#am i the only one who loves this though??

[soulrox]

DPxDC #22

(kind of a prequel/companion for #21 adding in my new OC whispers)

Danny is squatting in an abandoned building working on some tech he found in a dumpster.

??: *whispering* Numbers, the wind told me you are a protector and will keep me safe.

Danny turns his head to see a little blond girl in torn, dirty street clothes, maybe around age 10. The spirits around Danny all gain that soft look in their eyes when seeing something precious.

Danny aka Numbers: Well I can certainly try, what do you need? And what do I call you?

Little girl: *Whispering* I'm Whisper. Metas, especially young ones are trafficked. The wind sings to me, telling me secrets. Your secrets are many but you are a protector and can keep me safe.

Numbers tries to keep his face in check hearing the truth, pain, and fear in the young girl's words. Without hesitation, agrees to be her protector.

Numbers: Welp guess I'm a big brother (again). Okay, Whisper I will take you with me and protect you. You do not have to share anything at all about what you hear unless you want to, understand.

Whispers smile is blinding while she nods.

Numbers is well known to the other street kids as he's been living in Gotham for a few months and has good street cred. He is known to be kind to everyone and help anyone, especially with anything to do with numbers. Numbers is also well known for giving info to Red Hood on those who go against the rules of Crime Alley. Red Hood himself is supportive of Numbers, even though it's clear Numbers isn't a native Gothamite.

The kids of Crime Alley soon get used to Numbers and Whispers being inseparable and Numbers calling Whisper his sister. However, the street kids were not ready for what would become of the duo.

Whispers knowing now she would be safe did tell Numbers the secrets carried by the wind. Anything from the little things like someone tripped a few blocks over to a member of the Bats and Birds near, to the trafficking ring being set up outside Crime Alley.

Numbers knows he has to share the bigger things with Red Hood. Especially because Numbers has hung up his own vigilante suit. Racking his brain for how to share this information without letting people know it came from Whispers was actually easy to figure out. Numbers will say he's a psychopomp. Well, he can see and interact with ghosts since he himself is half dead but shhhh.

The spirits of Gotham are in abundance but he hasn't really interacted with them since coming here. He did listen to them when they told him Crime Alley run by Red Hood would make a good place to live.

Asking the ghosts to find out where Hood is was simple. A young male with a gruesome hole in his chest had shown them right to the rooftop Hood was chilling on. Numbers grabbed hold of Whisper and using his powers flew them to the top.

Numbers: Hello Red Hood! Lovely night for a rooftop stroll!

Red Hood gave a minuscule flinch.

Hood: Numbers! *grumbling* every time.

Hood: What do you got for me this time?

Hood notices that Numbers isn't alone for the first time. He inclines his head in a silent question.

Numbers: This is my little sister Whispers!

Whispers gives a small wave from beside him.

Numbers: And I got a new trafficking ring being set up at ____corner of ______ outside of Crime Alley. They haven't picked anyone up yet though.

Whisper nudges him. Leaning down so Whispers can talk to him

Whisper: *whispering* they are planning to head out in the morning.

Standing back up straight, Numbers turns his head to look at an empty spot, tilting his head like he's listening to something then turns to Hood.

Numbers: Actually you should hurry with dealing with them they are planning to head out in the morning.

Hood: Hmm okay, Numbers you always have the best intel but this is new even for you. Do you want to tell me how the info has changed since you've been standing here or?

Numbers: *sigh* only because you are Red Hood will I tell you. I am a psychopomp.

Hood stumped: okay cool I'll keep that to myself then, thank you for trusting me. Anything you learn from them you can tell me personally and I'll help in any way I can.

Hood quickly departed heading off to deal with the traffickers.

Whisper: *whispering* the wind sings his praise so much, even though his secrets burden him.

Numbers: The ghosts sing his praise too.

[tokkiwrites]

𝐇𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐛𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐤 𝐃𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐭

𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲: After breaking up with your boyfriend of four years, you’re left heartbroken and desperate to leave it all behind. But as fate would have it, just as you’re about to walk out the door of his house, you run into his fatherㅡ the man who’s always lingered at the edges of your mind. the next sensible thing to do is fuck him.

𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐬: pwp, bf's dad joel miller x f! reader, short description of toxic rs, fight scene, afab reader, i dont know if this is categorized as cheating :p , age gap, fingering f receiving, joel has a huge one but we alr know!, dirty talk, pet names, p in v unprotected, creampie, slight slapping and hairpulling.

✿ 🪽 𓈒 ﹫𝐭𝐨𝐤𝐤𝐢𝐰𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐬 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐲𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐠 ..＼ ♰ i have been neglecting you cute freaks, but i am here to feed you. behold! boyfriend's dad joel miller smut! around 2.6k words, so it's pretty short, but i hope you love it. not proofread!!!!! okay baiiii 😎🫶🏻

The fight tears through the house like a hurricane, each word leaving wounds too deep. "You never listen to me!" you yell, your voice raw and trembling. Your chest aches, your throat burns, but the word vomit won’t stop pouring out. "Four years, and it’s like I’m shouting into a void! Do you even care about us?"

"Do you even fucking hear yourself?" he fires back, pacing the room like he can’t bear to stand still. "God, all you do is pick fights! You always need something to be wrong. What the actual fuck?"

"Because something is wrong!" Your voice cracks, and the tears come faster now, hot and humiliating. You hate how small you feel, how desperately you want him to care. "I’ve been fighting for this, for you, and all you do is act like it’s a burden!" He shakes his head, running a hand through his hair, exhaling sharply. "Maybe it is. Maybe you are." The words hit you like a punch to the gut. Your breath catches, and for a moment, the room feels impossibly still. You don’t want to cry anymore, but the tears fall anyway, blurring your vision as you step back. "Fine," you whisper, your voice trembling. "If that’s how you feel, then we’re done. I’m done." He freezes, his expression shifting to something almost regretful— but not enough to stop him. "Fuck this." He grabs his keys from the counter and storms out without another word. The door slams behind him, the sound echoing in the quiet house.

For a moment, you just stand there, arms wrapped tightly around yourself as you try to hold in the sobs threatening to break free. The silence feels suffocating, pressing in on you from every angle. You can’t stay here. You need to leave.

You grab your bag and wipe your face as best you can, hands still shaking. You tell yourself you’re fine, that the fresh air will help. But as you turn the corner into the foyer, you collide with something solid— someone solid. "Whoa there," a low voice drawls, steadying you with hands firm and sure. Your heart stutters as you look up and see Joel, your now ex-boyfriend's father.

Your breath catches in your throat. His hand is on your arm, warm and grounding, as his dark eyes search your face. His presence is like a balm, so different from the storm you just walked out of. He’s all quiet strength and rugged edges, his salt-and-pepper beard only making him look more like someone carved out of the earth itself. "Hey, sweet girl," he says, his tone warm and laced with that familiar twang. "What’s got you all worked up? You alright?" The sound of his voice is enough to break you all over again. You shake your head, the tears spilling over despite your best efforts to hold them back. You try to answer, but your words falter. All you can do is nod, though you know you’re far from alright. Not when his thumb is brushing lightly over your flesh, not when his scent— warm, woodsy, familiar— makes your knees fall weak. You can’t look at him, can’t look at the steadiness in his eyes or the way his hands ground you when you feel like you’re falling apart.

"Hey now," he says softly, pulling you into a hug before you can protest. His arms wrap around you, strong and safe, and for the first time all night, you don’t feel like you’re about to shatter. "C’mere, sweet thing. You gotta talk to me, mkay? What happened?" You press your face into his chest, breathing in hus smell that makes you feel like you’re home, even though you know you shouldn’t.

It’s absurd, really. You’ve always known he was handsome, but standing this close, it hits you differently. You’ve always noticed him in ways you shouldn’t, caught yourself glancing too long, wondering too much. And now, with tears still wet on your cheeks and your heart in pieces, he feels like the only steady thing left in the world.

"It’s over," you mumble against his shirt, your voice muffled but thick with emotion. "I broke it off with him. For r-real this time..." Joel pulls back just enough to look at you, his hands settling on your shoulders as his brow furrows. "You and him?" he asks gently, but you could tell he wasn't quite sure in your answer. "You sure ‘bout that?"

"Y-yeah..." You nod, your throat tight. "So you don’t have to... act nice anymore. You don’t have to pretend like you like m-me or care or whatever. It’s done now..." His expression shifts, confusion flickering across his face before something warmer takes its place. His lips part slightly as if he can’t quite believe what he’s hearing.

"Sweetheart," he says, his voice dipping lower, softer, like a secret meant just for you. "What the hell gave you the idea I don’t like you?" You blink up at him, stunned. "I just—"

"Little lady," he interrupts, leaning closer, his voice growing rougher, "it’s damn near impossible not to like you." Your breath catches as his thumb brushes over your cheek, his stare unflinching, as he examines your tear-stained face. There’s something in his eyes you’ve never noticed before—something unguarded, like he’s been holding it back for years. "Sweet thing like you," he murmurs, his lips quirking into the smallest of smiles. "Anyone with half a brain’d like you. But me? Hell, darlin’. I’ve liked you since the day I met you."

You step back slightly, just enough to meet his gaze fully, searching his face for any hint of pity, of kindness given out of obligation. "You don’t need to lie to me," you say, voice trembling. It feels like your heart is spilling out of you, breaking open right here in front of him. "Not just to make me feel better..."

Joel’s brow furrows, his dark eyes softening, and for a moment, neither of you speaks. A thread holds stretched taut between you. He doesn’t drop his hands from your shoulders, doesn’t let you pull away any further. Instead, he tilts his head slightly, studying you like you’re the most important thing in the world right now, like he’s trying to figure out how to put the pieces of you back together.

"What reason would I have to lie to ya now that you ain't with my sorry ass boy?" His voice is low, almost a whisper, but it carries a shiver down your whole body. You swallow hard, shaking your head. "I don’t know. I just—" You stumble over your own tongue.

