#This is my first time promoting a fic on tumblr

[alecsnekoda]

all things end [lottienat x final destination au]

[iwritelmao]

Blossoms

And for the first time in all my life I know I'm more than what I fear - When Mara, Princess of Sodden, is exiled from her own country, she becomes the ward of Queen Calanthe of Cyntra, and the best friend of princess Cirilla of Cyntra. As the years go by, they get closer. But when Nilfgaard invades, Cyntra falls, and everything changes. - This fic is heavily inspired by Patroclus and Achilles’s relationship from Song of Achilles. Mara is an original character, who’s life is modeled after Patroclus. Though the story will still follow canon. (Plus some little things I add for SOA parallels or just cause I think the story needs it).

-

Quotes from the fic below the cut:

”I don’t remember much of my early childhood. But I remember vividly the day it all changed.”

“She gave him laughs and smiles that I was sure were only ever awarded to me.”

“I vaguely remembered him, like one of those faces from a childhood that had been long since forgotten.”

“A spark of hope lit up in my heart. If I could find the Witcher, I could find my friend.”

““When you see Geralt… fuck I don’t know, just go kiss your princess.””

““However, one of the few things the law cannot control, cannot rule over… is blood.””

“Only those of his bloodline may hone its power.”

[turtle-ly]

Half of Catra's backstory from this fic

Another memory bubbles up, this time of Captain Prime towering over her, about a year after she took down Hordak. They were standing on the deck of his flagship. 

“We specialize in relocating… extraordinary creatures like you, miss Catra.” She couldn't help but shudder at the word choice. “Such fascinating beings are not made to be hidden,” Long, firm fingers, different from Hordak's bony ones, moved past her chin to rest on her shoulder. Catra had to will herself not to flinch. The man smiled. "Our crew, the Horde, give them the chance to be brought into light. Appreciated,” -his grip tightened- “Utilized.” 

She felt suffocated under his gaze. “Magicats are not rare but they aren’t quite common outside of the mainland, you would make an excellent trophy in the more desolate kingdoms up north, I'm sure. Though I am more interested in your abilities. Your keen eyes, to be exact,” His stare turned hungry. Catra’s ears pinned back. “Your senses. Think of the brilliant hunter I could bring out of you. It would be a shame to waste all this talent on this small seaside town, don’t you think?” 

When Prime’s hands left her, the chill on her skin did not fade. He took a step back, as if to give her the space of choice, and declared.

“Miss Catra, you will be of use to us yet.”

[lacedra]

Chapters: 15/? Fandom: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Ahsoka Tano & Darth Vader, Anakin Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano Characters: Ahsoka Tano, Anakin Skywalker | Darth Vader Additional Tags: Human Disaster Anakin Skywalker, Darth Vader Redemption, Eventually he’s got a way to go, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Time Travel, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ahsoka Tano Needs a Hug, Vader needs a reality check and a therapist, Eventual father daughter relationship, Which used to be a brother sister relationship, So it’s complicated, Palpatine is the worst, More tags will be added as I figure out what I’m doing lol, Canon-Typical Violence, because Vader will be Vader, Mentioned Padmé Amidala, Jedi as Found Family (Star Wars), because they were Ahsoka's family and she's sad now, Angst, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better Summary:

It’s a few months into the Clone Wars and Ahsoka’s apprenticeship to Anakin Skywalker. They've just won the second battle of Geonosis. They’re getting a rare leave to the Jedi Temple. Everything is fine. But when Ahsoka goes to sleep that night she wakes up to a living nightmare, thrust into a terrible future with a strange Sith Lord called Darth Vader who seems to want her alive for reasons unknown.

[metaphoricgibberish]

To The Light [ joel miller ]

summary: Joel finds a young woman being held hostage by a group of men while he's out on patrol one day. He brings her back to Jackson, where she's given the opportunity to have something resembling a real life, for the first time. The two of them orbit around each other, destined to crash, if both of their reservations don't get in the way.

pairing: joel miller x f!oc / f!reader rating: 18+ minors dni word count: 96.8k (complete) a.n. be kind and soft with me, i have not posted regularly on tumblr since 2013, trying to get back into the swing of it to promote my fics

see tags and warnings on ao3

____________

Joel finds the love of his life lost in the woods.

Read on AO3

Fic playlist on Spotify

Read insatiable (a To the Light one-shot) here

[olderthannetfic]

https://www.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/746553097204203521/the-fandom-hates-women-response-to-lack-of-ff

The "fandom hates women" part of it comes from the fact that fandom as an entity just doesn't watch the kind of media that draws femslash, even if it ticks all of the boxes of things those very same people say they like. There are so many times I've watched a show that I've seen mega-popular Tumblr posts wishing existed, and then the fandom is so, so small comparatively and often in general. There have been superheroes, vampire/supernatural shows, fantasy shows, movies, books, the list goes on, that feel like they were generated out of Tumblr's desires for ideal fandom media, and everyone knows they're never going to attract anywhere near the same attention for fandom and fanworks because the common denominator just tends to be that if there isn't a full ensemble of attractive men to ship either with each other or with the women, fandom's not interested.

So it's not about prioritizing women in that sense, it's about people witnessing hypocrisy over and over again the second a show doesn't have a mostly-male ensemble. The people who are in these fandoms are frustrated that good faith attempts to get people interested are met with every excuse in the book that all eventually boils down to "I don't like watching stuff with women in it as much as I like watching stuff with men in it." And if that's how people feel about it... sometimes the conclusions are going to turn into the more uncharitable take of "fandom hates women."

--

Maybe, but whenever I see a "fandom hates women" reblog of my stuff, one or two reblogs further down the chain I get an overt TERF. I just had to go block several people today, in fact.

The first person to reblog with a comment like that is usually subtle, but their friends and friends of friends are not. The rhetoric that very quickly starts is the fandom equivalent of that "All the butches are becoming trans men! We're losing lesbians!" stuff.

Here's the thing: I've been in ten billion fandoms that were so awesome and fit fandom's supposed tastes to a T and yet no amount of promoting them could get anyone to try the canon. This goes for canons that are all men or all white men or all majority ethnicity men or whatever else.

The default state of media is to not engender a big fic fandom.

I agree that the rare outliers mostly follow certain patterns, but we extrapolate too far when we say that a lack of those patterns is why a fandom is small.

A fandom is small because that's the near-universal default.

--

Yes, a small slice of fandom consists of guilt-ridden queer fujoshi who say they want more f/f but don't make much of a move to make that happen. I tend to run into that a lot because of my own tastes and having friends who share those tastes.

Far more of fandom is people talking generally about how representation matters without saying they would personally join these fandoms if they existed.

Neither group is large enough to be the real reason some woman-heavy canon fails to take off to HP levels.

The real reason is not hypocrisy but the fact that most things don't take off like that. Most things without massive, massive audiences especially don't take off like that. And the very few things that do are flukes and don't actually predict that another similar thing will take off in the future.

--

Go to AO3's tag search. Search for all canonical fandom tags. Sort by uses and descending order.

Right now, I get 64,390 tags.

The first page, 50 tags, goes from HP with 497,845 works to the Thor movies with 59,266 works. By page 6, we're below 10 thousand works.

By the end of page 10, we're down to Labyrinth with 3,906.

Somewhere in the top 500 AO3 fandom tags (many of which are just franchise metatags for each other), we go all the way from megafandoms to medium size and down to relatively modest ones.

That's not a lot of room for a big f/f-heavy fandom given the trends in mainstream media and that mainstream media is where most really big fandoms come from.

--

I also notice that you're conflating a lack of desire to watch something that's primarily about women with a lack of desire to watch something that includes women.

There are tons of fans who want something more like The Mummy with a leading man and leading woman they love.

Granted, that's not me and that's not a lot of my fujoshi/slasher audience, but it's extraordinarily common. I know plenty of people who don't like canons that are only dudes, but since they also don't like canons that are only ladies and they don't ship f/f, this gets spun into "fandom hates women".

--

Let me be clear:

Conflating "lesbians" and "women" is a radfem position.

[johnnyutah]

average adam faulkner stanheight fan: if adam isn’t in saw xi we riot! @lionsgate @kevingruetert @jameswan #adamlives #justiceforadam #corpseinconsistencies

average john kramer fan: What people don’t realize about John, is he’s such a genius that even when he makes mistakes, he planned on making the mistakes. He is the greatest villain of all time

average jill tuck fan: Appreciation post for the Women of Saw 🩷 [the same ten photos that get posted once a week]

average lawrence gordon fan: last night i watched a 2004 tv movie about serial killers called ‘the riverman’, followed by the cheesy family rom-com ‘a castle for christmas’. today my friends and i are going to binge the entire third season of netflix’s ‘stranger things’. none of us have seen a single episode of the rest of the show and we don’t plan on it. then we might rewatch ‘another country’ together

average amanda young fan: sorry i haven’t been online in 4 weeks i’ve been too busy trying to get the new pig cosmetic in the rift [posted 7 weeks ago]

average mark hoffman fan: [underneath a gifset of costas mandylor in a republican christian propaganda ‘sci-fi’ movie] #hes so fucking hot #i would give anything to put him in a sports bra and make him do jumping jacks in front pf me i would literally do #ANYTHING #i need to make him into a marionett and fist him lol

average daniel rigg fan: Here’s a quick low effort doodle I did of Daniel! I just love him so much ❤️ [a literal masterpiece, the best art you’ve ever seen in your entire life] [3 notes]

average allison kerry fan: i am hardcore attached to ONE ship which is probably either allison/amanda or allison/lindsey and my whole blog is devoted to them. there are dozens of us DOZENS

average lynn denlon fan: okay so i know bahar is a realtor now but in her last instagram post where she’s congratulating her son on some new achievement, both the first and last words in the post have 11 letters, AND there’s an X and an I visible in the background of her post 👀?? is this a reach???

average jeff denlon fan: No seriously let me finish seriously when you compare him to the other shitty men in Saw he’s NOT that b

average david tapp fan: i’m 39k away from publishing my 40k tappsing Everybody Lives AU <3 this is going to be epic [account has been deactivated for an indeterminate amount of time]

average brit stevenson and mallick scott fan: Hey I stayed up making this instead of writing my thesis paper for grad school. Here’s a 30,000 word document about the implications of Brit’s promotion within the Marshford group and how it would lead to her eventual demise and also how she rose to the top in her group. It also delves into her relationship with Mallick, whose existence, I believe, is an obvious literary reference to an ancient Roman play read by only me and three other people currently alive. I translated relevant passages and included them in my work. I got understimulated around page 8 so I did take a break to pierce myself in the same spot that I believe Mallick would have a piercing. If you read my fics on AO3 you will already be familiar with the location.

average peter strahm fan: haha peter does CRACK cocoaine haha i think he sniffeds some drugs! why else would he be so MANIC HYPER CRAZY!!! i love my crazy JUNKIE man LOL get him some andderall STAT!! if hoffman didn’t kill him the SPEED certianly would of! LOL!

average lindsey perez fan: i love lindsey perez i’m such a big fan of the character lindsey perez

average matt gibson fan: i literally would eat garbage out of a dumpster

average ezekiel banks fan: holy shit i just finished spiral what a good movie what the hell!!! what a cool addition to the saw universe! i bet everybody else loves this as much as i do! let me take a big drink of water as i check tumblr dot com to see all the nice things people will have to say about darren lynn bousman’s Spiral

average william schenk fan: my hobbies include: being a fujoshi,

average cecelia pederson fan: [pic of cecelia yanking on the metal loop around her neck and smirking] https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vT3f5IIzt5PG-M7G9_Z-gjY4gZaiUneTdMlYrFAcdBGcJo0-N-RDQcj2JfxOaBTxKa6J_DiDQNgqVpg/pub

average logan jigsaw fan: What people don’t realize about John, is he’s such a genius that even when he makes mistakes, he planned on making the mistakes. He is the greatest villain of all time

[writingquestionsanswered]

how does one manage when there's no feedback, no engagement, no... anything? the last few things i've published have gotten zero. it's frustrating. it's discouraging.

