#Peer Sylvester

[whovian223]

New to Me - July 2023

New to Me #boardgames - July 2023 @BitewingGames @OspreyGames @alderac @oinkgms

July was yet another weird month for games, as I explained in last week’s “games played” post (sorry this one took so long after that). Even with that, I was able to get six new to me games to the table. Granted, three were quick card games, but still… Not only did I get six games played, but three of them are from 2020 or older! That made the Cult of the New to Me happy. They even threw me…

[hunter-sylvester]

Skullflower is Autistic: A Breakdown.

Buckle the fuck up.

Disclaimer: Don't take any of this too seriously.

Also all of this was written over a year ago with only minor edits. I'm just posting it now cause it's been rotting in my drafts and, like, fuck it.

I've wanted to try and make a comprehensive breakdown like this for a while just because I love these characters and very heavily interpret them all as autistic (with ADHD as well.) But this is just the perspective of one guy. And I probably overstate it but the fact that we can all have our own very personal interpretations about media is what's great about analysis & fandom.

Hunter Sylvester.

Yes I'm doing Hunter first, what do you think I am? Unbiased? Please.

Autistic Perfectionism. Hunter's autistic perfectionism is something I've mentioned before and somewhat struggle to describe satisfactorily. But to me the most obvious example is his inability to deal with the idea of Emily joining Skullfucker as a cellist. Obviously, there's the queer angle to this but I think two reasons can play a role at once. He's in love with Kevin so he doesn't want a girl that Kevin picked to be a part of their band. Additionally, I'd argue that he can't deal with the idea of having a girl cellist as their bass player because it in NO WAY fits the mental image that Hunter has in his mind of what he wanted Skullfucker to be. It doesn't match the perfect idea that he's dreamed of, that he holds onto for dear life, so he can't deal with it.

Hyperfixations. "Hunter's been into a lot of things since I've known him but he's stuck with metal longer than any of them." - Kevin. Need I say more? Well, I will anyway. The guy hyperfixates. I think the closest thing we have to a canon confirmed hyperfixation is Dungeons & Dragons. Because of what in my mind is a combination of Autism and ADHD in Hunter, they don't fully leave him. He still likes and plays D&D, but he's not as obsessed with it as he used to be when he made his dad buy him the most ridiculous game terrain that fucking lights up.

Special Interests. I think one of the easiest claims to make is that metal is a special interest for Hunter. He entrenches his entire life in it and reaches for it when a stressful situation happens to try and make himself feel more okay. (getting his hair cut off by Skip and relating his new look to Jason Newsted) It's clearly something that comforts him, having been obsessed with it ever since his mom left. Which, regardless of the specific circumstances, is a horridly stressful situation for any 12-13 year old.

Struggles with social interaction. He doesn't seem to have a lot of friends. He gets along with Robbie, Kevin (obviously) and the people he plays D&D with but that seems to be it. Especially whenever the situation gets very stressful, Hunter's mind immediately reaches for his comfort interest to try and make it through (or to lash out). He can't easily just be comfortable in a strange social situation. Or a strange situation in general.

Stims. Hunter stims by playing guitar. That's it, that's the whole point. And there's this little move:

Kevin Schlieb.

Neutrality. The way Kevin just takes Hunter and Emily as they are feels autistic to me.

Struggles with social interaction. And he clearly wants it to be easier for him. He wants to connect to people but he doesn't know how. It's not like he doesn't understand people. He does. He understands Hunter better than Hunter understands himself. "sometimes he's not so nice to people when he's uncomfortable" "You are afraid of everybody" "you treat everybody like shit and you make them hate you" But that understanding of how people think and work doesn't translate to his direct interactions with most of his peers. Maybe because he understands other neurodivergent people but not neurotypicals. The fact he does have a decent read on, at the very least, his best friend could also be indicative of the extra work Kevin has had to put in over the course of his life to try and understand people to begin with.

Directness. A lot of Kevin does feel direct to me. I suppose in a 'what you see is what you get' sort of way. He obviously has the whole protagonist thing going on which tends to end you up with pretty neutral, earnest and open characters.

Stims:

Emily Spector.

Gets overstimulated. Emily's outbursts could be attributed more to a struggle regulating her emotions. It's not a huge stretch to assume her mystery medication is a mood stabilizer. However, the idea of it being a combination of being overstimulated and then no longer being able to deal with her anger on top of the distress she's already feeling feels apt to me. This is a stretch, but, we only ever see her have outbursts at school. A nightmare environment for the stimuli sensitive. Emily is by far the character out of the main three we spend the least time with, which could easily explain my previous point away. We hardly see her out of school to begin with. But I think there can be merit in taking it as a part of the story, rather than an incidental effect of her being left by the wayside.

Black and white thinking. "So first you tell me that I should hate him, and now you want me to help him?" - Emily. No, he didn't say you should hate him, Emily. "You have every right to be mad- especially at Hunter!" - Kevin.

Directness. I mean she literally calls up Kevin to ask him if he wants to go fuck in a parking lot and more power to her. But it is very direct.

Struggles with social interaction. And apart from Skip & Co. having a particular hate-boner for Hunter, Emily might actually be the most widely ostracized for her lack of social finesse. Which would check out because society is brutally cruel to girls. Kevin is shown to have some positive interaction outside of the other two main characters, so is Hunter. And, yes, so is Emily. But it's only with the janitor of the school, who she is implied to have had previous interactions with. Having your only friend at school be the fucking janitor is not a neurotypical experience. I know I certainly got along easier with a handful of teachers than I did with my peers back when I was at school.

Whatever this is. Fam, I've BEEN there...but it's not neurotypical:

A 'little' note to end on: I want to state that I love all three of these character very dearly. I don't pretend that I don't have a favorite, but they are all amazing. There's various reasons why Metal Lords is such a comforting movie, but a big one, is that the characters act in a way that feels incredibly familiar. They act like me. They act like my autistic friends. We make weird facial expressions, we understand the world and each other through our interests. The way all of them talk feels so close to home. (The swearing is actually part of that. A lot of real people swear and over-censoring of that tends to bug me but that's kinda beside the point lmao)

[duckprintspress]

6 Queer Books for Autism Acceptance Month!

April is Autism Acceptance Month, so the group of folks at Duck Prints Press who suggest titles for these rec lists dug into personal favorite queer reads to find these six titles that include queer characters who are explicitly or implied to be autistic. Our picks are:

The Luis Ortega Survival Club by Sonora Reyes

Ariana Ruiz wants to be noticed. But as an autistic girl who never talks, she goes largely ignored by her peers—despite her bold fashion choices. So when cute, popular Luis starts to pay attention to her, Ari finally feels seen.

Luis’s attention soon turns to something more, and they have sex at a party—while Ari didn’t say no, she definitely didn’t say yes. Before she has a chance to process what happened and decide if she even has the right to be mad at Luis, the rumor mill begins churning—thanks, she’s sure, to Luis’s ex-girlfriend, Shawni. Boys at school now see Ari as an easy target, someone who won’t say no.

Then Ari finds a mysterious note in her locker that eventually leads her to a group of students determined to expose Luis for the predator he is. To her surprise, she finds genuine friendship among the group, including her growing feelings for the very last girl she expected to fall for. But in order to take Luis down, she’ll have to come to terms with the truth of what he did to her that night—and risk everything to see justice done.

May the Best Man Win by Z. R. Ellor

Jeremy Harkiss, cheer captain and student body president, won’t let coming out as a transgender boy ruin his senior year. Instead of bowing to the bigots and outdate school administration, Jeremy decides to make some noise–and how better than by challenging his all-star ex-boyfriend, Lukas for the title of Homecoming King? 

Lukas Rivers, football star and head of the Homecoming Committee, is just trying to find order in his life after his older brother’s funeral and the loss long-term girlfriend–who turned out to be a boy. But when Jeremy threatens to break his heart and steal his crown, Lukas kick starts a plot to sabotage Jeremy’s campaign. 

When both boys take their rivalry too far, the dance is on the verge of being canceled. To save Homecoming, they’ll have to face the hurt they’re both hiding–and the lingering butterflies they can’t deny.

Hell Follows With Us by Andrew Joseph White

Sixteen-year-old trans boy Benji is on the run from the cult that raised him—the fundamentalist sect that unleashed Armageddon and decimated the world’s population. Desperately, he searches for a place where the cult can’t get their hands on him, or more importantly, on the bioweapon they infected him with.

But when cornered by monsters born from the destruction, Benji is rescued by a group of teens from the local Acheson LGBTQ+ Center, affectionately known as the ALC. The ALC’s leader, Nick, is gorgeous, autistic, and a deadly shot, and he knows Benji’s darkest secret: the cult’s bioweapon is mutating him into a monster deadly enough to wipe humanity from the earth once and for all.

Still, Nick offers Benji shelter among his ragtag group of queer teens, as long as Benji can control the monster and use its power to defend the ALC. Eager to belong, Benji accepts Nick’s terms…until he discovers the ALC’s mysterious leader has a hidden agenda, and more than a few secrets of his own.

The Many Half-Lived Lives of Sam Sylvester by Maya MacGregor

Sam Sylvester’s not overly optimistic about their recent move to the small town of Astoria, Oregon after a traumatic experience in their last home in the rural Midwest.

Yet Sam’s life seems to be on the upswing after meeting several new friends and a potential love interest in Shep, the pretty neighbor. However, Sam can’t seem to let go of what might have been, and is drawn to investigate the death of a teenage boy in 1980s Astoria. Sam’s convinced he was murdered–especially since Sam’s investigation seems to resurrect some ghosts in the town.

Threatening notes and figures hidden in shadows begin to disrupt Sam’s life. Yet Sam continues to search for the truth. When Sam discovers that they may be closer to a killer than previously known, Sam has a difficult decision to make. Would they risk their new life for a half-lived one?

Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu

Wei Wuxian was once one of the most outstanding men of his generation, a talented and clever young cultivator who harnessed martial arts, knowledge, and spirituality into powerful abilities. But when the horrors of war led him to seek a new power through demonic cultivation, the world’s respect for his skills turned to fear, and his eventual death was celebrated throughout the land.

Years later, he awakens in the body of an aggrieved young man who sacrifices his soul so that Wei Wuxian can exact revenge on his behalf. Though granted a second life, Wei Wuxian is not free from his first, nor the mysteries that appear before him now. Yet this time, he’ll face it all with the righteous and esteemed Lan Wangji at his side, another powerful cultivator whose unwavering dedication and shared memories of their past will help shine a light on the dark truths that surround them.

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon

Aster has little to offer folks in the way of rebuttal when they call her ogre and freak. She’s used to the names; she only wishes there was more truth to them. If she were truly a monster, she’d be powerful enough to tear down the walls around her until nothing remains of her world.

Aster lives in the lowdeck slums of the HSS Matilda, a space vessel organised much like the antebellum South. For generations, Matilda has ferried the last of humanity to a mythical Promised Land. On its way, the ship’s leaders have imposed harsh moral restrictions and deep indignities on dark-skinned sharecroppers like Aster. Embroiled in a grudge with a brutal overseer, Aster learns there may be a way to improve her lot – if she’s willing to sow the seeds of civil war.

What are your favorite queer books with Autistic rep? We’d love to hear about them!

You can access this list as a bookshelf on Goodreads!

Did you know? Duck Prints Press has an affiliate shop on Bookshop.org – and you can access all our rec lists (including this one!) there to facilitate purchasing the books. If you buy with us as your affiliate book store, authors get royalties, Bookshop.org gets a cut, and we get a small percent of the purchase price too – everyone wins!

[stardustizuku]

Forgive me for transposing my tags on my reblog to the ask box but I totally agree with your post about Myne's age and her perception of her “peers”! And then THE VERY SAME PEOPLE turn around and say “ohhhh Sylvester is so terrible for not parenting her not treating her like a child!!!” Like. Dude. PICK A LANE.

I think it's insanely interesting how she views people in relation to herself because it's not so simple as “oh she sees her peers as children because she's mentally an adult” when it's just. Not true?? I don't think we get concrete proof that she does. She sees Eglantine for example as older despite Myne+Urano combo age being most definitely elder.

FerMyne is a very good ship but I think people (especially on Discord, my fucking god) shut down other ships in an instant using this as a bludgeon.

Anyways I hope you don't mind me sending this ask, I've been following along your posts about AoB's trope/genre subversions and the breakdown of Yurgenschmidt's hypocrisies. You're so big-brained for it, whenever I see a particularly rancid take from somewhere else I come back to your posts to cleanse my brain.

Im glad you feel comfortable enough to share that!

Rozemyne is an interesting character bcs, If you’ve noticed, she rarely states who she loves and likes until it’s absolutely necessary for her to do it.

Even with her family, she starts showing affection but it isn’t until she has a near death experience that she becomes very vocal about how much she loves them. With Ferdinand, it isn’t until he’s set to leave for Ahrensbach that she vocally states how much he means to her. Even with Lestilaut, she states that his sudden proposal was opening a can of worms she didn’t want to open.

While she doesn’t lie when she has noted someone is important to her, she takes a while to admit it.

Also, her way of defining “love” has very little romantic connotations, and oftentimes just falls in an ambiguous “family”.

Saying that age is the only reason why she wouldn’t consider someone as romantic interest, is greatly reducing her character. There’s like at least five things that would come first than age - hell Ferdinand checks all the boxes and she STILL doesn’t see him in a romantic light (as of now at least)

Also, and this more important to me, is fucking rude.

People are allowed to ship whatever they want, regardless of what canon says. So pulling the “but they said x in canon!” is like spoiling the fun for everyone for the sake of a rigid moral compass that blocks you from even exploring the characters in interesting ways.

Fandom is about having fun, exploring rships and encouraging others to have a say in what they think of characters!

If you have a genuine insight into characters, sure! Share it, expand on it. But using the tired and useless “she said x therefore she won’t see them as romantic therefore shut it all down” is just, stifling. It screams horrible fandom etiquette

That said, I’m very happy that you like my essays! I try to put my thoughts in order and sometimes I take days to write them, so it means a lot to me.

[hedgiwithapen]

stargirl season three, “sylvester” decides to get rid of courtney instead of pat :)

"There's a clearing just up ahead," Sylvester said, looking back. Courtney scrambled after him through the fallen leaves with the boundless energy of a teenager in over her head. 

Pat had to die, of course. Siding with the Crocks, of all people. Caring about them, even. Sylvester--it was so much easier to think of himself as the name of  the character he was playing-- and Icicle didn't always agree about everything, but on this they saw perfectly eye-to-eye. But to kill Pat, Sylvester knew, Courtney needed to be out of the way. That was the problem with heroes and Legacies and families. They always got in the way for each other. 

So Ito would take out the boy, he'd get rid of Stargirl, and the rest of the new JSA, already crumbling, would come crashing down.  The staff warbled in his hand. Sylvester sighed.  It wouldn't work after this, probably. He'd fooled it this long, fooled the girl, fooled them all, but if it saw... That would be a shame. He hated to lose so useful a weapon. Something that could help him fly...

Unless it didn't realize. He'd had a whole speech planned out, a whole beautifully choreographed fight that would certainly have required breaking the Staff to be certain it didn't betray him. But perhaps there was another way.

Changing plans on the fly wasn't his usual MO, but a little improv never hurt anyone. He veered just a little from his mark.

"See, right here." He pointed to the grate in the forest floor, next to one of Ito's many little bunkers.  Courtney peered into the dark.

"It looks a little small," she said, frowning. "What exactly did you find down there?"

"Proof that Icicle's not after peace," he said. "Evidence of his real plan. I thought you'd want to bring it to the JSA."

She nodded, peering closer. "It's a long way down," she said. "Hold the Staff up so I can see?"

He raised it just a little, and in the scuffling of leaves, kicked out lightly. just enough  force to send her reeling.

She caught the rim of the airshaft entrance, of course. No one could just fall and break their neck these days.

"Stargirl!" he said, putting just the right inflection on the name as he lunged forward, dropping to the ground and kneeling  on her fingers. She yelped, he drew back, and he heard the crack of body of cement. 

"Courtney!" he called again, listening to his voice echo. "I'll-- I can't fit down there," he told the staff, clutching it. "Stargirl--I'll go get help! Just hold on!"

The staff was fast. If he'd really meant to get a paramedic, there might have been a chance to save her, if she hadn't died on impact-- and even then, given the Staff's healing connection. The cosmic staff would do everything it could to protect its wielders. Sylvester could tell. It wanted to save Courtney Whitmore so very, very badly.

He had no intention of letting it do so.

[clyches]

the girls you loved before ୨♡୧ vii. big babies

defeat.

“damn it,” kenma furrowed his eyebrows at the red light—the only light in his room—illuminating from his screen, which will surely make his head pulse the next day. he had mentioned something about staying back to do his plates and coding… but who was he kidding? the other three very well knew that kenma was lying about doing his work; he always did (not exactly lying, he just couldn’t be bothered to do it), hence why he had that chain of unread messages from his professor about his missing work. in fact, his name was passed around as a subject of the drunken conversations of his friends at that very moment, making him sneeze.

it’s such a hassle, kenma thought with an annoyed groan, having to carry unbelievable “braindead” players that can’t even think for themselves. he had been dreading to rank up, but it seems like no matter what he does, the game simply refuses to give him that satisfaction of moving up to the next tier.

the thought makes him a little more agitated as he stares at the leaderboard. he already had an outstanding kda of 47/15, but they still managed to lose? what a pain.

suddenly, kenma had notice the sudden silence in the room, and the way it was dimly lit. aside from his monitor, the only thing that was keeping his room from being pitch black was the moonlight seeping in from the velvety beige curtains he had. it’s the silence that bothers him, though—if he remembers correctly, he had ignored the meowing of his beloved pet, denji. don’t get him wrong! kenma absolutely, daresay, devastatingly adores his cat. it was just the adrenaline of clutching the round that had his attention centred on the game.

“it’s not like he could go that far…” he convinces himself. which is true, right? it’s not like denji was dumb enough to get lost when all he’s been doing is slip out of kenma’s spacious living space.

the puddinghead, that’s what his damn friends call him everytime he gets all grumpy, may it be because of his loss in a game or because of the way kuroo takes away his switch to “bond more with them”, it doesn’t matter, he believes they just love being nuisances, throws himself on his bed. 

kenma doesn’t really give a second thought about denji. he trusts him. or rather, he can’t be too bothered since the furry feline has disappeared on him for one too many times now. and kenma was already laying down, can’t expect him to stand up now.

his golden eyes darted to the digital clock, 11:37pm. oh well, nothing else better to do now.

you had promised yourself to catch a break around 11pm—which was thirty minutes ago—but you can’t help it, who in the world would neglect their precious babies? 

but it was all worth it to you when sylvester had finally given in and tasted the cat food you had prepared for him. “thank heavens,” you sighed, just noticing how you were panting from running all around your apartment complex; you never really had the best stamina. 

you were sitting on the floor, intently watching your cat eat, weakly, but still eating, you thought. 

then it hit you.

you didn’t have one cat, but two. 

finally peering behind your back, there sat miu, the older sister of the family. miu was her own cat—fiercy independent and wise, observant, and aloof. on the other hand, sylvester, sly for short, was your shadow. you could be never seen apart, both of you had the same schedule. even if miu was just herself most of the time, admittedly, she would have days full of attitude and would need much attention.

and today is no exception.

it was already a given that you would feel guilty giving all the attention to sylvester, but the way miu looked, with a very obvious annoyed expression in her eyes, made you feel even worse. you never play favorites—even if it feels like miu hates you sometimes, but it’s her charm! it’s why you love her so much. though, it seems like she really loves tobio, always following your beloved best friend around. even waiting in front of the door whenever he uses the comfort room, it was unbelievable.

maybe it’s because they both have a sense of… predatorial to them.

you were just about to open your arms to welcome miu’s sassy attitude into a hug, and also a form of apology for neglecting her all day, when suddenly—ring!

dang it.

a murmur of irritation leaves your lips. who would call at this ungodly hour? but mainly, why would someone disrupt her when her legs were already relaxed while crossed on the lush floor carpet? it made it such a challenge to stand up.

once you look at the caller id, though, you sighed. of course it was atsumu. 

you furrow your eyebrows unconsciously, but not even thinking twice. grabbing your jacket—it wasn’t even chilly, you just needed something to hide your plain outfit that’s only supposed to be worn at home—along with your keys, and dashed out the door.

it wasn’t long after you were parked in front of the club they had said they were in, it was the usual one everyone goes to whenever they need some time off stress. the city wasn’t exactly dark, but seeing the flashing, color-changing lights from the windows, it was the sore thumb from all the dimly lit buildings.

once you enter, it was much more crowded than you thought, the flashing lights making your head throb, which made it a little difficult to navigate through the crowds; having everyone around you shove you around with the upbeat music while having the time of their life wasn’t really helping, either.

with your eyes closed and having to inhale to prevent from furthuring the pounding of your head, that’s when you realized the whole place reeked of alcohol and sweat.

