#Manager said he was going to make him useful at last

[carnalcrows]

BRAT TAMING - THANOS

pairing: thanos x top male reader

synopsis: There is an uninvited guest at your solo smoking session.

content warnings: 18+, bottom thanos, weed, begging, breeding, creampie, orgasm denial.

word count: 1.1k

A/N: I can't find the req to this 😭😭

The arena was nothing but cold steel, bloodstains, and the constant fear of death looming over you. So, when you finally managed to find a hidden spot away from the cameras, you lit up a blunt that you had managed to somehow sneak in, inhaling deep, letting the tension in your body ease for the first time in days.

You didn't expect company, but then again, of course someone would show up.

"Tch, you’re really bold, huh?" a cocky voice piped up, and you turned to see him—Thanos, the purple-haired loudmouth rapper. His presence was unmistakable, as was that damn grin that screamed trouble.

He plopped down next to you without asking, nodding toward your blunt. "Pass it."

You considered telling him to piss off, but there was something almost amusing about his audacity. With a sigh, you handed him the blunt, watching as he inhaled like a pro.

"Damn," he exhaled, smirking at you. "Didn’t think a guy like you would have good taste."

"And what kind of guy am I?" you asked, raising a brow.

"Boring. Too serious. Probably one of those dudes who thinks he's got everything under control." He chuckled, flicking ash onto the ground. "Bet you're the type who likes to be in charge, huh?"

You side-eyed him. "And what about you?"

"Oh, me?" He grinned, leaning back on his elbows. "I like to piss people off. Keeps things interesting."

He kept running his mouth, going on about how he was the best rapper in Korea, how people worshipped him, and how, if the cameras weren’t watching, he’d probably be throwing the guards around like rag dolls.

You let him talk, dragging slowly on the blunt, waiting for the moment he'd slip up. And, sure enough—

"Bet you’ve never met someone like me, huh?" he teased, his gaze flicking to yours. "A guy who knows he’s hot shit and doesn’t take orders."

You let out a slow, deep breath and turned to face him completely. "You don’t take orders?"

"Nope," he said smugly.

"So what if I told you to shut up?"

His grin widened. "I’d probably talk even more."

You leaned in, closing the distance between you two. His breath hitched for just a second—not enough for anyone else to notice, but you did.

"You talk too much," you murmured, taking the blunt from his hand and pressing it to your lips. His eyes followed your movements, his usual cocky expression faltering just a little.

"And what, you gonna do something about it?" he taunted, but his voice was quieter now, his bravado teetering on the edge.

"Maybe," you mused, tilting your head. "But I don't think you’d last five seconds without running that mouth of yours."

That did it. His smirk twitched. "Tch. You wish."

"Prove it."

He went silent.

The air between you both got heavy. He wasn’t used to someone checking him like this. Every muscle in his body was tense, like he was waiting for you to make a move.

You leaned back slightly, exhaling a slow stream of smoke. "Yeah. That’s what I thought."

"Tch…" he scoffed, but you could tell—he’d lost the game. The brat had been tamed.

"Maybe I do like to be in charge," you admitted, standing up and stretching. "But it looks like someone likes being put in their place, too."

He huffed, looking away, but the slight flush at the tips of his ears didn’t go unnoticed.

"Shut up," he muttered, but he didn't move away as you stood over him, asserting every ounce of control you had.

"Make me," you challenged.

Without warning, he pulled you in by the front of your tracksuit, crashing his lips onto yours.

You were mildly surprise, but you reciprocated the kiss with a sense of eagerness, you hands gripping onto his waist.

Wary of any guard that might pop up from a corner, you pushed the purple-haired man further into the tight spot, pushing his pants down and lifting his legs up without prior warning.

He gasped– looking up to face you, but you were too busy with you fingers, spitting on your hand and letting it slid onto his naked hole- making him flinch.

Once you felt that your saliva had worked enough, you tugged down your own track pants, revealing your erection.

The other man's eyes widened, he had never seen a cock so– big before.

Without warning, you pressed the tip in his hole– making his head hit the wall with a loud moan– before which you covered his mouth with the hand that wasn't holding him up.

“Fucking brat– can't stay quite even when you're filled to the brim, hm?”

Unable to respond– he merely whimpered, pretty eyes rolling to the back of his head as you sheathed yourself in him all the way to the brim.

You buried your head in the crook of his neck and pulled out almost all the way before slamming back in, groaning at how tight he was.

Your repeated thrusts kept Thanos mumbling incoherently even with your hand covering his mouth. You merely rolled your eyes and pistoned into him even deeper– making his back arch against the wall.

Soon– you felt yourself at the brink of release and didn't bother to pull out, coating the other man's insides a pearly white.

Thanos hadn't come yet– but you slowed down your thrusts, making the man whine.

“You thought I would let you off that easy? Beg for it.”

You removed your hand from his mouth, and the other man immediately began blabbering and begging for you to let him cum.

After listening for a minute or two, you had grown hard again, and began to resume your thrusts– making him let out a loud moan.

Your other hand worked on his cock, slowly jerking him off as compared to the rapid pace you were fucking him at.

Soon, he felt his orgasm wash over him like a waterfall, and came all over your hand.

You kept him upright, and found the blunt discarded on the floor. Thankfully it was still lit.

You picked it up and placed it in Thanos’ mouth, to which he groaned– head falling back as he inhaled deep.

You slowly placed him down, cleaned him up with some cloth that was lying around and sat down next to him, taking the blunt from his mouth and inhaling the smoke.

The silence between you both lingered even after the blunt was long gone.

Thanos didn’t say much after that. For the first time since you met him, he seemed thoughtful—or maybe just trying to figure out why he let you get under his skin so damn easily.

"We're gonna pretend that didn’t just happen?" he finally asked, standing up beside you.

You smirked. "Nope."

He rolled his eyes but didn’t argue. Instead, he shoved his hands into his pockets and muttered, "Next time, bring more. We’re not done."

You watched him walk away, his usual cocky stride slightly stiffer than before. You just chuckled, shaking your head.

"Yeah," you murmured. "We’ll see about that."

© carnalcrows on tumblr. Please do not steal my works as I spend time, and I take genuine effort to do them.

[timbitshockey]

i’ve been thinking a lot about that article that interviewed these rich white 19-20 year old kids who voted for trump and how so many of them said they did it because they were tired of being told what they couldn’t say and wanted to be able to make offensive jokes again. the world we live in is so individualistic and devalues empathy to such an insane degree.

so it’s like, do i think every player who went to the white house is a trump supporter who voted for him? no, probably not. but the league is, by a vast majority, full of rich white men who likely grew up in rich white communities in a sport that devalues empathy and places so much weight on tradition. so they don’t care. going to meet the president is part of the experience of winning the stanley cup and they want the full traditional experience and they don’t care about the current political climate or what being photographed smiling and thanking trump for his time is going to look or feel like to the people who are actually effected the most by what he’s done and what he’s threatening to do. they don’t care. they want to do the fun thing they earned for playing hockey good. it’s just depressing.

and like to be clear this isn’t a way of removing agency from these guys. lots of people grew up in environments like them and managed to break free of those ingrained messages and care about other people. most of these guys just don’t want to. they don’t want to think about politics beyond whether they’ll get fired for saying slurs and if they have to wear rainbow jerseys one night a year. is every player who didn’t use pride tape after travis dermott did homophobic? no. they just don’t care enough.

which is i guess sort of the problem with sports fandom, and something we have to sit with whenever these situations happen. these are real people. they’re not characters on a show who have plot lines and character arcs. and people are often disappointing.

i don’t know if i’m going anywhere with this. i guess maybe i’d like to remind us all to be kind to each other. to be empathetic. we’ve all got our different lines in the sand for what makes players persona non gratas to us and trying to use that as a gotcha for fandom beef can only really come back to bite us. what am i gonna say to a matthew tkachuck fan when sidney crosby did the same thing when the pens won in 2017? id like to think the players i support would be different but realistically they probably wouldn’t. florida fans and tkachuk fans are in the spot they’re in because their team won the cup, not because the team and players are uniquely more evil or more trump-supporting than anyone else. i don’t want to gotcha anyone. we’re all out here trying to have fun in our sandboxes in a world where empathy is a weakness and people who really matter to us disappoint and hurt us, sometimes just by not caring at all.

anyway. i try not to get into real life stuff too much on here and this will likely be the last i say on the subject. love you guys & i hope the world is kinder to us all soon

[suugarbabe]

okay, hear me out, If mattheo actually got in like a relationship-relationship he would be absolutely ADORABLE

this man would write you tiny notes and letters all over

obsessed with this idea lovie, thanks so much

At first it was because he just truly did not know how to properly talk to you. He didn't want to scare you off. He was cruel and mean and dangerous and scary Mattheo Riddle after all.

The first note you received you actually didn't notice it until you were at your house table in the great hall. You had slumped onto the bench, all but slamming your textbook on the table. Your friend had noticed the note, snatching it from the confines of your book and flipping it open like it was theirs to discover.

The smirk on their face had you yanking it from their grasp immediately. "Someone's got an admirer. Did you have a tough charms class today?" they jested, causing your cheeks to burn before even reading the words. You peered down at the messy scrawl on folded parchment, heat only further increasing on your cheeks.

'you look very cute when you're frustrated. if you'd like any extra help, i'd be happy to volunteer...M.R.'

You glanced down the table, only to catch him staring at you already. Quickly, you grabbed a quill from your bag and scribbled your reply before pushing up from the table and walking a few meters down to hand him back the note personally. Theo and Enzo had crowded him immediately, just as eager to see your reply.

That was how Matty asked you to hang out the first few times. Little hidden notes you'd find at the end of the day; in your textbook, in your bag, in your robe pocket (how he managed to get them all there undetected he never did reveal).

Then when you both started to officially date, the notes didn't stop; they just served a different purpose.

Like when he knew you'd had a bad day, you would often find your favorite sweet, and a cute little note on your nightstand reading something like, 'i never thought someone could feel so much like home, you always know how to make my problems disappear. so hopefully these treats help some of yours go away'

Or when he knew you were stressing over an exam coming up, you'd fine one tucked into your study material, allowing you to smile admits all the worry; 'you are the smartest person i know, love (please don't tell theo i said that he'd murder me). you'll crush this exam, i just feel it. then after we'll get celebratory butter beers just you and me :)'

But your favorites were the ones he gave you, just because; 'i don't think i'll ever know how to love someone else the way i love you. you are the last person i ever want to love like this and i promise you that i will hold on to us until my hands are buried by the earth.'

[stollengoods]

Let’s Get Wild

REQ. Tha-gyu x Reader Smut~

Warnings: Cursing, drug use, and threesome/lots a smut (like someone needs to take my phone away from me cuz this was filthy bitch haha)

Summary: Your dumbass friends take Viagra.

————

Most people would think a single woman renting out a home with two men as your roomates would be a cause for concern. Especially if those same roomates, did all kinds of random substances on the daily but to you they were harmless goofballs; they could be dumb and annoying at times but harmless non-the-less.

You guys met at the club, Nam-gyu worked there as a manager, Thanos was a famous rapper so he was there almost every weekend, and you used to work there as a dancer until you finished college and went on to become a nurse.

You’re shift usually ends at 11 PM and you would get home around 11:30 - 11:45 PM. Most of the time you would get home before the boys because the club didn’t close until 2 AM, but sometimes your job would ask you to stay for a few more hours and you would for the extra pay.

Tonight was one of those nights, you texted the boys in the the group chat not to worry if they didn’t see you at the house because you probably weren’t going to be home until later.

On the way home they decided to stop at McDonalds and buy dinner for everyone. They wanted to surprise you and also knew that you most likely weren’t eating enough as you should for how hard you work.

When they got home, they set the food and drinks on the table. They didn’t know exactly how long you would be, but typically when your boss asked you to stay an extra few hours you got home no later than 3 AM.

They went into the fenced off backyard to smoke some weed before coming inside. They both sat down at the table engulfing their food in minutes.

Thanos burped, leaning back in his chair, “Alright, what do you got for us tonight ?”

Nam-gyu smirked pulling out an orange prescription bottle from his coat pocket.

“I pickpocketed this old fucker.” He said, shaking the bottle and listened to the sound of rattling pills.

Thanos made a face, “Why an old guy ? He’s probably got heart issues and shit. No way he’s taking anything fun.”

Nam-gyu shook his head, the corner of his eyes red due to the marijana they smoked earlier. “No dude, I specifically picked him because he was dressed like a rockstar and plus you should’ve seen all the woman he was picking up, that dude was a chick magnet ! Whatever he’s on I want.” Nam-gyu pointed his thumb to himself at the last statement before opening the pill bottle and shaking one out onto his hand.

“What even is it ?” Thanos asked, his eyebrows raised in curiosity now.

Nam-gyu handed Thanos the bottle, “That’s the thing, the labels kind of worn out, so I can’t really tell.”

Thanos inspected the bottle label closely but ultimately shook his head, “Yeah I can’t make it out either.”

He fished a pill out of the bottle and pinched it between his fingers looking at the front and back of the pill. “It doesn’t look familiar.”

Nam-gyu bit his lip in excitement, “I know, im telling you dude I’ve got a good feeling about this one.”

Thanos smiled, “Alright, down the hatch it goes.” He slipped the pill into his mouth, Nam-gyu following suit as they both swallowed it in sync.

————

“Dude, it’s been almost an hour and all I feel is a headache and my heart beating like crazy.”

Nam-gyu sighed, “Yeah, I know, this fucking blows.”

The sound of the door lock turning made them look back to see you stumbling into the house, closing the door behind you and sliding down it onto the floor.

“Hey there’s are Meredith Grey, how was work today ?” Nam-gyu called out to you.

Him and Thanos sat on the couch, watching a movie, with their heads turned to peer at you.

You could barely keep your eyes open, “Fucking exhausting.”

“Well we got you some food on the table, if you’re hungry.”

You perked up at the sound of food, you made yourself stand and walk over to the table. “Aww, thank you guys, this is a really sweet gesture.”

“Oh yeah, no problem, we know the long hard hours you work and wanna make sure you get the energy you need.”

You smiled at them, before grabbing your food and putting it in the microve. Once done, you sat down at the table and began munching down on your hot McSpicy with fries and washing it down with a coke.

You tilted your head, noticing the orange bottle of pills on the table in front of you for the first time. You picked it up and looked at the label, noticing that it wasn’t either of their names.

You rolled your eyes as you realized Nam-gyu must have stolen it from someone at the club. Curious though, you tried to look for the name of the drug but the label was too tattered to read it.

Thanos got up from the couch and joined you at the table, “Oh yeah, maybe you can help us out and tell us what this is.”

You huffed, “Please tell me you guys didn’t take one already, without knowing exactly what was going into your body ?”

“Eh, I wouldn’t worry too much y/n.” Thanos shrugged, “We took it an hour ago and still feel nothing except for our hearts racing but that could just be the weed we smoked earlier.”

You closed yours eyes at the mention of weed, “You mixed it with another substance ?”

“Yeah, but it’s just weed.” Thanos defended, “That’s not harmful, it’s like drinking alcohol.”

You smacked your hand in the middle of your face at his ignorance. “Thanos, mixing prescription drugs with alcohol can be lethal.”

“We only smoked weed, I was just comparing it to alcohol.”

You pinched the bridge of your nose, “No, Thanos, I get that I was just saying-“ you sighed, “You know what nevermind, let me see if I can figure out what this is before I give myself a heart attack.”

You popped open the bottle and shook one out onto the palm of your hand. The pill looked fairly familiar and it wasn’t until you looked very closely at it to read the writing that you let out a laugh.

“What ?” Thanos asked, “What is it ?”

You closed your eyes, shaking your head with a big smile on your lips. “Hey Nam-gyu ?” You called out to him.

His head turned around, “Yeah, what’s up ?”

“Come here please.” You motioned him with your finger.

He raised his eyebrows and got up walking around the couch, your eyes along with Thanos’s were instantly drawn to the prominent hard on showing through his grey sweats. Nam-gyu sat down across from you completely oblivious to his situation.

“Who’d you get this from ?”

His eyes went to the blue pill in your hand, “Some older guy at the club tonight. I thought since woman were practically throwing themselves at him, he would have something that we would want, but turns out it was nothing. This shit is ass.” He crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair.

The smile on your face grew even more, “Well typically Viagra only works if you’re sexually aroused.”

Nam-gyu’s eyes squinted in confusion not completely catching on yet, “Viagra ?”

Thanos froze for a second and then looked down, “Fuck.”

Nam-gyu’s head snapped to him, following his gaze and he chuckled, “Dude why are you-“ He blinked his eyes a couple times before looking down at his own erection.

You bit your lip to keep from laughing, “Yeah… so you guys took Viagra-“ You checked the pill again, “-And at the highest dose as well, wow.”

“Shit.” Nam-gyu commented, looking anywhere but at you.

“Good news is, since you only mixed it with weed there shouldn’t be too many side effects besides Tachycardia. Plus weed can increase the amount of Viagra in your system, making it last longer and amplifying its effects.”

They both looked at each other with worry and confusion. “What’s Tachycardia ?” Nam-gyu asked, looking back at you.

“It’s just means a faster than normal heartbeat.” You explained.

“Shit.” Thanos cursed under his breathe, “Y/n you gotta help us.”

You laughed, getting up from your seat and throwing your trash away. “Yeah not gonna happen, you two can suck each other off, I’m going to go sleep.”

You went to your room and shut the door, quickly switching into comfortable pj’s and snuggling under your covers.

A few hours later you awoke to someone shaking you lightly and whispering your name. You barely peeled your eyes open enough to make out the color of Thanos’s purple hair.

“Thanos…” You groaned, “What the fuck do you want ?”

“Y/n, you gotta help us.” His voice sounded panicky.

You whined, stretching your limbs, “Huh ? What are you saying ?”

“The Viagra we took earlier, remember ?”

You let out a soft laugh recalling the event suddenly, “What about it ?”

“It’s been two and half hours and we’re still hard as rocks.”

“Alright TMI.” You rolled over onto your side, your back facing him.

“Y/n-“ He pulled your arm down having your back lay against the mattress. “I’m not playing around, we both tried jacking off and came but nothing changed, we’re still hard and it’s starting to become painful.”

“Okay, I still don’t know what you expect me to-“

Thanos cut you off, attaching his lips to yours. This wasn’t the first time you two have kissed, sometimes when you would drink with them, you guys would get really steamy. Not just with Thanos but Nam-gyu too.

You moaned into the kiss, your fingers lazily running through his hair. He rolled himself on top of you, making you instantly feel his hard on pressed against your leg. You felt yourself clench at the thought of him inside of you.

You felt the bed dip next to you and looked over while Thanos kissed along your neck. It was Nam-gyu, he was feeling himself over his sweats as he watched you and Thanos play with each other.

When Thanos pulled away to remove his clothing, you crawled over to Nam-gyu. He leaned back onto his elbows as you made your way on top of him. You could hear his breathing pick up, as your face inched closer to his. You attached your lips to his and he moaned into the kiss as he tried pulling you more into him.

That’s the thing you loved about getting intimate with Nam-gyu, he was so needy.

One of his legs was trapped between your thighs and Nam-gyu bucked his hips up & down, humping your leg. He broke away from the kiss, releasing such loud sensual whines of desperation.

You began kissing his neck and his eyes rolled to the back of his head, hands clutching your hips to pull you even closer to him.

“Y/n.” You heard a deep voice call next to you.

You looked over to an exposed Thanos laying on the bed stroking himself, “Suck me off.” He commanded.

And this is what you loved about being intimate with Thanos, he was very dominating.

You licked your lips, nodding your head and crawling over between his legs. You grabbed the base of his cock and saw as his eyes glaze over with lust watching you. You licked a strip from where your hand was to his tip and felt him shiver beneath you before taking him into your mouth.

His hand tangled in your hair as you started to bob your head on him. You gagged around him when he shoved you down on his dick more, loving the sounds of you struggling to take him all in.

He released your head and you came up for air, a string of saliva being the only thing connecting you two at the moment. You wiped your mouth and Thanos sat up, swiftly unbuttoning your top.

You gasped at the cold air hitting your exposed skin, your nipples rock hard from it.

Thanos attached his mouth to one while his hand messaged the other. Your hand went to his hair lightly pulling on it. You felt vibrations against your skin as you heard him moan and noticed Nam-gyu, now fully naked as well, behind him. His arm was reached around Thanos’s waist, stroking his dick.

Thanos stopped what he was doing to you and turned around to focus on Nam-gyu. Attaching their lips as he fondled with his balls. Nam-gyu’s nails dragged down Thanos’s chest and he hissed into the kiss.

Thanos then detached his lips to spit in his hand. He reached down stroking Nam-guy’s leaking cock and watched as his mouth hung open, releasing such pretty moans for him as he looked at him through half lided eyes.

“God such a needy fucking slut for me, huh ?”

He whined, nodding his head as his hands hung onto his shoulders for support as he came undone; his cum spilling onto Thanos’s cock and lower abdomen.

Thanos grabbed him by the neck, his face only a few centimeters from his. “You better clean this shit up.”

“Y-yes sir.” Nam-gyu squeaked out.

Thanos released him, throwing him against the mattress. You watched as Thanos layed down and Nam-gyu quickly got up and crawled on all fours licking the cum from around his stomach.

You bit your lip at the sight, Nam-gyu was usually a shit talker who acted like he was a tough domineer but when it came to sex he was the complete opposite. Such a submissive, needy partner.

Nam-gyu was about to lick the cum off of Thanos’s dick but he stopped him. “Y/n-“ He used two fingers to motion you over and you listened crawling over to replace Nam-guy’s position next to him.

“Yes ?” You asked.

He rested his hands behind his head, “I want you to ride me.” You broke eye contact to look over at his cock that was decorated in Nam-gyu’s cum.

“Now.” He growled.

You swallowed, removing your shorts/underwear and positioning yourself on top of him. You grabbed his dick to line up with your entrance and felt the sticky substance coat your fingers. Nam-gyu’s cum mixed with your arousel made it very easy for you to sink yourself down onto him.

“That’s a good girl.” He moaned, placing his hands on your hips helping you bounce on his cock.

Your pace quickened when he slapped your ass with one of his hands and you moaned out his name. You felt him twitch inside of you and knew he was close. He pulled you into his chest and swiftly rolled you over so he was now ontop of you.

You didn’t have time to think as he thrusted himself into you, deeper and quicker this time. Your mouth hung open, moans falling out of it one after the other.

“Gonna cum.” Thanos grunted.

“P-please.” You begged, feeling yourself too close to the edge as well.

“Please what kitten ?” Asked, “You want me to cum in this tight pussy of yours, hmm ?”

You clenched around him in response and he groaned. “I need to hear you say kitten.”

Your nails marked up his back as you tried to form words, “P-p-please c-cum in me…”

He caressed his thumb on your cheek, “Such a good girl for me.” He said with a smile, “How could I say no ?”

His hand then went to your throat as he did three last hard thrust into you before spilling his warm cum into you. You came at the feeling of his cum filling you like a pastry and spilling out of you when he pulled out.

You never worried about either one them getting you pregnant because of all the drugs they took. Thanos layed beside you, instantly wrapping his arm around your waist with his head in the nap of your neck. It only took a few seconds for him to start snoring softly into your ear and you giggled a bit.

Nam-gyu who was fast asleep after Thanos had jerked him off; unconsciously rolled over pressing his chest against his back and you smiled at how cute they looked while sleeping. It didn’t take long for you to follow suit.

————

In the morning, it was your day off so you didn’t care too much that you slept in. The clock read 12:34 PM and you groaned as you stretched your limbs. You felt your ass damp and looked beneath the sheets suddenly remembering the events that took place last night.

You looked over and noticed the boys were no longer in your bed. You yawned, walking over to your bathroom and took a shower. Once done you threw on your clothes for the day and walked out your room into the kitchen. It smelled of eggs, bacon, hashbrowns making your mouth water.

“Well look who finally decided to wake up.” Nam-gyu snarked and you stuck out your tongue at him taking the chair across from him at the table.

Thanos scrapped the eggs out of the pan onto Nam-gyu’s plate that was full of food already. He pointed his spatula at you, “How many eggs you want ?”

“Two.” You said holding up two fingers as well.

Nam-gyu took a bite of his food and then stood up, “Mmm, before I eat I’m going to throw your sheets in the washer real quick.”

You nodded your head, “Thank you.” You called after him.

It wasn’t long before Nam-gyu returned and Thanos had made you and him a plate of food. Thanos sat in the chair next to Nam-gyu and everyone chomped down on their food.

“Do you need money for a plan B ?” Thanos asked, with an eyebrow raised.

You shook your head with a chuckle, “No. I’d be lucky enough if either of your guys’s sperm lasted two days in me.”

Nam-gyu looked at you confused, “What do you mean ?”

“You guys are so hopped up on drugs that your sperm cells aren’t the best. Even if they got me pregnant, I’d most likely have a miscarriage after a couple of weeks and not even know it.”

Nam-gyu’s eyes looked concerned, “Damn… that’s-uh kind of depressing.”

You shrugged your shoulders, “It’s not like you’re starting a family anytime soon and when you want to just slow down on the narcotics, yeah ?” He nodded his head going back to eating his food.

Once finished you set your dishes in the washer and thanked Thanos for the delicious food he prepared. You told them that you were going to go get your nails done and to not wait up for you. Thanos stopped you at the door handing you a wad of cash.

“What’s this ?” You asked.

“Money for your nails.”

You tried giving him the money back, “I’ve got it, you don’t have to-“

He shook his head, “I insist.”

“Really Thanos I don’t-“

He smirked, “Let me spoil you.”

You smiled, rolling your eyes at him, “Thank you.” You pressed a kiss to his cheek and walked out the door as he shut and locked it behind you.

[rederiswrites]

Full text of Heather Cox Richardson's latest essay:

February 1, 2025 (Saturday)

Throughout now-president Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign, it was clear that his support was coming from three very different factions whose only shared ideology was a determination to destroy the federal government. Now we are watching them do it.

