#My standards for waffles are way too high

[bueris]

nothing feels weirder than a simple conversation with your mum turning into a full blown nervous breakdown as you finally talk about what's been stressing you out

[absolutebl]

This Week in BL - Gangsters Win

Organized, in each category, by ones I'm enjoying most at the top. Delayed October reviews included this week! (Still traveling but now in home territory and familiar hotels.)

Nov 2023 Wk 2

Ongoing Series - Thai

My Dear Gangster Oppa (Thurs iQIYI) 2 of 8 - GIVING ME LIFE. How dare they be this… this... Just. How dare!

Twins the series (Fri GaGa) ep 1 of 10 - I have been waiting for another truly sports centered BL since HIStory 2: CTL. This is nowhere near as good, but I don’t care. It’s great pulp and Sprite is a fab central character. I've realized that I love the pulps most when they’re ridiculously soapy (identical twins identity trope for sport’s fuck’s sake) but ERNEST about it (not campy). This one is taking itself seriously and it's so cute that it's trying so hard. Good little pulp. Dee mar.

Dangerous Romance (Fri YT) ep 12fin - was it me or did this show kinda flag on you too?

Poor, struggling Sailom is forced to tutor his bully, Kang, and they fall for each other despite circumstances. I loved it for the first 4 eps, liked it for the middle 4, and then kinda lost interest. I think it's because the focus shifted from Sailom to Kang, and I just find a disenfranchised character more interesting than the poor little rich kid archetype. Ultimately the script waffled and failed these actors - the leads and sides were solid, and support cast on point. 8/10 pretty standard 2023 GMMTV fair

Absolute Zero (Thai Weds iQIYI) ep 6 of 12 - It’s sort of a paradox of emotions not just time. It remains sad and I remain wary. 

My Universe (Sun iQIYI) The Camp Fire ep 11 of 24 - Launched with an argument over rude pronouns and mistaken identity. Highlights the joy of camping. Ugh. I don't think this one is for me despite the pair.

Venus in the Sky (Tues iQIYI) ep 10fin - NO SINGING. I can't believe they brought in rando SIDEs just to sing! WHHHHYYYYY? Sigh.

An indifferent pulp with indifferent acting and poor chemistry (despite high heat) based on the reunion romance trope that was just... so... slow... It wasn’t entirely a waste of time but I can’t in good faith recommend it. unless you have a very high tolerance for Thai pulps and ultra tsundere characters. 5/10 ONLY WATCH IF YOU'VE NOTHING BETTER TO DO

Ongoing Series - Not Thai

Kiseki: Dear to Me (Taiwan Tues Viki & iQIYI) ep 12 of 13 - I don’t mean to be rude because you know I love the main couple in the show, but they are simply being out acted by the sides. They are so damn good. Ai Di and his dumb oversized sweaters and flappy flappy sleeves is EVERYTHING.

Bump Up Business (Korea Gaga) 5-6 of 8 - More language negotiation, so of course I like it. I also like that they openly let Eden admit to a crush on a boy. I like this whole thing way more than I should. Save me from myself?

You Are Mine (Taiwan Fri Viki) eps 9 of 10 - I don’t understand why baby boy is trying to escape so badly. (Except for plot reasons.) Running of the gays! Look at you Taiwan stealing Japan’s favorite trope. This show is fun but it’s a bag of tropes held together with some very thin fraying mesh plot. 

If It’s With You AKA Even If I Fall In Love With You AKA Kimi to nara Koi wo Shite Mite mo’ (Japan Gaga) ep 5fin - The leads are so painfully cute portraying a softly simple story of teen first love. This was a nice little piece with an early yaoi feel that come off as brief, as if it were meant to be a short story that had been extended into a series. Sweet but ultimately rather forgettable. 7/10  

Mr Cinderella 2 (Vietnam Sat YT) ep 6-7 of ? - yeah I forgot to watch again, I may be dnfing this by accident.

It's Airing But...

I Cannot Reach You AKA I Can't Reach You AKA Kimi ni wa Todokanai (Japan Tues Netflix-Japan & ????) - in classic JBL fashion, I Cannot Reach You could not be reached. It looks good though so I mgiht put some effort into finding it grey.

Look at Japan dropping all the tropes in on scene: rooftop, kabedon, hand hold.

SHADOW (Thai Gaga) 1-7 of 14 - this is a horror BL with ghosts & paranormal elements in a boarding school setting. I'm not wild about Thai horror (or horror at all). It features Singto (who did paranormal BL He's Coming to Me) opposite Fluke N (who's done a couple horror's before). Also Fiat. Dan suffers from sleep paralysis, and in his dreams he sees a shadow that suffocates him. It gets worse when he transfers schools. I'm holding off on this one and if told it's good I'll binge watch.

What Did You Eat Yesterday Season 2 AKA Kinou Nani Tabeta? Season 2 (Japan Gaga) ep 1 of 10 - I find this series more fun to binge, so I'm waiting until it completes its run.

One Room Angel (Japan Gaga) - adaptation of Harada’s manga of the same name (which I did not like) about a convenience store clerk who's stabbed, nearly dies, and returns home to find an angel waiting for him. With only 5 eps and a good chance this won’t end happy, I'm gonna wait and let you tell me how it goes.

Can I Buy Your Love From A Vending Machine? AKA Sono Koi, Jihanki de Kaemasu ka? (Japan cinema release in-country only) - This one is a movie from Japan so in customary fashion who tf knows when (or if) it will get international distribution. Salaryman Ayumu Koiwai just can't tear his eyes away from the strong, muscular man as he checks on the stocks of the vending machine in his office. I did some hunting but only found the manga, so I'm marking it cnf and moving on with life. This will be its last appearance on the weekly update.

I Finished It!

Love in Translation (iQIYI) ep 8 - solid ending, man these two are a great pairing.

A sweet little pulp about a Thai boy with a crush on a Chinese influencer who ends up in a business relationship with her ex-bf. This show had truly great chemistry between the leads, cute found family with good rep, and an exciting (if silly) ending that almost, but didn't quite, make up for how incredibly annoying the main character was in the first half. Gotta say the make-out scene in the convenience store is one of the greatest in Thai BL, tho. 6/10 DEF WORTH WATCHING BUT FLAWED

I Feel You Linger in the Air (grey) ep 8 of 12 - so that was A THING. I did a seriously extensive deep dive analysis, historical & linguistic extras, and review here.

I truly loved this time travel romance. IFYLITA is an exquisite BL, from filming techniques to narrative framework (much like Until We Meet Again). Steeped in history and family drama it edges into lakorn (but no as much as To Sir With Love and with way less scenery chewing). This is an elegant and classy BL… from Thailand which normally doesn't even try for classy. The main couple (both as a pair and individuals) were excellent, particularly Bright (Yai) whose eye-work acting style is a personal favorite of mine. Pity about the ending. Oh it wasn’t that sad but it wasn’t good either. This show should easily have earned a 10 from me except that it fumbled the… erm… balls. Argh. Whatever. 9/10

Only Friends (YT) ep 11-12 - What can I say, this wasn't my thing, it was never gonna be, and I didn't like it. Basically Thailand did the L-Word but with branded BL pairs and the only agenda seemed to be slut shaming and making sure those pairs stayed healthy and sponsor ready. Consequently, the pairs were all executing well and to the best of their ability (of course) but all other characters got shafted, both in the good and the worst possible ways. Unrated but if falls somewhere between 5 (hot mess) and 3 (what am I doing with my life?)

Next Week Looks Like This

11/10 Middleman’s Love (Thai Fri Mandee's YT & iQIYI 1 of 8? - TutorYim (brand pair origin = Cutie Pie) with side couple KingUea (Bed Friends) from Domundi trailer here. This used to be a JimmyTommy vehicle before the pair split (also prev title Middle Love). Adapted from a Y-novel. Jade works as a graphic designer and has always been stuck in the middle - average. His heart is hardened after a life spent being overlooked because he is not as charming or good looking as the rest of his family or friends. When his office gets a hot new intern, Mai, Jade assumes Mai couldn’t possibly be intersted in him. Mai, of course, has other ideas. Warning this is a Cheewin comedy so tonally it could be very OFF, but the cast is solid, and I have liked his stuff on occasion.

11/10 Last Twilight (Thai Fri YouTube) - JimmySea are bakc and maybe it's good this time? I dont' know, GMMTV isn't doing great right now. Burdened with heavy debt, Mork, a mechanic, is forced to take a high paying job as a caretaker for Day, a rich heir who suffers from partial blindness after an accident. Day recruits Mork as he realizes the latter does not see him as a disabled person, but rather as co-equals. As they spend time together, the two begin developing feelings for the other. However with Day just having 180 days until he becomes permanently blind, how will the two weather the trials ahead?Upcoming November BL

11/11 Beyond The Star (Weds iQIYI) qp 1 of 8 - Looks like House of Stars meets Boyband. I am not excited.

Upcoming in November

11/16 PLAYBOYY (Thurs ????) ?? eps - trailer here, high heat and it's helmed by Cheewin (shudder) with screenplay by Den (Only Friends) under Copy A Bangkok. It's gonna be a shizz show people. It's predicting Thai style "dark" (War of Y) one of my least favorites. Apparently there is a "plot" but when has Cheewin ever bothered with plot? A university kid who was involved with escorts, sex-trade, porn, online hook-ups, drugs, prostitution, blackmail, revenge, and so forth goes missing. His twin (sigh) and two friends look for him.

11/17 Pit Babe (Fri iQIYI) ep 1 of 14 - high heat teaser here, based on alittlebixth's omegaverse novel #พิษเบ๊บ’ set in the world of car racing (author says show will not be omegaverse). Charlie (fresh face), a young hot nerd, approaches his driver idol (Pavel "my love" 2 Moons 2) to borrow a racing car and win one for the team. Production house is new to BL but behind the Club Friday stuff. Show stars many known actors: Nut (Oxygen), Pop (Ram in La Cuisine), Pon (Phai in Gen Y, we LOVE him), Benz (twins in En of Love: This Is Love Story).

11/19 Bake Me Please (Sun Gaga) ep 1 of 6 - trailer here, stars Ohm (of OhmFluke) opposite Guide (bestie from IFYLITA) and possibly also Poom (well known, but not for BL). This looks like an actually gay version of Antique Bakery (play it again, BL). Still, I'm intrigued, it looks HELLA pretty.

11/22 7 Days Before Valentine (Weds ????) ep 1 of 10 - trailer here, horror-esk. Adapted from y-novel of the same name, directed by Tu (180 Degree) stars Jet (Why You… Y Me?). When you want your old love again, but fate sends you a reaper instead. All he can do for you is kill people. I'll likely give this a pass and wait to binge later. I'm planning to try SHADOW and I can only handle one Thai horror at a time.

11/25 The Sign (Sat ????) ep 1 of 10 - trailer here, horror-esk, but with a suspense and adult characters. Special investigators who loved each other in previous lives reunite with their new bodies, stars Billy Patchanon (BillySeng) & Babe Tanatat (new). Includes other SCOY favorites as a special investigation team. I may give this a try because I like the non-horror bits.

11/26 The Whisperer (Sun ????) 1 of 10 - trailer here. Thai horror BL that ALSO involves cheating (what joy is mine). He has dimples (My Ride) but I don't think even that gives me the will. Maybe a binge for me.

11/26 Cooking Crush (Sun YT) 1 of 12 - OffGun are back, trailer here. Adapted from the novel “Love Course! เสื้อกาวน์รุกเสื้อกุ๊กรับ” by iJune4S this is about Prem who runs a not-so-popular restaurant with 2 friends. About to go on a cooking competition with a huge reward, Prem gets involved with Ten, a stressed-out med student who wants Prem to teach him to cook.

11/30 For Him (Thurs ????) ep 1 of 10 - high heat trailer, I suspect iQIYI will scoop this one up. From the people who brought us Unforgotten Night (please no) based on a y-novel, man nursing a heartbreak has a one-night stand, but the other boy didn't want it to end. It looks terribly trashy so I'm in! Maybe I'll do a trash watch?

VIP Only (Taiwan) - may be delayed/canceled

Wuju Bakery AKA Space Bakery (Korea) - this one may be DOA

A Breeze of Love (Korea) - I know less than nothing about this.

Nov 2023 line up with screen caps here. Not kept updated.

Original 2023 forthcoming BL master post (see comments, some are inaccurate, NOT KEPT UPDATED).

THIS WEEK’S BEST MOMENTS

Yang's little smile! Argh. (Love in Translation)

This is our mean and grumpy gagster character talking about playing in game support roles. It's fucking adorable. Such a nasty criminal. (My Dear Gangster Oppa)

(Last week)

[itsbenedict]

Bullet Proof: Postmortem

Waaaay back in the day, when I was 19 and I'd just discovered Dangan Ronpa (back when we put the space in the title, because all we had was the Orenronen LP and we called Ultimates "Super High-School Levels"), I decided to do my own. That was the heyday of forum adventures on the MSPA Forums, and there were no standards. I didn't know how to draw, but I decided to learn. I wanted to make a thing!

I got a good ways into it, honestly! It went through a few format changes, skipping over a couple cases in the middle in an abridged format on Tumblr, but I'd finally found my groove for the fourth case, playable from the perspective of the murderer. It was going well!

Then the MSPA Forums got hacked and the admins didn't keep any backups and everything was lost.

So that sucked! And once it became clear they were never going to recover the forums due to a mix of security incompetence and not giving a shit, I didn't really have a choice but to try and reboot it. I'd lost all the text, apart from a few garbled pages from a corrupted archive snapshot.

But... I've got way too much else I want to do at this point, and it's not looking too likely I'm going to have the time to come back to it. So if you want to know everything about what happened and where it was going...

You've clicked the readmore. So you do want to know all that. Here goes! Activate theme music.

You remember how it opened, right? It was a forum adventure, and at the time, I asked the readers to select an SHSL talent and gender as the protagonist entered the American branch of Hope's Peak Academy.

That was diegetic. "Alice Bayko" was an SHSL Impostor, or- I actually kinda waffled on having her not technically be SHSL anything, as she infiltrated the school with a false identity. She has, however, forgotten this, and her original identity and mission, leaving her with nothing but the mask. I believe there was a scene planned, or maybe a scene that did happen, I forget- where Alice would be called upon to demonstrate some sort of stage magic trick... and completely not know how to do any of that.

But what was she up to?

Well, that's a good question, with a complicated answer. Let's start pulling back the layers, here.

Seventeen students, and of the seventeen... somewhere between six and nine of them could be considered secret masterminds. Hilariously, I seem to have ordered this old banner issue in order of who's the most technically the ultimate mastermind, which was very cheeky of me. Would've been fun if someone ever caught that.

Let's start with...

Mastermind Level 1: Disguise

This creepy kid, SHSL Prodigy Billy Bookerton, was supposed to be the original secret mastermind in charge of the school. As came up in the adventure proper, this iteration of Hope's Peak was intended to be a safehouse from the ongoing despair apocalypse pictured in the Danganronpa canon. The son of the headmaster, he would control their Monokuma puppet and be in charge of faking to the outside world that this Monokuma-themed airship was in fact a murder-happy despair cult (like everywhere else on Earth somehow.)

This was not supposed to be a secret to the student body. And this 27-year-old man was not supposed to wake up in the body of a malnourished child and pose as a student. After events occurred, he found himself like this, with a note in his own handwriting instructing him to lay low and play this role.

What events occurred?

Mastermind Level 2: Blackmail

Also explained in the adventure proper, since these two were culprit and victim of the playable case 4: Gwendolyn and Ursula Schultheiss, SHSL Sysadmin and SHSL Retro Gamer nothing at all. Gwen was admitted to Hope's Peak on the basis of an actual talent, and pretty quickly gained control of their computer systems, sneaking Ursula in under the guise of Sakura Aran, and learning about the plan to escape Ultimate Despair by disguising the school and taking to the sky.

She thought that plan was really stupid.

Specifically, she thought Ultimate Despair was a flash in the pan, and it was ridiculous to think that some student riots all the way in Japan posed some sort of apocalyptic threat. (In her defense, this is a reasonable thing to think! It is ridiculous! Danganronpa's worldbuilding is fucking nonsense! But unfortunately for her, we're rolling with it.)

So she and Ursula hatched a plan to get rich. Hope's Peak is full of the progeny of the super-rich, like the Bright conglomerate. Obviously people like this would have loads of incriminating secrets, with which they could be blackmailed, and by which they would deserve to be blackmailed because screw those nepo babies. The plan was to run a Deception Game, not a Killing Game- they'd steal Billy's remote-control scary apocalypse terrorist, and pit everyone against each other in a contest to uncover each other's darkest secrets.

Once they had the dirt, they'd pretend to lose control and land the ship somewhere safe and sound, and Hope's Peak could deal with the scandal of the Monokuma hijacking and the consequences of their bonkers overreaction to some airhead fashionista's trendy protest.

If you recall, their plan went like this:

Each of them assumed that the other had somehow betrayed them and hijacked the school's systems on their own- Ursula retained control of the damaged Monokuma puppet, and Gwen retreated to her secret closet base to try and wrest control of the systems back from whatever super-hacker Ursula found to compromise her control. It took Gwen a few chapters (and accidentally murdering her sister) to realize that there was a...

Mastermind Level 3: Reality TV

It all started with SHSL Heir Henry Bright, heir to the Bright Conglomerate and active vice director of the company. Specifically, he directed vice. The Bright Conglomerate, in his opinion, did things too by-the-book, and were passing up big opportunities for growth in the organized crime sector. He was fostering connections with the Hit Deck (which led to the altercation that led to his and Dominique Martine's deaths in case 2), and...

Unlike Gwen, he didn't think the emergence of Ultimate Despair was nonsense. No, it was a growth opportunity. His plan was to invite a film crew to the airship and broadcast an exciting (fake) killing game to pander to this emerging despair-based market! With illicit funds provided by his contact in the Hit Deck (in exchange for his help securing a place on the ark for the Hit Deck's boss and trusted confidantes, posing as students), he assembled a team. Bribed some students, located an SHSL Doctor and some effects artists for realistic murder effects, did some networking, and...

...well, word gets around. The team he put together had bigger ambitions. A creative vision. One that had no room for executive meddling. They cut him out of the production team and forced him into the cast.

(I'm honestly not sure if this layer of convolution was necessary- I was on the fence about cutting him from the cast. The show's team might've found out about the school just because Gwen and Sakura screwed up the school's stealth measures. He's gotta kind of be there to explain the Hit Deck's presence, though, since aside from Dom none of them were actual Ultimates.)

Realer Reality TV

Before I reveal the members of the final mastermind tier, let's go over how they did this.

I never ended up using this portrait, but this is Davi Rossi, SHSL Doctor, though he prefers "Ultimate Necromancer". He's a graduate of the original Hope's Peak in Japan, and his technology is the cornerstone of the whole setup here- underneath the school, in the restricted areas in the body of the ship, he has a whole secret lab with vats of glowy chemicals and fancy futuristic surgical tools.

He can bring back the dead.

Well, sort of. He can do all sorts of repairs on ordinary tissues- lose a limb, get a vital organ mashed up, bleed out, he can fix that. He can make alterations to the body, too- such as surgically reverting someone's apparent age, or implanting remote-control death chips, or strategically weakening someone's skull.

He can even fix a certain degree of brain damage- the kind of stuff that might occur if you suffer blunt force trauma or total deoxygenation, where the brain is still mostly intact.

As a result, most victims are recoverable. When someone dies, he can bring them back again and again. However: he can't fully reconstitute the brain, and he has a number of limitations when it comes to working with it:

If the brain is completely torn apart or otherwise destroyed, he cannot revive the victim.

He can't directly mind-control anyone, nor can he insert false memories.

He can delete and rearrange memories, but not read minds, and memory deletion is episodic- he can't mess with specific facts, only spans of time.

I think I... also made an exception so he could delete specific people? Which is clunky and doesn't really make sense in hindsight.

There's still a lot you can do by cutting up and rearranging the filmstrip of someone's memory- but except in one specific case, he only ever really used it to delete the last loop.

In case it wasn't obvious, this isn't the first killing game. This show has multiple seasons. It's been going a while- and while injuries that destroy the brain are rare, they're not nonexistent, and so there's quite a few students who died before the story began. There used to be a lot more students! That's why all the dorm rooms have bunkbeds!

And there's also unfortunately the one who received a fatal injury in this loop by blowing himself up with an improvised explosive device. Sorry, Mill!

(There's actually only a few people physically present running the show, since the show's been running for years now and they found that they really didn't need more than a skeleton crew to run it- Davi and some student plants, along with Monokuma drones and countless hidden cameras, are all that's necessary for production on the ground. There's no adult film crew present on the ship.)

(♪ Kids with guns. Kids with guns. Taking over. But they won't be long. ♪)

Davi is also responsible for rigging up the masterminds with the mental control rigs for the two Monokumas- and has a third Monokuma of his own, who was going to show up to treat Martha's injury during case 4, I think in literally the very next update planned before the forums exploded.

So who are the people in control of these Monokuma knockoffs?

Mastermind Level 5: Case 5

All that I just mentioned about Davi? You learn about this in the fifth case, after case 4 in which you play as either Sakura or Gwen after killing their sister and trying to avoid getting caught in the trial. You can't win case 4, but you can successfully stall and bullshit long enough for the trial to be interrupted by a sudden explosion before you can be executed.

Prior to case 4, Billy has disappeared into a secret passage, trying to track down the mastermind. Likewise, Flopsy-Turvy, Alice's rabbit, has also disappeared into a secret passage. Billy remains missing during case 4's trial.

