#I'm too tired and there's no point posting this tomorrow morning so

[urlocallesbiab]

sorry to everyone who's been missing me/waiting for something from me, i've been slipping in and out of depressive fog for a week or two (and in general have experienced significantly worse depression than normal for a couple years, but that’s another story)

i long to get back, too; a lot of things to read and ideas to write and people to talk to. love y'all, take care

[kozylife]

—  MILES APART, HEARTS TOGETHER

quinn hughes x reader | wc 1105

summary. quinn tells you that he hasn't been sleeping lately after reuniting with you content. fluff, slight angst, reader's in college, lowercase intended author's note. this was very lazily proofread

long distance was hard.

very hard.

especially when your boyfriend was captain of his hockey team based in vancouver while you finished up college in michigan. in total, you and quinn were almost 2000 miles and a different time zone apart.

but since you had an upcoming free weekend, you were able to fly to vancouver to surprise him!

luckily, this friday night, quinn arrived home at a normal hour and you two were able to facetime before you were eventually too tired to stay awake.

"hi baby," you greet him before asking how practice went.

"it was really good, i feel great about our game tomorrow," he says as he repositions his phone, already laying in bed shirtless.

you hum, staring at your phone screen with adoration. his hair is tousled and he's smiling at the jokes you've made after asking about how your day went.

"it's been so long since i've seen you..." quinn almost whispers.

and as much as you wanted to reveal your surprise, you kept your response simple, "i know quinny, i miss you so much."

afterwards, he tells you how much he loves you with nothing but sincerity, warmth, and hints of exhaustion in his voice. you knew he was excited to be captain of his team, but there was a great deal of responsibility and stress that came with it, even after his first season in charge had passed.

you two converse a bit more, catching up since you've both been busy with school and hockey over the past few weeks. and as you glance up at the time on your phone, you notice it's midnight and that you need to go to bed for your early morning flight. after exchanging "goodnights" and "i love you's," you hung up the call.

-

it’s now the next evening and you’re getting seated in the family area of the ice rink, settling in with some of the other wags and their children. you made sure to sit in the front row so quinn would actually be able to notice you. unable to stop fidgeting, excitement bubbled in your chest as you saw your quinn skate out onto the rink to warm up. you watched him glide effortlessly over the ice, his gaze intense.

"so how's your time back in vancouver?" one wife asks you, happy to see you again.

"oh it's great! quinn doesn't know i'm here yet, i wanted to surprise him since we haven't seen each other in a while," you say, unable to stop grinning.

as the game commenced, your heart raced every time quinn touched the puck. the energy in the rink was infectious, and you found yourself caught up in all of the excitement, especially since quinn hadn't spotted you yet.

however, this changed when a break was called and both teams made their way to their respective benches. as quinn sat down and scanned the rink, your eyes met and his face instantly lit up with a wide grin and a sparkle in his big green eyes. his teammates poked him, asking what he was cheesing so hard at before he pointed towards you, wearing his jersey proudly.

the game continued, and you cheered louder than you were before, watching quinn assist a goal.

the final buzzer sounded, signifying a victory for the canucks. you felt a rush of exhilaration shoot through your body and you couldn't wait to finally get your hands on him.

when quinn stepped off the ice, he looked around, searching for you in the crowd. when he spotted you, he broke into a wide smile, and you waved frantically, immensely proud of your boyfriend.

“hang tight! i’ll be right there!” he shouted, his excitement palpable.

you could hardly contain your own as you waited, heart racing at the thought of wrapping your arms around him again. the distance had been tough, but moments like this made it all worthwhile.

-

after the post-game celebrations and interviews, quinn drove you two back to his place with his hand comfortably resting on your thigh, squeezing every now and then. entering the apartment, you took your shoes and jacket off, ready to finally rest after a long day of mostly traveling.

“can we talk?” quinn asked behind you, his voice low.

“of course,” you replied, sensing the shift in his demeanor.

you both settled on the couch, and the excitement from earlier faded into an intimate silence. quinn ran a hand through his hair, a habit you recognized when he was feeling overwhelmed. “i haven't been sleeping well,” he began, his eyes meeting yours with a weight that made your heart skip a couple of beats. “between the games, the practices, and all the pressure… it’s been a lot. i thought i could handle it, but it’s just… hard being away from you.”

your heart ached at his words and you reached out, placing your hand on his. “oh quinn, i wish you had told me. i’ll always be here for you, even when i'm not physically present," your voice laced with sympathy.

“i know,” he said, his voice softening. “but i didn’t want to worry you. i thought i could push through it, but seeing you tonight reminded me just how much I miss you, how much I need you.”

you intertwined your hands with his as tears began to prick at the corners of your eyes before you spoke again, “you don’t have to do this alone, you know. we’re in this together, so it’s okay to lean on me. whenever you need to."

“you’re doing your best, quinny, and i admire you for it. i’m proud of you, and i love you.” you reassured him once again.

as he looked into your eyes, the tension in his shoulders seemed to ease. “i love you too,” he whispered, “more than you know.”

you moved closer, wrapping your arms around him. quinn buried his face in your neck, and for a moment, everything felt right. the distance and the struggles all faded away, replaced by the warmth of his embrace and the steady rhythm of his breath against your skin.

“i’m here for the weekend,” you murmured, pulling back just enough to meet his gaze, "let’s make the most of it. you don’t have to worry about anything else.”

his eyes brightened at the thought, and a small smile crept back onto his lips.

with that, you both sank back into the couch, and as you talked late into the night, sharing stories, laughter, and a few quiet moments, you knew that no matter the miles between you, your love would always bridge the gap.

author's note. this started out as something completelyyy different but i'm happy with the direction i took lol. tomorrow i'll post my about me page !!

[doctor-dusk]

𝐤𝐧𝐞𝐞 𝐬𝐨𝐜𝐤𝐬 | 𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐱 𝐭.

a private session, as he said.

warnings: mutual masturbation, fingering (f receiving), exhibitionism and voyeurism.

word count: 3.4k

part 1, part 2

it took me longer than expected. ngl that i've been feeling a bit discouraged and insecure about my writing lately and i've been putting off posting. anyway, hope you like it :3

you haven't stopped talking for a minute since alex got your phone number. like, for hours, going into the early hours of the morning sometimes. 

you found out he lived a few minutes away from you and was a bartender at a night pub, so eventually he had to be absent when he was on his shift. of course you understood, but you couldn't help but miss talking to him when he was away for too long, especially at night. you found yourself looking at his profile picture, or at the photos he sent you throughout the days. 

obviously, at this point you already had a certain level of intimacy, so he didn't see a problem in sending you some kind of spicy photos, for example, after the shower. oh, these were your favorites. you loved his toned muscles glistening with water, the fluffy towel wrapping around his waist, the marked v line. and of course, you loved seeing the outline of his cock in the towel. 

a was a tuesday night. particularly rainy, the wind was not violent and the news reported that it could last until the next day, but that doesn't bother you. you were reading a book peacefully on your bed when you felt your cell phone vibrate under your pillow.

you fumbled around the bed looking for your cell phone, reaching under your pillow to grab the phone, turning on the screen and smiling when you saw that he had sent you a message.

“hi baby, just got back home.’’ he texted you.

you smiled at the nickname. it was already natural for him to call you that, but you still found yourself giggling about it whenever he called you like that.

“did something happen?” you texted him back. he should be working now, since he had said he had a shift at the pub that night.

“the power went out at the pub because of the rain,” he explained in another message after a while. “guess i'll have to go back tomorrow to make up the hours. yay.” 

you chuckled softly. it wasn't like he didn't like his job, he just found it tiring sometimes.

“what are you going to do now?” you asked him. 

“well, for starters, i’m gonna take a shower and eat something.” he answered, sending another message afterwards. “but first of all take off these clothes. i'm so fucking wet.” 

“hey, that's my line.” you joked, imagining he must have laughed when he read it. and he did.

“cheeky. later i'll make you wetter than i am now, what do you think?” he suggested. you bit your lip.

“i’ll wait for it.’’ you texted back, swaying your legs up and down like a teenager.

“good. i’ll call you in 30 minutes. wear something nice for me, love ;)” 

you thought you were dressed appropriately for him. a cotton cropped shirt and a flared mini skirt. but you thought there's something missing. it wasn't "nice" enough for him.

you opened your closet and drawers, looking for some suggestion. you didn't even know exactly what you were looking for. 

your eyes landed on your underwear drawer, remembering that you had a pair of white knee socks somewhere. you didn't know if he would like them, but knowing him well enough, you could deduce that was worth a try.

you put on the socks, the soft fabric gliding over your legs like a massage, the hem resting right above your knees. you looked at your reflection in the mirror, flexing your leg and bending your knee to see how it looked. then you turned your back, looking over your shoulder to see how it looked from this angle. it wasn't bad. it showed off your legs nicely. he might like it, but if he doesn't, he'll be polite enough to ask you to take it off.

you made sure your door was locked, turning the knob twice as a precaution. once confirmed, you jumped on your bed, grabbing your phone. as if on time, a message from him popped up on your screen.

‘’ready?’’

‘’yep.’’ you texted, settling yourself in bed, lying partially between your pillows, your back resting on the headboard, your knee bent so you could rest your phone on it.

seconds later, a video call popped up on your screen, and you answered it without delay.

oh, as always, he was handsome. unlike you, he was standing, probably walking around his apartment, the position of the camera revealed that he was holding his phone a little too low. and of course, shirtless.

‘’hey love, i- fuck, no, no! wait a minute.’’ he said before you could say anything, leaving his phone in a corner, the camera focusing on the ceiling was all you could see now. you waited for him to come back, listening for some noises and trying to figure out what it was. seconds later, he came back. ‘’sorry, i had to put the neighbor's cat out. the bastard tried to steal my last slice of pizza.’’ 

you laughed at what he said. you expected anything but that. 

‘’how did he tried to steal your pizza?’’ you asked as he was making his way to the bedroom, turning off the lights on the way.

‘’he came in through my kitchen window. can't turn my back for a bloody second.’’ he rolled his eyes, entering his bedroom, sitting on the edge of his bed. ‘’you look lovely, baby. new necklace?’’ he pointed out. you looked at your chest, the silver necklace resting on your collarbone. you didn't even think he would notice that. but he was very observant, especially when it came to you.

‘’yeah, i bought it yesterday when i went out to shopping with my mom.’’ you answered and he hummed, his mouth was too busy eating a piece of pizza. ‘’although this isn't the necklace i was looking for.’’

‘’which one did you want?’’ he asked, his voice a little muffled as he was finishing the slice of pizza.

‘’your hand.’’ you answered him, causing him to cough almost uncontrollably because he almost choked on the piece of pizza. you would have laughed if you weren't so worried about him. “are you okay? i'm sorry, i-”

‘’no, no, i'm fine. wasn't expecting it, you can't do this to me, jesus.” he laughed after catching his breath, his face was a little red because of it. “you can't have my hand as your necklace if you choke me to death on a piece of pizza.”

“sorry, i didn't know you'd be so surprised.” you chuckled softly, watching him wipe his mouth with a napkin, throwing the paper in the trash.

“you just caught me by surprise, hon. you're not usually this forward.” he said. he was right, sometimes you were a little shy, even though you've done things that say otherwise. “by the way, are you wearing something nice like i asked you to?”

you nodded, adjusting your posture, getting into an angle so he could see your body when you stretched out your arm holding your phone in your hand, giving him a good view. he let out a low whistle, enjoying the view.

“no way, knee socks?” he asked with raised eyebrows as his eyes landed on your legs, making himself comfortable in his bed. it wasn't in a disapproving tone, by the way.

“yeah, did you like it?” you asked a little insecurely.

“hell, a lot.” he licked his lips, taking a look at you. “i have an idea, do you want to know what it is?”

you nodded eagerly. by the tone he spoke, he was certainly going to suggest something for you to do.

“take off your clothes. i want you in nothing but those knee socks. can you do that for me, love?”

the idea made your hair stand on end. you knew that eventually you would undress for him, but you didn't know that you would be so nervous about the idea and that it would be so exciting to be naked for him, wearing only a pair of white knee socks.

“you can take your time, baby. don't worry, i've got all the time in the world for you.” he reassured you, making you even more comfortable with the idea.

“shirt?” you suggested and he hummed in agreement.

“are you wearing a bra?” he asked and you shook your head. “good. i miss those nice tits of yours.”

you giggled, grabbing a pillow and placing it on the middle of the bed, positioning your phone so that it rests on it.

“is the angle okay?” you asked him, sitting with your legs spread on the bed. he could even get a small glimpse of your panties.

“amazing, baby. keep going.” he said. he didn't really care about the angle as long as he could see you and your body on full display for him on his phone screen.

you pulled your crop top up, pulling it over your head. the mere sight of your breasts on the screen made him groan, biting his lip as he palmed himself over his sweatpants, even though you couldn't see it for now.

‘’so beautiful. one day i'm going to suck those tits, mark my words.’’

you smiled at the idea. alex seemed like the kind of hungry man who could devour you if he could. and he really was. he wanted to mark you, to sink his fingers and teeth into your flesh, so that he and everyone else could see that he was the one who did this to you. he wanted to make sure everyday that you were his, that only he could see you like that and make you feel that way. 

you touched your boobs, adding a little more anticipation to the moment, your nipples hardening with the mere stimulation on them, your eyes rarely looking at him on the screen, focused on losing your shyness as you touched your left breast while your right hand went down your belly.

“the skirt too?” you asked him, tracing your index finger along the waistband of your skirt.

“everything.” alex answered, a minimally authoritative tone was noticeable in his voice, but you didn't think it was bad. it turned you on even more.

you shifted in bed, your fingers hooked on the sides of your skirt, slowly pulling it down, letting the material slide down your legs, his eyes watching every move without blinking, as if he would never see something like that again in his life. his hand tightened his grip on his cock, feeling that sooner or later he would have to take it out, such was the pressure inside his boxers.

“you have beautiful legs, love.” he praised you as he drank the sight of your semi naked body, the only thing that kept him from seeing you naked were your panties and knee socks.

“thank you.” you smiled, you liked it when he complimented you, even when it was something simple. you felt desired, in a way.

“you're nervous, aren't you?” he asked. he had never seen you in person and never lived with you physically, but he knew you well enough to know that.

“god, yes. i'm sorry, i've never done that.” you mumbled, closing your legs a bit so you wouldn't feel so exposed.

“that's okay, baby, you're doing so good. take your time.” he said in a reassuring tone, not wanting you to feel insecure or embarrassed around him. “just remember that sooner or later i'm going to see this pretty pussy of yours. and believe me, i'm going to gorge myself on it.”

you chuckled awkwardly, still feeling a bit insecure. he pouted slightly.

“hey, look at me.” he asked you, he couldn't just hold your face and make you look at him, so he expected you to look back at the screen, which is what you did. “don't worry about it. we're just going to have some fun, i want you to enjoy yourself with me, hm?” he spoke calmly and patiently, knowing he needed to be careful with his words.

you smiled, nodding in response to him. he knew how to reassure you, how to make you feel safe. you were in this together, after all.

you tried opening your legs again, your hand running over the fabric of your underwear, testing the waters as he swallowed hard at your actions. you touched your sensitive bud, feeling it contract inside your panties with the touch of your fingertip.

‘’mhm, that’s it. doing so good, love.” he said, his voice almost in a whisper as he stuck his hand inside his sweatpants, squeezing his cock more directly over his boxers, his thumb ghosted over his sensitive tip, leaking precum and staining the fabric of his underwear. 

he felt uncomfortable with this, shifting in bed to get his sweatpants and boxers down, freeing his cock, the angle he was lying at made the tip touch his stomach.

“you're making me hard as fuck.” he moaned in a somewhat anxious way.

“yeah? show me.” you instigated him.

fuck, you didn't even need to ask twice. he angled his phone so you could see his cock, his free hand grabbing it firmly by the base, massaging it deftly, working his way up until he reached the head, pulling back the foreskin so you could see his glistening tip practically taking over your screen.

you leaned against the headboard, supporting your body weight there while your hands were free. one hand hooked your panties, finally pulling to the side, showing him your most intimate area.

“beautiful. just like i imagined.” he bit his lip, watching your fingers firmly grip the fabric of your panties like a real hook while the fingers of your other hand roamed the skin of your crotch, teasing both you and him. “god, i can already imagine myself with my face buried in this pussy all day.”

you giggled, you loved how vocal he was. your index and middle finger wandered through your folds in an inverted 'v' position, sliding up and down your labia, feeling your digits getting wet.

“'wet?”

“so fucking wet.” you answered and he groaned. you also knew how to tease him with words, his dirty thoughts getting the best of him as he saw you touching yourself like this.

“yeah? think i can shove my cock inside you without needing lube?” he asked you, starting to pump his cock faster.