Joel exhales slowly, his lips pressing into a thin line as his eyes bore into yours. simmering, waiting to swallow you whole. "Darlin’," he murmurs, "Let me show you then." Before you can even think, he leans in.

The world falls away the moment his lips meet yours. It’s soft at first, hesitant, like he’s giving you a chance to stop him if this isn’t what you want. But when you don’t pull away and when you melt into him instead, your fingers clutching at his shirt, he deepens the kiss, large hands sliding from your shoulders to your waist, pulling you closer.

His lips are warm and sure, washing away any heartbreak you might've felt.

When he pulls back, his forehead rests gently against yours, his breaths mingling with your own. "Am I lyin'?" Your chest tightens, the tears welling up again, but this time they’re different. They’re not the tears of heartbreak—you’re not even sure what they are, only that they feel a little like hope.

"Mister Miller," you breathe, his name dancing on your puffy lips. He smiles, soft and a little sad, brushing a thumb along your cheek. "I got you, sweet girl. You just let me." and you crumble completely. with no hesitation, he picks you up, taking you to the nearest bedroom, where he closes the door behind.

it felt wrong. it was wrong. but the way he looked looming over, you got your head spinning in all the right ways. the bed pooled under you, sheets rustling as you watched joel discard part of his clothes. you nip at your lower lip, scooting your body upward to remove the pants you had on. in mere seconds, both of you are naked, gasping, and holding onto each other like nothing else mattered.

You finally get to see joel fully naked and you can't quite understand how a man his age looks the way he does, and how he's still single, given the package he's been blessed with. "you can stop starin' now. you wanna get me shy?" joel teases, his shaft now on full view for you to gawk at. you're taken by surprise when he so easily pulls you down towards him.

he trailed kisses down your chest like flowers fall from cherry trees in the spring, your body reacting in ways you didn’t know were possible. "Please hurry..." and he chuckles, maybe proud maybe amused to see you this desperate. "'m sorry, darlin'" You purr under his touch, wrapping around him like he's a lifeline. his lips crash against yours again, rough palm slipping into your wet panties. you gasp, the feeling so strange yet so familiar. he lets go of your lips, thick fingers working their way inside of you. Joels eyes meet yours, and he curls his digits, speed picking up. the sounds youㅡ your pussy made, were pure music to him, constant encouragement to go harder, faster, loving the way you looked crumbling onto his fingers. "got such a pretty pussy. Sure you ok with an old man ruin it for anyone else?" he asked it as if it was the least absurd thing he could say right now. you nod your head profusely. "atta girl. knew you were the obedient kind first time I saw ya."

"You gonna come?" Almost mocking you, but you could bot form the proper words. You just looked deep into his glinting eyes as your hand made its way to his hardened crotch. "P-pleasee..." Joel almost loses himself, but he's steady with his movements. "Wanna come on my cock, hm? is that what you beggin' for?" your folds drip and clench around him deliciously, you don't want it to end. and when you're almost there... he stops. you whine in protest but you're quickly put back in your place with a firm tug at your hair. "You take what I give you, girl. Now ass up." you comply. in a second, your back is facing him, red cheeks now hidden into his pillow. you try to balance yourself up with one arm, but he grabs you by the wrist.

"Spread 'em." And you do just that, pulling at your flesh. like an auction. only it's you presenting your cunt for fucking. "Fuck, look at that..." he tuts, gathering some of your juices on his pulsing tip, dragging it up and down your puffy lips. "Pretty girl. She cryin' for me, baby?" a string of fain 'yesyesyes' reaches his ear. hes quiet for a bit but the moment he pushes the tip inside you feel your knees buckle, all the strength you had left into your arms fluttering away. you fall face first into the mattres under you as joel pushes down your lower back. it hurts, but the pain is delicious. your moans feel the room, the occasional slap to your ass interrupting them. Joel is strong, fast and brutal, leaving you no room to breathe, fucking so deep into you you're sure he's way past your bellybutton. "T-takin' it so well, pretty girl, so well.." your skin burns where joel touched it, whole head fuzzy and empty. "pleasepleaseplease" as the whole bed shakes and strums to his movements.

your back arches as waves of pleasure break over your body like water on a shore. your head was spinning, heart pounding, as his whole weight dominated over you. "That's it, baby, take it." his thrusts are rough, each hit making your body bounce, the urgency as he hit that very spot each timeㅡ your whole insides burning, too cock drunk to talk or respond, other than some pathetic whines that perfectly accompanied the wet sounds your pussy made. "been dreamin' about havin' you like this, baby. look at herㅡ" joel throws his head back, delivering a harsh thrust, the pain quickly melding into pleasure. "gonna come, hm?" he's stern and rough with his request. "hhhaㅡ y-yes, plea-se..." You don't know if you're crying because it feels too good or because of how long you've waited for this, no matter how unforgiving this could be.

eyes shot open when he roughly yanks your hair, your skin slapping on his being to only sound you can faintly make out in your dazed state. you let your whole body go, tongue lulled out as he takes out on you anything he might've been feeling. you were at his mercy, your moans irrefutable. your stomach flips and churns as that familiar feeling pools again in your lower tummy, and you were chasing it, crying. from what, you didn't quite know. maybe because you've never been fucked this good or maybe because it'll be over too soon.

the room was stuffy. "o-oh myㅡ god!" You yelp when joels speed picks up, shocked that he can go that fast, considering you've heard him multiple times complaining about his bad back. "shitㅡ i gotta come, baby. you gonna let me do it in ya? huh?" You nod your head so, squeezing around him like a ring, and he rewards you with a slap to your ass. "fuckin' slut." he laughs through breathy moans. you're holding on for dear life, reaching for anything your fingers can grasp at this moment. you're sure the neighbors are having a blast seeing the whole house shake. "that's it, girl. take itㅡ c'mon..." with a few more pumps his hips come to a halt, whole body trembling as he comes ropes inside of you. you let go, bliss washing over you, the ringing in your ears covering the soft curses escaping Joel's lips. steadying himself, he pulls out, voice cracking as he speaks again. "fuuck... baby, look at her." he smiles crooked, watching intently as his come drips out of you, cascading down to your thighs. you lick your lips, looking back and right up at him whilst spreading your legs wider.

"Don't do that. think I don't have it in me to fuck you again?"

you tease, "i don't know. do you?" and he laughs, pushing inside of you again, watching as your face contorts in pleasure. "Careful, girl."

you wonder when your boyfriendㅡ i mean exㅡ will come back home.

[ellecdc]

If you have the time, do you think you can do a sharing a bed prompt “warming their hands by slipping them up the other’s shirt and onto their back/stomach” or “lovingly tracing the other’s scars”? With f!reader and Im fine with any ship since I like all of them. Have a great day 😊.

thanks for the prompt, doll <3

Sirius Black x fem!reader who takes Sirius to a winter cabin [732 words]

CW: celebrating Christmas, Sirius pretending to be disgruntled even though there's literally no place he'd rather be (other than the Maldives, perhaps)

“You know we could be in the Maldives right now, right?” Sirius drawls from his place stretched out on the luxurious queen sized bed adorned with a copious amount of bedding and faux fur throw blankets. “Wearing far less clothes and not needing to risk splinters every hour just to stay warm.” 

You smirk as you watch the log you just added to the fire catch; sparkles crackling and shooting from the bark as you close the windowed door to the woodstove. 

“This is romantic, though.” You argue, hanging the fire poker back up and turning to face Sirius. His long sleeved sleep shirt was so thin and tight that you could make out every curve of his upper body; pyjama pants hanging sinfully low on his waist as he laid watching you, head propped up by his fist and his legs crossed casually at the ankle. 

You thought, then, that Sirius Black - with his inky black curls falling nearly to his shoulders, his fair skin decorated by high contrasting black ink, clad in his comfies and surrounded by fur blankets, the numerous windows of the tiny cabin giving you a perfect view of the snow covered mountains surrounding you - had never looked more beautiful. 

“You know what else is romantic?” He asks with an arched brow, feigning insolence even as his eyes track the way that the hem of his thick jumper you were wearing rose slightly higher along your bare thighs as you made to crawl back into the bed. “Being served drinks that are equal parts sugar and rum whilst laying under a cabana and insisting that my sunburn is going to fade into a tan even though both of us know it isn’t true.” 

“You know what’s not romantic?” You murmur as you settle into the bed, slotting your bodies together as Sirius pulls one of the thick furry throws over the two of you. “Listening to you yelp when you feel a little bottom feeder fish nudging your toes and claiming that the barracudas are after you again.”

“I thought you said you loved the sound of my voice?” He asks accusatively. 

“Nor is peeling said burn off your back like layers of a very pink onion.” You continue, pressing a kiss to his down turn lips as he narrows his eyes at you. 

“You’re very mean to me.” He pouts, though he readily accepts your kisses. 

“Am I?” You murmur into his cheek as you move to trail kisses along his jaw; a content sigh escaping your boyfriend as he closes his eyes and melts into the bed. “I only wanted a white Christmas.” You pout as you pull away, batting your eyelashes at Sirius as he cracks one eye open to cut you a look.

“And a white Christmas my girl got, hm?” He responds before wrapping his arms around your middle and rolling over, eliciting a squeal from you as he settles you atop of him chest to chest. “What does that make me?”

“The best.” You agree readily, pressing another kiss to his lips, smiling at the appreciative hum that earned you. The moment was ruined, however, when his icy cold hands wormed their way under the hem of your stolen jumper to settle on your lower back. “I take it back; I take it back, you’re the worst!”

“The worst?” Sirius hums casually, strengthening his hold on you ever so slightly as you try to wiggle out of his grasp. “But I sacrificed sandy beaches and tropical drinks and swimming with dolphins for you. Seems only fair you warm up my hands.”

“You need to see a doctor.” You grumble as you relent to being used as his personal furnace. “You must have circulatory issues.” 

“Or my beautiful darling girl has sequestered me in a tiny wood-heated cabin in the height of winter.”

You lift your head to rest your chin on Sirius’ chest; cataloguing all the ways in which his face was at complete odds with his voice. The soft upturn of his lips, the slow, relaxed blinks as his eyes flickered across your features in much the same way yours were flickering across his. 

