’s halfway done fixing it when he hears the thunk thunk thunk of the headboard on the wall upstairs, the stranger in his bed moaning and his ex-wife shouting all sorts of filth as he fucks her.

“You fuck me so good, baby. Yeah, just like that. God I love your fucking cock. Feels so good.”

Dennis tries to drown out her sounds by turning on the tv in the kitchen but he’s heard enough already—enough to bring him right back to that dark place he used to live in. He hears her voice in his ear.

You have a bad penis, Dennis. All that cock and no idea what to do with it. You’ll never be able to fuck me right. You’re the worst I’ve ever had. Don’t kiss me. Don’t touch me. You disgust me.

Dennis leaves the dishwasher job unfinished as he walks out the door and slams it behind him. He knows she’ll laugh when she sees he didn’t finish, probably make some joke to her new man about how she never finished when she was with him. But this was a new level of cruelty, even for her. He’s angry, sure, and he wants to hate her but he doesn’t because Dennis doesn’t hate people even when they deserve it. Instead, he takes all that hatred and turns it on himself. But today, at least, he took a stand. He walked out the door, telling himself that she’s not worthy of his help or his kindness, and she will never get it again. He makes a promise to himself to reserve his kindness for people who deserve it, tells himself he’s done letting people walk all over him. He thinks about Jax coming home in a few days and he decides to dig deep and find some strength. He’ll need it for what is sure to be a tough transition.

Because he’s worried about bringing Jax home. Dennis has been preparing the house for his arrival, buying him the type of treats and toys you said he likes, a brand new Casper dog bed and a nice fuzzy blanket for his spot on the couch. He’s been cleaning like crazy (even though he keeps his place very neat to begin with) and all the while he’s been thinking the worst. What if he doesn’t like it here? What if he doesn’t like me? What if he misses you and wants to go back?

Dennis wouldn’t blame him. He wouldn’t want to leave you either. When he’s not worrying about Jax’s homecoming, he’s thinking about you—how desperate you seemed to get away from him after you’d made the mistake of inviting him for coffee. That call from your roommate was a convenient excuse to leave, but he stops short of believing you a liar. No, you just got a lucky break, because what reason would you have for wanting to stay? You’d given him all the information he needed; that’s what you were there for. And what did Dennis do but talk about his ex and his fucking divorce?

Dennis replays your “date” over and over again in his mind, only in his fantasy conversations with you, he is the man he wants to be instead of the man he is. He asks you questions about yourself. He tells you how smart and sweet and beautiful you are. He tells you that he wants to take you out anywhere you want to go and do anything you want to do. And in his waking dream, you say yes and you tell him how handsome he is, how much you want him, all the things you’d let him do to you. And the man he wants to be can actually do those things instead of just having a sad wank watching other men do them in pornos.

Which is exactly what he spends his Friday night doing. With only a few short hours left until he goes to pick up Jax (and sees you again), his mind is racing with thoughts of everything that could go wrong. He tries to distract himself by having a few beers and watching baseball but he can’t quiet his mind. No, there’s only one thing that’ll put him right to sleep. He grabs his phone and gets in bed in just his boxers, scrolling his favorite Twitter porn account until he finds a girl who looks enough like you if he squints. He pulls his cock out and strokes himself hard and slow as the man in the video eats the girl out until she’s shaking and pulling his hair. It’s only 2 minutes long but that’s more than enough time for Dennis, especially once he closes his eyes and pictures your face and what it might look like contorted with bliss and moaning his name.

He wants to make you feel that way, wants to taste you on his tongue and make you scream for him. He knows he can’t, though. Even if by some miracle you’d let him anywhere near you, he could never make you cum like that. The last time he tried to go down on his ex, she laughed at him, told him he was no good at it, and made him watch as she used her clit suction toy on herself—talking shit the whole time about how easily replaced he was by a piece of plastic with a motor. The idea of trying with you, of disappointing you, makes him want to curl up and die.

But Dennis would give anything just to touch you again—just another brush of your hand like the one that set him on fire and had him half-hard in his pants in public within seconds. And he’s sure you noticed; you were so horribly embarrassed and practically ran away from him, because you’re a nice girl who doesn’t need to associate herself with a touch-starved loser who pops a boner when a woman’s fingers graze his knuckles. As badly as he wants to see you in the morning, he’s dreading it, because he knows it’ll be the last time. Once he has Jax home, there are no more excuses for him to text you or come see you, and he knows he doesn’t have the balls to ask you out. Even if you said yes, you’d realize soon enough it was a mistake. No, tomorrow is the end of his delusions of you and him. He just hopes to God he can make it through without embarrassing himself.

***

You get to work early Saturday morning, wanting to spend as much time with Jax as possible before he leaves. You feed him his breakfast and take him out for his morning walk—a nice, long one today, because it’s the last one—and you start to cry on your way back inside. When he hears you sniffle, Jax looks up at you with his sweet eyes full of concern.

“It’s ok, Jax,” you tell him. “You’re gonna be so happy.”

He nuzzles up against your thigh as you walk him back to his pen and part of you considers leaving now just so you don’t have to watch him walk out. If you’re honest, though, it’s because you’re scared to see Dennis after making such a fool of yourself. Mal is convinced he’s going to ask you on a date today but you know he won't. He hasn’t texted you since your disastrous coffee date—not that he has any real reason to, but you thought that maybe he might have some last-minute Jax-related matters to discuss. But nope. Nothing. Radio silence. As much as it’s going to rip your heart out to see Jax go, you stare at the clock, wishing you could speed up time and just get it all over with. Once Jax is gone, so is Dennis. Then you can stop thinking about him and all the what-ifs and just go back to normal. You can stop wanting things you can’t have.

You’re in your office reviewing a new application when you hear his voice at the front desk. Your heart starts thumping in your chest because you know you have to go out there and slap a smile on your face for him and for Jax and make sure everything goes smoothly but you just want to hide in the bathroom and cry. You take a quick look at yourself in the mirror and see the complete mess you’ve made of yourself—all puffy eyes and smudged mascara. You’re such a wreck that you have to laugh, and even though you try to do a quick touch-up on your makeup, it’s pointless. You look like shit. You feel like shit. You just want to go home and curl up with Badger and a box of wine and watch sad movies until you pass out.

“Hey Dennis!” you say, thinking that the false cheer in your voice and in your smile must be completely obvious. “Today’s the big day!”

He looks as nervous as you feel, standing there with his hands shoved into his pockets and shuffling his feet. “Yeah,” he says. “So, uh, how does this-” He stops talking when he finally gets a look at you, and he furrows his brow. “Are you ok?” he asks, his concern genuine, and you almost start to cry again.

“Oh, totally!” you lie. “Just… uh… you know. High pollen count today. Anyway, why don’t you come into my office and we can fill out the final paperwork and then we’ll get you boys home.”

You can feel his large presence a few steps behind you as you walk to your office, all the way telling yourself keep it together keep it together don’t be crazy keep it together. Dennis sits opposite you in a folding chair that is much too small for his broad frame and you almost laugh. You can’t keep the smile off your face, though.

“What?” he asks, his blue eyes wide behind his glasses.

“It’s just… you’re a little big for that chair. Do you want me to get you another one?”

He looks down at his body, as if he’s only just realizing how massive he is in comparison to the seat, and he shrugs. “I’m ok,” he says, but you can see you’ve made him self-conscious and you’re already wishing you’d kept your damn mouth shut.

“Here are the papers. Nothing too complicated,” you say, handing him a few sheets. “You just fill those out and sign them and I’ll go get your boy!”

You rush out of the room before he can say anything and make a pit stop in the bathroom. You talk to yourself in the mirror. “Get your fucking shit together. What the fuck is wrong with you?” And then you hear a toilet flush and Betsy comes out looking radiant as always. She takes one look at you and she knows.

“Jax leaving?”

“Yeah,” you answer. “I just… I need a minute. Can you make sure he’s all ready to go? Dennis is in my office filling out the final paperwork and I just… I can’t go out there yet.”