The group that serves President Donald Trump is gutting the government both to get revenge against those who tried to hold him accountable before the law and to make sure he and his cronies will never again have to worry about legality.

Last night, officials in the Trump administration purged the Federal Bureau of Investigation of all six of its top executives and, according to NBC’s Ken Dilanian, more than 20 heads of FBI field offices, including those in Washington, D.C., and Miami, where officials pursued cases against now-president Trump. Acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove, who represented Trump in a number of his criminal cases, asked acting FBI director Brian J. Driscoll Jr. for a list of FBI agents who had worked on January 6 cases to “determine whether any additional personnel actions are necessary.”

Clarissa-Jan Lim of MSNBC reported that Trump denied knowing about the dismissals but said the firings were “a good thing” because “[t]hey were very corrupt people, very corrupt, and they hurt our country very badly with the weaponization.”

Officials also fired 25 to 30 federal prosecutors who had worked on cases involving the rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and reassigned others. Bove ordered the firings. Career civil servants can’t be fired without cause, and these purges come on top of the apparently illegal firing of 18 inspectors general across federal agencies and a purge of the Department of Justice of those who had worked on cases involving Trump.

Phil Williams of NewsChannel 5 in Nashville, Tennessee, reported on Friday that federal prosecutors were withdrawn from a criminal investigation of Representative Andy Ogles (R-TN) for election fraud; Ogles recently filed a House resolution to enable Trump to run for a third term and another supporting Trump’s designs on Greenland. On Wednesday, federal prosecutors asked a judge to dismiss an election fraud case against former representative Jeffrey Fortenberry (R-NE). Trump called Fortenberry’s case an illustration of “the illegal Weaponization of our Justice System by the Radical Left Democrats.”

That impulse to protect Trump showed yesterday in what a local water manager said was an “extremely unprecedented” release of water from two dams in California apparently to provide evidence of his social media post that the U.S. military had gone into California and “TURNED ON THE WATER.” In fact, water was released from two reservoirs that hold water to supply farmland in the summer. They are about 500 miles (800 km) from Los Angeles, where the fires were earlier this year, and the water did not go to Southern California. “This is going to hurt farmers,” a water manager said, “This takes water out of the summer irrigation portfolio.” But Trump posted that if California officials had listened to him six years ago, there would have been no fires. Shashank Joshi of The Economist called it “real ‘mad king’ stuff.”

Trump’s loyalists overlap with the MAGA crew that embraces Project 2025, a plan that mirrors the one used by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán to overthrow democracy in Hungary. Operating from the position that modern democracy destroys a country by treating everyone equally before the law and welcoming immigrants, it calls for discrimination against women and gender, racial, and religious minorities; rejection of immigrants; and the imposition of religious laws to restore a white Christian patriarchy.

Former Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson has been a vocal proponent of Orbán’s ideology, and J.D. Vance this week hired Carlson’s son, 28-year-old Buckley, as his deputy press secretary. Although Trump claimed during the campaign he didn't know anything about Project 2025, Steve Contorno and Casey Tolan of CNN estimate that more than two thirds of Trump’s executive orders mirror Project 2025.

You can see the influence of this faction in the indiscriminate immigration sweeps the administration has launched, Trump’s announcement that he is opening a 30,000-bed migrant detention center at Guantanamo Bay, and officials’ revocation of protection for more than 600,000 Venezuelans legally in the U.S. and possibly also for Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans. You can see it in the administration’s attempt to end the birthright citizenship written into the U.S. Constitution in 1868.

It shows in the new administration's persecution of transgender Americans, including Trump’s executive order purging trans service members from the military, another limiting access to gender-affirming care for transgender youth, and yet another ordering trans federal prisoners to be medically detransitioned and then moved to facilities that correspond to their sex at birth, an outcome that a trans woman suing the administration calls “humiliating, terrifying, and dangerous.”

The administration has ordered that federal employees must remove all pronouns from their email signatures and, as Jeremy Faust reported in Inside Medicine, that researchers for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must scrub from their work any references to “[g]ender, transgender, pregnant person, pregnant people, LGBT, transsexual, non-binary, nonbinary, assigned male at birth, assigned female at birth, biologically male, biologically female.” Faust notes that the requirements are vague and that because “most manuscripts include demographic information about the populations or patients studied,” the order potentially affects “just about any major study…including studies on Covid-19, cancer, heart disease, or anything else.”

Those embracing this ideology are also isolationist. As soon as he took office, Trump imposed a freeze on foreign aid except for military aid to Israel and Egypt, abruptly cutting off about $60 billion in funding—less than 1% of the U.S. budget—to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which provides humanitarian assistance to fight starvation and provide basic medical care for the globe’s most vulnerable and desperate populations. The outcry, both from those appalled that the U.S. would renege on its promises to provide food for children in war-torn countries and from those who recognize that the U.S. withdrawal from these popular programs would create a vacuum China is eager to fill, made Trump’s new secretary of state, Marco Rubio, say that “humanitarian programs” would be exempted from the freeze, but that appears either untrue or so complicated to negotiate that programs are shutting down anyway.

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) appears to be beside himself over this destruction. “Let me explain why the total destruction of USAID…matters so much,” he posted on social media. “China—where Musk makes his money—wants USAID destroyed. So does Russia. Trump and Musk are doing the bidding of Beijing and Moscow. Why?” “The U.S. is in full retreat from the world,” he wrote, and there is “[n]o good reason for it. The immediate consequences of this are cataclysmic. Malnourished babies who depend on U.S. aid will die. Anti-terrorism programs will shut down and our most deadly enemies will get stronger. Diseases that threaten the U.S. will go unabated and reach our shores faster. And China will fill the void. As developing countries will now ONLY be able to rely on China for help, they will cut more deals with Beijing to give them control of ports, critical mineral deposits, etc. U.S. power will shrink. U.S. jobs will be lost.” Murphy speculated that “billionaires like Musk who make $ in China” or “someone buying all that secret Trump meme coin” would benefit from deliberately sabotaging eighty years of U.S. goodwill on the international stage.

And that brings us to the third faction: that of the tech bros, led by billionaire Elon Musk, who according to year-end Federal Election Commission filings spent more than $290 million supporting Trump and the Republicans in 2024. Musk appears to consider colonizing space imperative for the survival of humanity, and part of that goal requires slashing government regulations, as well as receiving government contracts that help to fund his space program.

Before he took office, Trump named Musk and another billionaire, Vivek Ramaswamy, to an extra-governmental group called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), but Musk has assumed full control of the group, whose mission is to cut the federal budget by as much as $2 trillion.

Musk is interested in the government for future contracts, although a report from January 30, when Musk’s Tesla company filed its annual financial report, showed that the company, which is valued at more than $1 trillion and which made $2.3 billion in 2024, paid $0 in federal income tax. Today, Musk’s X social media company became a form of state media when the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said it would no longer email updates about this week’s two plane crashes—one in Washington, D.C., and one in Philadelphia—and that reporters would have to get their information through X.

Musk’s goal might well be the crux of the drastic cuts to federal aid, as well as the attempt last week from the Office of Management and Budget to “pause” federal funding and grants to make sure funding reflected Trump’s goals. After a public outcry over the loss of payments to local law enforcement, Meals on Wheels for shut-ins, supplemental nutrition programs, and so on, the OMB rescinded its first memo, but then White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt immediately contradicted the new memo, saying the cuts were still in effect.

The chaos surrounding the cuts could have been designed to make it difficult for opponents to sue over them. This method of changing government priorities through “impoundment” is illegal. Congress—which is the body that represents the American people—appropriates the money for programs, and the president takes an oath to execute the laws. After President Richard M. Nixon tried it, Congress passed a 1974 law making impoundment expressly illegal. But the on-again-off-again confusion appeared at first to stand a chance of stopping lawsuits. It didn’t work: a federal judge halted the funding freeze, suggesting it was a blatant violation of the Constitution.

But then, yesterday, Elon Musk forced the resignation of David A. Lebryk, the highest-ranking career official at the Treasury Department. Lebryk had been at Treasury since 1989 and had risen to become the person in charge of the U.S. government payment system that disburses about $6 trillion a year through Social Security benefits, Medicare, Medicaid, contracts, grants, salaries for federal government workers, tax refunds, and so on, essentially managing the nation’s checkbook.

According to Jeff Stein, Isaac Arnsdorf, and Jacqueline Alemany of the Washington Post, Musk’s team wanted access to the payment system. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) demanded answers from Trump’s new Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, warning that “these payment systems simply cannot fail, and any politically-motivated meddling in them risks severe damage to our country and the economy. I am deeply concerned that following the federal grant and loan freeze earlier this week, these officials associated with Musk may have intended to access these payment systems to illegally withhold payments to any number of programs. I can think of no good reason why political operators who have demonstrated a blatant disregard for the law would need access to these sensitive, mission-critical systems.”

Now, though, with Musk’s people at the computers that control the nation’s payment system, they can simply stop whatever payments they want to.

Wyden continued by reminding Bessent that the press has reported that Musk has previously been “denied a high-level clearance to access the government’s most sensitive secrets. I am concerned that Musk’s enormous business operation in China—a country whose intelligence agencies have stolen vast amounts of sensitive data about Americans, including U.S. government employee data by hacking U.S. government systems—endangers U.S. cybersecurity and creates conflicts of interest that make his access to these systems a national security risk.”

This afternoon, Wyden posted that he has been told that Bessent has given the Department of Government Efficiency full access to the system. “Social Security and Medicare benefits, grants, payments to government contractors, including those that compete directly with Musk's own companies. All of it.”

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo posted: “This is more or less like taking the gold from Fort Knox and putting it in Elons basement. Anyone who gets a check from soc sec or anything else[,] he can cut it off or see all y[ou]r personal and financial data.” Pundit Stuart Stevens called it “the most significant data leak in cyber history.”

All three of these factions are focused on destroying the federal government, which, after all, represents the American people through their elected representatives and spends their taxpayer money. Musk, who is an unelected adjunct to Trump, this evening gleefully referred to the civil servants in the government who work for the American people as “the opposing team.”

But something jumps out from the chaos of the past two weeks. Instructions are vague, circumstances are chaotic, and it’s unclear who is making decisions. That confusion makes it hard to enforce laws or sue, although observers note that what’s going on is “illegal and a breach of the constitutional order.”

Our federal government rests on the U.S. Constitution. The three different factions of Trump's MAGA Republicans agree that the government must be destroyed, and they are operating outside the constitutional order, not eager to win legal victories so much as determined to slash and burn down the government without them.

Today, senior Washington Post political reporter Aaron Blake noted that while it is traditional for cabinet nominees to pledge that they will refuse to honor illegal presidential orders, at least seven of Trump’s nominees have sidestepped that question. Attorney general nominee Pam Bondi, director of national intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard, now-confirmed defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth, small business administrator nominee Kelly Loeffler, Veterans Affairs secretary nominee Douglas A. Collins, and commerce secretary nominee Howard Lutnick all avoided the question by saying that Trump would never ask them to do anything illegal. FBI director nominee Kash Patel just said he would “always obey the law.”

[supernovafics]

bestfriend!steve comforting you after a break up

wc: 875

a/n: this short thing was born because "walking in the rain" by we all together has been stuck on repeat for me currently. enjoy!

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

“hey, what are you doing out here?” 

you were somehow able to hear steve’s voice over the heavy sound of the rain. 

seeing his maroon bmw was unexpected, and if it was any other moment it would’ve been a pleasant surprise, but in this one it wasn’t because you had really just wanted to be alone. 

“i’m just walking,” you answered, not stopping to walk over to his car and instead continuing your path down the sidewalk; you weren’t entirely sure where you were going, but you didn’t really mind that right then. 

“walking?” steve asked, his tone incredulous and slightly amused. “it’s pouring out.”

all you could do was shrug in response because you didn’t want to say anything right then; not even to your best friend. 

you hoped that would be the end of it. that steve would understand that your shrug meant that you wanted to be left alone and he’d drive away, leaving you out here walking in the rain on this random tuesday afternoon. but of course, he didn’t drive off. 

instead, he pulled over and parked his car on the random street and then ran to catch up with you; his scoops ahoy uniform immediately getting soaked in the process along with his hair.  

“what’s wrong?” he asked, falling into step with you. 

you shook your head instead of verbally answering him because you knew that it would be too hard to outwardly lie to him. 

steve looked at you, confusion and worry written so clearly across his features because he didn’t know what was up with you in this moment. 

the rain hid your tears well, but it didn’t hide how puffy and red your eyes were. 

“are you crying?” he asked. “what happened?”

you wiped at your cheeks with the sleeve of the jacket you were wearing, and it did absolutely nothing to help, but the action still felt slightly soothing. “i don’t really want to talk about it right now.” 

“okay,” steve responded, matching your quiet tone and not pushing you further. “we can keep walking.”

and so you did. continued walking down the random sidewalk and letting the rain fill the silence lingering between you two. 

until you finally did say something. 

“nate and i broke up. well, actually, he, um, he broke up with me… he ended things,” you said and then you quickly continued before steve could respond. “and i didn’t want to talk about this right now. i wanted to wait until i was at least a little less sad about it to tell you, but...” you trailed off with a halfhearted shrug. 

“i’m sorry,” steve told you, voice soft and hand finding yours, giving it a light reassuring squeeze. 

“it’s okay.” 

it was obvious that your words were a lie— there was nothing about how affected you felt by the abrupt end of this six month relationship that felt okay— but steve decided against calling you out on it. 

he gave your hand another squeeze. “can we go to my car now before we end up getting sick out here?”

“okay,” you whispered and for a second, you thought that he wasn’t able to hear you over the sound of the rain, but then he was leading the way back to his car. 

“i just don’t get it, y’know,” you said, voice still quiet, once you were sitting in steve’s passenger seat. your rain-soaked clothes were starting to stick to you in an uncomfortable kind of way, but you weren't really focused on that right then. “what i did wrong.”

“you didn’t do anything wrong.” the certainty in his voice surprised you as much as it managed to comfort you.  

you turned to look at him, the smallest frown on your face. “how could you possibly know that?”

“because i know you and you’re great.”

his words made you smile, just a little bit, which was a nice contrast from how shitty you’d been feeling for the last hour. it was typical steve behavior, him doing anything and everything to make you feel better.  

you’d been used to it from the moment you two met in third grade when you tripped while playing on the playground and he cracked jokes during the entire walk to the nurses office to take your mind off of the pain of your scraped knees. 

“i never liked nate, by the way,” he continued. 

“i know you didn’t,” you responded. “which is what makes this a thousand times more embarrassing.”

you knew that if you had just avoided nate like steve had suggested from the beginning none of this would be happening. you wouldn’t have been walking around aimlessly in the rain and you wouldn’t have needed your best friend to save you from your own sadness. 

 “do you want me to take you to your place or mine?” steve asked softly, breaking the growing quiet. 

“yours,” you answered immediately. you couldn’t imagine not being with him right now— in his house, in whatever t-shirt and sweatpants he’d offer you to change into, on his couch watching bad movies until it got late and you dragged yourselves to his bed to sleep like you’d done a million times before. “please.”

steve nodded. “of course. anything for you.”

[steveseddie]

‘cause it’s you and me

rating: g | cw: none | wc: 1,9 k | tags: eddie lives, hospitals and injury recovery, steve has a crush, he also knows how to play guitar, fluff

written for @steddielovemonth day one | You and Me by Lifehouse & the quote “every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.”

read on ao3

Steve doesn’t know how much time he’s spent on the chair that is next to Eddie’s hospital bed.

Too long probably, if the recurrent pain on his back means anything. But not even that is enough to prevent Steve from staying glued to that chair, neither are the doctor’s mean looks or Robin’s insistence about him getting proper sleep or meals for that matter. Steve only leaves the chair when he has a shift or when he wants Wayne to have time alone with his nephew or when the nurses wheel Eddie away for surgery or tests or physical therapy. That’s it.

It makes the months that Eddie spends recovering blur together. Sometimes, Steve even forgets what day it is, only managing to keep track of it by the nurse’s schedule or depending on who shows up to visit Eddie. The kids and Wayne and Robin all come on different days, effectively balancing keeping their friend company with their everyday lives.

All of them except Steve.

Ever since Spring Break, it’s been Eddie, Eddie, Eddie.

Find Eddie. Get Eddie’s heart beating again. Drag Eddie out of the Upside Down. Pray that Eddie makes it out of surgery. Wait for Eddie to wake up. Comfort Eddie when he’s in pain. Take Eddie’s mind off of the murder charges that haven’t been dropped yet or the loss of their trailer or the long hours of physical therapy ahead of him. Listen to Eddie ramble on the days that he feels better about books and music and Dungeons and Dragons. Watch Eddie sleep and only then try to get a little sleep himself.

The last one might sound a little creepy but Steve thinks it’s justified considering he still can’t forget how Eddie looked when they found him– pale, bloody, dead. Watching him sleep, his chest rising and falling slowly but steadily is the only thing that calms Steve enough for him to doze off in that damn uncomfortable chair.

Only at some point it stops being entirely about making sure that Eddie is alive– the staring. Suddenly, Steve can’t keep his eyes off of Eddie at all times.

Steve stares at his face while Eddie reads a book to him out loud and forgets to pay attention to what he’s saying. He stares at Eddie’s hands while he explains something to the kids and completely miss a question from Henderson. He stares at his mouth while Eddie slurps the extra jello cup that Robin sneaked in past the nurses and blush when she catches him and smirks knowingly at him.

It takes Steve some time to figure out why he looks at Eddie so much, obvious as it is, and when he finally does he actually leaves his chair and heads to the bathroom for a proper floor freak out.

He just doesn’t know what to do with these feelings for Eddie or where to go from there so he just– doesn’t do anything.

And things stay the same.

Except for the way Eddie keeps getting better.

The doctors are so optimistic that they announce that Eddie might get to go home soon. They have him doing laps around the hospital and start slowly tapering off his pain meds and encouraging him to pick back up things he used to do like writing and playing guitar to work on his dexterity, they said.

It’s why Eddie starts writing down plans and ideas for future dork campaigns again and why Wayne brings his sweetheart to the hospital.

(Eddie almost cried when he saw it, making grabby hands and hugging it against his chest with a happy sigh.

“I swear you’re happier to see that thing more than you’ve ever been to see me,” Steve muttered through pursed lips.

“Steve, don’t call her a thing! She can hear you!” Eddie protested, appalled. Which wasn’t a no but at least later he tells Steve that there’s enough room in his heart for two sweethearts.)

It’s not like Eddie goes back to being a rock god on the guitar right away and his writing is intelligible more often than not, but none of that stops him. He keeps trying, keeps practicing, and Steve loves him more and more for it.

Yes. Love. The first time the word pops up in Steve’s head it leads to yet another bathroom floor freak out but once he realizes it, he has to bite his tongue to stop himself from blurting it out several times a day.

He’s doing it right now while watching Eddie excitedly write down a D&D character sheet for him with his tongue poking out adorably between his lips, tempting Steve to lean in and kiss them. So when a nurse interrupts them to take Eddie away for some test, he appreciates the short break.

When he’s alone, Steve reaches for the notebook that Eddie left on the bed. It’s off limits for any of the kids, but Eddie has let Steve peek at it before. He doesn’t think he’ll mind.

He reads his character sheet, recognizing some of the nerdy words while others fly completely over his head. Then he leafs lazily through pages of notes and doodles until he pauses at what looks like an unfinished song, fragments of lyrics and melodies written messily over the page.

Steve sends a sidelong glance to Eddie’s guitar where it’s leaning against the wall.

He’s never told anyone but he took some guitar lessons back when he started high school, hoping that playing an instrument would help get him girls. He knows how to read music and can fumble his way through a few simple songs, but he never made it past that. It seemed useless when he already had Nancy, and then when he didn’t have her anymore, he had the kids and the Upside Down and playing guitar didn’t seem like a useful skill to have when fighting monsters.

He chuckles. “Guess I was wrong,” he mutters to himself, thinking about Eddie saving the world with a Metallica song of all things.

Without giving it much thought, Steve stands up and carefully grabs the guitar, bringing it back with him to the chair and resting it on his leg, Eddie’s notebook open on the bed in front of him.

He clumsily places his fingers on the fretboard and tries to play the melody that Eddie wrote down. He messes up a few notes, but for someone who hasn’t touched a guitar in years he thinks he plays it decently enough. Eddie would surely do a better job, but it still doesn’t sound half bad. Maybe he can ask Eddie for help to improve and–

“What are you doing?” Eddie’s voice breaks through the melody. His fingers slip and the guitar makes a loud, screechy sound that makes Steve wince.

He whirls around and finds Eddie staring at him from the door, his face unreadable.

Steve gulps, his cheeks pinking up at being caught. “Playing guitar?”

Eddie’s eyebrows knit together. “Since when do you know how?”

“I– uh, I took lessons years ago but I stopped,” he says, tripping on his words. “I– I found your– your song and I was trying to play it–”

Eddie’s eyes dart to the notebook on the bed. Steve winces again, worrying that Eddie will get mad because he went through his things or because he touched his sweetheart.

“That sounds nothing like what I wrote.”

Or because he butchered his song.

Steve blushes brighter, reaching for the notebook and fumbling to close it. “Sorry, I– it’s been a while and I was never that good to begin with.”

With three long strides –and a lot less limping than a month ago, Steve proudly notices– Eddie reaches his side and snatches the notebook from Steve’s hands.

“Give me that!” He says, flopping down on the bed and flicking furiously through the pages, his face pinched.

“Shit, Eddie, I’m sorry, I– I didn’t think you’d be mad–”

“You bet I’m mad!” Eddie says with a huff, patting the bed sheets, trying to find something.

Steve shrinks down on the chair. “I– I think I’m gonna go–” he says, pushing himself to his feet. Better to leave now before Eddie finds whatever he’s looking for and throws it at his head.

“Aha!” Eddie gasps, holding up his pen. Then he notices Steve standing awkwardly and frowns at him. “Wait, what? No, stay. Play it again.”

Steve blinks down at him. “What?”

“The song!” Eddie urges him but his voice is soft, gentle. “Play it again, Stevie, please.”

Stevie. Please. He’s not mad.

“What?”

Eddie heaves out a sigh, but it comes across as fond. “Dude, I’ve been trying to figure out the right melody for that song for like, half a year!” He says, shaking his notebook aggressively. A few pages fall off, but he pays them no mind. “But I just couldn’t get it fucking right, there was always something missing! And it was whatever you were doing when I walked in!”

“So you’re not mad at me?”

“Not at you, Stevie, no,” Eddie chuckles. “Just mad that it was you who figured it out with your secret magic guitar skills and not me.”

“Oh,” Steve says, and he can’t help but let out a chuckle himself. “So you want me to do it again?”

Eddie nods enthusiastically and that’s enough to make Steve flop back down on the chair, propping the guitar on his legs and doing his best to play the song like he did before.

He must get it right because Eddie lets out an adorable squeal before using his pen to cross out something and write down whatever Steve accidentally came up with.

“Goddamn, sweetheart, I’m gonna have to dedicate this song to you now as a thank you,” Eddie says, grinning so wide at his notebook that it shows off his dimples.

Steve hangs a hand from his neck. It feels hot to the touch, probably from the pet name. “Too bad it’s a love song,” he jokes weakly, even if he wants nothing more than for Eddie’s words to be about him.

Eddie glances up, his bottom lip trapped between his teeth. “I know,” he says softly, his eyes flickering nervously over Steve’s face.

Oh. Oh.

Stomach fluttering with butterflies, Steve stands up, grabbing the guitar by its neck to prop it up against the wall.

“Uh, you– are you leaving?” Eddie asks, chewing anxiously on his pen as he watches Steve move around silently. Little does he know that his heart is currently screaming at him to gently tackle Eddie into the bed.

But first–

“Just making sure your guitar is safe before I go over there and kiss you, Eds,” he says, the corners of his mouth ticking up when Eddie squeaks again, his eyes widening.

“Oh, o–okay. That’s smart. Yup,” he stammers out, his voice an octave higher, his cheeks pinking up. “Does that mean you also–”

“Feel that way about you?” Steve asks, sitting on the bed next to Eddie, who nods expectantly. Steve reaches out and tucks a lock of hair behind his ear. “Yeah, Eddie, I do.”

When Steve leans in and finally, finally kisses him, Eddie lets his notebook fall to the floor so he can grab Steve’s shoulders. The urgency to write down that perfect melody now replaced by an urgency for Steve.

But it doesn’t matter, Steve thinks that melody is now seared into both of their memories forever, as is their first kiss. The first of many.

[lucygxybaird]

billy x reader - reader is very shy

As you cling to Billy’s arm, one hand in his and the other grasping his elbow, you think — with undeniable yearning — of your armchair by the hearth, your book resting on the worn leather cushion. You can even picture the piece of ribbon you’ve been using to mark your place. You imagine a fire crackling merrily in the grate, warming your feet as you immerse yourself in the safe, familiar world of the printed page. 

Billy squeezes your hand, bringing you back to the moment. “You alright, darlin’?” he murmurs, leaning down to speak in your ear. 

You nod, peeking up at him from the corner of your eye. “I’m okay.”

“We won’t stay long, I promise,” he says, as the two of you approach the front door. “It’s just that Mr. Tunstall invited me — well, invited us — personally, and I didn’t wanna put him off.”

Your brow furrows. “He invited me?” you press, nibbling on your lip. Billy knocks on the door, so in a rush you whisper: “Not-just-you-he-specifically-said-me-too?” 

He smiles. “Specifically you,” he says. “He likes you.” 

You’re torn between delight and anxiety at the news. On the one hand, you do like Tunstall. You like to think you’re good at reading people, at sensing who they really are, the way some can scent a rainstorm coming in the air. If Tunstall is rain, he’s a gentle spring shower. Kind, warm, with a soft way about him that belies the strength underneath. He’s exactly the kind of man Billy needs in his life. 