Getting No Feedback/Engagement

It's frustrating when you put your work out there and don't get any engagement or feedback. However, what to do about it (if anything at all) depends on how you're publishing and what you want the feedback for.

Whether you're publishing books/e-books or publishing online via your blog or a fiction-sharing site like AO3, it's never a good idea to rely on reader comments for feedback to help you improve your writing. If you want feedback for improvement, it's best to utilize alpha and beta readers, critique groups, critique partners, and feedback exchanges with other writers.

If you want the feedback an engagement because you want to know that someone is enjoying your work, or because you want to make sure you're building a following, you'll need to spend some time learning how to build an audience on the platform you're using. It's so important to remember that there are over 6 million registered users on AO3, for example, and over 11 million stories. Kindle Direct Publishing on Amazon hosts a couple million authors, with millions of books being sold each year. Tumblr has 135 million active users with 21 million new posts created each day. So, you no matter where you're publishing your stories, there is an unimaginable amount of competition. Unfortunately, you can't just post your stories and expect people to flock to them. That's why it's so important to learn how to build an audience on the particular platforms you're publishing on, and then you'll want to learn how to utilize social media to help get your work out there. For example, if you publish on a fiction-sharing site or your blog, you'll want to make sure you're using all the right tags and other metrics to draw people to your story. It's also extremely important that you support and engage with other writers... read and comment on their stories, boost them when appropriate. You might also consider starting a social media page specifically to find more readers. For example, let's say you write Supernatural fic and post it to AO3. You might make an Instagram page for your fiction, post SPN related memes and content, and update potential readers when new stories go up. Again, symbiosis is super important. If you don't engage with others, they won't engage with you.

If you're publishing books/e-books, you'll want to spend some time learning the best ways to promote your books, which will include things like figuring out who your audience is and where to find them, learning the proper tags, figuring out what kind of advertising speaks to them most, and learning to create promotional images and videos.

No matter what, it's really a matter of taking the time to get your work out there and find your audience. Because regardless of where you publish, they're unlikely to find you if you don't do the work to find them first.

Best of luck! ♥

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

♦ Questions that violate my ask policies will be deleted! ♦ Please see my master list of top posts before asking ♦ Learn more about WQA here

[seiya-starsniper]

I wish you would write a fic where...

…Hob is a little insecure about his body in comparison to Dream. Dream is wondering why his love only wants to have sex in the dark…

I need some hurt/comfort 🥹

Oh man friend, I started writing this thinking it wouldn't be super long and then 9.7k words later...😅

Still gonna post the whole thing on tumblr since this IS a tumblr prompt, but it's probably best read on AO3 for length reasons lmao. I hope you enjoy this angst train!

AO3 Link: Cruel Summer

Rating: Mature

Warnings: None

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - America, Developing Relationship, Casual Sex, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, Miscommunication, Misunderstandings, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Self-Esteem Issues, Self Confidence Issues, body image issues

Also tagging @dreamlingbingo as I'm using this fill for my free space!

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

The first time it happens, Dream doesn't think too much about it. There's not a lot of thinking going on period, not really. Dream's only focused on the touch and taste and feel of Hob Gadling’s body against his as they drunkenly make out against the latter’s front door.

They’d been out tonight celebrating with their friends, all of them having finally achieved some hard earned life goal. Matthew and Jessamy were engaged, and planning a marriage out on Cape Cod the following summer, Lucienne had gotten promoted as an archivist at Harvard, Mervyn had finally launched his own cybersecurity firm, and Dream had just signed a publishing deal for the novel he’d been working on for the past two years. His editing team was even based out of Boston, even if their main headquarters was in New York, which made Dream’s life much easier. 

Hob…well. Hob’s celebration was more muted than the rest. He’d just landed a job at Harvard as well, working as a professor, so he and Lucienne were now technically coworkers. And while it was a fantastic opportunity with decent pay, and mostly free summers, it had come at the cost of his relationship with Eleanor, his longtime girlfriend. 

Eleanor had accepted a job across the country working as a marketing lead for a lifestyle clothing brand based out of Seattle. She’d wanted the position more than anything, but Hob hadn’t wanted to move, so they broke up. Hob insists it was all amicable, and that he’d miss everyone too much if he’d actually left, but they all knew Hob had been thinking about proposing.

Dream knows all this, and yet, when it had just been the two of the left at the bar and Hob had started openly flirting with him alone, instead of just playfully flirting with every single one of their friends, Dream had decided, “why not”, and matched the other man’s energy until they were suddenly making out just outside the bar while they waited for the Uber Hob called for them. It’s still the beginning of summer and not terribly hot outside, but Dream’s still grateful for the cool AC of the car that eventually comes to get them to drive the short distance back to Hob’s apartment.

When Hob finally unlocks the door and they practically fall into the front hall, Dream messily kicks off his shoes and works his way towards undoing Hob’s belt in between kisses. Hob wrangles them down the hall and towards his bedroom and Dream thinks vaguely about turning on the lights when they finally cross the threshold. But then Hob pushes him down into the mattress and Dream stops thinking about anything at all. 

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

The second time that it happens, a little over a month later, Dream is helping Hob clean up his apartment after their monthly movie night with their friends. They had all decided on rewatching Jurassic Park after Mervyn and Lucienne had gotten into a debate on whether or not dinosaurs looked stupid with or without feathers. But it had taken the group some time for them to even start the movie, since they had mostly gotten wrapped up with different bits of work and life gossip. It was rare that they were all able to get together like this, so the movie was a secondary concern for them.

During the movie, however, Matthew and Jessamy’s wedding planner called them about something that needed their attention immediately, and though they said it was fine to keep the movie running, they’d paused it anyways. Not even ten minutes after they wrapped up their call, Mervyn had to take a work call from a client suffering from some server issues. 

Needless to say, it was nearly midnight by the time they finished the movie, and since only Dream and Hob had nothing to do the next morning, Dream had offered to stay late to help clean up and then crash on Hob’s couch for the night.

That is, at least, the story they tell their friends. The dishes and the food end up abandoned as Hob pushes Dream into the couch cushions and palms his cock through his black jeans. Dream moans and ruts beneath the other man, wrapping his arms around his neck and pulling Hob in for a desperate, filthy kiss. They make out like teenagers for what seems like hours, the taste of buttery popcorn and overly sweet margarita mix mingled in every kiss. Dream isn’t nearly as drunk as he was that first night, but he’s got a pleasant buzz going, which really only adds to the whole illicit nature of what they’re doing. Neither of them had mentioned the first time they’d fucked to any of their friends, they’d barely talked about just between the two of them, really. 

Dream had figured maybe they could talk about it tonight after everyone had gone home but well. He’d gotten distracted with Hob’s mouth.

When they finally move from the couch to the bedroom, Dream turns the lights on, but then Hob turns them right back off as Dream’s getting undressed. 

“Are you one of those people who prefers to have sex in the dark?” Dream asks, laughing as Hob crawls on top of him, shedding his shirt and underwear along the way. 

“Mmmm,” Hob says, putting his mouth on Dream’s neck instead of answering the question. Dream gasps as the other man bites down on that one sensitive spot just below his ear. “Don’t wanna get up later to turn them off.”

Dream hums, and that’s the end of that conversation as his mind floats away to far more interesting pursuits.

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

The third time almost feels like a date. Almost. They don’t exactly plan to get together, just the two of them, it just sort of happens because Matthew had gotten sick, and Jessamy hadn’t wanted to leave him alone to fend for himself. She also wasn’t entirely sure if she was contagious herself and wanted to be safe. Mervyn was on call for a client this weekend so he wasn’t going out with them anyways, and Lucienne had decided she’d rather stay at home and catch up on some of her backlogged work rather than attend the Oktoberfest event they’d all bought tickets to. 

Hob had texted Dream individually and suggested they go out anyway, just the two of them, and Dream’s heart had stuttered in his chest when he’d read the message. Hob had suggested a new restaurant that had opened up near his apartment, and while it wasn’t necessarily a first date sort of place, it was still a bit nicer than any of the places they’d go with their friends for just drinks or a quick bite to eat. 

Dream agonizes for over an hour on what he should wear, before he ultimately defaults to what feels most natural to him, black jeans and a solid black polo instead of his usual band t-shirt, which he then pairs with a charcoal gray blazer, just to look a little nicer. But not too nice, just in case this isn’t a date. 

Hob, much to Dream’s disappointment, is in his regular outfit of a graphic tee and sweats when Dream arrives. He’s not terribly out of place in the restaurant, but he’s clearly not dressed to impress. He eyes Dream very appreciatively though, and doesn’t comment on why Dream’s a little more dressed up than usual. What he does do, however, is spend the evening whispering into Dream’s ear about how he’d like to peel that blazer off Dream and make him wear it while they fuck.

They only make it through a single round of drinks before they leave, with Hob leaving their server behind a more than generous tip for wrapping up their bill so quickly. 

Hob wastes no time divesting Dream of his blazer and tossing it down the hallway towards the bedroom before turning his attention back to kissing Dream senseless. He sinks to his knees and Dream moans as the other man then works at peeling his jeans off so he can blow Dream right in the front hall, up against the front door where anyone can walk by and hear. It makes everything that much hotter.

Later, when all Dream is left wearing is his blazer and nothing else, Hob gets up from where they’re kissing on the bed to turn off the lights and Dream frowns.

“You can just leave the lights on,” Dream says, before he coyly spreads his legs and shows off his best seductive pose to tempt Hob back to bed. Hob stares, transfixed at Dream’s posturing, before he huffs and then clicks off the lights anyways. Dream groans in annoyance and Hob laughs before he kisses Dream again.

“Sorry, just easier with the lights off,” Hob says, not sounding sorry at all. “Don’t worry about it too much.”

But Dream does worry. He doesn’t in the moment, but he does later, when they’re lying beside each other, Hob snoring away while Dream thinks and thinks and thinks. He thinks about how Hob always wants the lights off, and how he never cuddles with Dream after sex. He thinks about how they really only ever get together when it's convenient, but they've never made plans on their own, at least, not since Hob and Eleanor have broken up. 

Dream realizes, with a growing dread, that maybe Hob still isn't over Eleanor, that maybe all there is between them is sex, and nothing else. It makes an awful sort of sense; in the dark, Dream can't tell if Hob’s thinking about someone else, hoping for someone that's not Dream. Eleanor and Dream couldn't be anymore different but that hardly matters to a man with a broken heart. A warm body is a warm body after all, and Dream's the only other single person in their friend group.

If Hob's a little bit confused as to why Dream is a bit short with him in the morning he doesn't show it. Somehow that makes the pit in Dream's stomach worse.