“I’m beautiful and darling, hm?” 

“The beautifullest and darlingest.” He confirms readily, and you can't help but smile at him; he can’t help but smile right back. 

“Happy Christmas, Siri.” 

“It really, really is.” He agrees.

[creamflix]

cw: mentions of sex & reader menstruating, nothing detailed or explicit [for nsfw].

read part one here

three years.

three whole years of loving each other in your own chaotic way.

but when the anniversary actually rolled around, you felt like someone had hit the reset button on your social skills. standing in the kitchen that morning, you blurted out, “it’s our anniversary. we’ve been together for a long time,” as if that wasn’t blatantly obvious.

sukuna blinked at you from where he was tying his tie, raising an eyebrow like he couldn’t believe what just came out of your mouth.

“no shit,” he deadpanned, though his lips twitched like he was holding back a smirk.

you huffed, crossing your arms. “i’m just saying. it’s... a big deal, y’know?”

“yeah, yeah,” he muttered, brushing past you to grab his keys, but you caught the way his gaze lingered for a moment longer than usual.

truthfully, neither of you were handling it well. anniversaries weren’t exactly your forte. it wasn’t like you didn’t say “i love you” to each other, but those words carried weight between the two of you — too much to just toss around casually.

and now, faced with the unspoken expectation to do something, both of you were stumbling like teenagers on a first date.

sukuna spent the entire morning at work distracted, fidgeting with his pen and snapping at his coworkers more than usual.

am i supposed to plan something? he thought. i was the one who proposed, does that mean it’s my job? the pressure was getting to him.

finally, he decided to keep it simple: your favorite takeout from university, a nostalgic callback to the start of everything.

meanwhile, you spent your day spiraling in a completely different direction. romantic gestures weren’t exactly your specialty, but the thought of doing nothing felt worse.

so, you left work early and dove into something utterly out of character — a full-on romantic dinner, complete with candles, music, and a dish you’d only ever made once before.

by the time the evening rolled around, both of you were a mess. sukuna trudged through the door first, looking disheveled in his wrinkled work clothes, seven plastic bags in hand, each one stuffed with takeout containers. he didn’t even bother taking off his shoes before stepping into the living room.

“yo, i got —” he started, but froze mid-sentence when he saw you.

you were standing by the dining table, decked out in an outfit that screamed special occasion, with your hair done and everything. the table was set like something out of a movie: a full spread of homemade dishes, soft lighting from the candles, and an awkward tension hanging in the air because, honestly, what the hell were the two of you doing?

“...what the fuck,” sukuna finally said, his voice soft with something you couldn’t quite place.

you shrugged, suddenly feeling self-conscious. “i figured... i’d try something different.”

he stared at you for a beat, then down at the bags in his hands, then back at you. “you made all this?”

“yeah.” you shifted on your feet. “thought it’d be nice. but uh, if you don’t wanna eat it, we can always —”

“shut up,” he cut you off, a grin breaking across his face. “you’re insane, you know that?”

“takes one to know one,” you shot back, but your cheeks were burning.

he dropped the bags unceremoniously on the counter and crossed the room in a few quick strides. before you could say anything else, his arms were around you, pulling you into a hug that was somehow both firm and gentle.

“you’re ridiculous,” he mumbled against your hair. “but you’re my ridiculous.”

you rolled your eyes but melted into his embrace. “yeah, yeah. happy anniversary, jerk.”

he laughed, low and genuine, and for a moment, the awkwardness faded. the food didn’t matter. the plans didn’t matter. just being here, in this little apartment you called home, with him holding you like the world didn’t exist outside these walls — that was enough.

even after three years together, the idea of using the typical, sugary nicknames made you both cringe harder than nails on a chalkboard. no “babe,” no “sweetheart,” no “love.” for some reason, it just didn’t fit.

instead, you’d toss out things like “dude,” “bro,” or, on particularly annoying days, “boy,” just to get under his skin. the way sukuna’s eye would twitch every time you called him that? priceless.

but sukuna wasn’t innocent, either. his repertoire of names for you was a mix of creative insults and borderline threats, delivered with just enough affection to remind you that he didn’t actually mean them.

“woman,” “brat,” “shit for brains” — those were the classics. and when he was in an especially foul mood? let’s just say the creativity really started flowing.

the funniest part? even in public, neither of you switched it up. at restaurants, when a waiter would ask for your order, you’d say, “he’ll have the steak,” and sukuna would fire back with, “she’ll take the fish,” like it was the most natural thing in the world.

no “my love” or “my darling.” just “he” and “she,” like a couple of reluctant coworkers at a team lunch.

the one time you tried something different, it didn’t end well.

“what’ll it be, babe?” you’d asked one night, trying to suppress a grin as you glanced at him over the menu.

sukuna lowered his menu just enough to shoot you a look so disgusted you swore you could taste lemons in the air. “what the hell did you just call me?”

“babe,” you repeated, forcing the word out like it physically pained you.

he grimaced, his nose wrinkling. “don’t ever do that again.”

you’d burst out laughing, and from that moment on, the unwritten rule was solidified: no “cute” nicknames. not unless you wanted to ruin the meal for both of you.

and yet, despite all of that, there were moments when the truth slipped through. when you were out with friends, you’d proudly call him “my man,” as if daring anyone to challenge the claim.

and sukuna wasn’t any better — he’d talk about you to his buddies like you were the most important person in the world, casually dropping “my lady” into conversations like it was nothing.

but back home? it was business as usual. “yo, dude,” you’d yell from the kitchen. “did you put the laundry in the dryer?”

“hell nah, woman,” he’d yell back. “do it yourself.”

sure, it wasn’t the most conventional display of affection, but it was yours. no sickly sweet terms of endearment, no over-the-top romantic gestures — just you and sukuna, trading insults and sharing a love that, in its own weird way, felt perfect. would you trade it?

absolutely not.

you and sukuna had never been the type to ooze affection. no heartfelt “good lucks” or mushy “come home soon” texts.

instead, your love language was passive-aggressive threats with just enough bite to keep things interesting.

“don’t fuck it up,” he’d said before your job interview, leaning casually against the counter with a smirk that hid the way his eyes lingered on you a second longer than usual.

“look who’s talking,” you shot back, adjusting your jacket in the mirror. “aren’t you the guy who choked on his coffee before his last one?”

“watch it, brat,” he muttered, grabbing his keys, but his lips twitched.

underneath the snark, though, there was always something unspoken. a silent, shared understanding that you were rooting for each other, even if neither of you would ever outright say it. and during that waiting period — the nerve-wracking limbo between interviews and callbacks — the usual jabs quieted.

it wasn’t a truce, exactly, but you both found yourself going easier on each other. sukuna would make sure you had coffee in the mornings, leaving it on the counter without a word. and you’d restock his energy drinks without him asking, slipping them into the fridge while he wasn’t looking.

when the calls finally came, first for you and then for him, the celebration was as understated as your relationship. no grand hugs or squeals of excitement — just a knowing look exchanged from across the room, a rare, genuine smile curving both your lips.

“guess you didn’t screw it up,” he teased as you set your phone down, but his voice was softer than usual, the edges rounded out by pride.

“guess you didn’t either,” you replied, tossing the comment back at him with a grin.

and maybe — just maybe — there was a fleeting kiss in the mix. something quick and almost shy, as if lingering too long might make the moment too heavy.

“don’t think this means you’re off the hook,” he muttered afterward, trying to play it cool, though his hand rested on your waist a beat longer than necessary.

“wouldn’t dream of it,” you quipped, leaning back just enough to meet his gaze.

this was just the start, the first step in what would be your new life together. and even if it wasn’t wrapped up in the typical trappings of romance, it felt right. because with sukuna, love was never about the obvious.

it was in the things left unsaid, the quiet gestures, and the stubborn refusal to admit just how much you cared — though, deep down, you both knew the truth.

you still remembered the first time sukuna kissed you.

it wasn’t some grand romantic setup or a scene out of a cheesy romance flick — it was just… sukuna. blunt, stubborn, and perfectly him.

it was after graduation, a so-called “first date,” though neither of you called it that. he had taken you to the same drive-in you’d always gone to during halloween, the one with the faded screen and popcorn that tasted more like cardboard than butter.

but this time, they weren’t showing the usual campy horror flicks you two loved to make fun of. no, this time it was la la land.

you’d raised an eyebrow when he mentioned it. “really? la la land?”

“what? you’re too good for musicals now?” he shot back, pulling into the lot like he wasn’t questioning himself at all. but you caught the way his grip on the steering wheel tightened just a bit, like he was bracing for you to laugh at him.

“no, just didn’t know you had a thing for jazz hands,” you teased, grinning when his scowl deepened.

the movie started, but naturally, the two of you barely made it through the first twenty minutes without bickering. the popcorn bag was snatched back and forth between you, each accusing the other of hogging all the caramel-coated pieces.

“you’re eating all the good ones!” you snapped, clutching the bag protectively.

“you’re imagining shit, woman,” sukuna retorted, leaning over to yank it back.

in the heat of the squabble, with your faces inches apart and insults ready to fly, he kissed you. just leaned in and pressed his lips to yours, all sharp and sudden, like he had decided there was no other way to shut you up.

you froze, your brain short-circuiting for half a second, before he pulled away with a smirk that made your blood boil and your heart race all at once.

“what the hell was that?” you demanded, staring at him.

“you were being annoying,” he said, like that was the most logical explanation in the world. but his smug expression faltered just a little when you glared at him, lips parted like you were about to really let him have it.

“you don’t just kiss someone and then pull away like that, you asshole,” you huffed. and before he could reply, you grabbed him by the collar and kissed him back, pouring every bit of your irritation — and maybe a little something else — into it.

the second kiss was different. softer, slower, and entirely mutual. neither of you pulled back this time, and when you finally did, both of you were slightly breathless.

“still annoying,” he muttered, though the corner of his mouth twitched like he was trying not to smile.