On the other — 

You have no idea what you did to make Tunstall like you, and that makes you nervous. If you don’t know what you did, how are you supposed to keep doing it? And if you don’t keep doing it, does that mean he won’t like you anymore? If he doesn’t like you anymore, will he take it out on Billy? You don’t think he will — he doesn’t strike you as that sort of man, but what if—? 

“You with me, sweetheart?” Billy says softly, ducking his head to look you in the eye. “If you really wanna go home, we—”

You shake your head firmly. You don’t want to go home, not least of all because you know Billy really wants to stay; it’s hard for you, to be around people you don’t know very well, but Billy is the type of man who has never met a stranger. He likes parties like this (at least ones that are given by his friends, rather than — for example — a selfish, self-serving smarmy slimeball with an Irish accent and a proclivity for taking what doesn’t belong to him). 

You’re determined to stay at least an hour for him, maybe two if you can manage it. You know you’re going to be exhausted by the end of the evening, wrung out like a rag hung on the line, but you want to stick it out for Billy’s sake. 

It does help that he looks good. You love to see him in his neatly pressed shirt and waistcoat, the string tie — which you helped knot — around his neck, his hair neatly combed and smelling faintly of the apple-scented pomade he uses to make that sweet little cowlick he has lay flat. As if he’s reading your mind, Billy leans down further, his lips brushing against your ear. 

“Everybody’s gonna be jealous of me, walkin’ in with you on my arm,” he says. “Stick close to me, honey. I don’t want anyone stealing you away.” 

You only have time to giggle before the door is swinging open, revealing one of Tunstall’s maids. She gestures for you to come inside, and by the time you’ve flashed her a small, tight smile, people have already come up to Billy. You relax a little when you realize you recognize some of them — Manuela and Charlie, Tom, Mr. McSween and his wife, Susan. 

“You look lovely,” Susan says, smiling softly as she cups your elbow.

Your heart gives a little uneven thud, and you swallow. “Thank you,” you murmur, the corners of your mouth flickering briefly in return. “So — so do you.” 

You don’t let go of Billy’s arms as Charlie and Billy start talking about the last herd of cattle they moved for Tunstall, with Manuela and Susan chiming in every now and then — how Charlie came home late one evening, a cow pie smeared all over his boots and the seat of his pants; how Susan remembers one summer when she stayed with her uncle, who raised cows, and she gave them all flower names. 

You have a story yourself, one about your father trying (and failing) to get a cow up a flight of stairs to play a trick on a friend of his, but you can’t quite get your mouth to work. 

Even though you know these people, your throat still feels a little tight, the pit of your stomach going hollow, like you’re balancing on a tightrope. A part of you knows you’re being ridiculous. It’s the part that sounds an awful lot like your mother, when she would tell you to speak up, to enunciate, to stop hunching your shoulders. 

You wish you could explain it to her — to anyone — but it’s so difficult to put into words. 

Sometimes you feel as though who you really are is wrapped up in all these layers, wound around and around you, bound up so tight that it can be suffocating. You have to fight tooth and nail to drag out the same words, the same smiles, that seem to come so easily to everyone else. 

It takes time, to get through those layers, and not many people seem to want to put forth the effort. Certainly not at a gathering like this, where they’re just trying to have fun. And you can’t really blame them for that. You yourself have often wondered if what they find is worth the effort. 

Then, of course, there’s Billy. He’s never once made you feel like getting to know you, working through the awkward pauses and nervous huffs of laughter, the uncertain silences, is anything less than a pleasure. As if all that is nothing but a treasure map, and you’re the fortune waiting on the other end.

He doesn’t seem to mind acting as your interpreter, either. Walking around the party, he steps in when you stammer answering a question, or bends down so he can catch your words, lightly and easily as if he’s catching a snowflake in his palm. That’s how it is with him, when he’s guiding you through an evening like this. He never lets on, even for a moment, that he’s annoyed with you, that he finds it tiring or remotely taxing that he has to be your voice.

“You look familiar,” a man is saying to you. “Do you work at Tunstall’s store?”

You hesitate, as if this isn’t a straightforward question. “Um,” you say. “I — yes, I do.”

Billy presses his shoulder against yours, a wordless gesture of comfort. “She sure does,” he confirms. “Lucky for me, too. That’s where we met.” 

You smile. Lucky for me. Lucky for you, more like. You’re entirely convinced that Billy could have anyone he wanted — not only is he gorgeous, but his heart is just as lovely, if not lovelier. Not that you’ve ever told anyone this, because you would rather die than admit to harboring such maudlin thoughts, but he’s often reminded you of leather. 

Masculine and tough, sure, and sometimes bearing scars and damage right on the surface, whether it’s a gunfire flash of temper (never, ever directed at you, but at people like his stepfather, at Riley or Murphy) or guilt written in his eyes. But he can also be incredibly soft, his very touch a luxury, wrapping you up warm and making you feel so safe.

You’re pulled out of your reverie when the man clears his throat, making you give a little jump, as if someone has unexpectedly turned a corner down the hall ahead of you, coming right for you. “Do you know if there’s any jobs available down there?” he says. “My son-in-law is lookin’ for something, and I understand Tunstall is a good boss.”

“Oh—” Your tongue immediately finds itself in knots, and you feel the pit of your stomach tilt away as if it’s about to drop to your feet. “I mean, I — I think — I could ask…”

At your side, Billy smiles. “I’m sure Mr. Tunstall could always use help at the store,” he says. “Or if your son-in-law is any good with horses, the gang would never say no to another pair of hands. Y��never know when an extra man would come in useful herding cattle.”

You have to fight the urge to bury your face against Billy’s shoulder. Your cheeks are unbearably warm, and you can’t bring yourself to focus on the man in front of you, who smiles back at Billy and ambles away. You don’t even have to say anything. Without thinking about it, you tighten your hold on Billy’s arm, and he knows.

“It’s okay, darlin’,” he says softly, reaching with his free hand to turn your face toward his, gently grasping your chin. “That was a lot to ask of you out of nowhere. I didn’t mind steppin’ in.”

You curl your fingers into the material of his sleeve, offering him a small smile. “Thank you,” you murmur.

Billy tightens his grip on your chin just a little, so you can’t look away. “You don’t gotta thank me,” he says. “I would do anything for you, I hope you know that.”

“I do,” you tell him. 

He turns to face you, taking you by the waist and tugging you closer. You can’t help but giggle, even as you flush and look around. “Billy…”

“We’re not doing anything wrong,” he reminds you. “I’m just holdin’ onto my girl, that’s all.”

“I know,” you murmur, absently smoothing down his collar. He smiles, shrugging one shoulder as though to bump your hand back in that direction. You brush your fingertips over the curve of his neck, tentatively caressing the curls at his nape. “I just don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable.”

Billy gives your hips a little squeeze. “The only one I care about bein’ uncomfortable is you,” he says. “Are you?”

The truth is, you’re once again of two minds. You certainly don’t want to let go of Billy; you never do. Before, you weren’t really one to feel particularly comfortable with physical affection, but with him, it’s different. It just feels so…natural, as if your body is the tide and his is the shore. Being in his arms soothes you and softens you, even now, when nerves are crawling and pinching in the hollow spaces between your ribs. 

But the idea of people noticing you — of drawing attention to yourself, even if it’s positive, like playful ribbing from one of the boys — makes you feel as if you’ve been holding your breath for a moment too long. 

“No,” you murmur finally, pressing against him. “I just wish…”

Well, frankly, you wish nobody else was here, that it was just the two of you. But you usually wish for that. Or if it was just the two of you, at home, with the Bowdres and the McSweens. Since you’re more comfortable with them than you are with strangers, in the comfort of a familiar environment, you would actually be able to talk to them. To relax, enjoy yourself. 

Tunstall is well-liked — as he should be — and so nearly everyone on the guest list appears to have shown up tonight. With so many people here, you can’t help but feel like you’re waiting in the wings for a performance you didn’t expect to be putting on. Which means you’ll just end up being embarrassed in one way or another. 

Billy frames your face between his hands, pressing his forehead to yours. “I know,” he says. He offers you a smile. “Why don’t I go get us something to drink? Maybe some ginger ale to settle your stomach?”

He must see it when your heart gives a little leap of alarm in your chest, like a hare startling in the grass a fox gets closer. “I’ll be right back,” he promises. “Just…look, why don’t you wait for me in here?”

With his hand at the small of your back, he turns you toward an open doorway, which looks into Tunstall’s little personal library. “I’m sure Mr. Tunstall won’t mind,” he says. “You can see how many of these books you’ve already read. He’d probably like someone to talk about them with.” 

You manage to smile. If this was coming from anyone else, you would feel like a child being pacified with a piece of candy; but you know Billy means well, and besides, the idea of spending a few moments in this oasis of a room strikes you as perfectly fine. 

Still — 

“Hurry back,” you murmur, bracing your hands on his shoulders. 

Billy leans down and presses his lips against your forehead. “I will, honey, I swear.”

There’s a certain comfort in being known so well, you muse, as you step into the little room. You already feel better with the brunt of the party behind you, and the sight of the wall-to-wall shelves, filled with beautiful leather-bound volumes, makes you feel at home. There’s even an overstuffed armchair by the hearth, not too different to the one you have. 

You drift over to the shelves, brushing your fingers over the spine of a forest-green book whose title is printed in gold leaf: Leaves of Grass.

“Have you read it?” 

You would scream if not for the fact that your throat has suddenly narrowed to the width of an apple stem. A strangled squeak manages to escape as you whirl around, your hand to your pounding heart. You manage a deep breath when you see it’s only Mr. Tunstall.

“Oh, my dear girl, I’m so sorry,” he says, his face creasing in concern as he crosses the room toward you. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Are you alright?”

You nod, massaging at the base of your throat, where you can still feel your heartbeat fluttering like a trapped hummingbird. “I — yes,” you say. “I didn’t realize…”

Mr. Tunstall smiles. “It’s getting rather rowdy out there,” he says, gesturing with a tilt of his head toward the party behind him. “I needed a little bit of a break.”

You smile. “Me too,” you say. “Billy thought I might…”

“Wait in here?” Tunstall smiles again. “Yes, he told me. I hope I’m not intruding.”

A small laugh, more like a huff of air, escapes you. “Mr. Tunstall—”

“John,” he corrects gently.

You nibble on your lip, a shy little grin brushing against your lips. “John,” you say, fighting the urge to giggle again, like a child who swears under her breath in church. “It’s your house.”

“And, at the moment, this part of it is your refuge,” he says, with a courtly little bow that actually does get another giggle out of you.

“You aren’t intruding,” you assure him. “I was just admiring your books.” You gesture at the Whitman sitting on the shelf behind you. “I have read this one. I love it. I usually…” You smile self-consciously as one hand worries absently with a tendril of hair that has escaped your coiffure. “I usually read histories, but Whitman’s verse is so beautiful.”

Tunstall nods thoughtfully, another smile warming his face. “History is your milieu, is it?” he says, and his interest seems so genuine that you actually feel a little wriggle of excitement. “Any particular era?”

You feel a little silly admitting this to a proper Englishman, but you say, “The Tudors. And the Plantagenets, the Wars of the Roses.” You pause. “The Stuarts, a little.” You seesaw your hand from side to side to indicate that your interest in that scion of the royal family isn’t solid. 

“Ah!” Tunstall moves to another section of shelves, pulling a book from its place among its fellows. “I assume, then, you’ve read A History of England by Hume?”

You smile. “Oh, yes,” you say. “I think it’s fascinating, especially since he doesn’t really seem to see a particular difference between the Tudors and the Stuarts.” 

“You do?” Tunstall says, perching on the edge of a table tucked up into the corner. 

“Well, sure,” you say. “There has to be. For one thing, until Edward’s reign, the Tudors were essentially Catholic — even Henry VIII only diverted religious policy from the traditional doctrine where it suited him. Some of his advisors wanted to go farther, maybe, and they played on his — well, he was a bit full of himself — ”

Tunstall smiles again. “A bit,” he agrees.

“And they played on that, making it seem like he was like a Moses leading his people to the light,” you say. “But not only was James I a Protestant, he had something that the last three Tudor monarchs didn’t have.” 

“And that was?”

“Heirs,” you say. “A nursery full of children. That alone means he was in a very different place than either Edward, Mary, or Elizabeth.”

Now that you’ve run out of steam, you feel a warmth creeping over the nape of your neck, climbing into your face. “I — sorry,” you murmur. “I’m sure you didn’t…”

“Oh, no, no, don’t apologize, my dear,” he says. “I agree with you, for one. And for another, it’s always a pleasure to talk with you. You’re very clever.”

Your blush only deepens, and you immediately duck your head in an undoubtedly futile attempt to hide it. “Thank you,” you murmur.

When you peek up at him again, Mr. Tunstall is looking at you with a thoughtful, gentle expression. “And I think,” he says, “you’re exactly what Billy needs. I’m enormously fond of that young man, and I like to think I know him quite well by now. He’s a good man, exceptionally so, but he can be…impetuous. Reckless. There is a fire in his belly, which is an admirable quality. But sometimes, it can burn him.”

You nod. You certainly agree. 

“He needs you,” Tunstall goes on, smiling softly once more. “You have a gentle nature. You are thoughtful, and you measure your words. The two of you — well, I would say opposites attract, but perhaps you are not so dichotomous as one may think.” He smiles again. “I believe you have plenty of fire yourself, and Billy has a gentle heart. I know all he wants is peace.”

“He does,” you murmur. Your throat feels rather full, but you find that you don’t mind it. Not really, not about this. “I so…I so very much want to give that to him.”

“Oh, my dear,” Tunstall says softly, and he moves closer to you, reaching out to take your hand. “I can assure you that you do. I have never seen him so happy, or so content with himself. I have no doubt that you are the reason for that.”

You feel like you might cry, but in the happiest way possible. “Thank you,” you say again. “That means…” You swallow. “That means very much, coming from you. I hope you know...” You smile, clearing your throat. “I hope you know how much you mean to him.”

Before Tunstall can muster any answer besides a smile of his own, you hear the door creak and you turn to find Billy filling the doorway, a glass of ginger ale in one hand and a tumbler of scotch in the other. Only Tunstall still grasping his hand in your own prevents you from flying across the room to him. 

“You’re not makin’ any moves on my girl, are you, sir?” 

Tunstall chuckles and lets go of your hand. “I would never presume to think someone so young and so lovely would ever look twice at an old man like me, even if she were available,” he says, and the flush in your cheeks returns full force. “In any case, even if I were a young man, I know when I am beaten. The two of you are made for each other.”

Your face might actually, at this point, be on fire, but you don’t mind all that much when you look up to see the way Billy is smiling. He hands you the ginger ale, slides his palm one or twice against his shirt to rid it of condensation, and slides it around your waist to pull you closer. 

“Well, I think so, too,” he says, the smile still on his face. 

You press close to him and hopes he understands you feel the same. Judging by the kiss he presses to your hair, he does. 

“I’ll leave you two alone,” Tunstall says, giving them a little bow of his head, smiling softly. “I’m sure I’ll see you two out there later.”

“Yes, sir,” Billy promises. 

Tunstall closes the door behind him, and as soon as it clicks shut, Billy has set his own drink aside and he’s taken hold of your waist again. “Have I mentioned lately,” he murmurs, “how very much I love you?”

You giggle. “I’m sure you have,” you say. “But I do like hearing it.”

You don’t protest when he takes your un-sipped ginger ale and puts it on the same little table as his scotch, nor do you demur when he kisses you softly on the mouth. “I love you,” he says. 

“I love you, too,” you say, winding your arms around his neck. “Very much.”

He kisses you again, lingering so that you can’t see anything else except his face. Which you certainly don’t mind. “Thank you for comin’ out with me tonight,” he says. “Everybody is real glad to see you.”

You blink, your intent to say he doesn’t have to thank you dissolving on your tongue. “They are? Who?”

Billy chuckles. “Everybody,” he says again. “Mrs. McSween was sayin’ how she thinks you’re just about the sweetest girl she’s ever met. I had to convince her not to ask us over for dinner tomorrow night, so we could have the time to ourselves. I think we settled on Saturday instead.”

It’s such a little thing, this consideration that you would like to have a night at home after this party, but it means the world to you. And only Billy would think of it.

You lean up to kiss him. “I love you,” you say again. 

He places a hand against your cheek, thumb sweeping over your skin. “My sweet girl,” he murmurs. “I love you.” 

Eventually, after a few more kisses and sweet, whispered words, the two of you head back out to the party. You keep hold of Billy’s hand all night, but you don’t think he has any complaints — he laces his fingers with yours, rubbing his thumb along your knuckles every now and again, as if to reassure you that he’s right here. 

You keep hearing his words in your mind — everybody is real glad to see you — and it loosens you up, just a little. You even manage to crack a few jokes, making the people around you laugh. Most importantly, you hear Billy’s sweet, warm chuckle in your ear. 

By the time the party winds down, and it’s time for everyone to go home, the stars are out and the air has grown cool. After handing you up into the wagon, Billy grabs a blanket from the back and wraps it around your shoulders, making you giggle. “You don’t have to swaddle me like a baby,” you tease.

He grins at you, giving the blanket a playful little tug. “I just want you to be warm,” he says. “I gotta take care of my girl.”

As soon as he’s beside you in the front seat, you snuggle up to him, your head on his shoulder. “You do,” you assure him, thinking of the way he never hesitates to speak for you, or speak up for you, how he always thinks of your peace of mind and your comfort.

Clicking his tongue and giving the reins a little flick to get the horses moving, Billy leans his cheek against your hair. “I told you, honey. Anything for you,” he murmurs. “Anything for you.” 

[doctorbitchcrxft]

Are You There, God? It's Me, Dean Winchester | Supernatural Series Rewrite | Dean Winchester x Fem!Reader

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Fem!Reader ( :0 ?? )

Warnings: angstangstangstangst, choking in a non-sexy way, canon violence, canon gore, reader is reeeallly unwell mentally, mentions of paranoia, mentions of self-hatred, just all the warnings. put 'em all here.

Word Count: 3154

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Trailing Sam and Dean was easier said than done. It took you about a week to catch up to them. You only happened to find them when you went to Bobby’s house as a last-ditch attempt in your search. 

Staying out of the sights of three of the most skilled hunters you’d ever met was easier said than done. However, your years of experience spying on the lairs of monsters for your father helped you to feel prepared for a high-stakes situation such as this.

Something that was making your job slightly easier was Bobby’s house being in the middle of nowhere. It allowed you to conceal your car in a clearing about a mile away from Bobby’s house at the edge of the woods. There, you slept; nights terrorized with traumatic memories and your visions of Dean in Hell. It had been months since you slept decently. 

****

The soft morning light coming through the tinted windows of the trunk of your car was somehow soothing. You blinked the sleep away from your eyes and suddenly remembered why you were here. Just like that, the peace you’d felt had dissipated and was replaced by a crushing weight. 

It was a heaviness you’d become accustomed to. There hadn’t exactly been room for joy in your life in days of late, and you hadn’t tried to find it. How your past-self had managed to become human again after the deaths of your immediate family members; you had no idea.

After concealing your car with fallen branches, you made the trek to the Singer house. You put a tracker on both the Impala and Bobby’s truck to avoid you losing them in the event you had to get back to your car when they decided to leave. 

Hopefully, the thick tree branch you sat on would be enough to hold you up for the long hours you’d be spending on it. The birds chirped as the sun rose, painting the sky in soft hues of orange, pink, and purple. 

Hours passed, and the loneliness began to set in. The yearning you felt for Dean when he was gone had only grown stronger since he’d been back. And yet, it still felt as though you were grieving him: as if you’d wake up the next morning, and he’d be gone again.

You used a pair of binoculars to spy yards away into the kitchen window. You saw Sam sitting on the bench below Bobby’s kitchen window, the oldest man standing nearby with his arms folded, and Dean pacing the floor. Your heart nearly stopped when you laid eyes on him for the first time since he’d been back, and tears sprang to your eyes. 

Your stomach began to growl. Hunger was a feeling that had been evading you in the months after Dean’s death. Every once in a while, it had begun returning to you. Maybe you were healing.

**** You were cursing Uriel every two seconds as you barrelled down the road after the Impala. With no idea where the boys were off to or when they’d return seeing as they’d taken their duffel bags, you had no choice but to follow. 

Everything about your current situation was foreign to you. You had no desire to partake in whatever hunt they were going on. All you wanted to do was make sure your boys— most of all, Dean— were okay. Such a blatant lack of empathy for whoever was in trouble was commonplace for you nowadays, but it still made your stomach turn. You had become so different from the person Dean fell in love with; even more of a reason for you to stay away from him. 

You followed the boys all the way down to Jackson, Mississippi. It looked like they were doing a wellness check. They weren’t in any form of a costume, and they knocked on the door of the person’s home they’d led you to. From the glimpse you got inside the window of the house the brothers were in, whoever lived there was good and dead. You assumed another hunter, given the circumstances. 

‘What the hell is going on here?’ you thought.

Night had fallen, allowing you to remain fairly inconspicuous as long as your headlights were off. While you waited a little while to begin following the Impala again, you sat back in your seat and closed your eyes. The next time you opened them, you felt a presence next to you. 

Jolting upright, you turned to face the passenger side of the car. “Corbett?!” you squeaked. 

“Hi,” he said, seeming far less timid than he was the first time you’d met him at the Morton house haunting. “ ‘S been a while.”

“Corbett, how are you—?” 

“Why’d you do it?” he asked evenly, cutting you off. 

“Do what? I didn’t do anything—”

He laughed bitterly. “Exactly. You didn’t do anything. You just let me die!” It was then the spirit of the shy Ghostfacer was on top of you in the driver’s seat with his hands around your throat. 

Gasping for your breath, you fumbled for the railroad stake you kept in your center console. Thankfully, you managed to get it out and swiped at Corbett’s ghost with it just as your vision began to blur. 

When he was gone, you just sat breathing heavily and trying to process what the hell had just happened. 

****

Given your little encounter with Corbett had lost you significant time on catching up to the Winchesters, you had to speed the rest of the way to Bobby’s house. Every slight sound and movement out of the corner of your eye had you on edge, and you clutched the railroad stake in one hand and the steering wheel with the other. 

It wasn’t until the next morning that you made it to the aging hunter’s house. You stayed hidden in the tree line with your sawed-off in hand, praying that Corbett didn’t return. You were so exhausted, scared, and paranoid, you hadn’t even given yourself a chance to process how and why Corbett was back. He’d been dead for over a year— and died in a completely different state from where he’d tried to kill you. Why would he be back for revenge in a place he wasn’t even murdered in?

Suddenly, you saw Meg through one of the second-floor windows of Bobby’s home. ‘No, it couldn’t be.’ But it was. She just had longer brown hair. And she was attacking Dean. 

‘C’mon, Sam,’ you mentally begged. ‘Where the hell are you?!’

You couldn’t stand to watch her knock him around anymore. In your rational mind, you wouldn’t have made your next move. You were terrified of facing him again. However, your declining mental state had you bursting through Bobby’s back door and shooting shot after shot at Meg’s ghost when you’d reached the top of the stairs. 

It seemed Dean’s brain stalled as he lay frozen on the ground, and yours did, too. Everything in you was screaming to run back out of the door before he could catch sight of you. But you remained frozen until it was too late. 

Dean pushed himself up on his elbow, wincing and turning to see who’d saved him. Your heart stopped when he breathed out, “(Y/N)?” 

Tears immediately flooded your eyes. “Hi, Dean.”

He scrambled to his feet. Various conflicting emotions crossed his face— anger, relief, betrayal, joy— and you couldn’t bring yourself to say anything. “And where the fuck have you been?” he asked when he’d gotten ahold of his facial expressions again. 

“I’m sorry,” was all you could say.

Dean laughed bitterly. “ ‘Sorry’ ain’t gonna cut it. Explain. Now.”

You cast your eyes to the floor. “I— I can’t.”

He huffed angrily. “You can’t?” He turned away from you, running a hand through his hair. “How long have you known?”

“Known what?” you returned, still unable to meet his eyes. 

“That I was alive? How long,” he demanded. 

Tension hung thick in the air as he awaited your answer. “I always knew.”

That disdainful, bitter laugh returned, and you couldn’t bear the way it made your heart squeeze in your chest. “I’m sorry, Dean,” you pleaded, tears flowing down your cheeks. “But it’s too complicated to explain.”

“ ‘Too complicated’? Or you just don’t give enough of a shit about me to even try,” he snapped. 

Your eyes snapped up to his. “No, it’s not like that, I- I promise. Everything I’ve done the last five months has been for you.”

“Really?” he deadpanned. 

“Really,” you nodded. “I know you have no reason to believe me—”

“You’re right,” he cut you off. “I don’t.” 

You held your head low in shame while you waited for Dean’s next words. 

His voice was considerably lower when he asked, “How long did they give you, huh? Six months? Less than that?”

“I didn’t make a deal, Dean,” you said, beginning to get frustrated with his accusatory tone; even though you could understand where he was coming from. 

“I still don’t believe you,” he said. 

“Well, it’s the truth,” you shot back.

Dean scoffed. “I don’t know why you’re gettin’ pissy with me, I’m not the one who abandoned family”

Your voice rose in anger. “I didn’t abandon you—!” 

“Then what do you call the last month, huh? ‘Cause if I knew you were back from the grave? Come Hell or highwater, I would’ve made it back to you,” he said gruffly.

“Don’t you think I wanted to?” you pushed. “I told you, it’s not that easy!”

“Then tell me, (Y/N). Tell me what could’ve possibly been so important that you couldn’t come back to me,” he demanded. 

You opened your mouth as if to start explaining but snapped it shut a second later.

Just then, Sam called, “Dean?!”

You turned down the stairs, hesitantly stepping closer to where your friend was waiting for his brother. When the younger Winchester’s eyes met yours, your stomach dropped. 

“(Y/N)?” he breathed out. 

“Hi, Sam,” you said quietly. 

“What— Where did you—”

Dean brushed past you to head toward the kitchen. “We don’t have time for this.”