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

The fourth time—there isn’t a fourth time because Dream fucks it all up.

Dream had met with his publisher earlier in the day, and the meeting had gone rather…poorly. His editor had straight up told him that he’d needed to make significant changes to the book, and Dream had argued until he was hoarse but to no avail. He’d then been told to go home and sleep on things, effectively being dismissed like a petulant child who’d thrown a tantrum in public.

Dream knew he had a good story. He also knew that some of the suggested changes were good ones, while others would fundamentally change the story he was trying to tell. But still, the sheer amount of changes had overwhelmed him, and Dream had lost his temper. He already knows, with a growing dread, that he’ll have to make some apologies the next day.

He’s about to go home, but Dream decides instead he’d like to get as drunk as humanly possible to wash the bitter taste of the day from his mind. He texts the group chat, and since it’s a Friday night, they all respond with enthusiasm to blow off some steam for the weekend. Everyone except for Hob, who says he’s not feeling like socializing tonight, but he’s sorry Dream had such a shitty day. 

Dream tries not to be disappointed that Hob won’t show up. He wonders if he’d just invited Hob by himself, instead of texting their group, would he have come out, just for Dream? But they don’t do things like that, even with how long they’ve been friends. Before they started sleeping together, Hob and Dream had always just sort of existed together in the same circle of friends. Dream had actually met Eleanor first, and Hob only when they started dating. Dream has never spent any amount of alone time with Hob before now, and he still doesn’t know what sort of relationship they even have, if any at all. 

Dream’s worries leave his mind when the others show up. Mervyn stays for only one round of drinks, and Matthew and Jessamy only two before they head out for the evening. They have an early appointment with the planner the next day to do some cake tastings. Lucienne stays the longest, though she really only nurses the same glass of wine the entire night. She talks Dream through his frustrations with his editors, and his overall story. She’s been with him every step of the way to getting this publishing deal, and Dream hasn’t told her yet, but she’s going to be the front page of his acknowledgements. 

He’s so tempted to unload on her about Hob as well, but before he can gather the courage to broach the subject, she gets a text from someone and blushes furiously when she reads it. Dream pokes and prods until she admits she’s started seeing someone. Johanna. She’s not sure if it’s serious yet but well. They’re definitely physically compatible, and while she won’t show Dream her phone, he already knows she’s been sent something particularly provocative. So Dream lets her go, and then debates between ordering another drink or going home. 

He does neither of those things, and instead pulls out his phone and texts Hob, outside their group chat. The alcohol has more than loosened Dream’s inhibitions and right now, he’s lonely and horny. Lucienne’s reserved but still elated expression as she had happily explained Johanna had made Dream miss Hob. So he texts the other man and tells him he’d like to come over.

Hob’s response isn’t what he’s hoping for: are you drunk?

Dream frowns at his phone and then his initial message: aree tou busy?? Can i comeocer?

Okay, maybe he was a little more drunk than he realized. He asks Hob if it matters, being careful this time to make sure he types everything out carefully, and then closes out his tab while he waits for a response. Nothing comes. Dream’s annoyed and disappointed, but not surprised, so he starts to make his way to the train platform to head home. 

While he’s waiting, he finally gets a response back from Hob: okay. come over.

Dream changes platforms immediately and heads in the direction of Hob’s apartment. 

When he arrives, Hob pushes a glass of water towards him, which Dream drinks down greedily. When he’s done, he joins Hob on the couch and crawls into his lap to kiss him, but Hob pushes him away after only a few moments. Dream lets out an annoyed noise when Hob does it again. 

“Dream, not tonight,” Hob says, pushing him away when Dream tries to kiss him again.

“What do you mean?” Dream asks, now confused. 

“I don’t want to have sex right now,” Hob replies, before he pushes Dream off of him and back onto the couch, going back to watching whatever crime drama he’d had on before Dream arrived.

Dream stares, open mouthed and hurt, as Hob decidedly ignores him for Netflix. He gets up angrily and stomps around the kitchen, tearing open the cabinets looking for something to eat, and also more water because now he has a pounding headache as his body struggles to sober up now that he’s no longer drinking. 

“Dream!” Hob exclaims, getting up when Dream slams more than one cabinet door closed. “Come on, don’t be like this.”

“Like what?” Dream sneers, stuffing a potato chip into his mouth angrily. “I came all this way just to fuck you, didn’t I?”

“You’re drunk,” Hob points out.

“I’m always drunk when we have sex,” Dream argues, crossing his arms, chip bag still in hand. “You’ve never had a problem with it before.” 

“Yeah well, I’m not drunk now, and I’m also not in the mood,” Hob replies angrily. 

“Then why the hell did you invite me over?” Dream growls. 

“I don’t know!” Hob exclaims, throwing his hands up in defeat. “I wasn’t thinking, obviously,” he adds, then gestures to Dream. “How was I supposed to know you’d be like this?”

Dream huffs, then carelessly tosses the bag of chips onto the counter. A few stray chips scatter across the counter, but Dream doesn’t care. Clearly Hob didn’t want him around, not for sex, and definitely not to comfort Dream after the awful day he’d had, so there was no point in staying. 

“Fine, I’ll go,” Dream says, moving towards the door where he’d kicked off his shoes. He decides he’ll check the train times on the walk over.

“Dream,” Hob says, grabbing his arm before he can make it to the hallway. “It’s late. Come on. Let’s go to sleep.”

“I can get home on my own just fine,” Dream argues, raising his chin defiantly.

“No,” Hob replies, his voice stern as he grips Dream’s arm tighter. “Come on, let’s just go to bed. You need to sleep this off.”

“I can sleep on the couch,” Dream says, yanking his arm out of Hob’s grip. “Since you’re not interested in fucking my bad day out of me.”

“Dream, stop being so fucking difficult!” Hob yells, shocking both of them.

The echo of Hob’s roar hangs tensely between them, and Hob steps back from Dream with a hand over his mouth, clearly horrified at what he’s done. Dream also feels the prick of tears in his eyes as he processes just how angry Hob actually has been with him all night. 

How the hell had this night gotten worse? Dream doesn’t know, but what he does know is that he needs to leave before he starts drunkenly crying in Hob’s apartment, and Hob is the last person Dream wants to see him like this. 

Dream tries making his way towards the door again, but Hob seems to regain his senses and physically blocks him. Dream tries to push him, then tries to hit Hob’s shoulder to make him move, but Hob grabs Dream’s wrist to stop him. 

“I’m sorry,” Hob says, his voice much softer this time, laced with regret and pity. Dream hates it. “I lost my temper, I shouldn’t have done that,” he adds.

“Fuck off!” Dream yells, and oh. No. No, no, no, no. Dream furiously blinks back the tears before they can start falling, even if he can’t stop the pained hiccups that betray his emotional state from leaving his mouth.

“Just—” Dream gasps, then forces himself to breathe, slow and deep, and then counts to five. “Let me go home. You don’t—” his breath hitches again, cutting off what he wants to say. Fuck. He couldn’t even string together a full sentence if he tried.

“Dream, please,” Hob replies, his voice practically begging now. “Don’t leave. I don’t want you going home alone like this.” Dream turns to meet Hob eyes, and his anger dissipates slightly when he sees how devastated Hob looks. 

Despite how awful Dream feels, even he knows it’d be a mistake to go home in his current state. He’s highly emotional, drunk, and likely wouldn’t be paying attention to his surroundings. He could get mugged, or worse. 

“Fine,” Dream finally relents. Hob lets out a sigh of relief, and hugs him. Dream doesn’t hug him back. He’s still angry after all. 

But Dream lets Hob wrangle him down the hall to the bedroom, and then he strips down to his underwear to sleep, since he doesn’t have any of his own clothes here. And why would he? It’s not like they’re anything other than an occasional hookup after all. 

Hob does offer Dream a shirt and pajama pants to wear, but Dream tosses them away from him without so much as a second glance. Hob sighs at Dream, and then shuts off the lights, turning away from Dream without another word to sleep. He’s clearly still frustrated with Dream too.  

Dream lies there next to Hob, feeling cold and rejected and lonely. He hates everything about this. Hates that Hob let him come over and make a fool out of himself when he could have easily just told Dream to fuck off and go home instead. Hates that Hob even came onto him in the first place, all those months ago, and now they’re here, in this weird in-between state where they're together but not together. 

Dream realizes too late that he really hadn’t cared if they had sex or not either. He’d wanted comfort more than anything, comfort from Hob specifically. But the only comfort he knew that came from Hob was sex. And that’s the worst part of it. Dream knows now, without a doubt, that he has feelings for Hob. That he wants more out of this than what they’re doing now, but he’s not sure Hob does. At this point, he’s too afraid to ask. 

Hob’s bedroom suddenly feels like a suffocating prison as all of Dream’s feelings hit him at once. He’s going to cry again if he stays, and he really doesn’t want Hob to see him like this. He doesn’t want Hob to know just how badly he’s gotten under Dream’s skin. 

Dream realizes he needs to leave. He’s stone cold sober now, having laid here in the dark with nothing but his thoughts and his third glass of water now emptied on the bedside table. He listens carefully for the evening out of Hob’s breath, then shuffles around in bed to see if any of his movements disturb the other man. When he’s certain that Hob is deep in sleep, Dream hurriedly dresses himself, checks to see that there’s still trains running this late at night, and then rushes out when he sees the next one is in just 15 minutes. Hob lives about 12 minutes from the nearest station. Dream can make it if he runs. 

The front door slams loudly behind him as he leaves, but Dream doesn’t care. Hob probably won’t even notice that he’s gone. 

Dream makes it to the station just as the train is pulling into the stop. As he’s getting on, he hears yelling and frantic running, the sounds of someone about to miss the train.  Dream considers holding the doors until he sees just who's rushing towards the train.

It's Hob. Hob who is barely dressed, and running down the steps to the train platform in nothing but sweatpants and slippers. He catches Dream's eyes and waves frantically to get his attention. Dream’s heart flutters momentarily, and he imagines that maybe he was wrong about everything after all. That maybe there’s more to what’s been happening between them than just rebound sex.

Dream gets on the train anyways, and the doors shut just as Hob reaches the platform, and the train pulls away. 

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

They pretend like nothing is wrong after that night. Hob had texted Dream the next morning to ask if he’d gotten home okay, and Dream had left him on read. He had far more important things to worry about that morning, like his pounding headache and the fact that he needed to talk to his editor at some point.

When he finally fights off the last of his hangover, Dream has a much more pleasant conversation with his editing team, who he apologizes to for losing his temper. His team apologizes to him as well, which he doesn’t expect, but they reassure him it’s their job to encourage him, not discourage him from writing. They have a candid conversation about communication, and then agree on a plan to move forward with his book.

Dream happily shares the good news with his group chat, still ignoring the direct message from Hob. He credits Lucienne for talking him off the ledge the night before, and the flood of positive and congratulatory messages flows easily after that. Even from Hob. 

Dream sighs when he reads the other man’s message in their group chat, then flips back to their private conversation. He really should apologize for his behavior as well, but he has no idea how to explain himself without revealing more than he’s comfortable with. So Dream turns off his phone, and goes back to working on his novel, hoping that maybe he’ll come up with something to say later in the evening.

He never does end up replying. Hob doesn’t privately message him either after that.