“oh, you have no idea.” you said in a sly tone, moving your hands away from there only to pull the panties down your legs, discarding them on the bed among the sheets. and you were just the way he asked, completely naked, except for the knee socks. oh, that made his cock throb.

“god, you're so fucking hot.” he hissed, pumping faster, his fist closed so tightly that his tip was getting redder and the veins were getting more visible. “touch yourself for me, love. please.”

you brought your index and middle fingers to your mouth, thinking about it. please. he never asked you “please”, not that you remember. he always asked, in a polite but authoritative tone, sounding like a gentle order. but never added the word please. 

it sounded like he's begging you. and you liked it.

“please?” you repeated the word, wetting your fingers, bringing them down to your sensitive bud that was aching to be touched.

“fucking please…” he said in a desperate growl, his eyes fixed on your body as you tesed him furter, circling your fingers on your clit, the contact making you hiss. “feels good?”

“mhmm, so good…” you hummed, circling your fingers counterclockwise, the way you always did when you pleased yourself alone in that bed in your room. “i wish you were touching me right now.”

“don't say that to me or i might come out in the rain and climb in through your bedroom window just to fuck you.” he panted, making you imagine the scene, a small whimper leaving your lips.

“yeah? would you fuck me good?” you asked, moving your fingers down, teasing your wet and slick entrance, your fingertips sliding in with ease.

“so good, baby. would you like it hard and deep?" he asked you, feeling the pleasure starting to get the best of him, he tried to hold on as much as he could.

you nodded eagerly, sliding two fingers inside your tight heat. he watched as you buried your own fingers inside your cunt until reached your knuckles, withdrawing them just to repeat the motion. nothing had ever turned him on as much as this. he felt like a teenager watching porn for the first time, but it was a thousand times better. it was real, and it was for him. only for him.

“so be it. gonna fuck you good, baby. the way you deserve it.” 

his words entered your mind like a virus, your eyes squeezed shut as your fingers went back and forth, coating them with your arousal. you couldn't help but vividly imagine him fucking you hard, his hips snapping against yours, his cock filling you to the brim as he squeezed your neck, calling you his little slut who takes his cock so fucking well.

“oh my god, please…” you whimpered breathlessly, your legs starting to tremble involuntarily, your head tilting to the side.

“are you going to come for me, love? you're so close, i can see it.” he hummed, watching you nodding, his fist was hurting, but he didn't want to stop, not when he was so close too.

“yes, yes, oh alex…” you moaned his name, making him grunt in response, his breath ragged and his body trembled, he could barely concentrate on holding the phone anymore, even though he doesn't want to miss a single second of you fingering yourself, chasing your climax.

“fuck, i can't hold back…” he almost whined, and you let out a satisfied smile, so close that you're already seeing stars.

“yes, fuck me, alex…” you moaned, and that was the last straw for him. he moaned loudly, his head falling back into the pillow as he came, making a mess of his own belly and chest, but he didn't stop, even though his senses were overwhelmed at this point.

as you watched him fucking his own fist through his orgasm and heard his whimpers, you followed him suit, cumming on your fingers, your free hand covered your mouth so you wouldn't moan loudly as the climax hit you, your trembling legs closed automatically around your hand as your fingers pumped and curled inside you to prolong your pleasure.

in the seconds that followed, all that could be heard besides the sound of the rain outside were the panting breaths as the bodies lay completely exhausted on the respective beds. it was so intense, you couldn't remember the last time you had an orgasm that good, especially when you were touching yourself.

after a few seconds, he broke the silence.

“still there?” he asked. you gave him thumbs up and he chuckled. you needed a few more seconds to recover.

“yeah, yeah…” you mumbled, taking a deep breath through your nose and letting it out through your mouth. then, you lifted your head, looking at him. he was as broken as you were.

“it just gets better, princess. you're amazing, really.” he said. and he was sincere, you could see it. or at least he gave you enough confidence to make you think that.

“you're amazing too. you must be even better in person.” you answered him next. it was like you were having pillow talk after sex. the difference is you hadn't had sex. not yet.

“well, baby, i'll try to impress you. i have to win you over every day.” he chuckled, groaning as he saw his own mess, knowing he would have to clean himself up. “hate this part.” 

“i wish i could lick you clean.” you pouted and he pouted too, chuckling at your boldness.

“you always get feisty after having your orgasm, huh?” he questioned and you giggled, picking up your panties to put them back on carefully, your legs felt like jelly. 

“only with you.” you winked at him, licking your fingers as he sighed at the sight of you. he was quiet for a while, just looking at you, his mind working in different ways. “what?”

“i want to see you.” he answered after a few seconds of silence.

“you’re seeing me already.” you chuckled and he shook his head after letting out a weak laugh.

“no, i want to really see you. to meet you in person.” 

oh. now that was another level.

[roseykat]

KINKTOBER DAY 2 - CHANGBIN

Title: These hands were made for you

PAIRING: Changbin x reader

SUMMARY: Changbin agrees for you to give him a massage to relieve some of his back pain, but isn’t prepared for the physical reaction he has to your touch. For context, the reader is part of the management team!

WARNING: minors DNI with this post or my blog. I create NSFW SKZ related content and I know I won't be able to regulate/monitor every single potential interaction with these posts so please do not engage with my work and page whatsoever. 

TAGS: hands-free orgasm, massages, swearing, hint of body worshipping if you squint.

KINK: erotic massage

KINKTOBER - MASTERLIST

Thinking Changbin was awake happened to be a mistaken thought, especially after you had been standing at the door of his hotel room for the past few minutes, knocking at it. Even calling and texting him didn’t help. In saying that, it was late and you had to give him the benefit of the doubt; he had played a show not too long ago, had been complaining of muscle pain, and was most likely really tired. 

But so were you.

Having waited over an hour at the airport trying to track some of Changbin’s lost luggage during their performance. A while after that, both of his items had been located and it was your task to return them to him. 

For a few spare seconds, you thought it would be wise to just wait until the morning since you were convinced that he was asleep. But it wasn’t until you heard some rustling and footsteps behind the door right before it opened.

“Oh,” Changbin rubs his drowsy eyes. “Sorry, I swear I was up and then I closed my eyes and drifted off.” 

It was easy to tell by his bed hair, the way that his natural curls were starting to peek through, “no it’s okay, you must be tired.”

“You have no idea,” he replies and looks at both bags of his luggage that you had been rolling with you since you got back. “Thank you, thank you, thank you! Where were they?”

He takes one off of you while you roll the other one into his room, “they were at a different luggage pick-up. But we already rang the airport to say that they were missing and then it took them an hour to track them. Anyway, did you go to see the physio in the meantime?"

About a few hours ago after the concert had finished, Changbin was complaining about how sore he was after the gym. It’s common for him to feel that way since he practically lives in that space. Only this time around, he might’ve pushed himself a bit too hard - that and during the concert. 

“Nah,” he brushes it off as the door closes behind you both. “I can’t see any of them until tomorrow.” 

“Do you think you’re injured maybe?” You ask concernedly. 

Changbin huffs, “I’m not injured! I’m only sore and my muscles hurt like hell. Plus I always warmup and cool down properly.” 

“Okay then, where are you sore?” You question again. 

“Mainly my back,” he answers and goes to sit down on the edge of the bed. 

“Upper or lower?” 

“My upper,” Changbin confirms and tilts his head, looking at you. “I didn’t realise you were so concerned about me.” 

Your eyes narrow at him, “not in the way that you might think.”

“Sure, sure,” he chuckles lightheartedly. “Anyway, if you’re going to ask me so many questions about my injury, you wouldn’t happen to be a physiotherapist right?” 

“So you are injured.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he corrects. “I'm just sore, and I need a good night's sleep.” 

“Well, if you want me to I suppose,” you say, ignoring his tone of voice. 

“Wait...” He asks in disbelief. “Really?” 

“I did a year in physio at college so I know a few things,” you answer, placing your own bag on the lowered counter where luggage is usually stored in the room. “I’m not a licensed one though.”

Changbin ponders; he has no way of getting in to see their physio at this point in time. Even just a massage would be some relief to him. 

Whilst you aren’t professional in either of those fields, you didn’t study it for nothing. You know the functions of the body and muscles inside out. You know what happens to them when they’re under stress, torn, or strained. But also the remedies which can help repair them. 

“Okay then, if you’re able to,” Changbin agrees. “Where do you want me?”

“The bed, so take your shirt off and lie on your stomach,” you instruct. 

Changbin side-eyes you, “a date would be nice first,” he says even though he’s taking his shirt off in a rush.

You roll your eyes and take a small kit out of your bag. It’s stocked with the essentials; plasters, KT tape, scissors, cold spray - usually for Minho if his shoulder is playing up - nail clippers, all of which you have just in case.

These boys are constantly on the go and are prone to getting injured. So even though it’s not your job, you still keep things handy when there aren’t any left. But also because they end up asking you anyway whenever you're around. Spontaneous massages aren’t on that list though, but there's always a first for everything.

By that point, Changbin had stripped himself of his t-shirt, placed it to his side and lay face down on the bed. There were a couple of silent seconds of you preparing what you needed but also admiring Changbin’s body. 

His back and shoulders are broad but especially taut, you’ve seen them before when he walks around the dressing room with his top half stripped of any fabric. But you’ve never seen nor felt it - not that you would in that type of way. 

In saying that, you start by taking the small tub of deep heat, unscrewing the cap, and scooping some of the product onto your hand and setting the tub aside. Your first point of contact with Changbin’s back makes him jolt. 

“Sorry,” he mutters, turning his head on the pillow.

“It’s fine. I’m gonna start now okay?” 

“Got it,” he says. 

You dollop a little bit more of the deep heat onto Changbin before spreading it and working it in until his skin absorbs it. He’s smooth to the touch. Your hands glide over every glorious muscle.

It doesn’t really sink in that you’re doing this until Changbin hums, sounding like he’s in relief. Within a few moments, he feels like his back is pressed up against a heater. His skin is hot and burning slightly, but that’s the whole purpose of the deep heat. It’s to soften the bunched muscles in his back, making it easier to knead and roll them out like dough.

However, given the state this part of his body is in, you can already make an observation on how tense his muscles are under your hands. 

“You’re tight,” you feel as he rubs into a spot just above his right shoulder blade. “When did you say was the last time you went to physio?”

Changbin’s face flushes, he can feel the heat rising to his cheeks as if you put the deep heat on his face. 

“I-I didn’t,” he responds, trying to relax. “But I haven’t been at all so far.”

You pause, “we have three physios and a sports massage therapist for a reason. You can’t tell me that you haven’t been to see one of them so far.”

“Some of the others are seeing them shortly and I didn’t wanna wait that long,” he argues. You use the thumb and the pad of your index finger to dig and narrowly drag down Changbin’s spine, making him contort to the left slightly.

“I’ve still been able to take care of myself after shows and whatnot. Ice baths and stuff like that, so I haven’t had any injuries so far," he adds.

“You don’t just take ice baths though, do you?” You ask, digging for more information to see if he really has been taking care of himself. 

“Yeah, cold showers too,” he adds to his list. 

“Heat is also good for your muscles, you know that right?”

“Not as good as cold techniques,” he says. “Right?” 

“Depends on when you need it,” You point out. “You're a gym rat. I thought you already knew all of this information about taking care of your body-"

“Ah-” 

Your hands still for a second from his reaction, “hurts?” 

Changbin nods before his eyes flash open when you press your thumb deeper into the same spot. He lets out a yelp, his arms coming up to the sides of his shoulders, getting ready to prop himself up. 

“Yeah - yes, that really hurts, fuck,” he groans. 

“If it hurts, it’s working,” you use the flat of your hand to push Changbin back down into the mattress. 

“That’s a very outdated saying,” he strains, trying to absorb the soreness before it eventually becomes bearable. 

It takes him a few moments to melt against your touch now that his back is slightly more relaxed and warmed up. He’s now more susceptible to sensitivity which for him, heightens your contact on him. He doesn’t exactly know why it feels good - strangely good. But Changbin doesn’t complain. 

“Y/N…” he breathes out involunintarily.

You freeze on the spot, wondering if your ears deceived you for a second. Surely Changbin didn’t just moan out your name. All you’re doing is unravelling knots in his back. But even so, you were curious for a split second and when curiosity takes shape, there’s nothing you can do about it. So to test your theory, you take a little bit more deep heat, rubbing it between your fingers and massaging it slowly over the area. 

Changbin’s hands grip the sheets in response. He can’t control any of his reactions to the way your hands smooth over his back, or when the heel of your palm digs and drags nicely down his back. He doesn’t even want to think about where else good he feels.

“How does it feel now?” You test. 

His response is a strange, high pitched hum, but he does give a small nod. You try not to smirk even though it’s not like he’s able to see it. 

“I’m sorry,” Changbin swallows, almost panting. “It's just...you touching me.”

“Do you want me to stop?” You ask him.

“No!” he exclaims too quickly. “I mean, only if you want to. I’m okay with it, just…tender.” 

You’re thankful that Changbin can’t see you blushing with embarrassment. You don’t know why you reacted that way but the more you massage his back, the more you forget about the moment. Changbin on the other hand begins to panic when he recognises that he’s actually horny. 

Over the minutes gone by, his cock starts slowly filling out between his legs. It’s an awkward position to be hard and lie down at the same time. Either way, nothing is stopping it from happening and certainly not your hands. The heat, the cream, your touch, the wet, sticky sounds that it’s making, makes him think things that have crossed the border of ‘appropriate’. 

“Are you okay? You seem like you’re struggling a bit,” you witness his shoulder blades start to cinch together.

“Fine,” Changbin turns his face into the pillow. “It’s sore but…it feels good.”

You look down at his hands and see him gripping the sheets again. From any physiotherapist’s point of view, Changbin might just be expressing that this hurts. That you’re really relieving the stress and tension built up in his back. 

“Fuck, Y/N,” he mumbles. 

But from your point of view, you can tell that he’s actually enjoying this more than he should be. You mentally scold yourself for jumping to that conclusion, because in what world does someone get off from having their back rubbed? It might be this world because when you realise that Changbin is making small, almost unnoticeable thrusts with his hips, he can’t help but want to speak his mind.

Usually, massages, erotic ones at least, are accompanied by other forms of actions, at least that's what you thought before Changbin started to become visibly flustered

“Changbin,” you say as he takes his tone as a warning.

His eyes flash open, knowing what he’s just done, what he couldn’t help but do, “fuck. S-Sorry, I didn’t expect…”

Didn’t expect what? Changbin doesn’t even know what the rest of his unfinished question means and he obviously doesn’t know the answer. Flustered as hell, he cannot seem to rack his brain for a lie. Even if he did, you would be able to see right through it. 

“Again, it’s just someone touching me...” he mutters aloud what he's feeling.

You pause, “are you sure you don't want me to stop? If not, I’d like to get these last few knots out of your back.”

Changbin knows that this situation could go one of three ways. If he lets you continue to massage him, he will definitely cum. The bonus there is that his back will feel better and also his dick.

But if he asks you to stop, it'll be awkward as hell having to deal with the fact that he’s fully hard. The downside is that there are still knots in his back, and he won’t get to sleep, which ultimately means he'll be in a terrible mood.

The other way is that there is an unlikely small chance that he won't cum. His body might be overly excited right now, but it could pass. There's a 99% chance that he might have time to get soft. But with the way that you're both going, he knows it probably won't happen.

“I…I don’t know,” Changbin replies, clearly confused. “It’s been a while since…someone touched me-“

“That’s okay,” you dismiss his babbling. “It’s not unusual.”

He swallows, bewildered, “it’s not?”

“No,” you assure him. 

At this point, you would stop but for some...fucked up reason, you want to keep going. You really want to see how this ends. You’ve never been someone who half asses things, so how is this any different? Plus it’s technically your fault after making Changbin unintentionally horny. At least that’s the state he’s currently in to your knowledge. 

But you’re okay with that if he is. 

“Wanting contact with other human beings isn’t abnormal Binnie. You’re obviously just a bit touch-deprived.”

“T-That’s a thing?” He asks, turning his head to try and look at you. But you smooth your palm up his spine, massaging into the divots until he reaches the base of his neck so that he can relax and not focus so much on you. 

“There’s this theory that we all need human contact. Not sexually per se, but mundane things like hugs, holding hands and all that,” you start explaining. 

“I guess that makes sense,” Changbin responds, then tries to suppress a grunt when you start gliding lower to his tailbone again.

You’re working the area just under his shoulder blade which at the moment seems to be the most sensitive. That and his dick - indirectly. Changbin is too embarrassed to think about the fact that you can read him far too easily. Either that or he’s just being extremely obvious, which he is. 

“Even just social interaction at times. Studies show that there’s a link between loneliness and touch deprivation,” you add.

He can’t even believe he’s having this conversation with you. At the very most, he can’t believe that your hands are on him and making him feel certain things that are beyond his control. 

“R-Really?” Changbin jolts when you begin kneading his back again, like every cell in his body is on edge. 