Sam looked hurt. You could understand that. This was the third time you’d walked out on them. You hated yourself for making them feel abandoned over an angel you had no true loyalty to. 

When Bobby came in through the back door, he was both shocked and upset to see you. You were unfortunately becoming accustomed to that look. 

“Kid…” he trailed off, keeping his distance from you. 

“I know,” you said, idling near the front door. “I’m sorry.” You reached for the doorknob. 

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Dean grunted. “Where are you going?”

“I can’t stay,” you said, still staring at the ground. 

Dean laughed coldly. “Of course not. Do me a favor, huh?”

You looked up to him, eyes dewey. 

“Stay gone this time.”

Your heart sank. Bottom lip trembling, you bolted out of the door and back to your hiding spot in the trees behind Bobby’s house. Sitting down against the trunk of the tree, you leaned your head back and closed your eyes. You did your best to stifle your cries, but it was no use. 

When your cries turned to sniffles, you prepared yourself to climb back up the tree. However, a whooshing sound caught your attention. With your eyes bloodshot and wild, you spun around.

“Behind you, (Y/N),” a voice cooed. 

When you spun around, the source of the voice had disappeared. It wasn’t Corbett, and it wasn’t Meg… ‘What the hell is going on here?’

When you turned your head forward again, it was Nancy, the girl from the police station where you met Henriksen. You jerked back in surprise, taking a swipe at her with your iron stake. 

Her laughter echoed in your ears as she disappeared. Something had turned this very sweet girl into a callous, cold shell of the person she was. 

The next time she appeared in front of you, you noticed a symbol on her wrist. “What the hell are you?!” you cried, scrambling away from her on the ground trying to get to your sawed-off shotgun. 

“Why didn’t you save us?” she asked, stalking toward you. 

“I thought we did! Cut me some slack here, huh? I had no idea Lilith was coming your way,” you said. 

“I don’t wanna hear it,” she spat through her teeth. “Do you know what she did to me?”

You just stared at her, clutching your shotgun and afraid of what she’d say. 

“She peeled my skin off. While I was still alive,” she sneered. 

“Nancy, I’m so sorry—”

“I don’t wanna hear it!” she roared, lunging for her. 

You shot at her and braced for the impact in case she didn’t disappear. When you reopened your eyes, she was gone. 

The next thing you knew, you were pinned to the ground clawing at the hands around your throat. Corbett was back, and he was going to ensure he took you with him to the afterlife. 

Tears swam in your eyes as you tried with no avail to get him off you. Just as your eyes began to roll back in your head, the pressure around your throat went away. Breath filled your lungs once more through a big, heaving gasp. You coughed once, then twice, then sat up to see where Corbett had gone. 

No matter how much time passed after Corbett disappeared, your heart rate wouldn’t slow, and the pit in your stomach didn’t subside. Hesitantly, you made your way back to your stolen car to have some sort of safe space. You refilled your gun with rock salt rounds and sat up straight with your nerves feeling completely fried. Every small sound and movement of a woodland creature outside the car made you jolt. Even the wind made the hairs on your arm stand up.

The passing hours gave you time to think over how your “reunion” with the Winchesters had gone. You felt so incredibly guilty for making them feel like you didn’t care about them, but it was for their own good. You knew you would be putting them in danger they didn’t need by getting involved with them again. Still, that didn’t make you feel any better when the man you loved most in the world told you not to come back. 

Even thinking about those words made your heart squeeze in your chest. Tears sprang to your eyes, but you still tried your best to keep them at bay. If Corbett or Nancy came back, you wouldn’t exactly be having a therapy session with the two of them.

“Be not afraid, (Y/N),” a familiar voice said from beside you. “The Winchesters got rid of them.”

You clutched at your chest and squeaked out a yelp. When you realized it was only Uriel, you dropped your head back to the seat. 

“You gotta stop doing that, man,” you breathed out. 

“Excellent job with the witnesses,” Uriel told you evenly. 

“Wh— The witnesses?” you asked, tossing your shotgun into the backseat and turning to face Uriel. 

“Yes,” he nodded. 

You realized then that your mother had once read you the extended, ancient version of the book of Revelations that detailed the beginning of the apocalypse. “Holy shit,” you breathed out. 

“Ah, you do remember,” Uriel nodded. 

“What, do you have, like, access to my memory bank or something?” you questioned. 

“No,” he said. “But do you think it was coincidence that your mother had access to that book?”

You gave him a confused look. “What, have you always been involved in my life?”

“Like I told you, god has a plan for you.”

And with that, he was gone. 

****

You hadn’t been able to sleep a wink. All night, you scribbled in your journal everything you remembered about the version of Revelations your mother had read you:

“Revelations— the extended director’s cut,” you began. 

“- Recipe for the apocalypse (sp?):

66 seals

There’s a lot of options to choose from, but you only have to break 66 of them to free Lucifer from hell

Seven ‘published’ seals

The cries of martyrs

Plagues/electric storms

Last involves seven angels with seven trumpets dealing out seven plagues

“And it is written, that the first seal shall be broken when a righteous man sheds blood on behalf of Hell and his divine counterpart sheds blood on behalf of Heaven. As they break, so shall it break.”

Fuck you, uriel

The Rising of the Witnesses— ghosts forced to rise. Usually experienced violent deaths

Lilith, probably

Purposefully used spirits hunters couldn’t save? Dean with Meg; me with Nancy and Corbett? 

Natural disasters, ‘fiery skies’, Four Horsemen— all signs of the apocalypse

I am struggling so hard to remember specific signs

Oh!

The woman clothed with the sun

The Great Red Dragon (Satan)

The Land Beast with horns like a lamb

antichrist?

Something about a false prophet?”

You slammed your pen down in frustration and ran a hand through your hair. “Fuck,” you cursed. The hazy bits of Revelations that you did remember were absolutely horrible, and you were terrified of what was to come. If only you’d listened to your mother more closely when she used to read you those stories. 

Her methods of soothing you to sleep were unconventional to say the least. She read you and Steven books on demonology she plucked from local libraries or the Bible because your father believed that fairytales were a waste of your time. Your mother at least wanted you to be somewhat of a normal child and insisted on reading you some kind of bedtime stories. 

It was all getting to be too much for you to handle on your own. Everything in you desperately wanted to run that mile through the dark woods to Bobby’s house and throw yourself into Dean’s arms. It hurt you so badly to know that he didn’t want the same thing; in fact, he never wanted to see you again. 

If only he knew that everything you did, you’d done for him. You wanted to tell him about Uriel and the men you’d kidnapped and that you’d seen him in Hell every night. But a much more logical part of you drowned out those voices, reminding you that you were given a job to do. 

Maybe Uriel— and Heaven, by extension— needed you to be the Winchesters’ protector so they could stop the apocalypse from happening. As outlandish as that felt to even think about, you’d become accustomed to far weirder happenings in your life. Maybe when this was all over, you could tell Dean everything. 

A mocking phrase danced in your head that threatened that somewhat optimistic outcome: ‘If you even live long enough to see the end of this.’

Series Rewrite Taglist: @polireader @brightlilith @atcamillanorrman @jrizzelle @insomnia-bookworm @procrastination20 @mrs-nesmith @djs8891 @tiggytaylor @staple-your-mouth @jesstherebel @rach5ive @strawberrykiwisdogog @bruhidkjustwannaread @mxltifxnd0m @sunshine-on-marz @big-ol-boat @mgchaser @capncrankle @chervbs @simpingdeadcharacters @nesnejwritings @stillhere197 @tearsforhan @take-it-on-the-run @iloveyou2mia @maxinehufflepuffprincess @ohgeehowdigethere @seninjakitey @berarenado @s0urw00lf @princessleahorgana @quarterhorse19 @isla-finke-blog @silverdoragon @karacaroldanvers @gayandfairycore @examishbookwyrm @star-yawnznn @real-sharena-h @fandomloverrr @metalmonki @onlyangel-444 @yu-winchester @benniwiththefanni @daisychaingirl @immagods @missmieux @yoongi-holland @littledebbieinabigworld

[misfitwashere]

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

FEB 2

Throughout now-president Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign, it was clear that his support was coming from three very different factions whose only shared ideology was a determination to destroy the federal government. Now we are watching them do it.

The group that serves President Donald Trump is gutting the government both to get revenge against those who tried to hold him accountable before the law and to make sure he and his cronies will never again have to worry about legality.

Last night, officials in the Trump administration purged the Federal Bureau of Investigation of all six of its top executives and, according to NBC’s Ken Dilanian, more than 20 heads of FBI field offices, including those in Washington, D.C., and Miami, where officials pursued cases against now-president Trump. Acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove, who represented Trump in a number of his criminal cases, asked acting FBI director Brian J. Driscoll Jr. for a list of FBI agents who had worked on January 6 cases to “determine whether any additional personnel actions are necessary.”

Clarissa-Jan Lim of MSNBC reported that Trump denied knowing about the dismissals but said the firings were “a good thing” because “[t]hey were very corrupt people, very corrupt, and they hurt our country very badly with the weaponization.”

Officials also fired 25 to 30 federal prosecutors who had worked on cases involving the rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and reassigned others. Bove ordered the firings. Career civil servants can’t be fired without cause, and these purges come on top of the apparently illegal firing of 18 inspectors general across federal agencies and a purge of the Department of Justice of those who had worked on cases involving Trump.

Phil Williams of NewsChannel 5 in Nashville, Tennessee, reported on Friday that federal prosecutors were withdrawn from a criminal investigation of Representative Andy Ogles (R-TN) for election fraud; Ogles recently filed a House resolution to enable Trump to run for a third term and another supporting Trump’s designs on Greenland. On Wednesday, federal prosecutors asked a judge to dismiss an election fraud case against former representative Jeffrey Fortenberry (R-NE). Trump called Fortenberry’s case an illustration of “the illegal Weaponization of our Justice System by the Radical Left Democrats.”

That impulse to protect Trump showed yesterday in what a local water manager said was an “extremely unprecedented” release of water from two dams in California apparently to provide evidence of his social media post that the U.S. military had gone into California and “TURNED ON THE WATER.” In fact, water was released from two reservoirs that hold water to supply farmland in the summer. They are about 500 miles (800 km) from Los Angeles, where the fires were earlier this year, and the water did not go to Southern California. “This is going to hurt farmers,” a water manager said, “This takes water out of the summer irrigation portfolio.” But Trump posted that if California officials had listened to him six years ago, there would have been no fires. Shashank Joshi of The Economist called it “real ‘mad king’ stuff.”

Trump’s loyalists overlap with the MAGA crew that embraces Project 2025, a plan that mirrors the one used by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán to overthrow democracy in Hungary. Operating from the position that modern democracy destroys a country by treating everyone equally before the law and welcoming immigrants, it calls for discrimination against women and gender, racial, and religious minorities; rejection of immigrants; and the imposition of religious laws to restore a white Christian patriarchy.

Former Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson has been a vocal proponent of Orbán’s ideology, and J.D. Vance this week hired Carlson’s son, 28-year-old Buckley, as his deputy press secretary. Although Trump claimed during the campaign he didn't know anything about Project 2025, Steve Contorno and Casey Tolan of CNN estimate that more than two thirds of Trump’s executive orders mirror Project 2025.

You can see the influence of this faction in the indiscriminate immigration sweeps the administration has launched, Trump’s announcement that he is opening a 30,000-bed migrant detention center at Guantanamo Bay, and officials’ revocation of protection for more than 600,000 Venezuelans legally in the U.S. and possibly also for Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans. You can see it in the administration’s attempt to end the birthright citizenship written into the U.S. Constitution in 1868.

It shows in the new administration's persecution of transgender Americans, including Trump’s executive order purging trans service members from the military, another limiting access to gender-affirming care for transgender youth, and yet another ordering trans federal prisoners to be medically detransitioned and then moved to facilities that correspond to their sex at birth, an outcome that a trans woman suing the administration calls “humiliating, terrifying, and dangerous.”

The administration has ordered that federal employees must remove all pronouns from their email signatures and, as Jeremy Faust reported in Inside Medicine, that researchers for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must scrub from their work any references to “[g]ender, transgender, pregnant person, pregnant people, LGBT, transsexual, non-binary, nonbinary, assigned male at birth, assigned female at birth, biologically male, biologically female.” Faust notes that the requirements are vague and that because “most manuscripts include demographic information about the populations or patients studied,” the order potentially affects “just about any major study…including studies on Covid-19, cancer, heart disease, or anything else.”

Those embracing this ideology are also isolationist. As soon as he took office, Trump imposed a freeze on foreign aid except for military aid to Israel and Egypt, abruptly cutting off about $60 billion in funding—less than 1% of the U.S. budget—to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which provides humanitarian assistance to fight starvation and provide basic medical care for the globe’s most vulnerable and desperate populations. The outcry, both from those appalled that the U.S. would renege on its promises to provide food for children in war-torn countries and from those who recognize that the U.S. withdrawal from these popular programs would create a vacuum China is eager to fill, made Trump’s new secretary of state, Marco Rubio, say that “humanitarian programs” would be exempted from the freeze, but that appears either untrue or so complicated to negotiate that programs are shutting down anyway.

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) appears to be beside himself over this destruction. “Let me explain why the total destruction of USAID…matters so much,” he posted on social media. “China—where Musk makes his money—wants USAID destroyed. So does Russia. Trump and Musk are doing the bidding of Beijing and Moscow. Why?” “The U.S. is in full retreat from the world,” he wrote, and there is “[n]o good reason for it. The immediate consequences of this are cataclysmic. Malnourished babies who depend on U.S. aid will die. Anti-terrorism programs will shut down and our most deadly enemies will get stronger. Diseases that threaten the U.S. will go unabated and reach our shores faster. And China will fill the void. As developing countries will now ONLY be able to rely on China for help, they will cut more deals with Beijing to give them control of ports, critical mineral deposits, etc. U.S. power will shrink. U.S. jobs will be lost.” Murphy speculated that “billionaires like Musk who make $ in China” or “someone buying all that secret Trump meme coin” would benefit from deliberately sabotaging eighty years of U.S. goodwill on the international stage.

And that brings us to the third faction: that of the tech bros, led by billionaire Elon Musk, who according to year-end Federal Election Commission filings spent more than $290 million supporting Trump and the Republicans in 2024. Musk appears to consider colonizing space imperative for the survival of humanity, and part of that goal requires slashing government regulations, as well as receiving government contracts that help to fund his space program.

Before he took office, Trump named Musk and another billionaire, Vivek Ramaswamy, to an extra-governmental group called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), but Musk has assumed full control of the group, whose mission is to cut the federal budget by as much as $2 trillion.

Musk is interested in the government for future contracts, although a report from January 30, when Musk’s Tesla company filed its annual financial report, showed that the company, which is valued at more than $1 trillion and which made $2.3 billion in 2024, paid $0 in federal income tax. Today, Musk’s X social media company became a form of state media when the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said it would no longer email updates about this week’s two plane crashes—one in Washington, D.C., and one in Philadelphia—and that reporters would have to get their information through X.

Musk’s goal might well be the crux of the drastic cuts to federal aid, as well as the attempt last week from the Office of Management and Budget to “pause” federal funding and grants to make sure funding reflected Trump’s goals. After a public outcry over the loss of payments to local law enforcement, Meals on Wheels for shut-ins, supplemental nutrition programs, and so on, the OMB rescinded its first memo, but then White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt immediately contradicted the new memo, saying the cuts were still in effect.

The chaos surrounding the cuts could have been designed to make it difficult for opponents to sue over them. This method of changing government priorities through “impoundment” is illegal. Congress—which is the body that represents the American people—appropriates the money for programs, and the president takes an oath to execute the laws. After President Richard M. Nixon tried it, Congress passed a 1974 law making impoundment expressly illegal. But the on-again-off-again confusion appeared at first to stand a chance of stopping lawsuits. It didn’t work: a federal judge halted the funding freeze, suggesting it was a blatant violation of the Constitution.

But then, yesterday, Elon Musk forced the resignation of David A. Lebryk, the highest-ranking career official at the Treasury Department. Lebryk had been at Treasury since 1989 and had risen to become the person in charge of the U.S. government payment system that disburses about $6 trillion a year through Social Security benefits, Medicare, Medicaid, contracts, grants, salaries for federal government workers, tax refunds, and so on, essentially managing the nation’s checkbook.

According to Jeff Stein, Isaac Arnsdorf, and Jacqueline Alemany of the Washington Post, Musk’s team wanted access to the payment system. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) demanded answers from Trump’s new Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, warning that “these payment systems simply cannot fail, and any politically-motivated meddling in them risks severe damage to our country and the economy. I am deeply concerned that following the federal grant and loan freeze earlier this week, these officials associated with Musk may have intended to access these payment systems to illegally withhold payments to any number of programs. I can think of no good reason why political operators who have demonstrated a blatant disregard for the law would need access to these sensitive, mission-critical systems.”

Now, though, with Musk’s people at the computers that control the nation’s payment system, they can simply stop whatever payments they want to.

Wyden continued by reminding Bessent that the press has reported that Musk has previously been “denied a high-level clearance to access the government’s most sensitive secrets. I am concerned that Musk’s enormous business operation in China—a country whose intelligence agencies have stolen vast amounts of sensitive data about Americans, including U.S. government employee data by hacking U.S. government systems—endangers U.S. cybersecurity and creates conflicts of interest that make his access to these systems a national security risk.”

This afternoon, Wyden posted that he has been told that Bessent has given the Department of Government Efficiency full access to the system. “Social Security and Medicare benefits, grants, payments to government contractors, including those that compete directly with Musk's own companies. All of it.”

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo posted: “This is more or less like taking the gold from Fort Knox and putting it in Elons basement. Anyone who gets a check from soc sec or anything else[,] he can cut it off or see all y[ou]r personal and financial data.” Pundit Stuart Stevens called it “the most significant data leak in cyber history.”

All three of these factions are focused on destroying the federal government, which, after all, represents the American people through their elected representatives and spends their taxpayer money. Musk, who is an unelected adjunct to Trump, this evening gleefully referred to the civil servants in the government who work for the American people as “the opposing team.”

But something jumps out from the chaos of the past two weeks. Instructions are vague, circumstances are chaotic, and it’s unclear who is making decisions. That confusion makes it hard to enforce laws or sue, although observers note that what’s going on is “illegal and a breach of the constitutional order.”

Our federal government rests on the U.S. Constitution. The three different factions of Trump's MAGA Republicans agree that the government must be destroyed, and they are operating outside the constitutional order, not eager to win legal victories so much as determined to slash and burn down the government without them.

Today, senior Washington Post political reporter Aaron Blake noted that while it is traditional for cabinet nominees to pledge that they will refuse to honor illegal presidential orders, at least seven of Trump’s nominees have sidestepped that question. Attorney general nominee Pam Bondi, director of national intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard, now-confirmed defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth, small business administrator nominee Kelly Loeffler, Veterans Affairs secretary nominee Douglas A. Collins, and commerce secretary nominee Howard Lutnick all avoided the question by saying that Trump would never ask them to do anything illegal. FBI director nominee Kash Patel just said he would “always obey the law.”

—

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Barbara Rogan

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

February 1, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Feb 02, 2025

Throughout now-president Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign, it was clear that his support was coming from three very different factions whose only shared ideology was a determination to destroy the federal government. Now we are watching them do it.

The group that serves President Donald Trump is gutting the government both to get revenge against those who tried to hold him accountable before the law and to make sure he and his cronies will never again have to worry about legality.

Last night, officials in the Trump administration purged the Federal Bureau of Investigation of all six of its top executives and, according to NBC’s Ken Dilanian, more than 20 heads of FBI field offices, including those in Washington, D.C., and Miami, where officials pursued cases against now-president Trump. Acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove, who represented Trump in a number of his criminal cases, asked acting FBI director Brian J. Driscoll Jr. for a list of FBI agents who had worked on January 6 cases to “determine whether any additional personnel actions are necessary.”

Clarissa-Jan Lim of MSNBC reported that Trump denied knowing about the dismissals but said the firings were “a good thing” because “[t]hey were very corrupt people, very corrupt, and they hurt our country very badly with the weaponization.”

Officials also fired 25 to 30 federal prosecutors who had worked on cases involving the rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and reassigned others. Bove ordered the firings. Career civil servants can’t be fired without cause, and these purges come on top of the apparently illegal firing of 18 inspectors general across federal agencies and a purge of the Department of Justice of those who had worked on cases involving Trump.

Phil Williams of NewsChannel 5 in Nashville, Tennessee, reported on Friday that federal prosecutors were withdrawn from a criminal investigation of Representative Andy Ogles (R-TN) for election fraud; Ogles recently filed a House resolution to enable Trump to run for a third term and another supporting Trump’s designs on Greenland. On Wednesday, federal prosecutors asked a judge to dismiss an election fraud case against former representative Jeffrey Fortenberry (R-NE). Trump called Fortenberry’s case an illustration of “the illegal Weaponization of our Justice System by the Radical Left Democrats.”

That impulse to protect Trump showed yesterday in what a local water manager said was an “extremely unprecedented” release of water from two dams in California apparently to provide evidence of his social media post that the U.S. military had gone into California and “TURNED ON THE WATER.” In fact, water was released from two reservoirs that hold water to supply farmland in the summer. They are about 500 miles (800 km) from Los Angeles, where the fires were earlier this year, and the water did not go to Southern California. “This is going to hurt farmers,” a water manager said, “This takes water out of the summer irrigation portfolio.” But Trump posted that if California officials had listened to him six years ago, there would have been no fires. Shashank Joshi of The Economist called it “real ‘mad king’ stuff.”

Trump’s loyalists overlap with the MAGA crew that embraces Project 2025, a plan that mirrors the one used by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán to overthrow democracy in Hungary. Operating from the position that modern democracy destroys a country by treating everyone equally before the law and welcoming immigrants, it calls for discrimination against women and gender, racial, and religious minorities; rejection of immigrants; and the imposition of religious laws to restore a white Christian patriarchy.

Former Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson has been a vocal proponent of Orbán’s ideology, and J.D. Vance this week hired Carlson’s son, 28-year-old Buckley, as his deputy press secretary. Although Trump claimed during the campaign he didn't know anything about Project 2025, Steve Contorno and Casey Tolan of CNN estimate that more than two thirds of Trump’s executive orders mirror Project 2025.

You can see the influence of this faction in the indiscriminate immigration sweeps the administration has launched, Trump’s announcement that he is opening a 30,000-bed migrant detention center at Guantanamo Bay, and officials’ revocation of protection for more than 600,000 Venezuelans legally in the U.S. and possibly also for Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans. You can see it in the administration’s attempt to end the birthright citizenship written into the U.S. Constitution in 1868.

It shows in the new administration's persecution of transgender Americans, including Trump’s executive order purging trans service members from the military, another limiting access to gender-affirming care for transgender youth, and yet another ordering trans federal prisoners to be medically detransitioned and then moved to facilities that correspond to their sex at birth, an outcome that a trans woman suing the administration calls “humiliating, terrifying, and dangerous.”

The administration has ordered that federal employees must remove all pronouns from their email signatures and, as Jeremy Faust reported in Inside Medicine, that researchers for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must scrub from their work any references to “[g]ender, transgender, pregnant person, pregnant people, LGBT, transsexual, non-binary, nonbinary, assigned male at birth, assigned female at birth, biologically male, biologically female.” Faust notes that the requirements are vague and that because “most manuscripts include demographic information about the populations or patients studied,” the order potentially affects “just about any major study…including studies on Covid-19, cancer, heart disease, or anything else.”

Those embracing this ideology are also isolationist. As soon as he took office, Trump imposed a freeze on foreign aid except for military aid to Israel and Egypt, abruptly cutting off about $60 billion in funding—less than 1% of the U.S. budget—to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which provides humanitarian assistance to fight starvation and provide basic medical care for the globe’s most vulnerable and desperate populations. The outcry, both from those appalled that the U.S. would renege on its promises to provide food for children in war-torn countries and from those who recognize that the U.S. withdrawal from these popular programs would create a vacuum China is eager to fill, made Trump’s new secretary of state, Marco Rubio, say that “humanitarian programs” would be exempted from the freeze, but that appears either untrue or so complicated to negotiate that programs are shutting down anyway.

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) appears to be beside himself over this destruction. “Let me explain why the total destruction of USAID…matters so much,” he posted on social media. “China—where Musk makes his money—wants USAID destroyed. So does Russia. Trump and Musk are doing the bidding of Beijing and Moscow. Why?” “The U.S. is in full retreat from the world,” he wrote, and there is “[n]o good reason for it. The immediate consequences of this are cataclysmic. Malnourished babies who depend on U.S. aid will die. Anti-terrorism programs will shut down and our most deadly enemies will get stronger. Diseases that threaten the U.S. will go unabated and reach our shores faster. And China will fill the void. As developing countries will now ONLY be able to rely on China for help, they will cut more deals with Beijing to give them control of ports, critical mineral deposits, etc. U.S. power will shrink. U.S. jobs will be lost.” Murphy speculated that “billionaires like Musk who make $ in China” or “someone buying all that secret Trump meme coin” would benefit from deliberately sabotaging eighty years of U.S. goodwill on the international stage.

And that brings us to the third faction: that of the tech bros, led by billionaire Elon Musk, who according to year-end Federal Election Commission filings spent more than $290 million supporting Trump and the Republicans in 2024. Musk appears to consider colonizing space imperative for the survival of humanity, and part of that goal requires slashing government regulations, as well as receiving government contracts that help to fund his space program.

Before he took office, Trump named Musk and another billionaire, Vivek Ramaswamy, to an extra-governmental group called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), but Musk has assumed full control of the group, whose mission is to cut the federal budget by as much as $2 trillion.

Musk is interested in the government for future contracts, although a report from January 30, when Musk’s Tesla company filed its annual financial report, showed that the company, which is valued at more than $1 trillion and which made $2.3 billion in 2024, paid $0 in federal income tax. Today, Musk’s X social media company became a form of state media when the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said it would no longer email updates about this week’s two plane crashes—one in Washington, D.C., and one in Philadelphia—and that reporters would have to get their information through X.