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

It’s trivia night at the White Horse, and Dream would normally be excited to go and show off his arcane knowledge, but tonight he’s dreading the occasion. It’s been a month since he and Hob had last seen each other and he really has no idea how he’s supposed to act around the other man. Do they pretend like nothing ever happened between them? They haven’t spoken since, so things were clearly over between them. 

Dream’s still trying to tell himself it’s better this way. They were hurtling towards disaster, and Dream should’ve really known better, should’ve known that he really can’t do casual after all, and now he’s probably permanently fucked up his friendship with Hob because he couldn’t keep his own feelings in check. He still hasn’t apologized, he doesn’t know if Hob even wants an apology from him at this point, or if he just wants to forget about everything that ever happened between them. 

So when Dream’s sister texts him and tells him she’s in town for a few days, Dream jumps at the opportunity to meet her and cancel on trivia night plans. He receives a variety of boos and ‘we’ll lose without you!’ responses, all of which make him smile despite himself. Even Hob laments the loss of Dream’s knowledge for the evening. 

When Dream arrives at The New Inn later that night, it’s not only his sister that greets him. Eleanor is with her. Dream hasn’t seen her since she and Hob broke up. When she’d moved across the country, she left the group chat and hasn’t really talked to anyone since. Dream had missed her, if he were being honest with himself. Even though Hob had said the breakup was amicable, and that Eleanor had only left the chat because she couldn’t be part of their plans any longer, Dream was still sad to see her go. He realizes he could’ve tried harder to keep in touch with her, but then everything with Hob had happened and well.

Dream wants to hug Eleanor and also scream at her. Wants to unload what a horrible last month he’s had, and also wants her to never find out he’d been sleeping with her ex. It’s not her fault that Dream fell into bed with Hob knowing he wasn’t over his relationship with her yet. It’s entirely her fault for being so perfect, however, that there’s no way Dream could ever compare, and that’s why Hob won’t look at him when they have sex. 

When they had sex. Dream and Hob have barely spoken since that night, and only in their group chat. He’s pretty sure Hob doesn’t want to even be in the same room as Dream right now, for how ugly Dream had acted over what was supposed to be just a casual hookup.

“Not that I’m unhappy to see you, Ellie,” Dream says, giving both her and his sister a hug before taking a seat across from them. “But what are you doing back in town?”

“Dream—” Didi starts, but then Eleanor places a hand on her shoulder and stops her.

“We’re dating,” Eleanor says bluntly, moving her hand from Didi’s shoulder down to her hand. Their fingers interlace and Dream’s eyes boggle as he looks between them, shocked.

“When did this happen?” he asks, settling himself in for what must be an extremely interesting story.

Eleanor and Didi take turns recalling the story of how they met through a local meetup for knitters in Seattle, and how Didi had recognized Eleanor from one time she’d come out drinking with Dream and his friends years ago. Happy to have a familiar face, Didi and Eleanor had become fast friends, and they both realized they had a lot in common too.

Before either of them knew it, Eleanor was inviting Didi out everywhere as they explored their new city together, and Didi became accustomed to calling Eleanor after every shift at the hospital. One thing led to another, and then another, and now they’re practically attached at the hip. Didi even shyly admits they’ve talked about moving in together. 

The two of them beam at him when they’re done with their story and Dream wants to congratulate them. Wants to be happy that his favorite sister is dating one of his oldest friends. He wants to make plans to visit them in their new home, maybe even help them move if he can work out the logistics. He hasn’t been out to Seattle in some time, and he really could use a vacation.

“I started sleeping with Hob after you left,” is what Dream says instead. 

Eleanor spits her (thankfully white) wine all over Didi, who freezes in place, staring at Dream in shock. Dream stares back, horrified both at what he just said, and what followed after. He braces himself, expecting Eleanor to explode on him, to call him a slut, a bad friend, a terrible human being.

Instead, Eleanor starts laughing. Didi does too eventually.  

“Oh my god, of course he did,” Eleanor wheezes as she doubles over in her seat. Their server rushes over, bringing some extra napkins and Didi excuses herself to the restroom to wipe off the rest of the wine. Dream and Eleanor are left staring at one another in silence, before Eleanor breaks the tension with another giggle.

“I’m sorry,” she apologizes. “I’m not laughing at you, really, just the whole situation. Imagine if you brought Hob with you tonight?” she practically squeals.

“I—you’re not mad?” Dream asks, more shocked than anything. Eleanor just shrugs and drinks from her water glass this time, instead of her wine.

“I mean, did Hob at least wait a day before he tried to make a move on you?” Eleanor asks. “Not that it matters really, we were broken up before I left but well, you know. Respectful turnaround time and all that.”

“I—” Dream stutters, trying desperately to recall when that first time with Hob actually happened. “I mean, I think it was a few weeks after you left?”

Eleanor snorts. “Good enough, I guess.” 

“Sorry,” Dream says, shaking his head as Didi returns and sits back down next to Eleanor. “I’m still trying to wrap my head around this. Did you know he wanted to—?”

“Oh no, no,” Eleanor says then starts laughing again. “Our breakup wasn’t planned or anything, don’t worry. It’s just that, well. He told me he wanted to stay with you guys more than me, so I’m not that surprised?”

“What?” Dream says, dumbly. “But you both said the breakup was mutual.” Eleanor sighs.

“I mean,” she replies. “It was technically mutual. But Hob wanted to stay in Boston, and I didn’t. And one of our last arguments before I left was about abandoning our friends.” She shrugs again. “I love you all, don’t get me wrong, but I really love living out in Seattle more. Especially the company.” She smiles at Didi, who kisses her on the cheek. “It kind of sucked that Hob really didn’t want to move, but it wouldn’t have been fair to ask him to do it all just for me and my career goals.”

“Oh,” Dream says dumbly. “Yeah, I guess that makes sense.” Dream wouldn’t have wanted to leave Boston for any reason either, so it makes sense, he thinks. Boston is just that. It’s home.

“It’ll make double dating a little weird, though,” Eleanor adds, and Didi laughs. 

“I think we’ll be fine though,” Didi adds, then turns her focus to Dream. “So tell us about you and Hob,” she says.  

“I—we’re not,” Dream stammers, unsure of how to proceed further with the conversation. Eleanor and Didi’s expressions both fall.

“Oh, Dream,” Didi says, reaching out to take his hand. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to put you on the spot.”

“It’s fine,” Dream says though he feels anything but. “I don’t—it didn’t last long between us,” he admits. 

“Wow, he fumbled the bag on you?” Eleanor interjects, shock clearly painted on her face. “My god, he really is an idiot.”

“No I—we had a fight,” Dream says, unsure of why he feels the need to clarify. “It was my fault really. I shouldn’t have—he wasn’t ready to commit.” 

Eleanor makes a confused face. 

“That—doesn’t sound like Hob,” Eleanor says after a moment, and Dream huffs in annoyance.

“You only knew him while you were dating, how would you know that?” Dream retorts.

“Because he told me he’s never done casual,” Eleanor replies. “When we first started seeing each other, he basically said just that. That’s what I liked about him, he wanted to do the whole commitment thing right away, even if it didn’t end up working out.”

“Well maybe he’s changed,” Dream says, far more grumpily than he intended. “He’s never said shit to me about anything, and still hasn’t, so it doesn’t matter.”

“Dream,” Didi says gently, squeezing his hand. “Are you okay?”

“It’s fine,” Dream insists, not wanting to go into the details of how he’d terribly fucked up his situation with Hob. 

“You don’t sound fine at all,” Didi replies.

“Maybe we shouldn’t have this conversation at dinner though?” Eleanor interjects, looking concernedly at him. Dream huffs and then pouts. Eleanor was always hyper attuned to when people were upset, especially Dream.

But Dream does want to talk about it, even if it is a bit awkward, all things considered. Eleanor seems to at least be willing to hear Dream out, if nothing else. 

They wrap up their bill quickly, taking some of their dinner to go, and find their way over to Dream’s apartment, where he spends the rest of the night wrapped up in a blanket while he recounts the past six months to his sister and Eleanor. There’s also, perhaps, a lot of wine involved. Solely because Eleanor had decided it was also girls night and they needed a lot of wine for a proper one.

“I’m going to murder him myself,” Eleanor says, holding up her bottle of wine when Dream finishes telling her everything that had happened up until now. 

“El, no,” Dream whines. He’s really more embarrassed about the whole situation now than anything. Talking things over with the two of them had really helped, and Dream wonders if he should’ve talked to Lucienne, or even Jessamy and Matthew to start. Maybe he wouldn’t have let things go so far the way they did between him and Hob.

“Nah, he deserves it,” Eleanor replies, taking another swig from her bottle. 

“It’s really my fault,” Dream tries to insist, knowing it’s useless to defend Hob to his own ex. “I knew he wasn’t over you and I—”

“No, Dream, listen to me,” Eleanor says, taking Dream’s face in her hands. “He never—” she turns away from him suddenly and then burps. Dream laughs, despite himself. 

“He never what?” Dream asks when Eleanor turns back to face him. She sighs.

“He never told you why he turns off the lights, and that’s on him,” Eleanor tells him. 

“I—what?” Dream says dumbly. Hob turned off the lights with Eleanor too?

“Yeah, he—” Eleanor hiccups and then starts giggling. She releases Dream’s face and then falls back onto Didi, who’s sitting behind her on the couch. “He’s sensitive, you know? About—” she gestures at her front, “All the hair he has. Hates it when people see it. I think we had sex with the lights on like, twice, at most.” She pauses and then regards Dream, her expression sombering. “I thought you knew.”

“Why would I know that?” Dream asks, dumfounded. Hob had never given any indicator that he was sensitive about any part of his body, and no one in their friend group had ever commented on it.

“Because,” Eleanor replies, gesturing wildly. “Think about it. Whenever we went to the beach or anything together, did you ever see him take his shirt off? Or at the pool at Matthew and Jessamy’s place?”

“I—” Dream filters through his memory, which is an especially difficult task considering how drunk they are. He realizes that Eleanor’s right. 

“Shit.” Dream groans. “I think I fucked up.”

“No, no, he did,” Eleanor insists. “I always told him I didn’t mind all the hair,” she adds then sighs. “I mean it’s a lot, but it never bothered me, you know?”

“It’s never bothered me either,” Dream admits. He’d rather liked the differences in their bodies actually. Hob was broad where Dream was lanky, naturally tan and sunkissed where Dream was pale. Dream had never had an opinion on chest hair before, what little hair he’d had it was so fine and thin that his chest looked bare anyways. But Eleanor was right. Dream had never really seen Hob casually uncovered. And while he was always eager to undress Dream when the lights were still on, Hob almost never fully undressed himself until after he’d shut them off. 

It seems so obvious now, in retrospect. But Dream had been caught up in his own insecurities to really notice that Hob had any of his own to address.

“I honestly thought he didn’t want to look at me when he turned off the lights,” Dream confesses. “That maybe he was hoping he could pretend I was someone else in the dark.”

“Okay, I’m with my girlfriend,” Didi says suddenly, a murderous look in her eyes. “I’m a doctor, I can make it look like an accident,” she adds, holding up her weird hand mixed cocktail that has hot sauce in it. 

“Didi!” Dream exclaims. “No murder,” he orders, then laughs at the absurdity of the entire situation. They all start laughing, and Dream feels something unwind in his chest when they do. He thinks about texting Hob, but ultimately decides against it. What he wants to tell him, he wants to do it sober, and in person. 