After the explosion, the Monokumas call off the trial and lead the whole class to Davi's secret lab, which is the site of a set of murders.

Davi has been murdered via various small lacerations all over his body, including a slit throat.

Billy has been blown to bits by an explosion.

If Gwen or Sakura was executed during the trial, their corpse is found on a table in the lab.

Flopsy-Turvy, who was a robot all along, has been reduced to mechanical smithereens.

Violette, not dead anymore, but unable to speak aloud due to an incompletely healed throat injury

Some completely unfamiliar redhead kid, who doesn't know jack about anything and doesn't know how he got here.

The two survivors of this scene are naked save for some towels they found, and appear to have been spilled out from a couple of big glowy specimen tanks which were broken in the explosion that killed Billy and Flopsy. More on them later.

The subsequent investigation reveals all that stuff I just told you about Davi, blowing the setup wide open. In the course of that investigation, two of the masterminds find themselves confessing their involvement. After all- Davi's dead. There's no way they can run another season without someone to bring people back to life!

One in particular confesses before the other one- she doesn't care anymore, and she's happy to watch her co-conspirator squirm to try to avoid revealing his evil machinations to the people he desperately wants to think he's cool.

Lilakali Bhallu and Raymond Rizzini are my favorites. They suck so much. They hate each other quite a lot, and have gotten together and broken up like three different times. Their collective theme song is No Children by The Mountain Goats. They're like 25 at this point, stuck in the bodies of the teenagers they were when the show started filming and they fully agreed to be part of the production.

Why? Well, Lilakali hates everyone and enjoys seeing them turn on each other like rabid wolves repeatedly- and Raymond craves acceptance and is using his memory privileges and surveillance abilities to try over and over again to be Popular In High School (to no avail.) They're both pretty pathetic people.

Notably, they are both real students who're supposed to be here. I don't remember if I ever had Lilakali make any predictions, and she'll insist she's just making shit up, but I was gonna have her predictions all come true, because the Fortune Teller thing is a real talent. And Raymond really can make a pretty mean burger. (Cheekily, that old Tumblr post was supposed to have taken place in a previous season- you might notice Gwen in the background, who in this iteration was never convinced to leave her room for meals, instead sneaking out at night to raid the cafeteria.)

Lilakali also has an Edgy Backstory- she grew up in the circus, apprenticed under her grandmother, who refused to let her socialize with kids her age. She was supposed to learn the family divining techniques, not dance around like some harlot with a pack of urchins! Her grandma taught her to hate the world, and herself, and accidentally also her grandmother. One day, in a moment of perfect nihilist clarity, she took a Sixlizard cigarette lighter out of the trash, wandered amongst the tents, and burned down the entire circus, killing her grandma in the process. She looks back on that moment fondly as the happiest she's ever been.

Anyway. Those two are my favorites, but they're not the ultimate masterminds. In fact... they're quite sure there's supposed to be a third mastermind, and they suspect this third mastermind of having erased their memories of them and killing Davi. They can tell their memories were edited- they're fully aware of how the tech works and what the signs are, and they can tell there's big ugly gaps and gashes in their recollection of the past. Someone was missing, and Davi was being all cagey and weird about it. And last loop...

Well, what happened last loop is the direct cause of case 5. And at the end of the investigation... the two Monokumas go dead, and one giant Monokuma shows up, furious that Davi is dead and forcing the students to go to trial one more time. This will be the final execution- catching Davi's murderer.

Mastermind Level 6: Sailing No More

It doesn't take long into trial 5 for the identity of this giant Monokuma to be revealed- it's a mechsuit with a living person in it, not a robot, and he unmasks himself during the trial without too much objection once people start questioning... that confused redhead kid who they found at the crime scene. That character introduces himself as... the Super High-School Level Pilot, Nolan Cubbins.

Wait. What?

Didn't that guy die?

Well, you see--

--oh, shit, I forgot Tumblr has an image limit of 30 images per post. Uh, gonna have to break this up into two posts. Continue reading here!

[lena-oleanderson]

i have lost it . I can't write poetry m I look at other poets and I'm jealous , my heart is heavy , I feel like I'm drowning. My poetry isn't good enough at all , all those vocabularies, I can never be like them even if my vocabulary is extraordinary for the people my age . I can never . What even am I . What's my style ? I was also writing a story , but I just give up . My poetry is so bad . Why is there some one always better then me ? I actually liked your poetry alot , and I will admit I did feel jealous since you are such a good writer. Keep he good work up!

i honestly wasn't sure whether or not i should answer this ask, if i had anything constructive to say here. "i'm glad you like my work, thanks for the kind words, and remember comparison is the thief of joy" felt hollow somehow.

so, i'm going to waffle for a bit and hope that maybe some of it is helpful to somebody

from your wording, i'm assuming you're on the younger side, anon. i wish i'd kept some of my work from when i first started writing poetry (i think i was around 12?). i think you'd find i absolutely did not start here - but i did start, and kept going, and that's how these things happen. kept going is maybe misleading, too past simple. it's past continuous, really, or rather it's present continuous, i'm still going. if you think i hold my work in particularly high regard, you'd be wrong. i'm incredibly self-critical. but the thing about that criticism is that it can be constructive or it can be destructive. self-deprecation only imbues you with a sense of defeat, leads to black-and-white and eternity thinking, identification. "my poetry is bad" -> "my poetry will never be any good" -> "i am a bad writer" -> "i might as well give up" (there's a second fork in that road, depending on the type of person you are. you might admit defeat or launch into a perfectionism attack of the self, dedicate yourself wholly to improvement without any hope of actually ever feeling like you're improving because of the impossible standard you've set for yourself). there's a great many days i hate all my work. everything i've ever written, like i can't even bear to look at any of it - this extends far past writing. every other creative endeavour feels like that sometimes. everything in my life does. to a degree, i think that's just the nature of being an artist. but it can get out of hand fast (particularly, and i'm genuinely not going to make assumptions here so this is purely an if, if your brain, like mine, is at time of writing not exactly user-friendly. i don't know if i've ever outright mentioned the C-PTSD thing on this blog but i assume it comes through in my work - some of it keeps getting tagged with C-PTSD, anyway. the black-and-white/all-or-nothing -> eternity thinking -> identification -> perfectionism or self-destruction spiral is a path i have gone down many, many times in my life, with just about everything i love and care about).

reframing tends to be helpful when i get stuck like that, especially in the case of something subjective like poetry. "all my work sucks" is not a constructive place to be, i don't do good work there. "all my work is amazing" isn't a helpful counter-argument, because a, there's no way to actually prove that sort of thing and b, that sort of thinking implies there's no room for improvement, which there always is. a helpful reframing for me, and the reason i bother sharing my work at all, is, "my work has been meaningful to people. it resonates." i know that from feedback. and i value that immensely. in the absence of positive feedback like that, however, another helpful reframing is, "my work is meaningful to me. creating it is an act of self-expression that has brought me a lot of joy."

i encourage you to keep writing, anon. reading and writing and doing both lots really are the only ways to improve, but improving aside (there will always be room to improve; there will always be someone better), i encourage you to look within as to why you started writing at all, why you do it. what are your reasons? writing is one from of having a voice. what do you want to say to the world (or maybe just to yourself?)

[nugget-child]

YIPPEEEEE, u and I are rlly similar in some ways- anywayyyy

Ane (basic ass middle name ik)

2. uhhh not answering thatttttt

3. Feb 11th

4. Aquarius

5. Green/pink

6. Don’t have one, but maybe 2,3, or 7????

7. yes I have a cat

8. AMURICAAA 🇺🇸🇺🇸🦅🦅💥💥

9. Like 5’ 3.5” (I’m still half an inch taller than chuuyaaa)

10. About 7.5

11. I don’t know

12. I don’t remember my dreams

13. I can write and draw

14. Dunno what this means-

15. hahahahaaa don’t make me pick one pleaseee

16. I don’t know eitherrr

17. Someone who loves me (High standards fr)

18. NO, I HATE CHILDREN

19. I mean… idk, maybe just for the experience?

20. no

21. yessss at least 4 times (including my birth)

22. no, I’m like an angel 😇

23. if concerts count… then yes

24. showers, I ain’t taking all that time to do a bath

25. BAREFEET

26. no

27. Yes (I crave attention worship me peasants)

28. Everything except country. Literally everything

29. no

30. anywhere from 1-4 (and then I sleep on a stuffed animal instead)

31. Like halfway curled up, on my side and then I kind of like move around a lot in my sleep

32. don’t knowwww????

33. either like an egg sandwich, a slice of coffee cake, or waffles

34. I’ve fired a BB gun (this is America after all)

35. I did it at a summer camp a few times

36. I don’t knowwww I’m a writerrrr

37. FUCK

38. I don’t pull all nighters because I literally have nothing exciting to do for that long

39. Yes, and they’re kinda stupid too. Like my two scars are from a meatball tray and a hanger-

40. no

41. yes :3

42. Maybe??? Idk I haven’t had to judge no character yet

43. British, Russian, French

44. no

45. I don’t knowwww???

46. uhhh intp but i think the test thought i was more introverted than i was because i hate group projects because I don’t trust people to do a good job soooo 🤷

47. I don’t actually know

48. Yeppp can’t do the clover thing tho

49. innie, my belly button is just a hole in my stomach

50. Right handed

51. if they crawl on me, yes, if not… like probably not

52. any dessert (especially chocolate flavor), orrr pizza

53. Italian food

54. Both, im inconsistent af

55. Any variation of I’m gonna kms- (I need to cut down my usage of this…. I use it way too much.)

56. Fuck probably

57. not long, idk I don’t time myself

58. yes but like no…. (It’s confusing)

59. Suck (just like I did to your mother last ni-)

60. YES, LIKE A LOT ACTUALLY

61. ALSO YES

62. maybe? I’m prob like average

63. Like centipedes and millipedes crawling on me.

64. I would be, but I’m sort of socially isolated 😔

65. I don’t knowwwe stop asking me to pick favoritesssss

66. long

67. I can, I can also name all the capitals 🤓🇺🇸

68. art ig

69. (hehe 69) uhh ambivert

70. no

71. making mistakes on my schoolwork 😔(🤓)

72. No <3 I like the dark, I also like small spaces

73. Yes. It drives me crazy sometimes (🤓)

74. yes

75. no

76. noooo

77. no, my parents gave me opportunities to, I’m just fucking terrified of trying new things

78. nope, I’m still terrified of trying things

79. I haven’t had one (there was maybe this one girl, but I think I only liked her because she liked me)

80. 2 (one in each ear)

81. yessirrrr

82. not very fast

83. also not very fast

84. blonde, but a weirdly specific shade of blonde

85. blueeee

86. Penicillin, I also have like spring allergies

87. no, I’ve tried but I never end up actually writing in it

88. mother does like campaign finance or something, and father does opinion editing for a newspaper

89. I do

90. people being wrong, being accused of things, there’s a long list

91. yes its soo prettyyyyy

92. I don’t want kidsss

93. FOR THE LAST TIME I HATE CHILDREN

94. I have intelligence in school

95. I have intelligence nowhere else

96. idk prob bcuz it sounds nice

97. no

98. yes? I already answered this didn’t i???

99. One is white with butterflies with green sheets, the other is grey triangles and grey sheets

100. one is white, with a blue accent wall, and the other is grey

Uhh as for tagssss uhhhh just do it if u want to-

Get To Know Me Uncomfortably Well

PLEASE DON’T LET THIS FLOP AHHHH

1. What is you middle name? 2. How old are you? 3. When is your birthday? 4. What is your zodiac sign? 5. What is your favorite color? 6. What’s your lucky number? 7. Do you have any pets? 8. Where are you from? 9. How tall are you? 10. What shoe size are you? 11. How many pairs of shoes do you own? 12. What was your last dream about? 13. What talents do you have? 14. Are you psychic in any way? 15. Favorite song? 16. Favorite movie? 17. Who would be your ideal partner? 18. Do you want children? 19. Do you want a church wedding? 20. Are you religious? 21. Have you ever been to the hospital? 22. Have you ever got in trouble with the law? 23. Have you ever met any celebrities? 24. Baths or showers? 25. What color socks are you wearing? 26. Have you ever been famous? 27. Would you like to be a big celebrity? 28. What type of music do you like? 29. Have you ever been skinny dipping? 30. How many pillows do you sleep with? 31. What position do you usually sleep in? 32. How big is your house? 33. What do you typically have for breakfast? 34. Have you ever fired a gun? 35. Have you ever tried archery? 36. Favorite clean word? 37. Favorite swear word? 38. What’s the longest you’ve ever gone without sleep? 39. Do you have any scars? 40. Have you ever had a secret admirer? 41. Are you a good liar? 42. Are you a good judge of character? 43. Can you do any other accents other than your own? 44. Do you have a strong accent? 45. What is your favorite accent? 46. What is your personality type? 47. What is your most expensive piece of clothing? 48. Can you curl your tongue? 49. Are you an innie or an outie? 50. Left or right handed? 51. Are you scared of spiders? 52. Favorite food? 53. Favorite foreign food? 54. Are you a clean or messy person? 55. Most used phrased? 56. Most used word? 57. How long does it take for you to get ready? 58. Do you have much of an ego? 59. Do you suck or bite lollipops? 60. Do you talk to yourself? 61. Do you sing to yourself? 62. Are you a good singer? 63. Biggest Fear? 64. Are you a gossip? 65. Best dramatic movie you’ve seen? 66. Do you like long or short hair? 67. Can you name all 50 states of America? 68. Favorite school subject? 69. Extrovert or Introvert? 70. Have you ever been scuba diving? 71. What makes you nervous? 72. Are you scared of the dark? 73. Do you correct people when they make mistakes? 74. Are you ticklish? 75. Have you ever started a rumor? 76. Have you ever been in a position of authority? 77. Have you ever drank underage? 78. Have you ever done drugs? 79. Who was your first real crush? 80. How many piercings do you have? 81. Can you roll your Rs?“ 82. How fast can you type? 83. How fast can you run? 84. What color is your hair? 85. What color is your eyes? 86. What are you allergic to? 87. Do you keep a journal? 88. What do your parents do? 89. Do you like your age? 90. What makes you angry? 91. Do you like your own name? 92. Have you already thought of baby names, and if so what are they? 93. Do you want a boy a girl for a child? 94. What are you strengths? 95. What are your weaknesses? 96. How did you get your name? 97. Were your ancestors royalty? 98. Do you have any scars? 99. Color of your bedspread? 100. Color of your room?

[afactaday]

#aFactADay2024 #1461: the FINALE part 1! see the master post or the Neocities landing page. the following post is best read on the Neocities website.

Is Conditioner Worth it?

Musings from someone new to the concept of long hair

Abstract

In numerous distinct but overlapping experiments, data was recorded on time spent brushing hair and washing hair, and other miscellaneous occurrences like compliments. These were cross-referenced and regressions were calculated to numerically evaluate various pros and cons of using conditioner on my hair, and thus evaluated all these pros and cons to find that it is not "worth it" to use conditioner as an additional product in my hair.

Introduction

I've been growing my hair out for around two and a half years now. It was short before, and it's long now. I only cut it once in that period, just a short amount this July to treat some split ends (it did not help). However, this is all a relatively new thing to me, and I've been using a very similar haircare routine before and after: a bog-standard 172-in-1 shampoo, and nothing else. In April 2024, as it was reaching a certain length, I considered that perhaps I ought to take more specific care of my hair now that it was a bit more conspicuous and lengthy. I wrote a small report to mathematically estimating the optimum frequency for using conditioner, optimising for quality per time invested (as there comes a point of diminishing return, surely). It concluded that, with the given information, that optimum frequency was zero - but I decided that I had factored in too few factors and a more in-depth analysis would be required.

Before we go on, here's some not-very-factual facts on hair conditioner. This is "A Fact A Day", after all. The Handbook of Cosmetic Science chapter 67 states that the primary purpose of hair conditioner is to reduce the friction when you brush/comb it. This is achieved by a long hydrocarbon that deposits on the hair to lubricate it. Beyond that, everything henceon is either poorly backed up or out of reach of my understanding.

Hair consists of a cortex and then 8-10 layers of keratinous cuticle cells that give it its most perceptible properties, such as shine and combability. When the hair is wet, these are at their most fragile and their most resistant, so they receive the most damage. Cells can get torn away, peeled up or chipped, contributing to high friction and thus further damage or lots of time needed to brush it. Here are two SEMs (scanning electron micrograph) of hairs that've been brushed 700 times while wet - guess which had conditioner on.

The core tenet of conditioner is that it reduces friction, particularly when wet, and this has knock-on effects that reduce damage to the hair (particularly important with long hair because the stuff at the end is virtually three years old) like split ends and so on. It gets a lot more complicated...

The following section on how conditioner purpotedly works is pretty much just a passage from Wikipedia that's riddled with "citation needed". I found some sources that back it up and some that don't, but it all sounds a bit dubious and a bit confusing either way. The hair follicle, where keratinous cells form, has a layer rich in cisteine groups that are mildly acidic. This deprotonates (loses protons, leaving it a negative charge) when you wash it, which attracts positive quaternary ammonia by standard "opposites attract" rule. These have long hydrocarbon chains pointing in all sorts of directions, helping to patch over sub-cellular chips and smoothing out the surface of the hair. Apparently it also means the hairs repel one another, reducing clumping, and reduce static buildup, reducing frizzing - but that all seems poorly backed up.

If you ask me, there's a lot of truth to what's been said, but when it comes down to it, it's mostly a cultural ploy - something something beauty standards, cosmetics industry, you know the usual sceptic leftist waffle. But to be honest, if you lean into that too far then you just shave your hair off because it's easiest. If I want to present myself as someone with long hair, I may as well present myself as someone with smooth long hair. Well, we'll get into that in a minute actually.

Before we go on, I'll just define specifically what I mean by a couple of terms: "short-term" is specifically about a day, "medium-term" is between a day and a week and "long-term" is, well, long-term. These periods do overlap and are used with vagueness, but these are the ballparks we're working with. Gotta be in the same "Language Game", as I once read in a letter.

Collection Methods

A log of when I washed my hair, when I conditioned my hair, and when I received compliments was made beginning in April 2024, shortly after the initialising report. I asked a friend to specifically increase the rate of compliments (proportionally, so as not to skew any daya), although this had limited success, as more compliments were obtained from others than from this friend. Each datum was simply a date; a time of day (morning/afternoon/etc) was also collected but not used. Where applicable, notes were collected: whom a compliment was from, how long it took to condition my hair, and similar.

Shampoo was used on a regular basis, almost always the same shampoo. Two different conditioner brands were used - one consistently up to roughly October and then a different one for the last couple of months (although no difference between the two was noticed, remarked upon anecdotally, or measured). The assumption when I condition my hair is that I've immediately just washed it with shampoo, and that was always the case in the logs, with the sole exception of once when I washed it with a bar of soap then conditioned it (this had no discernible change).

During the period of study leave in May-June 2024 for exams, a special intensive experiment was carried out. For 52 days between 2024-05-10 and the end of June, every time I brushed my hair was recorded, with a timestamp, a duration, stroke-number (how many brushes to brush the hair) and a note (eg, "just had a shower" or "tying my hair up rn", although these are obviously conformed to a finite list of options). It is to be considered that the fact of having to fill out a spreadsheet every time I brushed my hair may have disincentivised me from brushing my hair at some times, and thus the data seen through an absolute lens may not be properly representative. Anyhoosles.

Other factors that were more trivial to numerically evaluate included financial cost of conditioning and how long it takes to condition (time cost).

Results and Discussions

Beginning with the easiest to put a finger on, how long does it take to condition my hair? 300 seconds (to one sig.fig.). Five minutes. This includes everything that would be done (Standard deviation = 90 seconds: so pretty widely distributed; that is to say that it often takes a lot less or a lot more.) This didn't seem to vary significantly with frequency (i.e. conditioning one day didn't ease conditioning on another ay shortly thereafter) to a measurable degree; the greater effects lie in how much I can be bothered to focus on what I'm doing. For future reference, the minimum time it took was 180 seconds (2 sig.fig.s).

Secondly, let's evaluate the "aesthetic" benefit of conditioner. 15 compliments over the 8-month period were received. Compliments were cross-referenced with how long it'd been since I last conditioned my hair, and surprisingly the results show very little correlation. The mean time since the last condition on days where I received a compliments was greater than the mean time since the last condition on all days. That is to say, although the correlation was weak, it was negative. In other words, conditioning appears to make my hair uglier. This is a surprising result, but it did feel anecdotally as if most of the compliments I received occurred during the longer periods of no-conditioner. We can say that the effects of conditioner are small enough to be ignored after a certain point, and thus all "time since the last condition" values can be capped at that point (which is actually what I initially did) but no matter how you cut the mustard, the same answer is given. My hair looks better when it's less smooth. Or, it would actually be more precise to say that my hair elicits fewer compliments when it hasn't been conditioned in a while.

To grapple with the host of data collected during study leave, brushing data were split into "wet brushes" (after a shower, hairwash, rinse, etc) and "dry brushes" (all others). From the information gleaned in the introduction, we can expect wet brushes to yield the most distinction when conditioner is used.