Musk’s goal might well be the crux of the drastic cuts to federal aid, as well as the attempt last week from the Office of Management and Budget to “pause” federal funding and grants to make sure funding reflected Trump’s goals. After a public outcry over the loss of payments to local law enforcement, Meals on Wheels for shut-ins, supplemental nutrition programs, and so on, the OMB rescinded its first memo, but then White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt immediately contradicted the new memo, saying the cuts were still in effect.

The chaos surrounding the cuts could have been designed to make it difficult for opponents to sue over them. This method of changing government priorities through “impoundment” is illegal. Congress—which is the body that represents the American people—appropriates the money for programs, and the president takes an oath to execute the laws. After President Richard M. Nixon tried it, Congress passed a 1974 law making impoundment expressly illegal. But the on-again-off-again confusion appeared at first to stand a chance of stopping lawsuits. It didn’t work: a federal judge halted the funding freeze, suggesting it was a blatant violation of the Constitution.

But then, yesterday, Elon Musk forced the resignation of David A. Lebryk, the highest-ranking career official at the Treasury Department. Lebryk had been at Treasury since 1989 and had risen to become the person in charge of the U.S. government payment system that disburses about $6 trillion a year through Social Security benefits, Medicare, Medicaid, contracts, grants, salaries for federal government workers, tax refunds, and so on, essentially managing the nation’s checkbook.

According to Jeff Stein, Isaac Arnsdorf, and Jacqueline Alemany of the Washington Post, Musk’s team wanted access to the payment system. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) demanded answers from Trump’s new Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, warning that “these payment systems simply cannot fail, and any politically-motivated meddling in them risks severe damage to our country and the economy. I am deeply concerned that following the federal grant and loan freeze earlier this week, these officials associated with Musk may have intended to access these payment systems to illegally withhold payments to any number of programs. I can think of no good reason why political operators who have demonstrated a blatant disregard for the law would need access to these sensitive, mission-critical systems.”

Now, though, with Musk’s people at the computers that control the nation’s payment system, they can simply stop whatever payments they want to.

Wyden continued by reminding Bessent that the press has reported that Musk has previously been “denied a high-level clearance to access the government’s most sensitive secrets. I am concerned that Musk’s enormous business operation in China—a country whose intelligence agencies have stolen vast amounts of sensitive data about Americans, including U.S. government employee data by hacking U.S. government systems—endangers U.S. cybersecurity and creates conflicts of interest that make his access to these systems a national security risk.”

This afternoon, Wyden posted that he has been told that Bessent has given the Department of Government Efficiency full access to the system. “Social Security and Medicare benefits, grants, payments to government contractors, including those that compete directly with Musk's own companies. All of it.”

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo posted: “This is more or less like taking the gold from Fort Knox and putting it in Elons basement. Anyone who gets a check from soc sec or anything else[,] he can cut it off or see all y[ou]r personal and financial data.” Pundit Stuart Stevens called it “the most significant data leak in cyber history.”

All three of these factions are focused on destroying the federal government, which, after all, represents the American people through their elected representatives and spends their taxpayer money. Musk, who is an unelected adjunct to Trump, this evening gleefully referred to the civil servants in the government who work for the American people as “the opposing team.”

But something jumps out from the chaos of the past two weeks. Instructions are vague, circumstances are chaotic, and it’s unclear who is making decisions. That confusion makes it hard to enforce laws or sue, although observers note that what’s going on is “illegal and a breach of the constitutional order.”

Our federal government rests on the U.S. Constitution. The three different factions of Trump's MAGA Republicans agree that the government must be destroyed, and they are operating outside the constitutional order, not eager to win legal victories so much as determined to slash and burn down the government without them.

Today, senior Washington Post political reporter Aaron Blake noted that while it is traditional for cabinet nominees to pledge that they will refuse to honor illegal presidential orders, at least seven of Trump’s nominees have sidestepped that question. Attorney general nominee Pam Bondi, director of national intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard, now-confirmed defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth, small business administrator nominee Kelly Loeffler, Veterans Affairs secretary nominee Douglas A. Collins, and commerce secretary nominee Howard Lutnick all avoided the question by saying that Trump would never ask them to do anything illegal. FBI director nominee Kash Patel just said he would “always obey the law.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[vigilante-3073]

Gentle Hands

Gregory House x Female Reader

Summary: House and Y/N have a four year old daughter and have just welcomed a baby boy. House teaches his daughter about the importance of using her 'gentle hands.'

TW: Mentions of postpartum parenthood, babies, House being House.

S/N: Son's name M/N: Middle name

D/N: Daughter's name

Y/N was laying in her hospital bed with her newborn held close to her chest. The baby slept soundly, wrapped in a blanket with a hat on his tiny head.

It had been a long and difficult labor, but their baby was finally here. S/N House was born at five o'clock in the morning, he was in perfect health with a strong set of lungs.

He was a gorgeous little baby with his father's blue eyes and a head of dark hair. D/N had always looked like her mother, but the newest addition to the family definitely bore more of a resemblance to his father.

House had stayed by her side for the entirety of her labor, although he did manage to take a rather lengthy nap in the earlier hours. Wilson had spent the night at their home to watch D/N when Y/N went into labor.

House slept on the couch in the corner of the room using his coat as a blanket. Y/N glanced at the clock before she pulled out the small toy gun House had given her.

She shot one of the foam darts at her husband and he jumped slightly before looking over at her, "What?" He questioned, sitting up and tossing his coat aside.

"Can you send a message to Wilson and tell him that he can bring D/N when he comes in?" Y/N asked, House nodded.

He pulled his phone from his coat, typing out the message before sending the text. He tossed his phone onto the couch beside him, leaning back into the cushions.

"How is he?" House asked.

"Quiet... He's been been asleep for almost an hour," Y/N said, pushing the blanket away from his small face.

"Good, little guy has been through a lot," House said.

"Oh, he's been through a lot, huh?" Y/N asked with a smile.

"You did the heavy lifting, but he was definitely involved," House stated.

"I guess you're right," She nodded, looking down at their son, "Do you think D/N will get along with him?" Y/N asked.

"No... Siblings fight and they'll spend most of their lives hating each other, but that's just family," House said.

"I hope you're wrong," Y/N said softly.

"We can teach her how to be a good sister to him," House stated, Y/N nodded.

House glanced over when his phone buzzed, reaching over and picking it up. He looked down at the screen, "Wilson is making her breakfast and then they'll come down," House said.

"We're going to have to buy him dinner or something. He's such a sweetheart," Y/N said, House raised an eyebrow.

"Hey, you hitched your wagon to this horse. You can't go switching it up mid-race," House said, Y/N rolled her eyes with a smile.

"Whatever you say, Greg," She said.

...

House fell back asleep with his arms crossed, head leaned back against the couch as he snored softly. Y/N smiled when she saw Wilson making his way over with D/N's hand held in his.

Wilson slid open the door, "Hey, how are you feeling?" He asked softly, making his way over to the bed.

"Tired, but good," Y/N smiled.

He looked down at the wrapped bundle in her arms, "Wow, boy or girl?" He asked.

"Boy. His name is S/N M/N House," Y/N said.

"That's a perfect name for him," Wilson smiled.

"Thank you so much for looking after D/N last night," Y/N said.

"Of course. I'm happy to babysit whenever," Wilson assured.

"Mommy," D/N mumbled softly, tugging on Wilson's hand.

"Can you lift her up here for me?" Y/N asked, Wilson nodded.

He bent down and picked up D/N, "Up we go, peanut," He said, placing her on the bed beside her mother.

"Do you want me to wake him up?" Wilson asked, pointing his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of House.

"He gave me something to use for that, actually," Y/N said, pulling out the toy gun.

She shot another foam dart at her husband, he lifted his head, "That's awesome," Wilson laughed.

House wiped a hand over his face before grabbing his cane and making his way over, "Can you take him for a minute, honey?" Y/N asked, he nodded.

House hooked his cane onto the edge of the bed, Y/N passed the baby to him and adjusted the blankets around the baby's face.

Y/N pulled her daughter into her arms, pressing a kiss to the little girl's forehead as she held onto her, "Did you have a good night with your uncle, baby?" Y/N asked.

"He made me pancakes," D/N said softly.

"Pancakes? Really? I hear that he makes the best pancakes ever. Were they yummy?" Y/N asked, D/N nodded.

Wilson smiled as he watched his friend interact with her daughter. They had always been close and it was good that she gave her daughter some extra affection with the new baby.

It wasn't that long ago that House and Y/N welcomed their first child, they were good parents and their children were lucky to have them.

"Wilson, do you want to hold him?" House asked.

"Definitely," Wilson nodded, moving over to his friend.

House passed the baby to Wilson, watching as his friend smiled down at the newborn, "He really is perfect, Y/N. You did an amazing job," Wilson said.

"Thank you, James," Y/N smiled.

"Hey, he got those looks from me. D/N is all Y/N, this one is mine," House said, Y/N shook her head.

"Remember how we told you that there was a baby in mommy's tummy, my girl?" Y/N questioned, D/N nodded.

"Well, mommy had the baby last night. You have a baby brother and his name is S/N," Y/N said.

"S/N," D/N repeated.

"Yeah, do you want to meet him?" Y/N questioned, D/N nodded.

"Come here, kid," House said, holding his arms out to his daughter. She crawled over and allowed him to lift her off the bed, "Go sit on the couch over there, okay?" House instructed, D/N nodded.

She rushed over to the couch and climbed up, waiting patiently as House and Wilson made their way over. House sat down on the couch beside her, "You have to be really gentle with your bother, okay? He is a brand new baby and we have to be very careful with him," House said.

D/N nodded, "Use gentle hands," She repeated.

House nodded, "Exactly," He said. Wilson passed the baby to his friend, House adjusted his hold on the child before holding the wrapped bundle out for his daughter to see.

"You also need to make sure that you keep two hands on him at all times, alright? He can get really hurt if you don't," House said, his daughter nodded.

Wilson placed a pillow on D/N's lap, "Hold your arms like this, peanut," Wilson said, holding his arms in a circle in front of himself.

D/N quickly copied him, resting her arms on the pillow in her lap, "Perfect, stay just like that," House nodded.

He reached over, placing the baby in his daughter's arms. D/N stared down at her brother in awe, holding him carefully in her arms.

Wilson took a step back, making his way over to Y/N, "You made some cute kids," He said.

"Thank you for being here, James," She smiled. Wilson gave her a quick hug before they returned to watching House and D/N look at the baby.

"Hi, baby," D/N said softly, eyes focused on the baby in her arms. S/N shifted with a squeak, opening his mouth and letting out a large yawn.

"He's tired," D/N mumbled, looking up at her father.

House nodded, "He had to travel a long and incredibly narrow way to be here," He said, glancing over at his wife.

"Don't tell her that, House," Y/N scolded.

"What? It's a compliment," House shrugged.

The baby began to fuss in his daughter's arms, "He's probably hungry," Y/N said.

"I can take D/N to my office for a bit," Wilson offered.

"You can take her to mine if you want. The kid loves Cameron," House said, carefully lifting the baby from his daughter's arms. House stood up from the couch, limping over to his wife and passing their son over to her.

"Alright, sounds good. Text me when you're done," Wilson said.

D/N hopped off the couch, "Come on, let's go visit Doctor Cameron," Wilson smiled, holding out his hand.

D/N rushed over to him and grabbed onto his hand, Wilson led her out of the hospital room and slid the door closed behind them.

...

S/N was asleep in his bassinet beside Y/N's hospital bed, comfortably swaddled with a fresh diaper. D/N sat in the bed beside her mother as Y/N read to her from one of her daughter's favorite books. House sat on the couch, eyes focused on the Gameboy in his hands.

Y/N looked up when she heard a soft knock on the glass. Cuddy and Wilson stood outside the room holding a comically large teddy bear and a floral arrangement.

Y/N smiled and wave them in, Cuddy opened the door and made her way into the room with Wilson following closely behind her. Wilson set the stuffed animal on the couch beside House while Cuddy went over to her friend.

Cuddy set the case of flowers on the table beside the bed, "Congratulations," Cuddy smiled, leaning in and giving her friend a gentle hug.

"Are you excited to be a big sister, D/N?" Cuddy asked, the little girl nodded.

"His name is S/N," D/N said.

"Oh, that's a beautiful name," Cuddy said, she turned to look at the baby, "It definitely suits him," Cuddy stated, staring down at the baby fondly.

She turned her attention back to her friend, "How are you feeling? Are you sore? Or tired? Because I can take D/N for a couple days if you need some time to recover," Cuddy offered.

"I feel good. I'm tired, but we'll be fine," Y/N assured.

"Just let me know if you need anything, okay?" Cuddy questioned, Y/N nodded.

"Well, since you're offering," House started, Cuddy held her hand up to stop him.

"Not you, just your wife. I don't need to hear whatever nastiness you had in mind," Cuddy said.

"That's not very nice, Doctor Cuddy," House said, shaking his head and returning to his game.

"You'll get over it," Cuddy said with a smile.

The baby wiggled in the bassinet with a whine, "Can you grab him for me, Lisa?" Y/N asked.

"Of course," Cuddy nodded, picking up the baby from the bassinet. She passed the fussing baby to her friend, Y/N unbuttoned the clasps at the top of her gown.

Y/N draped a blanket over herself as she set the baby up to nurse, cradling her child in her arms.

"He's such a beautiful baby, Y/N. He has really pretty eyes," Cuddy smiled.

Y/N nodded, "I definitely lucked out. I had two beautiful babies, but I definitely think that the baby factory is closed for business," Y/N said, looking over at her daughter.

"You said that after the first one too," House said.

"Okay, maybe we can keep it open for a couple more years... We do make some cute babies," Y/N smiled.

[blueskrugs]

I Know I Could Have Loved You | Brock Boeser

at long last, it's here! this is my fic for @wyattjohnston's winter fic exchange, written for @one-night-story! Once again, I am SO sorry this is a bit late, but I had a really brutal week.

I hope you enjoy!!

length: 2000 words

You met Brock Boeser in 2015 when you were both freshmen at the University of North Dakota.

He wasn't your best friend at first. 

In fact, he'd rolled his eyes and when you were forced to partner with him for a stupid project in your intro to stats course. You don't remember exactly when he did become your friend, but  before you knew it your weekends were spent watching hockey games, then going out for fast food french fries with Brock, or lounging in each other's dorm rooms while you did homework. (Or while you did homework, and Brock pretended to do his own.) 

You don't know when you fell in love with Brock Boeser, either, just that you did.

Brock dated a few people while at UND, like most of the hockey players did. They stuck around for a few weeks or months before disappearing. Brock never bothered to introduce you to any of them. You tried to not let it bother you. 

“You should move to Vancouver, "Brock said suddenly one summer day. He'd signed his ELC just a few months prior—instead of returning to UND with you in the fall, he’d be off to Vancouver for training camp with the Canucks. 

You were both tanning by the lake, and you lowered your sunglasses to look sideways at Brock. He wouldn't meet your eyes.

"Brock, some of us have to actually finish college before getting a job," you said. You still had 2 years before graduation. "And why the hell should I move to Vancouver?"

Brock shrugged, all forced nonchalance. "Well, I'll be there."

You scoffed. "Sure, from October to April." You didn't know anyone in Vancouver, excluding Brock, who only counted during hockey season anyway.

"But I'll miss you," Brock argued. "What am I supposed to do without you?"

"I think you'll manage just fine, Boes," you told him. "You survived this long without me before we met, didn't you? You can keep surviving now, too."

Brock pouts at you, but doesn't argue the point further, so you think that's the end of it. You put your sunglasses back in place on the bridge of your nose and settle back against your chair. You can’t deny that it leaves a nice fuzzy feeling in your chest that Brock thinks he’ll miss you so much that he’s begging you to join him in Vancouver.

Brock doesn’t bring it up again that summer, or for the next two years as you’re finishing up college, and you forget about the whole thing. The years pass; you graduate. 

Brock comes to your graduation party, kisses you on the cheek, and spends the afternoon charming your parents and your friends from high school and from UND. Brock always manages to stay within your orbit, never more than arm’s reach away from you. It’s nice, to have him back at your side like this. 

It's only when the party is over and Brock is helping clean up that he springs the question on you again.

"Have you thought about it at all?" he asks, apropos of absolutely fucking nothing.

You've had a few drinks, and it takes your brain a few seconds to catch up. "What?" you ask. "Thought about what?"

“Moving to Vancouver with me."

You already have a job lined up in your hometown. You haven't thought even once of moving to Vancouver instead.

"Brock, I can't just move to another country."

"What if I want you to?“

"Oh, sure, that will go over well on a visa application. ‘Because my bestfriend wants me to.’"

Brock sticks his tongue out at you.

"You should at least come and visit me," he pleads, "I really think you'll love it."

You roll your eyes at Brock. "I guess I can make time to visit,” you say, ignoring Brock's exaggerated cheer before he squishes you into a hug.

Brock manages to talk you into visiting him in June, because—in his words— "It's prettier in the summer."

He's not exactly wrong, you have to admit, after a week of traipsing around the city with Brock. You're watching a firework show with your head on Brock's shoulder when you realize you're starting to picture yourself in Vancouver, starting a real life here.

"D'you really think I could get a job here?” you murmur to Brock during a pause in the fireworks.

"What?” Brock asks. He turns to you. His blond hair glows in the light of the fireworks overhead. "Never mind,” you whisper back.

You begin searching for jobs in Vancouver that night, in the quiet darkness of Brock's spare bedroom.

Before you know it, you've lined up the perfect job—even better than the one you'd originally found back home, not that you'll ever tell Brock that—and Brock has helped you find an apartment in the city. 

"It's not far from me,” Brock had told you when he was helping you move in, "so you can come over and walk Milo and Coolie whenever."

"Oh, is that the real reason you wanted me to move out here?” you tease. "Free dog walking?"

Brock shrugs innocently but chuckles. "Well, I need someone to watch them when we're on road trips and stuff.”

You throw a wad of bubble wrap at him.

Later, while you and Brock are eating pizza on your living room floor, Brock flops into his back and sighs. You poke him in the head with your foot.

"You good, buddy?” you ask.

"What do you think of dating apps?” Brock says, which isn't really an answer.

You've always been too scared to try dating apps yourself. Instead of telling Brock that, you say, "You're a professional athlete.” And a very attractive one, but you don’t say that part. "What do you need dating apps for?”

Brock looks up at you from his sprawl on your floor. "Because I'm tired of being single?” he asks.

You flip him off. You don't say, I'm single, too, you could always date me. You got used to putting aside your feelings for Brock a long time ago.

"And you think dating apps are the solution? You didn't have any issues getting people to date you in North Dakota.”

Brock rolls his eyes. "I didn't play for the Canucks, then. It's all people I meet now seem to care about.”

You're still not sure how dating apps will solve that problem.

As if he hears your unspoken question, Brock continues. "At least this way, I can weed out puck bunnies or whatever a lot faster, instead of wasting my time.” He cranes his neck around so he can look at you directly. "So will you help me or not?” 

You think you'd rather get stabbed directly in the heart than to help Brock date someone else, but you never could say no to him.

"Fine, whatever,” you say. "Gimme your phone.” 

You're already regretting your decision less than ten minutes later as you watch Brock scroll through his camera roll to add pictures to his profile.

"You can't use your official headshot!” you tell him, trying to snatch his phone. "People are going to think they're getting catfished.”

"I don't have a lot of good pictures of myself!” Brock protests.

You've nixed three more photos—all pictures Brock has evidently stolen from the team's social media—("Why the hell do you save all these, anyway?”)—when Brock throws his hands up and passes you his phone.

"You do it then,” he tells you.

Brock's own camera roll is obviously useless, so you pull out your own phone. It only takes a few minutes of scrolling for you to pluck a handful of good photos out of your camera roll and Airdrop them to Brock. He's looking at you a little strangely when you hand his phone back.

"What?” you ask.

"I didn't know you took so many pictures of me,” he says. 

"I don't take that many,” you defend weakly. It's not like you have an entire album on your phone of pictures of him, or anything. 

Brock drops the subject, but you still feel uneasy as you continue helping him finish his profile. The two of you spend almost an hour bickering over which prompts to choose or the answers Brock writes for them before Brock deems his profile "good enough”.

"'Good enough?'” you argue. “This profile is a masterpiece,” you declare. "We'll get you cuffed in time for Christmas.”

Brock snorts at you. "All thanks to you,” he says, smacking a kiss to your cheek.

You try not to feel any particular way about it.

Brock spends the next few weeks bringing you his dating app matches to "approve.” He even shows you some of the funny ones—mostly girls tripping over themselves for the chance to sleep with The Brock Boeser of the Vancouver Canucks. He gets a lot of matches. 

You try to muster the appropriate enthusiasm for Brock, as he seems to be throwing himself into this endeavor with all the energy he throws into hockey.

It's hard, though, when all you can do is compare yourself to them. You wonder what Brock sees in them that he’s never seen in you.

Brock never seems to notice if your encouragement is lackluster.

Matches turn into a revolving door of first dates for Brock. A few times, first dates turn into second dates, and even into a third date or two. 

You force yourself to stop obsessively keeping track of his dates, and to pretend like each date he goes on doesn't drive the knife even deeper into your heart.

Brock's in the middle of telling you about his latest date—you think he’s been seeing this person for nearly a month—when he stops abruptly in the middle of a sentence.

"Are you okay?” he asks.

"Yeah? Why wouldn't I be?” you say. It doesn’t sound very confident, even to your ears. 

"You've got that look on your face, the one where you're mad at me, but trying to pretend that you're not.”

You try to arrange your face into something more neutral.

"I'm not mad at you, Brock,” you say. You don't think he believes you. 

"So why do you always get all—” Brock gestures vaguely at your face. “—pissy whenever I talk about my dates?”

"I do not! And besides, I didn't know moving to Vancouver meant a front row seat to your dating life! Don't you have teammates to talk about this shit with?”

Brock scoffs. "They don't care about my dating life, and, apparently, neither do you.” 

"Brock, it's not that I don't care—” 

Brock cuts you off. "Then what is it?”

"I care too much!”

"What?” he says.

"Dammit, Brock, why don't you want to date me?” you snap.

Brock shakes his head. You probably shouldn't have said that.

"What do you mean?” he asks slowly.

"You heard me the first time, Boeser. Why are you searching all over Vancouver for someone to date when I've been here the whole time?” 

Brock takes a step closer to you. You take a step backwards; your kitchen is small, and you end up trapped against the counter.

"The whole time? "Brock repeats dumbly.

You could slap him. "Yes, Brock. Boy, it's a good thing you're pretty and good at hockey, because you can be really stupid sometimes.”

"Hang on,” Brock says. He's moved even closer. "How was I supposed to know?”

"Do you think I'd more to another country for anyone?” you ask.

"Oh,” Brock says. Then he says, "For how long?”

"Huh?”

“How long have you been in love with me?” Brock asks.

“I don't know, sometime freshman year, I guess.” There was never really a lightbulb moment for you; your feelings for Brock grew and morphed so slowly you almost didn't notice until it was too late.

Brock kisses you then, crushing you up against the cabinets with the force of it. His hands are warm on your hips, his lips gentle and firm against yours.

You pull away, a little breathless.

Brock grins at you. “If I had known this was an option, I would have kissed you a long time ago.”

"So, can we delete that dating app now?” you ask, forehead resting on Brock's shoulder.

"We can do whatever you want,” Brock says, leaning in to kiss you again.

You suppose deleting his dating profile can wait a little while.

[fookinhellcurlyy]

Louis Tomlinson's Career History Pt. 3 and 4 [Post-1D] by notastrwbrysng2

Full credits to notastrwbrysng2 from X/Twitter. Reposting screenshots and texts for archiving purposes.

Please check the full disclaimer stated in Part 1 & 2.

Note: I will copy-paste the exact texts from the tweets. The words after the cut below are from the linked thread (source). The cited articles per tweet are hyperlinked ('x'). I might replace/combine some screenshots due to Tumblr's limitations, as well as add the links from where they were originally taken.

Again, thank you so much notastrwbrysng2 (Megs) for creating this.

———

Part 3: Why Louis Tomlinson is getting screwed over as an artist

I will fill in the connections and details. Main players are: SC, R.ob Str.inger, Ho.ward Stri.nger

We identified SC and Rob plenty of times but never made the connection of WHO ELSE is managing the UK side. We left off at R.ob wanting a songwriting career from Louis. In AOTV, Louis mentions talking to his mom about next steps. He said he wanted to sing. I believe that refers to this time period when he was being led astray and shuffled into behind the scenes activities.

During this 2016 period, Louis was trying (unsuccessful, going back to his tweet) to get his girl band going. The baby, Rob aiming for songwriting negotiations, and the girl band ate up 2016, along with the debut of Just Hold On and mom's health declining. | x

Louis contributed a couple songs (Blackbeard, EXO) but wrote for himself or was not credited/alias.

He eventually was signed UNDER Sony to RCA, as mentioned earlier, a month later to Epic, and sat dormant until Rob's very close friend David Massey took over.

Before Louis could leave Epic, it looks as though Louis had to put in some grunt work during "the lost years." Narnia blog highlighted this beautifully with this summary of events in 2018, ALL focused on Simon or Rob. Sounds interesting. Did they string along Louis with no intention of letting him have that solo career that he chose over songwriting for Rob? We will never know...

Louis was tapped for some VERY public events, forced to look excited and supportive. Oh look, the timing...

He FINALLY signed once xfactor was over in February 2019. He was made to hold off until then. I went over the single released and the album not until January 2020. Which leads us to: Airplay.

Airplay has lacked for both the Walls and FITF albums, going as far as being blacklisted/shadowbanned from B.BC radio. In the report out from BMG, Louis was not played until he was the #1 album (again, with NO AIRPLAY) and they very much begrudgingly played it to stop the calls.