“this place really only is tolerable when you’re drunk,” you can’t even hear yourself amongst all the laughter, slurred chatter, and eardrum-bursting music.

but each table still had the sense of fun and camaraderie to it, reminding you why you were even here; that one table where a familiar black-haired figure with slumped shoulders—seeming like he would have probably left now if he didn’t have some sense of responsibility—was watching over adults that acted like kids when drunk.

maybe coming wasn’t the best decision in your life.

and that thought was very much proven right when, in a blink of an eye, kageyama had his body thrown all over you, slurring your name out—it was a clumsy effort to hug you.

your expression contorted once you smelled the strong alcohol in his breath. it changed right after the second your body realized it couldn’t hold up the 181cm of muscle on top of you.

“kageyama,” you breathed out in annoyance, begrudgingly shifting your stance to even try to support his weight. it wasn’t new, having to bear the burden of taking care of the big babies you had as friends, but you could never really admit that it was easy… because it never was.

you thank the heavens when kiyoomi had lifted the pouty tobio from you, hearing a bit of his mumbled words calling your name and how he wants to go home. you can’t deny how you felt the same, having to close your eyes at the blinking lights. (it didn’t really work since you could still see the colors of the rainbow blinking through your eyelids.) you were only trying to prevent another migraine when kiyoomi’s keen observation didn’t leave him as he pointed out your expression, revealing telltale signs of exhaustion.

“you seem tired,“ he remarks, forcing the drunkard that was in his arms to sit down. it was a little hard to hear his voice.

“wow, i would’ve never thought,” you didn’t think that your state was this evident.

“i’m sorry, i should’ve handled this on my own,”

“psh, it’s nothing. it’s not like they haven’t had to deal with my hangovers,” kiyoomi only nods.

a few tables away, there was also a familiar figure for you. it was kuroo, standing tall and effortlessly handsome, leaning against the cushions of the couch all his friends were drinking on. with a cigarette lit in between his fingers, he took a puff, adding to the harsh scent of the whole club—but you couldn’t lie, it also accentuated his captivating charm. it really comes as no surprise that every girl throws herself onto him.

he seemed to have been deep in thought, his gaze seemingly sober despite every shot glass on their table.

it had seemed to be stupid, in the midst of the crowds, he’s the one you see. isn’t that what people in love do? of course you weren’t in love—you had to do a bit of convincing yourself, it’s not like you’ve been in love before—you were just… attracted, that’s all. because who wouldn’t be?

you breathe in, taking in the fact you have been staring at their direction for a few minutes now, a shade of pink tinting your cheeks to reveal your embarrassment. and you sigh, trying to keep your emotions in check, however that goes unnoticed by the artist.

before allowing him to do anything stupid, because you honestly don’t want to see your name trending on twitter again, (you just want to post about all the romance movies and books you’ve just watched and read on there!) you quickly stand up, catching the attention of kiyoomi.

“you want to go?” you nod, “can we? it’s getting late,”

“alright. let’s get them in the car,”

it was a terrible experience, really; having to drag through the ocean of people with kageyama’s hand in yours, your knuckles turning white in an attempt to keep a hold of your best friend and not lose him. it wasn’t hard to go through unnoticed, especially when tobio kept shrieking that he was getting kidnapped. what a scaredy-cat for someone who always looks tough and grumpy.

kiyoomi, however, had double the trouble. kourai normally would always be groggy and sleepy, which wasn’t much of a problem; not until kiyoomi needed to carry the sleeping drunkard.

in complete contrast to his friend, atsumu was obnoxious and loud, as if he already wasn’t in his sober state. he never failed to irk their babysitter.

thankfully, your only responsibility was kageyama, whom you decided to take back to your apartment. your exhaustion made that decision—deciding that it would take too long to go to his dorm, and go back to yours.

the trip back already felt like an hour, even if you were the one driving. the dull buildings and dim lights successfully cured your headache, being able to think straight once again. it wasn’t unusual for your migraines to bother you, even when you had some sleep, or lack thereof. maybe you’ve been reading that romance novel too much.

you had kageyama around your shoulders, and god, was it a struggle. you felt yourself hallucinating that you were getting tipsy from all the alcohol you were inhaling from his breath. pushing the door open with your side felt so difficult, especially after the flight of stairs you had to walk up with a drunk bastard double your size in your arms.

it felt like your body had relaxed immensely—to the point you could almost pass out—once you had thrown your best friend on the couch. you were just eyeing him, looking around at your whole apartment, as you released a sigh. it’s not like you hadn’t felt this drained before, considering you did choose pre-med as a course, but you couldn’t compare anything to the weariness you had right now.

your head was pounding, and whenever you close your eyes, you saw what seemed to be molecules that suspiciously looked like the view whenever you peered into the microscope, almost forgetting that you were standing in front of the door that you… pushed open.

the depleted energy that you just lost from this night suddenly came back in what felt like a lightning of shock.

you froze.

how could you have opened the door so easily when you were certain you locked it? and why isn’t miu anywhere to be seen, even when kageyama’s presence was obviously here?

masterlist — ୨♡୧ — previous — ୨♡୧ — act 1, viii.

the girls you loved before — a kenma social media au !

sypnosis. you, being the president of the hopeless romantic club (and possibly the only member) of tokyo university, you are an absolute dork for love & adore seeing it in the air. on the other end of the spectrum, kenma has completely given up in love, due to all his failed attempts, and just can’t believe that true love could even exist. when two absolute opposite dispositions suddenly collide, the universe just can't help to make a bittersweet mess!

notes. if i’m not wrong, it’s 2k words B) it’s my first time writing again in a while, so i’m sorry if it’s not the highest of qualities! i’m sincerely sorry for ghosting everyone, i’m genuinely just a little drained from everything that’s been happening in life :) will (hopefully) update again soon, take this hella long chapter as a meal for not feeding u guys :”D btw this is not proofread i’m sorry for any mistakes too

taglist. OPEN ! — dm or send an ask to be added :D

୨♡୧ @empathum @zephestia @camicocom1a @pauleensstuff @eriiiyoon @princesskakashi @88ksk @90s-belladonna @kawaii-angelanne @reveusecherie @katsu-shi @saiewithakatana @sukunasrealgf @basically-an-anime-stan-acct @lovinmc @rintarousgirl @lwmie @thechaosoflonging

[aesopsbaby]

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫(s): Raloris (@feelin-lo ), Celtic (My OC)

𝐒𝐲𝐧𝐨𝐩𝐬𝐢𝐬: When Raloris experiences one of his many mood swings causing him to feel as if he's worthless, Celtic arrives. Misunderstanding ensues and words were exchanged.

𝐍𝐨𝐭𝐞: Who doesn't love some misconception/miscommunication troupe!! >:]] It's been awhile since I last wrote a story so this might not be very good,,,! Also, I still haven't found a beta reader so this is not proof-read, so,,do expect to see some grammatical errors here and there!

𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: Angst no comfort, nothing much to be put here tbh

𝐓𝐢𝐭𝐥𝐞: Meaningless words

Wrong.

It felt wrong.

He felt wrong. Raloris couldn't take it, the scene before him didn't feel..right. He shook his head slightly, brows furrowing as he clenched his teeth, trying so hard to concentrate at what could possibly be eating away at him right now.

Right now. When the team had came out victorious in a battle. Why did it have to be now. Why is he suddenly feeling this bubbling sense of disgust and hatred towards himself?

...No. He shouldn't be happy for the victory. He didn't do anything to be happy for. Zane got injured. Vince almost lost a life. Celtic..

Oh. Raloris swallowed the bile that threatened to rise up as he realized he had only been staring at his leader. His leader that was holding his bloodied and injured arm while having a pained but satisfied expression.

Raloris' eyes trailed downwards, into his palms that were stained with blood. His or some goblins, he wasn't sure anymore. His vision doubled and he swallowed dryly, the feeling of needles being stabbed down his throat at the action. He let out a staggered breath. Damn it.. His hands tightened into fists.

I didn't do shit. Why the hell was I so happy for?

Closing his eyes, Raloris turned on his heel, walking away from the group, and made his way back to their hideout. Hearing the cheers getting further and further away as he took every step, allowing the negative thoughts of worthlessness starts to eat at his mind, consuming his thoughts and soul.

....

A gentle yet firm knock reached Raloris' pointed ears, causing him to peer upwards at his door. He pursed his lips, not wanting to be teased by Sylvester nor Zane right now.

Another knock came, accompanied by a quiet and flat voice; "Raloris? Are you in there?". Raloris could've sworn he felt his entire body turn to ice with how his heart literally stopped beating and he couldn't move an inch at the sound of Celtic's voice.