Dream wakes up the next morning extremely hungover, and orders breakfast for delivery. Didi and Eleanor try to insist on paying him back, but he waves away their money, and tells them they can buy him dinner when he flies out to see them move. They both hug him fiercely on their way out and make him promise to see them at least one more time before they fly back to Seattle.

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

A week after his conversation with his sister and Eleanor, Dream is outside Hob’s apartment door, pacing nervously as he rehearses everything he wants to say to Hob. His apology. His request to start things over, if Hob still wants to try. How he’s really been feeling about their whole not-relationship status.

Really, he’s just stalling knocking on Hob’s door. What if Hob doesn’t answer when he sees it’s Dream? What if he tells Dream to go away without even hearing him out? What if—

Dream groans and then mentally slaps himself. He needs to stop worrying himself unnecessarily. Either Hob will want to hear him out or he won’t. But Dream needs to at least try.

He’s about to raise his hand to finally knock on the door, when suddenly he hears Hob’s voice, distinctly from not inside the apartment. 

“Dream?” Hob asks. Dream turns in the direction of his voice and finds Hob standing at the end of the hall, groceries in hand. Dream realizes he’s been an idiot standing in front of a completely empty apartment. 

“Hi,” Dream says, every rehearsed speech and romantic gesture he’d just been rehearsing evaporating from his mind like wisps of smoke.

“Hi,” Hob replies, his voice flat. He looks tired, but not angry at least, to see Dream. “Did you need something?” he asks as he walks slowly towards his front door, eyeing Dream a little suspiciously. Dream can’t really blame him. Their last interaction had ended rather poorly.

“I—can we talk?” Dream asks, stepping aside so Hob can put his key in the lock. Hob sighs and his shoulders droop, like he’s been dreading this exact situation. 

“Sure,” Hob replies, putting on a fake cheerful demeanor as he opens the door to let himself and Dream in. 

“Do you need help with anything?” Dream asks, trailing Hob towards the kitchen. 

“If you want,” Hob replies, setting the groceries down onto the counter. But before Dream can start unpacking anything, he sighs again and groans. 

“Actually, Dream,” Hob says, turning around and facing him head on. “Let’s just talk now.” 

“Uhm—okay,” Dream replies, now feeling incredibly nervous. Hob looks at him expectantly, crossing his arms as he waits for Dream to gather his thoughts. 

Finally, Dream says, “I wanted to say I’m sorry. About everything that happened last time I was here.”

His apology seems to surprise Hob, who suddenly straightens up from his leaning position against the counter.

“Oh,” Hob replies, sounding dumbstruck. “I—I’m sorry too,” he offers, uncrossing his arms and running a hand through his hair. Dream realizes it’s longer than the last time he’d seen it. “I shouldn’t have lost my temper at you that night.”

“To be fair, I was being an ass,” Dream admits, even though it pains him to do so.  

“Yeah but you had a reason to be,” Hob says. “I was just feeling sorry for myself for no reason and I took it out on you.”

“I still took my shitty day out on you,” Dream replies, shrugging. “So I guess we were both not at our best that night.”

“I guess not,” Hob accepts, with a small smile. “We’re okay then?”

Dream nods. “Yes,” he says, offering a small smile himself, then stepping towards Hob. “Why were you feeling sorry for yourself?” Hob’s expression shutters closed again, and he shakes his head. 

“It’s not important,” he says, turning away and refusing to meet Dream’s eyes.  

“Hob,” Dream says, taking another step closer and reaching out to take the other man’s hand in his. “It’s important to me,” he adds.  

Hob sighs, and then turns his eyes to the ceiling. When he meets Dream’s gaze again, he looks pained. 

“I’m not good at being casual Dream,” Hob tells him bluntly, and Dream feels a sense of deja vu run through him like a live wire. “If we’re going to keep doing…this, I want there to be a commitment. It’s not just sex to me.”

It’s almost identical to what Eleanor had said about Hob to Dream a week prior. Dream suddenly feels wretched for not noticing sooner, but also indignant, because why had Hob assumed that wasn’t what Dream wanted as well? 

“Hob,” Dream says, as calmly as he can manage, before he squeezes Hob’s hand tightly. “What made you think I didn’t want the same things?”

Hob’s face falls. He looks intently at Dream’s face, and whatever he finds there only seems to upset him further. 

“I—I don’t know,” Hob admits, before he groans and places his free hand over his face. Dream finds it a bit comforting that he hasn’t tried to remove Dream’s hand over his other one.

“I’ve read this whole thing wrong, haven’t I?” Hob says through his hand, before slapping his forehead. “I’m a fucking idiot.”

“You’re not,” Dream says, before he takes Hob’s free hand as well. “And to be fair,” he adds, “it’s occurred to me recently that I may have, as well. We’ve never talked about—about this,” he gestures between them. “Us. We just sort of skip to the sex.”

“Well, we have been drunk every time,” Hob replies. “You said so yourself.”

“Not—every time,” Dream says. “After Matthew got food poisoning, when I thought that you had invited me out on a date, we only had one drink each that we didn’t finish.”

“Wait,” Hob stutters, his whole body going rigid. “You thought I had invited you out for a date? That’s why—,” his eyes widen suddenly. “That’s why you wore the blazer.”

Dream blushes furiously and now it is his turn to look away from Hob’s scrutinizing gaze. “You don’t have to rub it in.”

“No I’m not I—,” Hob groans again, and then, unexpectedly, pulls his hands free before dropping his head down on Dream’s shoulder. Dream startles when he feels Hob’s arms suddenly wrap around his waist shortly after.

“I had no idea. None at all,” Hob confesses, then groans again. “God I would’ve taken you somewhere nicer if I knew you wanted it to be a date.”

Dream shrugs, then reaches up to pat Hob on the back. “It’s fine. Really.”

“Not really, but we can agree to disagree,” Hob replies, before he tilts his head slightly up to look at Dream “Can I get a do-over on that then?” he asks. “Take you out on a proper date?”

Dream wants that, he realizes. Desperately. So he nods. 

“I do want that,” Dream says honestly. “But—”

“Oh God, there’s a ‘but’,” Hob groans before he straightens and untangles himself from Dream. Dream already misses the warmth of Hob’s body. 

“It’s not a bad ‘but’,” Dream replies. “But there’s something that’s been bothering me since we—since all this started,” he finishes. “I want to make sure we’re really on the same page.”

Hob nods. “Okay, sure. What is it?” he asks.

Dream takes a deep breath to brace himself, and then looks Hob directly in the eye. Now or never, he supposes. 

“Why do you turn off the lights?” Dream asks. 

Hob blinks, slow, then suddenly blushes a furious red before he buries his face in his hands.

“Aw, come on Dream,” Hob sighs. “It’s really embarrassing.”

Dream softens a bit, but remains resolute. Eleanor had told him what she thought had been the problem all along, but he still needs to hear it from Hob himself.  

“I need to know, Hob,” Dream insists.

“Why?” Hob asks, then sighs again. “I mean, I don’t know, it’s pretty obvious isn’t it? I’m not really much to look at, you know,” he says, gesturing to himself.

“Not much to look at?” Dream asks, unable to keep the disbelief out of his voice.

“I know, it’s stupid,” Hob sighs, running a hand over his face. “But I mean, Dream, look at you. You’re gorgeous and I’m…I don’t know, not that?”

“I’m still not following,” Dream says, still confused but also growing more and more uneasy about what Hob is implying. “Did you…did you really not think I was attracted to you? At all?”

“No, I—I just—,” Hob stutters. “I don’t know what I thought, honestly,” he says, looking guilty. “I just—I’m not as confident as you about how I look naked,” he adds, gesturing to his front, and Dream’s heart sinks at the confirmation of yet another thing Eleanor had told him. “I thought…maybe you’d change your mind about being with me. If you saw, well— everything.”

“Everything,” Dream replies flatly. 

“I mean, you know I’m really…hairy,” Hob says, before he winces. “And well, I’m not really in shape or anything like that either…” he trails off, looking even more guilty with every new word that comes out of his mouth. Like he’s only just realizing now that he pushed his anxieties about his body onto Dream, who clearly hasn't noticed any of the things Hob's insecure about.

“So…what?” Dream says, suddenly feeling indignance and hurt creep into his voice. “You just assumed I wouldn’t find you attractive unless I was drunk and we had sex in the dark?”

“Wait, what?” Hob exclaims. 

“Am I really that shallow sounding to you?” Dream continues, already feeling his emotions start to get the better of him.

“No, oh god, no,” Hob replies immediately. “Dream, I don’t know what’s brought this on, but swear it had nothing to do with you. I was just stupid and insecure about myself, and I wasn’t thinking properly. I’m sorry, I really had no idea it bothered you so much.”

A somewhat tense and awkward silence falls between them. Dream mulls over what Hob has told him, feeling wretched about how deeply they’ve both misunderstood one another. But he had come here to clear those misunderstandings after all. Hob had admitted his insecurities. Now Dream had to as well. 

“I actually thought—” Dream says, then takes a shuddering breath to calm himself. “I thought you turned the lights off because you didn’t want to look at me,” he finally admits.  “Because I wasn’t who you really wanted to be with.”

Hob’s eyes widen, first in shock, then horror. “Wait you thought that I—”

“Was using me as a stand-in for Eleanor?” Dream finishes. He wraps his arms around himself and then looks away, refusing to meet Hob’s eyes. He feels like a coward for doing so but Dream knows he’ll lose his resolve to admit everything he’d been bottling up if he does. “The first time we slept together, I assumed you were only looking for a rebound. And when we never talked about it after, or told our friends I—”

“Fuck, Dream,” Hob interrupts, grabbing him suddenly and hugging Dream to his chest. “I had no idea, I—fuck, I’m so sorry I made you feel like that.”

Dream sniffles, wrapping his own arms around Hob, shrugging helplessly. 

“I should have said something sooner,” Dream says. “But I let it—fester instead. I had no idea that you thought you weren’t attractive to me either. But Hob,” he adds, turning his head to meet Hob’s eyes again, hoping he looks as serious as he feels. “I don’t just sleep with people I’m not attracted to. Regardless of how much alcohol is involved.”

Hob nods. “Yeah. I—I’m still sorry about everything though.”

“Me too,” Dream replies, then adds, a bit more quietly. “I like the hair, actually.” Hob chokes out a noise that seems half between a laugh and a sob. 

“You don’t have to say—” he starts but Dream shushes him.

“I mean it, Hob,” Dream says, before he works a hand between them to pet the small patch of hair peeking out from beneath Hob’s shirt. “I think it suits you. And I would like to be able to fully appreciate it.”

When he looks up at Hob, the other man’s eyes are a bit watery. But then Hob blinks rapidly, and sniffles, before he hugs Dream even more tightly to himself.

“Stay the night?” Hob asks. “Not for—not for sex. Just stay with me?”

Dream nods against Hob’s shoulder. “Okay.”

Hob makes a decision to order takeout instead of making dinner like he originally planned, citing that he’d rather spend time talking with Dream anyways. They still put away the groceries, which helps release a lot of the emotional tension that had built up between them, and Dream enjoys the warm, domestic feel of the activity. 

Once their food arrives, they settle on Hob’s couch and talk late into the night about everything and nothing. Hob catches Dream up on what missed during trivia when he was out with Didi, and Dream shyly admits that Didi had not been the only person he’d talked to that evening. Hob stares at him, equal parts awestruck and mortified, as Dream recalls his conversations with Eleanor and Didi, and how he found out they were dating. 