BBC loved it but .. it was stopped during discussions with higher ups? Too indie? Something was a miss. It was being stopped as other artists have before (Madonna was listed because "She was too old to play," other bands just completely halted for no reason at all.)

Going back...Remember the person who was the head of Sony, who wanted a boyband, that partnered with SC and X.factor? That was HOW.ARD STR.INGER. Rob's brother. And what has he done for his career? Head of CBS, then Head of Sony Music, then a BOARD MEMBER AT BBC. —Who did Louis reject not once, but possibly twice, to come on as songwriting? Rob. —And who caused a lot of issues while in 1D, pursuing a new direction, taking control of the band? Louis. —Who was the head during that time? Rob. —Who does Louis have connections to as well that could make Rob sweat? HARRY.

Harry sits as So.ny and Colum.bias #1 earner. Louis has bucked Ro.b many times over the years and Ro.b wanted Louis behind the scenes, not a solo career. —Who said no to R.ob? Louis. —Who could that influence? Their biggest earner.

If you take H out of the equation, it's still the same result. Louis has defied SC, he has defied R.ob, and the last way to shut him down was a link to UK radio. As a non executive board member, that solely means brother Ho.ward doesn't work for BBC, but is on the board. "Dont play this kid" is all that needed to be said.

As a recap: —HS made a deal with SC for TXF to be under S.ony. —SC tries to shuffle LT into management. —RS tried to get LT on a songwriting roster, less trouble keeping him closer. —LT refused, albums delayed. —Jumps hoops, album out '20, '22. —RS BBC member BMG told NO, we can't play him.

LTs ENTIRE CAREER from 2010-2023 has been under Ho.ward, SC, and Rob's control some way or another, not even mentioning any OTHER issues on top of music (media portrayal, etc.).

Louis on attempting to get radio play and realizing it is all talk versus having shows that are transactional, black and white. | x (vid down atm)

—

Part 4: Supplemental article from BMGs Lisa Wilkinson

Behind The Campaign, Louis Tomlinson | April 19, 2023

ADDITIONAL BACKUP REFERENCE (full article in text format): louisupdates

This breakdown was provided by BMGs Dir of UK Marketing (New Recordings) Lisa Wilkinson.

There are areas that appear to be excuses without revealing truths (see: Unable to play BTM w/no reason)

This was removed from online. (Screenshots below were from the actual article.

Topics of discussion could easily be put up for debate as marketing via BMG was lackluster at best and more fan-driven and financed than what should have been, but this is what we were given:

Part 1 & 2 here.

[ansleyyquinn]

CHOI SU-BONG X FEM!READER(pink is reader,purple is thanos and red is the robot

The last thing I expected was to see him here.

The room buzzed with nervous energy—hundreds of players, all dressed in matching green tracksuits, shifting anxiously under the cold fluorescent lights. Some whispered, some prayed, and others sat in stunned silence, still processing what they had gotten themselves into.I had barely wrapped my head around my own situation when a deep, familiar voice cut through the noise.

“Señsorita?”

My stomach dropped.I turned slowly, already knowing who I would see. And there he was—Thanos.His towering frame loomed over the others, his eyes locked onto mine with an intensity that sent a shiver down my spine. He looked… different. His face was sharper, his body leaner, but the biggest change wasn’t physical. It was in his eyes.For a moment, neither of us spoke. The weight of our past hung between us, heavy and unspoken.Then he took a step closer.“Thanos,” I managed to say, my voice steadier than I felt.His lips curled into something that wasn’t quite a smirk, wasn’t quite a smile. “Didn’t think I’d see you again.” “Same,” I admitted, crossing my arms. “Though I guess it shouldn’t surprise me. You always did have a habit of making reckless choices.”His smirk faded. “And you always had a habit of walking away.”A sharp pang of anger stabbed through me. “I didn’t walk away. You pushed me away. You and those drugs.”Silence. A flicker of something guilt, maybe crossed his face. But before he could respond, a robotic voice crackled through the speakers.“Players, prepare for the first game.”

Our conversation was over. For now.

___________________________________

The first game started, the air was filled with screams.People dropped one by one, their bodies hitting the ground with sickening thuds. I forced myself to block it out, to focus on moving when the doll’s head was turned away.I had almost fallen near the finish line when I felt someone grab my waist to steady me.

Thanos.

His grip was firm but not forceful. His eyes darted around, scanning for danger before locking onto mine.“Stay close to me, señorita,” he murmured.It was the way he said it like a promise, like a plea that made my heart clench. I hated that part of me still responded to him.Against my better judgment, I nodded.And together, we made it across.

_____________________________________

The announcement of the next game sent a wave of murmurs through the players.“Pair up into a group of 5”I barely had time to react before a strong hand wrapped around my wrist.“You’re with me,” Thanos said firmly. It wasn’t a question.I should have said no. I should have found someone else. But deep down, I knew I didn’t want to face this game with anyone but him.“Fine,” I muttered.We found 3 other players to play it with(se-mi,nam-gyu and min-su)(sorry gyeong-su)“I’ll play gonggi” “Sure señorita”

____________________________________ “Mingle” sounded innocent enough—until we realized it was a social elimination game. Alliances were being made left and right.

_____________________________________

Tensions were high. Fights broke out. And then came the worst part—the bathroom fight.Player 333 had a fork,Thanos twisted at the last second. The fork sank into his shoulder instead of his neck. A guttural snarl tore from his throat as he elbowed his attacker, sending them sprawling. Blood soaked his tracksuit, but he didn’t stop moving.I didn’t even know what was happening until the robotic voice started announcing eliminated players in the fight.I froze hoping that thanos was okay.Then i saw him run…Straight to me.I barely had time to register the pain in his face before he grabbed my wrist, his blood smearing onto my skin.gripping his arm to steady him. “You’re bleeding.” “Not the first time,” he muttered. “Won’t be the last.”But despite his words, despite his usual bravado, he didn’t let go of me.

____________________________________

That night, after everything had calmed down, I found him sitting on one of the bunk beds, pressing a makeshift bandage from my jacket to his wound I sat beside him without a word.For a long time, we just sat there, the silence stretching between us. Then, finally, I spoke.“You almost died today.”He let out a slow breath. “Yeah.”I turned to face him fully. “Why did you run to me?”He met my gaze, and for once, there was no arrogance, no deflection. Just honesty.“Because you’re the only thing that still matters,” he admitted. “Even after everything. Even after I screwed up.”My heart twisted. “Thanos…”He reached for my hand, his fingers brushing over mine. “I’m not asking for forgiveness, señorita. Just… let me keep you safe.”I should have walked away. I should have said no.But instead, I squeezed his hand. ”You always were an idiot,” I murmured. He chuckled, then winced. “Yeah. But I’m your idiot.” And for the first time since this nightmare started, I let myself believe that maybe—just maybe—we could survive this.

Together.

[velting]

-`♡Our Manager♡´-

U-20 x Manager!Reader

╰┈➤. .Synopsis: You are the new U-20 manager! You try your best and connect with the players in the team, hoping this job and experience would go well and help them succeed!

╰┈➤. .Warnings: None

╰┈➤. [Featuring]: Oliver Aiku - Sendo Shuuto - Itsuki Watatsuki - Kento Cho- Gen Fukaku- Teru Kitsunenzato - Miroku Darai- Nio Kazuma-Neru Teppei- Haru Hayate (Separate)

The air in the training facility buzzed with the chaotic energy of the players. Sweat beaded down their faces as they gathered around the large, open space, the smell of freshly cut grass lingering from their recent drills. The sound of cleats scraping the floor echoed as the team members huddled together, some still stretching, others chatting loudly. It was the end of another grueling training session, and there was no shortage of banter and horseplay among the young athletes.

"You think I could totally outpace you, right?" one of the forwards boasted to a defender, his voice thick with mischief.

"I’ll believe it when I see it," the defender smirked back, tossing a water bottle to his teammate.

Laughter broke out, filling the room with the usual banter that had become part of their routine. But just as one of the midfielders was about to make a sarcastic comment about how bad the others' aim was with the ball, the door to the locker room swung open with a loud thud.

The room fell silent in an instant.

A tall man stepped into the space, the sound of his boots clanging heavily against the floor. Coach Kato—tough, no-nonsense, and always commanding attention—had arrived. His sharp eyes scanned the group with an intimidating focus. He was a man who didn’t need to raise his voice to make people listen, but when he did, it was enough to make anyone sit up straighter.

"Alright, everyone, listen up," Coach Kato's voice cut through the noise, firm and commanding.

A collective shush ran through the team as they turned to face him. The playful energy quickly dissipated, leaving an air of expectation. It wasn’t often that Coach called for attention after a training session unless it was important.

[Name] stood at the door just behind him, her hands nervously clasped together as she waited for her introduction. Her hair swayed by the wind as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other, unsure of what to expect. Her heart raced—not from nervousness about speaking, but from the weight of the moment. She was about to meet the entire U-20 soccer team as their new manager. Despite her usually easy going personality, this felt like a big step.

Coach Kato finally broke the silence. “This is [Name] [Surename],” he said, gesturing toward her. “She’s the new manager of this team. She’ll be helping with your schedules, maintaining your fitness and training routines, and keeping you organized. She’s not here to play your babysitter. You’re to treat her with respect, just like any other member of the team.”

[Name] straightened a bit, her heart beating faster at the mention of her role. She couldn’t help but smile, even though the pressure was mounting. It was a new experience for her, stepping into a professional setting like this one. Her cheeks flushed lightly under the attention, and she felt the weight of all those curious eyes on her.

“Hey, come on, Coach! We can totally handle ourselves,” one of the players called out, his tone half-joking, half-challenging. He was a forward with a reputation for mischief, always looking for an excuse to lighten the mood.

“Yeah, she doesn’t have to tell us what to do!” another player chimed in, grinning.

The coach raised an eyebrow, his voice darkening. “You think you can handle yourselves? Last time I checked, none of you could keep track of your own socks, let alone your schedules."

A few chuckles rippled through the group at Coach Kato’s remark, but there was no mistaking the authority in his tone.

[Name’s] cheeks flushed deeper, but she knew this was her moment to shine—no matter how intimidating the situation felt. She took a small step forward, standing a bit taller, and offered a bow to the team.

“Hello! My name is [Name] [Surename],” she began, her voice slightly more chipper than she felt, but she did her best to stay confident. “I’ll be managing everything behind the scenes—from your training schedules to making sure you have all the right gear. I’m really happy to be here and excited to get to know all of you!” She beamed, her smile as bright and genuine as she could muster.

As she stood there, nervously twiddling her fingers together, there was a slight, awkward pause. The players exchanged glances, trying to size her up. Some of them were still skeptical, while others were intrigued. [Name’s] towering height and striking appearance—especially with her hair and her eyes peeking out from her clear glasses—made her stand out in a way that was hard to ignore.

One of the more bold players, a striker known for his cocky attitude, tilted his head and shot her a playful grin. “I’ll take care of her, don’t worry, Coach!” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

Another player snorted in laughter, and the team’s usual rowdiness began to creep back in, despite the coach’s stern presence. But before the jokes could escalate, Coach Kato’s voice rang out again.

“That’s enough,” he snapped, a warning in his tone that made even the most rebellious players freeze. “You’ll treat her with respect, and that means no teasing, no messin' around, and no distractions during practice. If I hear anything out of line, you’ll be running laps until your legs give out. Got it?”

The locker room went dead silent again. The team knew better than to challenge Coach Kato, especially when he used that tone. Some players even shuffled their feet uncomfortably, realizing they might have crossed a line. [Name] swallowed and glanced nervously at the floor, hoping she hadn’t caused too much trouble by being the center of attention. But she was also grateful—this was the kind of environment where everyone would know she meant business, and perhaps they would give her a chance.

Coach Kato gave one last stern look to the group before turning his attention back to [Name]. “You’ll report to me for any issues, and we’ll work together to make sure this team stays on track. [Name], I trust you’ll keep them in line?”

She nodded enthusiastically, trying to shake off the nerves. “Yes, Coach! I’ll do my best.”

Coach Kato gave her a brief, approving nod. “Good. Now, get to know each other. We’re a team, and that starts with everyone pulling their weight. [Name], we’re counting on you to make sure things run smoothly. Welcome aboard.”

With that, the coach turned and walked out, leaving [Name] standing at the front of the room as the players slowly began to stir, murmuring amongst themselves.

As the door clicked shut behind the coach, a murmur of disbelief spread across the team. Some exchanged curious glances, while others made their way toward [Name].

“Well, [Name]-san, huh?” The bold striker from earlier swaggered over, a teasing smile on his face. “Not what I expected, but I guess we’ll see what you’ve got. Can you keep up with us?”

[Name] chuckled nervously, rubbing the back of her neck. “I hope so! I’m pretty good at staying organized… and I’ll be cheering for you guys from the sidelines!”

Her response, a bit shy but sincere, earned a few raised eyebrows, followed by polite nods. The first test had been passed: she wasn’t just another manager. She was part of the team now, and the journey to get to know each player was just beginning.

But what she didn’t know was that, despite her air-headed nature and awkwardness, the seeds of admiration had already been quietly planted.

Aiku Oliver ➺

The crisp sound of sneakers pounding against the field was constant. The U-20 team was deep into their daily training session, the field now painted with the streaks of sunlight breaking through the clouds. The players, drenched in sweat, were focused and determined, running their laps with precision. [Name] stood off to the side, her glasses perched on the edge of her nose as she diligently took notes on the team’s performance. A clipboard was clasped tightly in her hands as she wrote down the times each player completed their laps, tracking their stamina and ensuring no one pushed themselves too hard—or too little.

Every so often, she would call out to one of the players, handing them a water bottle as they slowed to catch their breath, offering encouragement.

“You’re doing great, Hanako! Just a few more laps!” she cheered, passing a bottle to a panting midfielder.

“Thanks, [Name]-san!” Hanako said with a quick, grateful nod, before jogging off again.

[Name] smiled, but it was starting to feel like the time was stretching on forever. The sun was growing warmer, and the field’s intensity was starting to wear on her as well. Still, she had a job to do, and she wouldn’t let herself slack off. But just as she glanced back down at her notes, she saw one of the players approaching her, a bit slower than usual, his tall frame cutting through the group of running athletes.

It was Oliver Aiku, the team’s defense specialist.

Oliver was hard to miss, his dark purple hair with lime-green tips a standout against the backdrop of the other players. His muscular build was clear under his training gear, and his confident stride had a commanding presence that drew the attention of anyone nearby. As he approached, he shot a playful grin in [Name’s] direction, his heterochromatic eyes—green on the left, purple on the right—glistening with a mixture of confidence and mischief.

“Hey, manager,” Oliver said, his voice smooth with an almost teasing undertone. He slowed to a walk as he neared her, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead. His eyes narrowed in an appreciative gaze. “You look stunning out here, you know? It's not often we get someone like you on the sidelines.”

[Name] blinked, a bit taken aback by the sudden attention. She knew Oliver was the team’s resident heartthrob—he had a reputation with the ladies, no doubt. The way he was looking at her made her cheeks turn pinker than she’d like to admit.

“Uh, t-thank you,” she stammered, fumbling with her clipboard. Her mind scrambled to stay focused. Stay professional, [Name], she reminded herself. She quickly pulled out a water bottle, offering it to him. “You’re doing well! Drink some water, stay hydrated.”

She handed it to him with a polite smile, trying to hide the fact that her heart rate had sped up at the compliment.

Oliver smirked, taking the bottle from her hand, but instead of immediately drinking, he lingered a moment longer, his grin widening. “You know, I could use a few things outside of just water,” he said, his tone smooth, almost flirtatious. “How about I take you out for a nice dinner sometime? You deserve it for all the hard work you’re doing for us.”

[Name] felt the heat rush to her face. What did he just say?! she thought in a daze. She’d heard stories of Oliver’s way with words, but hearing it directed at her was a whole new level of awkward.

“W-well,” she stammered, trying her best to keep it cool, “I-I’m really just here to help with your training… And, you know, make sure everyone’s staying on track. But, uh…” She fidgeted, her heart thumping in her chest. She wasn’t sure what to say. Her usual confidence was slipping away. “I’ll consider it… after the training,” she added quickly, her words coming out almost like a nervous whisper.

Oliver’s smile grew, clearly enjoying the effect he had on her. “I’ll take that as a yes, then,” he replied smoothly, his eyes glinting with a playful spark. He stepped back a little, ready to continue his laps. “I’ll be looking forward to it, [Name]-chan.”

He gave her a knowing wink, and for a moment, [Name] stood frozen, her face bright red. No way… Did he just wink at me?

Trying to regain some composure, she quickly jotted down the time for his lap. “D-Don’t push yourself too hard, Aiku,” she said, her voice shaky. “We don’t want you overexerting yourself.”

“I��ll be fine,” Oliver said, his voice turning soft, almost teasing. He gave her a final look over his shoulder as he started to jog away, his eyes lingering on her with that mischievous glint. “But if you ever want to talk more, just let me know, okay?”

[Name] watched him for a moment, her mind still reeling. Did I just get flirted with? By Oliver Aiku? She shook her head, trying to focus back on the task at hand, though her thoughts were still a swirl of confusion and surprise.

As the training session continued, Oliver’s behavior toward [Name] became more and more evident. He began to seek her out during breaks, hanging around her as she handed out water bottles to the players. Each time, he would make some offhand comment about her looks, her work ethic, or how much she seemed to stand out in comparison to other managers.

His compliments, though laced with a lighthearted, teasing tone, had a subtle sincerity to them that [Name] couldn’t ignore. She had to admit—he had a way with words. But it was also clear that Oliver wasn’t just flirting for fun—there was a growing admiration in his eyes. The way he’d wink at her, or the moments when he’d seek her out to engage in small talk, made it feel like he was trying to carve out moments where he could connect with her outside of just training.

[Name], however, remained mostly oblivious to the deeper meaning behind his words. She was so focused on her responsibilities that she didn’t notice how his attempts to charm her were slowly changing into something more serious. She was a little unsure of how to react, not just because of Oliver’s flirtations but because, in the back of her mind, she still had worries about her appearance, especially compared to someone as striking and confident as him.

And so, Oliver’s charming yet somewhat playful nature became a puzzle she found herself unwillingly drawn to.

As Oliver finished his laps, he slowed down and jogged back to the group, glancing over his shoulder once more at [Name]. She stood there, a little flustered but trying to focus on her clipboard. Oliver grinned to himself, shaking his head.

“Guess I’ll just have to make sure I see you more often, manager,” he murmured under his breath, his gaze lingering for a second longer.

[Name], still caught up in the haze of his attention, blushed deeply as she wrote down his final lap time. Oliver Aiku, she thought, glancing at him as he jogged away. ‘Definitely a lot to deal with, but... I guess he’s not that bad.’

Sendo Shuuto ➺

The sun was beginning to set, casting long shadows across the soccer field. The players had finished their laps for the day, but the air was still thick with the scent of sweat and grass, as some of the more energetic team members continued to practice on their own. The golden light caught the edges of the goalposts and the sleek blades of grass beneath them. [Name] stood at the sidelines, clipboard in hand, keeping track of the final practice sessions.

She had become accustomed to the rhythm of the players by now. The way they pushed themselves, their laughter, their teasing—all of it felt strangely familiar. Still, she stayed focused, occasionally making her way toward a player who needed a quick drink or a few words of encouragement.

It was at that moment that Sendo Shuuto, the star striker of the team, caught her eye. With his lean build and confidence practically oozing from his every movement, he was impossible to miss. He stood a few meters away, adjusting his position for a shot at the goal, an intense focus in his pale red eyes. [Name] smiled to herself as she watched him, knowing that he was known for his impressive skills—his talent was undeniable.

Sendo had been a little quieter around her than the others, but there was something in the way he observed her from a distance, the slight blush on his face whenever she offered him a compliment or encouragement. It was clear that he had taken a particular liking to her, though he hadn’t yet made his feelings known outright.

With a determined look on his face, Sendo kicked the ball with impressive force toward the goalpost, trying to show off his skills. But, as if fate had a different plan, the ball ricocheted off the post and unexpectedly flew straight toward the wall on the far side of the field.

There was a brief, almost comical silence, followed by a loud thwack as the ball bounced off the wall and came straight back toward Sendo. The ball hit him squarely on the head with a soft thud.

“Ow!” Sendo yelped, stumbling back a step, his face scrunching in pain as he tried to steady himself. His body rocked slightly as he rubbed the back of his head, wincing from the unexpected hit.

[Name], who had been walking toward him with a water bottle in hand, immediately froze. Her eyes widened in concern as she rushed to his side. “Sendo-kun! Are you alright?!”

Her voice was filled with genuine worry, and Sendo, still slightly dazed from the unexpected blow, couldn’t help but notice how close she was standing to him. His heart skipped a beat. ‘Oh no… did she see that?’ He tried to act tough, but his face flushed redder than he ever thought possible. “I’m fine... I mean, that wasn’t exactly part of the plan...” he muttered, still rubbing his head. He tried to smile it off, but the pain was more than he wanted to admit.

[Name’s] eyes softened with concern, and without a second thought, she gently placed a hand on his shoulder to steady him. “You really should be more careful! That looked like it hurt.”

Sendo couldn’t help but notice how soft her voice sounded, how close she was to him now. Her warm presence was so calming, so… beautiful. He tried to stand a little taller to impress her, but his head still throbbed from the impact.

She noticed his slight unsteadiness and, without thinking, gently guided him down onto the grass. “You should rest for a moment, Sendo-kun,” she suggested, her tone kind and caring. “I’ll make sure you’re okay.”

Before he could protest, [Name] kneeled down beside him, lifting his head gently onto her lap, a soft gasp escaping from his lips as the reality of the situation hit him. He could feel the warmth of her thighs against his cheek, her delicate fingers brushing through his hair as she checked his head.

The world around him seemed to slow. His heart pounded in his chest, and his thoughts went blank. ‘Wait... is this really happening?’

[Name’s] face was now directly above him, her soft, comforting voice reaching his ears as she spoke, “Just relax for a moment. I’ll make sure you’re okay.”

But in that instant, something inside Sendo snapped. He blinked rapidly, feeling his face grow hotter with each passing second. ‘Her... her lap?’ He could feel his pulse racing, his breath caught in his throat. He had been this close to girls before, sure, but never like this. Never with a girl who was as… perfect as her.

[Name’s] gentle touch, her concern for him, and her calm demeanor were like a dream. The way she looked down at him with those soft eyes... It was almost too much. The sweet scent of her hair, the sound of her voice, the closeness—it was overwhelming. ‘She’s so beautiful…’ he thought, his mind swirling in a sea of thoughts.

His heart was hammering now, and he felt something stir deep within him. His thoughts began to drift, and before he could even stop himself, his eyes fluttered closed, and he passed out.

[Name], still unaware of the full extent of what had just happened, blinked in confusion as she noticed his face grow pale and his body go limp. “Sendo-kun?! No, no! What’s going on?!” she exclaimed, panic rising in her chest.

She quickly shifted her position to check on him, her hands gently shaking his shoulders. “Sendo-kun, wake up! Are you okay?!”

His expression remained serene, almost too calm as if he were in a deep, peaceful sleep. But [Name] couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. She waved her hands in front of his face, trying to snap him back to reality, but there was no response.

Meanwhile, in the depths of his mind, Sendo Shuuto was lost in a dream. His mind was filled with images of him and [Name], the woman who had so suddenly and unexpectedly captured his heart. They were standing side by side at the altar, in a beautiful church with delicate roses scattered around them, the soft glow of candles lighting the way.

“I do,” he whispered, his voice smooth with confidence as he gazed into her eyes.

[Name], dressed in a stunning wedding gown, smiled at him, her eyes sparkling with affection. “I do, too,” she responded softly, her voice filled with warmth.

As they exchanged vows in his dream, Sendo felt his heart swell. In his fantasy world, nothing was more perfect than this moment. ‘This is how it’s supposed to be…’ he thought, his heart beating wildly in his chest.

But then, just as he leaned in to kiss her, the dream blurred, and a sharp, unexpected voice broke through the fantasy.

“Sendo-kun!” [Name’s] voice called out to him from the real world, pulling him back from his daydreams.

Sendo’s eyes slowly fluttered open, and he let out a weak groan, his head still in [Name’s] lap. His heart was racing, and his face burned hotter than it had ever felt before. ‘What... what just happened?’ he thought, trying to focus his thoughts.

[Name], still looking down at him with a concerned expression, tilted her head in confusion. “Sendo-kun, are you okay now?”

For a moment, he couldn’t form any words, his mind still trying to catch up with the rapid beat of his heart. But then, his lips curled into a sheepish grin, despite the overwhelming embarrassment. “I-I’m fine… Just... a little dizzy,” he stammered, his voice still soft from his dream-induced haze.

His face was still flushed, but it wasn’t from the hit. It was from the way [Name] was looking at him, the way she cared for him. He was too embarrassed to meet her gaze directly.

[Name] smiled gently and helped him sit up. “I’m glad you’re okay, but maybe you should take it easy for the rest of the day, okay?”

Sendo nodded, still feeling the weight of her touch in his mind. “Yeah… I’ll take it easy. But... thank you, [Name]-chan.” His voice had an underlying sincerity that he didn’t quite realize until now.

As she stood and walked away, he couldn’t stop the dreamy look in his eyes. Maybe one day... he thought to himself, his heart racing once more. ‘Maybe one day, she’ll really be mine.’

Kazuma Nio ➺

The air in the gym was thick with the sound of weights clanging against each other, mixed with the sharp breaths of players pushing themselves. The team was in the middle of their strength training session, and despite the hot, humid air, there was an undeniable energy in the room. The sound of machines being used, grunts of exertion, and motivational shouts filled the space, all blending together to create an atmosphere that was equal parts exhausting and inspiring.