Why is he here? Why now? Usually Raloris wouldn't mind being in the presence of Celtic. More often than not, he would've actually appreciated Celtic's accompany! But now? Now couldn't be any worse!

Raloris kept silent, hoping with all his heart that Celtic would just give up and leave him. He stared at the door with a bated breath, "..Apologies. But I'm coming in." And, of course, hoping that would be useless since Celtic was as stubborn as a mule.

Celtic's eyes darted from the interior of room --taking note of the lack of lighting--, and almost instantly, his eyes landed on the elf, sitting there on his bed. Raloris bit his quivering lips, averting eye contact from his leader and choosing to stare at the wooden floorboard instead, his mind running at a high speed at the suffocating silence and intense stare of Celtic.

"What h-" Celtic started but caught himself. It was as if the gears in his head were moving slowly and trying to piece together the perfect response.

He decided to close the door behind him first before making his way beside Raloris. Celtic parted his lips, taking his time to think over his words as he glanced at Raloris' trembling hands and the soft hiccups coming from him. Celtic spots the reflection of tears shining from the corner of Raloris' eyes and the stains of the salty liquid that trails down his cheeks and hangs onto his chin.

"..Are..Are you okay?"

Raloris didn't know why but he suddenly felt..angry. Frustrated. Irritated. That damn voice.

Why..why would Celtic ask that if he didn't care in the first place. Raloris hated it. He hated how Celtic always sounded monotonous, like he couldn't give two shits about his feelings or anyone's for that matter!

Raloris barked out a curt laugh, not bothering to look at the raven haired male. "You can be, oh so heartless sometimes, Celtic." Raloris darted his eyes up to meet Celtic's, hoping to see if he can spot the care and sympathy he was wishing to find. All that stared back at him was darkness, like the vast emptiness of the deep sea.

Raloris felt rage bubbling in his chest, "Your eyes can be so cruel." He seethed through gritted teeth and a slight glare. Celtic merely blinked, confusion evident on his face. "What are you talking about Raloris. Are you going through something? Should I leave you be for now?"

"There you go again! With that dead tone of yours. I truly wonder Celtic, do you really care?" Raloris stood up, glaring down at the leader who's still trying to understand the situation. "Do you even care about me? Am I even worthy to be on your team?? Why do you always speak as if you're forced to say those lines!" Raloris' voice cracks as he spoke, tears once again building up.

"If you don't care, I beg of you, don't bother spouting those nonsense. It was obvious that you don't mean it when you don't even bother putting in effort when you speak!!" Raloris choked out with great effort, he could feel his throat closing up, finding it difficult to breath.

Blurry and clouded vision stared into the same darkness that now were flooded with concern and shock.

The harsh breaths that leave the elf's parted lips filled the otherwise silent room.

"What..what are you talking about Raloris? I care. I care alot. I.." Celtic trailed off, closing his lips and swallowing, as if he was hesitant to say his next words. "..I care alot about you, Raloris. You mean..the world to me." He started again, gazing into Raloris' eyes, pleading that he can see his efforts.

"You don't SHOW that you do! You're just saying words and expect me to believe them when you look at me with those blank eyes!" Raloris yelled, the hot tears falling down his redden cheeks, frustration is evident in the way he flailed his clenched fists to show his emotions. His fist hitting his chest multiple times, before the frabic of his outfit is grasped tightly in his hold.

Celtic's heart tightened at the scene and he could've sworn he felt his heart shattered. He stood up abruptly---

"Raloris, I love you!"

Raloris' breath hitched, eyes widening as he stared at Celtic. Who, looked just as shocked as he is. Did..did he hear that right? What..did he just say?

As if he could hear his thoughts, Celtic spoke again softly, "I love you."

He continues, "And I need you like the moon needs the sun. You mean everything to me." A soft and gentle smile graces his features.

Raloris bit the inside of his cheek at his, once thought to be cold and emotionless leader, proclaiming and confessing his love right before him. He sighed, looking down before bringing his gaze to the raven haired male.

"I don't love you. I could NEVER love a heartless being like you." The words tumbled out of the mouth like running water before he could even stop them. He watched as Celtic winced slightly at the tone used but still, he maintained a poker face, aside from the slight crinkle of his brows.

Nothing but his heavy panting breaks the static of silence surrounding them. Raloris could feel the violent pounding of his heart in his ear. Was it the adrenaline? Fear? He wasn't sure, all he knew was that he can't think straight right now. He just feels so enraged and he's not even sure why anymore.

Celtic scoffed, glancing at the room before them before landing on Raloris again. His eyes always tend to do that, it always manages to find it's way back to Raloris, as if it's a compass that is destined to forever face one direction. His face was tense, lips pursed into a thin line, and his eyes..were empty.

"..Did you really have to be that honest?"

Raloris kept his mouth shut, closing his eyes and letting a sigh out. He opened them once again, choosing to look anywhere but at Celtic who was staring straight at him. After a moment of suffocating silence, Raloris picks up on the footsteps trailing off and the loud thud of the door being slammed shut. He finally picked up the courage to look up, realising that he's now standing alone in his room.

A haunting realisation daunted upon him as the entire situation replayed in his head at 2x speed. "Shit.." He muttered, hands coming up into his hair, clawing and grabbing at the strands as more curses string out of his lips. Why did he say that! Why did his emotions have to get the better of him at this moment?? Why did Celtic have to come when his emotions were..

Raloris let out a quivering breath, staring at the wooden floor, watching the droplets of tears hit the ground and form dark stains.

He needed rest.

Song on loop while writing this: Little Soldiers by The Crane Wives

[lazanskywrites]

Glee Was Ahead of It's Time.

You either love or hate Glee there is absolutely zero in-between. It's like the "cilantro soap-tasting gene", you decide whether you like it or not in one try. In my opinion, Glee is a masterpiece and I am prepared to die on this hill. Here are my top five reasons why Glee is one of my favorite shows.

My controversial take though, Glee was only good until halfway through season five. With that being said, the first reason why Glee is my favorite show is because the original cast is iconic. The original Glee Club members slowly fizzle out of the show, having random cameos here and there. This is why, to me, the last seasons are hard to watch. No amount of new characters will top the original characters, they were funnier and had better acting.

The fourth reason Glee is my favorite show is because the comedy was ahead of its time. Countless skits in the show are similar to those in today's comedic world on TikTok or YouTube. But Glee is slowly losing popularity as other shows and movies are produced. The writing and comedic timing of these attached clips are another reason why I and plenty of others still watch Glee.

The third reason I love Glee is for their celebrity cameos. John Stamos, Neil Patrick Harris, Britney Spears, Ricky Martin, Olivia Newton-John, and Jennifer Coolidge, the list goes on and on. Every celebrity has an important role in the episode or the season they're featured in. For example, John Stamos' character was dating a teacher involved in the Glee Club. Ricky Martin was a Spanish teacher who taught the Glee Club about Latin music. And Olivia Newton-John was alongside Jane Lynch's character in a music video.

The amount of A-list celebrities the directors were able to feature in only six seasons is outstanding. It shows how popular this show became as more episodes were filmed.

Fourthly, Glee would be nothing without the music (literally). Were all the covers good? Absolutely not. But the good covers were good covers. Every character has a handful of songs that were praised in the Glee fandom, but Rachel, Mercedes, and Blaine had hit after hit. As much as I dislike both Rachel Berry and Lea Michelle, she can sing. Rachel's standout song for me was "Don't Rain On My Parade", it perfectly highlights her vocal talent and the attitude her character brings to the show.

Mercedes has just as powerful of a voice as Rachel and Mercedes does not hold back. Her character was hilarious and full of talent, but she often got overshadowed by her peers. There are songs her peers had performed I think she would've performed ten times better. This isn't a solo, but it's my favorite song of hers. The context of the song is hilarious and the music video is pure 2010s vibes.

Finally, Blaine Anderson. On TikTok, there is a joke being spread that any song Blaine has covered in Glee is better than the original. They call it the "Blaine Anderson effect". Similar to the "Kelly Clarkson effect" which is when Kelly Clarkson covers a song and outdoes the original artist. I listen to Blaine's covers like they're originals. I could go on and on about how many good covers he has in Glee. Today, Darren Criss still performs outstanding covers. My favorite Blaine cover has to be "Bills, Bills, Bills".

The fifth and final reason why I love Glee is none other than Jane Lynch. Without fail, she'll always be the funniest character in every episode. What I appreciate about her character is the soft side she tries to cover up with crass jokes towards students and colleagues. Realizing why she is protective and patient with Becky it makes you see her from a different perspective. I love Sue Sylvester so much that I dressed up as her for Halloween.

It takes a certain person to truly enjoy Glee so it's not surprising that I'm one of the only people out of all my friends who enjoy watching an episode or two every night.

You thought I was kidding about the Halloween costume?

[bitbybitwrites]

study date - Klaine Hogwarts!AU

Originally this was a bit of a false start for my fic, Advanced Potions

The original prompt was "hogwarts!au + 4. meet messy + 6. "what is that?"

But I felt it wasn't messy enough, so I went in another direction. But I recently found it in my drafts, and thought it was a nice little drabble to share.

Enjoy!

You can read it on A03 or down below.

For @shame-is-a-wasted-emotion

NOTE: This takes place in the same AU as Advanced Potions - just during their seventh year at Hogwarts. They are about 17/18 yrs old

****

"Get your hands off me!"

The sound of a scuffle had Kurt look up from his reading. 

To be honest, Divination was such a bore of a class.  It's not like he needed to learn anything new about it.  Kurt had all of his mother's crystals, divination tools, and journals tucked away in her old trunk up in the attic of their home. He could read tea leaves and scry with the best of them. He had long ago lost focus on the chapter Professor Holiday had assigned them for the evening, so at this point, any other distraction would be welcome.

Even if it was prefect duties.  