However, this shows no immediately clear regression. There is one visible pattern, however: that the brushing immediately after using conditioner was invariably lower than the average. It seems to trend upwards for a few days before becoming more random than helpful. Capping it at a certain point as we did previously finally lets us put a number on this: if we cap at 5 days, we get a statistically significant least-squares linear regression! This has a gradient of 2, i.e. every day after a condition takes two seconds longer to brush than the previous, up to 5 days. The real case is likely more complicated than this linear model (it was originally modelled exponentially in the April report), but that matters little: based on this model, the maximum time that a hairbrush could save is 30 seconds spread over five days. Half a minute - a tenth of the average time taken to actually condition the hair, and a sixth of the best-case time.

The first plot immediately above shows the dry-brushes counterpart to the previously-discussed plot. No statistically significant regression, however we cut the mustard, is elicited. Basically, conditioner doesn't make it easier to brush my hair when it's dry. The second plot immediately above shows the time spent total per day brushing; this is quite a different measure, as some days I brushed my hair just once and some days five or more times. Since the time taken to brush once is independent of time since last condition, and the number of times that I brush my hair in a day is usually related to what sort of thing I'm doing and thus is also unrelated, we'd expect no pattern at all. That's what I first saw in the data, but there is apparently a statistically significant negative regression. That is to say, according to the data collected over these two months, using conditioner more frequently seems to decrease the quality of the hair, meaning it takes longer to brush. This is likely an anomaly caused by an underlying bias or similar (even though the R-value is statistically significant, p<0.05), but it does rather significantly quash any idea that investing time into conditioner pays off in the long run.

The two benefits of using conditioner that I thought would exist (aesthetic and mid-term time-savings) turned out to be less than negligible. This is a rather conclusive answer that, no, it is not worth it to condition, by quite a significant margin. However, I collected all this data so I may as well flex about it a little.

Beginning with the easier factors, the financial cost of conditioner was surprisingly low. I have quite a lot of hair (it's thick and long) but I usually used around a teaspoon, occasionally more. The stuff I buy in the quantity I buy it in only costs 9 pence per teaspoon - working at UK minimum wage, that's equivalent to about 28 seconds' work.

Niceness to the touch, fondlability, and similar texture-related factors are difficult to quantify, but from anecdotal evidence this does improve in the short-term with conditioner, but not in the medium-term, as is evidenced by the very weak correlation with brushability discussed. Either way, this effect is so relatively small in comparison to the large time-cost.

Seeing as I have about 200-odd data just lying around, I may as well give you a couple of graphs.

Brushes labelled with "after shower" are the "wet brushes" - this includes after just a hair wash or a bath or whatever. The blue section was the largest "reason" for brushing my hair as this happened guaranteed every single day - the first hairbrush of the day, having just spent eight hours in bed messing it up on my pillow. Before and after tying it up were also common reasons enough to elicit their own segments, and everything else falls into the "top-up" category, which encompasses all the little bits and bobs that accumulate over the span of a day and get annoying by the end.

It may have seemed arbitrary to split brushes by "wet" and "dry", but these two types of "brushing events" have very distinct patterns, as shown in this scatter plot between the number of strokes and the time spent:

Wet brushes weren't inherently slower - there is some overlap between these two clouds, although their centres of mass are very different. You can easily guess which cluster corresponds to the dry brushes. These took on average 21 seconds and their regression has a 1.2s gradient (corresponding to roughly 1.2 seconds per stroke) and a very small intercept of 2s (probably corresponding to moving the hair brush between hands, and tiny little things like that which are constant every time). The wet-brushes cloud had an average duration of 81 seconds and a gradient of 0.64 seconds, meaning each stroke was on average twice as quick when my hair was wet. This seems at first counterintuitive (why are strokes quicker when the hair is trickier to brush?) but instead points towards a significant change in technique when brushing wet hair. This technique (anecdotally speaking) is slightly more energetic, involving lots of short brushes towards the ends of the hairs. There was also a significantly greater offset (~26s), which points towards a constant number of strokes that have a different rate. In other terms, the technique used for dry hair was also used on wet hair, after using this "quick" technique. This is somewhat logical if we look at the graph, and see that following the trend line down, it takes a corner at around 25 strokes, where it changes from the wet-brush gradient to the dry-brush gradient. I sound like a painter.

Since these data point to a more vigorous technique to a non-negligible degree which clearly affects multiple factors, there's an argument to be made that this is the fact that's worth targeting. To improve and optimise everything about my mop, perhaps I ought to focus on how I brush after a shower. As per the introduction, the hair is most fragile yet most resistive when wet, thus must vulnerable. Conditioner does indeed have a medium-term effect on the smoothness of the hair, which is reflected in how long it takes to brush it (as per the previous graphs) but will also reduce damage to the hair. The effect was small in the medium term (not enough to incentivise based on time or aesthetics), lasting around five days, but slightly more marked in the short-term, as is shown in the graph below. The red datapoints are immediately after using conditioner (short-term), and the darker blue points are in the medium-term, specifically 1-4 days (chosen as the period over which conditioner was shown to have a trailing effect).

As can be seen here, the short-term effect of conditioner is much greater than the medium-term effect (even though the products claim to be longer-lasting than is observed here, and a longer-lasting effect is agreed upon by cosmeticians). This is a slightly different story now that we're working to solve a different problem: no longer are we worrying about "is conditioner worth it" in the medium-term (as the title of this article should have read) but rather minimising damage to the hair.

What should be done to minimise damage to the hair in the long-term needs to be investigated in more depth. Conditioner helps in the short-term but less so in the medium-term, although this effect is yet to be conclusively evidenced. The greater question is, how much does this really matter? How much will this aid the health of my hair (e.g. preventing split ends) and thus improve the joy in my life? This is a question that requires a much greater experiment, somehow exceeding the 8-months of this one. It's a very difficult thing to plan, having just one head of hair and no proper control over so many factors, to the point where I'd hazard to say that it's impossible to do this larger-scale investigation. It's with a heavy heart that I end this discussion with almost exactly the same sentiment with which I ended my report all the way back in April: no, but maybe even more science will help!

While I have your attention, if anyone has any idea what to do with all the data that I have, please let me know! I'm sure there's more science to be done on it all, or if you think that there could be some fun other statistic to collect over time, just let me know - I'm sure I'm game! My hair log was unfortunately one I'm planning on stopping in the new year, to focus on other logs, especially because it was started to run this experiment which will reach its conclusion in about 26 words. If you have any ideas or thoughts whatsoever regarding the data or statistics mentioned in this article (or any other!), I'd love to hear them!

Conclusion

To answer a more specific version of the question in the title, no, conditioner is not worth it in the medium-term. This article exposed lots of interesting trends, as well as fun facts about conditioner. (Is that not what this is about, ultimately?) One of the more interesting revelations was the notable ramifications of the different technique used to brush wet hair. The information given in the introduction hints at a major long-term effect (speaking in terms of years!) of this technique, which is more energetic and possibly destructive, but the scale of which is unknown. The effect of conditioner on this is also not known and unestimatable. The only answer to this question that can be given is, we need more data! (As is always the way.) Moving forwards, the number one focus has shifted off conditioner as a product and onto hairbrushing.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on what I can do with all this data that I don't feel has been used to its full extent herein. I'd also love to hear your thoughts on this article in general, or the "fact-of-the-day finale" series, a component of which it forms.

[danpuff-ao3]

HP Astro #19: Lily Evans

Born: 30 January 1960. Cokeworth, England (not a real place, so we're plopping her in Birmingham.) Time unknown.

My astrology dice rolled her as Aquarius Rising, which I'm okay with. I'll be honest, I wiffle-waffled a lot with her rising sign, so I really have to trust my dice here!

The ascendant is how we react to our environment, and how people perceive us. For Lily, people see someone who stands out from the crowd. Aquarius, the innovator. Quick-witted, a bit quirky, and quite curious. Aquarius is an air sign; air of intellect and sociability. People like Lily, and Lily likes people. But Aquarius is not a people-pleaser; Aquarius s is independent and values freedom, for herself and for others. Lily is also ahead of her time.

More that that, Lily's sun is also in Aquarius. The sun is her core, her ego, her self. Lily, the humanitarian. Lily, the freedom-fighter. The exact placement of her sun makes this interesting: sun in the Twelfth House: House of the Unseen. The twelfth house is subconscious and shadow; our innermost world. At her core, Lily runs deep.

The qualities of Aquarius are outwardly shown in her ascendant, but perhaps no one quite sees Lily the way they think they do. She hides behind the truth a bit here. There is more than meets the eye, and it's close enough to fool people into thinking they've seen it all.

She leans towards introspection, and introversion. The need to sit with herself and reflect and recharge. Likely she keeps a diary. Takes time for herself to sort her own thoughts and feelings. The Aquarian need to be her own self, to march to the beat of her own drum, to follow her own path.

Aquarius + the Twelfth House is an interesting place to be. The Aquarian values of individuality and innovation. The Twelfth House ties to dreams and secrets; shadows and emotions; invisible enemies. The deepest, darkest parts of the world. Lily understands too much.

Which brings us to her Pisces Moon. The planet of emotions in the sign of dreams, whimsy, and idealism. Highly intuitive and creative, is Lily. Her moon is also in the First House: the House of Self. She is sensitive and nurturing, but also moody and impatient. The realm of emotions tied closely to who she is.

There are a lot of close ties here. The sun, ascendant, and First House all represent pieces of our core: the sun being our energy and ego, the ascendant being how we are perceived, the First House being our physical selves. Pisces, the moon, and the Twelfth House all covering subconscious, and emotions; Pisces being idealistic, the moon being our emotions, the Twelfth House the state of our subconscious. Very similar energies being expressed, and being expressed in complementary ways: Pisces, the idealistic; Aquarius, the humanitarian. Pisces' whimsy, Aquarius' uniqueness. Pisces' creativity, Aquarius' curiosity. Pisces' empathy, Aquarius' intuition. Pisces, the compassionate; Aquairus, the friendly. Pisces, the emotional; Aquarius, the social.

Lily ties so much of herself to how she sees others, and how she treats others. She is a woman of high values. She sees things too clearly, in some ways, but she becomes willfully blind in others (Aquarius' stubbornness, Pisces' obsessiveness.) She has a drive to improve the world around her, but she sets her own standards. She sees herself as logical (Aquarius), but emotions can cloud her judgment (moon in the 1st), and can lead to strong bias. Lily wears her heart on her sleeve (moon in the 1st), and is unafraid of this. Proud, even, because she is so herself; so different (Aquarius) from the world around her, full of people who hide in shame.

Since we're already talking Aquarius and the First House, let's next look to Chiron. Chiron in Aquarius: the Wound of Belonging. In the first house implies a journey of self-discovery.

Our Chiron wounds are early wounds, ones that cut deep and stay with us. For Lily, she feels different. A disconnect from others. A strange placement for such a popular girl, but if we look back...she's a witch in a Muggle family. We can only imagine what trouble this caused in her younger years. Before she even knew the truth of who and what she was.

Strange occurrences must have happened, ones she couldn't explain. Confusion in herself, and confusion of those around her. And then, when she found out, what happened? The truth alienated her from her own sister. Petunia was bitter and cruel. Lily then went off to Hogwarts, away from her family and the world she knew, for a world of magic. But even at Hogwarts, she was set apart in ways. A Muggle-born girl. Unlikely to be the only one, but still a separation between her and some of her peers. Especially when some of her peers were blood purists.

It is my belief that Lily worked on healing her inner wound early on. The way you heal your Chiron wound is through facing those things. Lily embraced being different, and embraced others (Severus) who were different. She worked toward self-discovery (1st House Chiron) through self-reflection (12th house sun), accepting her uniqueness (Aquarius), and celebrating the individuality of others (Aquarius), and having empathy for them (Pisces moon.) And if she didn't live long enough to heal entirely, she was at least walking the path to self-surety when she died. She was working actively on making herself better. (Aquarian innovation.)

And what of Lily's inner planets? Mercury (communication) in Aquarius (unconventional) in the First (self.) Lily is able to observe others, draw conclusions, and works with speed in gathering information and interacting with others. Mercury's arena is information: learning, teaching, speaking. Here, Lily can be contradictory; exposing others' biases, while adhering to her own. There is an air of intellectual superiority, of knowing better than others.

On the flip side, Lily's way of seeing the world, and expressing what she sees, can be refreshing; she can connect with others and help broaden their horizons. She has a lot of insight to share, and she wants to share it. She delights in surprising others, entertaining them, helping them. There is a desire to leave her mark, to change those around her, in a manner that is both self-serving and not. Lily has a genuine desire to mend and build for the sake of others, and the world around her. To change how others think. To change how she herself thinks, always craving to learn more.

Her Mercury is conjunct the Sun, lending more to her very opinionated nature. There is too much pride, and too much of herself at stake when it comes to her intellect, and her ability to sway others.

We move into Capricorn with Venus (relationships) and Mars (action), both in the Eleventh House (House of Friendship.) Leisure (Venus) spent with friends (11th); prompted to action (Mars) in the aid of a common cause (11th; the Order.) Both areas flavored by Capricorn's productive, goal-oriented energy. Lily has drive, and plenty of it.

Lily values competency (Capricorn), in herself but also in others (Venus: relationships, 11th House: friendship.) Lily values structure (Capricorn), in both her romantic life (Venus) and in what she does (Mars.) Lily wants to build stability and resources for herself, to give herself and those she cares about a level of comfort and safety. She is very productive and responsible (Capricorn Mars); she enjoys a high quality life (Venus; leisure and comfort) and works to attain those things (Capricorn.) Lily craves commitment, and a partner who shares her goals and values. She is serious and deliberate in matters of love, and not one to fawn over a lover. (She rather makes them work for it, methinks!)

Her Venus and Mars are also in conjunction; tied closely together, sharing the same energy. Her leisure and goals closely bound; her feelings of romance and sexuality, too. This conjunction makes Lily charismatic, drawing others in. She is assertive with what she wants, but cooperative with others, caring enough about them to work with them, to make sure both her and her partner's needs are fulfilled.

No wonder people are so drawn to her.

We've got another placement or two to look at: what is Lily's chart ruler? And what is the dispositor of the sun? With both the ascendant and her sun in the same sign, this points to the same place...or places.

Aquarius is ruled by Uranus, according to modern study, but its traditional ruler was Saturn. Uranus: planet of enlightenment and progressiveness. Saturn: the planet of responsibility and discipline.

Saturn is domicile in Capricorn; the planet's aim for betterment easily energized by Capricorn's ambitious energy. Lily has high standards for herself, and she works hard. She cares too much about the rules, and following them to the letter. She has a strong sense of right and wrong.

But thus far in this series, I've paid more focus to modern rulerships, so let's take a closer look at Uranus.

Uranus' focus is on discovery and ingenuity. This focus is strong within Lily, as it rules her chart as a whole, and lends its power to her sun.

Strangely, her Uranus is detriment in Leo (the planet's aims struggling with Leonine fuel), and is in a loose opposition to her Aquarius Sun. A struggle between her self expression (sun) and her journey to enlightenment (Uranus.)

Her sun also happens to be detriment in Aquarius. The sun's self-focus at odds with Aquarius' outward focus.

There is disharmony within her. There is a sense of ego there, and rebellion. Unwilling to do what she doesn't want. Pride in her originality, but also loneliness in how separate she feels. There is a strong need for authenticity, to express herself honestly, and dispense with pretense. She needs to be able to focus on what she's passionate about! And Leo is nothing if not passionate, if also a bit stubborn. She has a desire to revolutionize the world (Uranus) in creative, fun ways (Leo), particularly within relationships (Seventh House.)

The Seventh House rules contracts, as well as romantic relationships, and open enemies. Think of contracts as meaning official and labelled connections. Business partnerships, marriage, a named foe.

Revolution (Uranus) and enemies (7th House)...

War.

Look at her chart ruler. Now look at her life.

Venus (fun), Mars (action), and Saturn (responsibility) all in the Eleventh House: House of Organizations, Groups, and Causes. Sun (self) in the Twelfth House: House of Secrets and Betrayal. Moon (emotions) and Chiron (wounds) in the First (self.)

And in the Seventh House: House of Contracts, the house containing her chart ruler, tells her life story.

True Node: fate, life's purpose. A fear of relationships, and a need to learn to rely on others. To learn compromise.

Uranus: rebellion and revolution. To change how she connects to others. And her connection to others driving her to change. In Leo, Lily is bold and brave and bright. She gives her all with great enthusiasm towards the cause. She gives her loyalty, generosity, and love to those who matter.

Think, she marries a man she once hated. He changed, and when he did, so did her feelings. It wasn't anything she expected, but she welcomed him into her life, and welcomed his friends alongside him. A husband, and a chosen family. All fighting for the same cause. Fighting the same common enemy.

And Pluto: death. Transformation. Power.

Lily both fears and desires (Pluto) close relationships (Seventh.) She is drawn to people (Seventh) who are intense, possessive, passionate, and obsessive (Pluto.) There can be power struggles within the relationship. But so too can Lily find her own power within these relationships. In her connections with others (Seventh), Lily can be transformed (Pluto), or bring out a transformation in others (Seventh.)

Pluto also represents death, also known as endings. The downfall of her friendship with Severus (Pluto: ending.) The change in her dynamic with James (Pluto: change, rebirth.) They married (Seventh), and committed themselves to the war effort (Pluto: death, fear, danger.) They were betrayed by a friend (Peter), which led to their deaths (Pluto) -- a more literal translation of Pluto than is often seen.

Death so rarely means literal death; but sometimes it does.

Lily: killed (Pluto) by an open enemy (Voldemort, Seventh); betrayed to him by a dear friend (Peter, Seventh); her husband (James, Seventh) died for her (Pluto.) And Lily died (Pluto) for her son. Not long after, or far from, where James died. They were buried side by side.

And their deaths (Pluto) played a part in how the world was changed (Pluto.) Her death (Pluto) giving her son protection, and power (Pluto) that he needed to eventually win the war. Lily helped transform the world in her own way, even if it wasn't the way she intended.

[sugar-petals]

SuperM as Boyfriends Headcanon

↪ caro’s note. extra long version because i miss ‘em. best boys, they’re all bf material to the moon and back ♡

5k words | bullet points

○ warnings ⚠️ 18+, dom/sub play, shibari, female reader, grinding, poly mentions, threesomes, face-sitting, femdom & vanilla, smut and fluff

⌈ ten

— motto: they won’t underestimate me for long.

most of your social environment is gonna be confused by ten at the beginning 

and don’t really get what he’s all about

or think he’s like whatever, some random guy in a tank top

acting peculiar

finding him kind of hard to gauge

some of your family and relatives might even think he’s totally unusual and a sneaky fuckboy making you mad 

they seriously wonder what you see in him

down the line that perception has turned by 180 degrees

as it should

ten becomes more irreplaceable, relatable, beautiful, perfect and impressive the more you know him

he’s not as mysterious and impossibly badass as everyone assumes

his personality is very approachable to you 

and you find him interesting in every aspect, looks to hobbies to background to personal habits

and also opinions because ten is a guy who really thinks stuff through

so you gotta be roughly on the same wavelength 

he likes discussing controversial and complicated stuff a lot for sure

being far wiser than his age suggests 

you are the first to share those things with him until the rest of the world catches up to this gem of a person

spending so much time with you

in the most personal way he can

he takes you to see the floating markets in bangkok, you spend the summer in thailand

wakeboarding and playing badminton

his entire family knows you inside out at some point this shit is serious

it’s very important to him to go back to the roots every now and then

and that you have been around his home city as well

getting to enjoy the area and time together eating the most savory delicacies

renting a boat and paddling you around to the important spots, he can explain any question you have

this kissing is gonna be so romantic 

who needs a vacation in venice when you can go to thailand with none other than ten himself as your ferryman let that sink in

except eating durian there he is, the boyfriend who can do anything!

with seemingly no effort

ten does little kind services of love for you throughout the day

he pours you herbal tea, fixes some furniture (he’s surprisingly good at tinkering), comes home from the bakery with your favorite pastry, does the laundry with your favorite fabric softener

he also goes on a huge shopping spree with you monthly because fashion is key in this household and it’s tremendous fun

you giggle when he puts on oversized shirts deliberately to look funny

everyone in the clothing store will think oh man what an adorable pair

ten will model the living hell out of the entire stock

and buy you the cape you really really want as a birthday present

said item turns out to be your favorite couple accessory

because you can sit next to each other on a bench at the river and wear it

what’s not to love about a portable blanket

of course he will take to instagram and make it such a cool thing, photographies of you wearing really cool coats and jackets

mirror bathroom selfies together as well, with a back hug, the classic

and not just for insta

you snuggle a lot generally

ten is always available for affection

and accepts all PDA

he’s a kitty after all, he loves the warmth of your body more than you know

remember how taemin said ten’s hands are always cold, newsflash not anymore since you stuff them into the pocket of your hoodie whenever you can

and hello sir your paws will be nice and cozy on my waist

or hand in hand when you waltz through your apartment

time for dance is a must

oh my god ten is so good at all of this

although say he’s definitely faster into latin than standard genres

tango argentino, he loves flamenco as well

don’t believe me? ten is a diehard rosalía stan!

vamos

so, no-brainer, expect a lot of dancy stuff 

that escalates into wild, passionate fucking

which probably looks like an aggressive form of couple exercises

you poor sore souls

ten’s lil kitty butt is falling apart from all the “i can handle a bigger one!”-level pegging and you have aching legs all over

favorite position? full nelson

if you ask me ten’s ass is probably so carved out by the end of this you could fit lucas and kai in there from head to toe

this is not for the faint of heart

sex with this guy is extra cardio

and if you’re into that a threesome is gonna go down sooner or later

with our girl lisa

there. i said it

miss manoban in those knee-high boots, grinding her thighs between yours and you finishing off on ten’s face? the fucking hottest thing ever i need a moment wow

i don’t have to tell you how orgasmic this is gonna be

steamy sex life with ten very recommended

⌈ kai

— motto: you’re like a precious rose. i’ll protect you forever.