“Sure thing,” she says. “And, hey, if it’s any consolation, I’m pretty sure Dennis would let you see as much of Jax and of him as you want to.”

You spin around to face her. “Why do you say that?” you ask.

“I saw the way he looked at you,” she replies. “That dopey lovestruck look. That’s how Jack used to look at me.”

“He still looks at you like that, Bets.”

“Yeah,” she says. “I guess he does. Anyway, just thought you should know. I’ll go take care of Jaxy. You stay here and get that shit of yours together.”

You take a minute or two to just breathe, and when you return to your office you find all 80 pounds of Jax sitting on Dennis’s lap in the tiny chair.

“Oh my God,” you say. “I have to take a picture. Can I take a picture?”

Dennis is all smiles and giggles as Jax licks every inch of his face and neck.

“Yeah,” he says, coming up for air. “Go for it.”

You grab your phone and take a few shots and then a video, telling yourself they will be great for the website but really you want them, too—a memory of a happy Jax on his way to his new happy home.

“Get down, Jax,” you say. “That chair is about to collapse.”

Jax does as he’s commanded and bounds over to you, jumping up to give you a few kisses, too. And that’s when you lose it. You try not to, but it’s pointless. The dam breaks and the tears pour out and you fall to your knees in front of Jax, wrapping your arms around him.

“I’m gonna miss you, buddy,” you say into his fur. “I love you. You’re gonna have such a good life. I just know it.”

You hear Dennis get up out of the chair and come kneel next to you, and when he places his big hand on your back, it just makes you sob harder.

“I’m so sorry,” you say. “This is so unprofessional. I never do this. I usually just cry at home like a normal person.”

“Hey,” he says, his deep voice soft and soothing. “I meant what I said the other day. You can come see us any time you want.”

“No,” you say. “He needs to adjust. It would just confuse him.”

“What… What if… I want you to come see us?”

You look up at him and wipe the tears from your eyes and you can see his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows deep.

“You… you’d want me to?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I would. I really really would. We both would, right Jax?” Jax barks right in your face and you laugh. “See? How can you say no to that?”

“Well, I never could say no to this guy,” you reply, pulling Jax’s ears down and letting go so they pop back up into place.

“So you’ll come over?” he asks, all nerves again like you hadn’t already agreed. “Once we get settled in?”

“I’d love to come visit,” you reply, looking from Jax to Dennis. “The both of you. Now get the hell out of here before I start crying again, will you? Time to take this good boy home.”

Dennis stands up and holds his hand out for you to hoist yourself up off the floor, but you both pull a little too hard and you end up stumbling into him, catching yourself on the hard muscle of his chest. You let your hands linger a beat too long as you stare at him, his hand still holding yours and his other hand cradling your elbow. He licks his plump bottom lip and your whole body feels like its throbbing.

“Sorry,” you whisper, unable to find your voice. “Clumsy me.”

You both let go at the same time. Dennis straightens his polo shirt where you’d bunched it with your fists and you wipe your hands on your jeans because now you’re starting to sweat. You haven’t been that close to a man in months, and you’d never been that close to one so fucking huge with such pretty eyes who smells so good.

“I’ll see you soon,” he says. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” you reply, still breathless from your little accident.

You lean down and give Jax a kiss on the head and you watch the two of them walk down the hall and out the door, your heart still racing from the absolute insanity of what just happened. You need to call Mal. You need to call her now. You shut the door of your office and dial her up and she picks up on the second ring.

“So,” she says, “what happened? Did he ask you out?”

“Sort of,” you say. “He wants me to come over and visit and I may have accidentally felt him up.”

You have to pull the phone away from your ear because Mal is cackling so loud. “Oh, yeah, ‘accidentally’—right.”

“No, I sort of just… I don’t know… stumbled into the great expanse of his chest and maybe I stayed there longer than I should have.”

“And what did he do when you groped his man titties, hmm?”

“Nothing,” you say. “He just sort of… stood there and, like, held my… I don’t know, Mal. It was an accident. It doesn’t mean-”

“Shut. The. Fuck. Up. It does absolutely mean whatever you think it doesn’t mean. Now hurry up and finish work because we’re going to shopping to get you something cute to wear over to Big Boy’s house.”

“Mal, it’s not a date. And don’t call him that.”

“It’s a fucking date. It counts. And I’ll call him whatever I want. See you later, you minx.”

Mal hangs up before you have a chance to tell her she’s wrong. It’s not a date. He’s just being nice. He saw how upset you were and he wanted to make you feel better. If anything, he’s a friend. Yes, a friend, being friendly. And the other part… well, that was an accident. Best to just forget about it. It didn’t mean anything. You fell, he caught you. That’s what friends do.

PART THREE >>>

Taglist: @littlelioncub43

[ygreczed-3]

The Walking Dead/Detroit Become Human AU

(so basically I was tempted to make a post to apologize about the mess my blog has become lately - feels like I’m posting AUs, artworks, sketches and comic updates in such a chaotic way… I’m really sorry about it ahaha 😅 Hopefully it will get better soon)

So this post is me drawing for hours and forgetting to eat on my break day (I finally did !!! Don’t worry ahaha) because I became obsessed with an idea again. Also I like to make concept arts and storyboards as if I was working on a professional project for a TV show/animation. I find it fascinating ! This time I don’t really have any plot or finished story, I just wanted to draw these scenes badly so… I just did.

I’d like to draw your attention to Connor’s curly hair and Hank’s design (strongly inspired by Kristoff from Frozen). I just LOVE these details.

⚠️Remember this is NOT a new series. Just me having fun with characters and a universe I like (aka The Walking Dead) ! 

Anyway, more ideas below 👀

*POW*

Hank open his eye again. The walker was shot in the head. Hank pushes the walker away, it falls dead on the concrete.

Looking up, he sees Connor with a gun.

Hank : Jesus… Thank you.  I thought I was…

Connor : I wouldn’t have wasted a bullet for you if it wasn’t for your kid back there. Your car, does it work? Hank : … Yeah… I just… I was looking for some gas when… well… Can I drive you somewhere? Connor : Not really, I’m looking for someone.

___________________________

Hank and Cole are walking in a gas station with jerricans and pour what’s left of gas from the pump.

Cole : Dad, that mister from earlier, do you think he’s gonna be okay ? Hank : I think, pumpkin. He was the one helping us. Cole : Being alone sounds dangerous… He should have come with us. Hank : …

___________________________

It’s nighttime, Cole is sleeping in the backseats with a blanket, Hank is sleeping in the driver seat. He wakes up brutally as he hears something tapping softly against the car window : the young man from earlier. He rolls the window down.

Hank : You ? Connor : I’ve looked around the whole city. Now it’s too dark… I need a safe place to have some sleep, I was thinking you could let me in. You owe me after all. Hank : … Yeah sure. Get in.

Connor gets in the car. He takes his bag off and keeps it by his side, out of Hank’s reach. He takes his coat off but keeps a gun near him. Hank stares at him with narrowed eyes.

Hank : … You’re safe here, really. You can trust me. Connor : Sorry, but I only trust myself.

___________________________

It’s dark outside, Hank can’t really sleep with the stranger next to him. His guts dictate him to stay alert. He watches carefully as Connor turns his head to him, half-opening his eyes.

Connor: Can’t sleep ? Hank : … Well you were right… I don’t know you. What about you ? Did you sleep a little ? Connor : … No. I’m too… cautious. My brain won’t let me sleep with a stranger next to me. Hank : … My name’s Hank. You ? Connor : What the hell are you doing ? Hank : We agreed we couldn’t sleep next to strangers. I’m introducing myself. Connor : It won’t make it any better… *after a silence* I’m Connor. Hank : Nice to meet you. Connor: … Where were you before ? You… you act like a newborn in this hell… Hank : … I had a neighbor with one of those bunkers… with tons of food, water, enough to live for months. We… We were hiding there with her until… until a few weeks. Connor : What happened ? Hank : She thought she had heard a chopper. Thought someone was out there to rescue us… she opened the hatch and she was… attacked by those things… Connor: … the kid… he’s yours? Hank : Yeah… Cole. Connor: … Where’s her mom ? Hank : He’s never known her. Connor: Sorry.  Hank : Don’t be.