“So what you’re saying is, I’m lucky to have my bits still attached?” Hob jokes. 

“Hob,” Dream chastises him, bumping their shoulders together. “That’s not nice.”

“You didn’t date Eleanor,” Hob retorts. “She’s terrifying, do you know how many serial killer documentaries she used to watch?”

Dream did, in fact, know this. He had been subject to many episodes of Cold Case Files growing up with Didi, and his knowledge had been how he and Eleanor had first become friends. Dream suspects Eleanor’s deep passion for them is actually one of the reasons why she and Didi get along so well.

“Hob,” Dream says, a new worry now crossing his mind. “Are you—okay—with all of this?” he waves vaguely. “With Didi dating your ex while we—?” He trails off. They still haven’t really decided on what their official relationship status would be going forward, and Dream doesn’t want to presume.

Hob nudges Dream with his shoulder, and then kisses the top of his head. 

“Yeah, I am,” Hob answers sincerely. “I mean—it’s never not going to suck that we broke up,” he adds. “But we had our time, and if she’s happy then I’m happy too.”

Dream nods. “That’s good to hear,” he says. 

“Are you okay with it?” Hob asks. Dream hums. 

“I am,” he answers, then huffs a laugh. “I did offer to help them move into their new place, though.”

Hob groans. “Does this mean I have to help too as part of my good boyfriend duties?” he asks.

Dream’s potsticker falls out of his mouth mid chew, hits his knee, and then falls to the floor.

“Shit!” Dream exclaims, putting his food on the coffee table before bending down to pick up the stray dumpling. 

“I—did I say something wrong?” Hob asks, worry now clear in his voice. Dream shakes his head and then flops against Hob’s shoulder.

“You said nothing wrong,” Dream says into Hob’s shoulder, his face now flushed with embarrassment. “I was just surprised, is all. You—you said it so easily.”

“Boyfriend, you mean?” Hob asks, now in a teasing tone. “Do you like it?”

Dream nods, feeling ridiculous about being done in by a single word. But Hob doesn’t seem to mind.

“I like it too,” is all he says, before he places a hand underneath Dream’s chin and kisses him.

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

As they’re getting ready for bed, Dream feels a thrum of excitement, even though they’ve still agreed that sex is off the table for the night. They’re both far too tired and emotionally drained from the evening to put in the effort anyways.

But then Hob is holding out his arm for Dream to snuggle into, and Dream feels like a teenanger as he curls up against Hob’s chest and rests his head on it. 

“Fair warning that you’re going to wake up sweaty if you stay here all night,” Hob tells him. Dream knows he doesn’t mean to sound so self-deprecating, but now that he knows just how deep Hob’s insecurities run, it breaks his heart a little. 

“That’s fine,” Dream says, pressing himself even closer. He can feel Hob’s chest hair poking through the thin material of his undershirt. Dream rubs his face into it, enjoying the rough, scratchy texture against his check. Hob laughs at Dream’s actions, and Dream hums in contentment. He really did like the feel of Hob’s chest hair. It was surprisingly soft in certain places, and warm. Maybe Dream would wake up because he’s too warm in the middle of the night. Maybe he won’t. He’s just glad that now he gets the opportunity to find out. 

“You don’t have to pretend to be enthusiastic about it,” Hob says as Dream nuzzles him again.

“I’m not,” Dream replies, rolling his eyes. “It feels…nice.”

“Sure,” Hob replies. “Say that again in the morning.”

Dream does in fact, say something similar to that effect in the morning. He says it while he sits atop Hob’s lap, Dream gripping the thick pelt of hair for purchase as he ruts himself desperately against Hob. 

They’ve never had sex in the morning. In the bright light of day. Somehow it’s even more intimate than what Dream imagines having sex with the lights on must feel like and he loves it. Hob is looking at Dream like he’s something divine, like he can’t quite believe that what they’re doing is really happening. Dream thinks he’ll never let Hob turn off the lights again when they do this. He never again wants to miss a single second of seeing the way Hob looks at him, at how stunning Hob’s entire body looks and feels when pressed against Dream’s. His new goal, for however long it takes, is that Hob never questions Dream’s attraction to him ever again.

When they’ve both reached their peaks, Dream collapses on top of Hob, uncaring of the sticky mess between them. Hob’s chest is warm and broad, and Dream finds himself slowly drifting back to sleep. Hob groans after a while, however, wriggling beneath the weight of Dream's body, and disturbing his otherwise peaceful post-coital rest.

“Okay, this is sweet and all, but now I’m the one that's too hot,” Hob whines, pushing gently at Dream’s shoulder. Dream laughs, a brazen, awful honking noise that he’s always been insecure about. But Hob had told him the night before that he loves Dream’s laugh, and Dream can see now that the other man wasn’t lying. He’s looking at Dream softly, so full of affection that Dream nearly forgets he needs to move and just stares at Hob for a while.

“What?” Hob asks, his eyes crinkled with happiness.

“Nothing,” Dream replies, smiling back before he moves off of his boyfriend’s chest.

Hob gets up from the bed once Dream rolls off of him and heads towards the bathroom. He comes back with two warm washcloths to wipe themselves off with. When they’re both done, he tosses both cloths in the direction of the hamper, missing his target by mere inches. 

“Close enough,” Hob says. 

“That’ll leave a wet spot on your carpet,” Dream tells him, already seeing his prediction start to come true. 

“I’ll get to it later,” Hob replies before he kisses Dream, languid and slow and perfect. “I have more important things to do today.”

[tojisfavlatina]

‘Me and My Husband’

Wc: 3.9k

Cw: nonconsensual drug use, brief message of SA

An: if you’ve seen this fic before… yeah that was me i accidentally deleted my tumblr acc cuz i didn’t know deleting ONE blog deletes all of them… oops… i also wrote that spider-man gojo fic WHICH I WILL REWRITE AND REUPLOAD

Being engaged to Satoru Gojo was nothing short of perfect. You both completely trusted each other, you were completely in love, you rarely ever argued, and if you did, it was over the simplest of things and you’d both end up laughing at the end of it.

The only problem was his family. They didn’t approve of your ranking as a grade 3 sorcerer and they didn’t like how you chose to spend your time as a sweets maker, instead of trying to become at minimum, a grade 1. You had the potential, they were aware of that, but you just chose not to try and promote your rank. They saw your actions as rebellious and an embarrassment to sorcerers.

When you first started dating Satoru, they all laughed in your face, saying your relationship was nothing more than a fling, but once Satoru announced he had proposed to you, hell broke loose.

They condemned it, they hated it, they even sent you threats, stating if you didn’t break off the engagement, they’d ruin your life.

Satoru always told you to never worry about them. He’d always choose you over his family, and of course, you trusted him.

⋆

“Ugh, do you have to go?” Satoru had gotten a call, another mission he had to oversee, since no one else could be trusted enough to take care of it.

He laughed at your grumbling. “I wish I didn’t, but you know how it is.”

You threw your head back on the couch and let out a deep sigh. “Yeah, I know… I just wish we could spend every day together.”

“Become a grade 1 and then we can go on missions everyday together.” He sat down next to you and placed his hand on your thigh.

You placed your hand on top of his. “Very funny, Satoru.”

You felt your phone buzzing and you quickly glanced at it, but the messages weren’t from anyone in your contacts.

2 New Messages From An Unsaved Number

hey it’s mei-mei

let’s go out tonight. just the two of us.

“It’s… Mei-Mei. Why would she be asking me to hang out?”

“Change of heart? I say give her a chance.”

“I don’t know… this feels random. She’s never liked me, Satoru, why would I believe she all of a sudden is a changed person?

“I think you’re acting way too paranoid.” You gave him a light smack on his forehead. He pouted at you as he rubbed it better. “Come on! It’s been forever since you’ve gone out, hasn’t it? Go have fun!”

You groaned with annoyance knowing he wouldn’t stop persisting. “Okay… only because you’re irritating me.” He gave you a smile and kissed your cheek before standing up.

“I guess I’ll see you later tonight. Have a great time baby.” Satoru gave you one last kiss before leaving.

Once you heard the door close, you flopped down onto the couch. You didn’t like the idea of hanging out with Mei-Mei, especially since it’d be just the two of you. There was a bad feeling growing in your gut, but you pushed it down because you told Satoru you’d have fun. You sent her a confirmation text and you felt your phone buzz a couple minutes later, but you didn’t even bother looking at it.

Slowly, you rose up from the couch and started getting ready. You didn’t bother doing much since you didn’t really care how Mei-Mei perceived you nor did you care about impressing anyone there. You were doing this for Satoru and Satoru only.

She sent you the address to a bar nearly half an hour away, so you decided to call an Uber instead of having her pick you up.

⋆

The bar was extremely busy, the only reason you were able to spot her was because of her bright hair.

You tapped her shoulder and let out a small hi. She let out a small gasp and gave you a smile before giving you a bone-crushing hug. “Go find us a table, I’ll get us drinks!” She left before you could even say anything, so you simply obliged.

You sat at an empty table and let out a shaky breath. You wanted to calm down, you wanted to have a good time, but this still felt strange.

She came back and slammed two glasses on the table, sliding one over to you.

“I wasn’t planning on drinking…”

“Come on~ one drink won’t hurt…”

“…Okay.” You took the shot from her and downed it immediately. It burned your throat, making you wince. There was a slight salty taste, but you ignored it, thinking maybe alcohol just tastes like that now. You rarely ever went out to bars or clubs, since Satoru was a lightweight and couldn’t get past two drinks. Mei-Mei giggled at your reaction and took her shot soon after.

“I’m gonna get us some more~.”

“N-no Mei-Mei, please I had the one drink, I think that’s enough.”

“What? You don’t want to have some more fun with your friend?”

“I… I’m gonna find the bathroom.” You quickly left your seat and walked forward, not even knowing if you were headed the right way. You eventually found the line for it and waited.

Once it was your turn, you felt yourself get lightheaded, must’ve been one hell of a shot Mei-Mei gave you.

You finished using the restroom and tried finding Mei-Mei, but couldn’t spot her. Every step you took had you stumbling, you couldn’t even stand up straight. You’ve only had one drink… Why was it affecting you this much?

You spotted white hair in the middle of a group of people, and you let out a sigh of relief. You hoped Mei-Mei could take you home since you felt so strange.

You pushed through the crowd to reach her, but once you did, it wasn’t her you saw.

“S-Satoru? Why are you h-here? … at work…” The words that could leave your mouth came out slurred and mumbled. The music started sounding extremely muffled, every blink you took made your vision blurrier. Satoru kept fading in and out, eventually, someone grabbed your arm and pulled you outside.

Your eyes shut. Once they opened again, you were inside a house, but you couldn’t tell who it belonged to.

Everything felt foggy, you felt nauseous. You wanted to stand, you tried to.

But you must’ve fallen, since the next time you had opened your eyes, you were blinded by the sun’s rays.

The first thing you felt was pain. Your head was throbbing and the light wasn’t making it any better. You rubbed your temples for any sort of relief, but to no avail.

You slowly opened your eyes, hoping they’d adjust to the light. Blink by blink, the light wasn’t so harsh anymore and you could fully open them. You looked around and didn’t recognize where you were.