to be straightforward with you

he is in so heavily in demand it’s madness

to give you an idea of the scale

mark is basically occupied by yuta until the end of time 

but kai has an entire idol fanclub on top of all erigoms

those sharp moves did not go unnoticed

he gets an inkigayo sandwich every other day

jesus christ

if rent-a-sexy-bf.com was a thing kai would be the most requested

his phone would be blowing up with contracts like

and you also have to pass kyungsoo’s vibe check

and taemin’s

the road to being kai’s gf is indeed the way of the samurai

i mean honestly: kim jongin is without a doubt the hardest member to get a date with

this has got to be the most selective man of the entire industry or something

if he likes you he REALLY likes you

and he will be the one showing initiative

because he wants to make it clear he isn’t just spending time out of politeness or something

although it’s pretty logical that if kai was unable to reject someone he would no longer be an idol but a harem husband busy every hour of the day

seoul would be able to found its own village 

kai town

where like 70% of the population is pregnant

but since kai wants to keep on dancing obviously and he wants to lend his heart to only one person 

seoul has to settle with a singular nini family house instead of a kai district

where you and the man himself are a full-fledged household basically since kai’s nieces double as actual kids

if you wanna be a young ass ‘mom but not mom with kids’ and be married to kim kai this is it

does he have a thing for milfs or something

that thought just came to my mind

anyway you’re mommy anyway wink wink

fucking til’ dawn until even his muscles hurt

going raw at the gym together

him cooking the most random food with the infamous waffle maker

cuddling with an army of teddy bears surrounding you

walking the dogs with the sexiest dancer alive 

and the sexiness is only the tip of the iceberg 

we know he’s all-round amazing

kai is the king of figuring out ways to chill out with you anywhere anytime

and yes innocent chilling

...unless you’re in the mood for something else

up to you

anyway

sweet innocent chilling for now... with the stunner... just smooching at best things aren’t going raw or anything

on the couch in the kitchen in the car when it’s parked somewhere in nature

kai takes you very seriously and is a great listener

he’s literally so respectful and open-minded i can’t

he will keep your secrets and stand up for you if it’s ever needed

yes he is extremely caring and invested

kai does not tolerate others being shady towards you

if there’s an instance where you are hurt and unable to assert yourself don’t worry. he knows how to confront others with measure but a firm determination.

kai takes a lot of that responsibility but only to the degree where you are comfortable

i think you get what i mean by that

and he is diplomatic instead of plain patronizing

you have a right to be protected. it means he not only treats you well, but also makes sure your well-being isn’t disturbed in any other way outside of the relationships

outside influences aren’t to be underestimated

and since kai is a godly man you encounter a lot of jealousy from others

a matter he will take into his hands since he knows he’s the reason

standing up for you also means saying no 

to these jealous voices so this is an important boundary he has to draw

that all kinds of hellbent people want to get into his pants and take his stage image too literally is not up to you to fix

kai is there for you to enjoy and love not to defend

that’d be exhausting and beside the point 

kai prevents stress and negativity to come to you

i hope i explained this well he doesn’t do this to be bossed up or make you weak it’s because he wants to make life easier for you

guys being protective will be chalked up as chauvinistic these days. often rightfully so 

but what i mean is that kai support you in all regards so you won’t be at a disadvantage or feel terrible about something

⌈ taeyong

— motto: we’ll take good care. enjoy the pleasure.

he’s the type of boyfriend who will ask you about things he missed out on while he was busy

things um from the internet

while mark literally knows that one by heart already taeyong will ask you things like what the wellerman song is

and you thought it would be something nsfw

i got you fooled

did we forget that the man literally watched nct memes on youtube

taeyong is both even more 18+ than you think but also even more innocent than you think it’s complicated

this man is just hard to describe he’s so different, i mean every person is unique but he’s an original it’s the extra mile you know

anyway

sea shanties

bopping to it all day since he just heard it 

singing it while he prepares dinner based on a youtube recipe video as he often does

he’s the most adorable person ever ever ever

asking you why shanties are back in fashion 

(good question, requires a deeper sociocultural analysis i reckon)

planning to remix one for his soundcloud lmao i kid you not

maybe your favorite shanty 

featuring fast-pace rap and all

creating his own previously unknown phrases and shit like that you know him

palazzo rocco lemon detox flashbacks

he’s hilarious i swear

taeyong will produce his own shanties for you can you imagine

as he says: my happiness is your happiness

watch out he will drop a shanty music video with extra krumping moves

taeyong is a never-ending source of pure crack

prepare to laugh a lot like, a lot lot

how can a man who seemingly has such a serious outlook on life and such a bonkers kinda face be so lighthearted

it’s like he’s peter pan or something

especially since he has to manage like over 20 brats in nct his cutesy behavior towards you as his gf will stand out to you

yeah so to be clear we all know he’s the cute one in the relationship

and guess who wears the pants

that’s always you ma’am don’t deny it

or wait 

not for long actually because they come off um physically

but not metaphorically

because who doesn’t wanna sit on his face tbh

your favorite reserved spot

he loves it

taeyong has such a thing for your body it’s ridiculous

mister lee got a sexy mama

and you have such a thing for the gloriousness that is him

but neither of you will not admit it as openly as other people would think

all there is... is being flustered

baekhyun probably has to play some cupid now and then

and give you some ideas

like gifting taeyong plushies and things like that

baekhyun knows what taeyong is all about so the advice is very welcome

but most things you find out for yourself

by being a little braver with him you know

you walking around naked in the apartment or basically fresh out the shower with nothing but a towel

will shake up taeyong so immensely, he will back himself against a wall without you even pinning him there lmao!

jeez he’s so deep into kinky stuff but easily shook anyway

i quote him again: “born to be cute, i dunno!”

you can imagine the overwhelm when you rub yourself against him like it’s nobody’s business

it’s so much fun to give taeyong a regular horny meltdown not gonna lie

this man was grinding his whole body all over the superm stage and now he’s basically freezing up and drooling

how many denied and ruined orgasms he’s gonna get, so much overstimulation all the way  

you’ll lose count of it

and just how wet you’re gonna be

is a thing for the history books

taeyong isn’t such a big deal in nct for no reason god gave him every talent 

so great sex is obviously in his repertoire

i think you’re gonna break some records for most fucks per week

you know... guys like lucas taemin kai and baekhyun spend more time wooing and teasing and flirting

but taeyong gets down to business

one glance is enough

⌈ lucas

— motto: the hottest couple around.

ah, big boy

you really got this man’s attention

doing nothing much at all really

he probably just saw you walking around talking to friends

carrying an impossibly huge veggie burger munching and enjoying yourself after going on a jog

yeah boy that’s how you catch his eye

they say love begins in the stomach and that is the true meaning

or the nose, your food smells really good, lucas is going crazy, he’s seeing stars and shit

anyway

the towering burger isn’t the only thing he wants

lucas cannot get you out of his mind no matter how much he tries to distract himself 

with more good food, movies, games

fooling around with wayv or the superm maknaes, and working out

he’s admittedly... a little himbo head over himbo heels with you the feels got to him

he’s not gonna say it’s a date he’s just gonna invite you just because

to hang out in the kitchen while taeyong cooks and baekhyun comes up with the idea to play twister

imagine lucas with his long arms and legs bending himself all over the place

fighting with kai who almost crashed his shoulders into taemin who avoided the accident quickly

making you lose a round

obviously lucas will hustle until your team wins

mostly because he’s so tall and baekhyun is so small which is a huge advantage when stacking each other over the map

let’s just face it baekhyun only suggested this game to bite everyone’s butts and to see you have skinship with lucas

which is definitely a successful plan of the leader

yukhei is in paradise 

jumping around his room like an oversized bunny after you went home

don’t lie, you fell hard for him as well he’s just such a presence

emotionally, physically

a gentle but persistent giant

he’ll do anything to make your relationship happen once he knows you’re interested

if there’s someone meant to be a boyfriend it’s gotta be him come on

he will cave in after a while and admit he can’t just forget about you 

not gonna lie

your ex is gonna be shaking in his ratty boots

his poor eyes will literally jop from their unexpecting sockets

when he sees lucas hanging out with you

with his shining blonde hair and tall stature, that perfect shapely body, with great fashion on top of that

looking like your guardian angel

man, xuxi really does

pulling you out of your slump that’s been going on for months

and bringing back smiles and a good time he knows how to do that best

and big big hugs of course

you can imagine how soothing and grounded it feels with such huge arms around you

he will make sure that feeling is always there when you need it

because you deserve that treatment

which means he will come over very very often

yeah get ready for how yukhei is a lot more driven than you think just dial and he will be there

underneath the meme surface is someone very determined who really really wants you

yukhei is chaotic good incarnate but in that area he isn’t messing around

his brain is like: “gotta be with her”

on repeat

he must call you, he literally can’t sleep without tying loose ends together as quickly as possible

no second wasted with this guy, even far down the relationship timeline

i really pity your ex 

i mean someone dating any superm member would drive their former partner completely nuts 

but lucas is a special case

he has that kind of look and aura that makes other guys dig themselves into the ground like wiggling worms or cope by fanboying over him

i don’t wanna make this sound like a competition and yet — congrats on your noodly blondie boyfriend alright

⌈ mark

— motto: two nerds in love.

how to explain this. mark is a perfect balance of a lover, a talker, and a shy bean

with a tendency toward bean

and flicking the bean

you know

cutting right to the chase are we

mark is very invested in pleasing you as good as he can

and defeating his awkwardness

because if we know one thing it’s that he always strives to become better and better like he can’t help it

and isn’t afraid of almost biting off more than he can chew

how many subunits is he part of at this point is it gonna be nct hollywood as well god dangit

back to the point mark doesn’t treat relationships and sex as something static which is a good and rare thing

he does his best and always looks for room to improve

while being very nervous, very bilingual, it takes two languages or more to express what he thinks about you let that sink in

that’s very shaky first date sex while being extremely in love with each other

lucky you

and an afterglow where he plays the guitar for you

that’s so nice 

he can play it while laying down and shit

while singing

not rapping, actual full-fledged serenading

we’ve heard how that sounds in the relay cam

are you dating some kind of teenage heartthrob or something huh

mark will make it very clear he’ll stick around, this bad bitch is here to stay

or actually, he’s a good bitch, don’t misunderstand

mark doesn’t have a lot of edgy in him unless rap is concerned

he’s the kinda guy to get lost in IKEA with 

having a good time 

as often as his schedule permits

you really have to make use of your time together 

this man might as well the busiest idol out there

and you are no different because birds of a feather

you’re both mr. and ms. independent 

out and about very often

so meeting up becomes something special during comeback season

or wait mark always has a comeback going on

which is a double-edged sword but something you both know you signed up for 

which is why you spend a lot of time around NCT dream, 127, and SuperM 

sm’s publicity agents have to work extra hard i’m telling you

a dating rumor is the last thing both of you would need

since you befriend several members you gotta stay on the low as well

but hey the rage of jealous people of the public is nothing compared to the force of nature that is yuta nakamoto

who seriously thinks himself threatened and robbed

in case you are feeling possessive as well...

...you might have to fistfight yuta

to be able to be with mark

who is basically property of osaka at this point

yuta is a scorpio that’s just the way it is

unlike taeyong who wishes his rap buddy the best, yuta kinda wants to be mark’s wingman and see him date, live his best life

but also have mark for himself to fawn over and to adore, to be fascinated by

we get it yuta. bisexual struggles. very understandable

you have to promise in person that mark doesn’t forget about the holy gaming nights with yuta 

which is hilarious since that’s not up to you but mark’s memory

bestie, yuta uses everyone as a scapegoat don’t sweat it too much

regardless you put a weekly reminder on the fridge

so the roaring lion yuta would be pacified

he doesn’t want to lose his sweetheart can you blame him

the ultimate but also most risky solution is obviously inviting yuta for movies 

which will be appreciated but also cause a storm

mark will definitely break a sweat when you start a popcorn war or try to prove who hugs mark the best 

caught in the middle of mayhem is mark lee’s specialty what did you expect

this either ends with murder or a chaotic open relationship down the line

yuta really is attached but who wouldn’t be

it could be worse mark has double the love you know 

⌈ baekhyun

— motto: you wanna know why i’m your candy?

baby tell me are you ridin’?

in fair verona where we lay our scene...

that baekhyun always wants to woo you — his way, which proves to be very interesting to say the least — is never hard to miss

putting in effort is mochi default mode 

no matter what stage of the relationship you’re in

he might as well regularly serenade you under your balcony in the backyard just because

probably singing ‘baby we can stay up’ and wiggling his ass in all directions because he’s a dirty boy gone wild

yeah. nowadays romeo is twerking instead of feuding with tybalt

that’s good for him and everyone involved

you in particular because you get some very racy eye candy

you know how baekhyun is

at least nobody’s around seeing him put on an 18+ show like that

your little guy is one unhinged fella

if it starts pouring he will grind up and down the next lantern and belt out ‘singing in the rain’

you bet he can do some actual pole dance

he’s strong and bendy you know

and loves to gyrate his whole bag of bones like... he wants to hit you with all the body rolls

in the rain

what a freaky man

but hey you wanna stay up for sure 

doesn’t take long until you beckon him to come upstairs

where the only way to alleviate him of his wet clothes—

oh well he has those roger rabbit vibes and you can’t be mad at it

he will play off all his hormonal antics

baekhyun is hilarious

and so perverted, he can keep up with your spicy idea of playing patty-cake don’t worry

how do i know you’re an extra nsfw kinda person?

who else would like baekhyun

he says juicy things all the time

and does juicy things

yes. finally a couple on eye level indeed. 

when baekhyun asks are you ridin’ you ask how hard 

bruh

this is gonna be fun

and remember

beside handing you sacks of money

his priority is always to make you smile

i’m kidding about the bags but

baekhyun is so rich it’ll show in your relationship, but he’s more about the interactions with you rather than the lifestyle

baekhyun didn’t hustle for a bentley he hustled to sing and get out of sm alive alright

financial stability: important

luxury: very nice to have, he can make you the presents you want to have and travel a lot together

but smiles: baekhyun priority

because he so badly wants to know you love him and adore him, he sometimes feels so insecure

of course you do

you always reassure him with your reactions

it’s very important to him don’t underestimate it

baekhyun has always been talking about his ideal type in terms of how he can cheer her up

so even the naughtiest sexy time evenings are gonna be filled with all giggles

anyway other than that your pussy will be dripping

because this guy is as horny as all other members of super m combined

and you have your ways of leaving him tongue-tied and wrists-tied

taemin’s impact

superm isn’t short of bondage supplies we all know that

so yeah. shibari baekhyun is gonna happen

since he does pilates imagine what kinda shapes you can bend this lil guy into

and take some pictures

privé is in trouble 

bondage model baekhyun is bursting onto the scene

you might even run a risque blog that features cropped pictures with him

heh — you think people will recognize him by his body?

nope

first: you only upload HD pictures that aren’t whitewashed

baekhyun is basically never photographed like that

second: who expects baekhyun to be featured on a bdsm blog with his girlfriend

and this is the guy that drives you around in his expensive car with his big black shades on 

well what can i say

nothing is the way it seems

⌈ taemin

— motto: i’ll unfold a whole new world for you.

taemin is cocky, he’s sensual, and: a very smiley person as we know

least boring relationship ever

he will prance toward you whenever he can to involve you in cuddles

touch-starved taemin is a thing

kkoong can tell you about it, he needs kisses and embraces so often

might as well pepper him with it no problem

and put him into your oversized sweaters when he eats ice cream on the sofa, watching movies, and you brush his ever-growing hair

he’s smol he’s gonna fit into them don’t worry

and on the other hand he likes a rough and tough girl who thinks of him like a boy toy

who acts tsundere or like his bodyguard

working out almost daily to the point of sweat all over

a gal probably able to pretzel minho lucas and chanyeol into one giant bundle

taemin truly has the taste of a divo

multi-layered as always

so you couldn’t say the relationship is always the same in sentiment, the vibe of the dynamic could be different every day

we love a complex man

what would be volatile to others is actually an advantage up close

because taemin understands every difficult facet of himself and his partner 

even if those facets might be contradictory

or something that’s felt shameful about

he will accept and listen anyway

the same goes for getting what drives you

taemin is like a walking psychology velvet couch with fancy swirls as arm rests

point is he isn’t fooled by the surface of the world

he knows what has to be known

which also means your looks aren’t the part he prioritizes

and not even outward personality and habit is what he’s drawn to

it’s the mentality and values underneath

that’s true compatibility to him and he can feel it

he’s really really smart

and also finds it important that you get along with shinee and superm, that you think they’re nice to be around and vice versa

especially kai as taemin’s absolute bearly bestie. if kai thinks you’re shady and you don’t like kai either

or if you’re permanently super awkward and taemin’s moodmaking doesn’t help

we have a problem

but fair enough

kai and taemin are basically one soul at this point so if taemin likes you jongin does anyway 

bff telepathy

in fact jongin was probably the one introducing you to taemin lmao!

because he knows you go well together instinctively and he is correct

so not to worry then

and it’s good on taemin to think longterm and not see you as a person outside of social interaction y’know

cough cough he thinks about marriage, you might be ms. lee one day

here he goes again taemin is just very mature seeing you as well-rounded in every aspect of life

without letting his dick make the important decisions at the detriment of making this a relationship of two lives not just two bodies only

but obviously don’t assume taemin is no horny devil. we all know he dreams of the freakiest scenarios and fantasies in this whole group

going kinda crazy about the thought of making you cum which he always wants to try with new methods

which occupies his mind more than a big bowl of super spicy noodles which is taemin’s favorite meal so

at the same time taemin junior is definitely the same clingy attention whore as his sparkly owner

limp wrists from all the handjobs on your side

and very swollen lips from giving all that head on his side

this is gonna be interesting

he puts the 6v6 in 69

equals 69v69 am i right

but i’m serious that’s gonna be a lot of oral action

you definitely ask each other about having sex very often, daily if you have the time and find a nice spot

and how on earth do both of you keep your hands off each other sleeping in one bed

taemin is touchy as hell with no shyness, and you squish squeeze and grope this guy like the mochi he is

ah when things go both ways

© submissive-bangtan 2017-2021. all rights reserved. do not repost or translate. all depictions fictional.

[goodlucktai]

(I feel like I should finish your prompt first but. These ones are so good....feel free to ignore if you have too many asks but 29 or 33 with chocobros...?

PROMPTS LIST

33. “Are you SURE I can’t punch him in the face?” “Yes.” “What if I just break his nose a little?”

ik i just did this one for natsuyuu but...........chocobros

x

They're somewhere in Duscae, near enough to the coast that each breeze carries a hint of the sea, on another errand for another stranger to scrape together enough gil to eat tonight.

They've stopped at the last little roadside cluster of shops before the countryside stretches far and wide and wild, stocking up on what meager supplies they can afford.

Noctis has never lived this way before. He's never gone to bed hungry before. Neither has Gladio or Ignis, for all their world-weariness and the general practical knowledge and common sense they walk around with that far surpasses Noctis' own.

Ignis can budget with the best of them, and Gladio is willing to eat literally anything at any time, but Prompto is the one who gets it.

He chats at length about all the times he's had to get creative with pasta or rice because it was all that was left in his pantry. Back in high school, when he could only work part-time. When someone should have been taking care of him, and instead he was left to figure out how to stretch a tiny budget much farther than made sense.

"Come on, Iggy," he said once when they were out shopping, half-laughing. Like he thought Ignis was joking. "Fresh produce? We've got like a hundred gil between the four of us and we're totally out of restoratives."

And Ignis paused, and glanced sidelong at him. He put back the crisp, flowery vegetables and pulled out his little notebook and asked for suggestions instead. It took Prompto a few minutes to convince himsef that Ignis was taking him seriously, but now they like, bond over canned fruit.

"I'm gonna kill this catoblepas with my bare hands," Gladio says with feeling, leaning against the car. "I'm so godsdamned sick of pasta. Don't tell Iggy I said that."

Noctis rolls an energy drink between his hands absently, brow furrowed. It's tricky business, and he's not very good at it just yet, but home-made elixirs save them a ton of gil. He feels guilty when they have to spend their money on something he should be able to do himself.

"I'm telling him," he says without missing a beat. "He'll never forget, and he'll give you shit every single time you make cup noodles from now on, forever."

"I can't stand you," Gladio tells him seriously.

The bell above the door of the convenience store rings brightly, and Noctis glances up to see Ignis and Prompto walking out looking a lot more cheerful than they did going in.

Gladio's face does something very subtle and specific when he sees them, there and gone in a second, before Noctis can pin it down and figure it out.

"What are you two chucklefucks up to?" he calls over. Ignis immediately narrows a disapproving stare at him, but Prompto beams.

"I got a commission, sort of!" he says.

"A commission?" Noctis parrots, sending the energy drink back to the Armiger.

"Sort of?" Gladio adds.

"While we were checking out, the store-owner saw my camera, and seemed really into it," Prompto says. "Since, you know. It's unique."

Noctis does know. The digital camera hanging at Prompto's side has been with him since Noctis first bought it for him three years ago. He would rebuild it every so often, bowed over a collection of impossibly tiny parts spread out carefully across a dish towel at the kitchen table in Noctis' apartment. To call it unique is a bit of an understatement.