*silence*

Hank : I think… I’m starting to relax… we should try to sleep huh ?

Connor is already sleeping.

___________________________

Connor takes his backpack as Hank and Cole take a breakfast with some fire.

Hank : You sure you don’t want to eat anything ? Connor : No thanks, I have my own stock. You should save your food for your kid. Hank : … Hey, if you ever need to find us… after you’ve found what  you’re looking for, I have a police radio. Frequency 58,7 kHz. Connor: I won’t need it but- thanks. Good luck.

Connor leaves.

___________________________

Cole : What should we do now? Hank : … We need to find more food… and weapons. I’ll go downtown today. You… You’ll stay here alright? Cole : No I… I want to stay with you… Hank : I know you’re scared Cole… But it’s too dangerous. You’ll be safe hidden in the car. Cole : You’ll be quick? Hank : Back before sunset, pinky swear.

___________________________

Hank finds an axe on a bar counter.

Suddenly : *BONG BONG BONG BONG*

Hank : What the-

He runs outside and hides against a wall as walkers pass nearby, heading to the source of the ringing.

He looks up and sees Connor climbing on a ladder but a Walker is trying to grab his leg.

Hank comes and kills the monster. Connor : You..! Follow me !

On the rooftop, they see the church. It’s an automatic bell, the walkers are massively getting around the building. There is something painted on the wall that says “Find Jericho” with black paint and scribbled under it “Find 9s”

Connor : Nines… Hank : What is Jericho ? Connor : … A safe place for survivors. It’s hidden… to keep the thieves and killers away. Hank : … The church. Connor : What ? Hank : Jericho, it has to do with the bible. The message is written on a church’s wall. It’s not a coincidence, there might be… a hint in there. Connor : … But we can’t get inside with those creeps around… Hank : … Maybe they leave when the church stops ringing the bells. Connor : Or maybe we should try to lead them away with… Hank : With what ? Connor : … Your car.

___________________________

Connor : So, let me get it straight. You drive around the town honking. It will attract the creeps away from the church. I get inside the church and look for any kind of hint. When the bells start ringing I get out before the creeps come back. And what do we do with Cole ?

Hank : He’s going with you. I don’t want to have him in the car with hundreds of undeads trying to get me. Connor : … I don’t- Hank : Don’t worry. He’s a smart kid. He will do as you say. Right Cole? Cole : …Hmm. Connor: … Fine. Let’s do it.

___________________________

Connor and Cole sneak into the church. Connor kills two of the Walkers still inside the church as Cole follows him cautiously. 

Cole : … Look. *he points out a book on the altar* Connor : … It’s a bible… The chapter about the Battle of Jericho… it can’t be a coincidence. *They look up and see something written with old blood on the wall behind the altar. It says “Rahab the harlot defied the King of Jericho. Here lies the key to the fortress.”* Cole : What’s a harlot? Connor : … You should… ask your father. Now… I have to read… and think. Cole : … We only have one hour left before the bells ring again… Connor : I know.

___________________________

Connor : … I don’t get it ! There must be something I’m missing ! Cole : … Connor, I found a map ! Connor : Not now Cole, I’m trying to focus… Cole : Connor, look ! Connor : Cole please I really need-…

Cole shows him the map… there is a “9s” written on it.

Connor : Nines ! Cole : Does it help ? Connor : … I don’t know-…

The bells ring suddenly.

Connor : Crap… we have to get out of here. Give me your hand, buddy.

___________________________

Hank is waiting for them : he has lit a fire and when Cole sees him, he lets go of Connor’s hand and runs to hug his dad.

Hank : I gotcha, pumpkin. *looking up at Connor* Did you find something ? Connor : I think…  Hank : You think ? Connor : I have this map my brother left for me inside the church… there was some kind of riddle on the wall, and it must have something to do with this but… there is nothing noted on it. Hank : What’s the riddle ? Connor : “Rahab the harlot defied the King of Jericho, here lies the key to the fortress.” Rahab was a prostitute, she helped Joshua by hiding spies he sent inside the city… and Joshua spared her when he took the fortress. But I… I don’t see the connection. Hank : … Let me see the map.

Connor gives it. Cole sits next to his father, near the fire, and soon falls asleep. After some time thinking and overthinking it, Hank finally points to a town on the map. A city called Defiance.

Hank : Look. Connor : Defiance… Of course. The key lies in Rahab’s defiance… Defiance is a town… Fuck- You’re a genius…! Hank : Man, I was feeling like a Detective again… felt nice for a moment. Connor: You were a Detective? Hank : A police Lieutenant, to be specific. But yeah. Detective works too. Connor : … I don’t think the treasure hunt is done yet. You’re gonna need your supercop sense again ! Hank : … It’s good to see you all excited. Feels like meeting the real Connor under the survivor’s shell. Connor: It’s nice… that Cole and you don’t have that shell yet… humanity is a rare thing to find down there. Hank : … So, who is “Nines” ? Connor : My little brother. We lived together, in the same group of survivors. Our camp was attacked… we got separated. Hank : Looks like he’s smart. He solved the riddle all by himself. It took the two of us to understand the hint. Connor : He’s always been a nerd. Hank : Pffft… Well we should try to get some sleep. We should be able to reach Stoneton, then we’ll have to find more gas.

Hank gets up and carries Cole to the car seats.

Connor: … Hank…? Hank : Yup ? Connor : Can I… Can I come with you two ? I could go to Defiance by myself but… if you’re heading there too, maybe we could… Hank : What the heck ? Of course you’re coming with us. With our two half-brains we’re gonna need each other’s help to find Jericho and your brother, don’t you think ? Connor *chuckles* : Right.

[absolutepokemontrash]

Kid!MC/Teen!MC Needs someone to go to Parent Teacher Interviews for Them and Guess Who’s Available?

Masterlist

The brothers being bad babysitters/dad figures is something I love very much, I bet you all could already tell that considering the Fic/Headcanon series I have going on. I would just like you all to know that Asmo’s section is based on a true story. Anyhoo~ onto the Headcanons!

Why? Why Him? (Lucifer)

Is MC really dumb, or are they just a kid? No one knows.

Obviously MC asked Lucifer, the only competent one in the house, the most professional, hard-working, controlled-

MC got their things together and gave Lucifer the run down on their teacher(s) before Lucifer got too absorbed in extolling his own virtues in an intense internal monologue.

News flash Lucifer, this isn’t a Shakespeare play, you can’t have a dramatic monologue or soliloquy about how great you think you are

At the actual meeting, if MC is in there, no, MC is not actually in there. Lucifer will speak to the teacher as if MC isn’t there. As someone whose not a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down kind of person, Lucifer expects the teacher to behave the same and not spare MC’s feelings.

Feelings do not deserve to be spared if MC is being a nuisance. No fake-kid/little sibling of his gets to be the class idiot!

If MC’s doing very well academically, he expects to be pointed at projects or tests they’ve done and the grade on it. It really makes him proud to see MC doing well.

Even if they’re not the best academically, if they’re not failing and they’re doing well in other aspects of school, he’s proud.

If MC really struggles in a school environment and just hates it there but they’re still keeping their head above water, they get a head pat of approval.

On the drive home, if MC came with him to the parent teacher interviews and everything went well, he just happens to turn onto the street that has a Baskin Robin’s or something of that caliber.

If they didn’t go, he picks something up on the way back.

No fun treats if MC is being a disruptive little heathen in class, no kid under Lucifer’s care is going to be the class Mammon. Not on his watch.

MC was busily stuffed their face with the treats that were gifted to them. Lucifer had to hold himself back from rolling his eyes at the kid’s blatant disregard for basic table manners when it came to sweets.