Satoru. I need to call him. You looked around for your phone, but as you looked down, you weren’t in the clothes you put on last night. Instead, you wore an oversized shirt and sweats, clearly belonging to a man. A sick feeling grew in your stomach. There’s no way in hell…

“Mornin’.” A deep voice caused a shiver to run down your spine. Every worst case scenario went through your mind.

“W-who are you? Where am I?” He handed you two pills, but you refused to take them, you didn’t even know who he was.

The man only rolled his eyes at you before dropping the pills onto the coffee table. “They’re painkillers. Take ‘em’ or don’t, I don’t care.”

“How did I get here… did we…did you…” Sleeping in the house of a stranger scared you enough, but the possibility of him also taking advantage of you, made your heart almost stop.

“No. We didn’t have sex, I didn’t even touch you. The most we ‘did’ was me liftin’ your body off the floor.”

“Did you see the girl I was with? She has white hair-

“Yeah, she left. She came with us last night, but she was gone before I even woke up. Hell of a friend you got.” He walked to another room and came back out with a bag. “Here’s your shit. You should leave soon.” You only nodded to him before he left you alone again.

At the top of the bag was your phone, which thankfully, had enough battery to last you until you got home. There were 27 missed calls from Satoru alone, and a couple of others from your friends. You’d call them once you got home, right now you just wanted to hear Satoru. You dialed his number, but it immediately went to voicemail.

You didn’t think much of it. His phone was probably dead, you were always the one that plugged it in at night. You’d see him soon, so you simply ordered a ride home

⋆

You unlocked the front door, but it was eerily quiet inside. He was probably still asleep, he always woke up late.

You walked towards your room, the door was slightly cracked open, but you could see a figure inside, “Satoru?” Once you opened it all the way, you saw it was him and let all your things fall to the floor. You missed him so much, you just wanted him to hold you.

He had his blindfold on, which was extremely out of character, he rarely wore it around you anymore. He was sitting on your guy’s bed and stared at the wall ahead of him, not even glancing at you. “You’re back.” His tone was cold and his voice was meak, the complete opposite of what you had expected.

“Yeah… I am.” You approached him for a hug, but he stood up and immediately backed away from you. “Satoru? What’s wrong with you?”

“Yeah, what’s wrong with me… the fuck is wrong with me…” He let out a dry laugh. Everything about him was confusing you. “What exactly did you do last night?”

“I… I don’t remember. I met up with Mei-Mei, I had a drink, then everything after that is… blurry.”

“What were you doing with Toji?”

“Who’s Toji?”

“So you don’t even know the man who you slept with last night. That’s fucking amazing.”

“What are you talking about? I didn’t sleep with anyone!”

He pulled out his phone and walked towards you. Satoru made you hold it as he swiped. On the screen was a picture of you getting pulled out of the bar by a man and you getting into that same man’s car. You recognized the man, you woke up in his house this morning. You started laughing at Satoru. “Is that Toji? Are you two friends? Wait… you both set this up to prank me! Oh~ you really got me.” You continued laughing, but as you looked at his face, he didn’t find this the slightest bit of amusing, making you stop.

He snatched his phone from your hand before inhaling deeply, “and whose clothes are you wearing?”

“I don’t know. I woke up like this.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose and groaned, “and you keep lying to me, even though I already know…”

“Already know what?” Your voice grew louder, angrier. “You don’t… believe me?”

“How am I supposed to!? There’s pictures, the clothes you’re wearing, Mei-Mei called and told me everything that happened.” Hearing her name made you pause…

Mei-Mei…

“You believe Mei-Mei over me? Satoru, you know she’s been oddly obsessed with you since you’ve known her.” You threw an accusing finger at him.

He only glared at your finger, and at you. “I’ve also known her longer than you. She’s given me evidence that you cheated on me, so is believing her really the craziest thing right now?” You were taken aback by his words. He had never doubted you before, but now he was believing Mei-Mei of all people.

“So is that what’s going on? Is this your lame ass way to end things with me, so you can go and have her? Is that why you were so insistent on me going out?” He rolled his eyes and scoffed at you.

“Don’t try turning this on me ‘cuz you can’t own up and admit you’re a whore now.” You lifted your hand to slap him, but your hand never made contact with his skin. His infinity was on. Satoru didn’t even trust you enough to have it off around you anymore.

You scoffed, tears were building in your eyes, but you refused to let them fall. You let out a shaky breath, “okay… I’ll admit to being a whore once you admit you were too pussy to end things with me, so you called your side bitch for help.”

“My family was right, I should’ve never proposed to you.” That was the last straw for you.

“Yeah, they were right.” You started gathering your things, but as you tried walking past him, he grabbed your arm to stop you.

“I already packed my things. You have my number right?” He let go of you and started walking out of the room, “make sure to get rid of it.” He walked further away and you eventually heard the front door slam shut.

Everything that just happened hit you all at once, finally breaking you. At first, you felt so betrayed, so angry. You threw the framed picture of him you kept on your nightstand against the wall, shattering it. Anything that even reminded you of him was broken. Once your rampage was over, you fell to your knees and started wailing, screamed until your voice was gone, you could barely breathe at this point.

You weren’t sure if you even wanted to.

Your entire life, the love of your life, gone.

Just like that.

⋆

A few days passed, you’d wake up hoping it was a nightmare, but the other side of the bed was always empty. He’s in the bathroom… he just woke up before me.

You’d get up to use the bathroom, but of course, it was empty, not even his toothbrush was there.

He was gone, and every time you came to that realization again, you’d break down sobbing.

⋆

A week passed. You knew he wouldn’t be there. You knew he wasn’t coming back. It still hurt, but you had to get use to it.

Word got out to your friends that you’d broken up, and they all sided with him. No one came to check up on you. It sucked, but you grew to understand it.

⋆

Three knocks sounded from the door. They were faint, almost hesitant. At first, you thought you imagined them, but then you heard them again, this time, a lot louder.

You opened the door to see the very man who had caused this depressive episode. Just seeing him made your knees almost buckle. Various emotions coursed through your body; rage, shame, sorrow, but worst of all, love.

You wanted to throw yourself back into his arms, for him to cradle you and say everything’s okay. You needed his warmth against yours and to bring you back the comfort you’ve been yearning for since he left.

But that wasn’t possible. Nothing he could say would fix what he’d done to you. His immediate response being to leave you, told you how much you really meant to him. He was so quick to push you away, like these last couple of years together truly meant nothing to him. It hurt to think about all the empty promises he had given you when he proposed.

How he promised to cherish you forever. How he swore to endlessly love you no matter what. How he’d choose to relive this lifetime over and over again if it meant being with you and only you.

The longer you stared into his eyes, the more you wanted to bawl. All of those happy memories you had with him flooded your mind, nearly drowning you into submission.

A lifetime had passed before you decided to be the one to break the silence. “Why are you here?” Your voice was laced with venom, making him rethink everything he wanted to say to you.

“I… I needed to see you again.” He could barely even look at you. Ironic. He knew he had caused you all of this pain and he wanted so badly to just hold you once more. “Can I come in?”

You exhaled before answering him, this didn’t feel real, you weren’t sure if you wanted it to be. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” His eyes pleaded to be let in, making it hard for you to refuse. You opened the door a little wider and let him walk past you. You closed the door behind him and stayed facing it.

“We need to talk.”

“I don’t think there’s much else to say.”

He tried turning you to face him, but you wouldn’t move. “Please. Just give me 5 minutes and then you can slap me, kick me, scream at me, I don’t care, please just… listen to me for a bit.”

You sighed. “5 minutes.” He let out a breath and thanked you. You ignored him and you both walked over to the living room.

You sat down and waited for him to start. He was nervous, he wouldn’t stop pacing around.

This was getting on your nerves. “Time’s ticking.”

“I found out my family had paid Mei-Mei to set you up. They paid her to drug you, and they paid Toji to take you home. I talked to Toji and he said he wasn’t aware of this plan they had set up. All he was told was to take you and Mei-Mei to his place and that’s what he did.” He said that all within a single breath.

Everything that had happened that night came back to you and what he just told you, explained everything.

It explained why you got drunk so easily, why you ended up in Toji’s car, why you woke up the next day with different clothes on, and why Mei-Mei had that picture of you and Toji together.

To say you were pissed was an understatement.

“You believed everyone else over me, over your own fucking fiancée.”

“Mei-Mei showed me proof! How am I supposed to believe words over that?” He threw his hands into the air out of frustration.

“Because they were my words! When have I ever fucking lied to you, Satoru?!” He was stunned into silence and you took a deep breath before you continued.

“When you proposed to me, I thought that meant we could trust one another, that we understood each other, that we were in love, but I see that I was wrong. You believed the bitch that’s been trying to get at you since high school. You chose the family that you shit talked more times than you’ve told me you loved me. All of them… over me.”

He was at a loss for words. He felt like the biggest idiot alive. Satoru knew he had made the worst mistake possible, believing others before you, and he could see that now.

Before, he was so blinded with anger, he was so hurt by you, he thought he had hated you. He even blamed himself, thinking you had cheated on him because he didn't care about you or didn’t appreciate you enough. He didn’t even stop to consider you were telling the truth.

You tore your eyes away from his body, knowing if you even caught a glance of him, you’d never say what needed to be said. “Maybe… maybe this is for the best. You need someone equally as strong alongside you. Someone who can pick up from where you may fall short, not someone weak, who drags you down alongside them. Maybe your family doing this was the right thing to do. You need to find someone better.”

Every word you spoke tore his heart apart. He hated hearing you belittle yourself, how you thought leaving him is what’s best, and how the both of you knew, you didn’t believe a single word that came out of your mouth.

He grabbed onto your hands and tried getting you to look at him, but you wouldn’t budge. “But there isn’t someone better. I don’t need to find anyone else… I need you. I can’t imagine my life without you, I don’t even know how I managed to live before I met you. You’re the reason I wake up in the morning and the reason I continue living. You make me want to get stronger so that every time I leave, you have that reassurance that I’m coming back home.” You continued looking away from him, causing him to feel helpless since he knew once your mind was set on something, there wasn’t any changing it.

He fell in love with your stubbornness, and now that same stubbornness became his grief. He couldn’t stop the flow of tears that fell from his eyes. Gojo hated showing weakness, he hated showing that he was just a human. He was never treated as such, so why act like one?

It hurt to see him like this. You hated seeing him in pain, but you kept convincing yourself this was the right decision. “Satoru, I’m always going to love you…” You tore your hands away from him and slid your engagement ring off your finger, “so when you eventually find the perfect somebody, the person who truly completes you, just know it was all because of me. Because I had the strength to let you go. I had the strength to let you find true happiness.” The tears that had been threatening to fall finally came crashing down.

You had spent the last few weeks all by yourself, abandoned by your fiancée, so officially breaking things off should’ve been easy. But it was so difficult having to mourn the very person that stood right in front of you.

It’d be so easy running back into his arms and saying everything’s okay. That everything would be fixed and everything would go back to normal.

However, there wasn’t any trust anymore, the very foundation your relationship was built on, was broken. Staying with him would mean living under his constant supervision, since he’d fear being lied to. You’d never be able to enjoy yourself without feeling guilty. It simply wasn’t possible.

You wiped your eyes and sniffled a few times before speaking again. “It’s been 5 minutes, Gojo. You should leave.”