“still an asshole,” you shot back, crossing your arms, though your cheeks burned so hot you were glad for the darkness of the car.

after that, there wasn’t much attention paid to the movie. there was a lot more kissing, though, a lot more bantering between each one. and while neither of you would ever admit it, kissing him made you feel like a stupid, giddy teenager. like you wanted to kick your feet in the air and giggle, even if the thought made you cringe internally.

it was ridiculous, it was messy, and it was entirely the two of you. just the way you liked it.

your relationship with sukuna had always been a clash of opposites.

back in your college days, he was infamous for his revolving door of women — never the same face twice, always someone new on his arm. sukuna, the loud, reckless heartthrob who could charm his way into anyone’s bed.

and then there was you: exclusive, reserved, someone who didn’t let just anyone close enough to even try. while sukuna’s name was tossed around in gossip, yours carried a quiet weight, a mix of intrigue and admiration.

it wasn’t that you were some saint — far from it. you weren’t a stranger to sex, but you didn’t hand it out like candy at a parade. your friends teased you about your “dry spells,” but you’d always brushed it off. you had standards, that was all.

meanwhile, sukuna? standards weren’t exactly his thing, or so it seemed.

so, when the two of you somehow transitioned from bickering frenemies to a full-fledged couple, there was an unspoken tension between your histories. you knew who he was, what he’d done, and he knew exactly how tightly you held your walls up. still, you worked together, two stubborn halves of something that somehow clicked.

until one night, when things heated up unexpectedly.

it started innocent enough — if “innocent” was a word that could ever describe sukuna. a clumsy makeout session in his dimly lit apartment, his hands tangled in your hair, your breath mingling with his as he pressed you against the couch. it wasn’t your first kiss, far from it, but this one was different. there was a weight to it, a hunger neither of you had acknowledged until now.

“you’re terrible at this,” you muttered against his lips, though your shaky breath betrayed you.

“yeah?” he shot back, his voice low, teasing. “seems like you’re still here, so what does that say about you?”

you rolled your eyes, but before you could quip back, he kissed you again, harder this time. his hands moved to your waist, fingers tracing the curve of your hips, pulling you closer until there was no space left between you.

it escalated quickly, too quickly. his mouth moved to your neck, and you felt the scrape of his teeth against your skin. a shiver ran through you, your hands gripping his shirt to ground yourself. this was sukuna — your sukuna — and yet, this was a side of him you hadn’t faced before.

you froze slightly when his hands wandered lower, testing the waters. for a split second, you weren’t sure what to do.

your mind raced with contradictions: the part of you that wanted to pull him closer, to let yourself get lost in him, and the other part that wanted to smack his hand away and call him out for moving too fast.

“seriously?” you blurted, breaking the kiss and glaring at him. “do you ever not act like a horndog?”

he smirked, cocky as ever, though his hands eased up. “what? you didn’t seem to mind a second ago.”

“maybe because i was too distracted by your terrible kissing technique,” you shot back, though the heat in your cheeks betrayed you.

“you’re full of shit,” he said, leaning back with an exaggerated groan. but there was something softer in his gaze, a flicker of hesitation that wasn’t usually there.

“look, if you’re not into it, just say so. i’m not gonna —”

“shut up, sukuna,” you interrupted, grabbing the collar of his shirt and pulling him back down. your lips crashed against his, and this time, there was no hesitation.

it was messy, passionate, a clash of teeth and tongues that left you both breathless. every time you thought you’d had enough, he’d kiss you in a way that made your head spin, and you’d find yourself pulling him closer all over again.

maybe you’d slap him later for being an overconfident ass, but for now? for now, you let yourself get lost in him, in the way he made you feel like you were the only person in the world he’d ever want. and, as much as you hated to admit it, you didn’t regret a second of it.

sex with sukuna was its own breed of unique — a stark contrast to the wild stories he carried in his history. where you once expected a whirlwind of dominance and filthy words, what you got was something raw and unexpectedly tender, the kind of connection that made your chest ache in the best way. it wasn’t the slow, candlelit romance people wrote songs about, and it wasn’t some grand kink-fueled adventure. it was quiet, comfortable, and somehow, so deeply you two.

sukuna had his reputation, sure. tattoos, a sharp tongue, and an aura that practically screamed i don’t care about your feelings. in his youth, you imagined he’d been the kind of guy who thrived on power plays in the bedroom, leaving women weak-kneed and breathless for all the wrong reasons. hell, he probably relished in it, back in the day.

but that wasn’t what you got.

instead, he was gruff, but not in the way you’d expect. it was the kind of gruffness that came with holding back, with trying to temper himself into someone who could make you feel safe and seen. when he leaned over you, his usual arrogance was softened by something quieter, something he didn’t say out loud but you could feel in the way his hands traced over your skin.

“this okay?” he’d grumble, his voice low, trying to sound nonchalant, but you caught the way his eyes searched your face for any hesitation.

you’d nod, a little too bashful to form words, and he’d pause, eyebrows raising just slightly. “i asked if it was fine, not if you could sit there like a scared rabbit.”

“sukuna,” you’d groan, slapping his shoulder. but your face would heat up anyway, and he’d smirk like the cocky ass he was, though his hands stayed steady, patient.

if you didn’t answer quickly enough, he’d ask again, his actions slowing to a near halt. “hey,” he’d say, leaning down just enough so his lips brushed your ear, “you gonna tell me, or do I have to stop?”

“don’t stop,” you’d finally mutter, voice barely above a whisper, and he’d let out the most obnoxious chuckle, something halfway between pride and amusement.

“thought so,” he’d say smugly, resuming his movements — but gentler than his tone suggested, always so much gentler. it wasn’t about control or ego, though you knew he liked to push you just enough to make you squirm. no, it was about making sure you were there with him every step of the way.

it was new, this side of him that catered to you, the way he’d catch your gaze when he thought you were feeling shy or uncertain. sometimes, you wanted to throttle him for the way he’d tease you, like it was a sport. other times, you wanted to melt into him for the way his hands would guide you, steady and secure, like he had all the time in the world for you and no one else.

but your favorite part? it was always the aftercare.

where sukuna usually thrived on chaos and crudeness, after sex, he was different. softer, quieter, almost dazed. he’d hold you like he was afraid you’d slip away, his arms wrapped around you a little tighter than usual.

“you good?” he’d ask, his voice gruff but quiet.

you’d nod, and he’d huff, pressing his chin to your head. “drink some water,” he’d grumble, even as he was already reaching for the glass on the nightstand.

he wouldn’t joke as much, at least not in the way that made you want to kick him. instead, he’d run his fingers absentmindedly through your hair, muttering about how you’d better not go passing out on him. he’d press lazy, almost featherlight kisses to your temple, your cheek, anywhere he could reach without moving too much.

and if you curled closer to him, burying your face in his chest, he wouldn’t say anything. he’d just hold you tighter, his fingers tracing slow patterns on your back, grounding both of you in the moment.

sometimes, you’d laugh to yourself, thinking about how this man — this loud, sharp-edged, unapologetically rough man — had turned into a vanilla sap just for you. and other times, you’d bite your lip and blush at the thought that he was yours. completely and utterly yours.

you’d never admit it out loud, but the way he took care of you? the way he toned down all the bravado and just was with you? it made you love him more than words could ever say.

the first real fight wasn’t the playful sparring you and sukuna usually indulged in. it wasn’t the sarcastic quips or half-serious insults that usually left both of you laughing by the end. this time, it was different.

the argument started small, something inconsequential, but quickly spiraled into a storm of raised voices and sharp words. sukuna’s tone was harsh, and your stubbornness was just as sharp. you were used to challenging each other, but this felt heavier, like neither of you was willing to back down.

“you’re not even listening to me!” you snapped, your voice breaking in frustration.

“yeah? and you’re so damn perfect at communicating?” sukuna shot back, his words biting.

the tension was suffocating, the air in your shared apartment thick with unresolved emotions.

and then it happened — he grabbed his jacket, slammed the door, and left.

the sound of the door shutting echoed in your ears, and you froze, your chest tight. sukuna didn’t just leave. not like this.

he left home.

it wasn’t just an apartment. it was the place where you built something together, where you shared quiet mornings and loud, chaotic evenings. it was the place that held laughter, tears, and everything in between.

and now it felt unbearably empty.

you wanted to scream, to throw something, to lash out at the ache in your chest. but you knew that chasing him down with your usual fire would only pour gasoline on the flames. so you swallowed your pride, slipped on your fuzzy slippers, and bolted out the door.

you spotted him a few blocks down, his tall figure unmistakable even under the dim streetlights. his pace was fast, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. he looked pissed, but there was something about the way his shoulders hunched slightly that made your heart clench.

“sukuna!” you called, your voice louder than you intended.

he didn’t stop.

“dammit, will you stop walking for one second?” you yelled again, jogging to catch up to him.

when he finally turned around, his expression was a mixture of anger and surprise. “what the hell are you doing?” he asked, eyes narrowing. “it’s late.”

“yeah, and whose fault is that?” you shot back, before taking a deep breath. no, not this time. no more yelling.

“look,” you started, your voice softer now, though your chest was still heaving from the sprint.

“i’m sorry. i mean it. not the sarcastic, biting kind of sorry. a real one. i shouldn’t have — ” you paused, struggling to find the right words. “i shouldn’t have made it about winning. i was wrong.”

sukuna stared at you, his expression unreadable for a moment. the silence stretched, and you felt the sting of tears prick at your eyes.

“...dammit,” he muttered, his shoulders dropping. “i was a dick too.”

you blinked, surprised. sukuna rarely apologized, and when he did, it was never straightforward.

“yeah, you were,” you replied, a small, tentative smile creeping onto your face.

he let out a low chuckle, shaking his head. “you don’t make this easy, you know that?”

“neither do you,” you shot back, stepping closer.

he sighed, his hands leaving his pockets to pull you into a hug that was as awkward as it was comforting. “you’re lucky i didn’t get too far,” he grumbled into your hair.