“Is everything the teacher said true?” Lucifer asked, MC looked up at him with a smile.

“Yep!”

“Good, good.” Lucifer held out his hand and patted them on the head. “You’re doing well. Keep it up.”

“Geez,” MC mumbled as they continued to stuff their face. “Can you get anymore affectionate?”

“Don’t be sarcastic, MC. It’s uncouth.” Lucifer said sternly. “Besides, I’ll have you know that many people enjoy my headpats. I’m quite affectionate.”

“Really now? Name one person.”

Lucifer opened his mouth to respond, but no words came out. He and MC stared each other down, one pair of eyes much more nervous than the other. Spoiler, MC was still calmly eating their treat as they maintained eye contact.

“…Cerberus.”

“If you’re reaching for Cerberus, you’ve already lost.”

…his pride was under attack. Right in front of his desert…

“You’re grounded.”

“Worth it.”

*Rides by on a Skateboard* School is for NERDS (Mammon)

Pff! Stupid human! He’s not goin’ to some lame parent teacher conference-

Wait! What’s with that face?! Ugh… fine. MC’s gone and forced his hand with those damn puppy dog eyes…

Mammon does not dress up for this event, he dresses like he would every day, maybe throw on some designer stuff to let all the parents and teachers know he’s hot shit.

If MC goes with him, he pulls up in his beloved car and takes up two parking spaces (pure evil.). Every parent present already hates him, but at least the other kids there are impressed with MC’s sweet ride. MC would have gained some street cred if Mammon hadn’t managed to trip up the stairs to the classroom in front of everyone.

He’ll act way to casual with the teacher, turning the parent chair backwards and sitting down so he can lean on the seat.

Mammon gets bored crazy quickly while the teacher lists and explains all the stuff the class is learning, so his eyes begin to wander to any and all displays in the classroom. Projects, annoying posters, class pet, anything is more interesting than this teacher’s explanation.

When MC finally becomes the main topic of the interview, he’s all ears. MC’s doing great in school academically? Ha! Nerd! Maybe giving MC a playful noogie and interrupting the whole interview wasn’t a good idea, but whatever.

If MC’s failing anything, or just isn’t that gifted when it comes to grades, it’s very much a “Aw man me too” from Mammon.

This teacher is speaking with the Great Mammon, the first demon in RAD’s history to fail three semesters in a row. If this teacher thinks bad grades will phase him, they’re dead wrong.

Grades don’t mean anythin’ about smarts anyway! I mean, look at him! He’s a fuckin’ genius but he can’t get through a history test without sobbing even though he LIVED THROUGH MOST OF IT.

MC gets treats no matter what’s up in class. Though, if MC didn’t go with him, he’s likely to forget and just order something for the two of them when he gets back home.

“Goddamn teachers and their rambling!” Mammon whined, grabbing a slice of pizza from the open box on his coffee table. “You owe me, MC! Ya really do!”

“Yeah yeah yeah.” MC said, they leaned over and rolled a pizza slice into a pizza-scroll then proceeded to eat it like a veggie roll. “How do you think I feel, listening to them every day? You know how long it takes to get to the actual class material?”

“Five years?”

“Ugh! Five years if I’m lucky! I swear, I know more about my teacher’s grievances with like… five of my classmates than I do about trigonometry, and guess which one’s on the test next week?”

Mammon winced in sympathy, then remembered he was supposed to be whining and went back to it. “School’s shit and a waste of money, ya should drop out as soon as you can and help me run my new business.”

“You mean your pyramid scheme?”

“It’s not a pyramid scheme, MC! It’s legit! It’s a multi-tiered marketing-”

“It’s a pyramid scheme.”

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA SOCIAL INTERACTION (Leviathan)

Everyone else must have been sick or something for MC to have asked Levi. He’d flat out refuse to go otherwise.

So, Levi couldn’t exactly go to the interview in his usual “I haven’t left my room or changed clothes in eight weeks” look. With the help of MC, he was able to find his military uniform at the back of his closet.

Asmo nearly fainted when he saw Levi in the uniform, not because “oooo, a man in uniform~”, it was because the outfit was so crumpled and wrinkled that it made it physically painful to look at. No time to iron and wash, the conference was in an hour!

Levi (and MC if they went with) rolled up to the school in a less than impressive ride, but one look at the uniform and all the other people present went “yep, time to be respectful (tm)”

For the first time in his life Levi was more intimidating than Lucifer! And he wasn’t even trying!

When the teacher starts explaining the course material, Levi spaces off in horror as he realizes he remembers literally nothing from school (AND HE’S STILL IN SCHOOL!) all that’s running through his head is “A squared + B squared = C squared” and “the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell”.

The actual interview was the least interesting part of the trip, the real stuff happened when Levi passed by some art on display in the hallway and something caught his eye-

Those colours… that hair… that adorable smile..!

IT WAS HER! LEVI’S PRECIOUS RURI-CHAN IN ALL HER GLORY!

Levi immediately started fawning over the art class fanart and by sheer coincidence, one of the kids walking through the hallway happened to notice.

The kid asked MC if their… parent and or guardian liked anime. MC responded with “obviously.” Levi then asked the kid if they drew his adorable Ruri-chan. The kid said no, and that they drew the My Hero Academia fanart a few rows down.

Levi was absolutely floored that there were two anime fans in one class, then his entire world shattered when MC explained there was more anime art inside the art room and other classrooms.

H-hang on… did that mean that… a lot of people here… liked anime..?

Levi needed a while to process. No snacks on the way home…

Levi and MC were sat in the back of their Uber, Levi, the Avatar of Envy himself, was having his entire sense of reality warped. S-so much anime fanart… in a school of all places..! What did this mean for the future of anime?!

“Levi. Stop.” MC sighed. “If this were an anime, the camera angle would be doing that thing where it’s right on the bridge of your nose and dramatic music plays in the background.”

“S-so many kids in your class like a-anime huh..?” Levi stuttered, weakly trying to smile. “Must be nice..?”

“Oh, that’s just my class. The other classes and grades have their fans too.”

“Oh… really?”

“Levi,” MC stopped looking out the window and looked at the otaku that was having a full scale silent mental breakdown. “Anime isn’t even a niche interest anymore. It’s a pretty casual thing to watch now. At least a third of my class watches- Levi?”

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGHHHHH! ANIME! A THIRD OF THE CLASS?! ANIME… HIS PRECIOUS ANIME… WAS BECOMING A NORMIE INTEREST! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-

“Levi?” MC waved their hand in front of their spaced out demon’s face. “Leviiiii? Okay he’s dead.”

The Know it All (Satan)

Ah, a smart choice, MC. Satan would be glad to help further their education. He’ll do everything in his power to make sure that the human’s brain is fed all that sweet sweet knowledge.

Satan can’t dress himself normally, MC had to coax him into a suit jacket, but he still only wore one sleeve.

MC was coming along to the interviews whether they wanted to or not, it’s important to hear what they need to improve on from the teacher themselves after all.

The two arrived pretty early, so Satan asked MC for a tour of the school. It was pretty tame until they reached the library. Satan was horrified at the state of some of the books…

Their spines lined with duct tape… pages missing and torn… someone apparently used a taco as a book mark…

The first thing Satan does when it’s time for his interview is demand the teacher take better care of the library, even though they’re not the librarian. MC tries to explain this, but Satan is too distraught to listen to reason.

He enjoyed hearing about the course material, but he made it known if MC thinks the assignments are too easy that they need to be given more challenging work. THEIR BRAIN NEEDS TO BE STIMULATED DAMN IT.

It was up to MC to either agree with Satan and nod to the teacher, or make frantic eye contact with them to try and communicate “NO DON’T PLEASE”.

Similar to (ugh) Lucifer, as long as MC is doing their best, he’s happy for them.

…but if they are in any way in the running for valedictorian he is HELPING THEM WIN.