"Oh, stop whining, Mudblood." he heard another voice growled.

"Let go!" the muffled voice called out.  "Let go of me!"

Kurt recognized the voices of the perpetrators and, fuming, whipped out his wand, slipped out from behind the tree he was leaning against, and stalked toward them.

As suspected, there they were: Karofsky and Azimio, the two most ridiculous, thickheaded idiots the Wizarding World had to offer who were also the two beaters on the Slytherin quidditch team. They had apparently decided to take up practice off the pitch and use some unsuspecting student as a stand-in bludger. Some unsuspecting Hufflepuff, it looked like, from the color of their robes, which were tossed over their head.

"Now, now, boys, "Kurt said as he brandished his wand path the scene before him. "I think we'll have enough of that.  You should move on."

Azimio sneered, peering down at Kurt.  "Of course, you would stand up for this one." The large student shook the smaller Hufflepuff roughly.  "You're no different.  Sticking with your own kind, Hummel?"

Karofsky laughed, and his grip tightened on their victim's robes. "That's right. You're another Mudblood, aren't you, Hummel?"

Kurt's eyes narrowed.  Suddenly, his arm flashed, and the two bullies yelped out in pain, dropping the Hufflepuff, who landed on the ground with a soft bounce. 

"Now, move on," Kurt warned, ready to throw more stinging jinxes their way.  "And you can be sure that I'll be reporting your behavior to Headmistress Sylvester. That outdated language died with the last Wizarding War.  She doesn't take kindly to anyone badmouthing or mistreating anyone with Muggle parentage."

Karosfy and Azimio growled and stormed off towards Hogsmeade, rubbing their sore hands and muttering under their breath.

"Are you OK?"  

Kurt leaned over to check the Hufflepuff, who remained on the ground. The student chose to stay still and buried in their robes instead.  This worried Kurt, who then knelt down to take a closer inspection.

"Are you injured?  I can take you to the infirmary.  Madame Pillsbury can look you over.  She can be a bit too thorough with her cleansing spells regarding small scrapes and such sometimes, but she'll fix you up quickly."

The student, still avoiding Kurt's gaze, mumbled. "I'm . . . fine.  Thanks."

Kurt now recognized that voice. His expression softened as he heard the American pronunciation of the words. Though it had been a couple of years since the exchange student from Ilvermony had transferred to Hogwarts, he still sounded like he stepped off the plane from New York.

Kurt adjusted his position so he was sitting next to the student.  He gently intertwined his fingers with theirs and said softly.  "Blaine, seriously.  Are you hurt?  Did they do anything to you?"

Hazel eyes turned to look back at him.  "No.  I'm fine." Blaine sighed and shrugged his shoulders.  "I wish they would just leave me alone.  I haven't done anything to them.  And as much as I don't like my father either, I don't like how they keep treating me like being half Muggle is a bad thing. It's not."

"Hey.  I know that.  I'm in the same boat, mister." Kurt said, squeezing his hand tighter.

"Some days, I wish I had listened to my mother and transferred to Mahoutokoro instead of Hogwarts after the divorce.  If I was, I'd be closer to our relatives in the Philippines." Blaine grumbled, slightly pouting.

Kurt gave Blaine a soft smile and brushed his curls off his forehead with his free hand.  "But if you did, we never would have met." Kurt reminded him.

Blaine sighed deeply, "Well, at least you're one of the good things that came out of coming to England."

Kurt squawked and shoved Blaine slightly.  "One of the things?  I thought I was the only thing?" he teased.

Laughing, Blaine pushed Kurt right back.  "Well, there is Honeydukes and Fortescue's. . ." he said, his eyes twinkling.

"Blaine Devon Anderson, if you are trying to tell me that I come in last against a cauldron cake, I am so going to jinx you into next week. I can't believe I lose out to your sweet tooth." Kurt pulled out his wand and mock-threatened the Hufflepuff with it, pouting.

Blaine cackled as he tackled the Slytherin prefect to the ground, pinning his wrists down with his hands.  He smiled as he began nuzzling Kurt's beautiful neck slowly making his way to that sweet spot just behind Kurt's left ear.  "Oh, you definitely come first.  Aren't I generous like that?"

Kurt whimpered as he felt Blaine settle on top of him.  "Not fair, Anderson, you're playing dirty.  Maybe they sorted you into the wrong house after all."

"Well, we could make good use of this cushioning charm," Blaine said as he continued mouthing at Kurt's neck.  "Thanks for that, by the way.  Didn't want to bruise my ass falling on these rocks when they dropped me."

"Well, I think that would have been a shame, "Kurt murmured as his hands roamed under Blaine's robes, pulling him closer.

[ming-sik]

How do you think canon would react to your au?

there's definitely a lot of them who are mostly unrecognizable, like tuuli's personality overhaul is so substantial and her original character is so flat that i think that baon!tuuli would scan as a completely different character who happens to share her name if they ever actually met. there's also a lot who are similar enough that there wouldn't be a huge clash, although canon angelica and baon!angelica are very different, you wouldn't notice the differences unless they were called to perform a task without using enhancement magic and angie suddenly had to deal with dyslexia symptoms. so im just gonna do the highlights

canon rozemyne would probably find baon!rozemyne to be a bit of a coward. myne entering noble society under conditions that force her to constantly keep the danger nobles pose to her in mind means that she has to act way more cautiously than canon rozemyne gets to since she cannot solve any problem that canon rozemyne solves by brute force. i do think she would be very worried about the fact that rozemyne is hartmut's retainer. surprisingly, otherwise she's the character who changes the least since i already find her interesting to mess around with.

ferdinand is basically the same in personality with only the details changed. he's an analytical, callous proponent of noble society who is the way he is because he views his own life as a tool. he's a version of himself who wasn't surprised by myne and therefore didn't allow her to influence him. that said he comes across as way more villainous simply because we don't mainly see him through the perspective of the one person he likes and respects, we see the way he treats everyone else.

hartmut would be one of the more divergent comparisons. in the AU he fixates on printing itself instead of rozemyne, fascinated by the myriad of practical and social challenges to implementing widescale printing. this comes after rozemyne earns his respect by accurately and viciously chewing him out in a way he's never experienced. his initial assignment to help with the printing industry ended up in him slacking off and sabotaging it bc he doesn't care, but despite everyone else knowing it was common sense to just wait for it to be over and try to pick up the pieces, rozemyne pointed out that he was being such a jerk because he didn't have any actually helpful knowledge since he refused to listen to lower-status nobles long enough to learn the basics and didn't back down when he tried to strongarm her into giving up. idk if canon hartmut would be impressed by rozemyne being good at arguing(or extremely stubborn when it comes to books) but baon!hartmut's main problem is that his entire brain revolves around whatever he finds interesting and anything outside of that is for the most part beneath his notice, so when rozemyne interests him and makes printing interesting, he latches onto it. he mirrors ferdinand, but because of his age she's able to push their dynamic closer to peers and unlike ferdinand he comes to see her as someone who is intellectually his equal, as well as them being very similar kinds of autistic. also he ends up playing the comedic role sylvester does since he's a silly guy who is her boss but who she isn't especially scared of and has a personal rapport with.

sylvester is as always my special little guy. i cannot decide if he and baon!sylvester would totally get each other or fight to the death. i push sylvester a Lot farther, with him being forced to choose and choose and choose whether he cares more about preserving his status or doing what he feels is right with the cost of doing what he feels is right getting higher every time and eventually him having to accept that his fundamental worldview is incompatible with him as a person. canon sylvester might think he's kind of a dumbass since most of those problems are solved for him by someone else so he doesn't have to deal with them or just don't exist in the first place and while in my heart sylvester is just waiting for the right push to go full communist i dont think that's supported by canon if we don't ignore the back half of the series. he spends a lot more time as an antagonist or at least a character who is definitely doing something wrong, and unfortunately his silliness is very constrained by how on fire everything is for the majority of the story. born to game forced to adult as some might say

charlotte might view baon!charlotte as a kind of wish fulfillment, at least at first. since charlotte decides to take advantage of wilfried's condemnation by launching a story-long mission to become aub ehrenfest at any cost, she's a wayyyyy more active force in the story. she's a massive schemer and although her goal is to stabilize ehrenfest and become an aub who can save it from the brink of collapse, she is ultimately incapable of doing that on her own using the tools of her nobility, almost getting turned into georgine's pawn through trying to exploit her without fully understanding who she's up against. how much and how viciously she fights with sylvester is definitely very different, since their conflict between sylvester wanting to keep charlotte safe in the immediate future and charlotte wanting her life to be as valuable to her duchy as possible, plus an entire childhood of bad blood from sylvester's neglect mean that charlotte actively hates him for a lot of the story.

detlinde is more expanded than changed. detlinde's narcissism as a result of the abuse and neglect she's under means that she clings until her fingers bleed to the idea that someday she will be big and powerful enough to leave all the haters in her dust. she's aware that her mother only cares about her as a pawn, but she's bad at that and so she rails against it, refusing to throw herself at whichever noble her mom demands she curry favor with when all it has ever done is make people hate her more. charlotte is initially just a target georgine gives her, but charlotte is too committed to gaining her as an ally at first and too sympathetic to her later to give up. detlinde is in a very complicated place for a lot of the story, torn between wanting to stay in her comfortable shell or follow charlotte to the terrifying world of trying to function within society instead of hoping to spontaneously escape it one day. this kicks into overdrive when georgine starts treating charlotte as the daughter she always wished she'd had, which explodes her and charlotte's relationship, and is unfortunately After hartmut is engaged to detlinde on charlotte's promise that he would be a reliable ally in her own quest for the throne. detlinde & hartmut end up being a team of antagonists once charlotte defects to the revolutionaries but that's way later i havent thought about the details yet. probably they're tragic antagonists because that's fun :)

[hournites]

for the best friends to lovers prompt- "did that kiss mean anything to you"

hope you are doing well!! i love your writing 🫶🏻

Soundless Spin

“You start.” 