He was on his knees, practically begging now. “Don’t do this. Don’t call me that. Please, we can make it work again, it’ll be okay.”

“I gave you what you wanted, and now it’s time for you to go.” He very hesitantly got up and tried to at least hug you, but you backed away from him. “Funny, you still haven’t even apologized to me.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but you quickly raised your hand to stop him. “Don’t bother. Just leave.”

Gojo wiped his eyes and turned to walk out. He wanted to say something, anything, but his mouth kept failing him. He decided to say nothing, he didn’t want to make it worse. He opened the door to leave but before he could, you grabbed his shoulder

“You have my number right?” He nodded, a spark of hope lit up in his eyes. “Make sure to get rid of it.”

[paracosm-draw]

Obikin Advent Calender 🎁🎄💕

Guys I have an idea !

I wanted to do something for Christmas but then I figured it would be even more fun to do it with you, so what I propose is this :

- My project is to promote 24 artists/writers, so one every day ; in that way the participants will only have to do one (or two) works for the entirety of the challenge (which I think is less demanding)

- For a reason of expectation vs. reality, if I don't have 24 different entries, you will be able to propose several works

- The works : basically everything you want, whether it's fics, drawings, edits or those pretty things you find on Pinterest and which I forgot the name, as long as the main themes are turning around Obikin and Christmas 🎄

- How to participate : if you want to participate you just have to put your tumblr name and the kind of work you do in the table i'm going to link just below, in front of the day you want 🍬

- Entries : I will make a first round of subscriptions from today to saturday 09 November. If I have 24 different persons then it's perfect, if I don't I will make a second round from Monday 11 to Saturday 15 and in this one you'll be able to subscribe for a second work 🎉

- End of the challenge : on Friday 29 November so I'll have the time to organize everything before the big reveal ! (Also for time zone reasons) 🎁

- How to submit your work : you can submit it to me via my tumblr or via my email address, that I'll give privately once you're subscribed ☄️

The subscription document :

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TQJ98hmfX36BEYBHjq-AY5QkCTztr-40IQaBFaGQpsY/edit?usp=drivesdk

I'm excited to see which ones of you will want to participate 🥰🫶🏻

[eoieopda]

my blog is two years old today.

the last twelve months have been rough - personally, professionally, and creatively. in that time, i’ve grieved two major deaths, had a lot of health issues and subsequent medical debt, and dealt with four (4) tornadoes. most recently, i had my car stolen and trashed. it’s been really, really hard to pour myself into writing because — for large chunks of this past year — there hasn’t been enough of me to spare.

that said, a lot of incredible things happened this year. i moved into an apartment i love and adopted two cats. i got promoted. i watched my dad fight off leukemia for the second time and return to a job he loves after a long time away. i’ve challenged myself creatively and have been chipping away at projects that genuinely excite me. the friendships i’ve made through tumblr have gotten more meaningful by the minute. without those friendships, it would’ve been a hell of a lot harder to army crawl through the Horrors™️ mentioned above.

for as ugly as things can get on this site, i’m still as happy to be here as i was two years ago. i’m happy that you’re here, too.

thank you.

here’s an update to last year’s eoieopdaversary time capsule for posterity:

102 fics/drabbles posted (excluding ones that were later deleted) — or 109 total works, including series chapters — for four groups (bts, seventeen, stray kids, and ateez)

70 requests filled

six wips that are truly wips (excluding the four or so that are brewing in my brain and may or may not ever see the light of day)

most recent fic - whiskey neat (jung wooyoung x reader)

longest fic - force quit episode iii: spider (lee minho x reader) at 23.5k words. this series as a whole is my longest posted work at 49.5k words and counting.

most popular fic - lacuna (kim namjoon x reader). it’s not the work with the most notes, but i think it’s the one that brought the most people here; and it’s the one people mention to me the most… even two (2) entire years after i posted it.

favorite deep cut - the one with seokjin and without complaints (kim seokjin x reader)

work i’m proudest of - force quit (skz x reader, series). this has been a massive fucking undertaking for me, even more so than i anticipated when i started working on it in june 2023 (yes, you read that right). it’s a huge departure from everything else i’ve written in terms of concept, world building, length, etc.

wip i’m most excited about - far from home (wen junhui x reader), which is inspired by and based largely on fallout 4.

favorite read - vice;grip (vernon chwe x reader) by @daechwitatamic and a word from our sponsors (kim namjoon x reader) by @ugh-yoongi are tied for first, holding hands on the podium.

[sl-walker]

Self-Promotion as Distraction

Want something to read? Here's my stuff that I'd rec, along with what kind of mood it's good for. Feedback adored if you read any of these and wanna give it.

Supernatural - The (Second) Book of James - Long Good if you like stories written before Season 9, tons of angel lore and metaphysics, angel-vessel relations, Jimmy Novak, a story told backwards-and-forwards, and something with a very bittersweet ending that is not actually the ending. Some warning for tragedy, of a sort. If you love Cas and Jimmy, though, it's a hell of an adventure, especially if you like Cas as a total badass.

Star Trek: The Original Series - The Arc of the Wolf - Long Good if you love your Trek stories very grounded and humanistic. Pretty much the life story of Montgomery Scott, it's very much a Scotty story first and a Trek story only sometime after that. There's drama, humor, high seas piracy, friendship, found family and even if you don't actually know Trek very well, I've been told you don't need to in order to enjoy it.

Star Wars - Witness me - Long Good if you like Maul and specifically Obimaul, especially with the more Legends lean on Maul's characterization. Basically an AU where Maul was captured after Theed, the series doesn't ignore the fact that Maul was cut in half, so it's very heavy on the psychology and relationship building. It also has a whole gamut of emotions explored, and beyond the Obimaul, you also have found family and friendship building and an absolutely awesome cast of clones in Blackbirds: Year One. Probably my most popular work, and not entirely without reason.

Star Wars - Undersong - Long-ish Good if you like id-fic! A Sith AU where both Obi-Wan and Maul are raised by Sidious before escaping together, it's largely written in a serial format, with short chapters and a lot of momentum. Good if you don't like long, dense chapters, but do like a story with some real rollercoaster emotion. I enjoyed the hell out of the supporting cast, and so does everyone who reads it, too.

DC Comics/JLI - Past Resolution's Power - Mid-length Good if you want a shorter tale but with teeth. The prequel series to Stardust, this one primarily looks at the short span of time between the book Justice League: Generation Lost (and Booster Gold Vol. 2) and Flashpoint, mostly centered around Booster, but also with Rani and Rip and Michelle and Guy. It's a pretty heavy and genuinely mature story, though it's got its light spots, too. Also called the Mk. I timeline, as its the first.

DC Comics/JLI - Carbon Cycle - Long Good if you want something long, involved, sometimes incredibly fluffy and definitely filled with warmth. The Mk. III timeline -- meaning the third reboot, versus the Mk. I timeline above -- takes place mostly around DC's Rebirth era, on the notion that the characters aren't getting cleanly reset every time and instead that there are these echoes from past lives. The main story, Stardust, is Booster/Beetle slowburn, lots of funny but also lots of sincerity, and later on some heavier stuff creeping in, but the supporting cast has some serious screentime, too.

How about you, Tumblr? GIVE US YOUR DISTRACTION RECS.

[pandapodfics]

Panda's Podfics - Halloween Special

excited to announce that this year's Halloween Special will be in collaboration with the one and only @1dtrickortreatfest!

on to the details:

Participation

first things first; your fic(s) featuring in the Special is completely voluntary. Just because you submit a fic to the collection, doesn't mean you're automatically included. This also means in turn, if you want to be featured, please fill out this form.

Publishing

The Halloween Special episode will be published on the 31st of October (please be lenient if it ends up being the 1st of November). It will be available on Apple Podcast/Spotify, as well as for on-site streaming and as download (MediaFire) from AO3. Disclaimer: I won't be linking every individual fic to my AO3 post and instead just refer to the fest as a whole. Similarly, I will only tag the most common tags across all recorded works. Hope you understand. The podfic post for the episode will include links to all the featured fics and @ the author's tumblr (if available). The episode will also be promoted on Twitter.

Recording

The individual reading of your fic will include: - title/author - rating - [warning only if it's marked for MCD and/or Violence] - 2-3 of the most important tags/potential TWs* - fic (*you're welcome to let me know which of your tags you'd like to have included, otherwise I will choose at my own discretion.) If you gave permission to be featured, I will get started on recording your fic ASAP after you submit it to the collection. You're also welcome to send the fic to me directly via pandaspodfics@gmail.com - please make sure to include everything on the aforementioned list.

I know that Life™️ happens, but if you know you'd like to be part of the special, and have the opportunity, I kindly ask to not leave submitting your fic until the last minute. I will do my best to have the episode done in time, but it can be aided by you submitting your fics as early as possible. Thank You!

For further questions/concerns feel free to reach out via this blog, Twitter or email (see above).

Looking forward to reading some spooky fics!

[batfambrainrotbeloved]

For curiosity sake (also cuz polls are fun)

For those stumbling upon this, I will NEVER give up the oppertunity to shamlessly self promote SO you should read my fic

Summary on A03-

Tim Drake died at seventeen, his family long broken beyond repair. A Cuckoo finally rid from the nest.

But when he wakes up in his time, but now just a year after the Graysons death and appearance of the first Robin. Tim wouldnt let his family suffer again, even if it meant he couldnt join them.

Bruce Wayne is not "Brucie Wayne" Tim Drake is not "Timothy Drake"

They are both personas, a front to prevent people from looking at whats really under the surface. But sooner or later Tim should have known Gotham being a city of secrets, nothing stays buried forever. Especially not when the bats get involved with their trashy next door neighbor whose behavior seems more and more contriditory.

Tim had saved them all more times than he could count, maybe this time they could return the favor.

[mollywog]

I'm now joining you in your regency/historical everlark mood with the fics you reblogged 😊 Do you any favorites to recommend?

Yesssss!! Join in and send your favorites! I’m limiting myself to Regency or there abouts, because my Historical AU list is… extensive.

Anyways, I haven’t made it through all @everlarkficquestions 1800’s masterlist but here are some I’ve enjoyed!

Searching regency+everlark on tumblr gifted me:

Part 1 & Part 2 by @endlessnightlock Gah!! I guess I hadn’t read them before? But what a delight!!

All’s Fair by @rosegardeninwinter I have read multiple times. I mean it’s season/book 2 Bridgeton mashed up with Everlark, what more could you want?

My search of the tags also revealed that @thesweetnessofspring is working on a Regency one-shot 👀 looking forward to that!!

From my bookmarks

Quicksilver by @gamesmakers - love - it’s smart and funny. I’m giggling and kicking my feet as I read - so good!

First Impressions by @pookieh - ongoing story, recently updated, and… guys… it’s getting spicy!

In Hope and Agony by Hawtsee - this was recommended to me in the comment section of one of my fics. It’s Persuasion but Gadge and features Everlark and Odesta as well!

I’d be remiss not to mention Unmasked by @katnissdoesnotfollowback but come on, we all know - it’s awesome! A classic really.

And a little shameless self promotion -> The Odds

Bonus!

Regency Peeta by @charlunday

Peeta in the shirt by @millennium-queen

Is there a Regency Katniss anywhere or the pair together?!? Dying for some regency everlark artwork (no pressure artsy friends! But if the mood strikes…)

What did I forget?! Send recs!