He decided to stop at a cafe or bookstore to let MC pick out a “congrats on surviving your pitiful school” present after the interviews.

MC gleefully perused the shelves of the bookstore, there were so many books too look at…

“I’ll buy you as many books as you’d like, MC, just,” Satan shuddered slightly. “Promise me you won’t treat them like those poor library books…”

MC put their hand over their heart. “I swear on the duct taped book spines that I will never treat a book like that.”

“Good… good…” Satan breathed a sigh of relief and went back to looking at his book about cats.

“Are you… reading a Warrior Cats book..?” MC asked tentatively.

“Yes, why?”

“Satan, put that back.”

“I Will Seduce the Teacher For the Sake of Your Grades, Don’t Worry.” (Asmodeus)

Oh MC dear! He’d be delighted to go! Just let him get ready~

Asmo may not be the best choice, but he was at least going to be the best dressed person at that conference. (And MC just had to come too so all the other parents could be jealous of how well coordinated their outfits are)

He teased MC a little by saying he was going to flirt with their teacher to make sure they passed the class, but he was just kidding! …but he made sure to ask if their teacher was cute, he needed to know!

While waiting for his turn, Asmo flirts with some of the single parents, if he doesn’t see a wedding ring, they’re fair game.

Once his time slot arrived, MC realized that Asmo is one of those “my child has done and will do nothing wrong ever” types. This may have ended up working in MC’s favour if they were a class nuisance.

If MC is doing very well in sports, clubs, grades, anything, Asmo is fawning over them and gushing to the teacher about how great, smart and adorable they are.

Asmo surprisingly does not exactly flirt with the teacher, he was just teasing MC after all. But um… if MC’s teacher just happens to be cute and young, he may turn up the charm, just a little. Enough to make the teacher giggle and make MC cover their face in embarrassment.

After the interviews Asmo will probably schedule a nice day out for the two of them, shopping, a movie, mani pedis, something fun!

The real weird stuff happens in the months after the interviews… if Asmo did lightly flirt with the teacher, MC gets quite a few questions about their guardian. Questions that ask if Asmo is single in not as many words…

Oh lord, MC’s teacher developed a crush on Asmo.

Nail painting night was supposed to be a fun occasion, but MC was hopping mad and embarrassed. Asmo didn’t seem to notice as he continued to paint the little human’s nails.

“And then I told Phenex to get lost. The nerve of that little monster, right MC?” When MC didn’t reply, Asmo looked up and tilted his head. “MC?”

MC’s angry face would have been much more threatening if they weren’t just so adorable, but it was getting the message across.

“MC..?”

“Asmo.” MC’s glare deepened. “My teacher wants to know if you’re single.”

Asmo blinked a few times, before he hit his tongue to keep from laughing. “Really now~. I knew they’d be madly in love with me-”

“WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIIIIIIIIIIIS?!”

Oh My Demon King is That a BAKE SALE?! (Beel)

Of course Beel said yes! He’d gladly go to MC’s parent teacher interview!

He even put on a nice outfit :D he ended up looking a bit like a secret serviceman guarding MC, the tiny president.

Beel stopped for McDonald’s on the way there, all the other kids were so jealous of MC when they stepped out of the car eating fries.

But a little something something caught Beel’s eye when he and MC walked into the school… was that a… bake sale?

MC quickly explained that the bake sale was fundraiser for their class trip that year and the snacks weren’t complimentary. He had to pay.

And pay Beel did. He cleared out the entire table. MC’s grade’s overnight trip was going to be decadent as hell. That was no longer a crowd funded thing, that trip was privately funded by a tall buff ginger secret service member and this tiny in comparison child.

Kids are incredibly blunt, just like Beel, so when a random kindergarten kid wandered over, looked up at Beel, and very knowingly said “you’re very tall”. Beel was like “yeah”. The kid then said “what’s it like being that tall?”

Beel’s response to this kid’s question was to pick them up and hold them for a few seconds before placing them back down. For just a few moments this kid knew what it like to be over 6’4. Of course, more kids swarmed in and asked to be picked up.

Sure it was cute, but Beel now has an army of kids ranging from kindergarteners to third graders.

Finally, the conference actually began. Beel snacked the entire time and dutifully listened to everything the teacher had to say.

After the interviews are over, he checks with MC to make sure everything the teacher said was true and that they weren’t lying. If all was well, the two made their exit.

They stopped at Wendy’s on the way home.

“I’m so full…” MC groaned, Beel held up a massive cookie.

“So I can eat this?”

“No. Gimme that.” MC took a very defeated bite out of it. “My stomach says no but my mouth says yes…”

“I don’t want you to get a stomachache, MC,” Beel said worriedly. “No more snacks.”

“It’s a little late for that. It’s past nine and I’m still eating, there’s no way I’m getting to sleep at a reasonable hour.”

“Oh…” Beel mumbled. “I may have not completely thought this through.”

“*Snore* Huh? Wha? MC’s Grades? Uh… Fuck…” (Belphie)

MC must be failing a class or something because why on earth would they pick Belphie otherwise.

They ask him to go while he’s delirious from just waking up from a nap, he sort of half nods and mumbles some gibberish before going back to sleep.

MC had to basically carry his ass to the school. Belphie drooled all over them in the waiting room, and when it was their time to go into the interview, Belphie had to be manually put into the chair and slapped awake.

He barely listens, he just sits and nods along with whatever the teacher is saying. The teacher could say MC brought an alligator to school and he’d just go “uh huh…” “mmmph… yep…” “really now?” then yawn.

The only thing that could possibly get Belphie to be interested is if MC is studying space. If they are, than boy howdy is Belphie suddenly interested in their education.

Other than that? *snore*

If MC is in fact failing or doing poorly, MC’s teacher asks to see another one of MC’s guardians at a later date. Their plan failed miserably.

MC drags Belphie out of the school and yells at him for not helping them. Belphie, still sleep delirious, tries to press the snooze button. MC does not have a snooze button.

“Belphie!” MC shouted, shaking the Avatar of Sloth awake. The House of Lamentation’s resident bastard was somehow sleeping standing up outside. “HOW COULD YOU?!”

“Eh?” Belphie half-snorted and looked around confused. “What’d I do? Where are we?”

“At my school! You said that you’d go to my parent teacher interviews!”

“…MC I don’t think I’d pass well for you.”

“YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO GO AS MY GUARDIAN!”

“Sheesh,” Belphie murmured while he rubbed the remaining sleep from his eyes. “You humans are so noisy.”

MC looked up at their dearest demon friend, and gave him their best glare. “I’m going to take all your fancy temperature changing pillows and switch them with normal pillows you traitorous bastard.”

[copperbadge]

Calling Museum Staff

So, this started out as a joke that isn’t even on @letsgostealthelouvre yet because it’s still in the queue, but now I have genuine concerns stemming from being a) a professional data nerd and b) an amateur museum nerd. Thus I have a story to tell and a question to ask of anyone in my readership who might work in museum catalogue-keeping or museum-specific website design. Or, you know, if you work at the Louvre, that would also be helpful. 

I am reading through the Louvre’s entire online collection, chronologically. Starting around page 200 or so, when I should have been in 1800 BCE, I noticed a sculpture that was definitely not from 1800 BCE. It was in fact from the 18th century and had been partially miscatalogued (one of the dates was “-1800 to -1700″, the other one clearly said “18th century”).

It seemed evident that someone had either selected the wrong tickey box or started typing and hit enter on the autocomplete too soon when they were building the record, but this kind of thing happens and I just threw it in the queue with a “lol” and let it slide. 

Here’s the thing, though. As we started to get into the area of 1500 BCE, it started happening a lot. Fully half of page 300 (so, about 3000 records in) is 16th century decorative chinaware, and it keeps going like that for another page or two. And I don’t care if it’s miscatalogued on the website because the website isn’t where scholars of art are going to go to do their actual publishable research, at least generally, but I’m worried that this dating error extends to the museum’s actual catalogue, which means that if you were to search for “hideous china from 1501 to 1601″ in museum records, this stuff might not come up.