“With these interactions, it can release a neurochemical in the brain called oxytocin which is responsible for good feelings…”

Neurochemical...oxytocin….Changbin appreciates the science talk and in fact, it’s strangely hot to hear it come out of your mouth. But he cannot focus on what he’s saying at all, because his dick is achingly hard and there’s nothing he can do about it.

“Fuck…” Changbin swallows harshly. “Touch me, please.”

“I believe I am touching you,” you respond coldly. 

He doesn’t even know if your words were teasing or not. He just wants to relieve the throbbing ache in his dick when all he can do is make small thrusting movements. It’s not until you use the pads of his thumbs to press into a few points in his tailbone. It feels good in terms of the pain he had in his back, but now he can’t thrust against the mattress anymore. Not yet at least. 

Changbin whines when you slowly release the pressure of his touch.

“You have a nice back,” you comment, then gently scratch down it with your fingernails, not enough to hurt him, but it definitely makes the deep heat feel hotter. 

“Oh my god m’gonna cum,” Changbin exclaims out in a choked, rushed voice. His words instantly confirm your thoughts, so you continue to slowly rub down his back to his tailbone again. “Please..."

“It’s okay, you can come,” with the heel of your palm once more, you knead just under his shoulder blade, enough to make Changbin keen to the side. 

His eyes snap shut before he’s dipped into pleasure. He goes silent for a few seconds, still making tiny movements, almost as if he were trying to fuck someone into the mattress. For him, it’s an odd sensation because his cock had been completely untouched and neglected. 

Breathing heavily, Changbin slowly opens his eyes when the realisation dawns on him. He spends the first ten seconds of his comedown trying to figure out where he is. Your soothing hands slowly and gently rubbing up his back reorients him. The heat that the cream provided is now turning into a cooling sensation, added in with your touch. It feels good, and even better now that his muscles are at ease. 

“Feel better?”

“H-Heaps,” he swallows, now feeling like someone tipped a bucket of ice water on top of his head.  

“Good,” you smile to yourself, content with that outcome. “You should probably clean yourself up then.” 

-

A/N: thank you everyone for your patience. The last half of this week was so busy for me, so I’m back writing and catching up the works x

TAGLIST: @kbitties @luneskies @mal-lunar-28 @kibs-and-bits @aaasia111 @fairy-lixie @dreamingaboutjisung @lizzekat 🩷🩷🩷 (if I’ve forgotten anyone again, please let me know 🙃)

[legostars]

DOGDAY X READER

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Note from Author: Well, I made this At 4:00 Am early in the morning. And also, you're a female y/n and I'm tired of calling them/they/blah blah.

I'm still figuring out how to colour my texts, so you guys are stuck with non colour ones, yay...

Just a quick reminder that I barely post like tomorrow or next week, it depends if I get busy at school. Welp, that's all. Enjoy the story, and I might make it longer by time. ENJOY MY LITTLE LEGO STARS!

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"Well, that's the end of the tour!"

"Thanks, dogday. I was expecting that the other employees would be the ones to give me a tour... But, I guess they were busy." Nope. They weren't busy. They were lazy. "Oh, hahaha! Well, I get that a lot too, angel." He laughs and then you hear him calling you an angel again.. strange, nobody called you that. "Um, can I ask a question?" "Hm? Sure!" You were getting embarrassed of the question but you pulled it off. "Why do you.. keep calling me angel? I mean I have a name." Dogday was quiet for a moment, you felt awkward for asking that question and you can barely feel your face getting warm from the embarrassment. "You know what! Never mind... Haha..." Dogday laughs seeing you getting all nervous. "No need to be nervous, besides. The reason I called you angel, is because i- uh- like calling you that. Yeah!" Awkward. Y/N looks around to find a change of subject. The only thing that comes to her mind is the statues of the smiling critters. "Oh, Uh.. can you tell me more about yourself.. and the other smiling critters?"

Dogday's tail wags a little from excitement. "Well, I don't mind! As you heard from Tiffany. I'm dogday! The leader of the smiling critters! And you probably can meet the others and they might introduce themselves properly to you!" Dogday was very cheerful about it as you can tell by his tail wagging. "Okay! I'm y/n and I'm 22 years old, my favourite colour is red. And I love to eat cookies!" Dogday smiled at you. "Well, the introduction has been confirmed to both of us. And also, you have to keep your eyes with the others to see no one is getting any Problems." You nodded as he began to point at your office.

"Okay, keep a watch at the others and do my job. Got it!" Dogday smiled as he patted your head.

"I know you can do it, angel!" You felt a flutter in your heart.. what.. what is this feeling? Am I sick?

(Girl you stupid).

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––It's been a week since you started working there. You met three smiling critters along the way, craftycorn, picky piggy, and hoppy hopscotch. The others are you haven't quite met yet. Day by day, the children loved how caring and loving you are, they even started to call you mama. You're not used to it but you tried. Dogday got even close to you, every time he gets a chance he would come and hang out with you. (Ah, young love. 🤭)

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––After you arrive in playcare at 5:00 Am, since you woke up Prettyyy early in the morning. You went to your office and sat down, you stretched your body and yawned. "Man... I woke up so early I couldn't even go back to sleep... I want some coffee now.." you groan and sighed. And then you noticed a clipboard on your side of the desk, you picked it up and read it. Your first task was to give the smiling critters baths, your second task was to wake the children up and the others are for later. "Hm... A bath- oh. Dogs hates water... The others might enjoy but for catnap... Ugh... This is going to a lot more harder..." You groan as you rubbed your face with both of your hands. And then you thought for a second.. then realised that you might meet the other critters. "I should probably get started.. since it's 5:26 am.." you got up from your chair and started to walk to where the smiling critters are sleeping. You felt kinda nervous tho, you don't like disturbing people from their sleep. At their room of where they sleep, you noticed below the door that the lights are turned on. You knocked on the door 3 times but no answers, strange you knock again but 6 times, yet no answers.. you open the door a little and take a peek, then.. someone pulled you in to make and it made you caught off guard. "Oof!" You landed on the floor and immediately got up. "Holy mother of cookies from heaven. I almost got a heart attack." You look up, and saw all of the smiling critters except for catnap. Dogday was in front. "Angel?" "Okay, why on earth did you pull me and almost give me a heart attack?" The other smiling critters chuckles and laughs a little. "S-sorry angel.. we thought you were some sort of a bad guy.." You sighed looking up at him. "You did hear me knocking 3 to 6 times, right? You know what, never mind.. come on now all of you.. I have to give each of you all a bath.." Dogday flinched and started to back away. "U-um dogday?" The craftycorn was confused seeing dogday backing away. "Hm? What's wrong dogday?" "I... I don't like baths..." Dogday claims himself scared of baths. And kickin chickin starts to laughs. "Don't be such a coward, dogday! It ain't gonna be that bad!" As kickin keeps laughing bobby bearhug pinched kickin. "Ow! Ow! BB! Stop!" "Stop being such a bully to dogday, kickin." You sighed and went over to dogday. "Dogday, what's wrong? You can tell me, and I'll try a way to make you feel less scared." Dogday thought about it for a moment. Before dogday was the one who was going to speak, picky piggy was the one who speaks first. "It's probably because of how the other employees bathe us..." She said, you tilted my head from confused as bubba bubbaphant came in front to tell the other details. "Well, they put us in a cage... And just spray water on us like were some kind of a... Animal..." (*LE GASP* HOW DARE THEY>:0)

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After knowing and understanding the situation, I sighed and walked over to hoppy. "Do you have a pillow that I can borrow?" Hoppy was confused but she gave you a pillow, you took the pillow and shoved it to your face and screamed in anger making the other smiling critters confused.. you were done screaming your anger out and gave back the pillow. "Ahem. I'm fine, I'm not mad at your situation. I am mad at those employees for treating you all like some animals.." the smiling critters were surprised about that including dogday. "You guys deserved better than being an animal in a cage... I can even relate how that feels..." Craftycorn then asked. "What do you mean... By that?" You stayed quiet... Staring at the floor... "It's... Nothing... We should probably get you all some baths before the playcare opens..." The smiling critters can feel that something is wrong but they didn't want to ask and just nodded. (Time skips in the bathroom) At the bathroom you told the smiling critters to take off their pendants and put them somewhere, and you also told them that dogday will be last. The smiling critters understand and follow your orders. During giving a bath from each smiling critter you ask them how their day was, it was awkward at first but they eventually told you. There laughing and chuckling curing gave them each a bath, it took 20 minutes or more. After the others are down with baths and drying, dogday was the last. He took a peek at the door, while you were busy getting the giant tub ready for him. He was hesitant but what he had heard from the others, by saying she's kind,caring, and loving it made him feel confident to trust you. "Dogday! You can come in now." Dogday slowly walked in and sat in the tub. You started to spray water on him it took 3 minutes to get him wet. (Just like my dog) you then put vanilla shampoo on him and started to scrub with a big brush. "So, dogday.. since we have known each other for a week now, tell me... How was your day." "It.. was fun.. you get to play with children seeing them laugh together and chasing each other and seeing them enjoy themselves." I smiled giving him a scratch on his head. "You're such a good boy, dogday. You really are." Dogday's tail wags happily. After 30 minutes of laughter and giving a bath to dogday, it's finally time to dry him up with a blow dryer. "You're such a good boy, dogday! You look more handsome and cute!" Dogday blushes slightly and wags his tail. "Thank you, angel."

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After getting all the smiling critters except for catnap a bath. It was time for the playcare to open up. But, you have been thinking... Where is catnap?

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PART 3?

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Note from Author: Well... In part 3 I might put the dark backstory of Y/N, for fun of course. But also, if your wondering Is dogday in this story a human version of him or is dogday in this story is in his original version? It depends on you and your imagination. And also! I recommend seeing @sinnersweets Stories! They are very heart beating Stories (⁠≧⁠▽⁠≦⁠) Well, see you in part 3! Toodles my Little Lego star devils! (⁠ ⁠˘⁠ ⁠³⁠˘⁠)⁠♥

(This is kinda short..)

[inmyminditsreal]

Lego Is Life

Fem!reader x Spencer reid

Word count: 700 ish

Summary: Woken up by a very eager 8 year old daughter, Spencer and I crawl out of bed and indulge in Lego like true adults.

Warnings: sweetnessss

I'm supa tired so if this is rusty IM SORRRY!! also sorry i haven't posted in like 30 years. been tired and focused on school!! Hope you enjoy

Enjoyyyy!!!!

Spencer had just finished a case and as soon as he got home, he almost fell asleep while hugging me. I told him we should just go to bed, he agreed. So now we���re crawling into bed, finally able to get some sleep. Though, with an eight year-old daughter it’s very hard. Most nights we're woken up by bad dreams, the monster under the bed, that she puked, or that she wants to cuddle. We eventually both drift off to sleep, holding each other close. Until,

“Daddy! Come look at this!” Our daughter says as she bursts open the door. With a loud groan followed by a smile, Spencer crawls out of bed, picks her up and says,

“Where to sweetheart?"

“My bedroom!” She says with a stifled giggle. Curious as to what this mystery was, I crawl out of bed too and begin to follow them. I check my phone to see a whopping 1:37am. In the bedroom I see that Kasey has just finished building her Lego friends set.

“Awww that’s awesome sweetie.” I smile from the doorway with a yawn, and see Spencer give her a big high-five.

“I love it. Which one is this?” Spencer asks.

“This is the best waterpark ever. I call it Kasey’s Kool Slides, but cool with a k. It has all the cool characters and I can make them fight each other! It says you can add water to it! Can I?” 

“As long as you do in the living room, where there’s no carpet.” I add with a smile.

“So! Wanna play?” She zaps while looking at us with the biggest grin I've ever seen. 

We both look at each other with tired eyes and smile. “Absolutely.”

“YES! Okay so this is Emma, she’s my favourite and she likes Mia, Autumn, and Stephanie. But the other girls are their enemies! They’re the mean girls at their school.”

“Are they mean enough to give a tickle attack?” Spencer laughs as he throws her on the bed and tickles her into a fit of giggles. 

“Stop!!! Let's go to the living room and fill it with water!” She giggles as she escapes from his arms and runs down the stairs. 

“Are you sure you’re not too tired honey?” I ask Spencer, seeing his giant eyebags. 

“Of course. How could I miss out on this waterpark drama.”

I smile as he picks up the Lego set and walks down the stairs. Kasey has already cleared a big spot on the living room floor and filled a cup with water. “Are you ready?” She asks us both.

“Mhm.” I say, as we sit down by her and watch as she pours the water in with a giant smile. I watch as Spencer takes one of the characters and begins to fight with the one in her hand. She gasps and pushes his down the slide. Both of them, smiling like idiots. I join in  and they eventually tire eachother out. She collapses on top of Spencer, who has already fallen asleep on my lap. I snap a picture and gently wake him up,

“Spence, wake up its 3 in the morning. Honey, wake up.” I whisper while gently shaking his shoulder. His eyelids shutter and he looks up at me.

“Hi beautiful.” He smiles and shuffles his position.

“Don’t move!” I whisper-shout while pointing towards Kasey. He slips her into his arms, we both walk up as I pick up the lego set. In her room he sets her down on the bed and pulls the covers up slowly. She opens her eyes and smiles at us. 

“Goodnight mommy. Goodnight daddy. Can we play more tomorrow?” 

“I’ll see what I can do about that sweetheart. I love you.”  He says as he places a soft kiss on her forehead, and I do the same.

“I love you so so soooo much sweetie. Goodnight.” I whisper.

“I love you too.” She mumbles as she snuggles into her blankets. We turn out the lights and quietly shut the door. 

“She’s so cute, oh my god.” I mumble as we walk back to the room.

“So cute.” he says with a sleepy smile. I show him the picture I took of the two of them sleeping. He smiles and whispers softly,

“I love you so much.” While looking down at me. He collapses into the bed and I follow right after, crawling into his arms and drifting softly asleep.

[notfreetoday]

MPW Ep 2 Subtitle Corrections

Subtitle Corrections: Ep 1 here

Cultural/Language Tidbits: Ep 2 here

Same translation disclaimer applies. Thanks to everyone reading the first post and geeking out with me in the notes, I really appreciate it XD Ok, Ep 2, let's go! Sorry in advance for the length!

If you're wondering why Yoh's freaking out about the rainy season even though they've been together for 3 years, the manga artist posted a clarification on twitter:

By the way, “it’s been 3 years since then” – that phrase refers to it being 3 years since that conversation regarding the slave contract. As for living together, they’ve only just started (to do so) around Mar/April*, so (at this point) it’s only been a few months (for them). What if (I) got it wrong…. I remember making a note of it, but the file that I wrote it in and passed over (to the crew) couldn’t be found right, so… (was it) a dream?” *Japan's rainy season comes around June/July, so this means that this is the first rainy season these two have been experienced together.

[Y: まずっ] Y: Tastes bad In case the original "that sucks" sounds like Yoh might be talking about the news of the young forecaster - he's really just talking about the food here.

[S: 遅くなるからいらねぇっつっただろう] Original: I told you not to bother since I returned late Mine: I told you I wouldn't need it cause I'd be late right? This is actually a pretty harsh sounding line tbh. It's sort of inkeeping with Segasaki's curtness, but still pretty harsh - so this tells us he's tired after a long day, and explains the frown on his face that Yoh just wipes away with his cuteness

Nikujaga literally means meat and potatoes. It's a stewed dish and a very well-loved comfort food. Super easy to make too (link goes to an easy to follow recipe, and the site also explains a little about the dish).

[Y: 本当、顔だけはいいよな] Y: Really, it's only his face that looks good.

I've talked about this in my cultural/language tidbits for this episode (linked up top) but I'll add it here for completion's sake

[Y: あ、いや。なんでもない…です*] (Ah, iya, nandemonai…desu*) Y: Ah, no, it's….nothing* Yoh let's his sentence trail off before tacking on a "desu" at the end. "Desu" is an ending verb characteristic of "polite" speech, which Yoh doesn't use frequently with Segasaki (in fact, by this point, he has not used polite speech with Segasaki at all, except for maybe saying the full form of the word "welcome home", and even that's pushing it). Here he adds it at the end as an afterthought (the polite form of "iya" would be "iie", if he had wanted the whole sentence to be polite from the get go), which tells us that Yoh's feeling a little off-kilter here, and does introduce the slightest distance between him and Segasaki. We'll see this distance increase as the episode goes on.