“you’re lucky i chased after you,” you countered, though you clung to him just as tightly.

and just like that, the tension broke. it wasn’t perfect — there were still things to talk about, wounds to mend — but in that moment, wrapped in each other’s arms on a dimly lit street, you both knew this was home.

sukuna would never say it outright — hell, he’d rather swallow nails than admit it — but he had your back when it came to that time of the month.

he tracked your cycle like a tactical mission, not because he was obsessed with you or anything (his words), but because it was easier to prepare than to deal with the aftermath of being caught off guard.

“what, you think i like listening to you whine about not having your stupid chocolate?” he’d grumble, dumping a bag of your favorite snacks onto the counter with an air of exaggerated suffering. but there was no mistaking the care behind the gesture, no matter how much he tried to play it off.

medicines? stocked. pads and tampons? stocked. heating pads? ready to go. hell, he even had a backup stash of painkillers tucked into his drawer at work in case you ran out at home.

he wasn’t perfect, of course. sukuna had zero patience when you were in one of your mood swings, snapping at him for breathing too loudly or sitting “wrong.” but he’d weather it, rolling his eyes and muttering under his breath.

“you done yelling at me, or you wanna go another round?” he’d ask, arms crossed, leaning against the doorframe.

but the moment you started crying — whether it was over a sad commercial or pure frustration — his entire demeanor shifted.

“hey, hey, cut that out,” he’d say, pulling you into his chest despite his grumbling. “you’re not allowed to cry over dumb shit while i’m around, alright? i’ll give you something real to cry about.”

when you were touch-starved, he’d let you cling to him, even if it meant sitting through a three-hour movie you’d already watched ten times. when you were touch-repulsed, he’d keep his distance but stay close enough to hand you water or make sure you were comfortable.

and when you were too tired to shower, he’d step in without hesitation, grumbling all the while. “can’t believe i’m doing this,” he’d mutter as he adjusted the water temperature and gently washed your hair. “you owe me a massage or something after this.”

he’d change the bedsheets without complaint, tossing you one of his oversized shirts afterward. “don’t stretch it out, or i’ll kick your ass,” he’d say, but you both knew he didn’t mean it. he even kept a corner of his closet stocked with clothes he didn’t mind you ruining — shirts and sweatpants that were practically yours at this point, though he’d never admit it.

“don’t get used to this,” he’d say, watching as you shuffled into the living room in his clothes, burritoed in a blanket. but the way his gaze softened as you curled up on the couch, finally comfortable, betrayed him.

for all his rough edges, sukuna handled you with a quiet kind of love — grumbling, sarcastic, but steady. he might call it “dealing with your bullshit,” but deep down, you both knew better.

it wasn’t a night you’d easily forget — not because of the celebration itself, but because of what came out of your mouth when you were deep into a rum-induced haze.

the bar was alive with the thrum of music and the clang of glasses, laughter and shouting merging into a chaotic symphony that somehow suited you and sukuna. the two of you had ridden in on bikes, looking like a mismatched pair of rebels — him towering, tatted, and menacing, and you just as fierce but smaller, less overtly intimidating.

"you know," sukuna drawled, leaning against the bar with a lazy grin that had been charming women for years, “if you weren’t already mine, i’d be trying to pick you up right now.”

you rolled your eyes, though your own grin betrayed how much you enjoyed the rare moment of his playful charm. “you’re an idiot,” you shot back, taking another shot and wincing as it burned down your throat.

but then, in the lull between his next teasing remark, you blurted it out. “i love you.”

the words landed like a hammer.

sukuna froze, the smirk slipping from his face. the rowdy atmosphere of the bar seemed to fade into static as he stared at you, his crimson eyes narrowing slightly, as if he was trying to gauge whether or not he’d heard you correctly.

"what?" he asked, voice lower than usual, his usual bravado stripped away.

you blinked at him, too tipsy to care about the weight of what you just said. “i love you, stupid. don’t make me say it again.”

and just like that, it was as if someone had pulled the rug out from under him. sukuna, the guy who had once been a whirlwind of hookups and no-strings-attached chaos, was sober in an instant. not because he didn’t like what he heard — no, it was the opposite. it was because those words had been lodged somewhere deep inside him, waiting for the right moment to claw their way out, even if he refused to admit it to himself.

he didn’t say anything right away. instead, he paid the tab, his movements oddly methodical, and threw his leather jacket over your shoulders.

“c’mon,” he muttered, voice gruff as he guided you to the door.

“what’s the rush?” you slurred, stumbling slightly as he helped you onto the bike.

“the rush is you’re drunk and saying shit you don’t mean,” he snapped, though his tone lacked its usual bite.

you didn’t protest after that, leaning into him as he drove the two of you home. by the time you reached the apartment, he was practically hauling you inside, grumbling about how you were a lightweight.

as he set you down on the couch and pulled a blanket over you, the words escaped him, unbidden and softer than he’d have liked.

“i love you too, idiot.”

he thought you were out cold, your breathing slow and even. but the faintest smile tugged at your lips, and a quiet mumble escaped you:

“heard that.”

he froze, a flush creeping up his neck. “shut up and go to sleep,” he barked, but the gentleness with which he tucked you in betrayed him.

you didn’t say anything else, and neither did he, but the air between you felt lighter, warmer. it wasn’t perfect or grand, but it was yours — messy, stubborn, and just enough.

produced by creamflix on tumblr. all rights reserved. do not copy, steal, modify, repost — support your writers by liking and reblogging. ♡

[astrologysaysno]

I keep giggling at 1 am in the morning about the idea of an A/B/O SVSSS Au where Shang Qinghua is an omega but absolutely sucks at it.

So imagine that he's presents as an omega, but to Shang Qinghua, he can't seem to feel it. Everyone else seems to feel his 'omega-ness' when he presented, so it's probably just him that can't feel the change. The system himself said that he was an omega (A/B/O was never canon, so Airplane wouldn't have thought about what secondary gender SQH was) so he just has to roll with it.

The rest of his story is just him flubbing and epicly failing at this whole Omega thing. Even his system has given up.

His Non-A/B/O first life as Airplane has left his brain incompatible with his body, the motor skills and instincts that you're supposed to have going with your secondary gender are out of the picture, it is not built into his mainframe, so he's basically a de-facto beta with extra no second gender psychologically speaking.

His superiors are keeping a wary eye on him, his fellow peers a wash of mixed reactions to his overall behaviour, worried about who he is and his complete disregard for norms or basic instincts.

He appears completely scent blind to pheromones, nor does he seem to be able to control his own. His master remembers a time where he was the unfortunate victim of two aggressive alphas fighting in the dorms, causing so much havoc they ended up breaking his inkbrush.

The scent from him when it broke was so acrid and sharp they immediately ceased, though he seems to be none the wiser, acting in his usual cowardly manner while shakily asking them to stop.

His martial brothers have never seen him nest in all of the years he's been on the peak. Not a single piece of clothing, not anything comfortable. He simply had a single pillow and a blanket for cold nights as he dozed off. It doesn't help that he avoids everyone like the plague, so even if he tried, he didn't even have anything to build one with

(The system tried to give him the task of making a nest, and he completely misunderstood, building an actual bird nest on his mattress. The system decided not to give nor take points, simply choosing to shame their host for this stupidity. Shang Qinghua keeps it by the windowsill, a memento for unintentionally spiting fate and living.)

In comparison to the rest of his fellow An Ding Disciples, he's antisocialism incarnate, zero bonds that connect him to anyone. (Shang Qinghua can't afford that, not unless he wants the weight of people on his conscience when he betrays his sect.)

It's kind of like that one classmate everyone is familiar with, but no one actually knows them. They just see him in class and forget the rest. He's scarily competent in group works and is capable of working with people, but he's never gonna respond to your text to hangout after the project is submitted and graded.

His master sees this as a detriment. How is he going to be able to have healthy relations with his future pack as a peak lord if he can't seem to get the initiative to actually communicate and bond with them.

So he coordinates a trial run with the Bai Zhan and Qing Jing Peak to help their own head disciples get a grip. A mission to be given to them to get them to open up and become closer as friends.

It backfires tremendously, only ending with the three of them becoming more prickly or antisocial. Only the most formal of greetings will ever seem to come out of Shen Jiu's mouth now, barely hiding his sharp demeanour. Liu Qingge seems to be at least willing to talk to others now, but his relation ship to the future leader of Qing Jing has now soured.

And Shang Qinghua is now more apathetic to the idea of bonding to his future pack, rathering to become completely detached from them.

(Shang Qinghua is destined to be a traitor, so why should he allow himself to experience the cruelty of betraying someone he cares about. It would be kinder this way)

[Love the fact that I just went absolutely everywhere with no coherent thoughts. Enjoy the word vomit I guess.]

[wonderjanga]

Possession

The Gods including Solomon possess Billy whenever they feel like it. They try to not do it that often, but sometimes just can’t help it.

Batman and Question: *talking about an intellectual topic*

Marvel: *possessed by Solomon, somehow seamlessly joins the conversation*

Batman, Question, Marvel: *all yapping*

Question: *pauses and slowly looks over to Marvel* “When did you join this conversation?”

Marvel: “Like a couple minutes ago.”

Question: “Huh.”

Batman: “You normally never add to these conversations.”

Marvel: “That’s because I normally never care for them.” *shrugs* “But this one is actually interesting.” *is about to stroke his beard only to remember Billy’s Marvel form doesn’t have one* “Anyways-” *goes back to yapping about the topic*

Batman and Question: *look at each other before shrugging and also going back to yapping*

or

Marvel: *possessed by Hercules and walking to the lion exhibit in a zoo*

Billy: “HERCULES NO-”

Marvel: *hops on the railing of the exhibit* “It’s no Nemean Lion but it’ll do.”

or

Robin!Damian: *on a couch at the Titan’s Tower, watching TV*

Marvel: *possessed by Atlas who uses Marvel as a way to take a quick nap since he’s literally been holding up the heavens for like a thousand years, does not notice Damian and just lets himself fall on the couch, passing tf out*

Robin!Damian: *feels the weight of an eight foot tall unit of a man on his legs* “WHA-“ *tries to push him off* “YOU IMBECILE! GET OFF!?”