It might not seem that serious but in academic terms it can be a real issue if stuff isn’t dated right and therefore isn’t findable. But the Louvre is in France and the website is in French and I don’t know if I should like...locate someone there who speaks English (probably not that hard) and bring this to their attention, or if they’d just think I’m some weird American, or what. I wouldn’t even know who to talk to -- Communications offices generally run museum websites in America, but I don’t know if the same is true in Europe, and would they have anything at all to do with the catalogue beyond getting it loaded into the website? 

I can’t believe I’m actively fretting about a museum’s online catalogue, and I don’t want to get some poor probably-intern who misdated this stuff in trouble, but it gnaws at me. 

[destroyscythe-heck]

No. The top level of the organization who were fandom friends back in the livejournal days and they are absolutely terrified of anybody who wants to change anything about the culture to be different from the livejournal days. They’re still trying to run a nonprofit like it is a livejournal page and the only difference they think there is between those two things is having to have to file a few more documents with the government. Nothing has changed about most of the higher ups attitudes towards how to behave in positions of leadership since their days as BNFs. They have cultivated an environment with such levels of fangirl squee flavored toxic positivity, then placed themselves as the champions of all transformative fandom, and finally ended up buying in to their own hype so much that they will attack and try to silence and even bully anybody who goes against the grain and points out that “Hey there are actual problems here and we might need to talk to somebody who is not involved in this one specific clique of nerds that has known each other for over 20 years” to the degree that they will end up ostracizing the person who raised the concern out of the organization. Then the board will continue to speak ill of them to their remaining followers to keep them in line in case anybody else decides to commit the unforgivable crime of “hashing the vibe” again.

Do not volunteer to be on their moderating team.

Do not do that.

Until there has been a radical restructuring of the board and legal team of the OTW, including implementation of a code of conduct for board member behavior and the behavior of the other team leaders of the OTW, and possibly even a complete removal of board members who have contributed to the toxic environment at the organization, do not volunteer your time until there has been a change in the fundamental power structure. The current leaders will not see your attempts at giving them your labor as something different and valuable. You will just be seen as more disposable volunteers for the meat grinder of their internal culture. They will chew you up and spit you back out and continue to do so for the rest of the existence of the organization. You are signing up to be cannon fodder for them.

Honestly I’m surprised that after basically the past decade of just going through the cycles of like living through politics that people who still have such a naive view of how to hold people in power accountable even exist. STAND UP TO THEM! HAVE A SPINE! You have some worth as a human being and hold them accountable, and don’t just walk into their abusive system thinking that you can just try to change it from the inside. Sure it’s not like we are trying to have like a legit revolution and the people on the board are just a bunch of Joe-schmoes to the rest of the world and some of them have law degrees, but they have been proven to be incredibly toxic and incompetent people who also have absolutely no idea how to run a nonprofit so large in a professional manner. Considering the actions that some of the notable board members and members of the legal team have done in their pasts in their involvement in fandom I am shocked that anybody would still trust these people to be able to run any community beyond a petty cult of personality.

Decades of high school mean girl behavior coming from people well into their careers.

I don’t know what was going on in the old community but you did say that the scale was much smaller. So treat this as a different larger scale problem instead of using how you fixed that previous place as a one size fits all solution. They seem to be terrified of having anybody outside of fandom look at how they are making the sausage, even if the outsiders come wanting to provide help with a problem they are having, and heaven forbid that outsider wants to make any suggestions to how they can change for the better. I appreciate the spirit of wanting reform and change, I like your moxie. However with the current leadership any attempt at change will be met with more of the same old same old hostility form them. We need to be honest about the abuses. We need them to know that they can’t keep getting away with how they have behaved since they founded the organization. We need to do heavy restructuring of the power structure and change the culture of the organization to be one where you can speak up on problems without being bullied out of the organization. We need leadership who can be held accountable to their own volunteers.

All of the talk of what to do as a potential volunteer can be saved for after the power structure has changed. This is how you hold abusive organizations accountable.

also, hot take, but speaking as someone who has volunteered to work on big projects tackling difficult issues out of community love in the past, I am just. is the otw probably a really toxic place to volunteer and work right now? Sure is, probably! Is public pressure that doesn't come with an influx of new people volunteering to do the messy work of figuring out what a better policy is, how to create anti harassment safeguards, and otherwise fixing the problem actually useful? Fuck no it is definitely not!

like I will be 1000% honest, I have in fact been asked personally to volunteer to help a community transition on a much smaller scale to fix problems of this magnitude to encourage a much smaller scale organization to work and perform a community service. and I took that job with a strong sense of "ye gods this is going to suck and I'm going to piss people off by doing things wildly imperfectly, but if I don't help provide my work it might not get done because this is fucking hard and no one is paying."

and I did it and I stopped as quickly as humanly possible. now that shit is someone else's volunteer problem and I'm delighted, because let us be real I'm a disabled middle aged lady with a day job and I don't have full time professional effort to dedicate to stuff I do in my spare time for free. that's one of the fun things about disability actually, it constricts the total store of focused labor hours available to me to put in, especially on landmine topics like extending the scope of my archiving projects to create a farsighted anti harassment policy that can't be weaponized.

so like. the work needs doing. anything anyone does is going to be imperfect and problematic and bad, because it is being done on an almost purely volunteer basis by people who are for whatever reason willing to donate high level professional skills and labor for free and don't need to do stuff for actual money and support instead. like sure the budget is enormous for servers but none of that goes to labor.

Outrage is going to do jack shit unless people volunteer to roll up their sleeves and start doing the work to donate a better policy, or better management. This shit is fucking difficult, exhausting, and impossible to do without pissing people off. I am damn sure not getting involved right now, and that's why I have not been commenting. Public pressure is not going to do jack shit if it didn't come with support.

If this is an issue that is important to you, you have to back up your outrage with resources. Since the AO3 does not exchange money for labor, that means showing up to offer to help build something different. as I said, I am a middle aged disabled lady who finds fandom and archive repositories to be important and helpful and I don't have any labor left to donate, so I have been reserving comment on complaint. If this is a thing that matters to you, congratulations! Public pressure is only useful insofar as it can be used to make the org let you help. It's up to you to actually help.

[hyenahunt]

Bogie Time: Siege upon the Sacred Citadel - 1

Writer: Akira

Season: Summer

Characters: Hiyori, Jun

Proofreading: Sei + royalquintet (JP) & Skyress (ENG)

Translation: hyenahunt

Hiyori: If I'm going to die anyway, I'd want to go out with a bang, à la Marie Antoinette.

Location: Inside ES Elevator

[Time turns back — one week ago]

Hiyori: — Bogie Time?

I feel like I've heard of that before from somewhere! What was it again? Alrighty, Jun-kun, explain!

Jun: Couldja kindly not leave every single troublesome thing to me, Ohiisan?

Hiyori: I'm simply offering you the spotlight out of concern, considering how you just regress to your gruff and silent self whenever left to your own devices!

Come now, bask to your heart's content in the light I've granted you!

Jun: What a pain.... It's more like I won't stand out one bit whenever you're around no matter how much I try to express myself, y'know~?

Well, whatever. Bogie Time was that thing, right? That variety show that aired ages back~

The one where fresh faces to the idol world would play against each other in a range of challenges.

Stuff like running races, answering quizzes, and eating sour things...

They'd do a bunch of minigames like that, and whoever earned the most points at the end would be the winner~ or something like that.

The winners would get extravagant prizes, and the losers would have to play a punishment game.

Hiyori: Extravagant prizes? Did anyone win a castle?

Jun: Even if someone did suddenly win something like that, anyone who isn't a rich boy like you would go bankrupt from the property tax alone...

I think the prizes would get decided by spinning a roulette, but the best one was something like a huge TV?

Hiyori: Was it, now? That's not nearly as fancy as you made it out to be, is it?