Gladio frowns, sensing where this is going a split-second before Noctis does. "And?"

"And he offered me money for it! Like, more than it's worth probably. A lot more."

"I don't see how that could be possible," Ignis says smoothly, leaning through the open window of the Regalia to put the shopping bag in the backseat. "Since your camera is clearly priceless. Which is what I explained to the man."

Noctis relaxes, glad that Ignis and Prompto have bonded over shopping to the point that neither of them want to do it unless they can go together-- because if Prompto had been in there by himself, he 100% would have sold his camera. He would have hated to do it, but he would have done it. It's like he thinks he owes his friends something just for letting him exist.

"Good looking out, Specs," Gladio says gruffly. Prompto waffles a bit, looking torn between pleased and embarrassed. Noctis decides to rescue him.

"What commission, though?" he asks.

"Oh, right. Well, he was kind of bummed about the camera, but he asked if he could see some of my photos, and Ignis said we had time-- "

If it were literally anyone else, Noctis thinks, up to and including and especially the Actual Crown Prince, Ignis would have said they were in a hurry and not to show off.

"--and he seemed really impressed! With the photos! I told him we were going to take down a catoblepas, and he asked why, and I said for some cash, I mean, clearly," Prompto adds, gesturing at the four of them and their general road grime. "So he, ah-- well he's never seen a catoblepas up close before, and he said if I could get some good pictures of it, he'd pay me for them. He gave me a figure, and it's, like, better than some of the jobs I've done for Vyv."

He's delighted, clearly. He likes feeling like he's pulling his own weight. Noctis is always so relieved when Vyv calls, not because of the inherent payday, but more because it puts this light in Prompto's eyes that Noctis would easily climb a hundred volcanic mountains for.

"Damn, Prompto, at this rate you'll have funded our whole trip," Gladio says. He doesn't ruffle his hair anymore, because Prompto actually hates that, just sort of scrunches his fingers through it instead. Prompto doesn't hate that at all. It's adorable.

Sometimes in the early morning, when he and Noctis are the last to drag themselves out of the tiny camper, they'll do their affirmations together:

"Gotta be our best today," Noctis will say, and Prompto will put on this absurdly determined expression, bed hair hanging into his eyes and cheek still creased pink from the pillow.

"Gotta get those hair scrunches," he'll reply gravely.

"What else did he say, Prompto?" Ignis says in a pleasant tone of voice that Noctis hasn't trusted since he was seven years old.

"Um! Nothing. Nothing worth repeating, anyway, you know." He is looking completely away from them now, an avoidance tactic if Noctis has ever seen one. "Woah, is that really the time? We better get going if we wanna catch that cow before it gets dark!"

He turns toward the car and runs into Gladio's arm instead.

"He suggested that Prompto's talents would be put to better use in different company," Ignis says, his voice carrying clearly over Prompto's whine of 'nooo, Iggy, let it go.' "He said that if Prompto ever got tired of our lifestyle, his door would be open."

Ah, Noctis thinks, followed by, ouch?

"Oh, fuck that guy," Gladio blurts. "Let me go talk to him."

"No!" Prompto clings to his arm, throwing all his weight into keeping Gladio in place. The Shield, who could bench Prom's entire body weight in one hand, lets himself be detained anyway and pretends to be annoyed about it. "Ignis, why are you causing trouble right now?" Prompto says frantically.

"Transparency is important in a relationship," Ignis replies.

"There's transparency and then there's causing trouble. Noct, tell them."

"I think Gladio should go talk to him," Noctis says immediately. But then Prompto looks betrayed, and it makes Noctis feel awful. "Ugh, okay. Okay. We're leaving. Ignis, Gladio, that's an executive order."

"Are you sure I can't punch him in the face?" Gladio grumbles.

"Am I-- yes, dude!" Prompto half-laughs nervously. "Very sure!"

"What if I just broke his nose a little?"

"Then that would be treason, I guess, cause Noct just said no."

It's with the standard amount of bickering and noise that they climb into the car, the top rolling up over their heads as it starts to drizzle. Ignis pulls smoothly back onto the cracked asphalt road and reaches over to turn the radio on; a peace offering. From the backseat, Noctis can see the corner of Prompto's smile, framed by a flyaway piece of yellow hair.

They live this way now, but they didn't always. Noctis used to have the run of the whole Citadel, had his own penthouse apartment, grew up dodging banquets and lavish dinners. It's not like he likes sleeping on the ground and having nothing to eat. It's not like he chose to lose his home.

But it could be worse. It's not a bad way to live, just Noctis and the people he loves best and these countless hours together. There's a lot of hard work and sometimes he goes to bed hungry but he knows he'll remember these days forever. He knows he'll miss them.

"Hey," he says, over the quiet sound of rain on the windows and the catchy synth-pop crooning out of the speakers. "Don't ever sell your camera, okay?"

Prompto says, "I mean, I wouldn't ever want to."

"Seriously," Noctis presses. He doesn't want to let it go. It feels important. "Your pictures are-- they mean the world to me, Prom. I can't even tell you."

His friend looks bewildered. He's half-turned in his seat, and his eyes stray to Gladio, then jump to Ignis, then settle back on Noctis. Whatever he's looking for, he seems to find it, because he smiles.

"Okay, weirdo," he says, "one fully-documented roadtrip, coming up. I won't leave anything out."

Noctis is counting on it.

[rottenwoodandwiltedsunflowers]

Waffle Recap 8/6 Late

Guys! Guys! This was 1000% the most BANANAS show I have ever seen in 9 years. I have seen a show or two but this was a delightful night of total fuckery. We all had no idea what we would be witnessing this show.

Started off as a standard show. Went to the ballroom and was delighted to see Ruth Howard as Sexy witch. She is, IMO, one of the best residents currently in the hotel. She is a great dancer and actor which is less common. All the residents that pass through the McKittrick are arguably talented but there are a lot who are great dancers but less great with the acting and vice versa. I feel like I catch her Agnes a lot but not so much her Sexy witch. I also haven't looped a sexy witch in awhile so I immediately honed in on it. 

I apparently honed in too far because I failed to notice that the ballroom was missing an important resident. I followed her and Boy witch (Nate) un the stairs and they were in full on fun mode. When they got to the lobby desk Boy witch leaned over the counter and whispered to Porter before taking the Banquo letter, turning to the audience, and tossing it over his shoulder in a blasé way. WHAT?!?! Let the games begin! Nate ran over after Sexy in a playful way and they proceeded to do the Banquo/Sexy couch dance. It was shocking and fun. A total departing from the normal tone of the scene with Sexy laughing at lifts and Boy flirting around area. I’m sure if it was your first show you wouldn't be the wiser. They then both joyfully darted over to the phone booths to torment Porter. 

Ruth peeled off and as we hit the 4th floor she did a sudden about face to stare at me and smirk before continuing on. She chose someone else for the 1:1 so I watched Agnes for a few minutes. I love the Sexy bar top solo in the rep bar. It is such a good example of the power of dance to convey emotional moments and a narrative that is open to interpretation. A verbal story gives you the narrative but a contemporary dance number can give the audience so much more. Sexy witch has just come off of the rave scene which is overwhelming, high energy, and loud. It’s intentionally designed to overstimulate. Then the character is immediately launched into this beautiful, intense in a quiet way, dance. Sexy witch switched from loud and bold to heartbreakingly venerable. The imagery that the show manages to invoke with drowning and Sexy witches struggle to literally stay afloat as Hecate isolates her from her fellow witches. Ruth pulled off one of the best hair flips I’ve seen in awhile splashing many audience members in the front. 

Sidenote: When I see that hair flip post-Covid (and frankly lots of other moments in the show) I can't help but think of things I’ve seen in previous years that are 100% not Covid safe. It was a running joke before the pandemic that the building was a zest pool of germs. Now I think back to how those things may never fly again in this new post-pandemic reality. The hair flip often makes me think of how Leslie Kraus would spit water across the audience instead of a hair flip. It was perfect (in an absolutely gross way)! 

When Ruth crawled over and grabbed my hand from the floor it was heartbreaking. Then, of course, Hecate swoops in to snatch her away and set her straight. Ugh.

We headed down to the banquet which I honestly tend to skip even if I’m looping nowadays. I was very interested to see if a Banquo would be appearing so I headed down. Once we got there I realized there was no chair for Banquo. I figured out at this point that there was probably no Banquo coming. I actually saw all three ballrooms that night and each was slightly different because it was clear that there was a lot of improving going on. During the third ballroom Lady Macbeth slowly rose up and toasted Macbeth at the moment where Banquo usually does. 

I watched the trees move. It was slightly smaller forrest. Then I followed the witched up for reset. I always and forever feel awkward as hell watching that scene. I try to be vigilant of blocking other people when watching scenes and there is no good place to stand to not block views for this scene. I stood past the doorway then awkwardly craned my neck to look in. Ruth made eye contact with me as she fixed her hair and reapplied her lipstick then stepped out of the room and grabbed my face to kiss my mask. 

To add to the absolute chaos of the show, Layne was on as Speakeasy. I was hoping to catch this. They were great but it meant that there were defiantly changes to the choreography. I loved the energy of the Sexy duet but much of the choreography was altered to adjust for the massive amount of lifts that are usually in the dance. I really liked the quiet confidence that Layne exuded during the back and forth though. Very hopeful and a bit cocky only to be disappointed. 

After being looked over for the first Sexy 1:1 I decided to keep following and see what happened the second time around. Most of the dances I love most are in the beginning of the loop any who.It came time for the 1:1 and there were a few super pushy audience members. When I’m really into following I try to keep up but I am far too old to be engaging in a game of push and shove. I ended up behind a petite girl and a big bro dude who were being overly aggressive. Ruth unlocked the door, turned around, and reached through to two to grab my hand and pull me between and into the room. I don’t take it too personally when I’m passed over for a 1:1 but there is a level of vindication when a resident chooses me (or anyone else for that matter) over pushy and poorly behaved jerks. I felt a bit smug. Don’t push people out of the way.

I made my way to the Banquo murder second time simply because I wanted to see what would happen. When I got there the card game was going to start. Layne surprisingly stepped in to replace Banquo. I was very impressed they knew the rules. (Yes, there are actual rules) It was another wild moment to watch. Jeff’s Macbeth arrived and I was still standing toward the end of the speakeasy bar near the wall. The space was packed with white masks as he arrived. No one had made any attempt to move the audience toward the ledges. I can only assume the black masks were also doing their best considering the circumstances. He ended up between the card table and the pool table and started having a total breakdown. I am talking throwing himself around, on the floor, blood everywhere, wood chips flying through the air, yelling breakdown. It was a real choice. At one point Layne started to try to move the audience toward the usual wall but it was a useless endeavor. Valiant effort given though. I started to move but most people didn’t and I actually ended up closer to Macbeth so I retreated back to my original spot for slight fear of bodily harm. Some girl (by no fault of her own) almost got horse kicked in the face when Macbeth started bending over and kicking his feet in the air. There was very little breathing room but everyone was making it work.

After that I wondered around a bit. I watched the second ballroom because no Banquo and went to the 5th floor for a bit. I am so happy they finally opened the padded cell again! If they aren’t going to keep the new and amazing material then at least give us the set space back. I did notice that they replaced the door so there is no peep hole anymore which is sad. I was delighted to find Camara in the hut. It was my first Matron 1:1 since re-open and it felt wonderful. I appreciate the nuanced details of her character and that she leaves the window and door open for much of the time. I like the new picture of a nurse on the cutout page beside the desk. Found it right away. I also like all the LMB’s carved into the papers hung up. The next day I realized it’s Joy’s nurse that brings them to her.

Other fun moments that happened include Joy’s bald witch basically giving up in the third ballroom. I can not blame her one bit. No Banquo means A LOT of improving for a bald witch. During one ballroom she saddled up to a white mask like they we attending the party and whispered something before pointing up at Macbeth on the mezzanine. Third ballroom she legit hopped up on the edge of the banquet table, crossed her legs, and just watched the scene play out. After the third ballroom, the Porter had laid out 3 shot glasses with the 3 Banquo letters and when Boy and Sexy arrived they all toasted and tossed the letters. Malcolm and Macduff carried Duncan down to the crypt without a third person. 

I finished the night with Kelly Todd’s Danvers. She handed me the weirdest thing I've ever been handed and I was so very confused until a friend filled me in on the backstory for the item. It will now forever reside in my trinket cabinet. It was a wild night complete with a Macbeth strangulation finale. What a sight watching Macduff and Malcom hold down Macbeth on the stage and choke him out. No Banquo=No hanging. I had a blast and super kudos to the cast for having a real make it work moment!

[newtonsheffield]

Okay so I adore Anthony being the absolute most with the breakfasts in bed and the general "I'm going to make your standards for men impossibly high" energy but does Kate ever give him flowers for no reason or something cute like that? ALSO I LOVE THE BRIDGERTON AND SONS MCU SO MUCH OMG!!! thank you for writing it 😊😊😊

Hello! Hello! 

I am gonna do one post here before i knuckle down to finish this week’s chapter because I have done basically nothing all week! I promise tomorrow will be better! 

Ahhhh The Bridgerton and Sons Cinematic Universe. What a beautiful disaster of a unicorn tbh. It is truly, my Frankenstein’s Monster at this point. Perhaps it will also drown me on an iceberg in the Arctic post pandemic, who can say? 

Anyway! Anthony is truly a little sweetheart isn’t he? Huge THAT’S MY WIFE energy coming off the boy and we love to see it. But tbh, Kate has huge LOOK AT THIS MAN! HE MARRIED ME energy too

Anthony had always thought that sharing his life with someone would be uncomfortable, awkward, stilted in a way. That he’d have to give up too many parts of himself to make the companionship worth the struggle. And really, given everything he’d known about Kate before they’d been in a relationship, he had expected it to be a little more of a struggle. But as Anthony soon found out, Kate Sheffield had marched in, swept everything off the desk that was his neatly ordered life, and went about neatly putting everything back in place, new and different, but so so much better. And even if it would be a struggle, an endless battle of wills, Anthony would fight everyday. But as it turned out, he never had too. 

The very first time she’d done it, the hadn’t been very far into their relationship at all, he’d finally gotten out of a very long meeting that had run right through lunch only to enter his office and find lunch neatly laid out on his desk, a little note in Kate’s loopy handwriting next too it. And while his heart had beat an erratic rhythm in his chest, he hadn’t thought it would continue. He’d seen it as a one off. But now, every time he didn’t emerge to eat, every time he worked late, he’d find a plate of food on his desk. A sandwich, some sushi, a bowl of pasta, even once a stack of waffles. A hand written note beside it, her handwriting sprawled across the page, and even though the note was almost always a little witticism, the Love, Kate seemed stuck in his mind. Love, Kate Love, Kate Love, Kate. Like a mantra echoing in his brain, her way of looking after him. He’d asked her about it once, when they went home, his arm wrapped around her waist in the elevator Why do you leave me lunch? Greg will get me something, it’s kinda his job. He’d said, nudging her lightly, his tone teasing. And she’d looked at him so seriously, her eyes burning into his for a split second as she said Someone has to take care of you, Anthony. And as quickly as it had come, her seriousness was gone. Besides, what if all of that muscle faded away? How would you ever carry me up the stairs then? 

Anthony honestly had no idea why Kate had been so embarrassed when she’d slip the box across the counter to him on Valentines day, her eyes darting around as he opened it curiously. And then his heart nearly stopped. Right there on a tiny cushion was a set of intricate gold cufflinks, their initials engraved AEB KGS one set on each. A permanent reminder of them together. He’d looked up at her, trying to push back the tears stinging at his eyes and she was looking at him so carefully, her bottom lip caught in her teeth. I noticed that one of your cufflinks broke last week and I know you were looking for a new set and... never mind it’s stupid I’ll just get you something else instead She’d stuttered out her hands reaching out to take the box back from him, barely holding eye contact. And finally he’d found his voice, tutting softly as he swatted her hands away It’s rude to take back a gift Sheffield. Didn’t Mary teach you that? And the next morning as he’d gotten ready for work, he’d slid his new cufflinks through the buttonhole feeling an odd sense of Pride as Kate watched him carefully, her fingers running over them as she stepped in to do his tie, like she always did a soft smile on her face. You’re wearing them. She’d said gently disbelief colouring her voice a little and he’d felt his heart clench all over again mmmm Thought I’d try wearing my heart on my sleeve. See what all the fuss was about.  And the smile she’d given him stole his breath from his body.

By the time they’d moved in together Kate’s little signs of affection were nearly constant. His pen had run out of ink during a meeting and she’d held her own out instinctively, not even looking at him, and he’d returned after his next meeting to find his pen refilled, ready to use. He came home and found a plate of muffins on the kitchen counter. She left him little notes on the mirror when she had to leave early. A constant shower of Love, Kate. And Anthony craved it. He’d walked into the small office he kept at home one day and something had seemed different. He’d glanced around and noticed the small plant sitting on his desk. Kate! He’d called out, hearing his girlfriend’s step in the hallway What’s this? He’d said as she poked her head in the doorway. Her brow furrowing in confusion. It’s a fern. She said slowly, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. Have you never seen a fern before? Anthony rolled his eyes. I know what a fern is Kate, what’s it doing in here? And she shrugged, a smile coming to her face, Just saw it and thought of you. And she walked away leaving him feeling a little gobsmacked. It was only when he sat down at the desk that he noticed the pot had a tiny corgi painted on the side, and the words Love, Kate. 

[y0itsbri]

billiards, brilliance, & bad hats

svetlana always made a fuss when ian was home at the milkovich house, at least at first. orange boy not good for baby or some bullshit that mickey tuned out most of the time. whatever. fine. he would just take ian out, then.

they spent a lot of time at the alibi, both before and after the whole big ol' 'mo fiasco of a confession. but lately, instead of just downing discounted drinks and grilled cheeses from kev, they took up residence at the pool table.

mickey had grown up playing with his brothers and terry, a game of skill, constantly proving his competency, proving his masculinity. but with ian, it was different.

"hey, mick, how do you hold the stick, again? like this?"

"'ey dumbass, are ya jerking it or actually wanting to hit the cue?"

"mmm, dunno yet, haven't decided," he winked.

"fuckin' idiot." and ian would grin like a dork, eyes fucking twinkling and everything. ian was a goofy shit that made him blush way too often under the dim lights of the shittiest bar on the southside. with ian, it was fun.

between shifts at the waffle cottage, mandy would stop by the alibi sometimes to visit with her favorite ex and favorite brother -- though being the favorite of either of those didn't set standards very high.

sometimes she'd try to put her stupid squirrel hat on mickey, so he learned when to bolt around the table to avoid her gross ass hat. ian didn't care one bit, though. he would leave it on for entire games sometimes, despite the teasing.

"you look really fuckin' stupid in that hat, man."

"hey! i love this stupid hat! what if you really hurt my feelings, mick? wouldn't you feel bad?"

"no, i wouldn't feel bad, because you still look fuckin' ridiculous." mickey would roll his eyes and ian would grin like mickey had professed his love in a shakespearean manner, though it really wasn't that different -- star-crossed lovers and all that shit.

sometimes, their moon-eyed stares and too-many touches became too much for mandy. she was happy for them and all, but shit, she wished she had something like that. she didn't deserve what she had, the cards she'd been dealt, and she knew it. but what could she do? mandy would lean over the bar, refilling her own beer while kev looked the other way with a wink.

"they're something, huh?" kev mused, eyeing the boys giggling as ian oh so badly missed his shot. mandy wasn't sure if he was talking more to her or himself.

"yeah, fuckin' numbnuts over there stole my boyfriend." she only partially joked, waiting for the day when someone would look at her like the way ian looked at her idiot brother.

kev knowingly looked at her again, "hey mandy, you can pull anyone you want, do anything you want, ya know? don't limit yourself in this shitty town."

"yeah?" she'd been thinking about it for awhile, escaping. this would have felt like a sign or something if kevin wasn't also an idiot. he could be kind, but he didn't know her life.

"yeah, or, of course, i could set you up with paulie back there," kevin kidded, nodding his head off to the corner where an old drunk had passed out.

"thanks, no thanks," she faked a smile as she swiped her beer off the counter and returned to the pool table where the boys were now wrestling over the one stick they decided to share, "hey, sluts, wanna get some pizza after this?"

shit was far from perfect, for any of them, but they had these moments together when things felt okay -- even for just for now.

[13-reasons-ideas]

So I have this idea, You know how people want/like things they can’t have, MontyxOC have always had this friendship that bordered on something more but it never got there. She gets a boyfriend, Monty starts avoiding her majorly & their friendship crumbles until one night he shows up at her door & lays his cards out, they have a heated argument but then it turned into into something else quite heated😘 and as bad as it was that she cheated she doesn’t regret it, he’s all she’s ever wanted anyway

Why Didn’t You Say Anything? 

A/N: contains SMUT. DNI if under 18. 18+ ONLY. Trigger warning: rough CONSENSUAL sex. I hope you like this. I’m sorry it took WAY too long to get around to finishing but I was having a lot of issues finding inspiration for requests. I’ve found it again though so expect more to come. As always, I love feedback and much love. - Em

Montgomery and I had been friends since… well since forever. As long as I could remember anyway. He was a quiet kid. Kept to himself for the most part when we were younger. I wouldn’t come to find out why exactly that was until much later on in our friendship. We bonded over a love of the same candy. It sounds stupid thinking back on it now, but at the time we were just kids. We didn’t really know how to have interests yet.