Doja Cat blasted through Cindy’s speakers, fancy chandeliers overhead shaking from the noise as Rick eyed the offensive Bud Light in front of him. It pained him that Blue Valley, Nebraska couldn’t shake the 20th century out of its roots–Somehow, even amidst 2020 billboard charts, Jackbox games, and Tiktok trends, the only activity collectively agreed upon tonight was spin the bottle. 

“Do I have to?” 

“Yes,” said Cindy, already bored at how long he was taking. Why was she facilitating this nonsense–she hates half of the school. That said, Rick also didn’t understand how they scored invites to her party. Or why the girls wanted to go. They might have not been at each other’s throats anymore with the ISA discontinued, but it wasn’t exactly like they were close friends. Since the JSA recovered the true Sylvester’s pickle brain, Rick stopped applying logic in his life when he didn’t need to. Crowded between drunk teens sat in a seance approved circle, everyone waited on Rick to start the game he had assumed was a joke. 

“No, you don’t have to,” said Beth reassuringly from across the room, though Rick suspected the second it was her time she’ll nope out. She looked around the group of classmates, sober as a judge. “Please remember that kissing should always be consensual!” 

Cindy rolled her eyes. “It's not that serious, Dr. Chapel Jr.” She shrugged in that nonchalant way before she stirred the pot. “Rick might land on Cameron, for all we know.”

Yolanda facepalmed. “We’re supposed to be encouraging Rick, not giving him the ick.” 

Cameron shot Yolanda an icy look. She raised a brow in retaliation.  “I said what I said.”

Courtney, nestled beside him, placed an ineffective hand on his knee. To Rick, she chanted, “C’mon! Spin, spin, spin, spin!” 

Everyone joined in. 

“Spin! Spin! Spin!” 

“Fine. Fine!” he shouted loud enough to be heard, blowing hot air out of his mouth. “I get it!” He raised both hands in the air to get some of Cindy’s cheerleading friends to stop hollering, their enthusiasm giving him minor concern. “I’m doing it. I’m doing it.” 

The empty beer bottle spun tightly around their sitting circle–Rick anticipated disaster, regretting his cave to peer pressure the second his hand lifted away. Anyone but Mahkent. Anyone but Mahkent, he nearly prayed in mounting desperation. It whirled around Yolanda on his right, Becky Sharpe, Cindy and the cheerleaders, tipped past Jenny Williams, slowed by Courtney, and crawled past Cameron until it hesitantly landed on Beth. 

Rick jerked his eyes up, meeting her gaze. His heart stopped for, like, a minute. He’d been so caught up in who would be the worst option, he hadn’t had enough time to think what would happen if the bottle landed on one of his friends.

What the hell should I do?  

Courtney covered her mouth to hide her giggles. “Wow! Must be fate.” 

“Girlie,” Yolanda whisper-mimed, shaking her head and zipping her lips. “Shut up.” 

It didn’t matter–Rick easily ignored Courtney cajoling them six ways to Sunday because he couldn’t hear her. The music distorted around them as he tried to pick up on Beth’s cues. 

He almost asked her, should I spin again? 

Then her lips lifted into a small cheeky smile. Of course, Beth wouldn’t have let herself play if she minded getting a few kisses from this game considering she was the one reminding everyone about consent. And, he came to realize, this would be his first kiss sober. It scratched an itch in his brain to think it would be with Beth. They could laugh it off later. 

“Well?” some dude huffed, impatient. “Are you kissing or not?”

Rick cleared his throat. “Beth, are you sure…?” 

But she was already making her way towards him, answering his question. 

Okay. Welp. We’re doing this. 

Instead of shuffling into the middle of the circle like a circus act, Rick let her come to him. Once she was in arm’s reach, he reached forward, hauling Beth into his lap to move her away from a sticky beer spill. It was easier, more comfortable—Less of a spectacle, this way. 

“Oof.” She laughed breathlessly as he rearranged their limbs. “Hi there. This is close.” 

“Sorry,” he said, embarrassed, ready to shove her off him if she didn’t like it. 

Beth touched his hand. “Don’t apologize.” She was right, this was so close. He could count every curly eyelash of hers behind those dark frames.  “Did you know this only had a 7% probability of happening?” 

Rick inwardly rolled his eyes at her math brain guzzling out computations at a time like this. Why wasn’t she nervous? “I did not. It’ll just be a peck, okay?”

Her brown eyes brightened in the dim party room and she nodded. “Sure!”

Rick cupped her jaw, cautious to be gentle, then tipped her chin up so he could lean down and kiss her.

She was ready for it. She closed her eyes and looped her arms around his neck, meeting his quick peck with another kiss before he could end it. It caught him off guard when Beth let out a tiny sigh. 

It felt good. Right. Rick couldn’t pull himself away. 

She pushed herself up in his lap and then there was more. Rick’s thumb pressed against her cheek. He hadn’t had anything to drink since they first walked in, but his mind went warm and fuzzy, like that first sip of alcohol down his throat. Everything slowed around them. He didn’t know what they were doing or cared where they were, he just wanted the soft way Beth’s body pretzeled against his, her hand now moving, exploring down his neck to rest over his chest. It wasn’t rushed, or unsure, Beth was taking and he was giving or maybe it was the other way around. She let out another hum, and then there was another long lazy kiss, hypnotic enough for Rick to nearly believe that he had a soul she could’ve kissed out. 

“Woah, okay! Ew? Too much.” Jenny W clapped her hands. “Time’s up! Spin again!” 

He blinked out of the trance. “What?” 

She gave him a shy smile. “That was nice.”  Beth slid herself out of his lap seemingly unaffected nor aware of how she had just turned his life upside down.

 Nice? That was—Okay. Apparently the most intimate moment in his 18 years was just “nice.” Rick was fucked. 

“Yeah,” he croaked out, scared that if he spoke further his voice would crack, the tension between them was still palpable. Say something. You have to say something.

He focused on forming a coherent sentence out of his mouth. They should leave. To do what? He had no idea (yes, he did–her lips, that touch, the perfume on her neck, he needed it memorized). He also needed to process what the hell just happened, and, not surprisingly, Beth was very good at analyzing weird shit that happens to them–but not usually to both of them at the same time. 

“You heard me, right? It’s your turn now.” Jenny W thrust the bottle into Beth’s hand, not giving Rick the option to get a word in. 

“Oh,” Beth said. “Sorry!” 

He watched in stunned silence as she returned to her spot and wordlessly spun again. It landed on a guy from Ms. Woods’ calculus support group and jealousy took a hold of him with an iron fist. 

He got up and left, announcing he needed a piss, though the terrible excuse was luckily drowned out by the latest remix. Unable to stomach Beth kissing someone else, the rest of the night blurred like watercolors on a canvas. 

Nothing except the bleeding dark pinks of her lips dripped into every corner of his mind, the browns of her soft eyed stare, haunting his sleep. He suffered through the blue phantom-pain of Beth in his lap. The way she moved in it and how boldly he pulled her to him without second-guessing what he was doing. 

What was he doing? 

~.~ 

“Assuming the calculations from the goggles are correct, we would have six hours in the pocket dimension.” Beth wrote notes to follow her thinking on the Pit Stop whiteboard with a green marker, her goggles projecting a diagram. “That’s one hour in our dimension, meaning hypothetically your hourglass won’t time out.

“Got it,” Rick agreed without understanding, miserably distracted by the fact this was his first moment alone with Beth since Spin the Bottle. Thick tension returned with a vengeance. He could taste how bad he wanted her to like him. Every time she caught his eye Rick was certain he’d need a fire extinguisher to douse his hot heart within him. He sat on the table, his fingers tapping anxiously against the wood surface, really wanting to kiss her again. 

She narrowed her eyes and cocked her head like she didn’t quite believe him. Rightly so. He didn’t believe him, and that posed a risk for the JSA tomorrow. “Any questions, then?” 

“I don’t think so.” 

Beth folded her arms. “Really?” 

“Fine. Yeah. One.” 

She looked relieved. “Let’s hear it.” She turned around and wrote QUESTIONS on the board and set out to underline it.  

“Did that kiss mean anything to you?” 

Beth’s impeccable marker line careened to a crooked left. Slowly, she turned around. “That has nothing to do with our pocket dimension trip.” 

“You asked if I had any questions.” 

“Yes, you did. Fair enough.” She sighed in a way Rick couldn’t tell was wistful or annoyed. “Our kiss, you mean?” 

“Yes, our kiss.” Even calling it a kiss, as he had in his brain the last few days, was very modest. There was not just one kiss. There were several kisses. It was an experience. 

“Of course it meant something to me,” she said primly. The marker cap pressed into her inner-palm. “That was my first kiss.”

“That’s it?” 

She glanced away, fixating on the antiquated mugshots of Per Degatron’s goonies, finally starting to look as nervous as Rick felt. “What more do you want me to say? It was nice.”

He almost winced—There she went again. It was nice. For a girl with her vocabulary, that wasn’t promising. 

“It was a nice kiss,” she continued in his stretched silence, “and I’m glad I had it with you. I didn’t think the bottle would ever land on me, or that I would want to play until they made you go first. I’m pretty sure I went into it wanting to watch.” 

He furrowed his brows, trying to read between the lines. If she didn’t want to play unless he went first, then why did she continue with her turn afterwards? She must’ve used him to boost her confidence and practice kissing, not realizing he’d read into it so much. Now Rick felt stupid. 

“You’re hurt,” she said. He was about to argue, but there really wasn’t any point. Not when his voice would probably crack as he denied it. He cursed the accuracy of the mood reader still embedded in her goggles. Sensing his lingering wariness at the object above her hair, she took the goggles off and laid them aside. An offering that she wouldn’t leverage her emotional advantages in this conversation. She used the stool to step up onto the table, taking a seat next to him. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to tell you how you feel.” 

“It’s okay.” 