[Y: いや、どう考えても食べ過ぎだろう] Y: No but, no matter which way you look at it, (he's) eaten way too much hasn't he? Btw, if your hair started standing at the spoon scraping the pot - in the manga artist's post about visiting the shooting venue (as well as during Ep 1 twitter space) it was mentioned that Mashiko, the actor, can actually cook, so during filming they had to tell him what someone who can't would likely do, and also asked him to do the housework poorly (because Yoh's not supposed to be good at cooking or housework hahaha)

この人*、明日も朝早いんだよな。たぶん。 Original: This guy, has an early morning again tomorrow. Probably. Mine: This person*, has (to leave) early tomorrow morning too. Probably. *The word here is "kono hito", literally "this person". There's actually nothing wrong with the translation "this guy" tbh because that's a fairly neutral term in English, but I'm highlighting it here because in his monologues, Yoh usually refers to Segasaki using much rougher language, such as "koitsu, aitsu", except when he addresses Segasaki directly in his head. I'll talk more about how Yoh addresses Segasaki in the analysis post, but for now - this sentence hints that Yoh has clocked Segasaki's tiredness (subconsciously or not) and is feeling a little bad for him. Then again he quickly hides that by adding on "probably". (Adding the word "probably" behind your sentence is a common way to express doubt/negate what you just said, and incidentally is commonly used by comedians to deliver a punchline).

[Y: あの*…あの…寝るなら部屋でとおもって。] Original: Um… Hey… You should go back to your room. Mine: Um*... Um... if you're going to sleep then, (it would be better to sleep) in your room - at least that's what I thought...

*"あの…" (ano…), translated as "um" here, is a common sound you use when you want to get someone's attention but don't want to sound too demanding - it actually isn't being polite per se, but it does show the hesitancy with which Yoh approaches him. Contrast this with the way Segasaki gets Yoh's attention (so far it's just been "Yoh" or "Oi" - the latter of which you would NOT use unless you were close to the person, or looking for a fight).

As a general rule of thumb, the level of politeness in Japanese is directly correlated with the length of the sentence and just how far you can beat around the bush. So, Yoh's suggestion that Segasaki goes to sleep in his room is literally just "if sleeping, then room..." and everything else in that translation is assumed. He may not being using polite speech forms here (that would be "to omoimashita" instead of "to omotte") but this is still a common way to be polite because he's making a suggestion that is so mild Segasaki can choose to ignore it. This is a great example of Brown & Levinson's "negative politeness" which we'll revisit when analysing their speech patterns, and which you can read about in entirely too much detail here (free to read).

[Y: じゅあ、俺は寝るので** あの、その、そういうことで、おやすみ] Original: Then, I’ll go to sleep. That…sort of thing. Good night. Mine: So then, I'm going to bed, therefore**... Um... that... with that... night!

"Therefore" is an awkward translation for the word ので (node), which is more often translated as "so". I've chosen to use that word because "node", whilst again not a polite form per se, is less colloquial than the more commonly used "から(kara)", to mean the same thing. It tends to pop up more in writing than in speech. "Therefore" doesn't make a sentence polite/formal in English, but it's definitely less colloquial than using the word "so". The use of "node" is just that tiny bit out of place in this sentence paired with the informal pronoun "ore" for "I" as opposed to the more formal choice of "boku".

Again, Yoh answers Segasaki properly here with a "はい (hai)" as opposed to his usual "un" (which is a sound that expresses agreement), when told that Segasaki will be late again. There actually aren't very many moments where Yoh does speak politely to Segasaki (he's definitely rude when he talks about Segasaki in his head hahaha), so these moments stand out. This whole short exchange, together with the random -desu he added earlier, just make Yoh's sentences a little more stilted/awkward, and more distant. Individually they don't deserve much mention at all, but together, and in the context of his jealousy, show just how unsure Yoh is about where he stands with Segasaki.

[Y: あの人の帰宅が遅くなり] Y: That person returned home later and later

"That person" - similar to the above usage of "this person". This sentence is incomplete - the verb form of the last word - 遅くなり (osokunari) indicates that there should be a second part to the sentence (the "completed" form would be osokunatta). But after he says this, there is a pregnant pause, as Yoh puts his phone down and continues cooking alone. The pause continues all the way into the next scene, before the sentence continues, highlighting the loneliness that Yoh feels.

[Y: 当然、触れられることもないままに] Original: Of course, he did not touch me at all Mine: (and) of course, (I) remained untouched (by him) as well

The literal translation for this would be "(the situation in which I) was not touched (by him) continued on as well". Yoh uses the passive form of the word "touch", which places the emphasis on Yoh "receiving" the action of being touched as opposed to placing the emphasis on Segasaki "carrying out" the action of touching Yoh. Consider the difference between the sentences "I was hurt by him" and "he hurt me". The former is the passive form, and is super common in Jp, much less common in Eng. If this is confusing - welcome to Jp grammar just know that the emphasis of this line is more on what Yoh does not have, rather than what Segasaki has not done. It accentuates Yoh's feelings of emptiness and loss.

Y: すっかり日々は過ぎて Y: The days pass by completely ...

Similarly, this sentence is "incomplete", and is instead continued by Segasaki walking in and telling Yoh he'll be late again. (This whole bit just hurts my soul tbh, Yoh is so lonely. )

This is a teruteru bouzu aka a charm of sorts for good weather. See the cultural tidbits post for Ep 2 linked up top for more info!

This is said really strongly, and gives the "what the hell are you doing" feel. Yoh's truly upset here.

I try not to care about some of the subs in these side conversations because they don't add much to the main story and these posts are already too long, but this sentence should really be "Dammit, maybe I should (go) troll the chat" (and the previous sentence should be "If this was broadcasted in a certain country it would be instant death" aka N.Korea ^^;) and I just think it was a nice touch to hint at the fandom wars/flaming that goes on between fans hahaha

[Y: しんどい] Y: This is too draining The word here used is "shindoi", which is a term used when you're feeling mentally/physically exhausted/drained, and carries a sense of frustration (at feeling this way) and sometimes (emotional) pain.

This. Is. Huge. Segasaki does 2 things here - one, he rejects an after-work meal, which you rarely do because Japan is all about the group and rejecting a group invite, to welcome a new member, can make you seem like you aren't a team player - two, the guy who invites him is his senior, which you can tell because Segasaki sticks to polite speech forms whilst the other guy does not. It's still relatively casual, so you can tell he's got a good working relationship with them (probably why he's not worried about rejecting them) but still. In Segasaki's world, Yoh is the No. 1 priority.

This is more accurately "WTF". There are many sounds in Japanese that aren't exactly words, but carry a lot of meaning - "Haa?!" is one of them, and is a very rude way to express a lot of anger and shock. Please, never say this in real life. You will royally piss off whoever it's directed at and if you are outside a Shibuya bar you will get punched.

The word used here is てめぇ (temee), which is a really rude way to say "you", and has the same energy as "you bastard". Segasaki usually uses the informal pronoun "omae" for "you" when he talks to Yoh, he's definitely pissed off here.

This is the same word, "shindoi" again.

I'm going to put the rest of the whole argument here with just my translation because it's too long to screencap the whole thing.

[S: 何なんだよ？このエロい惨状は Y: うるさい。 Y: 俺は売れっ子エロ漫画家になるんだ S: なんだそりゃ。おい *takes away beer can* Y: 売れっ子さんが　シコリながらネーム描くと　いいのができるって言ってた S: なんも描けてなかったぞ。 S: おい、だめだっつってんの S: 飲みすぎ　出すもん出して　寝てただけだろう Y: 黙れ！ Y: 俺はエロくて　抜ける漫画描いて　いっぱい稼いで Y: 早く　こんなとこ出ていくんだ S: はあ？　おい、お前　どういうつもりだよ Y: どうもこうもないよ！ Y: 平気で抱かれてると思うなよ 。 Y: 俺のこと、好きでもないくせに Y: 便利な奴隷としか思ってないんだろう？そんなにやりたきゃ隣のキ���スターとやってろよ S: お前　さっきから　何を... Y: 俺はあんな風に笑いかけられたことない]

Breakdown: S: What's up with this? This lewd disaster of a scene Y: (You're) annoying! ["うるさい (urusai)" is often translated as "shut up", but it literally means someone is being "noisy", and here is more of a complaint that Segasaki is being bothersome] Y: I'm going to become a hot-selling erotica manga artist! [the word used here is 売れっ子 (urekko), which literally means "someone who gets huge sales" and mostly refers to idols, entertainers, TV personalities etc. So Yoh is not just saying he's going to become popular, he's saying he's gonna be like a celebrity manga artist, which is why Segasaki snorts a little at this] S: What's with that? Hey. *takes away beer can* Y: The hot sellers say that if you jerk off whilst drawing your storyboard, you'll come up with good stuff [urekko-san is a pretty cute way of referring to these popular artists] S: You've not drawn anything, you know? [this is said with a really indulgent air, which contrasts directly with the more authoritative tone of the next line] S: Hey, I'm telling you no more *grabs beer can* S: You drank too much. You just shot what you shot and then went to sleep didn't you? [And this is back to an indulgent tone - also, everyone knows Segasaki is talking about cumming here, he just doesn't actually say it so directly] Y: Shut up! ["黙れ (damare) - contrast with "urusai" earlier. The former is used much less commonly and really does mean to "be quiet". This is why Segasaki pauses and looks at Yoh. Up until now Segasaki just thinks Yoh's gotten drunk and is whining cutely, but this word means things are serious.] Y: I'm going to draw manga that is erotic, that you can wank off to, and then earn lots of money [this is a call back to the conversation with Man-san over the phone in Ep 1, which I did not include earlier because I didn't think it was important to the story when Yoh says "the work that was released last month was amazing! There was a big buzz around the topic "I can't wank off (to this)" - Yoh was being sarcastic here, meaning that he got reviews that his work wasn't erotic enough] Y: and leave this sort of place soon! S: What? Hey - what (the hell) are you thinking? [Again, "haa?" here shows he does NOT like what Yoh's saying, but he does soften the end of the sentence with a "yo"] Y: I'm not thinking of anything! Y: Embracing me so easily - don't think you can (keep on) doing that [again, this is the passive form, so the emphasis is on Yoh being embraced, and here has the nuance of "don't think I'll just (keep on) being fine with being embraced (by you) like it's some sort of norm"] Y: when you don't even like me [this line has quite a bit of bitterness in it - the emphasis here is strongly on Segasaki and his apparent "non-liking" of Yoh my english is dying.] Y: You think of me as just a convenient slave, don't you? Y: If you want to do it that much, go do it with that forecaster next to you! S: You... from the start... what have (you been saying?) Y: I have never been smiled at like that before [again, this is in passive voice]

It's obvious from the acting alone that this entire argument is pretty emotionally charged - this is also reflected in the language because Yoh uses the pronoun "ore (I)" a lot. Pronouns are frequently dropped in Japanese - often you can go an entire conversation without ever uttering the words "I/me" or "you", in part because the pronouns are assumed and also because emphasis on an individual can come across as too selfish/narcissistic or direct. Segasaki uses them often enough with Yoh, which fits his personality, but Yoh normally doesn't. So, when he uses "ore" here it stands out - his plans to be successful and leave, his feelings, his interpretation of Segasaki's actions - all of the emphasis is on his own self. The message is very clear - Yoh is hurting a lot more than he is blaming or accusing Segasaki.

[Y: もう疲れた。あんたといると疲れる。嫌いだ S: お前　酒入るとめちゃくちゃしゃべるんだな Y: ねぇ、何で雨の時はだめなの？ S: はあ？　だって、お前が言ったんだろう] Y: (I'm) tired out. When (I'm) with you, (I) get tired. Hate it. [We've lost the "I" pronouns here, because the emphasis is on the extreme sense of physical and emotional fatigue as opposed to Yoh himself, and on how much he dislikes that feeling. Of note, "hate" here is closer to "detest/really dislike" - the word is "kirai" - which is not as strong as the word "nikui" which we talked about in Ep 1 when Yoh said he hated the part of him that always listened to Segasaki. Also, this is the first time Yoh has addressed Segasaki with the pronoun "you" out loud - he uses "あんた anta", which he also used in his head in Ep 1, after they did it. Again, we'll talk about this in the analysis post in the future, but for now just know that this term is usually used between older couples.] S: You... once you start drinking you really start talking huh? [literally, you "become able to talk"] Y: Hey...why is it when it rains, (we) can't do it? S: What? Because, you said so didn't you? [the last "haa?" from Segasaki! This time expressing his surprise and slight indignation.]

[S: 俺は優しいんだ] S: I. am. Kind. Great example of Segasaki's use of the "ore" pronoun here to quite literally emphasise how great he is. "優しい (kind)" in Japanese carries the connotation of being thoughtful, anticipating the other person's needs and wants and then meeting them etc. It's a characteristic that people often say they look for in their potential partners.

[S: そもそも、なんだ先の言いぐさは 好きじゃないだの　出ていきたいだの お前　俺のプロポーズを受けといてよくそんなことが言えんな S: 養ってやる*っつってんだ　プロポーズ以外になに] S: In the first place, what was with those things you said earlier? That you don't like me, that you want to leave... You... that was rich, saying all that after accepting my proposal. S: I was saying I'd provide and care* for you. If that's not a proposal than what is? ["養ってやる" is a pretty possessive way to say I'll provide for you - it's the same word used when referring to parent providing for a child, or an owner providing for a small animal. It's not rude per se, but it does imply a power imbalance. Segasaki actually sort of has a point here because... this is not something you say to someone else unless you're in a relationship ^^;]

S: ていうかお前、俺のこと嫌いなんだ S: どうなの S: Actually about that... so you hate me huh? S: Which is it?

S: ふーん。あ、そ S: Ohh..? I see. ふーん (Ohh..?) - Segasaki says this a lot, especially in this episode. This is another one of those sounds that isn't a word but carries a lot of meaning. It has a dismissive sort of tone to it, like you've already assumed something or when you're pretty nonchalant/not impressed about whatever the other person has said and are just playing along with them by giving them some attention (so again, if you use it wrongly, it can piss people off). Segasaki uses it whenever Yoh goes mute or shy, as a way to tease Yoh - though Yoh seems to think Segasaki is dismissing/not interested in his answer. あ、そ (A, so) - again, Segasaki says this a lot - can be interpreted as "oh really?/I see/is that so?" - Combined with the above, you can see why Yoh often thinks Segasaki isn't interested in his answer, and even when he does recognise it as teasing, he gets too flustered to do anything about it.

This seems to have gotten longer, if you reached the end - congratulations! I hope this makes it a little clearer why it's so obvious to us as the viewer that Segasaki is really quite patient with Yoh, and is waiting for him to come to terms with his feelings, but at the same time so confusing for Yoh, because of the way many of these interactions can be read both ways. In Ep 3, we'll really be able to get into their dynamics because they've got so much more interaction together.

[kumoriyami-xiuzhen]

Japan Girl’s Fest - Hakuoki Drama "One Night's Promise" Eng translation

Found another drama with Hijikata and Kazama that's much shorter than the last one I posted... this one is from the ライブビデオ JAPAN乙女Festival in 2011!

Also this post is to make up for last week... I think?

Hakuoki ライブビデオ JAPAN乙女Festival drama "One Night's Promise"

Translation by KumoriYami

Hijikata: I thought I had just finished my work, [but] it's already midnight. It seems that headquarters is pretty quiet at night.

???:……

Hijikata: Who's there?!

Saito: It's Saito. I'm sorry for startling you.

Hijikata: Don't scare me like that. Is there something wrong?

Saito: I wasn't able to sleep, so I went to the dojo.

Hijikata: Ha, you seriously are an idiot for kenjutsu.

Saito:...Thank you. I'll take that words as a compliment.

Hijikata: Seriously, it can't be helped that you're an idiot for kenjutsu. Hurry up and get to bed so you don't cause problems for work tomorrow. Well then.

Saito:...Vice-Commander, what are you doing/where are you going this late at night?

Hijikata: Ah... I can't sleep. I just want going to walk around headquarters to get some fresh air.

Saito: Please wait. Because you're the Shinsengumi's Vice-Commander, I hope you will consider the circumstances and think twice about going outside alone [technically "without a companion" but that sounds weird...].

Hijikata:....You have a point....

Saito: I also can't sleep so I'll accompany you.

Hijikata: You don't need to be worry, it'll be fine.

Saito: I sincerely apologize. But this is something that I can't compromise on.

Hijikata: Ha… Okay, I get it. I give up. There's really no helping it, let's go.

Saito: Yes.

Okita: Areh, Hajime-kun, what are you doing in a place like this?

Saito: Why are you over here?

Okita: I just finished my patrol and was thinking of heading back after getting some fresh air. Areh? Hijikata-san is here too. I was thinking that there was a suspicious people around here, I never thought it would be Hijikata-san.

Hijikata: Hey, let's run away, Saito.

(crowd laughs)

Getting caught up with this guy will only make this rare warm evening breeze feel disgusting.

Okita: Hold it, Hijikata-san. Where are you going?

Hijikata: I’m not going anywhere. I'm just taking a stroll.

Okita: Then I'll also go.

Hijikata: Just hurry up and go to sleep. If you can't get up early tomorrow morning, you're the one who's going to get in trouble.

Okita: Hm~ Hijikata-san and Hajime-kun are able to stay up late yet I can't, that feels super unfair~

Hijikata: You bastard... can't you do something bout your mouth?....Just do what you want!