Eventually, as we got older and we developed our things, we found that even though our interests didn’t really match the way people thought they should-I was a novice musician, he was on his way to being a star athlete- we bonded over our passion and drive for our respective things. He would come over to my house and watch me teach myself to play guitar, play piano, or sing. I would meet him in the park and play catch when he discovered a love of baseball. Or when we started middle school and he would try to teach me how to throw a football. That… never went very well. But he was pretty good at catching it regardless as it turned out, so it worked out in the end.

Our friendship started to change around middle school too. It wasn’t noticeable at first. He started spending more and more time at my place. By then I had learned what his father was like behind closed doors. That had been an interesting phone call to my mom to come get me. Our conversations became even longer and more personal. We talked about our hopes and dreams. Where we wanted to end up when we were finally adults. The running thing was that no matter what we wanted to be when we grew up that week, we were always staples in each other’s futures. I started to seek him out at lunch more. I felt this desire to be near him that I couldn’t explain. Or maybe I could, and I just didn’t want to, for fear of being rejected and losing my best friend.

In high school, when we made different friends and traveled in different circles, we were still best friends. We had always been basically inseparable. Montgomery and Juliette. Julie and Monty. Where you saw one of us, you usually found the other. I waited for him after football and baseball tryouts and my dad made waffles for dinner when he made the team. There was a seat basically reserved for me at games since freshman year. I only missed two games in three and a half years. Once when I had strep throat in sophomore year and once when my uncle died last year. Monty didn’t want to go to that week’s game. I told him if he didn’t, I would never play piano for him again. For his part, Monty sat through countless hours of me learning songs or listening to tons of voice memos while I was writing my own. He was at every one of my gigs, no matter how big or small. It didn’t matter if there was ten people or a hundred people, he was always there, sitting in the first or second row. Even Bryce Walker couldn’t come between us.

I couldn’t help but feel like there was something more than friendship between us. I was still too afraid of rejection to say anything and he never said anything either. Other people had always made comments about our friendship and how close we were. But we both just laughed it off and attributed it to people not understanding that guys and girls could just be friends. When we were in junior year and it became clear to me that the feelings I had ignored and buried for so long, weren’t reciprocated, I decided it was time to move on. There was no point in pining after someone who didn’t want me back. And as luck would have it, the perfect person to get my mind off of my best friend had just moved to town and was assigned as my chemistry lab partner.

Parker Johnston was an average height, thin but lean, young man from Ohio. He had shaggy blond hair and cobalt blue eyes. He came from a stable, well off family, but he wasn’t a show-off about it. His parents were mortgage brokers who wanted to work in, but not live in the city. Essentially, he was everything Montgomery de la Cruz… wasn’t. He did still like sports though. They have that to bond over. I thought after my first conversation with him after chemistry. I invited him to have lunch with us. The guys on the football team liked him. Even Monty was nice to him. Though, at that point, none of us knew what would become of Parker and I hanging out.

**

“I don’t know Monty. We are just going for burgers at Rosie’s. It’s not like I’m going to marry the guy.” I was on the phone with Monty while I got ready for my first date with Parker. We had been hanging out as friends for seven months or so. Over the summer, we had connected more and found we had more than just a mutual dislike of our chemistry teacher in common.

“Well, what do you think will happen?”

“On our date? Or are you asking if I’ve thought far enough ahead to actually consider if we are getting married? Because I haven’t thought further ahead than my math test next Friday.”

“On your date.”

“I think I will have my usual cheeseburger with pink lemonade, and we will talk. Maybe split a milkshake for dessert. Green or grey shirt?”

“Is it the green with polka dots?”

“No, the plain army green one.”

“Grey. The green one gives you too much cleavage. A cheeseburger and lemonade? That’s it?”  

“He’s seen me in the green one before, and no it doesn’t, but whatever. Yes Monty. That’s it. Why do you care so much, anyway?”

“I don’t. Just want to know what you’re planning. Make sure you’re safe.” I rolled my eyes.

“Well, I appreciate your concern.”

“Anytime. Are you coming to the game on Friday? It’s our second home game. First game of October. You know how you love fall games.”

“Of course, I’m coming. It’s not like I have a choice anymore, you guys are stuck with me.” I joked.

“Haha very funny Julie.”

“I try. Hey, listen. I gotta go. Parker will be here soon. I’ll call you when I get home.”

Our first date was going great. We had been to Rosie’s before together, but it was different now that we were on a date. We were there for hours, just sitting and talking to each other. Monty texted me around eight, just to check in. You still out or do I need to call the cops?

I’m still here. All good. He left me on read. I assumed it was because I was still out. “Everything okay?” Parker asked when he got back from the bathroom.

“Oh, yeah. Just Monty checking in.”

“Fair, fair. I guess that’s my cue to take you home for the night?”

“I suppose so.” Even though we had verbalized the need to leave, neither of us moved to leave.

“One more order of fries?”

“Yes.” After our last order, Parker drove me home and I called Monty to spill all the details as I got ready for bed.

The following Friday, Parker and I went to the game together. It was the first time we were going together just the two of us, and not with a group of friends.  As far as high school football games go, this one was pretty standard. We held hands through most of it. Bryce’s parents were out of town again, so he was having a “we lost but I have money so let’s all get wasted” party. “I’ll meet you in the parking lot? Or did you want to just meet at Bryce’s place? I have to go talk to Monty.”

“We can meet at his place if you want.” He looked confused.

“It’s tradition. I always wait for him. I have since freshman year.”

“Oh, okay then. I’ll see you at Bryce’s place Jules.” He kissed me. I smiled into it before pulling away. I watched him turn and walk down the bleacher steps and turn towards the parking lot before running off to find Monty.

I spotted him talking to Luke and Scott. His back was turned to me. They saw me coming but didn’t react. They know me so well now. They know exactly what is coming. I smiled playfully before wrapping my arms around Monty’s waist tightly. He laughed and pried my hands off of him, before turning around and lifting me up in a hug. I didn’t even complain about the sweat. “You know that doesn’t surprise me anymore Julie.”

“I know. But it’s fun.” He was still holding me. “Are you going to like… put me down at some point?”

He turned back around to face Luke and Scott. They were shaking their heads, grinning. “Nah.” He decided.

“Well. I don’t need to see inside the boy’s locker room so you put me down outside.”

“What, you mean you don’t want to see a whole lot of Brycey’s pasty white ass?” Luke teased.

“No. No I do not. Every day I don’t see that is a good day for me. And since you are hell bent on carrying me, can I at least be comfortable? My legs are just dangling here.” Monty stopped walking so I could wrap my legs around his waist like a backwards piggyback ride. His hands went under my thighs to support my weight.

Thankfully, he put me down outside the boy’s locker room. I played around on my phone while I waited for him. “You know, I smell like sweat now.” I said when he came out, freshly showered and changed. He shook his head and smirked.

“I don’t see that as a bad thing.”

“Dude. I smell like your sweat.” He rolled his eyes and stopped to dig around in his bag. He pulled out one of my t-shirts. It was a little wrinkled but still presentable. I took it when he handed it to me. “Thank you. I’ve been looking for this. How long have you had it?”

“A while.” He shrugged. I ran into the girl’s room to change. I handed him my other shirt.

“Since it’s your sweat, you can wash it.”

“You know, you never used to complain about smelling like sweat after a game.”

“Well, I didn’t have a boyfriend who would care then.”

“Juliette, you didn’t have boyfriend period.”

“You say like you’ve had a girlfriend.”

“Oh, shut up.” He pushed me playfully.

“You know. How the hell did we get to our senior year of high school and neither one of us has actually dated anyone? Tyler Down has been on dates.”

“You’ve been on dates before.”

“Yeah. but it was never anything worth getting past the end of date three. And I wouldn’t call what happens in bedrooms or bathrooms at parties, dating. You’ve been on dates too.”

“I mean, sure. But they weren’t serious.” We had made it to the parking lot now. “I’ll see you at Bryce’s?”

“Yeah. I’m meeting Parker there.”

“Awesome.” I hugged him again before sprinting to my car.

The party was in full swing by the time I arrived. I had run to Walplex to grab a bottle of Advil on the way. Monty’s Jeep was parked out front and I spotted Parker’s Ram was parked up the road a little ways. I parked in an open spot and made my way past the people milling in the front. “Julie!” Bryce called, raising his beer in my direction.

“Bryce!”

“Hey Monty, your girl is here.”

“Not my girl Bryce.” Monty laughed as he handed me a drink.

“How many has he had already?” I whispered.

“Two.” I blinked slowly.

“So, is this Bryce in a good mood?”

“Yup.”

“Huh.”

“Hey Jules.” Parker snaked his arms around my waist and kissed my head. “Hey Monty.”

“Hey. Parker.”

“Oh, shit you’re right. She’s his girl now.”

“Fuck off Bryce.” I teased. Monty was looking at Parker and I with his brow furrowed. I mouthed later to him.

The three of us moved through the party easily. Monty and Parker talked about the game. I tuned them out. I was too busy watching them. It was nice to see my boyfriend and my best friend getting along so well. Maybe that was why I never dated much before. I was scared they wouldn’t get along. Soon enough, Scott pulled Parker away to chat. “Go ahead. I’m good here with Monty.”

“You sure?” I nodded, placing my hand on his arm.

“Just don’t steal him for too long Reed.” I kissed him on the cheek. Scott nodded. When they were out of earshot, Monty spoke.

“You didn’t tell him you hate being called Jules?”

“It’s cute when he does it.”

“Julie. I saw your face when he said it. Your eye twitched.”

“Muscle spasm.”

“Mhmm. Sure.” I caught Scott’s eye from across the room. He nodded slightly to me. I took that to mean I should hear what they were talking about.

“Oh, would you look at that. My cup is empty. Time for another drink. Refill?” I took his cup anyway and he followed me into the kitchen.

While I was refilling our cups, Monty’s with beer and mine with a Crown and Sprite, I listened in on their conversation. Monty tried to hide it but I knew he was listening too. We whispered nothings to each other to make it seem like we weren’t eavesdropping. “So what exactly is their relationship then?” Parker asked. He’s asking about me and Monty.

“They’ve been best friends for as long as anyone can remember. There isn’t anything more to it.”

“They seem to spend a lot of time together.”

“Like I said, they’re best friends. And I don’t think I’m the person you need to be having this discussion with.”

“You know them best. Do I need to be concerned?”

“What? No, of course not. Look. She’s never really dated anyone before. It’s always just been the two of them. You have been seeing Julie for a week officially. It’s going to take some time for that relationship to change. Just leave it alone for now. And Monty is a good guy. He’s an asshole. But he’s a good guy. If he wanted to make a move, he wouldn’t do it now. Not knowing that she is in a relationship. You really should talk to Julie about this though.”

“I will. I just wanted to get a little bit of insight from someone else first. Thanks man.”

“No problem.”

Parker did that guy handshake thing with Scott and started walking in our direction. My eyes widened. Monty just smirked and mouthed math test to me.

“Anyway, yeah. That math test was totally brutal.”

“I’m sure you did great.”

“I’m literally eighty percent sure I failed. Mind you, so is everyone else.”

“I have it on Monday so thanks for the heads up. Oh, hey Parker.”

“Hey guys. What’s on Monday?”

“Math test that ruined my entire class.”

“Damn.” I put my arm around Parker’s waist and leaned into him.

Monty was scanning the room. To Parker, he was just looking at the crowd. But I was familiar with that look. He was on the hunt. I pulled Parker away discreetly so we could be alone and he could seem available. Monty nodded and smirked at us. Fuck off you little shit. I stuck my tongue out at him and Parker rolled his eyes. We managed to find a quiet corner that was unoccupied. “So, your drink is Crown and Sprite. You hate math. You don’t like chemistry. You like extra lettuce on your cheeseburger. We’ve been friends for months and I never really noticed any of that.”

“You like vodka in your iced tea. But your drink is whisky and Coke. You hate history. You also don’t like chemistry. You get tomatoes on the side of your burgers. I think you knew all of that about me. It just didn’t matter before.”

“That makes sense.” I laid my head on his shoulder and we sat together like that for a while. We were still getting used to the change in our relationship.

I looked up from my lap and caught Monty’s eye across the room. He had a girl in his sights. I nodded to him. He smiled, thinking no one else would see. The smile he reserved for me. Before he went to talk to whatever girl he would have under his spell and realistically, him in less than twenty minutes, he came over to us. “I’m probably going to be busy for the rest of the night, so will you make sure she gets home okay?”

“Yeah. No problem.” Monty turned to me and gave me a pleading look.

“Dude. Again? Seriously?”

“I didn’t have time to stop on the way over.” He shrugged, acting innocent.

“One of these days I won’t be here. Or I’ll leave my wallet at home. Or I won’t be carrying. What are you going to do then?”

“That isn’t a right now problem. Now do you, or don’t you?”

“I do. Calm down.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out my wallet. Parker was watching our interaction with a puzzled look on his face. I pulled out the square silver packet and handed it to him. Monty accepted it gratefully.

“Thank you. You are a life saver.”

“Don’t do anything you’ll regret in the morning, Montgomery.”

“Never do, Juliette.”

“And don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“I make no promises.” I sighed deeply. Of course, you don’t. Monty waved at us again and ran off to go make a move on whatever girl it was this time.

I looked at Parker and he was staring at me with wide eyes. “What?”

“You carry condoms around for him?”

“No. I carry them around for me. And if he needs one, then I give it to him.”

“But why?”

“I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but he’s kind of a whore. He is my best friend, but the man is a whore. I’d rather give him a condom than take him to get tested or become a cool aunt. I’m too young for that.”

“What if you needed it?”

“Will I need it? Because I wasn’t exactly planning on needing it.”

“I don’t know. You never know.”

“Well, if that’s the case, I have a whole box at home anyway. I don’t plan on using any tonight though.”

“I wasn’t either.”

“If it makes you feel better, I can start carrying two. Also, I put a fresh one in my wallet every morning so it’s not like they’re sitting.” He only nodded in understanding. Monty was right. I didn’t see him for the rest of the night. He texted me later that he was crashing at Bryce’s.

A few weeks after that party, things with Monty and I were the same as they always were. Parker never brought up his conversation with Scott. I attributed it to seeing us around each other and Parker being comfortable with the status of our relationship. We were getting home from a coffee date. “My parents are working late if you want to come inside. My mom has a double at the hospital.”

“Sure.” He slipped his hand in my back pocket when I was unlocking the door. I blushed. Inside, I dropped my purse on the kitchen counter. He draped his coat over a chair and sat down. I was digging through the cabinets for a snack when he surprised me with a question.

“What’s going on with you and Monty?”

“Uh.” I paused because he caught me off guard. “What do you mean?”

“It’s just how you guys act with each other. I never noticed it before. Or I did and thought it would stop after we got together.”

“I don’t understand the question?”

“Do I need to be concerned about your relationship with him, Juliette?”

“No. Not at all. Monty is the last person you need to concern yourself with. It’s never been like that with us.”

“So, you just flirt with each other and finish each other’s sentences for no reason?”

“Okay, first of all, we do not flirt with each other. Second of all, we have been best friends since we were in elementary. Which means we know things about each other.” I was walking back to the table with a bowl of M&Ms. Placing it on the table, I sat in his lap gently. He wrapped his arms around me.

“You carry condoms around in your wallet and give him one whenever he wants.”

“I already told you why I carry them Parker.” I rested my head on his shoulder.

“You’re sure there’s never been anything between you guys?” Nothing reciprocated.

“I promise there has never anything between us. He really isn’t a concern that way Parker.” I kissed his neck softly. It was barely a brush of my lips against his skin.

“Do you still have that box?”

“Mhmmm.” He stood me up and grasped my hand.

“Lead the way Jules.”

The next day, I woke up alone. Parker had snuck out after a little bit of cuddling, so my parents didn’t find him here. I stared up at my ceiling for a few minutes. It was different with him. It means something. Maybe that’s what I needed to get Monty out of my system. Maybe it had to mean something. I groaned when my alarm went off again. Reluctantly, I got up and got ready to go to school. My dad had already left for work again. I texted Parker and Monty before I left. Stopping for coffee if you want anything.

Parker answered first. I’m good, thanks though babe.

Monty answered a few minutes later. Since you offered, my usual?

Gotcha. See you at school.

Coffees in hand, I pulled up to school. Parker was waiting for me just outside the parking lot. “Hey you.” He kissed me. We were walking to my locker when he saw the second coffee, he continued, “I said I didn’t want anything.”

“Oh. This isn’t for you. It’s for Monty.”

“Ah, yes.”

“We talked about this last night Park.”

“I know. That’s not all we did last night.” He muttered, leaning in to kiss my neck.

“Yeah. Last night was pretty great.” I smiled.

“What about last night?” Monty asked, scaring me a little.

“Jesus Monty. I need to buy you a bell or something. Why do you have to be the only guy at this school whose shoes don’t squeak?” I turned and stuck out his coffee.

“Parker’s don’t squeak.” I rolled my eyes. As though he could snese that I wanted to talk to Monty alone, he made a quick exit.

“I’ll catch you at lunch Jules.”

“Okay. Save some cheese for me.” Parker kissed me before walking away.

“So, what about last night?” Monty asked again after Parker left. I was quiet and blushed deeply. “Julie, what happened?”

“Homerun.”

“Shit. Seriously?”

“Yeah. It was good. Nice.”

“That… that’s great.” I didn’t notice the way his smile didn’t reach his eyes or that he stammered.

“I’ll see you at lunch?”

“Uh, yeah. I have a couple of things to do for Coach, but I should be able to make at least a little bit of lunch.”

“Okay.”

I fully expected my relationship with Parker to change after that night. But I never expected that night would cause my relationship with Montgomery change too. It seemed like the closer I got to Parker the more distant Monty became. At first, it was little things. He had stuff to do with the guys or for sports stuff at lunches. Or he had things to do after practice. He wouldn’t stop to talk as long in the halls with me. If his dad was on another tear, I would find out about it the next day at school instead of that night. He brushed it off when I asked him about it. “I don’t want to seem like more of a burden. I have other places I can crash too,” he had said. For some reason, I believed him. I didn’t think anything of it. It wasn’t the first time he had taken a break from always coming to my place. I didn’t think it would be the last time.

But then, as the days and weeks passed, our relationship became even more strained. He had stopped waiting for me after games. He had all but stopped talking to me at school. My texts were left on read for hours, whereas before, he would answer me within minutes. What had initially been dubbed a ‘break’ from seeking refuge at my house, had become a full out ending. One Monday, when I got to school his cheek was stitched closed. I stopped dead in my tracks and covered my mouth in shock. Upon closer inspection when I passed, it looked like it was stitched with sewing thread. Why didn’t he come to me? He knows my mom keeps a suture kit in the first aid kit. He all but looked through me when he caught me looking. If he saw me coming now, he walked in the other direction. For the first time, my best friend was literally all out ignoring me. I didn’t know what to do. So, I tried to do the same. If he wants to ignore me, then two can play at that game. We pretended the other person didn’t exist.

“Hey, are you okay?” Parker asked me when we were sitting on the couch watching tv.

“Yeah.” I was scrolling through my phone.

“You haven’t looked up from your phone for an entire episode.”

“Huh? Has it been that long?”

“Yes. What are you looking at?” I was scrolling through my texts with Montgomery. The last time we had texted each other was three weeks ago. Before then, the last time we went longer than two days not texting each other was when I was at summer camp and we weren’t allowed to have our phones for a week. I couldn’t figure out what I had done wrong or what made our relationship change. Parker took my phone from me and closed out of messages when he saw what I was looking at. “If he doesn’t want to talk to you because you have a boyfriend, that’s his problem.”

“That’s not why Parker.”

“How do you know?”

“He wouldn’t do that.” Would he?

“How do you know he wouldn’t, Jules?”

“We promised each other a long time ago that we wouldn’t be those people.”

“Those people?”

“The people who stopped talking when one of us got into a relationship. We promised.”

“Okay, well if you promised then I’m probably wrong.” He sounded skeptical.

“We promised.” I muttered. Parker pulled me closer and held me while I tried to focus on our show.

**

I was sitting cross legged on the couch playing I Almost Do on my guitar while I listened to the rain hitting the roof. The old Disney World sweatshirt I was wearing helped me to stay warm, even though the heat was on. As I finished the bridge, there was a knock at the door. I’m not expecting anyone. Maybe its Parker swinging by to keep me company. I set my guitar down on the coffee table and went to answer the door when there was another, more impatient knock. “I’m coming, keep your pants on.” I muttered under my breath. Yanking open the door I felt my jaw hit the floor. “Monty.” I breathed. He was soaked. His hair fell on his forehead and I could tell the flannel he wore was soaked through.

“Hey.” Was all he said. I blinked at him slowly. “Can I come in?”

“Uh, yeah. Yeah come in.” I said, moving out of the way while I tried to figure out what he was doing here. “Did you like… walk here or something?”

“Would you believe me if I said no?”

“No. Trust you not to wear a jacket in the pouring rain though.” He didn’t respond. He just looked around the living room. Okay. This isn’t weird and awkward at all. “What are you doing here Montgomery?”

“I thought about what I wanted to say to you the whole way here. And now that I’m here….”

“What are you talking about?”

“I have some stuff I need to say to you Julie.”

“Oh okay. Now you want to talk to me. Right.” I crossed my arms.

“Can you just let me say what I need to say?”

“Why? I mean, you’ve been avoiding me like the fucking plague for weeks Montgomery. Why should I listen to what you have to say?”

“Because it’s important Juliette.”

“Fine. Speak.” This better be good.