“It doesn’t have to be okay. Wasn’t it just a game?”

His hand inched closer to hers until their fingers brushed. She leaned against his side. He felt a strange catch in his breath as the warmth of her closeness untied some of the knots in his stomach. Beth was beautiful and sweet, and always bursting with compassion. How could he pretend he wasn’t falling for that? “It was supposed to be.” 

She looked up at him. 

“But..it wasn’t.” He met her stare and swallowed hard. “It wasn’t for me.” He dragged a hand over his forehead in disbelief he managed to say it out loud. He summoned the strength to keep going. “It wasn’t a game. It wasn’t just nice, it was…I didn’t want it to end. I didn’t want it to stop. I felt like we clicked in that moment and I woke up from sleepwalking through feelings I have for you.”

Beth didn’t say anything, like his confession knocked the wind out of her. “You like me?”

He groaned softly. “It’s embarrassing, I know.” 

“No! No, no it’s not,” she objected, squeezing the hand nearest to hers, but Rick didn’t think he could handle her breaking his heart so softly. 

“Can you just tell me if I need to get over you?” 

“I’m not doing that.” Beth sat up straight. “I called the kiss nice because I didn’t know how else to explain how I felt. I was inexperienced and surprised at myself. I won’t lie, the thought of kissing you excited me, but I thought that was because I trust you, so it would’ve been an easy way to get my first kiss out of the way.” 

Rick started to smile, thinking back on what she said. “You calculated that 7% chance.” 

 “I did, and then that happened. I didn’t know if that’s how kissing always felt like or if it was because it was you. So I kept playing and I had a few more turns after you left, okay, but none of those kisses were like ours. But I knew you hated the game, left right after kissing me, and intended to only give me a peck,” she repeated the last fact with fake quotation marks. “I was the one that got carried away. I was the one that was embarrassed. It was easier if I pretended it didn’t happen so I wouldn’t make things weird.” 

It was such a relief to hear her say that they were on the same page. “So what do we do now?” 

“Well, first, we need to go over the pocket dimension because I know you were not paying attention, which I thought was because you were feeling uncomfortable but now I think it is because you were staring at my skirt.” 

“Holy shit.” Rick scratched behind his neck as heat crawled up his face. This was perilous and exhilarating new ground. He liked Beth and she knew it. He was attracted to her and she could feel it. “Uh, I plead the fifth?” 

Beth laughed and flashed him that same flirty grin from the party. “But as for right now?” Rick knew he was either in for trouble or a really, really good time. “I can think of a few ideas.”

She unearthed the green marker from her pocket and gave it a spin.

[cantsayidont]

April 1950. Years before Betty Kane or Barbara Gordon, the Robin solo strip in STAR SPANGLED COMICS #103 briefly floated the idea of giving Robin a female counterpart: Roberta the Girl Wonder. The story begins at Dick Grayson's high school, where the girls are discussing their hopeless crush on Robin. One of them, redheaded Mary Wills, then has a brainstorm:

Mary is adorable in this story, although the assertion that Dick Grayson's peers are enamored with Robin (something that was repeated on and off into his college days in the 1970s) doesn't withstand close analysis. Even by the standards of the late '40s and early '50s, Robin is only a little less of a nerd than the young Clark Kent in the Superboy strip (who quickly established himself as the epitome of squaredom), and Dick Grayson at least as bad. However, Mary is determined:

A crime-compact! Obviously, Mary has already grasped the merchandising potential of being a Bat-adjacent crimefighter, but where did this teenage girl get smoke, gas, and explosive capsules? (Is that what we're supposed to assume she was making in panel 2 above?) Troubling …

As "Roberta the Girl Wonder," Mary quickly manages to introduce herself to Robin, even sneaking into the Batcave by hiding in the trunk of the Batmobile. However, to her dismay, Robin responds to her with irritation and disdain.

She asks a pretty reasonable question, honestly. Upon meeting her, Robin's immediate reaction is that "this is too dangerous a game for a girl" (but totally fine for a boy who doesn't even have any pants, apparently), and he subsequently becomes very critical of her ability to cover her tracks to protect her secret identity (much of which criticism seems unmerited or at least overblown), but even if you consider those reasonable arguments, his almost total disinterest in her (the above splash page not withstanding) does end up coming across as kind of gay. The comics were a little vague about how old Robin was supposed to be, but the beginning of this story indicates that he and Mary go to the same high school, so he's probably 15 or 16. That he reacts to a pretty girl his own age expressing obvious interest in him as if she were trying to sell him aluminum siding is thus a little odd unless, as Mary suggests, he just doesn't like girls.

To underscore the point, Robin deliberately sabotages her, arranging to douse her with chemicals (with which he's surreptitiously dosed the perfume shown below) to make her mask fall off in public:

Poor Mary.

Mary Wills is more than a little reminiscent of another STAR SPANGLED COMICS character: Merry, the Girl of a Thousand Gimmicks. First seen in STAR SPANGLED COMICS #81 in June 1948 (although she didn't adopt her costumed identity until the following issue), she was Merry Pemberton, adoptive sister of Sylvester Pemberton, the Star-Spangled Kid. Syl tried to discourage her from getting involved in crimefighting, but not only did she not listen to him, she soon took over his strip.

The above panels are from a story in STAR SPANGLED COMICS #86, which is still identified with the Star-Spangled Kid logo on the splash page even though Syl himself is nowhere in sight. With the following issue, the strip officially became Merry's in name as well as fact. However, with reader interest in superheroes fading rapidly, the strip lasted only through #90, in March 1949.

Roberta the GIrl Wonder may have originated an attempt to create a similar heroine for the Robin strip, but given how hard the ending of her story shuts down the possibility of her reappearing, one assumes editor Whitney Ellsworth decided that particular ship had sailed. National-DC was not very likely to replace Robin with a girl the way Merry had replaced her brother and Black Canary had superseded Johnny Thunder, and in any event, it had already become clear that it wasn't going to arrest the sales decline. Even Robin would soon lose the STAR SPANGLED cover slot to Tomahawk, and in 1952, the book became STAR-SPANGLED WAR STORIES.

[richincolor]

[The six images above are the covers of the books that are featured in the post and are described below after each of the titles.]

Disability Pride Month

For Disability Pride Month we gathered a few titles that we have enjoyed and/or hope to read in the near future. If you know of others that shouldn't be missed, please let us know. 

The Secret Summer Promise by Keah Brown Levine Querido [Cover is painted and shows three young people sitting near water with a bright sun up above. They're wearing shorts and have long dark hair.]

THE BSE (Best Summer Ever) LIST!

1. Blueberries 2. Art show in ShoeHorn 3. Lizzo concert 4. Thrift shop pop-up 5. Skinny Dipping at the lake house 6. Amusement Park Day! 7. Drew Barrymarathon 8. Paintball day

Oh, and ….

9. Fall out of love with Hailee

Andrea Williams has got this. The Best Summer Ever. Two summers ago, she spent all her time in bed, recovering from the latest surgery for her cerebral palsy. She’s waited too long for adventure and thrills to enter her life. Together with her crew of ride-or-die friends, and the best parents anyone could ask for (just don’t tell them that), she’s going to live it up.

There’s just one thing that could ruin it: Her best friend, Hailee, finding out Andrea’s true feelings. So Andrea WILL fall out of love with Hailee – even if it means dating the cute boy George who keeps showing up everywhere with a smile.

Do we want Andrea to succeed? No! Does she? We’re not telling!

Breathe and Count Back from Ten by Natalia Sylvester Clarion Books [Cover has a young woman swimming in water. She is wearing a bikini and there are scars visible on her back.]

In this gorgeously written and authentic novel, Verónica, a Peruvian-American teen with hip dysplasia, auditions to become a mermaid at a Central Florida theme park in the summer before her senior year, all while figuring out her first real boyfriend and how to feel safe in her own body.

Verónica has had many surgeries to manage her disability. The best form of rehabilitation is swimming, so she spends hours in the pool, but not just to strengthen her body.

Her Florida town is home to Mermaid Cove, a kitschy underwater attraction where professional mermaids perform in giant tanks . . . and Verónica wants to audition. But her conservative Peruvian parents would never go for it. And they definitely would never let her be with Alex, her cute new neighbor.

She decides it’s time to seize control of her life, but her plans come crashing down when she learns her parents have been hiding the truth from her—the truth about her own body.

The Luis Ortega Survival Club by Sonora Reyes Balzer + Bray [Cover shows four brightly dressed young people in a narrow passageway or hallway. They are leaning in towards each other to pose together for the picture.]

Ariana Ruiz wants to be noticed. But as an autistic girl who never talks, she goes largely ignored by her peers, despite her bold fashion choices. So when cute, popular Luis starts to pay attention to her, Ari finally feels seen.

Luis’s attention soon turns to something more, and they have sex at a party—while Ari didn’t say no, she definitely didn’t say yes. Before she has a chance to process what happened and decide if she even has the right to be mad at Luis, the rumor mill begins churning—thanks, she’s sure, to Luis’s ex-girlfriend, Shawni. Boys at school now see Ari as an easy target, someone who won’t say no.

Then Ari finds a mysterious note in her locker that eventually leads her to a group of students determined to expose Luis for the predator he is. To her surprise, she finds genuine friendship among the group, including her growing feelings for the very last girl she expected to fall for. But in order to take Luis down, she’ll have to come to terms with the truth of what he did to her that night—and risk everything to see justice done.

Disability Visibility Adapted for Young People edited by Alice Wong Delacorte Press [Our review] [The cover has several geometric shapes and bright colors on it along with the title.]

The seventeen eye-opening essays in Disability Visibility , all written by disabled people, offer keen insight into the complex and rich disability experience, examining life's ableism and inequality, its challenges and losses, and celebrating its wisdom, passion, and joy.

The accounts in this collection ask readers to think about disabled people not as individuals who need to be “fixed,” but as members of a community with its own history, culture, and movements. They offer diverse perspectives that speak to past, present, and future generations. It is essential reading for all.