Okita: Hehe, yes, yes, I'll do as I like~!

....

(in a back alley)

Okita: Hey, Hijikata-san~ I'm getting tired~

Saito: The Vice-Commander has something important to do here. Please head back if you're going to disturb him.

Okita: Ah something important is it~ but all I see is him going on a pointless stroll.

Saito: He definitely isn't wasting time, this is an important way for Vice-Commander to pass the time.

(crowd laughs)

Okita: Heh~ it turns out it was a diversion. Then wasn't that enough of one?

Hijikata: Hey! You tow! Can't you be bit quieter? Seriously, it's a moonlit night, and yet there's no elegance to it.

Kazama: Elegance is it, you're saying that doesn't suit you at all.

Hijikata: You are... Kazama Chikage!

Kazama: I thought there would be stray dogs barking in the middle of the night, and it turned out to be you guys. Could it be that you don't even time to sleep in the Shinsengumi. You don't even have time to sleep while working for the Shinsengumi? You must be having a hrad time.

Hijikata: You bastard, what /What are you doing here?

Kazam: What am I doing? Why do I have to tell you tht?

Hijikata: Heh, our job is to maintain the public order in Koto. If we encounter a suspicious person in front of us, we need to send him back to where he came.

Kazama: Maintaining the public order in Kyoto.... Hahahaha, your dog-like nature hasn't changed at all. Ah. Well, it's fine to just keep licking the boots of the Shogunate.

Hijikata: Licking boots?! We're doing this because we have ambitions! You have no right to tell us what to do.

Kazama: Your ambitions? They're probably all pointless things anyway.

Hijikata: Hmph, you keep saying that you have great ambitions, but all you do is kill people people to be rewarded. After all, humans are creatures controlled by petty desires.

Okita: Hijikata-san, there's no point talking to him, just cut him down.

Saito: You guys, get ready.

Kazama: Hahahahaha, I was feeling bored, so this as tonight's entertainment is perfect. It's just as well, I'll be your opponent.

Hijikata: Take your hands off your swords, Souji, Saito.

Saito:……Why?

Okita：I can't back down so easily after being made fun of like that.

Hijikata: They say the weakest dogs bark the loudest. Listen, Kazama. I'll let you off today. But in return, you'll have to closely watch us with your own eyes from now own. The Shinsengumi's ambitions.

Kazama: Hm... You want me to witness that with my own eyes?

Hijikata: Yeah. Though if you still can't admit it to that, then-

Kazama: Then at that time, I will cut down all of your so-called great ambitions.

Hijikata: Fine. Then I'll just say one thing. Humans are creatures that are full of greed. As you say, it's true that the Shogunate and the world is full of corruption. But even so, as long as the Shinsengumi exists, we will fight for what is important to us. Don't forget that.

Kazama: Is that all you wanted to say? Isn't this what they mean when they say the "howling of the losing dog".

Hijikata: Just say whatever you want! The next time we meet… I'll cut cut you down.

Kazama: Those words, I'll return them to you.

....

Okita: Hijikata-san, why didn't you do anything?

Saito: Souji, the Vice-Commander was reaffirming thorough him that the Shinsengumi must never bring shame to ourselves as warriors before the Shogunte or the world. We must engrave that in our hearts.

Okita: Hm~ what a serious pain. Anyway, I'll just cut down the enemy in front of me, so I'll leave the rest of the problems to Hijikata-san.

Hijikata: Hmph, I thought you'd say that. It's fine if you do that, but just focus on looking forward without looking back. You too, Saito. Under the Makoto flag, keep heading forward.

Saito: Yes.

Okita: Yes~ yes. Oh, it's already dawn.

Hijikata: Our regulations say that weren't supposed to be out at night, so what the hell were we doing? [???]

Okita: Ah~~ (yawns) If I can't wake up today, it'll all be Hijikata-san's fault.

Hijikata: You were the one who insisted on following us!

Saito: Vice-Commander, since this is a rare opportunity, why don't we go enjoy the morning sun.

Hijikata: Ah, right. It looks like we'll have a beautiful sunrise.

---end---

[ghost-proofbaby]

modern!steve harrington + mine cause i just KNOW he’d love that song and daydream about a future with his girl listening to it 😭💜

mine (steve's version)

warnings: hurt/comfort, my fingers slipped and put angst

wc: 2.1k+

an: okay i completely goofed here and made this far angstier than you wanted, and did not realize until AFTER it was done. 😭 i'm gonna apply the same logic as miss swift does with surprise songs - since i technically messed up, if you'd like a redo with more sweetness, let me know and i've got you haha 😭 i also just processed you wanted him to listen to the song and that image broke my brain so basically what i'm saying is this one will definitely get a redo haha sorry nonnie <3

It had all started over a stupid fight. A fight that he didn’t even recall how it had started. That’s how stupid it had been. 

Steve had been tired, coming home from a long shift at the diner. It had been a shit show for the entirety of the twelve hours that Steve had been there, instantly making him regret pulling a double to cover one of his coworkers who called claiming they had a fever, but that he’d definitely seen posting on their stories about being out for drinks very late the night before. But he wasn’t going to tell his boss that — he’d been there. One too many beers on one of his rare free nights with friends, and he too would call out, claiming something along the lines of food poisoning. 

He wasn’t fully lying. That much alcohol probably had poisoned him considering the way he felt like death the next morning.

The coworker wasn’t what had him in a sour mood, though. Nor was it the one elderly couple that had kept trying to have terribly long conversations with him when he knew he had food to run. Nor was it that obnoxiously large group of preteens that seemed to have no self awareness as they’d reeked absolute havoc on the diner for the final hour before closing. No, none of that really phased Steve anymore — he was just tired. He was tired, a bit too easily irritated, and just wanted to sleep. 

His plans for the night had been crawling into bed with you, watching some TV show or movie he wouldn’t pay attention to with his head in your lap as your fingers would scratch soothingly at his scalp. His plans for the night didn’t include this fight. If he could have stopped, God only knows he would have.

“They’re going to shut off the water, Steve,” you stress, on the verge of tears at this point. Steve didn’t know if they were from stress, exasperation with him, or if you were hurting from how flippant he’d been since he walked through the door. Regardless, it didn’t matter; seeing you misty-eyed twisted the knife in his chest all the same, “What the fuck are we going to do if they do that? This isn’t something to talk about tomorrow.”

“They’re not going to turn it off tonight!” he shouts right back at you, throwing his hands into the air in defeat, “Fuck, I- what do you want me to do about it? What can I do about it tonight?” 

You snap your mouth shut at that, lips pressed tightly to avoid any quivering. 

“I just worked twelve fucking hours, I just wanted to come home and relax, I’m not in the mood-“

“You’re never in the mood,” you flatly interrupt him, tone a stark contrast to all the overwhelming emotions prominent on your face. Your voice doesn’t even waver — he knows that whatever you’re about to say, it’s been on your mind a while, “It’s always we’ll talk about this tomorrow, or we’ll figure it out. But we never talk about it. We never figure it out, Steve. We can’t just- You don’t think I’m tired, too?” 

His heart breaks a little. You’re right. You’re standing there, still in your scrubs from your own twelve hour shift, and fuck, you’re right. 

Things hadn’t ever been easy. Back in high school, there had been the issue of Steve’s parents. After graduation, it had been the terrible decisions of what now. When you two had decided to pack up and get the Hell out of town, it had been the stress of finally dealing with all the uncertainty, all while desperately trying to keep afloat amongst stacks of bills and adult responsibilities neither of you had expected to drown in. Things had never been easy, but Steve didn’t care about easy — he just cared that you’d always been there, by his side, on his team. 

Right now, it didn’t feel like you and him versus the world. For the first time, it feels like there’s only you two in the boxing ring. 

“This isn’t a competition, we’re… we’re supposed to be on the same side.” 

There it was — your voice cracks, and the moment the first tear falls from your eyes, you’re quick to reach up and swipe it away, pretending it never happened. Pretending that one tear wasn’t ripping Steve apart from the inside out.

“It’s not a competition! But Jesus Christ, I feel like I’m suffocating-“

“I’m suffocating you?” the tears are falling more freely, and you make no move to erase them. 

That’s not what he meant. At all. He’s only making it all worse. So, so much worse.

“I-“ he starts, but he doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know how to make this better. 

He doesn’t know how to fix this.

In an instant, his hands go from threading and angrily tugging at his hair to flaring at his side as he suddenly walks sharply down the hallway. He’s making a beeline for your shared bedroom, doing the only thing he can think of to fix this for you. For tonight, at least.

You’re quick to follow, only two steps behind him, “Where are you going?”

“I’m-“ he pauses, yanking a random drawer open to the dresser, finding himself staring at a pile of your clothes rather than his own. He huffs through frustration and his own building tears, “I’m gonna stay at Eds’ tonight. Give you some space.” 

“Give me space?” you laugh back in disbelief, not daring to take any more steps closer to him, “You’re the one who’s being suffocated-“

“You’re not suffocating me,” he stops all movement, hand still on the knob of his drawer. He turns to you suddenly, a new found confidence, “That’s- That’s not what I meant, okay?” 

He can’t make this right, but he can’t leave you thinking that’s what he meant. You could never suffocate him — and even if you tried, he’d find it to be the most heavenly way to die. But you didn’t know that, not in this moment, and that was what was currently killing him.

You take a deep breath, one step forward, before asking quietly, “What did you mean, then?” 

One last chance. An opportunity to make this right.

“You could never suffocate me,” all the shouting and the frustration has vanished, only softness and hurt left in their places, “Ever. Don’t you ever think for one moment that it’s you. It’s not, okay? I love you. You’re the best thing to ever happen to me, you are-“ he chokes up, looking into your glossy eyes. He can still recall the way he felt all those years ago when they’d first laid eyes on him. He’s memorized the way it felt, because every time you look at him, it still manages to feel like the very first time, “You are everything to me. You’re- Fuck, honey, you’re my entire future. When I think about the future, all I think about is you.” 

You take another step forward. Steve’s own tears now track his own face, his heart racing painfully.

“I love you so fucking much, it’s crazy. And I just- I feel like I’m fucking all of this up. You deserve more than this, and I try to give it to you, but I can’t-“

“That doesn’t all fall on you, Steve,” your hands shake as you lift them, finally close enough to touch him. Each palm rests delicately on his chest and you can’t look him in the eyes, “I don’t want you for your money. Never have, never will.” 

He laughs wetly. You’ve more than proven that. When his parents cut him off completely, you hadn’t blinked an eye. 

“I want you because I love you. I’m in love with you, Steve Harrington. Okay? I’m so in love with you, I followed you across the goddamn country.” 

“Eddie and Robin did too, to be fair,” he reminds you, almost jokingly. All the tension from the fight is quickly fading. His hand drops from the drawer. 

“They did, but I guarantee I love you more than them,” you scrunch your nose, almost grimacing before adding, “No offense to them, of course.” 

“Of course,” he echoes, slowly reaching up and holding your hands that had been pressed to his chest. You don’t pull back.

“I’m just- it’s stressful. We’re both stressed. Neither of us were prepared for this,” you look him desperately in his eyes, “I meant what I said, though. This isn’t me versus you — I never want it to be us fighting each other. It’s always us versus the problem, okay?” 

He nods when you wait patiently for his response, “Okay.” 

“And I want you here,” you continue, “I want you here, in our home and in our bed. I want you here, even screaming back and forth with me, as long as you’re here. With me. Go to bed mad at me, I don’t care. Just… don’t walk away.” 

You smile through the residual tears, squeezing his hands that hold yours. 

Steve thinks about all the examples of love he’d ever been shown. His parents, in a castle of ice. The way the fights always ended in separate rooms, sometimes separate houses. His father storming out to spend the night in a hotel rather than having to be around his mother a second longer. He remembers the way that even with an abundance of money, they were never happy. They never loved each other. A marriage of convenience rather than love. Lasting only out of obligation, not dedication. 

He didn’t want that with you. He couldn’t ever imagine what the two of you have being reduced to that.

When he looks at you, all he can see is happiness. All he can feel is that love bursting from his chest. Images of the two of you by Lover’s Lake, the way the waves of the lake had sent shattered and sparkling flares of light across your cheeks as you’d laughed at him as if he was the funniest person in the entire world. All the nights spent over the phone, talking about nothing and everything, desperate to just fall asleep to the sound of each other’s voices. The ridiculous nerves he’d felt on the first date, King Steve shaking at the thought of putting his arm around you because for the first time, he was truly scared of fucking this up. 

You made him a better man. You saw everything inside of him that was broken, that he had spent so long trying to hide, and you’d simply sat down beside him with glue in hand, prepared to spend as much time as he needed to piece it all back together. 

Go to bed mad at me, I don’t care. Just… don’t walk away.

“I can’t do that, sweetheart,” he finally sighs. Your face starts to fall, but he’s quick to clarify, “I can’t go to bed mad at you. Ever. And we can fight, us versus the problem like you said, all we want but… I don’t want to go to bed mad. I don’t want… I don’t want that. Whenever my head hits that shitty pillow every night,” you both break to laugh, because God, you both really did need new pillows (and a mattress, if you were being honest), “All I want to know is that you’re mine and I’m yours. Sound fair?” 

You smile, and it’s the best thing he’s ever seen. It makes all the long shifts worth it as you nod slowly, “Sounds fair to me.” 

“Good,” he guides the two of you to the center of the room before he drops your hands from his, sighing and letting his shoulders finally drop, “Then in that case, I’m staying.” 

Even with crying tears on your cheeks, you’re still the most beautiful person he’s ever seen. You’re still the best thing Steve Harrington has ever had the privilege of calling his, “Yeah?” 

“Yeah. So if we’re gonna fight — let’s fight, baby.” 

He puts his fists up comically, and you only giggle and grab at them, shaking your head.

“I think we've fought enough for one night,” you mumble, bringing one fist to your mouth, kissing each of his knuckles gently. 

Once you’ve placed your final kiss, he quickly placed the hand beneath your chin, lifting your lips to his. He kisses you in quick succession, and between each one, he repeats the sincerest I’m sorry he can muster. 

He only stops once you’re smiling too wide for him to continue. 

After his lips leave yours one last time, pulling back slowly as he savors it and you, he finally sighs, “I am curious, though — what the Hell are we going to do if they do shut off the water?” 

You shrug, “Like you said, we can talk about it tomorrow.” 

“Or we can use Eddie and Robin’s shower.” 

“Or we can use Eddie and Robin’s shower.” 

As it turns out, Steve Harrington was wrong — when it comes to you, he can always fix things. 

"brace myself for the goodbye, 'cause it's all i've ever known. then you took me by surprise, you said 'i'll never leave you alone'."

[every-character-ever-poll]

If you want anybody to ever be able to safely view anything posted by this blog, you will need to remove the dangerous entries from the spreadsheet and never publish them on this blog, because anyone could be susceptible to some of these things.

(Prior ask)

Anon, I am going to be honest with you. I've been taking these asks in good faith, and treating you as someone who has spent too much time online in a small community feedback bubble and came out of it with some beliefs on how people should use the internet. I am always willing to talk with people if they have an issue with my blog and see what, if anything, can be done.

I do not think you are that person.

You're not telling me anything to actually fix your perceived issue, and instead are just repeating the same talking points without clarification. I am a real human person. I have a life. I have things to do. Respectfully, it is very much past midnight for me, and I have stuff going on very early tomorrow (this?) morning. I take people at face value a lot of the time, but really, if you keep sending me asks like this, I will block you. I'm also not going to publish any more of your asks.

I feel like I could handle this with more grace and dignity, but I am naught but a mortal man, and I am very tired, and there is only so much nonsense I can deal with at this time before I call it quits.

Have a good one.

[drippingmoon]

Merry new year to everyone, again! 🥳💞🥂

I know it wasn’t an event this year, but writing a yearly wrap-up is really therapeutic, you know? So I decided to continue the tradition, and if anyone wants to join me, absolutely view this as an open invitation^^ Introduction is over, and now let’s see what 2023 looked like:

(spoilers: I adored it. I'm also probably going to make this my fixed post, in case anyone ever wants to catch up with me. And also because my second baby, AoS, is growing, and it doesn't have an intro, but I can't leave it out.)

Stats

Aquiver, Aglow: 181k (draft 4) + 195k (draft 5) + hmm, draft 6 is an outlier, because I didn’t rewrite from scratch, so I’m unsure of the written word count. I didn’t change much from draft 5, so I’d say an extra 15-20k. Total word count: 376k+

Remains of a Night: 120k 

Aberration of Sunlight: 134k

This was definitely my most productive year to date. And I got so hungry: the more I wrote, the more I just wanted to keep writing, and honestly? I’m proudest of myself for literally carving writing time whenever I got a spot into my schedule. Mostly it was from 8pm-11pm, but I had a mad run where my only free window was from 1am till I literally felt I was dying… I’ll talk about that separately🤣🤣👌

Though, I'm seriously understating it.