“I don’t know how to say this. I literally had this all planned out in my head on the way here.” He began. I remained silent. “I get that you’re mad at me for avoiding you, but I have reasons for it. And I need you to understand that it hasn’t been easy for me. You’re one of my closest friends.” I let out a dry, unamused laugh. Sure. You just avoid all of your friends. Totally normal behaviour for you. Monty sighed before continuing, “I couldn’t sit around and watch you with Parker. I tried. Believe me. I fucking tried. I tried being happy for you and I tried being friends with him. I tried to ignore everything in me that was screaming to just walk away. But I couldn’t do it anymore. I needed to walk away for both of our sakes. It wasn’t fair to you for me to be half out of our friendship and it wasn’t fair to me to have to keep everything in. It wasn’t healthy.”

“So, you couldn’t be friends with me, or say anything about why you were suddenly shutting me out, because I have a boyfriend? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard you say. And we promised we wouldn’t be those people.”

“Oh, for fucks-. No Juliette. I couldn’t be friends with you because I’ve been in love with you for four years.”

My eyes widened at his revelation and I felt the colour drain from my face. What? I couldn’t think of anything else to do except laugh. “Yeah, sure you are Monty. That’s rich.”

“You think I would joke about that? You know me Julie.”

“No. I think if you did love me, you would have had the balls to fucking say something about it before I got into a relationship. Or at the very least, to not act like a fuckin’ child when I did get into a relationship.”

“When exactly would I have told you? Somewhere between when you were worrying about your friends and when you were pining after Parker?”

“Yes. Parker and I were friends with each other for months before we started dating. At any of those times, you could have put on your big boy pants and fucking said something about how you felt.”

“That’s nice that you think that. Do you think I would walk halfway across town in the pouring rain for someone I wasn’t in love with? Seriously Juliette?”

“Maybe.” I replied. I was still angry with him, but he did have a point. “It doesn’t matter. You waited too long. I’m with Parker now.” He scoffed. I hadn’t realized how close he had gotten to me until now.

“Doesn’t matter? Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t feel it. Tell me you don’t feel the fluttering or the warmth when we are together. And then tell me that what you feel with Parker is anything close to that.”

“I-I-I….” I started, trying to meet his hardened gaze.

“You can’t can you?” My silence spoke volumes. “Tell me you don’t want this.” He whispered, as he caressed my cheek. I couldn’t tell him that. And I couldn’t pull away. I couldn’t do anything to stop him. For the first time, I had allowed myself to consider the feelings I had buried down deep for so long. I opened the box in my heart labeled danger, and damn it felt good. I reached up and tapped his arm quickly, twice. Our silent ‘okay’ signal when we couldn’t speak. He immediately kissed me hungrily and backed me against the nearest wall. My hands immediately went to his belt and began to tug at it, in a heated attempt to undo it. He nipped at my lip sharply and I growled lowly from the back of my throat. Giving up on the fickle strip of leather, I began to fight with his still wet shirt. The flannel stuck to the cotton of his t-shirt more and more with every tug. Abandoning the idea of removing them separately, I grabbed the bottom of his shirts together and pulled up harshly. All the while, his lips never left mine. The only time they did was to give me the space to pull off his tops. His eyes had darkened at least two shades as he stood in front of me. I felt my pupils dilate again as I reached out for him. He was on me in seconds. The feeling of him tugging at my sweater, now sightly damp from his clothes, as though I was a prize he couldn’t wait to tear into, stirred something inside of me. The primal aggressiveness and the slow burning, ever present tension of the situation making any consequences of our actions, seem totally irrelevant. He managed to remove my shirt with far fewer struggles than I did and began attacking my neck, leaving wet kisses and stinging nips down one side and then the other. Once again, I tried my hand at undoing his belt again. This time, I was able to. Quickly undoing it, I pulled it through the loops of his dark jeans and went for the button. He placed his hand on mine to stop me. I looked at him questioningly.

“What?” I asked, breathlessly.

“Maybe we shouldn’t do this in your living room.” He said, panting. I nodded in agreement and suddenly, he picked me up and threw me over his shoulder.

“Monty!” I exclaimed, taken by surprise. He merely tightened his grip on my waist as he walked through the house to my room in the basement.

In my dark room, only illuminated by the dim pink-red glow of the salt lamp on my nightstand, he strode towards my bed and dropped me on my back. I reached out to him as he took a step back from the bed. “Get back here.” I demanded. He chuckled and shook his head.

“No. Nuh uh. I’ve waited far too long for this moment.” He smirked, devilishly. I groaned in displeasure at him. His smirk widened.

Deciding it was time to take matters into my own hands again, I sat up and slid off my bed. Taking my place on my knees in front of him, I reached up and undid the button and zipper on his jeans. He made no move to stop me as I dropped to my knees and pulled the denim harshly. They fell in a pool at his feet and I sat back on my heels as I stared at the bulge in his boxers. I growled lowly in the back of my throat and reached for the waistband of his boxers. Pulling them down, I watched his cock spring free and whined unconsciously. My movements were suddenly timid as I reached for it. It wasn’t my first time by any means. But it felt different this time. This time it was with Monty. And you have a boyfriend who isn’t Monty. Oh, shut up and let me enjoy this. I’ll deal with the consequences later. Grasping his thick, heavy cock in my hand, I stroked it softly. This was so wrong, yet it felt so wonderfully right.

My strokes changed as I gained more confidence and was able to push away any intrusive thoughts about Parker. They were faster and I tightened my grip slightly. Montgomery let out a sharp breath when my ring fingernail caught a bit of skin. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay, you’re excited. Just remember we have all night Julie.”

“I know.” His hips started to buck a little bit and my mouth began to water.

“We have plenty of time for that later.” I groaned a little. “Look at me.” I looked up at him through my lashes. “I promise you can after I fuck you into your mattress.” My eyes widened as big as saucers. We went from five to a hundred real quick. Fucking hot though.

Monty took my bicep in his hand to pull me up before pushing me back down on the bed roughly. I gasped in shock. I sat up on my elbows and watched him unbutton and rip open the zipper on my jeans. He pulled them down with a little help from me. He took a very brief second to admire my mint underwear before pulling them off and chucking them across my room. I sat up to undo and remove my pink bralette. A low growl came from deep in his chest when my breasts were out in the open and I was naked. His eyes scanned my body hungrily. My own dark eyes admired his naked body. I grabbed his arm to pull him down towards me.

“There is so much I want to do to you, but it will have to wait until later.” He whispered in my ear, biting at my earlobe. He bit and sucked his way down my neck, easily pulling loud moans out of me. There were sure to be marks all over my neck in the morning. Consequences be damned.

“Later, yes.” I panted. I could feel his hard length against my thigh. I rutted my hips against his. He kissed me passionately. When his hand trailed down my body, I knew his intentions. “No time. Just do it. Need it.” He stilled. The passion and tension were still in the air but there was a slight shift.

“Are you sure? I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Yes. Just be quick about it and it’ll be fine.” I stuck out my pinky. He linked his with mine.

“If you need me to stop and adjust, just say so.”

“I will.” I nodded, trying to edge him along. Just hurry the hell up and do it.

Monty straightened up and pulled my hips closer to the edge of the bed. I shut my eyes as he lined his cock up with my entrance. No matter how ready I was and how much I wanted it, it was still a reflex. I barely felt the tip, but I knew more was coming. He held my hands in his, interlocking our fingers as he pushed further. The stretch stung a little. He was bigger than Parker and without taking the time to prepare me, it burned slightly. I whimpered softly and he stilled immediately. Only about half was inside of me. “No, no keep going. Please.” I begged.

“I don’t want to hurt you Juliette.”

“Montgomery. I need you to do it. It hurts more if you stop. Please just do it. You can give me time to adjust after.” I told him seriously, staring into his eyes.

“Okay. Deep breath.” I sucked in a big breath and let it out as he quickly thrust the rest of his cock into me. I yelped sharply and he stilled again. I felt him go to pull out and growled harshly at him.

“Don’t you dare. Just give me a second.” He nodded and stayed still, allowing me time to adjust to his size.

After a minute or so, I was ready. The pain had dissipated for the most part. I felt like we could keep going. “Okay.” I nodded. His thrusts were slow and shallow at first. The more he did it, the more comfortable it became. When my moans grew louder, his thrusting became faster. He was fucking me hard and fast. Quite literally fucking me into the mattress. I tried to match him thrust for thrust. It was sloppy at first, but soon enough, we had a good rhythm going. He leaned down more, and I wrapped my legs around his waist. His cock was buried deeper in me and I screamed. He was moaning and grunting softly in my ear. I let go of his hands and wrapped my arms around his back. Dragging my nails down, I scratched him from his shoulder blades all the way down to his mid to low back.

“Jesus Christ.” He spat out. I smirked and dug my nails into his back. He nipped my collar bone. I was panting and I could feel my core tightening. “Fuck. You are so fucking tight.” Monty stood straight again and hooked one of my legs over his shoulder. The changed angle felt like magic. My moans had become whimpers again. I bit my bottom lip to keep from screaming once again. He used his right hand to rub my clit harshly while his left steadied the leg on his shoulder. I couldn’t hold a scream in after that. His thrusts were starting to get sloppy just as I had begun to fall over the edge. My orgasm hit me like a freight train. My entire body shook. I groaned when I felt his own orgasm hit. The feeling of his cock pulsing inside of me was exquisite. Thank God for birth control and regular testing. Monty pulled out of me gently and half fell, half laid down onto my bed beside me. He was panting harshly. So was I.

“Fuck me.” I muttered.

“I just did.” He panted. I groaned, unable to find the energy to flip him off or move or make an actual noise in response. After a couple of minutes, he stood and put his boxers back on. I hadn’t moved. He walked to the bathroom across the hall, and I heard the water running. Back in my room, he gently wiped me clean with a warm washcloth. It felt very nice on my sensitive folds. I groaned again. Once I was wiped clean, he climbed on the bed again and pulled me close. I snuggled against his chest.

I woke up in Montgomery’s strong arms the next morning. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I groaned softly. Monty stirred behind me. I leaned into him. He sighed. “Half of me thought last night was a really hot dream.” He mumbled sleepily.

“It wasn’t.” I yawned. We rolled onto our backs and I stared at the ceiling. We were quiet for a time. I was processing what happened last night. I cheated on Parker. With the one person…. The one person what? I told him not to worry about? I mean, yeah. But if that was the reason, I would have regretted it as soon as we were done. Oh shit. What does this mean for our friendship?

“Do you regret it?” I paused before answering. I knew the answer already but what would it say about me if I answered him immediately?

“No. Do you?”

“Not a bit.”

“What does this mean? What are we supposed to do now?”

“I don’t know. I can’t tell you what to do. But if I were you, I would break up with Parker.”

“That would be the kind thing to do.”

“Yes.”

“Did… did you mean what you said last night?”

“About you?”

“Yeah.”

“Isn’t it kind of obvious?” He motioned between the two of us. I laughed.

“I just wanted to confirm.” Monty chuckled and turned to kiss my temple.

“Does this mean,” I paused again, “was this just to get it out of our systems? Or do you want more?”

“I want more if you want more. I’d also be down for another round.” I sat up a little and pulled the sheet around my chest to look at him. He was smirking wider than I had seen him smirk in a long time.

“I think I would like more. And as for another round, I think I need to talk to Parker first before this goes any further.” He considered that for a moment.

“That’s fair. I can respect that.” We were quiet again. He’s all you’ve ever really wanted anyway.

[yourlocalhazbintrash]

How About a “Do it in Your Style,” But Instead of Strictly Drawing We Do it in a Multitude of Medias? This is Mainly My Excuse for Writing in Placement of Not Being Able to Draw Hazbin Characters to Save My Life

Prompt: An early morning routine goes awry when an important date is forgotten.

Ship: Alastor x Mimzy

Category: Romance/Humor

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Waffles, that’s what woke Alastor up that morning. The smell of freshly made waffles that were slowly becoming drowned in syrup and butter and whatever else his sweetheart decided would be enough to satisfy his hunger without making him vomit or destroy his teeth. Granted, the syrup they used was sugar-free, thanks to Alastor’s general dislike of sweets, but he digressed.

With a low groan, Al sat up and yawned, rubbing his eyes free of sleep before stretching until his spine popped. That was step one of his typical multi-step morning routine. After this came actually getting out of bed, which he managed to do beautifully if he did say so himself! Then came your standard stuff, brushing, rinsing, flossing; occasionally he chose to shower before eating, and sometimes he chose to eat before showering, though today he felt the need to do the former. After this came a snap which left him dry and clothed, needing only one more step before he started a successful day.

“A nice, hearty breakfast!” Alastor chimed to no one in particular, his pace bouncy and ears perked as he kept a steady stride into the kitchen of his radio tower. His smile grew fonder at the sight of his girlfriend, a short, pudgy demoness named Mimzy, who owned a club just a good ways away and had no trouble telling anyone off who offended her. “Good morning, mon amour! I see you’re in high spirits.”

“Yes, I am! And I see you are, too!” Mimzy cheers, a wide smile of her own plastered onto her face. “And I’m so glad! Because that means that you won’t be mad about the mess when I show you my present!”

“Present?” Alastor muttered, jumping slightly when a large banner fell from the ceiling that read ‘Happy Anniversary!’ “Oh...”

Mimzy’s smile slowly fades, and she lets out a slightly saddened sigh. “That’s your ‘I forgot’ sound.”

“What? No it isn’t! That’s my... erm... ‘How could I ever top this?’ sound!” Alastor yelps.

“Allie, you’re the Radio Demon. Outdoing others in entertainment is your specialty.” Mimzy snorts. “It’s fine, I’ll just add it to the pile.”

Alastor nearly frowned, biting his lip and tapping his chin before an idea comes to his mind. He races back into his room, leaving Mimzy to sulk at the kitchen table. She isn’t left alone for long, however, and gasps at the sight of a golden ring with two jewels embedded in the center. One of the jewels, the larger one, was a ruby, and the slightly smaller one was a rose quartz.

“Mimi, you have every right to be upset with me for forgetting our...” Alastor glances towards his shadow, who facepalms before signaling the number eight. “Eighth anniversary! I should have remembered from the beginning, and I feel like an absolute fo-”

“Keep talking and you’ll look like an even bigger fool.” Mimzy warned, rolling her eyes as Alastor frantically moves to place the ring on her right ring finger.

“There! Now you have to-”

“I’m right-handed.” Mimzy snickered.

“So what?” Alastor asked, his voice slightly strained.

“You’re supposed to put the ring on the non-dominant hand.” Mimzy chimed, laughing as Alastor’s eye twitches before he stands and starts to leave. “I love you too, Allie! See you tonight?”

“AFTER TWELVE!”

[straymackerel]

Omg I feel like 9 would fit Ranpo so well!!!❤️🥰❤️✨💚📗🔫

ranpo + epibreren (dutch, v.) to perform useless busywork as though it were very important.

➽─{and you are quite right, my darling anon 😼🖤💫😚⭐️🌻}─❥

You thought nothing of it at first. How the greatest detective in the city, probably Japan, and possibly the whole wide world spent company time was none of your business. It’s not as if you were paying him or anything. But come this dreadful morning, when all other available hands were on deck, you couldn’t help but to slowly realize that Ranpo was—in fact—the only detective slacking off.

Any old passerby may find the young man’s attempt at play pretend convincing, but to the seasoned eye, there was no mistaking it. Even with all of his posturing, Ranpo seemed much too eager given the stack of paperwork weighing down on his desk. He seemed a little too… self-satisfied. 

You knew exactly what laid in that pile; in fact, you’d organized it for him. A disappearance, a stolen car, a murder or two in a back alleyway, a few robberies in broad daylight. The circumstances of which, you’ve come to learn, were nothing but a bore—at least by his standards.

So, yes, you’re quite suspicious when Ranpo makes his way through a supposedly related newspaper, humming a happy little tune to himself as he marks the pages. His attention hardly wavers as he continues to take notes on it—something you’re quite sure his ability doesn’t require.

You ponder your options. After all, you’re but a secretary in this agency full of gifted detectives. Would it really be okay to tell the best of the bunch how to do their job?

But surveying the area once more, you find that the situation remains in your hands. Dazai is still out in the field, undoubtedly unreachable at this hour. Atsushi is sifting through paperwork like his life depends on it, and Kunikida is briefing a hushed Kyouka and Kenji on their next case, though the confusion on the children’s faces is most apparent. Yosano was last seen dragging Tanizaki into one of the back rooms, the latter with a deep gash to his right leg (...yikes). No one else seems to notice the overt slacker right before you, but how could they when things are this hectic?

This isn’t a matter of respectability anymore. Not when your coworkers are so visibly struggling. 

So you take a step in Ranpo’s direction, to which he pushes his cap down just a little further. For someone whose job is to snuff out the truth, he’s pretty bad at hiding it. His hand scribbles away at the newspaper with unprecedented ferocity, speed increasing with every inch you gain. By the time you’re hovering over him, he’s nearly burning holes through the paper, but you’re determined to confirm what you already know to be true. 

Nose deep behind recycled newsprint, it would appear that Ranpo isn’t taking notes at all. Hidden in his lap are pigmented sticks of wax, and beneath his hands are his favorite weekly comic strips. 

He’s been coloring them. 

...He’s been coloring them in crayon.

You try to suppress the amusement that dances across your face, but to no avail; Ranpo refuses to look at you anyway. 

“This is very important,” he insists before you can even get a word in, clutching the newspaper to his chest a beat too late.

“More important than the state of the workplace?” No response. “I hear there’s a chance we could go into overtime for the rest of the week,” you try again, steeling your voice as best as you can. The tension is completely lost on Ranpo, though.

“Not my problem.” His crayons are hidden, one by one, into a balled-up fist as he asks: “What good is a detective agency carried on the back of a single detective?”

“You know very well how unfair that is,” you sigh, holding your hand out for the crayons, but his grasp on them only tightens. “The city is in an uproar, crime rates at an all time high. I know the cases aren’t particularly interesting right now, but—”

“But that’s because a bunch of nobodies thought they could pull fast ones in all the chaos. That’s more or less what you wanted to say, no?”

“Well, yes, but...” you trail off, taken aback. Ranpo somehow worded it better than you could have.

“I still don’t see what that has to do with me,” he says, unconvinced. If you could follow his gaze, you’d see him looking straight past you, eyes trained on the front door and already plotting escape. Your recovery is a meek one.

“Please, Ranpo. The city is in danger.” He only smirks in response.

“You haven’t been working here long, so trust me on this.” He folds the newspaper into a neat little square, shoving it into his pocket. “This city is always in danger.” With that he rises from his desk, and you scramble to rein him back in again.

“I’ll treat you to ice cream later.” Ranpo hesitates for a moment, but continues to walk past you.

“What do you take me for, charity? I can buy ice cream myself,” he says, leaving you no choice but to step directly into his path. He has half the mind to push you aside, but what you say next completely stops him in his tracks.

“It’ll be topped with cotton candy.” 

Ranpo stills, his mouth agape. His face finally swings up to meet yours, suddenly intrigued by your offer. A crayon falls to the floor in his stunned silence.

“Served in a bubble waffle,” you add for insurance, to which his eyes widen—sparkle, even.

“And what place sells such a delicacy...?”

“Finish your work and I’ll bring you there.” 

Your words prompt cat-eyed slits to peer into you, methodically searching for any trace of a lie. When he comes up empty-handed, Ranpo sighs not in defeat but in content, settling back into his chair as fast as he stood up. Emerald irises sink back under lazy eyelids, wispy eyelashes coming to rest upon his cheeks once more. Every last piece of coloring paraphernalia is handed over to you and he poises a hand to shake on the sugary suggestion.

“Deal.”

general tags. (info)  @skateme2yokohama @shozaii @suehiro

[keanureevesisbae]

Mister Cavill, your dog is kinda fat - Chapter 12

Summary: Veterinarian Olivia Tran has zero time for bullshit. After becoming a mom at age twenty three, the one thing she wants is a good life for her daughter Vanessa. Her ex didn’t want anything to do with her nor the baby and she decided that man are officially banned out of her life. But then she meets Henry Cavill at her clinic and her ban slowly starts to crumble apart. Henry on the other hand is looking for one thing: a family. And when he meets Olivia Tran, he finds just that.

Henry Cavill x Olivia Tran (ofc)

Warnings: None

Wordcount: 4.7k

A/N: I may or may not have ended this with a cliffhanger - I’m not at all terribly sorry 

Masterlist // Previous chapter // Next chapter 

Time sure does fly by.

After the Christmas dinner at his parents place, Henry blinked with his eyes and it was New Years Eve already. Normally he would spend it with his brothers, going to a New Years Eve party, but this year couldn’t have been more different. this year he was over at Olivia’s, trying to keep Vanessa awake for as long as possible, watching movie after movie. But at ten p.m. she fell asleep against her mother and Henry and Olivia decided they would wake her up at eleven forty five, so she could feel the joy again of not kissing one important person in her life into the new year, but two.

They sat in front of the window, as they watched the fireworks and Henry couldn’t help but get a little bit emotional.

This was a new beginning for all of them. The way Olivia and Vanessa had suddenly walked into his life and made their way to his heart, is something he is still intensely grateful for. They were the blessings that he was waiting for.

They enjoyed their last few days of holiday, sometimes with and sometimes without Olivia, as she had to go to work. But spending time with Vanessa was always nice. They would bake cakes, have little tea parties or they’d go on walks with Kal.