Jun: More like that's just how old the show is, yeah? It was from a period when even a prize like that was too much for common folks to afford~

From a generation older than folks like my shitty old man and Jin Sagami, really.

Hiyori: So in other words, around the time Hidaka-sensei made his debut?

I can't really imagine someone like that eating sour food and running around like a headless chicken, all for the sake of a big TV, though?

Jun: Really? That guy's a complete professional, so he'd play his part perfectly no matter what's being asked of him, right?

Though when you're at a level like his, your agency would probably bar you from taking on such crude work.

Hiyori: Crude?

Jun: Yeah. Bogie Time was famous for how ruthless its punishment games could be.

They were all stuff like getting guys to crossdress and flirt with randos, and they'd have to keep it up 'til five people fell for it.. or something like that.

Hiyori: Eww. If that was done in today's times, I imagine there'd be so many issues that it wouldn't even make it on air.

Having to pull crude acts just to stand out... It really is a program from such olden days, isn't it?

Jun: Yeah. At its core, I feel like it was basically a show meant to showcase newcomers yet to make a name for themselves, y'know~?

After all, folks like Jin Sagami or Hidaka-sensei would've been able to make it as top idols without needing a buff like that...

It seems like it's unexpectedly unknown territory for everyone involved with us.

Hiyori: Buff? You've been using nerdy language like that recently, haven't you? We as Eden have a dignified and refined image to sell, so that isn't the most appropriate, don't you think?

Jun: It's 'cause lately I've been spending my free time in the dorms gaming with Yuuki-san, y'see~

And for that matter, what's wrong with being nerdy? To the public, idols are a subset of nerd culture too, y'know.

Hiyori: Mm~. It does feel like ever since God passed on, the industry's been ever declining towards such a state.

I doubt individuals such as Ibara and Eichi-kun would ever sit back and allow it to become a mere subculture, though.

"Idols shall be elevated to the very pinnacle of culture", or so they say, yes?

It seems there are those still reckless enough to inherit the dreams not even God could fulfill, and make it their mission to see them through.

As for me, as much as I'd love to see my agency and industry become the crowning glory of the world...

It does make me wonder if that which even a god failed to do could ever be achievable by human hands, you see?

Jun: Ahh... I'm finally catching up with what you mean. By God, you mean that guy, right? That "Godfather" dude the two from Adam have some connection to, or something?

Hiyori: Precisely, I'm talking about the man known as "Godfather".

Just the other day, a person named GFK who had inherited a portion of his power was punished by someone.

Jun: Someone, you say.... Is there any point to hiding things like that between us~? GFK this and something that... Keep being secretive like that and I won't have a clue what you're talking about.

Hiyori: Well, think of it as a little game and it'll serve as a nice mental workout for you, yes?

In any case — the various things that that GFK person had been hoarding have now been let loose left and right, it seems.

They had a whole range of things, be it land or assets... It seems there's a rumour that even the 'antique market of mysteries' opening up at the end of the month is a collection of their various treasures.

Jun: Sure sounds like something no one uninvolved would have any idea about, but that seems to be the case with anything Double Face or whatsit gets involved in.

Hiyori: The two of them indeed resemble some form of secret police, attempting to get to the bottom of anything that can't be made public.

Since we would certainly rather not be done away with behind closed doors, let's keep an eye on them as much as we can.

If I'm going to die anyway, I'd want to go out with a bang, à la Marie Antoinette.

Jun: That example feels so real I can't even laugh at it, y'know~?

Hiyori: Heheh. Just to be clear, the role I played was on the other side of the revolution, of course.

But I do digress. In any case, one thing that came out of GFK's released inheritance was a considerable number of TV programs, it seems.

One key example would be Marble Cast, a music program recently taken over and revived by Anzu-chan.

It's shows like those, thoroughly gutted and reduced to shambles by that incompetent, unmotivated GFK, that the four big agencies are now collecting and dividing up amongst themselves

Jun: Haha. They're just like a bunch of vultures swarming over a carcass, aren't they?

Hiyori: Indeed, and I hear that Bogie Time is one of those dead programs. So it's a variety show, hmm?

I did feel that something like that would be more of our brand as Eve, as we're the ones usually out there putting on a show.

So it comes as an utter surprise to me that this time we'll be participating in this alongside Adam, or namely all together as Eden.

Jun: Yeah. The Adam guys usually prefer going the route of authentic artistry, the kind most professionals go for.

Our usual policy is to take on the jobs we specialise in, after all.

Hiyori: You could say that's Ibara's policy, really. With Eve as the light and Adam as darkness — by combining the two, we become the unparalleled chiaroscuro combo that is Eden.

But lately, ES as a whole has been attempting to expand its scope across various different genres.

So it's a given that even Adam wouldn't be content to remain confined to the darkness, isn't it?

Jun: Who knows... That's something you gotta ask the two of 'em to find out.

Judging by the text we got over HoldHands, it kinda feels like even Ibara was totally caught off guard, huh?

Hiyori: True, his message was oddly riddled with typos. It was even worse than that time in Conquest.

Speaking of which, there's a chance this whole situation could be even worse than that... Oh, what a pain. I want to live my life doing only the most enjoyable things, and yet...!

✦✦✦✦✦

← prev ✦ all ✦ next →

[ursie]

Do you have any hcs for any jobs for Nico? I’m trying to write a future fic

Literally sm thoughts unironically I keep on changing my mind :

Community service-running something like a food kitchen/shelter/orphanage/or maybe a community center with Hestias blessing like I think that would be very nice especially with his narrative and background. Bit much I recognize that but man do I see it 😭

Volunteer work -misc but especially with animals and the homeless

He just runs the Hades record label?? I forget what it was exactly I have to reread tlt but yeah there’s literally just a job waiting for him in la. Otherwise I think it would be cute if Hazel worked for the label whilst Nico wrote her songs and music.

2 am Radio personality

None because he has sm actual political positions in the godly world like?? Man already has a full time job

Professional dog trainer? Breeder? I think it would be funny like man is just good with dogs

Runs a lil antique store with a little section for his cartography and a section for antique books like..

Librarian

Hyper specific career like Calligrapher/cartographer/book repairs/etc

Museum guard but really he just steals things back and replaces them w replicas and also vibes w the dinosaurs and skeletons

Traveling writer-maybe for a food or culture magazine? Maybe he does photography? Idk

He actually writes the “Percy Jackson books” in world hence the unreliable narrator and retcons as he just wasn’t there half the time

Public elementary school teacher ideally music or like. 1st grade

Specific Artist like a poet or sculptor

Owns a club everyone frequents called some pun like idk the Raveyard

Trophy husband/Pinterest mom/pta queen

Got drafted into a band w Rachel over a bet and against his best efforts they’re popular

Model for Drew maybe??

Makeup artist (special effects)

Stage Actor/singer

Literally runs a larping thing. Professional smith. Teaches sword fighting at a renaissance fair. Professional nerd

Creative director of mythomagic

Professional gamer (mythomagic for starters)

Just like. Works in a morgue because there’s no visitors and he can get some of his paperwork done. Multitasking

Owns a themed restaurant either a kids one based on his ghost king/labyrinth persona, an adults one with like only really gothic food and decor, or a family around the world cuisine one

Cryptid

[tennessoui]

Idk if you are still doing this. But 18 and 40?

i think you're my last one !!!

(all you need to know for this is that on monday i went to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and today i went to the Smithsonian museum of natural history)

18. Someone’s birthday + 40. “It’s just hard for me to forgive you after everything that’s happened.”

"You said you'd be polite," Padmé murmurs just loud enough for Anakin to hear. "Civil. I think your actual words were, 'Yeah of course, Padmé, I won't even look in his direction!'"

"This me being polite," her friend mumbles from next to her, scuffing the toe of his shoe against the lineloium of the floor.

"You glared at him so hard the second he came in that he didn't even approach me," Padmé points out, exasperated. "I'm the birthday girl! He came to see me!"

"You see each other all the time," Anakin defends gruffly, crossing his arms. "You work in the same building. Look even your exhibits are next to each other."