Like a lot of other people, I would have all these hours when I was younger when I didn't have anything to do, yet I'd still find some excuse not to write. "I'm waiting for the right time." "I'm anxious I'm not going to get it right." "Tomorrow! Tomorrow I can start right from the morning, and I'll have more time to write, yeah?" or "I'm too tired now, it's late..." and so the snowball rolled down and downhill and I found every reason under the sun not to write, now that I think about it. Sigh. So much time wasted. But I can't regret it either, because I needed those baby steps at that time.

And now! Now I do what I thought I'd never learn to: I prioritize, and I actually organize my daily stuff so it's not so impossible anymore to have a little bit of writing time. I don't take it for granted either. It feels like such character growth for me, I'm immensely proud of it.

And for the record? This year was a huge improvement over yesteryear mentally, too. It turns out, what I needed to get over my word count anxiety… was to be faced with people who literally didn’t give a fuck about it, and just cared about the story. One of the most unexpected things beta stage managed to do to me… was to quench all my anxieties. It’s as simple as that. I read and enjoy very long books. People also do that. So, I’m very happy to say I’m no longer in a tizzy about ‘quiv. It might kill my chances for trad publishing, it might not. I’ll be happy come what may.

Because it’s so simple how working on ‘quiv or thinking about it makes me joyous, and now I can just enjoy that freely. I will miss writing this story so much. I really will. But at least I’ll have it forever to reread, and I hope this thought brings comfort to everyone who also has problems letting go, like it does to me.

Let’s break it down a little, shall we?🤩

Aquiver, Aglow◇◇◇

My little star of the hour. How fond I am of it.

Like you could glean from above, ‘quiv went through three drafts this year. More specifically: in the first part of the year, practically almost as soon as February arrived. I knew it was getting closer to the final version, and gave me the push to finish all three back to back. I couldn’t justify anymore the bazillion AUs I do with rewrites (basically, WHAT IFs from events, WHAT IF it went this different way, WHAT IF Tyrone actually said this here… and so on and so forth. I wanted to test out as many pathways as possible, and did I exhaust every one of them in existence? Definitely not. I don’t think that can happen, you just keep getting new ideas. On and on. What happened, instead, is that these couple different pathways, at some point, cemented themselves as canon in my mind. I didn’t want to tease myself with alternatives anymore, and that’s when I knew they would be it. Some bits from the first draft, some from the third, some from the second. Some were even draft 6 originals!

It’s a bit of a weird process. I definitely didn’t need to reach draft 3, and meet Mezusa, because I could’ve feasibly made it work with just Yles in the story. It still would’ve made sense, though in a different way. But if I hadn’t… I might’ve missed one of the best characters I’ll ever probably have created, and the story (and Yles) is much stronger for her, if you ask me. 

For that matter, yes, full rewrites every single draft might take a lot of time and effort, but honestly I don’t think I’d ever change my writing process (save for the moments of frustration when I think I will lol) because of the sheer satisfaction of it. Whoever said so long never to settle on the first version, I owe you a beer and probably some curses as well lmao, but very lovingly. You shaped my writing life.

I don’t have much else to share about ‘quiv, other than it’s off with my beta readers my beloved, and maybe a tentative promise that, if anyone wants, you’ll be able to read this precious ball of hope of mine relatively soon. This story is so gentle to me. And as much as I loved to write and work on it, I dearly hope that whoever decides to give it a go, is treated just the same. That’s the only wish I have.

I also don’t know if I’ll go trad or self-published. Instincts say trad, because I fuckin’ suck at marketing (fact), and I know I’d grow resentful if I’d have to put so many hours into advertising when I know I could instead… write. I’m a writer. That’s the only thing I know how to do. Trad, however, might not be as kind on a ~200k as life’s been, so I might not have a choice. If it comes down to that… I’ll just treat it as I do everything. I don't love this story any less if I just write, publish without a fuss, hope that maybe, just maybe, a reader or two will stumble upon the story and we could talk. Maybe we can have the fun of our lives, create some genuine connection. I know that’s applies to a lot of writers. I hope we can accomplish it.

And so, I’ll finish this section of the wrap-up with a kiss to my ‘quiv, for all the warmth it’s ever brought me. It’s come so far, I know it can live distinct from me from now on. It brings me great comfort. And I look forward to the times I’ll reread it, and we can relive our best experiences together. Never thought I’d get to this point. Thank you, ‘quiv.

Remains of a Night♤♤♤

Mwhahaha! And because ‘quiv took all the pressure, this left AoS to be an extremely fun and spirited experience. Literally the chillest I’ve ever been writing. In many ways, it’s more my thing than I expected ‘quiv to be: I get to murder characters left and right, it’s more plot-heavy and banking on the tension created by a creature that horrifies the characters down to their marrow, but still the only way to defeat it is to know it better, which, uh, might have unpleasant consequences for them. It’s got chase and stealth scenes, and it always shoots me with adrenaline to think about them. In short, exactly my jam.

It’s not a new book, nope. You knew it before as Aberration of Sunlight, but from the get-go I felt it would be bigger than ‘quiv. Very fortunately for me, I had a place where to break it, and behold: there’s RoaN (book 1), and AoS (book 2). There might be a third book, which I dearly hope not because titling sucks, but it depends on the Sycamine arc. More on that in AoS.

One last thing to note, before we delve into the story (hoo-ray for earlier drafts, because I can talk more frankly about them). This is the culprit of my 1am writing adventures!!😫❤ My schedule became too packed, then NaNo came round and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to honor how AoS began, because it was last year’s NaNo, aaand I’m happy to say I won NaNo, somehow, with 56k down before I died. At that time, I only had one section left to write (from both books), otherwise, hahahaha, yeah, it wouldn’t have flown. Still, most of draft 2 I’d written in September-October, with my fairy lights, late nights, and cups of hot cocoa, exactly like how life should be<3

Alright. We’re going through them chapter-by-chapter again, exactly because I love seeing the titles so much:

ACT 1

Cracked Visor, Scorpion Grass

I did it! I did! Twas another shower thought I managed to get down in time. Bare broken sentences, but they did the impossible, and arranged this chapter into a structure I adore to bits and won't ever change. (And 'quiv's naughty voice left me alone for once and I could write it properly!) While I don't think I'll ever be happy with a first chapter (not as a concept, but the writing — part of me will always wish that the reader just had all the information already lol), this one is in the right place.

It pays its respects to the story of the broken helmet at the foot of a spaceship, and how it reconnects Madigan with all the people who'd suffered from being tethered to the planets when they yearned to fly, but the Beast punished them cruelly for it. It makes him feel phantoms of their efforts. The tone is exactly what I needed this story to start from: melancholy and numbly hopeless, against the backdrop of the Beasts's echoed cries.

Rain Through the Universe

Unlike 'quiv, because RoaN and AoS are way more plot-heavy, it's not as easy to change things willy-nilly (whereas 'quiv was all about character bonds and dynamics). As such, it's very similar to draft 1. Because of that, I'll frankendraft next (select and combine drafts 1 and 2, rewrite to connect them) and afterwards I'll try something I've always wanted to. (Scrivener keeps hinting at it!) I'm gonna split the chapters into scenes, and focus on those individually and how I can just rewrite them and set their purpose in stone<3 I'm excited!

As for the chapter itself, gods, I love the atmosphere. Just the wreckage of a sundered ship, and Madigan’s sudden madman appearance making a lasting impression on Spica, because how could it not. They no longer answer distress calls in that age, it just means more dead bodies. In fact, they're forbidden to. Madigan instead brings him what he himself lacks: hope. And a lot of crawling around while dreading the Beast's lambent eye opening, and oh my, the moments are really flying by😈👏 extreme fun for me as the writer.

Aberration of Light

If you remember, the books follow two timelines, which will connect at some point. The first and main one is Madigan and Spica’s story. The other is Holloway’s, in the distant past of that universe, and who’s been dubbed the most selfish man in existence. That’s important, because of how the Beast came to be. But that becomes important later. For now, a weird-ass new recruit has joined the ship, and the witchy crew will very soon start making bets if she’s the Beast in human flesh, which really wouldn’t bode well for their future.

Night Falls On Their Reflection

Draft 2 became Spica’s draft. It was high time. He didn't exist in the original idea beyond chapter 2, but he refused to die with his story untold. And now he's one of the most independent thinkers I've ever written. Now he's Madigan's son (yes, even at 25), best friend, back-to-back partner all in one, and I could watch the trust and mutual respect between these two forever. To be sure: Madigan comes up with the dumbass plans, and Spica's only too happy to follow him through everything (it is good fun.)

He's repaying the incredible kindness Madigan's shown him when answering his distress call, after all.

But it goes a bit further than that, doesn't it? Madigan is used to watching over myriad people. He's the Superintendent of his planet, and while he genuinely loves people, kindness is his default. It doesn't go further than that for him. He doesn't necessarily think people need, much less desire his presence there beyond Madigan extending help, and most of the time, he's content with that. Kindness does make him happy. And it should be the same with Spica now, shouldn't it? He's kind, but he's not Spica's family, nor ever will be. Yet he immediately feels a connection with the boy, that has nothing to do with bonding over escaping-a-cosmic-disaster. And so does Spica.

This is the moment when Madigan starts feeling guilty, for stepping where he should not. But here's the beauty of Spica's character: he's nothing if not dead sure of his own feelings, and what he sees with his eyes. It's okay if Madigan keeps unexpectedly taking steps back. For very long, there'd been nobody to support Spica's beliefs. So he does the same, as when he followed his heart to go into dead space: he believes in himself and Madigan, and that their paths aren't meant to diverge. They mean too much to each other for that to ever happen.

(In short, and legend says you can still hear me screeching about these two ten thousand years later, I love these two so much, and especially the parallels between Spica going alone into outer space and loving Madigan.)

(And, okay, obviously all these developments don't happen in a single chapter, but I couldn't stop gushing🤭🥰.)

Who Puts These Tombs in Ice

Overall, I think draft 2’s Luitgart performed worse than draft 1. Mainly it's the setting I want to revert (still an icy, sempiternally dark hell, but with different ice constructions) because some of the beats are a huge improvement, and again, I gotta combine the two. Otherwise, I’m still as obsessed about the Luitgart arc as I’ve ever been, and huge thanks to it for being so strong it could function as an ending of its own, allowing me to split the book.

Gettin’ into spoilery territory, but I have to un-kill Madigan so many times it leaves me in hysterics. That was what I was supposed to fix this draft. It got worse. Considerably.

(One constant: the chapter being a love letter to Madigan, and how his first answer will always be to help the other, no matter if they deserve it or not<3 and finally, finally, he gets acknowledged for it, and the favor returned.)

ACT 2

Lemon-Dotted Days + Remnant

Two Holloway chapters! I’m actually massively pleased with how they’ve turned out. Last year, I said the main issue was that I had an outline, and that never works for me. So I did what I do best and rewrote everything from scratch, and the result is both uncanny and… unexpected.

Unexpected, because I never in my life thought Holloway’s voice would make me laugh so much. He’s supposed to be unsympathetic, but then you get his interactions with Saintlark (the new crewmate, possibly Beast) where they’re contemplating the harvest of a nebula, and he’s harshly critical of it, which gives Saintlark hope… only to go deadpan One Moment Later: if they’d used the nebula to prolong their lives instead of bolstering the war, they wouldn’t have died like clown idiots. 

And, they could’ve maybe stolen immortality from the nebula. They would've had to share it with him, of course. Or he would've murdered them to get it.

That, my guys, is his personality in a nutshell.

I have a lot of feelings on Holloway now, and most involve me huffing and slapping my forehead while groaning, but oh my gods. Was it ever so fun. And wait, wait, wait. Since I'm talking of humor (apparently a lot of comedy fit into this horror lmfao) I have to show you guys the following section🤣🤣👏:

Corpse Snow

The drifters are set howling on the ice. They share glances, five separate vehicles nodding at each other. Madigan revs up the engine, splitting the air with a jet of steam and vibration.

The last of the marines are climbing into the box. A figure flashes past Madigan’s drifter — and he leans over, teeth grinding because of his ribs, and he does his very best to grab someone by the back of their suit and pull. Workout days were never his strength, though. He only succeeds in stopping them in the frost smoke.

It’s Spica dangling from his hand, expressionless.

Lieutenant Hahn instantly seizes on the situation. He throws Madigan a long, withering look. “Whatcha doing, Boss?” he asks softly, about to unhinge his jaw again.

Madigan nudges Spica into the drifter. “Picking up your boy.”

Spica gets the hint and deposits himself into the front seat, glancing from his father to his Superintendent. He seems to give up on whatever’s going on, and makes himself cozy in the frosty spot. And Madigan, of course, pretends not to notice Hahn’s drifter sliding closer.

“And you didn’t consider I might want to have my son with me?”

Madigan looks up and sighs. “Lieutenant, dear Lieutenant,” he starts pleadingly. “Why won’t you show some leniency to a poor, wounded man?”

Hahn’s drifter stops, summoning a breeze across the icy floor that gently rocks the other vehicle. His breathing distorts the comms with static. “And what exactly is my son right now?”

“My trusty navigator,” Madigan answers easily.

“Sir’s emotional walking stick?” Spica pipes in at the same time.

They both look over. Spica’s quietly turned to the navigation, as serene as daylight, seemingly oblivious to how Madigan's expression changes, lightning-fast. He quickly hides it under the guise of a polite mask, as the marines stir and turn their attention on them. They’re snickering.

Lieutenant Hahn throws up his hands, giving up on everything.

This is also the first 30k chapter I’ve ever written. It's everything I've ever wanted to do with ice.

Heart of the Void

The end of the book. Originally, it was the ending section to Corpse Snow, but since it already got so ungodly long, I chipped off that bit and I have to say I’m very happy with how it works as an epilogue! So it ends the frosty, weary journey, and I can’t see the two books as separate yet, but here we bid goodbye to the first.

Aberration of Sunlight♧♧♧

I did the unthinkable and created a fifth arc. This might not seem like much to you, but I was screaming bloody murder you guys😭😭😭. Sigh. It’s so sigh. For so long, AoS consisted of four clear-cut acts, but it was necessary. With the introduction of Sycamine, and making it two books, it was just needed. It’s still one of the worst things I’ve ever done because I was used to four😃💔

(The chapters continue from where RoaN left off – from chapter 10, to 21.)

ACT 3

Retro Spectrum

Sycamine, oh Sycamine. Definitely the break I needed before Days in Darkness. It made for a really neat beginning. It’s calmer, focusing on the knowledge they have on the Beast. It’s also a reflection on Procyon (their main star) and the story of the two straggler dog constellations, and what they'd been running away from. I liked the direction it took. It veered away from the Beast for a bit, so the tension kept expanding in the background. And when it returns, well... maybe they shouldn't have been so eager to see it again🤭.

It suffers from the same syndrome as draft 1’s first chapter… it’s there in the vicinity of the idea, but too much to the left. Not bad for a first attempt. The setting annoys me – I really don't enjoy writing cities, and AoS didn't change that. So, for our next try, I was thinking... maybe we don't need to be on the planet, but up close and veeery personal with it. It's a secret❤.

And, oh gods. I put a moustache-twirling villain in this. And then I couldn’t stop myself from naming some sucker Sweetman Calories. I don’t know what happened to me during those days, but I’m crying🤣🤣🤣.

Toast to the Light

Holloway and Saintlark’s story is slowly coming to an end. Unexpectedly bleaker than draft 1, yet it feels much more sincere. Holloway has a way of saying everything Saintlark needs to hear. No surprise. They did that to themselves.

Dissonant Recognition

Ahhhh, the Madigan-is-slowly-losing-his-grip-on-reality chapter, or maybe he should really stop staring into the suns. One of my favorites<3 Also because it features Moren (!!!) who has a blast staying in the grey morality area, because she doesn’t know if her actions could ever matter, or if she could change anything. Does she just exist? Is she a player or just pawn? Who knows. Besides that, she gets along great with Spica. They form such a teasing duo, the level of mutual respect they felt for each other on sight was a delight to write. My favorite ally of theirs, even if her destiny lies elsewhere.

Night Beneath the Elevator

Best title hands down, dethroning Solgesis. I’m going batshit crazy about the visuals, it's exactly my thing. This half-light slanted over an elevator waiting in a rundown basement to be boarded. And there's something underneath it, and always has been. Something insidiously creeping up and waving its tendril fingers at you as you're just waiting for the fucking thing to ascend. Immaculate, guys, I'm telling you, and I'm cursing my hands because I can't make a wallpaper of this. I want to eat that atmosphere.

Time-sensitive missions, y'all.

And why the heck did nobody inform me I was going to add Command as an actual character and have them talk with Madigan?! That entire convo, made up entirely on the spot but somehow with a direction, made me realize what an idiot I’d been for not doing it sooner. They mean so much to Madigan, after all.