But then Vanessa had to go back to school again and he fell back into his standard routine of waking up, bringing both of them to their work of school, walk Kal, go to the grocery store if necessary, go to the gym, all that good stuff. And he continued to decline job offer after job offer.

Olivia kept asking him if he still wanted to take a break. He means, sure, he would like it if he would star in another movie again. It’s nice, you know: the filming process, the red carpets, the interviews and all the magazine cover shoots, but Henry isn’t sure he wants that anymore. Does he want to be away from his newly found family for that long?

He still isn’t ready to face possible bad reviews again come to think of it and he really doesn’t want to leave the two of them behind.

Besides, about money he’ll never have to worry again. He has enough of it.

Today however, it’s February 14th. Valentines Day. Thankfully Olivia doesn’t have to go to work today, so after they took Vanessa to school, he drove back with a nearly illegal speed to her place, because he had plans for the both of them.

The days that Olivia doesn’t have to go to work, are the only days where it’s just them. He loves Vanessa with all his heart and he would never ever want to lose her, but spending time with just Olivia can be a nice change from time to time.

The two of them made love for God knows how long and afterwards took a long shower together. He can’t seem to get enough of his lovely girlfriend and with the way she was clinging onto him the entire time, he figures she can’t get enough of him too.

But ever since his mother mentioned it about making Vanessa calling him dad official by simply adopting her, it hasn’t left his mind for a single second. He needed to think about this, because of course that’s what he wants, but he doesn’t want to force the idea on Olivia. Though they have been mentioning the whole idea of adding a new baby into their little family, he is still a bit hesitant about the adoption thing.

But for some reason, he feels the need now to ask what she thinks about this. Henry sits on the bed, a towel wrapped around his hips, as he stares at the woman he loves so much and so dearly.

‘Sweetheart,’ he says, gaining her attention. She turns around with a smile, as she puts on the tight black leggings. She is wearing one of his sweaters and he loves it when she walks around in his clothes and he means, it’s only fair, since her apron is becoming his favorite piece of clothing. ‘I have a question.’

‘I’m not going to make you waffles, Valentines Day or not.’

He chuckles. ‘That wasn’t my question, sweetheart.’ He ushers Olivia over and she sits on his lap, hooking her ankles together behind him. He loves the feeling of her hands on his chest  (especially when he is not wearing a shirt) and he nearly gets distracted by it. ‘My mom said something around Christmas and I want to ask your opinion about it.’

Her frown gets deeper and she looks worried. ‘Is everything okay?’

He nods. ‘What would you say if I adopted Vanessa?’

Normally he can read at least something off of her face, but her entire expression is completely blank. He fears his suggestion was wrong. He already can see his future with her crumble apart. This was too soon, he thinks to himself. Sure, they mentioned the baby thing, but he should’ve brought up the adoption thing when she was pregnant with his baby.

‘Why would you want that?’ she asks.

What kind of a question is that? ‘Because… I… She… What?’

‘Why would you want to adopt her?’ Olivia asks again.

He needs a moment before he can find the right words, because he did not expect her to ask him this. ‘Because I’m here to stay,’ he simply states. ‘I love you, I love Vanessa and I love the idea of us being an official family.’

‘But what if we break up? Before we have another kid?’

Okay, he thought about that too and he totally understand why she asks this. ‘Because I still want to be there for Vanessa,’ he says. ‘No matter what happens to us. If you don’t want to, I totally understand, but—’

Olivia shakes her head. ‘I want you to adopt her,’ she interrupts him, ‘but I guess that I’m just scared that one day you might not want this anymore and you simply walk away. That’s the last thing I want for her.’

‘And I understand that, love,’ he says. ‘And I’m not forcing you to sign the papers right now, but I want you to think about it.’

‘I already think it’s a good idea,’ she says, a soft smile appearing on her face. ‘I want you to become her official dad, but there is only one person we really need to ask and that is Vanessa.’ Olivia leans in and gives him a kiss. She wants to pull back after the short peck, but he crashes his lips on hers again, unable to let go of her already.

Olivia is on board with him adopting Vanessa and when their lips part for a second, he lets out a shaky breath. This is truly happening. It’s slowly becoming what he always wanted: a family.

‘Maybe you can ask her tonight,’ she suggests.

Tonight on Valentines Day, he planned on taking them both out. Vanessa has been looking forward to this moment the entire week, when he officially asked both of them out on a date. Since Vanessa didn’t have a right father figure in her life who would show her how boys should treat her and Olivia has a shitty boyfriend experience, he felt the desperate need to make their first Valentines Day together as a family as memorable as it can be.

‘Yeah?’

Olivia nods. ‘You totally should.’

The hours pass by with Henry stealing kisses from Olivia, them walking with Kal and him insisting on buying her chocolate, because that’s what you do on Valentines Day and he was not going to miss out on that cliche. They pick up Vanessa from school and after they have eaten some cookies and drank some tea, Vanessa stands up and announces: ‘We are going to get ready for tonight. We are going to have a little girls… How do you call it mommy?’

‘A little girls pamper night,’ Olivia says. She looks at Henry and says: ‘So, no boys allowed.’

Henry pretends like he is insulted. ‘Well, then I’m going home with Kal and have a little pamper night, specifically for guys.’

‘But dad,’ Vanessa says, frowning deeply, ‘Kal isn’t going with us on the date.’

‘And he is not going to wear a suit, so,’ Olivia adds.

Henry lifts up Vanessa with one arm, before he hoists up Olivia in his other. ‘You two are so mean to me,’ he says.

‘Dad, let me go!’ Vanessa screams, before she starts laughing.

‘Oh my God, Henry, stop this!’ Olivia tries to wiggle herself out of his arms, but he is too strong.

‘Maybe we can distract him,’ Vanessa whisper shouts, still not aware that Henry can hear her, but he pretends he doesn’t. ‘With kisses.’

‘You go for that cheek,’ Olivia plays along, ‘then I go for this one, okay?’

Vanessa nods. ‘Three, two, one… Go!’

He feels two sets of lips on his cheeks and though he already knew this would happen, he still can’t help but chuckle. ‘Okay, okay, I surrender!’ he says. ‘You go have a girls pamper night and I’ll go home and pick out a nice outfit for myself, okay?’

Henry carefully places Olivia and Vanessa back on their feet, where they high five each other. ‘I’ll text you when we’re almost done,’ Olivia says, before standing on her toes to give him a kiss. ‘I love you, honey.’

‘I love you too, beautiful.’ He crouches down and gives Vanessa a kiss. ‘I also love you, sunshine,’ he says to her.

She chuckles. ‘I love you too, daddy. Now go.’

He can’t help but laugh, before he grabs his coat and clicks his tongue, so Kal knows they are leaving. ‘Enjoy your pamper night.’

‘We will,’ Olivia says and he walks out of the house, as he hears both of his ladies rush up the stairs, laughing in the process.

God, he truly is happy with his life right now.

When Henry and Kal are back at his own house, he misses them already. He misses hearing them laugh, he misses the unlimited hugs and kisses and he even misses Vanessa tiny temper tantrums.

He holds out his phone and looks at some of the pictures and videos he made of the course of a few months. Vanessa falling asleep next to Kal, Olivia sitting across from him at the table, the four of them in bed. Every moment he gets to spend with them, is one he cherishes. And he can’t wait to adopt Vanessa, to marry Olivia and have more kids with her.

≫≫≪≪

Henry lets himself in when he got a text from Olivia that they are nearly ready. He stands at the bottom of the stairs and yells: ‘I’m here.’

‘You are all dressed up?’ Vanessa asks.

He chuckles. ‘I sure am, sunshine.’

‘We’re almost done,’ he hears Olivia say. He leans with his shoulder against the doorframe and he hears footsteps coming from upstairs. He recognizes that they are Vanessa’s and Henry can’t help but break out in a big and proud smile, when he sees her. She is wearing a lovely pink dress, with a black cardigan over it. On her feet she wears slip-ons that match the color of her dress and her hair hangs loose beside her face, a fake flower clipped between the strands.

‘You look absolutely beautiful,’ he says in absolute awe. ‘My oh my, Vanessa.’

‘I’m even wearing a bit of mommy’s lipstick.’ She wraps her arms around his legs and he clears his throat. Vanessa looks so happy, especially when she realized that not only did Henry want to go on a date with Olivia, but also with her.

‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Isn’t Valentines Day for couples?’

He simply shrugged. ‘Maybe some people think like that, but I like to spend my Valentines Day with not only your mom, but also with you. Valentines Day is about showing people who you care about a little bit of extra love and I care deeply about you too.’

The look in her eyes then was priceless and that same sparkle was still here and that only makes him realize: he never wants to let her go. He desperately wants to adopt Vanessa Tran and make her his legal daughter.

‘Mommy looks really beautiful,’ she tells him, as he lifts her up in his arms. ‘I bet you are going to fall in love even more.’

‘I didn’t know that was possible,’ he jokingly says. ‘Olivia, sweetheart, are you ready?’

‘I am, I am,’ he hears, followed by her footsteps on the steps, as she descends from the stairs.

His breath gets caught in his throat. Holy shit, he thinks to himself. She wears a tight fitted dress, in a lovely shade of red that he has never seen her wear before. She paired it with black heels, that he didn’t even know she owned. The dress has short sleeves and he sees how the fabric hugs her godly figure just right.

‘Mommy, is Henry speechless?’ Vanessa asks, pinching his cheek, hoping to gain his attention, but he can’t stop gawking at Olivia.

Olivia seems to blush. ‘I think so.’

‘Is it because he thinks you’re pretty or because he doesn’t like the way you look?’

‘I sure hope it’s the first one, otherwise I need to dump him,’ Olivia laughs. ‘Henry, honey, are you okay?’

‘Wow,’ he says, ‘you look beautiful, darling. I’m such a lucky guy that I’m taking out the two most beautiful ladies out on a date.’

Olivia walks up to the both of them and gives him a kiss. ‘And Vanessa and I are very lucky to be taken out by such a handsome looking man, aren’t we, sweetheart?’

Vanessa nods. ‘I understand why my mommy is in love with you, daddy,’ she chuckles.

≫≫≪≪

During their dinner, Henry can’t help but notice the looks on other peoples faces. Some look at their table, probably because they think it’s weird that they brought a seven year old along, but those aren’t the looks that he thinks about too much.

It’s the look of adoration, of admiration, because they look so cute as a family. And they actually do. Vanessa sits on her mothers lap and he thinks of that moment alone, he has taken a hundred pictures.

He stares at Olivia, as the dim lights still highlight her exceptional beauty and he wonders: what did he do in life to deserve a woman as beautiful, as intelligent and as strong as her?

And he wants to ask Vanessa now about the whole adoption thing, but he hears Olivia’s phone ring. She looks at the screen and groans annoyed, before she picks up. ‘Tito, you are on call,’ she says, ‘don’t you dare call me … Oh, really? … How is her heartbeat? … Oh no, poor thing … I’m coming right over. See you in a bit, bye.’ She hangs up her phone. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says.

‘You have to go, mommy?’ Vanessa asks, before licking the chocolate crumbs of her lips. She doesn’t seem to  be disappointed, something that he truly admires and he is still in awe at how well Olivia has raised her.

The other day when a dog died on the operation table—a risk everyone was aware about—Olivia came home and simply started crying. Vanessa knew exactly what was up and told her mom that she did her best and that the owners knew that and the doggie in heaven knew that too.

‘I have. There is a dog who is having her puppies right now, but there are some difficulties.’

Henry watches her give Vanessa a kiss, before placing the young girl on the chair when she stands up. ‘Can I borrow your car?’ she asks.

‘Of course, my love,’ he says, handing her over the keys. Olivia gives him her own set of keys and he says: ‘Vanessa, sunshine, how about you and I finish dessert and then we walk home?’

Vanessa nods. ‘Of course, mommy has to save some puppies.’

‘Exactly,’ Olivia says, giving her daughter even more kisses. ‘Have fun you two and I’ll be happy when I’m home again with you.’ She presses her lips on Henry’s and whispers: ‘Go ask her, honey,’ before she rushes out of the restaurant.

Henry can’t help but stare at the beautiful woman, but he also realizes that he really needs to ask this question now. ‘Daddy,’ Vanessa says, tapping his hand and he looks up. ‘What do you like about mommy?’

He nearly blushes. ‘There is so much I like about mommy. I like how she is really rough and strong, how she loves you so so much, how she always lights up when you walk into the room.’

Vanessa nods. ‘She does that. She is a sweet mommy.’

‘She totally is.’ He brushes out a strand of her hair out of her face. ‘Sunshine, I have to ask you something, okay?’

‘Okay.’

‘Do you like it when I’m with you?’

Vanessa stirs through her dessert and starts to laugh. ‘I love it when you are with us. Mommy is always really happy when you are here and I like having a dad around.’ She gets off the chair, so she can sit on his lap. ‘Why?’

‘Because I have an important question for you and I want you to think about it real good, okay?’

‘Okay, I can do that.’

Of course she can. ‘You know that you are not officially my daughter, though I call you my daughter and I’m your dad, right?’

She nods.

‘Well, if I adopt you, then I can officially become your dad and you’re officially my daughter. That means we have to sign some papers and all.’

‘But why does that need to happen?’ she asks. ‘I call you my dad, right?’

He nods. ‘But if you are not officially my daughter and something happens to your mom for example, there is a chance you can’t stay with me.’

Her eyes widen. ‘But that is mean, because you are my dad.’

‘I know, sweetheart, but that’s how it works.’

‘When can we do that? Adopting?’

He chuckles as he watches her smile. ‘Your mom and I have to figure that out, but from this reaction, I take it that you want me to adopt you.’

‘Of course I want you to be officially my daddy!’ She wraps her arms around him and squeals. ‘I can’t wait to tell miss Sue that I’m going to have an official dad!’

Their entire walk to Olivia’s place, Vanessa is skipping and by the time they are at the front door, he hears his own car driving through the streets. ‘Look who is there?’ he asks Vanessa, squeezing her hand.

‘Mommy!’

He has barely seen Olivia drive his car, but after she parallel parked, he falls even more in love with her. She gets out of the car and Vanessa rushes towards her. ‘How are the puppies?’

‘They are all good,’ Olivia says. ‘All very beautiful and healthy and no, we can’t have one.’

Vanessa wants to stomp her feet on the ground, but then she remembers what happened just about forty five minutes ago. ‘Mommy, I’m going to have an official daddy,’ she says. ‘He is going to adopt me.’

Olivia bites her lip, but from the looks of it, she tears up a bit. Henry watches her swallow hard and then she says: ‘I’m so happy for you, sweetheart.’ She crouches down and pulls Vanessa in a tight hug. She places her chin on Vanessa’s tiny shoulder and smiles at Henry. ‘Thank you,’ she mouths to him.

He wants to shake his head, but decides not to do it, though he wants to say what is truly important: Thank you, Olivia Tran, for giving me a family.

≫≫≪≪

Henry: Everyone, I have good news!

Henry: And no, Olivia is not pregnant, so you can unclench your butthole now.

Niki: Butthole unclenched, now tell us what the good news is.

Henry: I’m going to officially adopt Vanessa

Mom: Finally! I’m so happy for you, my dear!

Dad: So, she’s officially becoming a Cavill now?

Simon: Oh shit, Vanessa Cavill, I like that

Piers: You should marry Olivia as well, otherwise everyone is a Cavill, except for her and I don’t want her to feel left out.

Simon: Olivia Cavill, I like that too!

Henry: No, wait, stop!

Niki: Then they’re officially the Cavills. Wouldn’t that be cute?

Henry: You are all going way too fast now

Charlie: Why? You’re going to adopt Vanessa, right?

Henry: But they are used to be called Tran and I don’t want to take that away. We (and with we, I mean Olivia, Vanessa and I and that doesn’t involve any of you!) have to think about this.

Mom: I totally understand, sweetheart. I’m happy that the first step is there. Now everyone, say congratulations. I didn’t marry nor raised rude Cavills

≫≫≪≪

To celebrate the adoption, the three of them go to the ice skating range. Since Henry actually doesn’t like ice skating, he watches Vanessa and Olivia sliding on the ice. They do this every year a few times and from the looks of it, it’s a good thing that Henry doesn’t like ice skating. This is such a lovely mother daughter moment and he felt like he would ruin that, if he participated in this. He sometimes forget that they had a life together for six whole years, before he came even in the picture. Instead, he grabs his phone, so he can make some clips and pictures, so he can send this to his family.

It’s going to be official, he thinks to himself. He is going to be officially Vanessa’s father. He had to think about it for nearly two months, before he could voice his thoughts with Olivia, but now he is happy that he did tell her, even kind of regretting that he kept it to himself for so long.

‘Hi daddy!’ he hears Vanessa yell and he holds up his hand and she soars past him, Olivia holding tightly onto her hand. Henry keeps looking at them, especially at Olivia. For the past two months, they have been discussing the whole baby thing a bit more, and he is impressed that Vanessa has indeed kept her mouth shut and only mentions it when the three of them are together.

But Olivia is right: they should wait a bit more. There is so much for them to figure out and  and he truly doesn’t want to force it onto her. Besides, she has to do the hard work for nine months straight and he wants her to be totally ready.

But sometimes, when they are in bed and Vanessa is trying to sleep in her own room (has yet to work out, but she stays in her bed longer and longer, before she rushes back to them), he slips his hand underneath her shirt, placing a heavy on her belly. ‘What are you doing?’ Olivia would groggily ask every single time, knowing exactly what he was doing.

‘Go to sleep, sweetheart,’ he’d whisper, pressing kisses on her temple. She’d place her hand on his, before she’d fall asleep. He can’t wait for her to be pregnant, but he also knows that he would definitely not take another job, because he wants to be there every step of the way.

Olivia and Vanessa balance on the skates as they attempt to walk up to him and when they succeeded, they sit on the bench. ‘Dad,’ Vanessa says and it still gives him a happy feeling deep inside, hearing her call him dad, ‘mommy and I had an idea.’

‘Tell me all about it.’

‘We are going to drink hot chocolate with a lot of whipped cream.’

‘That, sunshine, sounds like an excellent idea and I’m totally here for it.’ He helps her taking off her skates and Vanessa slips on her shoes. ‘You need help, love?’ he asks Olivia, who can’t seem to get her left skate off.

Vanessa starts to giggle as she sits next to Olivia, while she sticks out her foot and says: ‘Yes, I need help.’

‘My mommy is a big baby,’ Vanessa chuckles.

Henry helps her take off the left skate and suggests: ‘How about you go find a spot at the restaurant, while I return the skates and bring back the hot chocolate?’

‘That is such a wonderful plan,’ Olivia says, slipping on her boot, before she and Vanessa walk off to the restaurant.

It’s funny, but they have the same walk. Lots of traits they have are nearly identical. They scrunch their noses the same way when they see something disgusting. The sideways glances they share. The way they walk. Even when they are concentrated, you can tell that Vanessa is the exact copy of Olivia: they both push the tip of their tongue in their bottom lip.

It makes him wonder: what traits would an eventual sibling have of both Olivia and him? Would there be certain things that Henry does, that Vanessa will copy?

After he returned the skates and ordered three hot chocolates, he walks to their table, where the two of them are babbling like they usually do. He sits next to Vanessa, giving her a kiss on top of her head and she giggles. ‘Thanks, daddy,’ she says with a smile, as she grabs the mug.

‘Thank you, honey,’ Olivia says and she leans back in the chair. ‘Alright, before we go back home, we need to do some groceries.’

‘Again?’ Vanessa asks. ‘We done groceries four days ago.’

‘I know, but since we have extra people in our house, we need more food. Besides, mister Cavill over here eats a lot.’

Vanessa chuckles. ‘Yes, he does. He always takes another portion.’

‘Wait a minute,’ Henry says, fake insulted. ‘I can’t help but get another portion. I’m a big man, I need to eat a lot.’ He looks at Vanessa and says: ‘If you want to grow tall and strong, you need to eat well.’

‘But… We don’t give Kal another portion, because otherwise he would get fat,’ Vanessa says.

Though Kal is almost at his ideal weight (he only has one more kilo to go!), the insults, how direct or indirect they are, about Kal’s weight, are still a very effective way to make Henry go quiet.

‘It’s a bit different for dogs and humans,’ Olivia says, placing her hand on top of Henry’s. ‘Dogs don’t go to the gym, like Henry does.’

‘Right,’ Vanessa says, nodding as she stares at her hot chocolate. ‘Can we buy those cookies?’

Henry bursts out in laughter. ‘Well, I want to, but we have to ask your mom.’

‘Like I’m able to say no to both of your cute faces,’ Olivia chuckles, before taking a sip of her hot chocolate.

In those past months that have flown by, he has barely spend a minute of it at his own house. Though it’s a lot bigger than Olivia’s, it doesn’t feel as homey as hers. He sometimes goes back to grab some clothing, some of Kal’s stuff or his own, but he could put that place up the market.

What would life be like, if he bought a new house for all of them?

Before he can finish his thought, he hears someone clear his throat. ‘Olivia?’

They all look up, but while Vanessa tilts her head and Henry wonders who this is, he nearly sees steam coming out of Olivia’s ears. ‘What are you doing here?’ It’s like the temperature of the entire restaurant has dropped quite a few degrees.

The man looks at Vanessa and asks: ‘Is this her?’

‘Don’t you dare look at her. I asked you a question and you better answer.’

Henry has never seen Olivia like this, her eyes dark like this and ready to kill from the looks of it.

‘Mommy, who is this?’ Vanessa asks.

‘This is Wesley,’ Olivia says, not stopping looking at the man. ‘He is the man that left me before you were even born.’