He gestures with a hand to the doors on the other side of the lobby. One reads Hall of Fossils--Deep Time. The other, straight ahead, reads Ocean Hall.

"First of all, you do know we don't actually work in those exhibits, right?" Padmé checks. "And second of all, with the new funding the Deep Ocean Exploration team has just gotten--"

Anakin cuts her off with an angry huff of derision. She hides her smile behind her glass of champagne as she takes a sip.

"Don't even get me started on that, Padmé. I don't understand at all how they chose deep ocean exploration over my team's proposal! I don't think I'll ever forgive him after everything that's happened now! You know we needed that funding! Our satellite designs are flawless! NASA approved, even! We could be out there now, exploring the galaxies! But Obi-Wan Kenobi says a few words about the fucking ocean and suddenly half the nation is putting on flippers and oxygen tanks?"

Padmé has to bite her lip to control her urge to burst out laughing at the angry, petulant expression on Anakin's face.

"I bet he slept with someone," Anakin mutters mutinously as Padme watches him watch Obi-Wan Kenobi move across the room, talking with party-guests and waitstaff interchangeably. The man, in an appropriately tailored and casual suit, throws his head back when he laughs at something someone says to him, and he pats her on the arm. Anakin's jaw flexes.

"I think it's quite telling that you think he's attractive enough to sleep his way into millions of dollars," she says, taking a sip of her champagne. "I can't think of a single fuck in my entire life worth that much money."

Anakin splutters and his face turns red. "That's not what I--" he gets out.

But Padmé has had enough of both of them pretending that they don't think the sun revolves around the other. As much as Anakin hasn't taken his eyes off of Obi-Wan since the man walked in, Obi-Wan has been shooting just as many surreptitious glances at Anakin when he thinks the blond-haired man is looking somewhere else.

It's been years of this. Two years exactly, actually, of Padmé in the middle of two men who are at each other's teeth professionally but can't seem to stay away from each other in their private lives. She's lost track of the amount of times the two of them have broken into deafening arguments over lunch or dinner or drinks because "We should be spending more resources on exploring space!" "Only 5% of the ocean has been explored!" "I can tell you what's down there! Fish!" "And I can tell you what's in space! Rocks!"

Padmé is, quite frankly, sick of it now. She'd like her life much more if her two friends could decide what exactly they wanted from each other. But no, they argue and hate each other when they're together, but she'll post a photo to her Instagram of her and Obi-Wan and a new intern, and Anakin will be texting her not even five minutes later, asking who that guy is and why he's holding Obi-Wan's waist in the photo. Or Anakin will publicly and loudly declare his intention to get back into the dating scene, and Padmé will spend the next two or so weeks fielding questions from Obi-Wan about if Anakin's found any space nerds to date, how those days may be going, if anyone's come back for seconds....

"You didn't let me finish," Padmé says quickly, when she catches Obi-Wan's eye and smiles at him, certain that this will get him to come over. "I was saying that with the new funding, Obi-Wan might not be working at the museum anymore."

Anakin freezes beside her. "What?" he breathes out.

"There's an open position in a research facility in Hawai'i. He's been tapped for it. I don't know really if he plans to accept yet..." she says leadingly, but it's pretty clear pretty quickly that Anakin isn't listening anymore.

"He never told me that," he says in a very small voice.

He sounds so unsure, hurt, that Padmé almost regrets what she's about to say. "Why would he?" she asks anyway. "You were just saying how you would never forgive him for winning the funding. This just be perfect for you. He leaves, you never have to see him again."

Anakin's eyebrows furrow and he looks confused. Hurt. Angry. The perfect expression for Obi-Wan's arrival in front of the pair of them.

"Padmé!" Obi-Wan smiles as he leans in and kisses her cheek. "Happy birthday! Amazing celebration, I cannot believe they allowed you to host it in the museum itself."

"Well, you only turn 35 once," she smiles at him.

Obi-Wan nods seriously with a teasing grin on his face. "Now you're old enough to run for president and everything."

She laughs. "Me? A head for politics? I'm not sure. But," she says slyly when it's very clear Anakin isn't going to say anything himself, too busy staring at the side of Obi-Wan's face with an intense, creepy sort of glare. "If anyone I know does, I think it'd be you. Ani and I were just talking about how they granted funding to your proposal the other day. Congratulations!"

"Thank you, thank you," Obi-Wan says graciously, but his smile has become fixed and his eyes dart over to Anakin.

Anakin, who decides to take this moment to figure out how to speak again. "When do you leave?" he asks in an angry, harsh tone. Padmé sighs to herself. She should have known a surprised and hurt Anakin turns to fury before he turns to acceptance, especially where Obi-Wan Kenobi is concerned.

"Pardon?" Obi-Wan asks politely, turning his body to face only Anakin. Padmé tries not to sigh again. She should be used to this, the way their eyesight narrows to only each other.

But on her birthday, really?

Anakin's jaw flexes as he gnashes his teeth together. There's nothing Ani hates more in the world than someone acting as if his question is a silly question.

That's not what Obi-Wan's doing of course, but Obi-Wan's done it enough in the past to rile Anakin up that Padmé can understand the confusion the astrophysicist is going through.

"To Hawai'i. Padmé said all your water money is gonna get you a fancy new position on the West Coast. Just wanted to know when you're going to go."

Padmé has half a mind to tell Obi-Wan that that is not, actually what she said, but Obi-Wan looks as if he wouldn't even realize she's spoken if she tried.

"Would you miss me?" the oceanologist murmurs, stepping closer to Anakin. "Were I to leave, would you miss me, Anakin?"

Anakin looks like a deer in the headlights for a second, before his face shuts down. "I wanna write it on my calendar, celebrate the day."

Obi-Wan's face flashes with something that leaves his eyes colder than before, and he steps back. Away. Padmé winces and tries to take a sip from her champagne glass before realizing it's empty.

"Well, that certainly makes things easier," he tells Anakin shortly before turning his full attention back to Padmé. "I meant to come over and say goodbye. It's a bit of walk home, and I have an early day tomorrow."

"But you just got here," Anakin sounds confused, as if he'd expected to keep Obi-Wan's attention for much longer.

Obi-Wan summarily ignores him and leans into kiss Padmé's cheek again. "Happy birthday again, Padmé," he tells her gripping her hand in both of his for a second before dropping it and turning back into the crowd.

"What was that?" Anakin says gruffly, crossing his arms. "Why'd he kiss you? He's leaving so early! And ignoring me! What?"

Padmé shakes her head and puts her hand on his arm. It looks like she's going to have to spell a few things out to her silly astrophysicist. "That was you fucking up," she says slowly.

Anakin scoffs. "What? No. We say that shit all the time to each other."

"Anakin, listen to me," she waits until his eyes are on hers and not trying to catch Obi-Wan's receding figure. "Today at lunch, he told me he hadn't decided if he was going to take the position yet. But I think he just did."

Anakin blinks at her. Men are stupid. These men especially.

"If you want him to stay, you have to tell him."

"Tell him--I...why do I--don't be ridiculous--"

"Anakin, I've known Obi-Wan for four years. The only thing he talked about the first two was the ocean. For the last two, it's been the ocean and you."

Anakin stares at her and then stares at the people around them. Padmé knows he's trying to find Obi-Wan in the crowd. "But...he's leaving."

"But he came here wearing a coat," she points out, giving him a little push towards the unmanned coat room.

"I--right," Anakin mumbles to himself.

Feeling like the best friend in the whole world, Padmé takes his champagne flute from him and pushes him harder forward. "Go get him, Ani," she encourages, but she gets the feeling Anakin isn't even listening to her anymore as he moves across the lobby to the coat room.

She watches just long enough to see Obi-Wan emerge from the room wearing his tan coat and Anakin pushing him furiously back inside. The door closes behind them, and Padmé hopes it comes with a lock.

But if it doesn't, that's their problem. She's done enough for one night.