Damian was stuck like that for four hours.

or

Marvel: *possessed by Zeus* “It’s been a while since I’ve let loose! MUAHAHAHA! *spamming throwing lightning at Captain Nazi*

Captain Nazi: *in a crater literally getting his heart restarted and stopped*

Fawcitizens: “😨” *cause Marvel just did an evil laugh*

or

Marvel: *possessed by Achilles, chilling on the ground, making a spear with a branch and a stone he found*

Fawcitizens: *taking tons of pictures because they love their hero*

Marvel: “Alright!” *stands up with his complete spear*

Purse Snatcher: *steals a purse* “You can’t catch me!”

Marvel: *throws the dang spear, misses by a hair, and impales it in a wall so hard, the concrete is cracked* “Huh… I guess I’m rusty. I’ll need to work on my throwing skills.”

Purse Snatcher: *walks over and hands Marvel the purse* “I am extremely sorry for the grievance I have just committed. Please forgive me as I am ready to renter society as a humble human being.” *walks off*

or

Marvel: *possessed by Mercury, grabs a bunch of poker chips he won* “Man, you guys all suck.” *playing poker with mobsters disguised with a fake mustache, sunglasses, a Hawaiian shirt, and some sandals*

Mobster: “Oh that’s it!” *stands up, pulls out a gun and puts it to Marvel’s head*

Marvel: “Whaaaaat? I would never.” *is in fact cheating using magic*

Mobster: “We’ll see about that!” *pulls trigger and bullet just falls flat on the table*

Marvel: “You know, that is so not nice. You don’t shoot a man in the face if you think they’re cheating.” *stands up to make that eight feet and five inches of height apparent to everyone in the room* “You owe me 10 million in emotional reparations.”

He was just joking around. He didn’t actually need nor want 10 mil. Though, they did get 5 mil which was donated to a homeless shelter Billy knew was good.

[kiragecko]

The only other thing I'd like to add to this wonderfully thorough description of the problem is:

fandom is bigger now.

25 years ago, I was able to remember the names of at least a quarter of the authours in my fandom (that I'd been able to hunt down through web-rings and google searches. ME!

(I am very, very bad at names - my favourite cousins and now-husband all answered to 'Other Vic' for a while because I mixed their names up so often.)

20 years ago, I was almost able to keep up with the X-Men category on fanfiction dot net - skim through every new fic on a regular basis and see if they interested me. And it was a 'big' fandom!

15 years ago, the Batfandom was so spread out - on livejournal, dreamwidth, tumblr, ffnet, and the new ao3 (I even found some authours through deviantArt!) that it always felt like I knew most of what was happening around me.

Now a days, I'm a drop in the ocean. There is more fic than I will every be able to read. There's no way to form relationships with all the authours that I'm reading. I would DIE! So I reread the people I know, a lot.

And not knowing the authours has a ripple effect. I'm not great with tone. Or talking. I enjoy reading works written by other neurodivergent people who may also be bad at tone. In the past, I would carefully check the water with my first few comments. Do they understand humorous exaggeration? Playful complaints and yelling about emotions? Do they prefer being built up, or being cheered on? How do I communicate with THIS authour, specifically? And are they interested in doing the work to understand me?

Now, there are too many authours! I can't keep track of that! So I have to leave more generalized comments. If I'm overwhelmed by emotion, I can't just yell at them for making me feel. I've hurt people that way! If there was one really squicky thing, and even though I loved the rest my feelings are all entangled, I don't have a relationship strong enough to get into that with this person.

The comments get shorter and more general. So relationships don't get a chance to form. And I don't learn new authours' names, and everything feels even bigger, and ...

It's GREAT that so many people are into fandom, and it's accepted! It's just hard to form community in this vast ocean.

feedback and fic in fandom (3 f's of our own)

This conversation about feedback on fic says everything I’ve been wanting to say better than I could say it. But I’ll go ahead and try anyway.

Over the last five years or so there have been some great discussions around the rise of commodification of fanworks and decline of fandom community. This commodification looks a bit like enshittification of the internet: a cool site exists; its popularity makes someone realize they can get money from it; it has more and more ads; the site adds features to drive engagement, including The Algorithm; the things that made the site cool start to fall away. The site exists now as a vehicle purely to get clicks, and the people on it are on it solely to get clicks—to make money, to be successful, for some kind of social cachet.

AO3 doesn’t have advertisements. It’s not making money. But what is happening to fandom is proof of concept that enshittification changes the way we as humans engage. A cool website in 2004 was often a community space where you could meet people, have conversations, find cool things, and make cool things. A cool website in 2024 is either a content farm that will continually feed you enough content to hold your attention, or a social media site where your participation will come with stats to show you whether you are holding the attention of others.

AO3 wasn’t built to be a community space. It doesn’t have great functions for meeting people and having conversations. The idea was that, because fandom community spaces already existed, AO3 would serve the part of that community where you can find the cool things and store the cool things you made. It was meant to be a library in a city, not the whole city itself.

But it was also never meant to be a website in 2024, a content farm constantly generating content solely for your clicks and eyeballs and ad revenue, or a social media site where the content creators themselves vie for your clicks and eyeballs.

The most common talking point when people discuss the enshittification of fandom is the folks out there who are treating AO3 as that first kind of enshittified website: the content farm. This discussion is about how people treat fanfic as a product for consumption.

The post that kicked off the discussion on @sitp-recs’s blog was about someone who wasn’t getting very many kudos or comments on their fic, and was feeling pretty demoralized about it, then joined a discord server and found an entire channel dedicated to people loving their fic. But those on that server had never come to share that love with the author, which the author found really discouraging.

There are more and more stories like this. Someone on tiktok pulls a quote from a fic on AO3 and makes a 10-second video with them staring at a wall, the quote pasted at the bottom, music playing over it. It has 100,000 hearts, and 100 comments with people gushing over the fic, which has 80 kudos on AO3. Overall, people notice more and more hits on their fics, but fewer and fewer comments or even kudos. Fewer and fewer people seem to feel the need to interact with the author, instead treating the fic like a product to be used and discarded—which the enshittified internet (a stunning feature of late-stage capitalism!) encourages. The fandom community is dying, these stories conclude.

I agree. 100%. Both of the stories above have happened to me—viral tiktoks about my fic, secret discord channels to follow and discuss my fic—and let me tell you, it fucking sucks.

But from these observations about fandom enshittification, the discussion continues in a very odd direction. The solution to the death of fandom community is our favorite enshittification buzzword: engagement. We should engage the authors. They’re producing these products for free. We consume them at no cost. We must demonstrate our gratitude by paying them back.

It’s as though the capitalist consumption that the enshittified web encourages is so ingrained within us that we must think in terms of payment, in terms of exchange, transaction. Or as though, by forgoing payment, authors are some kind of martyrs defying capitalism, and the only way to honor their great sacrifice is comments and kudos.

Indeed, the discourse around this sometimes does veer away from capitalist rhetoric into something that smells almost religious in desperation. Authors are gods who bestow us mere mortals with the fruits of their labor benevolently, through love; the least we can do is worship them. Meanwhile the authors adopt the groveling sentiment of starving artists: I produce great art; I only humbly ask that you feed me in return.

These kinds of entreaties make my skin crawl for a number of reasons. I’m not a god. I’m not writing because I love you. I don’t expect your worship or even your praise.

I think the thing that disturbs me the most about it is that it suggests that authors (or, if the OP is feeling generous fan work creators) are the most important people in fandom. I’ve even seen posts stating that without creators, fandom wouldn’t exist—as though readers aren’t just as important. As though conversations where people discuss characterizations and plot points and randomly spin out interpretations and ideas and thoughts related to canon are meaningless. I’ve even seen people scramble to include folks having these discussions as “creators,” as though realizing that these people are necessary and integral to fandom communities but unable to drop the idea that the producers are the ones who are important. As though that person who just lurks can never count.

Is this what community is? When you join the queer community, are you expected to produce a product of your queerness? If not, must you actively participate and give back to the queer community in order to be considered a part of it? Or is it enough that you are queer, that you exist as a queer person and want to be around others who are queer, you want to be a part of something? What is community, anyway?

The problem with people raising the authors above everyone else in the community and demanding that tribute be paid is that they are decrying the “content farm” style of 2024 website out of one side of their mouth, but out of the other side are instead demanding that AO3 become a 2024-style social media website. Authors are influencers. “Engagement” and clicks are the things that really matter. They are in fact suggesting that the way to solve the commodification of fanfic is by “paying authors back” with stats.

Before anyone comes at me with the idea that comments aren’t just “stats,” I will clarify what I mean. There are literally hundreds of posts on tumblr alone claiming that any comment “helps” the author. Someone replies that they are shy to comment. Someone else replies that incoherent keyboard smashes, a single emoji, or the comment “kudos” are all that is required to satisfy the author, all that is required as tribute—all that is required as payment to keep this economy healthy.

I’m not condemning the comments that are keyboard smashes or emojis or a single kind word. I receive them. They make me happy. If anyone wants to leave such a comment on my fics, I’m really grateful for it. But this is not community-building. This is a transaction. In @yiiiiiiiikes25’s excellent response in the post linked at the beginning, they point out that “you have a cool hat” is something that is “perfectly nice” to hear from someone—and it is! We all want to be told we have a cool hat! But as they go on to say, what builds community is interactions that are deep and specific, interactions that are rich in quality, not in quantity. A kudos or a comment that says only ❤️are lovely things to receive, but they don’t build community.

My reaction, when I see people begging for kudos and comments as the only means by which to keep fandom community alive, is very close to @eleadore's. I want to say, “No. Readers do not need to comment or kudos. Believe not these hucksters who claim to know the appropriate method of fandom participation. Participate as you feel able, or not at all; nothing is required of you.”

I’ve been told before (several times) that I’m not qualified to participate in such discussions because I am an established author who has some fics with very high stats. It doesn’t matter that I have also been a new writer with almost no one reading my fics. It doesn’t matter that I still write in new fandoms where no one in that fandom knows me. It doesn’t matter that I, like any human being, still care about receiving recognition and attention and praise.