(And Mariya. So much Mariya in these chapters.)

ACT 4

Loop System

Like Who Puts These Tombs in Ice, draft 1 might’ve done it better. Not Spica and Madigan, though, because of the sheer development Spica’s been through and the dynamic he’s managed to form with the crew. It's different from Madigan’s, but similar enough that it’s got Hahn commenting lightly: [Spica’s] picked up quite a few habits from Madigan, hasn’t he? Almost as if they’ve gotten very very close, huh? How about Madigan tell him more?

(I adore writing Hahn.)

Outreach

Another Holloway chapter. Doesn’t have the punch of the kids subplot from draft 1, but this just makes it worse for Saintlark personally, because, this time, the consequences are on her.

Days in Darkness

I knew the moment I first got the idea this would be my favorite chapter. Well, it finally happened in draft 2: when the entire crew is here, this time, and ready for the final countdown, to relive the experience of being trapped in a ship that's disintegrating. No more heroes left behind. I'd been so tired writing this chapter in draft 1, but this time around it was incredible. Everything went up sharply from here, both in terms of events and how on fire I was.

(Maybe less than the gorgon, but I was.)

ACT 5

Echo Terminal

The first of the two log chapters.

I've never written smoother, more visual chapters than in this period. Days in Darkness changed me so much, I was writing day and night by this point and couldn't get enough. Well, I hit my limit in the second half of the very last chapter, but I am beyond satisfied. Even the Beast's metamorphosis took me by storm, because I'd been wondering what the final verbs, the final images, the final design for it was going to be. I didn't expect it to come to me this early, and with such thrill. Those were my very best days of the year, and I toast to them.

(And I knew it was going to be fantastic when Halo's Warthog Run OST started blaring in my head, with as much adrenaline.)

Where, Now? + Solgesis

My beloved. The second and last of the two log chapters, but it’s Noelle Saintlark’s log.

Holloway’s timeline ends here. Or maybe it just gets carried into the future. I thought I’d want to rewrite his parts again, make the plot just a tiny bit more psychedelic and nonsensical because it’s so close to the Beast… but Solgesis put all my fears to rest. Even the formatting and layout is a bit of that special thing I’ve always wanted to try, and it really changes the perspective of the previous chapters. There's a new confession that stands at the heart of Holloway's stories.

Honestly, the only thing that needs urgent working on is the anger at the end of the chapter.

Anger is so hard for me to write sometimes. Not because I don’t connect with it, but because I feel self-conscious writing it. The wildest I felt it was when I tackled 'quiv's chapter 3 and Imera's Turning speech, both in quick succession (before I'd even written draft 1. I'd been taking notes.) Since then... I just thing back to how keenly I'd felt that anger, and I kind of intimidate myself out of it. Kind of like a natural resistence, I quench it from myself. Which is actually hilarious when you think about it. It’s like I’m going I BANISH THEE FROM MY BRAIN because generally, as a person, I dislike feeling and operating on anger. But no worries. I’m going to find a way around it.

Watch me😎.

What Goes Around…

(Now it’s the time for me to start crying some rivers, and, alright, it won’t be visible so I’ll say it: the chapter titles are holding a conversation, guys. They speak to each other. And sometimes it’s both sides of the same coin, like how What Goes Around (comes around) hints here. If you take two chapters, one from the beginning and one from the end (for example 1 and 21) it'll tell you a little secret. Okay, What Goes Around and Rain Through the Universe communicate through their plot, which I can’t spoil but of course it has to do with Madigan and Spica and how they first meet… but there is one title pair that does it best visibly. 

Lemon-Dotted Days and Days in Darkness.

And I hadn’t even planned this. All the parallels I wanted to draw… I feel like they built themselves, guys. They really did, and it makes me so wildly happy I don’t even know how to stop my hands from flailing.

And, with them being 21 chapters, they meet in the middle, on the one unpaired chapter.

Called Toast to the Light.

I friggin’ love everything.

New Sunrise, Forget-Me-Right

Of course, Forget-Me-Right is a play on Scorpion Grass. But it’s also such a gentle name for the chapter, because everything ends here. Lying on their backs, staring out into the universe, and it really, really is over. Just a dark horizon on which stars flare and bloom. And suddenly, that maddened rush to make every sacrifice count, to remember every soul they’ve encountered because the legend says the Beast absorbs you when it kills you – all that suffocating pressure dissipates. Lightness remains. Because they’ve protected each other.

For the first time in my writing journey, blood rushed to my head with such emotion I had to stop writing, which never happens. I had to look up and exclaim, holy fuck. But how could I not, considering how the story ends for the Beast? I am speechless. A lot of gorgeous surprises this draft.

Conclusion□●□

Whew, what a year it's been! As for how 2024 will probably look like, though I don't like making plans: finishing the beta stage for 'quiv, and tackling RoaN and AoS's draft 3. Thaaaat one I'm actually starting on Christmas, when I can (finally!!) reread draft 2 with my mug of hot cocoa (or maybe mulled wine for a change) and, no surprises here, I'm hyper stoked for that<3 <3 <3 I legit can't wait to see where the new draft brings them. I might not have set any expectations for them, but they're vying to keep up with 'quiv and I adore it🤭❤

As for my lovely friends... well, you know by how I spam your tags how much I adore you and wish you happiness forever🤩🥺🥳 I don't know what my activity will look like in the near future, so for now I won't be saying anything, and my semi-hiatus continues. Semi, because you're unforgettable and I crave to see what everyone's been up to and (!!!!) what you've written!

So let's meet in 2024 again, and all the best wishes to you, the reader🥰🥂❤.

[captainsophiestark]

Dive Bar

Maxon Schreave x Reader

Masterlist - Join My Taglist!

Written for my personal fic writing challenge for 2024, Sophie's Year of Fic! Featuring a new fic being posted every Friday, all year long :)

Fandom: The Selection Series

Summary: As one of the Elite, a finalist in the Selection, Y/N gets to bring Maxon to her hometown to show him around on an official royal visit.

Word Count: 1,841

Category: Fluff

Putting work into an AI program without permission is illegal. You do not have my permission. Do not do it.

I smiled, trying not to squint my eyes against the bright lights flashing in my face. All this time, and I still hadn't gotten used to that.

"Thank you all for coming, but we're going to have to call it a night! Our official tour of the city starts bright and early tomorrow morning, after all," said Maxon Schreave, the man I stood arm and arm  with, a brilliant smile on his face as he addressed the press. They kept cheering and taking pictures as the two of us smiled, nodded, bowed, then headed inside the hotel arm in arm.

As soon as we were through the doors, I sighed and let some of the tension ease out of my shoulders. Maxon kept his posture and demeanor proper until the elevator doors closed on us. Then he sighed, too, and turned to me with a tired smile.

"Well, that was certainly a long day. But I'm happy to be here with you."

I smiled, my face warming. Moments like this, just the two of us with no one else watching over our shoulders, were incredibly rare. I wanted to savor every second of it that I could.

"I'm glad you're here, too. And the tour tomorrow is going to be fun, even if it's also a media circus."

Maxon laughed, offering his arm to me again as the elevator doors opened and we stepped out together. Servants and staff waited to escort us to our  separate suites.

The two of us stopped to face each other in the  middle of the hallway, before going our separate ways. As one of the finalists in the Selection, I got to bring Maxon back to my hometown for a tour and a look at where I'd come from. Aside from being a fun  experience spending time with the man I loved in the place I called  home, it was also the first time we'd spent togehter without the other members of the Selection. Even with all the media and people surrounding our every step, it had been fun.

"I suppose I'll see you in the morning for the circus," said Maxon, taking my hands and staring into my  eyes with a sparkle of mischief in his I grinned back.

"Yeah. I'll see you then."

Maxon hesitated for a minute, then leaned forward and planted a soft kiss on my cheek. I smiled even wider, although that was hardly possible, then said goodnight to Maxon and headed to my room.

I went through my regular nightly routine, sending my ladies in waiting away to get some rest of their own. I curled up in bed and closed my eyes, then started my mental clock running. I was going to give it a full half hour, to really minimize my chances of getting caught.

When I'd first heard about the hometown dates, I'd mentally planned a full week of various activities from when I'd lived here before someone burst my bubble. We were coming here with the Crown Prince, sole heir to Illea, while the rebels remained a threat. He would not be going anywhere the palace  hadn't planned and approved.

As someone who'd spent most of my time in this city far away from anything the palace would ever select, I'd been furious. What was the point of a home date if Maxon didn't actually get to see my home?

I knew better than to bring that up with anyone, though. So instead, I'd continued to make my own plan. If Maxon was on board, we were going to have the night of our lives.

I slid out from under the covers in the darkness, listening carefully for any sound or movement from my suite. When I heard nothing, I slipped into a more comfortable pair of  clothes (featuring beat-up blue jeans and a ballcap from my original wardrobe when I came to the palace), then headed to the window.

I'd worked in this hotel for a few odd jobs here and there, and I knew I could get to Maxon's room via balcony-hopping if I really wanted to. So that's what I did. I slipped out the window, closing it most of the way behind me so hopefully no one would notice, then moved carefully from one balcony to the other until I got to Maxon's room.

I listened at the window for a minute, and when I didn't hear any conversation, I leaned in to peek through. The room was empty save Maxon, who was just climbing into bed. I grinned and tapped on the window. He looked up, his face changing from surprised to delighted to concerned in a few  seconds. He glanced at the closed bedroom door behind him as he hurried to open the window for me.

"What are you doing here?" Maxon asked, his voice a frantic whisper. I grinned.

"Trying to take you on an adventure, if you're up for a little bit of risk."

Maxon hesitated for a moment, glancing back at the closed bedroom door again. Then, he looked back at me with a smile.

"Just let me get dressed."

I ended up having to help Maxon pick his outfit, since only a few things in his entire wardrobe would give him a chance at blending in with non-royals. I gave him an extra ballcap and told him to keep his head down, and within a few minutes, we were heading through the city to my absolute favorite spot.

"This is it!" I said proudly, turning with a smile to face Maxon. We stood on a dirty street, in front of a glowing red neon sign for my favorite place in the world. They sold the best shitty pizza and seriously toed the line of dive bar, and it had been one of the things I missed most since going to the palace.

"This... is it? Are you sure this is the place, my dear?"

"Oh yeah. Just you wait, you're in for the best night of your life. The palace could never compare."

Maxon smiled and shook his head, but he took my hand when I offered it all the same.

"Alright then. Let's see what this place has to offer."

****************

"Yes!" Maxon shouted, leaping up in the air before landing with a sheepish grin. "I got my first bullseye."

"I saw!" I laughed, beaming at Maxon's excitement. It had taken him the better part of an hour to relax, but now we were playing darts while eating terrible pizza and sipping local beers, like any other normal  couple from my city might. It had been magical.

"If I'm keeping  score correctly, that means I win unless you also get a bullseye, doesn't it?" he asked, fixing me with a brilliant smile. I picked up my dart and nodded.

"That's right. You better cross your fingers, Schreave."

Maxon laughed as I stepped up to the line, leveling my dart at the board. I'd done this so many times before, it was like second nature, even though I  hadn't played a lot of darts at the palace. I drew back, then followed  through and let the dart fly. It smacked into the board just slightly to the left of the center bullseye.

"Oh my- did I just win?" asked Maxon, a slightly delirious joy in his voice. I beamed as I turned around to face him.

"Yeah. I guess you did."

Maxon laughed in disbelief, then moved forward to wrap me tightly in his arms. He picked me up off my feet and spun me around, and I smiled. I hadn't missed a game-winning shot like that in years, but I wanted to see how happy Maxon would be if he won. I'd made the right decision.

"Does this mean I'm the darts champion now?" asked Maxon, a teasing quirk to his mouth as he set me down. "Since I beat you?"

I shook my head, still smiling as I went to retrieve the darts in the board.

"You've  gotta do more than beat me once with beginner's luck to take the title of champion," I said. "Put a dart board in the palace and we can really see what's what."

Maxon grinned. "You have a deal, my dear. Prepare to lose again."

I chuckled. Maxon's words didn't have any heat behind them, and it made my heart soar to see him so happy and carefree. I wished I could give that to him all the time, but I'd settle for tonight and look for opportunities in the future.

Unfortunately, by the end of that game of darts, we had to head back to the hotel or risk being caught  sneaking out. We took our glasses up and dropped them off at the bar, then I settled our tab. Maxon and I walked out of the place together arm in arm, this time no different than all the other regular strangers milling around on the street.

"Thank you for bringing me here tonight," he said as we walked, the cool night air perfect and refreshing. "I don't often get the opportunity to be among the citizens of Illea. That in itself is a treat, but getting to do it with you is the best thing I could imagine."

"I'm always happy to spend time with you, Maxon. Thank you for taking the risk and sneaking out with me."

"I'll sneak away with you every time I can get away with it, and maybe even a few more times than that."

"Well, good. But let's try to make this one of the not-getting-caught times, okay?"

"Of course."

Thankfully,  we made it back onto the balcony outside Maxon's room without issue. His room was dark, the door still closed, meaning none of the palace staff were any the wiser about where we'd gone. Maxon hopped back through the window, and I smiled before turning to go back to my own room, but he caught my hand and pulled me back.

"I just wanted to  say... I really enjoyed myself tonight. I find that I enjoy most times that I spend with you. I... I love you."

I beamed. "I love you too, Maxon. I love every minute we spend together, even when it's many, many minutes of letting the press take pictures of us. You even make royal procedure meetings enjoyable just by being in the room next to me."

Maxon laughed. He glanced down at my lips, then back up at me, a tentative smile on his face.

"Can I kiss you?"

I grinned. "Absolutely."

I leaned forward, and Maxon and I shared a long, sweet kiss through the window. After a moment, we pulled apart, both of us positively glowing. I took a half-step back, never taking my eyes off Maxon.

"I guess I'll see you tomorrow?" I said. He grinned, leaning out the window even further.

"Yes you will."

"Okay. Good. Then goodnight."

"Goodnight, my dear."

I floated back to my room, thankfully also without getting caught, and fell asleep with a smile on my face. I couldn't wait to experience a thousand more places with Maxon, and play a thousand more darts matches together. Anything the future brought, as long as it was with him.

****************

Everything Taglist: @rosecentury @kmc1989

The Selection Taglist: @valkyriepirate

[unreliablesnake]

Early birthday present (Joel Miller x reader)

Summary: Right before the outbreak you give a visit to a Joel on your way to the hospital. While it was you who wanted to surprise him, he ends up being the one with a big surprise.

Note: Loosely connected to Wounded animals. I wrote the first half when I started to play the game last year so it originally took place on his birthday. But whatever, it’s changed because of the show. / If you want to know when I post new stuff, follow @unreliablesnakefics and hit the get notifications button. I don't have a taglist.

Warnings: fluff with some not-so-detailed smut. Afab!reader. MINORS DNI!! (Please don't report this as mature content, just keep scrolling.)

You stood in his doorway with a bright smile on your face, holding a few balloons in your hand that he watched with a suspicious look as the moment he opened the door. “Good morning and happy early birthday!” you told him happily.

Shaking his head while laughing, Joel took the balloons from you and leaned over to give you a quick kiss. “Thank you, honey,” he said before ushering you inside, mostly because his neighbors were watching his every move today.

“Where's Sarah?”

Joel tied the balloons to a chair in the kitchen before he answered your question. “She already left for school with a friend.”

He pointed at the coffee machine, happy to see you nod in response. His previous girlfriend–or whatever you call someone he slept with a few times–was strictly against caffeine in general, avoiding everything that contained even a very small amount of it. But this man was addicted to coffee, it would be cruel to force him to stop drinking it.

“I hoped I could catch her,” you told him, talking about his daughter.

“Why?”

You flashed a cheeky smile at him. “Girly things.”

“Oh, you two are keeping secrets now?” Joel asked as he walked over to you, his hand reaching out to take yours into his.

“You have a problem with that? Don't worry, it's not like we were conspiring against you.”

“Good to know,” he told you, leaning dangerously close to your lips. “And no, I don't have a problem with that. In fact, I'm glad you get along so well."” He kissed you softly before you could say anything, his hand letting go of yours as he raised it to your face to keep you close to him. ”Are you working today?”

With a sigh, you nodded. “Yeah, I'm on my way to the hospital. A nice thirty-six hour long shift. If I'm lucky,” you added sourly, remembering the last time you had such a long shift. A woman was brought in following an accident, and you spent a good eleven hours in the OR, finishing five hours after your shift was supposed to end.

Joel sighed and rested his forehead against yours. “So you can't come over tomorrow?” he asked, although he probably already knew the answer.

“I'm sorry, babe, even if I could leave in the evening, I'd be so damn tired I wouldn't be able to stay awake for a minute,” you replied before kissing him again.