[Name] stood to the side, her clipboard in hand as she made her way through her task of observing and noting each player's progress. Her gaze shifted over the team, each member focused on their individual exercises. Her eyes landed on Nio Kazuma, who was positioned at the far end of the gym near the bench press, his broad shoulders and powerful build evident as he gripped the heavy barbell.

Kazuma was known for his raw strength and the competitive streak that ran through him. His sweat-drenched shirt clung to his body, and the muscles in his arms and chest flexed as he pressed the barbell upward with ease. He was in the middle of a set, his face contorted in concentration as he pushed through the weight.

[Name] couldn't help but feel impressed by the sight. His confidence and sheer physicality were something to behold, but it was also clear from his focused expression that he didn’t take his training lightly.

As Kazuma finished his set, he released the bar with a loud clank, letting it drop back into place on the rack. He wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand, exhaling deeply. [Name], seeing an opportunity to show some support, made her way toward him, her light footsteps barely making a sound on the gym floor.

Kazuma glanced over his shoulder, catching sight of [Name] walking toward him. His lips curved into a confident, cocky grin. He wiped his hands on his gym shorts and adjusted his posture, trying to make himself look even more imposing as she got closer.

[Name] gave him a friendly, genuine smile. “Kazuma-kun, I have to say, I’m really impressed with how much you’re pushing yourself,” she said, her voice filled with admiration.

Kazuma’s grin widened, clearly enjoying the attention. He straightened up, flexing his chest slightly in a way that made his muscles pop even more. “Ah, well, you know. I don’t settle for being just ‘good’ at something,” he said with a wink. “If you want to be the best, you’ve got to give it everything you’ve got.”

His voice had that usual confident edge, and there was an unmistakable arrogance in the way he spoke. But [Name] didn’t mind. She admired his enthusiasm and the way he carried himself—his confidence was contagious.

“You’re definitely showing that you’re giving it your all,” she said, her voice light but sincere. “It’s really inspiring to see someone put so much into their training. It makes the team look up to you.”

Kazuma chuckled, clearly pleased with the praise. He swiped a towel off the nearby bench and draped it over his shoulders, holding it like a trophy. “Well, I can’t let the guys think I’m slacking, can I? They need to know who the strongest guy in the room is.” He looked at her, his dark eyes glinting with that same cocky confidence. “And that’s me, of course.”

[Name] giggled softly at his boastful nature but couldn’t help but feel a strange sense of respect for him. His confidence wasn’t unfounded—he was clearly one of the strongest players on the team, and there was something about his attitude that made him stand out.

“I can tell,” she said, her eyes bright with admiration. “It’s hard to ignore the guy who pushes himself so hard.”

Kazuma smirked, clearly satisfied with the compliment. He stretched his arms above his head and gave a slight nod, as if acknowledging her words. “Well, someone’s gotta set the standard,” he said, lowering his arms and flashing her another confident smile. “And why not let it be me?”

[Name] chuckled, her cheeks flushing slightly from the ease with which Kazuma commanded the room. His personality was loud and assertive, but it was also oddly charming in a way that made him hard to ignore. “I don’t think anyone would argue with that.”

Kazuma took a few steps toward her, wiping his face with the towel. He seemed to grow even more comfortable with her presence, his posture relaxed but still brimming with self-assurance. “Hey, you’re doing a pretty great job keeping track of everything, [Name]-chan,” he said, his tone casual but tinged with genuine appreciation. “It’s gotta be tough, managing all these guys.”

[Name] smiled, a little flattered by the compliment. “It’s not easy, but I enjoy being part of the team,” she said, trying to sound modest. “I really like getting to know everyone and helping out however I can.”

Kazuma gave her a look that was half teasing, half approving. “Well, it’s clear you’ve got a good head on your shoulders, that’s for sure. Anyone with brains and a little charm like yours can do pretty much anything.”

The compliment hit her harder than expected, and she felt her face warm. Kazuma-kun, always so confident, she thought to herself, a little bashful but also genuinely impressed.

“You’re too kind,” she said, trying to regain her composure. “But I’m just here to make sure everyone stays on track. I’m just doing my job.”

Kazuma smirked, his dark eyes gleaming with mischief. “Well, if it’s your job to make sure we’re all doing our best, then I guess I should show off a little more,” he said, his grin widening. “You know, just to make sure I’m living up to your expectations.”

[Name] laughed softly, her eyes twinkling. “You don’t need to show off for me, Kazuma-kun. You’ve already proven yourself plenty.” She tilted her head slightly, adding, “But I’m happy to see you take pride in your work.”

Kazuma chuckled, clearly pleased by her words. He gave her a playful shrug. “What can I say? It’s just in my nature. But don’t worry, I’ll leave some of the spotlight for the rest of the team too.”

[Name] smiled warmly at him, appreciating his straightforwardness. “I’m sure everyone appreciates that. It’s great to see you leading by example.”

Kazuma gave a quick nod, then glanced down at his watch. “Well, I should get back to it. Can’t let the rest of the team think I’m slacking off, right?”

“Of course,” [Name] said, watching him with a genuine smile. “Keep up the great work, Kazuma-kun. I’ll be cheering for you.”

Kazuma gave her a final grin, his cocky demeanor still very much intact. “You’ve got it, manager,” he said, before turning back toward the bench press. “I’ll make sure to keep impressing you.”

As Kazuma returned to his workout, [Name] stood off to the side, a small smile on her face as she watched him. His confidence was infectious, and despite his cocky nature, she couldn’t help but admire his drive. His ability to be both serious and relaxed in the same breath was something she found fascinating.

He really does have a way of making everything look effortless, [Name] thought, her admiration for Kazuma growing. I can see why he’s a leader on this team.

The gym felt a little quieter as the sound of weights and grunts took over once again. Yet, for [Name], Kazuma’s boldness and confidence lingered in the air. She could only hope that his energy would help lead the team to greater heights, just as his personality did for him.

Hayate Haru ➺

The late afternoon sun cast a soft golden light over the soccer field, creating a tranquil, almost dreamlike atmosphere. The sounds of the team’s training had started to die down as most of the players were finishing their workouts, their laughter and voices fading into the distance. The occasional breeze ruffled the leaves of the nearby trees, sending a refreshing coolness through the air.

In a quiet corner of the field, far away from the commotion of the others, Haru Hayate was laying on his back, eyes closed, arms stretched out at his sides as he enjoyed the peaceful solitude. His spiky light yellow hair seemed to glisten in the sunlight, and his tall, lean figure was perfectly still against the soft grass. Hayate was a person who valued calmness and quiet—he found solace in the simple act of soaking in the environment around him, far from the chaos of the training ground.

The world around him was peaceful, almost serene. The gentle rustling of the leaves, the faint chirp of birds in the distance, and the occasional flutter of a butterfly’s wings—these were the small things that he appreciated, the things that allowed him to reset and recharge.

[Name], having finished her rounds and ensuring everyone else was doing okay, was walking through the field, clipboard in hand. She was scanning the area for the last few team members to check in on, making sure everyone was hydrated and feeling good. Her eyes fell upon Hayate, who was still stretched out on the grass, seemingly undisturbed by the hustle and bustle around him. She couldn’t help but smile at the sight of him—his peaceful aura was a sharp contrast to the usual high-energy atmosphere of the field.

She quietly approached him, stepping lightly on the grass, not wanting to disturb his calm. As she drew closer, she looked down at his resting face, her gaze softening. There was something about the way he lay there, completely at ease, that made [Name] feel… relaxed. She admired how effortlessly he seemed to embrace tranquility.

The warmth of the sunlight made her feel at ease as well, and for a moment, she stood there just admiring the scene before her. The wind tugged at her hair, and she thought to herself that it was nice to have moments like this, where everything seemed to slow down and feel right.

Without thinking, [Name] leaned down slightly, wanting to get a little closer.

At that very moment, Hayate’s calm was interrupted by the faintest shift in the air. He felt a presence above him, a quiet disturbance in the atmosphere. His eyes fluttered open slowly, as if drawn to something. When he met [Name’s] gaze, his eyes widened in surprise.

"Ah!" Hayate gasped, his head jerking up instinctively in the direction of her sudden presence. His motion was too quick, and before he could stop it, he collided with her forehead with a soft thunk.

Both of them yelped in pain, the sound echoing across the otherwise quiet field.

“Ow! That hurt!” [Name] exclaimed, her hands immediately flying to her forehead. Her eyes were wide from the sudden shock, and she stumbled back a step, rubbing her head.

Hayate, also wincing from the accidental collision, quickly sat up, his hand going to his own head where it had made contact. “Ah, I’m sorry!” he said, his voice calm, but there was a hint of fluster in his expression as he glanced up at her. "I didn’t expect you to be right there…”

[Name] blinked in confusion but then let out a nervous laugh, brushing a few strands of hair from her face. “I was just checking in on you, Hayate-kun. I didn’t mean to startle you…” She winced slightly as she touched her forehead, still recovering from the bump. “That was quite the greeting.”

Hayate, rubbing his own head with a slightly sheepish expression, shook his head. “No, it’s my fault. I should’ve noticed you approaching. My bad…”

[Name] smiled gently, reassured by his calmness despite the accident. “It’s okay, really. I should have been more careful, too.”

Hayate gave her an easygoing smile, his eyes softening as he relaxed again. “Well, you’ve got me up now, so… what’s up? Was there something you needed?”

[Name], now standing fully upright, took a step back, her expression softening as she observed him more closely. “Actually, I was just making sure everyone was alright. You’ve been out here for a while, and I wanted to check in and see if you were feeling okay. You looked so at peace that I thought I’d let you enjoy it, but I guess I startled you…”

Hayate chuckled quietly, leaning back into the grass and letting out a deep breath. “It’s fine. I’ve just been enjoying the quiet for a bit. I like the feeling of the sun on my skin, and the wind…” His voice trailed off as he looked up at the sky, his eyes half-lidded in contentment. “I guess I needed a little break from all the noise, you know?”

[Name] nodded, understanding. She could see that he wasn’t just physically relaxed but mentally rejuvenated by the peaceful atmosphere. “I get it. Sometimes, the noise of everything can get overwhelming. It’s nice to just take a step back and breathe for a moment.”

Hayate turned his head slightly to look at her, his eyes softening with a rare warmth. “Exactly. That’s why I come here sometimes. It helps me clear my mind.”

[Name] smiled brightly at him, her eyes glimmering with interest. “I think that’s really nice. I mean, I always feel like I’m running around trying to make sure everyone’s doing alright, but there’s something special about taking time for yourself and just appreciating the moment.”

Hayate’s lips curved into a small, quiet smile at her words. “Yeah. It’s important to find peace wherever you can. And it’s not just the quiet; it’s the little things. The plants, the wind, the sky… it all works together to help me stay grounded.”

[Name] tilted her head curiously. “Plants?”

Hayate nodded slowly, his gaze drifting back to the small patch of grass surrounding them. “My grandfather’s a botanist. Growing up, I spent a lot of time with him, learning about different types of plants and the importance of nature. Being around plants helps me feel more connected, more… calm.” His voice took on a slightly nostalgic tone, as if remembering something meaningful. “The scenery here reminds me of the peace I found in those moments.”

[Name’s] expression softened as she took in his words. She hadn’t known that about him. “That sounds wonderful. I think it’s amazing how plants can bring such a sense of calm. Maybe… I should get you a little potted plant as a gift sometime.” She chuckled softly. “It seems fitting.”

Hayate looked at her in surprise, his lips twitching upward into a small, genuine smile. “I’d appreciate that,” he said quietly. “It’s the thought that counts.”

[Name’s] heart warmed as she smiled at him, her fingers gently brushing through her hair. “I’ll make a note of it. Maybe something that can help you feel even more at peace.”

Hayate stretched out his legs, his posture still completely relaxed. “I’ll look forward to it, then.”

The peaceful atmosphere settled around them once again. [Name] stood there for a moment, enjoying the stillness, as the sounds of the team’s training slowly faded into the background. It was nice, she thought, to have this quiet moment with him. His calm, collected nature was something she admired, and in a way, it made her feel just a little more grounded herself.

“Well,” she said, after a moment of quiet contemplation, “I’ll let you get back to your peace and quiet. I just wanted to check in.”

Hayate gave a slight nod, his expression still calm and serene. “Thanks for checking in, [Name]-chan. I’m good here.”

[Name] smiled brightly at him, nodding in return. “Alright then. Take care, Hayate-kun.”

As she walked away, Hayate lay back down on the grass, closing his eyes again, the soft breeze carrying his thoughts far away. [Name] couldn’t help but smile to herself, thinking that it was nice to see someone so at peace with themselves. She’d have to get him that plant one day.

Neru Teppei ➺

The day was slowly winding down, the sun beginning its descent and casting a warm golden light across the field. The sound of heavy breathing and the thud of soccer balls slowly faded as the last few players finished their grueling training sessions. The air felt slightly humid but refreshing, the smell of freshly cut grass mingling with the faint scent of sweat and determination.

[Name] had taken it upon herself to prepare some hearty meals for the team, wanting to ensure everyone refueled after such an intense practice. She had spent the better part of the morning making a large pot of curry, along with some other snacks, and now it was time to distribute the food to the players. She walked through the field with a large container in hand, her eyes scanning for players who might be in need of a break.

As she passed by the others, she saw many of them eagerly waiting for their meals, but her attention was soon drawn to Neru Teppei. He was sitting off to the side, leaning against a bench, looking completely drained. Sweat glistened on his forehead, and his normally bright eyes were half-lidded, a clear sign that he was struggling to keep his energy up.

[Name’s] heart softened at the sight. Teppei was always so energetic and cheerful, and seeing him this tired made her want to help him even more.

She walked up to him with a bright smile, trying her best to lift his spirits. “Hey, Teppei-kun! You look like you’ve been working really hard! Want something to eat?”

Teppei, whose eyes were barely open, immediately perked up at the mention of food. “Food? Did you make food, [Name]-chan?” His voice was a little raspy from exhaustion, but there was a spark of excitement in his eyes at the thought of getting something to eat.

[Name] couldn’t help but giggle at his reaction. “Of course! I made curry for everyone. I figured it would be perfect to help everyone get their energy back after all that running.”

Teppei, despite being on the verge of passing out, sat up straighter, a wide grin forming on his face. “Curry?! That sounds amazing! I’m starving!”

[Name] smiled warmly, her heart swelling with affection for the team member she’d come to care so much about. She bent down slightly, holding out the spoon with a hearty helping of curry. “Here, Teppei-kun, let me feed you! You’ve earned it.”

Teppei’s face immediately turned a deep shade of red as he blinked up at her, surprised by the gesture. His usual cheerfulness didn’t seem to do much to calm his nerves in this moment—being fed by his manager was an overwhelming experience, and he couldn’t help but feel flustered. “W-wait, [Name]-chan, you don’t have to—!”

But before he could finish, [Name] was already bringing the spoon closer to his lips, her eyes full of care and warmth. “Don’t worry, Teppei! You’ve worked so hard today. Let me help you out.”

Teppei’s heart skipped a beat. He opened his mouth without thinking, and before he knew it, the warm curry was in his mouth. The flavors instantly hit his senses, and he couldn’t help but sigh in contentment, his eyes closing in satisfaction. “Mmm… this is so good, [Name]-chan! You’re amazing! I never knew you were such a good cook!” He smiled at her, his cheeks still flushed, both from the food and the moment itself.

[Name] chuckled softly, happy to see him enjoying the meal. “I’m glad you like it! It makes me happy to know that it’s helping everyone.”

Teppei couldn’t stop himself from looking at her with admiration. He had always thought she was kind, but this… this felt different. He felt a warmth growing in his chest—not just from the food, but from the kindness she was showing him. It made him feel special, and he couldn’t deny the butterflies in his stomach as he watched her smile.

As she fed him the next spoonful, [Name] looked down at him and asked, “So, Teppei-kun, tell me something about yourself. What do you like to do when you’re not training?”

Teppei’s eyes lit up as he eagerly replied, “Oh! I love Pokémon! They’re the best! My favorite is Pikachu. He’s just so cute and full of energy, like me! I’ve always wanted to be like him—positive, always there for my friends, and ready for any challenge!”

[Name’s] smile widened. “I love Pokémon too! My favorite is Pachirisu. I think she’s just adorable and so full of spirit. And she’s always so kind-hearted!”

Teppei’s face lit up even more, his excitement clearly evident. “Pachirisu! That’s a great choice! They’re both so cute! I bet they’d make an amazing team!”

[Name] giggled. “Right? I think they’d be the perfect pair. Maybe Pikachu and Pachirisu could be like… you and me!”

Teppei’s eyes widened in surprise at her words, and his heart skipped a beat. Did she… did she just compare herself to his favorite Pokémon? He blushed even harder, his mind racing. He couldn’t help but picture Pikachu and Pachirisu together, and for some reason, it felt right. In his mind, it was almost like a perfect metaphor for the bond he felt with his manager—he, the energetic and cheerful Pikachu, and her, the sweet and kind Pachirisu.

“You think so?” Teppei asked, his voice slightly shaky as he looked up at her with wide eyes, his blush deepening. “I… I like that idea a lot.”

[Name] smiled warmly at him, feeding him another spoonful of curry. “I’m glad! You’re such a hard worker, Teppei-kun. It’s nice to see someone with so much energy and spirit.”

As Teppei ate the food, he couldn’t stop thinking about her words. His heart was fluttering in his chest. There was something so comforting about [Name]—about her kindness and the way she made him feel special. He didn’t want this moment to end. He didn’t want her to go.

As she finished the meal and started to clean up, Teppei couldn’t help but ask, “[Name]-chan, do you think… we could hang out again sometime? Maybe talk a little more? I’d love to chat with you again…”

[Name] paused in her cleaning, turning back to him with a warm smile. “Of course, Teppei-kun! I’d love that. We can talk more once everything’s settled. It’ll be fun!”

Teppei’s heart soared. “I’ll be looking forward to it! Thanks, [Name]-chan.”

As [Name] walked off to clean up the rest of the mess, Teppei sat there, his heart racing, his mind filled with thoughts of Pikachu and Pachirisu—of him and his manager. His smile grew wider as he daydreamed about their next conversation.

Miroku Darai ➺

The gym was unusually quiet, the distant sounds of soccer balls bouncing and players shouting faintly in the background. The air was thick with a serene, peaceful atmosphere as sunlight poured through the large windows, casting soft shadows over the gym floor. There were weights neatly arranged in one corner and a few yoga mats scattered around, but the real center of attention was a single, calm space where a young man sat with perfect stillness.

Miroku Darai, the U-20 team’s spiritual soul, sat cross-legged on a yoga mat in the center of the gym, his black eyes closed in deep meditation. His dark skin contrasted against the faint golden light around him, and his henna tattoos along his arms and neck gave off an aura of calm, almost sacred presence. His breathing was slow and steady, the rhythmic hum of his chant adding to the peaceful energy of the room. He was completely absorbed in the practice, tuning out everything around him as he focused on the stillness within.

[Name] walked into the gym, her usual light-hearted energy trailing behind her. She had a small notebook tucked under her arm, planning to jot down some things for the team’s upcoming schedule. She didn’t expect to find anyone here—let alone Darai in the midst of his peaceful meditation. However, her intentions to keep things quiet were thwarted as she accidentally pushed the door just a little too hard, causing it to slam shut.

The loud thud of the door breaking the stillness made Darai’s eyes snap open, his sharp gaze now fixed on the source of the disturbance. He exhaled sharply, the calm that once enveloped him momentarily broken. The tranquility of the gym seemed to vanish in an instant as he stared at the person who had dared to interrupt his peace.

[Name’s] eyes widened in realization, her cheeks turning red from the embarrassment. She quickly bowed deeply, her words tumbling out in rapid apology.

“I-I’m so sorry, Darai-kun! I didn’t mean to disturb you! I didn’t see you there! Please forgive me!” She bowed again, the sincerity in her voice clear.

Darai let out a long, deep sigh, his lips curling into a slight smile as he observed her flustered form. He had always been a man of few words, and though he had a natural gravitas, his personality was far from harsh. He exhaled slowly, then spoke with an air of calm that returned to him quickly.

“It’s... fine,” he said, his voice deep and soothing, though tinged with a hint of exhaustion from having his peaceful moment interrupted. “It’s not the end of the world, just... a little disruption.” His tone was almost dismissive, as if not holding any ill will, yet still clearly yearning for the peace he had lost.

[Name] straightened, her bowing ceasing, though her expression was still full of concern. “I didn’t mean to bother you while you were meditating. What were you doing, if you don’t mind me asking?”

Darai’s eyes flickered slightly, considering her question. Meditation was something deeply personal to him, a moment of reflection and calm in a world full of chaos. His thoughts paused for a moment before he spoke again.

“I was meditating. Trying to find balance in the chaos,” Darai replied quietly, his gaze thoughtful. “The world is constantly shifting, filled with... noise. I need peace to clear my mind.”

[Name’s] eyes softened, sensing the sincerity in his words. She had always admired how Darai seemed to possess an inner calm, as if he had mastered the art of controlling his mind. It intrigued her, and she found herself drawn to the peacefulness he radiated.

“I can understand that,” [Name] said gently. “It’s hard to find peace in the middle of everything, isn’t it?”

Darai slowly nodded, his gaze turning back to the floor, as if grounding himself again. He didn’t speak for a moment, allowing the room to fill with silence once more. But then, [Name] took a step forward, her voice light but eager.

“Would you mind if I joined you? I don’t know much about meditation, but... I think it would be nice to try.”

Darai’s eyes opened once again, and he glanced at her with slight surprise. For a moment, his usual reluctance to engage in conversation was evident, but he seemed to take in her genuine interest, and his gaze softened. A small smile tugged at the corner of his lips.

“If you wish,” Darai said, a rare warmth in his voice. “The peace is not exclusive. Anyone who seeks it is welcome.”

[Name] smiled in return, grateful for his openness. She moved to sit beside him on the mat, copying his posture as best as she could. She folded her legs underneath her and straightened her back, though her mind was racing with excitement and curiosity.

As they sat in silence, the only sounds were the rhythmic hum of Darai’s chanting and the soft sound of breathing between them. [Name] couldn’t help but feel that even in the silence, something unspoken passed between them—an understanding, a bond.

“You have a really calming aura, Darai-kun,” [Name] said, her voice soft and sincere as she sat with her eyes closed, attempting to focus on the stillness. “I can see why so many people gravitate toward you. Your meditation… it’s beautiful.”

Darai’s eyes flickered open, a hint of surprise crossing his expression. He felt his heart skip a beat, a rare sense of fluster hitting him. Why is my heart racing? He thought to himself, as the sudden compliment caused his usual calm demeanor to waver.

Her words echoed in his mind—beautiful. The way she appreciated his practice made him feel a little more seen than usual. It wasn’t often that others took interest in his spiritual side, especially in a world so focused on the physicality of soccer. But [Name’s] earnestness felt different.

“Thank you,” Darai murmured, his voice almost a whisper. He cleared his throat, attempting to refocus. “I believe in balance. Yin and Yang. Life needs both sides to work harmoniously. You can only find peace once you accept both the calm and the chaos.”

[Name] nodded, her eyes still closed as she let his words sink in. She could sense that Darai had a wisdom beyond his years, a quiet strength that came from within. It made her feel connected to him in a way that went beyond mere words.

They continued to meditate in silence, the room becoming even more still as time passed. [Name] found herself relaxing deeply, her mind becoming clearer with each breath she took. For the first time in a long while, she felt completely at ease, sharing a peaceful moment with someone who valued serenity as much as she did.

Cho Kento ➺

The locker room was quiet except for the faint sounds of the occasional rustle of towels and shoes. It was a dimly lit space, the golden glow of the setting sun filtering in through the windows, casting long shadows on the polished floor. The air carried a faint, musky scent of sweat and the lingering freshness of a workout just completed. In the corner, there was a small area with padded mats where players sometimes took a moment to rest or stretch.

Kento Cho, the tall, handsome, and stern member of the U-20 soccer team, sat on one of the benches. His expression was serious, but his furrowed brow hinted at the discomfort he was feeling. His dark hair was still damp from the practice, and his body, which was perfectly sculpted from his rigorous training routine, seemed a little tense. He had been pushing himself hard lately—staying disciplined in both his training and diet, always striving to improve—but something had gone wrong. He felt a sharp, painful pop in his lower back earlier while working through an intense set of exercises, and now the discomfort had settled in.

He was used to pushing through physical pain, but this was different. It felt like something needed to be addressed, or else it could get worse.

Looking over at the door to the locker room, he caught sight of [Name] [Surename], the manager of the team. She was busy tidying up and checking her clipboard, her usual cheerful expression on her face. She had been a steady, supportive presence for the team, always there to help with anything they needed.

Kento hesitated for a moment, then walked over to her. He could see she was immersed in her tasks, and he almost didn’t want to bother her. But the pain was becoming harder to ignore. He cleared his throat.

“[Name],” Kento said, his voice calm but tinged with discomfort. “I... I think I hurt myself during training. There’s this tightness in my back. Do you think you could help me with it?”

[Name] looked up, her eyes widening in concern. She noticed the slight grimace on Kento’s face and immediately put down the clipboard she had been holding.

“Of course! What happened? Is it bad?” she asked, her voice full of concern as she stood up, walking toward him. Her genuine care was apparent, and she was ready to offer her help.

Kento rubbed the back of his neck, his usual stern demeanor softening slightly under the weight of the discomfort. “I think I might’ve pulled something, or it just... popped when I was stretching. It’s a bit painful now. I was hoping you could maybe give me a massage or something. It’s nothing too serious, but... I just need it to feel better.”

[Name] nodded, her brow furrowing with empathy. She had seen the way Kento worked—always so focused, so determined—and she hated to see him in pain. She gestured for him to sit down on the bench, where she had already noticed the soft cushions. She felt a little nervous, but she knew she could help. After all, she had experience with giving her friends and teammates massages before.

“Alright, please take a seat. I’ll do my best to help you out,” [Name] said with a reassuring smile, trying to keep her own unease in check. She gently patted the spot next to her on the bench, encouraging Kento to sit.