And maybe that’s correct. I personally don’t think that billionaires have a place in deciding the direction of the economy, and--if we're really going to consider fandom an economy--in fandom terms, if I’m not a billionaire, or even a millionaire, I’m definitely in the infamous “one percent.” So, just as no one wants to hear Elon Musk say “money isn’t everything,” maybe it’s not my place to say “kudos isn’t required, actually.”

That said, I’m not the only one who has a problem with the stats-based discourse around fandom community. However, the main counter-response to this discussion I see goes something like this: you shouldn’t be writing fic for validation. If you’re writing for attention, you’re doing it for the wrong reason. Authors should write fic because they love it without any expectation of return.

This is, in my opinion, missing the point of what is meant by fandom community.

I wrote fanfic before I knew that fanfic, as a concept, existed. I read books; I wanted them to be different; I wrote little stories for myself with new endings, with self-inserts, with cross-overs, with alternate universes. I did it for myself in the 90s. It never occurred to me that anyone else would do this, much less that people would share.

As @faiell points out—creating and sharing are two different things. I created fics for myself, but I decided to share them in the early 2000s because other people might like them, too. And of course, I wanted to hear whether other people liked them. How could I not? I might decorate my home just for me and not for anyone else’s preferences, but when people come over and say my house is nice, how can I not enjoy that? And if a lot of people think my house is nice, which encourages me to post pictures of it online, isn’t it understandable I might do so with the hope that more people will say my house is nice? And, honestly, if no one is appreciating my pictures, I probably won’t continue to go through the trouble of taking them and posting them. I’ll just enjoy my house that I decorated without sharing, the end.

When I found out there were whole fannish communities where people discussed canon and tossed ideas around about it, made theories and prompts and insights into the characters, fics they had written and recs for other fics and analyses of fics and art based on fics and fics based on art—I wanted to be a part of that, too. Now, sometimes, I write fic not out of an internal need to do so but out of a desire to participate in that community.

The idea that we write fic only for the love of it, then post it only because we possess it, is a process entirely centered on the self. It’s fandom in a vacuum. The idea that we share this thing, that we feel pleasure if someone likes it but feel nothing at all if no one says anything about it, that it’s completely okay to be ignored and unseen—that’s not what a community is either. That’s some weird sort of self-aggrandizement through self-effacement—because yes, there is often a weird kind of virtue-signaling in this kind of discourse.

I say this as someone who has virtue-signaled in that way: “some people write for stats, but I write for myself.” It’s bullshit. Sure, I write for myself, but why post it on the internet? Honestly, said virtue has a whiff of the capitalist machine, which would like you to produce for the sake of production, work for the sake of work. The noblest among us expect no recompense for that which they give!

The reason that I’m bringing this back around to capitalism is that capitalism actively works to dismantle community. The reason that folks are out here pleading for “engagement” in order to “pay back” authors for the products they give us “for free” is because people no longer even have the language to discuss how to participate in meaningful community. And frankly, how to build back fandom community, in the face of enshittification, is getting harder and harder to see.

But I do think that if we value fanfic and the fanfic community, it’s really, really not constructive to judge whether someone’s reasons for writing fanfic are valid. It’s also weird to me that it would be considered wrong that someone’s reason for sharing fanfic is because they would like to receive some recognition for it, when in fact that seems to be the most natural reason in the world for sharing something so private and vulnerable with the world.

Let’s go back to that idea of how hurtful it is to find out your fanfic is trending on tiktok without anyone from tiktok saying anything to you about your fic, or how it can be painful to find out there’s a secret discord channel dedicated to your fic. The people who respond to that with, “Ah, but you shouldn’t be writing to get attention!” are missing the point. The fic did get attention. It got lots. Attention obviously wasn't why the writer was writing--they were writing to participate, and they didn't get to. At all.

However, if your conclusion is that the author was upset because these particular stats were not accruing under this author’s profile, thereby preventing them from achieving the vaunted status of BNF and influencer—I don’t know, maybe you’re right. But I don’t think that’s why I, personally, have been hurt by these things, and I doubt it’s what hurt the people in these posts either. They’re hurt because they want to participate, and they have been systematically excluded by the very people they thought were part of the community they thought they could participate in.

Sure, if those folks from tiktok and the discord server all came and showered the author with kudos and comments that said “kudos,” the author might have felt satisfied enough with the quantity of this recognition that they would continue writing. But in the end, this still does nothing to address the problem of fandom community, in which the deep, meaningful recognition, interactions, and relationships in fandom are getting harder and harder to have and to build, as a result of how people now expect to engage in online spaces.

So, how to address the problem of fandom community? You probably read this long, long post hoping that I had an answer, and for that I must apologize. I don’t have solutions. My intent was to be descriptive, rather than prescriptive. I wished to outline the problems that I’m seeing in what was hopefully a slightly new or at least thought-provoking way, rather than offer solutions.

But, now that I’m talking about being prescriptive, maybe I can offer one suggestion, which is—maybe the solution to this isn’t about prescribing behavior. I do understand the irony in writing a prescription saying we shouldn’t prescribe people, but I’m going to write it anyway:

Maybe we shouldn’t be telling anyone the appropriate reasons for writing fanfic or for sharing it. Maybe we shouldn’t be telling readers they need to kudos or need to comment. If we’re going to go pointing fingers, we should be pointing at the institutions of capitalism that have made the internet what it is today—but I don’t think that’s going to solve the problem either.

But I do think that describing this problem, understanding what it actually is, not blaming readers for it and not blaming authors for it—I do think that helps. The discussion I linked at the beginning of this post is what I think of as the fandom I miss, the fandom that's now harder and harder to access, the fandom that is dying. That fandom was a social space where people had opinions and disagreed and went back and forth and gazed at their navels and then talked about Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

In the words of @yiiiiiiiikes25, it was a fuckin’ discussion about hats. And we’re hungry for it.

[siriuslylantsov]

mistletoe

pairing: spencer reid x reader

description: in which you and spencer decorate your apartment for christmas.

tags: fluff, roommate!spencer, gn!reader, idiots in love, pinning, decorating!, spencer lifts reader up super quick, reader teases spencer bcs its fun, a little singing.

a/n: woahhh first christmas fic. MY BAD i listened to our love by curtis harding when i wrote majority of this so it just became what it did (not rlly sure what that is). you'd think a reader fond of christmas would only be playing christmas songs (esp when decorating), but she doesn't even?? idk guys. also i gave a hack making a header for this one, might continue making them. anyway lmk what you think, happy reading :))

wc: 1.7k

“tacky, tacky, tacky...” you drone, fingers skimming over the themed trinkets and signs on the shelves. you’re christmas decor shopping with spencer. it's almost the end of november, which you personally think is too late (being a strict ‘christmas starts on november 1st’ believer), but you had no choice in the matter, wanting to wait for spencer's schedule to free up so you could go together. 

“oh cute!” you chirp, picking up a porcelain snoopy with a santa hat on. you show it to spencer, who trails behind you with a sparsely filled cart. “beside the-”

“tv,” he finishes for you, nodding in agreement. you place it in the cart and continue walking down the aisle.

“i hope you’re checking the price tags,” he muses from behind you, scanning over all the items. you shoot him a look paired with an unconvincing “yeah.”

“be serious,” he says, though a little amused.

“i am,” you step closer to him, meeting his somewhat challenging gaze. you try to hold your ground but something about the way his eyes crinkle at the corners as he squints at you makes you want to look away. “fine, i'll look over everything before check out. deal?”

he smiles, victorious. “deal.” he holds out his hand and you give it a firm shake before continuing your perusing.

you spend the next 2 hours like that, complaining about the abundance of generic things and squealing when you do find something nice. in the end, settling on an assortment of baubles, to add on to the ones you already had from last year, a new green blanket, a mulled-wine scented candle (that took you way too long to pick), the snoopy ornament, and 2 matching mugs which you had to sweet talk spencer into buying. you can never have too many mugs. 

˗ˏˋ ♡ ˎˊ˗

you light the new candle and set it on the dining table, briefly glancing at the flame. the warmth on your face feels nice but you pull away quickly, knowing that if spencer catches you that close to the candle, he’ll chastise you about the fumes. 

he's digging through the closet for last year's decorations. the tree is already up–7ft something–tucked in the corner of the living room, bare and in dire need of some personality. he finds the box, and you pull out the fairy lights, starting to swirl the wire from the top down, spencer opposite you to help.

music faintly plays from your speaker, so you turn it up, landslide by fleetwood mac.

you circle around the tree with a handful of baubles, a collection of reds and whites, hanging them up where they felt right. spencer nudges you for approval on a few placements and you give him a reassuring smile. the two of you move in sync, on either end. he places a custom ornament of his team somewhere to the front of the tree. when you put up the last of the new ones, you take a step back and give it a good look. happy, spencer hands you the star. he hovers two tentative hands under your arms, over your rib cage, to lift you. there’s a stool near you that would’ve been perfectly fine, but you wiggle in his grasp anyway, telling him he can. despite his lanky frame, he picks you up with ease. you place the gold topper on firmly. when he puts you down you lean back into him, swaying. you hum quietly to the music. he presses his lips into your hair, lingering, before pulling away. you instantly miss his warmth, but you don't dwell on it, why should you?

the click of the kettle sounds from the kitchen, he's probably making tea. you think to tell him to use the new mugs, but he already knows. you're still swaying, head dipping up and down as you move across the room. you look through the box for more things to decorate with when your eyes land on a sprig of artificial leaves held together with a red bow.

“hey, when did we get mistletoe?” you call out, hoping your voice carries to the adjoining room.