You often wondered how he could taste this good, a nice mixture of coffee and something sweet you hadn’t been able to identify yet. This man was everything you needed to function, his energy was keeping you alive, and his kiss would have been able to bring you back from the brink of death as well.

You noticed him looking at his watch while his lips were still connected to yours. Right, it was time to let him be, after all it was a workday for the both of you. But then he said something that surprised you a little. “Well, I don't know about you, but I have some time before leaving for work,” he told you when he pulled away to talk.

It was a tempting offer. “I really can't stay.”

“Come on, it's my birthday tomorrow. Can you stop being such a goody two-shoes for once? You’re always there way too early.”

“We both know I’d be terribly late if I stayed.

“But wouldn't it be worth it?” he asked with a laugh.

The corners of your lips curled into a wide grin. “Someone's confident,” you noted with your hand buried in his hair.

“Someone compliments me a little too often and now my ego's big.” You playfully punched his upper arm at this. “No, but seriously, there's something I'd like to talk to you about.”

In the history of humanity no good conversation ever started with this sentence. “I don't like the sound of that,” you said with a sigh.

But Joel looked happy as he kissed the tip of your nose then let you go just to retrieve something from the living room. “Hopefully you'll love it. Sit down,” he asked you with almost his entire arm disappearing inside a cabinet.

You had absolutely no idea what it could be about, but you did as he asked nonetheless. You trusted him with your life, so if it came down to it, he could’ve easily killed you since you wouldn’t have suspected a thing. But hopefully he wasn’t planning to get rid of you, at least not in the bloody sense of the words.

Then he returned, a hand hidden behind his back when he stopped in front of you. “Okay, so here's the thing. I suck at this so don't be mad. I love you. I love you more than anything. And Sarah also loves you, which is a great thing, and also very, very important to me. So it got me thinking, and I don't want to lose you. Would you marry me?” he asked as he showed you the little box he’d been hiding behind his back.

You couldn’t believe your ears. But as you watched the delicate ring, you realized that it was true. “Yes!” you squealed before he finally put the ring on your finger.

“C'mere,” he said with a smile, putting his hands around your neck to pull you into a passionate kiss. His hands soon began to wander, moving down your back until they reached your bottom.

It took some time until you could pull away long enough to ask him what had been on your mind since the question. “How long have you been planning this?” you asked with a smile.

“For about a month. I wanted to do this on my birthday to guilt trip you into saying yes.” You gave him a disapproving look that made him laugh. “Okay, okay, sorry. But for real, I knew it would be a great birthday present for me.”

“And if I said no?”

Joel shook his head at this. “I knew you wouldn’t do that.”

“You’re right, I wouldn’t.”

“So what do you say? Can’t you be a little sick this morning?” he asked, sweeping a strand of hair behind your ear. “Or maybe your car should break down on the way to work.”

With a sigh, you enjoyed the way his finger brushed over the skin on your cheek. He was right, you had never been late before, only went on a sick leave once when you got the flu. So why not? “Don’t tempt me,” you said quietly.

Joel flashed a sly smile at you as he moved behind you, wrapping an arm around your body to pull you close. His free hand traveled down your side, straight to your hips before taking a sharp turn towards your sex, all while his lips barely left your shoulder. You turned as much as you could in his arms to give him better access to yourself, leaning against his chest as he did his magic.

It was hard to resist him when he wanted something, especially when you wanted the same thing. He unbuttoned your pants to push them down, making you kick it away, then he slid his hand under your panties to see how wet you already were for him.

“We’ll be quick, I promise,” he whispered in your ear. “If I only warm you up a little,” he began as he pushed two fingers inside you, “we can finish just in time for you to get to work almost on time. You’ll make it up to me some other time.”

With your head thrown back on his shoulder, you moved a little to give him a kiss, muffling your moans with this trick. Joel was a giver; always making sure that you were okay if he happened to be rough with you, and that you were also satisfied in the end. Even now that his fingers were pumping in and out of you, you could tell by the way his other hand kept you in place that he cared so much about you.

He kept going at a merciless pace, pushing you to the edge of insanity by slowing down every time your body gave away that you were about to come. He loved to do this to you, for some reason finding it adorable how you began to whine and plead for him to go on. And this time wasn’t any different, you were begging him to keep going, your brain cells slowly disappearing from this sweet torture.

And when you came for him covering his fingers with your juices, he simply placed a kiss on the nape of your neck, telling you what a good girl you were for him. “Let’s get you on the dining table, okay?” he asked, already maneuvering you towards it.

“For real? You eat here,” you pointed out.

“I couldn’t care less now, I’ll clean it later,” he said against your lips before grabbing your sides and helping you hop on it. You unbuckled his belt then unbuttoned his jeans, revealing his already hard cock that was eagerly waiting to be inside you. “I love you so fucking much, baby,” he suddenly told you.

You flashed a wide smile at him. “I love you too.”

Before you knew it he pushed his cock inside you, picking up a steady pace as his eyes were locked with yours. “The future Mrs. Miller,” he noted, his words followed by a string of groans as he kept going. “We’re so good together, aren’t we?”

It was hard to reply, your brain already foggy from the pleasure that spread through your core. But you pulled yourself together just enough to hum in agreement before pulling him into a kiss. He fucked you hard, but he was still careful not to hurt you, only aiming to make it hard for you to walk after he was done with you.

You buried your face into the nape of his neck when you were close to your climax again, barely able to bite back your moans. “I wanna hear you, baby,” he told you once he pulled your head back to face you.

Nodding weakly, you stopped trying to be quiet, constantly reminding yourself that Sarah wasn’t home and there was no need to hold back. “I’m so close,” you whimpered.

This made him flash a predatory smile at you, knowing full well by now that this was the case. He knew your body, he could decode every single little movement perfectly, so it wasn’t hard to figure out you were on cloud nine. Giving you another kiss, he kept going and fucked you until you came around him, and you soon felt his warm cum inside you, the mixture of your juices slowly dripping out of you.

While you tried to catch your breath, you couldn’t help but glance over at your watch. “Fuck, I’m late,” you mumbled as you jumped off the table and steadied yourself by grabbing his shoulders.

“You sure you can drive?” he asked with a cheeky laugh.

“I’m sure. Where the hell are–there they are,” you said when you found your pants lying a few feet away from you. As you got dressed, Joel kept his eyes on you, as if he wanted to say something serious. “What?” you asked in the end.

“Hmm? Oh, nothing, really,” he dismissed it with a forced smile. “I don’t want you to be that late so I won’t keep you up.”

With a nod you rushed over to Joel to give him a quick kiss on the lips. “I’ll call you tomorrow morning. Veeeeery early. Hopefully you’ll wake up to that,” you said with a laugh.

“I can’t make any promises, you might have to call me later,” he told you. “But I’ll do my best.”

[lemotmo]

🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖🫖

Ok I’m not gonna lie. This dose of tea took me a minute to compile together because my gosh did the video Ryan share poke the hornets nest 😂😂 and the results brought out ALL the insiders with the dish on what happened behind the scenes with the bt fandom. Main take away was they are two schools of thoughts. 1) Pretend it never happened and act like everything is sunshine and daisies. 2) Acknowledgement of the video and absolutely blame Ryan and only Ryan for all the world’s problems. You’ll also probably notice how as time goes on from the original Ryan share, their response and actions to it get more and more unhinged 💀 though 1 seems to have seen the light as you will see, and then another one (one of the leaders of the Bt fandom) and I agree with the spy in terms of the thought of it being horrifying, has apparently decided she now wants to love Eddie again and write fics about him. Which as the post says, she had been one of most foul toxic horrible takes on Ryan and Eddie since Tommy arrived, including being the one who made that horrible video about Eddie having a 💀 attempt mirror Ryan’s , so no thanks. Keep her far away from both.

And at the very end, I am including a post I saw that had me absolutely wheezing so I hope you enjoy that.

And with that! May I present to you, your tea (also I love how creative these people are getting with the secret names 😂)

https://www.tumblr.com/lover-of-mine/758468759788929024/lady-whistledown-im-sorry-i-had-the-audacity

https://www.tumblr.com/lover-of-mine/758470951061078016/lady-whistledown-ok-since-im-painfully-not-up

https://www.tumblr.com/lover-of-mine/758471424214220800/perry-the-platypus

https://www.tumblr.com/lover-of-mine/758473403573436416/httpsxcombuckkissestommystatus18223891447037

https://www.tumblr.com/lover-of-mine/758473500594995200/httpsxcomabnosomealyssastatus182240298059718

https://www.tumblr.com/lover-of-mine/758473589161967616/theyre-lashing-out-to-the-point-of-making-hate

https://www.tumblr.com/lover-of-mine/758473827902799872/hi-love-carmen-sandiego-here-i-just-want-to-add

https://www.tumblr.com/lover-of-mine/758475697703485440/lady-whistledown-watch-your-inbox-and-sanity

https://www.tumblr.com/lover-of-mine/758476116840398848/httpsxcomramallsznstatus1822376926960316499

https://www.tumblr.com/lover-of-mine/758476357390008320/its-carmen-sandiego-again-sorry-they-just-dont

https://www.tumblr.com/lover-of-mine/758476617173581824/theyre-turning-this-into-a-crazy-ryans-inciting

https://www.tumblr.com/lover-of-mine/758478720198688768/hello-gurl-gg-here-not-only-for-gossip-but-for-my

https://www.tumblr.com/lover-of-mine/758480196440588288/omg-one-of-them-saw-the-light

https://www.tumblr.com/lover-of-mine/758479499360927744/okay-i-have-something-to-add-here-i-feel-like-a

https://www.tumblr.com/lover-of-mine/758481810156109824/no-new-spy-info-from-me-but-i-do-think-that

And now for your early morning laugh

https://www.tumblr.com/lover-of-mine/758476959373213696/im-gonna-pee-myself

That’s all for now! may your kettle be boiling with tea anew tomorrow 🫖

Hi 🫖 Nonny!

Thank you for my morning 🫖. I do appreciate you taking the time and effort to do this.

A lot has happened since I went to bed last night. 👀

I can't wrap my head around some of the things I've read and seen.

All of this over a fictional character on a TV-show. 🤷‍♀️ I guess the cast got tired of the sh*tty takes too. Good for them.

Hopefully we'll get some more great bts the following days. I'm ready to speculate about season 8 some more. 😄

Have great Sunday Nonny!

[study-with-aura]

Thursday, May 9, 2024

Not like me at all to finish up my studying while eating lunch and in the car to and from ballet, right? Ha. That sounds exactly like me as of late. No wonder I've felt tired. I am not giving myself much of a break. But I tell myself that I only have a week left and Julien is going to be home soon, and it will be better to study extra now so I can spend more time with my brother when he gets back for the summer. It's only a few more days, and I'll get to see him again. I know I saw him over the winter holidays, but it was not long enough! Yet, I'm going to be gone for a lot of the summer too. It will be okay.

Mom is coming with us on one summer trip as a chaperone, partially because they needed more volunteers and we can afford to pay for a second trip (the cost for one person is pretty high). She wasn't going to at first, but I said it was okay and that it would give Dad and Julien time to be together and us time to be together, as long as she didn't umbrella (hover over) me during the trip, which she promised she wouldn't.

Tomorrow is my harmony exam! I can't believe it is here already! I've been studying during my piano practice times, but this exam is so difficult! Then again I didn't think I would score a distinction in my Advanced Foundation exam so maybe I'll get a higher mark on this than I'm expecting. Then again, I am more serious about ballet than I am piano, though I am still fairly serious about piano too. As long as I pass, that is all that matters. All I need is a 60, and I am good. Albeit, that is only a pass with no honors, but I am praying for a 60 minimum. Although, if I don't overthink like I sometimes do, I could manage at least a 70 I think.

All that being said, I may not get the chance to post tomorrow since my exam is at 9:30 and will take about 3 hours. I will be doing all of my school work of the afternoon before ballet and anything I don't finish on Saturday morning after breakfast if I need to.

I can do this! I am an amazing and awesome human being! I will not doubt myself. I will trust in my abilities because I have worked hard this entire year and I am as ready as I can be. I've got this!

Tasks Completed:

Geometry - 3rd and 4th quarter quarter review

Lit and Comp II - Reviewed Units 10-11 vocabulary + read the news + worked on non-fiction writing assignment (due next Thursday) + CLEP Test practice question + copied/reviewed final study sheet 2

Spanish 2 - Reviewed Los Deportes y El Cuerpo vocabularios + reviewed hacer + que

Bible I - Read Matthew 22

World History - Read about Al-Qaeda + read about ISIS + read about HAMAS + watched a 20-minute video on the origins of HAMAS and its connection to Hitler + watched video on why Al-Qaeda and ISIS hate each other + answered questions on terrorism

Biology with Lab - Learned about worms + filled in graphic organizer chart (next three sections) + continued germination lab

Foundations - Read the definition of wisdom + read another article displaying media bias + read about bias in elections with changing legislation + started writing my argumentative speech

Piano - Practiced for two hours in one hour split sessions

Khan Academy - Completed High School Geometry daily mastery challenge + completed High School biology daily mastery challenge + completed World History Unit 2 test (71% - apparently I need to study this area bit more :|)

CLEP - Completed Sample CLEP Test Questions 76-90

Streaming - Watched The Cuba Libre Story Episode 9

Duolingo - Studied for approximately 30 minutes (Spanish, French, Chinese) + completed daily quests

Reading - Read pages 1-31 of The Weight of Our Sky by Hanna Alkaf

Chores - Put away the dishes + took the trash out

Activities of the Day:

Personal Bible Study (Ecclesiastes 7)

Ballet

Pointe

Journal/Mindfulness

[koffeinvergiftung]

Tips for studying as a struggling adult

I often see tips for studying and building routines, but they often help me for only a day or two, but never long run. Most of them are also oriented towards students, and the schedule won't work if you have a full time job while studying.

Note: I am neurodivergent (AuDHD), and have been struggling with mental and physical health for most of my student years, to the point where I had to drop out of University to focus on myself. These tips will be a mixture of what has helped me in high school, and what helps me now.

1. Having a routine is good, but missing your 'checklist' is not the end of the world

Having a full time job means there is a 'must do' every day, no matter what other plans I might have. What I usually do is try to work my study plans around my work schedule.

Morning shift: I come home around 1.30, so at around 3 I will start with revision, or new lecture (depending on the day). During revision, I will take a break after every 'section' (for example: vocab practice - break - sentence practice - break - revision review). If I'm starting a new lecture, I will usually take a break every 45 minutes, to mimic the classroom schedule I had when I was in school. Usually I will do my Duolingo lecture on the to, during my break, or before bed.

Afternoon shift: I try to wake up around 9, and I do my Duolingo practice while having breakfast. After that I do my revision/new lecture, and I try to study until at least 11-11.30. After work I will do some more revision, and get ready for bed.

I always spend my evenings on call with my partner, so I will also use that time to ask for help with grammar or pronunciation.

This routine helps me, BUT, there will always be days when I don't feel like doing anything, especially is work has been extra tiring that day. Then I will just do my Duolingo daily quests, and if I'm feeling like it, some vocab review.

It's okay to not be okay, if you feel like you need a break, please take some time for yourself. There is always tomorrow, or even next week. Go easy on yourself ♡

2. Make your free time count

With work and studying, it's easy to forget about your hobbies and social life. To avoid the burnout, try to fine some time every day to do what you enjoy (drawing, reading, gaming etc.) Even if you spend more time on your hobbies than studying, that's okay.

Another thing I do is take a few minutes every say to tidy up around my room. Somehow ( no idea how), trash such as papers quickly acclimate in my room, so if I don't deal with trash on a daily basis, it eventually turns into a depression room. And those are nearly impossible to deal with for me.

Make sure to keep in touch with your friends, too! I try to go out at least once a week, and sometimes turn that coffee into a study session. Those often help me stay focused, and we also talk about the material while studying.

3. Mental health matters more than your studies

I often see posts that romanticise 'working until you drop', sleep deprivation, caffeine overdose and similar. Please, please, PLEASE, take care of yourself! I used to be that way in high school, and sure, passing my classes with an A, felt amazing, but you know what didn't? Suffering a complete burnout, mental breakdown, and major issues with physical health, all withing less than six months. All due to overworking myself in highschool, all due to not taking care of myself. Remember, you can always retake the exam, or redo a year; you cannot redo your life.

When I'm feeling a burnout coming, I make sure to take a day or two just for myself; no studying, to revision, just me and myself. On those days you can do whatever makes you feel happy, relaxed and content. I usually watch a few episodes of a show, spend some time playing video games, and spend some time outside. Especially if it's a nice day outside, try to catch a few rays of sunshine every day, and especially if you're not feeling well (don't forget to wear sun protection!)

These are the tips that help me now, but most of these I couldn't really implement while I was in high school. I will do another post on how I studied before (over 5 years ago 🫣), and how I raised my grades. I'm also planning on writing (and maybe illustrating) about the way I study now, including taking notes and revising.