Kento did as she asked, slowly lowering himself onto the bench. His eyes closed for a moment, silently grateful for her willingness to help him.

[Name] stood behind him, moving around to his back. Her hands were slightly trembling as she touched his broad shoulders, feeling the muscles that were tense from the strain he had put on them during his workout. Her heart beat a little faster, realizing how close she was to him, how his shirtless form gave her a view of his well-toned body, and how she was about to touch him in a way she had never done before.

She took a deep breath to steady herself, pushing aside her personal thoughts, focusing on her task. She began by gently massaging his shoulders, her fingers pressing into the tight knots in his muscles. Kento let out a small sigh of relief at the pressure being applied to the spots that had been causing him pain.

“That’s... better,” Kento murmured, his voice low and calm. He could feel the tension slowly ebbing away, and it brought a quiet sense of peace. “You’re really good at this, [Name]. I didn’t know you were trained in this sort of thing.”

[Name] smiled, though her cheeks flushed slightly at his compliment. “I’m not exactly trained, but I’ve helped out with my friends before. I’m really glad it’s helping.”

Her hands moved further down his back, applying gentle but firm pressure as she worked on his lower back. As her hands made contact with his skin, she couldn’t help but feel the warmth radiating from his body. The faint scent of his cologne mixed with the clean, sweaty scent of post-practice—it was almost intoxicating. [Name] quickly turned her attention back to her task, focusing on the sensation of his muscles relaxing beneath her touch.

Kento leaned back slightly, his eyes closing in relaxation. He could feel his body letting go of the tension, and for a brief moment, he allowed himself to relax fully. “You’ve got a really good touch,” he murmured, his voice now almost quiet, filled with appreciation. “I think... I think I might’ve been too hard on myself lately. I don’t always know when to stop pushing.”

[Name’s] hands paused for a moment as she heard his words. She could hear the underlying frustration in his voice, the weight of his dedication to always strive for the best. “Kento, you’re already working so hard. You don’t have to do everything all at once,” she said, her voice warm but firm. “It’s okay to take breaks when your body tells you it needs one.”

Kento stayed silent for a moment, and then he exhaled deeply, as if he were releasing some of his own internal tension. He didn’t usually talk about his limits. He always had this intense drive to be better, to be perfect. But hearing [Name’s] reassuring words, he felt a sense of peace he hadn’t realized he needed.

“Thanks,” he said, his voice quieter now, tinged with a sense of gratitude. “You’re right.”

[Name] smiled softly, her hands continuing their soothing motions. She had never expected such a heartfelt moment to arise from something as simple as helping him with a massage. It felt like she was getting to see a different side of Kento—one that was more vulnerable and human.

As she continued to ease the tension from his back, [Name] couldn’t help but feel a little flustered by the proximity and the way his muscles shifted beneath her touch. She had always admired Kento’s strong and disciplined nature, but this more relaxed side of him was... surprisingly endearing. It made her realize just how much she enjoyed being close to him, even in such an intimate moment, helping him to feel better.

Kento’s eyes opened after a few minutes, and he shifted slightly, turning his head slightly to look at her. “I’m really grateful for this, [Name],” he said quietly, his voice almost soft. “I’ll... try to take things a little easier from now on.”

[Name] nodded, her smile widening. “I’m glad I could help. Take care of yourself, Kento. You’re doing amazing, but even the strongest people need to rest.”

Kento looked over his shoulder at her, his serious expression softening with a hint of admiration. “Thanks. You’re always so kind... I’ll keep that in mind.”

The two shared a quiet moment of understanding before [Name] finished the massage. Kento stood up with a slow stretch, feeling the relief in his back. He was grateful for the care she had shown him and the peace she had given him during his moment of pain.

Wakatsuki Itsuki➺

The soft hum of the night was the only sound that filled the dormitory. Most of the team had long since fallen asleep after a long and tiring day of training. The quietness of the building felt peaceful, with the occasional sound of distant crickets outside. The cool night air seeped through the slightly cracked windows, adding a calm, almost serene atmosphere to the space.

The lights in the hallway were dim, casting soft shadows along the floor, and the quiet murmur of the wind outside was the only thing that could be heard. Inside one of the rooms, Wakatsuki Itsuki lay on his futon, his eyes wide open and staring at the ceiling. His body was still, but his mind was restless.

Itsuki had always struggled with sleep. The quiet of the night was supposed to bring comfort, but instead, it only amplified the thoughts racing through his head. He flipped over onto his side and pulled the blanket tighter around him, trying to find a comfortable position. But no matter how much he tossed and turned, he couldn't find any peace. The quiet was deafening, and his insomnia was taking its usual toll on him.

Finally, after what felt like hours of tossing and turning, he gave up on trying to sleep. He quietly slipped out from under his blanket, careful not to wake his teammates. The cold wooden floor felt oddly comforting under his bare feet as he padded softly to the door.

He crept down the hallway, his black hair falling over his eyes as he tried to sneak past the others' rooms. His footsteps were light, but his mind was still racing with thoughts he couldn’t quite shake. He made his way toward the kitchen area, hoping a glass of water might help soothe the restlessness that refused to leave him.

But as he turned a corner, his hand brushed the doorframe, and he stumbled slightly. He lost his balance, and before he could steady himself, he collided with someone else.

“Ah!” a startled voice exclaimed as both figures bumped into each other. Itsuki’s heart skipped a beat as he quickly took a step back, trying to apologize for his clumsiness.

“I-I’m so sorry!” Itsuki stammered, his cheeks flushing with embarrassment. He immediately looked down at the floor, feeling awkward and unsure of what to do.

[Name] [Surename], the team’s manager, was standing there with wide eyes, clearly surprised by the collision. Her face softened, and she giggled softly, brushing a few strands of her long black hair out of her face.

“No need to apologize, Itsuki!” she said with a warm, reassuring smile. “It’s no big deal. Are you okay?”

Itsuki looked up quickly, his gaze meeting hers for a brief moment. The contact made his heart race even faster, and he felt his cheeks burn with a sudden, intense heat. He quickly nodded, too embarrassed to say much else. The warmth from her smile made him feel even more self-conscious, and he found himself frozen in place, unsure of how to respond.

“I’m... I’m fine,” he whispered, his voice barely audible. The quietness of his words made him feel even more timid and small.

[Name] tilted her head, her smile still soft and kind. “You’re sure? You look a little tired,” she said gently. “It’s pretty late, too. Are you having trouble sleeping?”

Itsuki was caught off guard by how perceptive she was. He nodded again, though his head was lowered slightly in embarrassment. “I... I can’t sleep,” he whispered, the words barely leaving his lips. He didn’t want to admit it, but he was feeling vulnerable now. “I just... I didn’t want to wake anyone.”

[Name’s] eyes softened even further as she stepped closer to him. She could tell that Itsuki was trying to hide his discomfort, but she could see right through it. She didn’t want him to feel alone or restless, especially when the team needed to be well-rested for the next day’s training.

“Well... if you’re feeling restless, maybe you could come with me to my room?” [Name] offered, her tone warm and inviting. “It’s a little quieter there. I could make sure you get some rest, if you’d like.”

Itsuki froze for a moment, his mind racing with uncertainty. The idea of being in a room alone with [Name] was both comforting and terrifying at the same time. He wasn’t used to being so close to someone else—especially not someone as warm and friendly as her. But he didn’t want to refuse her kindness. After a few moments of internal hesitation, he finally whispered, “I-I don’t want to be a bother…”

[Name] smiled gently and placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “It’s no trouble at all, Itsuki,” she said softly, her voice soothing. “I just want you to feel comfortable and get some sleep. I’ll be there if you need anything.”

Her kindness eased his anxiety a little. He nodded, though he still felt a little flustered. “Thank you...”

[Name] led him down the hallway toward her room. The door creaked slightly as she opened it, revealing the cozy, quiet space inside. A futon was already set up on the floor, and there was a faint scent of lavender in the air from the small sachet near the window. The soft lighting from a nearby lamp created a peaceful, calming atmosphere.

“There we go,” [Name] said with a smile. “This should be a little more comfortable for you. I’ll just sleep here on the futon too. You’re not bothering me, I promise.”

Itsuki hesitated for a moment, his cheeks turning pink again. The idea of lying next to her was almost too much for him to handle, but he knew she just wanted to help. “I... thank you,” he whispered again.

[Name] made sure to fluff the blankets and settled down beside him on the futon. “Just relax, okay?” she said gently. “You can rest now.”

For a moment, they both lay there in the soft silence, the only sound being the gentle rustle of the sheets and the soft rhythm of their breathing. Itsuki tried to calm his racing heart, feeling incredibly self-conscious and nervous next to her. But [Name] didn’t seem to mind. She just smiled softly and looked over at him, her eyes sparkling in the low light.

After a few moments, she began humming a gentle tune, one that was soothing and peaceful, like a lullaby. Itsuki felt his eyelids grow heavy as the soft melody lulled him into a peaceful daze. The soft, calming sound was like a weight being lifted from his chest, and soon, he found himself drifting off to sleep.

His breathing slowed, and he let out a soft sigh of relief as he finally succumbed to the sleep he had been fighting for so long. [Name], noticing that he had finally relaxed, gently tucked him in, her fingers brushing the top of his head as she smiled to herself.

As she lay down next to him, she hummed softly again, the sound filling the room like a gentle breeze. Soon, she too drifted into slumber, her own heart warmed by the quiet peace of the moment.

Kitsunenzato Teru ➺

The day had been long, filled with intense training sessions and moments of both frustration and triumph. The team had worked hard, pushing themselves to their limits, and now it was time for a brief break before heading to dinner. The locker room buzzed with the sounds of teammates chatting, some laughing, and others still catching their breath from the workout.

[Name] [Surename] was standing near the door, her notebook in hand, jotting down notes about the day’s training and team dynamics. She’d always been so caught up in organizing and helping out the team, but there was something special about these small moments she shared with each of the members. Tonight, though, she found her gaze drawn toward one particular player: Kitsunenzato Teru, the cheerful and optimistic forward with light salmon-colored hair and his signature panda-like nose.

Teru had been chatting with a few of his teammates, but as soon as he noticed [Name’s] presence, he waved at her with a bright smile, his signature blue doe eyes sparkling in the dim light of the locker room. [Name] waved back, her usual grin spreading across her face as she walked over toward him.

“Hey, [Name]!” Teru greeted her, his energy always so infectious. “I was actually hoping you could help me with something.”

[Name] tilted her head, genuinely curious. “Sure! What is it?”

Teru’s smile widened, and he rubbed the back of his neck nervously. “Well… it’s my hair. I’ve been trying to tie it into a bun for a while, but I just can’t seem to do it the way I want.” He sighed dramatically, his eyes sparkling with a playful glint. “Do you think you could help me out?”

[Name] couldn’t help but laugh softly at his cute antics. Teru always had this ability to make things feel lighthearted, no matter the situation. She nodded enthusiastically. “Of course! I’d be happy to help. Let’s see what we can do.”

Teru led her to a nearby bench where he sat down, giving her an exaggerated bow. “Thank you so much, [Name]! I’ve been really struggling with this.”

[Name] chuckled and knelt down in front of him, her fingers already reaching for his soft hair. She picked up a brush from her bag and started to run it through his light salmon strands, gently untangling any knots that had formed.

As she worked, they began chatting, sharing stories and exchanging jokes, with Teru constantly offering playful comments and making her laugh. The atmosphere was warm, comfortable, like a quiet bubble where it was just the two of them, outside the chaos of the rest of the team.

“You know,” [Name] said, as she worked on the final touches, “I think you’d make a pretty good hairstylist with how much you care about your hair.” She smirked teasingly.

Teru blinked in mock offense, his hands going to his hips. “Hey, I take my hair very seriously, alright? Gotta look good on and off the field, you know? It’s all about presentation!”

[Name] giggled, her fingers deftly tying the final loop of the bun. “I can tell! But honestly, it’s not bad at all. It suits you.”

Teru beamed at her, a proud twinkle in his eye. “Really? You think so? I’ve never had someone tie it for me before. I think I might even keep it like this for the next game.”

[Name] smiled, stepping back to admire her handiwork. His bun was neat, secure, and definitely looked more polished than the usual messy style. “There we go,” she said with satisfaction, brushing her hands off. “I think it looks great.”

Teru jumped up from the bench, his face lighting up with joy as he twirled in front of her, showing off the new hairstyle. “Wow, this looks awesome! I can’t believe I’ve been struggling with this for so long!”

[Name] watched him with a fond smile, her heart warmed by his unbridled enthusiasm. “I’m glad you like it! You look amazing, Teru.”

Before she could react, Teru took a step toward her, and in a sudden burst of affection, he wrapped her in a tight hug. [Name] froze, taken aback by the sudden warmth of his embrace, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. Teru’s hug was sincere, his energy and gratitude pouring into the simple act.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” he said, his voice muffled as he held her tightly. “I’m so happy with it, [Name]. You really helped me out!”

[Name] blinked, her face flushing slightly, but she quickly recovered. She smiled warmly and returned the hug, her arms gently wrapping around his back. “I’m happy I could help, Teru,” she said softly. “I’m always here if you need anything.”

The hug lasted just a moment longer before Teru pulled back, grinning from ear to ear. “You’re the best, [Name]!” he exclaimed. “I’ll owe you a snack or something later, okay?”

[Name] laughed, brushing a few strands of her own hair behind her ear. “No need to owe me anything! It was fun.”

Teru winked at her, his eyes sparkling with a mischievous glint. “I insist! A snack is definitely in order for such a fine hairstyle.”

She chuckled, feeling her heart warm at the interaction. Teru always knew how to lift her spirits. “Alright, alright. But only if it’s something really sweet.”

Teru gave a mock salute, his grin growing wider. “You got it! A sweet treat for the sweet manager!”

As the two of them laughed and continued their conversation, the locker room felt just a little bit brighter. Even with the chaos of the training sessions, moments like these—where the team came together, laughing and supporting one another—were what truly made [Name] feel that she was part of something special. Teru’s kindness, like the rest of the team’s, filled her with warmth, and she couldn’t help but feel grateful for the chance to be a part of their lives.

Gen Fukaku ➺

The sun was beginning to set, casting a warm orange glow through the windows of the training facility. The last of the players were finishing up their cooldown exercises, some stretching on mats and others talking in groups. [Name] [Surename] was in the corner of the room, organizing her notes on the day's training, but her thoughts were somewhere else. She had spent the day with the team, bonding with each player, but there was one player she hadn't spent much time with yet: Gen Fukaku, the team's serious and reserved goalkeeper.

Fukaku had always been somewhat of an enigma. His serious demeanor, combined with his tendency to keep to himself, made him hard to approach. While the other players seemed to have their personalities shine through in their interactions with [Name], Fukaku remained a mystery to her. But she knew he was just as much a part of the team, and she wanted to show him that he was seen and appreciated as much as the others.

As she stood up, deciding to take a small break from her work, she looked around and spotted him. Fukaku Gen was sitting near the far end of the room, his tall frame hunched slightly as he tied his shoes. His expression, as always, was serious, and his eyes focused on the task at hand.

[Name] took a deep breath and walked over to him, carrying a small tin of homemade cookies she had baked earlier. She had been looking forward to sharing them with the team, but something about Fukaku’s quiet nature made her especially want to offer him a sweet treat.

When she approached him, he didn’t immediately acknowledge her presence, his attention still on his shoes. [Name] hesitated for a moment before speaking.

“Hey, Fukaku,” she said softly, her voice gentle yet filled with warmth. “I made some sweets for the team today. Would you like one?”

Fukaku paused for a moment, his hands still holding his shoe laces. He glanced up at her, surprise flickering in his brown eyes. “You… made these for us?” His voice was low, almost hesitant, as though he didn’t quite believe it.

[Name] nodded, offering the tin with a smile. “Yeah! I thought you might like one. They’re cookies. I hope you like them.”

For a moment, Fukaku just stared at the tin, his expression unreadable. [Name] felt a bit nervous under his gaze but held the tin out for him, her smile never wavering. Finally, he sighed softly and slowly took the tin from her hand. He opened it, picking out a cookie and inspecting it carefully as though evaluating its quality.

[Name] stood there, watching him with a soft, patient smile, her hands clasped together in front of her.

Fukaku didn’t say anything right away. He broke off a small piece of the cookie and took a bite. [Name’s] heart raced a little as she waited for his response. The silence between them stretched for a few moments before he finally looked up, his brown eyes meeting hers.

“…It’s good,” he said, his voice as serious as ever. “Very sweet. You did a good job.”

[Name] beamed at the compliment, feeling her cheeks warm. She had been a little unsure if he would even enjoy the cookies, considering how reserved he was, but hearing him speak so honestly about it made her feel a sense of accomplishment.

“I’m glad you like it!” she said enthusiastically, her voice brightening. “If you want, I can bake more for you sometime.”

Fukaku’s expression softened just a touch, and [Name] noticed the slight change. It was subtle, but it was there. He placed the cookie tin down beside him, and for a moment, he just looked at her quietly.

“You don’t have to do that,” he said, his voice quieter this time, almost as if he was trying to make himself more vulnerable. “But... thank you. No one’s ever done something like this for me.”

[Name’s] heart ached a little at his words, and she bent down slightly to get on his level, her eyes filled with genuine care. “Well, I just wanted to show you that I appreciate you, Fukaku. You’re a big part of the team, and I’m really glad you’re here.”

Fukaku blinked, his eyebrows furrowing as if processing her words. He wasn’t used to being so openly praised or shown kindness. His brow furrowed slightly, and he looked down at the tin again, his fingers brushing over the cookies.

“…I’m not good at talking,” he admitted after a beat, his voice more vulnerable than she had ever heard it. “I don’t… say much. But I do care about the team.”

[Name] smiled softly, understanding that words weren’t always Fukaku’s forte. She placed a hand on his shoulder, a simple gesture meant to convey her appreciation. “I know. You don’t have to say anything to prove how much you care. Your actions speak louder than words.”

For the briefest moment, Fukaku’s face softened, a hint of a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. He looked at her, then back down at the cookie tin, his fingers playing with the edge. “You’re different, [Name],” he said quietly, more to himself than to her. “Most people just see the expression, the quiet... they don’t see beyond it.”

[Name’s] heart fluttered, and she nodded gently. “I see you, Fukaku. You don’t have to be anyone else around me.”

The air between them grew comfortable, and Fukaku slowly took another cookie, this time without hesitation. He didn’t smile, but the small gesture—him accepting the cookie and acknowledging her presence in his own way—spoke volumes.

“Thank you,” he said again, this time with a quiet sincerity that made [Name’s] heart swell. “I’ll… I’ll try to make more time for these things.”

[Name] smiled brightly, her chest feeling warm at the unexpected bond they were forming. “Anytime, Fukaku. I’m always here if you want to talk—or if you want more sweets.”

Fukaku chuckled softly, his expression still stoic but with a slight softening in his eyes. “Maybe just a little more.”

As she walked away to continue her rounds, [Name] felt a renewed sense of connection with the team. It wasn’t always about grand gestures or words; sometimes, just sharing a simple moment of kindness was all it took to make someone feel seen.

-`♡´-

-`♡Our Manager♡´-

The day had been long—too long, if [Name] were being honest. She had spent hours tracking the players' training progress, handing out water, taking notes, and making sure every one of them had what they needed to perform at their best. It was rewarding, of course, but the exhaustion was starting to catch up with her.

As the last few players finished their individual drills, [Name] took a moment to sit at the table in the team office. Her head rested in her hands as she tried to catch her breath. The hum of the lights and the occasional shuffle of feet filled the otherwise quiet space.

She yawned, stretching her arms overhead. Her eyes were heavy, and despite trying to stay alert, she couldn’t fight the pull of sleep much longer. Slowly, her eyes fluttered closed, and her head drooped toward the desk. The paperwork that had piled up throughout the day became too much for her to keep her focus on, and in the end, she simply succumbed to the fatigue, drifting off to sleep on the table, a soft sigh escaping her lips.

The room was still, save for the occasional sound of footsteps echoing down the hall. Unbeknownst to her, the team had noticed her fall asleep, each one of them quietly observing their manager as she rested.

-`♡´-

Haru Hayate was the first to notice. The tall, calm player glanced over from the doorway, his usual serene demeanor softening with concern. Seeing [Name], slumped over at the table, he couldn’t help but feel a pang of sympathy. He knew how hard she had worked that day. Without a word, he stepped quietly into the room, a light breeze of calm following him as he moved to cover her.

Gently, he draped a blanket over her, ensuring she was comfortable. The soft fabric rustled as he settled it over her shoulders. He paused for a moment, just watching her as she slept, a small smile tugging at his lips. The peace that surrounded her in that moment was rare in the busy training facility, and it reminded him of how much the team appreciated her.

As he left, he whispered, “Rest well, [Name].”

-`♡´-

Kitsunenzato Teru was next to come in. His bright and cheery energy had a slight hum of excitement even now as he saw [Name] sleeping. The sight of her exhaustion struck him, and he wanted to do something nice for her, something small to show his appreciation.

He quickly found a small snack on the counter, a bar of chocolate that he knew would provide a burst of energy once she woke. He placed it beside her on the table, with a small note that simply read, “A little treat for the best manager!” He grinned at his handiwork and took a step back, admiring his thoughtful gesture.

“Sweet dreams, manager,” he whispered with a wink before quietly leaving the room.

-`♡´-

Miroku Darai, always in touch with his inner peace, stood outside the door, observing with quiet understanding. He saw how [Name] had given her all to the team that day. Her exhaustion was clear, and while she may not have asked for help, Darai felt the need to offer her something soothing.

He entered the room and quietly prepared a cup of tea—chamomile and honey, the perfect remedy for a long day. He placed the warm cup next to her, the steam curling up in the air, the aroma soothing and calming. A small note accompanied it: “For rest and relaxation. May you find peace in this cup.”

With a quiet nod, Darai left the room, closing the door softly behind him.

-`♡´-

Sendou Shuuto walked in next. His loud and boisterous personality had been subdued for once, replaced by a quiet concern as he surveyed the sleeping [Name]. He couldn’t help but notice how much she had taken on during the day. In an act of kindness, he gently gathered up the scattered papers she had been working on and neatly organized them into a pile, ensuring everything was in order.

As he worked, he couldn’t resist glancing over at her. She was still so serene in her sleep, and it made him smile softly. Before leaving, he jotted down a quick note, scrawling, “For the best manager ever—don’t overwork yourself!” and placed it on top of the papers. With a final smile, he quietly exited.

-`♡´-

Oliver Aiku, always the flirt, couldn’t help but notice [Name’s] peaceful slumber as he passed by the open door. He stopped for a moment, watching her, and a small grin spread across his face. As he entered, he silently watched her for a beat, before picking up a sticky note and scribbling something quickly.

“You’re amazing. Don’t push yourself too hard. Take care of yourself!”

He placed it gently on her desk, right by her hand, and with a last glance at the peaceful manager, he quietly slipped out of the room, his heart swelling with a protective feeling he rarely showed.

-`♡´-

Kento Cho, ever the serious one, took one last look around the training facility, his eyes scanning for any unfinished tasks. As he passed the office, he saw [Name] resting on the desk. He paused, walking over to her silently. His hand hovered for a moment before he gently placed a bottle of water next to her.

The note he left was short and simple, but meaningful: “Stay hydrated. Don’t forget to take care of yourself.”

He sighed, shaking his head as if to remind himself to take his own advice. With one final glance, he turned and quietly left.

-`♡´-

Neru Teppei was next. He grinned as he spotted the sleeping manager, her exhaustion clear. Unlike the others, Teppei couldn’t resist one more playful gesture. He grabbed a bright sticky note and scribbled something silly: “Pikachu and Pachirisu forever! Rest up, manager!”

With that, he quickly grabbed a sweet treat, a small cupcake he had stashed away, and placed it near her hand. Teppei gave one last, heartfelt smile and crept out of the room, his heart light with the affection he felt for their manager.

-`♡´-

Itsuki Wakatsuki had been standing outside for some time, uncertain if he should enter. But seeing everyone else leave, he decided to slip in quietly. As a gentle, introverted person, he didn’t want to disturb her rest, but he wanted to leave something behind to show his appreciation.

He quietly placed a small note by her side, written in his delicate handwriting: “Thank you for always being there for us. Please get some rest.”

With a deep breath and a tiny, bashful smile, he left the room without a sound.

-`♡´-

Fukaku Gen, ever the serious one, took a moment to consider the situation. He saw his manager sleeping soundly, her exhaustion apparent. He silently stepped over to her desk and placed a simple note beside her: “Take care of yourself. You’re appreciated more than you know.” It was brief, but in his usual quiet way, it conveyed everything he wanted to say.

Fukaku turned, leaving the room with nothing more than a soft sigh.

-`♡´-

Nio Kazuma, the final one to peek in, stood quietly at the doorway, watching his manager sleep. He had witnessed her effort firsthand that day. He could tell that she was the type of person who always gave everything, even when it wasn’t asked of her. With a small smile, he left a note beside her with a few simple words: “Rest well, manager. You’ve earned it.”

-`♡´-

[Name] slowly stirred from her nap, stretching lazily as she blinked her eyes open. Her body was sore from the long day, but there was something oddly comforting about the scene before her. She looked around the desk and found that the chaos of papers was now neatly organized. There was a warm cup of tea by her side, a blanket gently draped over her shoulders, and a sweet treat waiting for her. A small smile tugged at her lips as she read the notes that had been left for her.

“For the best manager ever—don’t overwork yourself!” “Stay hydrated. Don’t forget to take care of yourself.” “Pikachu and Pachirisu forever!” and many more words of encouragement and care from her players.

Her heart swelled with gratitude as she took in the small gestures from each of them. She silently thanked her team for being so thoughtful, for looking out for her, and for making her feel appreciated.

As she stood, stretching once more, she felt an overwhelming sense of warmth and affection. Though the day had been long and taxing, this quiet moment made it all worth it.

-`♡´-

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