Something More by Jackie Khalileh Tundra [The cover shows three students in uniform near a school sign. One is standing in front and the other two people are sitting on top of the sign.]

Fifteen-year-old Jessie, a quirky loner obsessed with the nineties, is diagnosed as autistic just weeks before starting high school. Determined to make a fresh start and keep her diagnosis a secret, Jessie creates a list of goals that range from acquiring two distinct eyebrows to getting a magical first kiss and landing a spot in the school play. Within the halls of Holy Trinity High, she finds a world where things are no longer black and white and quickly learns that living in color is much more fun. But Jessie gets more than she bargained for when two very different boys steal her heart, forcing her to go off-script.

Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens edited by Marieke Nijkamp Farrar, Straus and Giroux [This cover features two people hugging with their eyes closed on the cover. One has long hair and the other has very closely cut hair on one side with longer hair on the top. The one with short hair has a cane in one hand.]

This anthology explores disability in fictional tales told from the viewpoint of disabled characters, written by disabled creators. With stories in various genres about first loves, friendship, war, travel, and more, Unbroken will offer today's teen readers a glimpse into the lives of disabled people in the past, present, and future.

The contributing authors are awardwinners, bestsellers, and newcomers including Kody Keplinger, Kristine Wyllys, Francisco X. Stork, William Alexander, Corinne Duyvis, Marieke Nijkamp, Dhonielle Clayton, Heidi Heilig, Katherine Locke, Karuna Riazi, Kayla Whaley, Keah Brown, and Fox Benwell. Each author identifies as disabled along a physical, mental, or neurodiverse axis―and their characters reflect this diversity.

[doctor-yo-yo]

Hey, so, update on the shadows

I've been bitten by one and it really fucking hurts, but I'm apparently fine? According to my peers. so it's like phantom pains? How ya been

[Hands you a gift box. In the gift box is a hand drawn Sylvester with sheep surrounding him.]

- @the-bite-of-87-lol

"I told you that thing would attack! Seriously, why-"

"...Is that me?"

"Thank you so much, I never really got gifts outside of Molly sending some while I was in the hospital."

[kuiperblog]

It's still possible to find success later in life

I'm frequently shocked by the number of 19-year-olds saying some variation on "it's so over for me" or "I'm cooked" or however it is that the kids these days express that their best days are behind them.

On a certain level, would be easy for me to laugh at them. "19 is still so young!" my millennial peers might say. It's absurd for a literal teenager to feel like they're a washed-up "has-been."

But on another level, I understand why 19-year-olds feel "cooked" in a way that their older peers don't. College is often the stage of life where many come to realize that they've lost their "child prodigy" license.

Part of this comes from the fact that as you climb up the educational ladder, you're no longer a big fish in a small pond. The kid who was in the top 10% of their class in high school who gets into a "good university" will likely end up classmates who were also in the top 10% of their class in high school, and by the inevitability of mathematical necessity, half of those kids will realize that within this new context, they are below average. It can feel crushing to go from being the smartest kid in AP calc to being in the bottom quartile of your class.

And in a much more profound sense, it's the point in your life where you realize just how big the ocean is. High school graduation marks the last point in your life where you can get "perfect marks" by following the path of least resistance. I remember being in my senior year of college, listening to my fellow mechanical engineering students chattering about all of the various certifications they were studying for. I had never even heard about this -- "huh? Apparently some states require you to pass an exam to be certified as a 'Professional Engineer?' Is this something I need to study for?" It feels as if you're expected to suddenly know a lot of things that are outside the curriculum.

The thing I think we all eventually come to realize is that everyone is in this boat. Even some of the biggest success stories had "slow starts" while they took their time to figure things out.

So, in the spirit of offering encouragement to those young'uns and 19-year-old "has beens," here are some stories about famous people who didn't find success until later in life:

Sylvester Stallone

Sly Stallone's story truly is an inspirational overnight success story. Obviously, he's famous for being Rocky Balboa -- but when he showed up to the where Rocky won three Academy Awards, he was 30 years old. He didn't even finish writing the famous screenplay until he was 29 years old!

Tina Fey

Tina Fey made history as the first woman to become head writer of SNL, but she didn't achieve this until age 29. What's more, she had to grind for years to reach this point -- she first got hired to write for SNL at age 27.

Stephen King

Stephen King didn't sell his first novel (Carrie) until he was 26 years old. Up until that point, the only things he'd ever had published were short stories. What's more, he only got a $2,500 advance for Carrie -- he didn't really "make it" as a pro author until after the book came out and started selling gangbusters, with the paperbook rights selling for $400,000 -- this didn't happen until King was 27 years old!

Steve Jobs

Funny enough, I've seen a lot of people point to Steve Jobs as an example of an "early life success story" because Steve Jobs was a 21-year-old college drop-out when he co-founded Apple. And while it's true that Apple did have some early success stories, like the Apple II, the company didn't IPO until three years after that. After the IPO, his net worth was measured in hundreds of millions of dollars, but he had to grind until he was 25 years old to reach that point!

Jennifer Lawrence

A lot of people saw Jennifer Lawrence portray a teenage Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games and assumed that she was a teenage success story. Not so! JLaw was actually 21 years old at the time, proving that even if you don't achieve success in your teens, it's still not too late to achieve fame and success. She didn't even win an Academy Award for Best Actress until she was 22.

In short, if you're 19 years old, it's not "too late" for you. You are not "cooked." There's no reason to think you are too old or need to give up on your dreams and ambitions until you hit your early 30's, at which point if you haven't become a famous multimillionaire it's pretty much over for you.

[chesters-ocs]

i dont know what this is. but im very much so half asleep so. yeag. @the-whispers-of-death heres your daily dose of sylvester x butcher. no beta read we die like men cuz i am not reading this shit myself

cw: none, just butcher being needy. like he always is.

wc: 793

"Y'know..." Butcher drawls from the doorway, catching the attention of Sylvester, who looks up from the disassembled camera he's been fixing "it's been a while since you've kissed me."

"... What?" Sylvester scoffs, staring at the man clad in leather "Feeling needy again?"

"And if I am?" he challenges, smirking.

"Well.. can you at least wait until I'm done working?"

The question causes Butcher to grumble, as he stalks inside the room "No can do, kitty. You damn well know that..." the man almost growls in the crook of the smaller one's neck, only to be met with a hand to the face, batting him away.

"Oi! None of that! You're waiting. Go pout elsewhere, asshole!" Sylvester grunts, adjusting his glasses to sit on top of his head, as Butcher whines from the impact of the hit, which in reality, was more like a gentle shove.

"You wound me, dollface, you know that? Can't even spare your baby a little kiss?"

"... If I kiss you. will you promise to never call yourself baby ever again?" Sylvester questions, with Butcher taking the deal immediately "Oh, dollface, now that's something I can work with! Deal."

Rolling his eyes, Sylvester stands up from his desk and cups Butcher's cheek, who leans into the touch, deep brown ones staring into his own blue ones.

Purposefully dragging out the moment, Sylvester leans in slowly, and the moment Butcher's eyes slip shut in anticipation, all he gets is a quick peck on the cheek, and the soft laughter of the shorter man, who slides back into his chair, and yells out "Hey-! No fair!"

With a satisfied smirk, the hybrid looks up at him from the chair, pulling down the glasses as he continues to work, tutting "You never specified where you want it, baby. You gonna let me work now?"

As much as Butcher's eye twitched in dismay, he was never one to break a deal, even one as menial as this one, so he opted to accept his defeat in his heroic battle for affection, and sits down on the office chair next to Sylvester, looming over, before resting his chin on the hybrid's shoulder.

"Whatcha even fixin' there? Looks like a pile o' junk... And my junk could use some attention too~" He purrs, the human's arms snaking around the others' waist, only to be met with an incredulous laughter.

"What, is this what your flirting has devolved to? Come on, you know you can do better, man... But it's a camera. One of my old ones, actually."

"Mm.. what's so special bout it?" The larger man asks, hands playing with the hem of Syl's shirt.

"I'm pretty sure it's just got some old film in it. Y'know. College party bullshit, maybe an occasional nude, the usual. It's just stupid shit I need to dispose of, really."

"... Now you've intrigued me, dolly..." Butcher purrs, his breath hitching, "no way you're gettin' rid of that then... I'm sure I can make some use out of it~"

"Christ, you're hopeless, babe."

"Only for you, dollface... and keep talkin' like that and you'll have an even bigger problem to deal with..." Butcher mumbled, his face still in the crook of Sylvester's neck. Not doing anything, just breathing in the scent.

"Aren't you supposed to be at work right now?" Syl sighs, wanting to change the subject, which Butcher obliges to unknowingly.

"Nah.. got a day off. Something with th' boss rearranging the schedules and shit. Felt like I should bother my favorite nerd" he teases, poking at his ribs, which cause Sylvester to jolt, and drop the screwdriver he had just picked up.

"I told you, I'm not a nerd! And I could have dropped something important! How many times do I have to sat 'don't touch me while i work' for it to get trough to your thick skull?!" he rants, peering at Butcher over the rim of his glasses, displeased frown on his face.

The sudden rant only amuses the human further, as he laughs deeply, cooing "Aww, dollface, you think my skull is thick? You shouldn't have!" he grins, leaning forward, and tries to again capture Sylvester's lips, this time succeeding for a moment, before pulling back with a self-satisfied smirk.

"Got my kiss" he teases, to Sylvesters chagrin, while standing from the chair and pushing it back in its place.

"Can I keep working now? Didya get your fill?"

"Sure did, doll, thanks again. See you at dinner?"

"... Yeah. See you then... Asshole" Sylvester sighs, but can't help the small smile which graces his face, as he looks over his shoulder as Butcher leaves trough the door he entered from.

"I heard that, kitty!" Butcher calls out, before getting out at last, closing the door quietly, leaving the other to his project at last.