“hmm?” he pokes his head through the door, looking at the item in your hand. “oh... penny got it for us last year, didn't put it up though.” he explains before returning to the tea, you put it in your pocket for later. you were well aware of what his teammates thought of you, or rather you and him. over the course of the 2 years you lived with spencer, you’d been taken to their family dinners and get-togethers as his plus one, never a girlfriend or a date, you. they ceased their relentless teasing for your benefit, but you knew spencer got the brunt of it when you weren't around. they mean well, they’re just annoying, he told you after you met them for the first time. 

you saunter over, ready to tease him. you can't help but want to, he's just so easy. plus, you think it's endearing when he's flustered. “you wanna put it up?” you ask with a smirk, leaning against the kitchen counter.

“what! oh- i don't know, no- uhm- well i don't mean no like it would be bad a bad thing- i just mean–” he stammers nervously, eyes wide and slightly panicked, before you cut him off with a laugh. 

“calm down, pretty. i'm just joshin’ ya.”

he lets out a sigh of relief, though it's laced in hidden disappointment. he wouldn't mind if you put it up, wouldn't mind at all. he hands you your mug, navy with little yellow speckles that resembled stars. with his own in hand, he leads you out of the kitchen.

you settle on the couch beside each other. your shoulder lightly bumps against his in steady beats because you're still swaying, as you blow at your drink. worried about you spilling he peels it from you and sets it down on the arm rest to cool on its own. your knee is bouncing now as the next song starts playing, our love. 

“there's a girl in town and words gone around she's just fine,” you sing quietly, head dropping onto his shoulder. “so i don't worry my head cause i know her heart is tied to mine.” you tip back onto the cushions, and you raise a dramatic hand to your chest, over your heart. “the life that we live and the love that i give to her. each day it grows more and more i'm sure, it shows. well,” you shift to face him, leaning closer. 

“our love, is a bubblin' fountain. our love, that flows into a sea. our love, deeper than any ocean. our love, for eternity.”

you quiet as the second verse starts playing, switching to mouthing the lyrics instead. you look at him with a reverie, head tilted in observation, that makes him nervous. “…he holds me down for sure.” in diligent self-sabotage, he combats this by starting to sing along with you, putting his mug down beside yours, effectively ending the moment as you spring in recognition.

your eyebrows furrow in amusement as you follow suit, planting your hands on his shoulders to move his in tow with yours. the angle is awkward, and he looks a little silly as he does it but it's fine. the chorus plays through and you tire, dipping your head back into his shoulder as he returns your mug to you, albeit still quietly mumbling the lyrics. 

you practically chug the tea, having reached an ideal temperature. spencer sits sipping slowly, a serial sipper. you curl into his side in the meantime, arm looped through his. after several minutes, he finishes and you take both mugs to the sink, rinsing them swiftly. 

you slowly but surely continue decorating. two stockings adorned with your initials hang from the key rack in the hallway. handmade paper snowflakes are stuck to the window, snowflakes that had you and spencer hunched over in concentration on the floor a few nights ago, tediously cutting away. you go back and forth on whether the tinsel would go well with the tree, realising all it missed was something sparkly, you wrap it around. spencer nails a simple wreath on the front door, there's a little purple bow on it. snoopy is placed in the midst of the trinkets that sat at your tv table–good choice, you think. you change out the pillowcases on the couch for ones with a red flannel pattern and throw the new blanket across the back. 

the space is perfect, standing in the middle of the room you take a deep breath. waxy candle scented greatness fills your senses, and somehow pine? from the wreath you assume. it's dimly lit, and the low light reflects off the sparkles on the tree gracefully. you wish you had a fireplace during times like this, you take a picture to preserve it anyway. 

you leave to change into your pyjamas, quickly so the cold doesn't linger on your skin. when you return to the living room you find spencer on the couch, a book perched in his lap. you come up to the back, mistletoe that you fished out of your pocket in hand. you crouch behind him, a little to his right, with the leaves dangling over his head. you graze it lightly on his hair and he looks up. his eyes widen slightly in realisation, but he doesn't try to move, he's intently still. with an amused huff, you lean in and kiss his cheek softly. he's still frozen in place, so as to prolong whatever's happening, a flush spreading across his face. you lean back and drop the sprig into the seat beside him. 

“goodnight spencer,” you whisper, suddenly timid. he touches his fingers to the area as you walk away. 

˗ˏˋ ♡ ˎˊ˗

a few hours later, he walks into your room, quietly padding across the floor, to your side of the bed. he made the mistake of drinking a cup of coffee a few minutes after you left and now, he can't sleep, naturally. he bends and presses a kiss to your forehead, in some kind of implied reciprocation. you don't feel it, you don't even stir, but for now, that's alright with him.

he’ll put the mistletoe up, maybe in the doorway to the kitchen. and hope to god you both find yourselves under it at the same time.

m.list | comments and reblogs are appreciated :)

[jujuscrolled]

Satoru Gojo has a lot of love in his heart and he refuses to keep it all inside. His preferred method of showing exactly how much love he has to offer? Physical touch.

Even before he knew he loved you, your personal space had quickly become his personal space.

“Say, Gojo, you ever heard of personal space?” You asked one day as satoru pressed his leg up against yours while sitting on the bleachers. The two of you were watching Shoko and Suguru “spar”, though really it was just them doing the least amount of work possible - enough to keep Yaga satisfied but no where near enough for it to actually have any effect on their improvement (“you can only get better with real life experience!” Suguru would say leaning back on his chair slightly. “And i’ve got better things to do than fight this loser anyway.” Shoko nodded to herself , ignoring Suguru and Satoru’s eye rolls.)

“It’s Toru to you, and i’ve heard of it. Why do you ask?” He asked leaning closer to your face making you roll your eyes, “oh, you know, it’s just that usually people like to stay within their own personal space. Not in mine.” You thwacked his forehead causing him to whine dramatically before he threw an arm around your shoulders. “But I like your personal space better than mine, Sweets! Not my fault you have your own gravitational pull and stuff.” He grinned as he watched your cheeks bloom a lovely shade of red.

That being said if he sees anyone invading your personal space he will not hold back. “Hey, you mind backing out of our personal space?” he’d tell anyone who he deemed to be far too close to you before wrapping an arm around you and practically absorbing you into his side.

You’d only roll your eyes, heat filling your cheeks as you pinched his side. “Yeowch!” he’d exclaim dramatically but still never backing away from you.

Satoru Gojo also needs a lot of reassurance. He’s not picky on how he receives it as long as he receives it. He needs it. And if he felt he wasn’t getting enough back you’d definitely be hearing about it.

“I can’t believe we went from being madly in love to being just roommates.” he sighed one day, shaking head before placing the back of his hand over his forehead; imitating a damsel in distress. He was leaning against the bathroom door watching from his peripheral as you rolled your eyes, not moving away from in front of the bathroom mirror and into his arms like he had hoped.

“Neither can I… Because that hasn’t happened.” you sighed finishing your skin care before flicking the bathroom light off and squeezing past him, right under the arm that he had placed specifically to block you from leaving.

His pout deepened as he followed behind you like a lost puppy.

“Hasn’t?! As in it could?!” He whined reaching his arm towards you but narrowly missing the back of your shirt (you had sped up at the last second, already having had anticipated his behavior).

“Gojo.”

“That doesn’t work anymore, I’m not sure if you’re talking about me or you now, so you’ll have to be more specific about who you’re talking about!” he scoffed, finally grabbing onto your body before you were able to flop down onto your bed. You let out a whine, giving up and simply allowing him to maneuver your body however he pleased.

Taking your flimsy body as permission, he turned you around to face him, he wrapped his arms tightly around your torso before biting your cheek softly, coaxing a soft hiss from you.

“That’s exactly my point, Toru. We’re married not roommates… Does that not show how madly in love with you I am?” You couldn’t help but coo at him, wrapping your arms around his waist. He smiled widely at you, pursing his lips before tightening his already brutal grip on your body.

“Dunno… You’ve only kissed me like two times today. Tax getting high on them or what up? I can pay my fees, ya know?” You rolled your eyes again but a small smile pulled at the corners of your lips. You had definitely kissed him way over two times but you knew that when he got this way there was no other way to soothe him than by giving him what he wants.

“They’ll run you about 450… Each. Sure you got it like that?”

“What about the husband discount?”

“Make it 650.”

“Ugh! You’re an evil little gremlin, aren’t you?”

To nobody’s surprise he got his kisses. Several of them and in quick succession resulting in your face being covered in an abhorrent amount of his spit (his full face smooches are always so unnecessarily messy!) Family discount be damned, he’d pay whatever tariff necessary for your love (not that he ever had to!)

[respectthepetty]

GMMTV 2025 - Hot Tops and One Bottom

GMMTV offered up ONE straight show, and even though I'm salty that I didn't get Midnight Museum 2 and despite the current state of the world, I have never been happier to be alive at this exact moment that I'm living in. GMMTV really cemented that it is Disney BL, and said FUCK THEM HETEROS!

As usual, I'm listing what shows I'm most excited to see from GMMTV's annual unveiling, but in order to be fair to the other shows, I will not consider one of the shows in the rankings because I am a Jaidee fan first, and a human second:

Dare You to Death

My boys are giving me ~Murder, Manipulate, Make-Out, and MAYHEM~ so I'm already seated, sat, and sitted. I've always thought Joong should play a character who was insincere and a bit crazy, and Dunk should lean into his haughtiness (emphasis on HOT), so even though all these other shows look great, they aren't JoongDunk trying to solve a murder while trying to not murder each other, and it would be unfair of me to hold that against everyone else. I was going to take whatever I was getting from them, but THIS?! Sorry, to everyone else, but y'all never stood a chance.

#1a - Memoir of Rati

Moment of honesty - Inn and Great are fine as fuck. They are already attractive to begin with, so to put them in a historical drama, of course, I'm going to eat it up. This is a serious piece about political and social tensions which I have no doubts they will carry into getting some awards for it. I was getting worried that these two weren't going to have another show together next year, but not only did GMMTV give them one of the meatier plots, the series also has Aou and Boom in it with an amazing story as well, so this was easily my top choice.

Or at least it was my top choice until . . .

#1b - Ticket to Heaven

Religious trauma aligned with Catholicism is my special brand of queer angst, so this series already has me all the way fucked up. Fourth is such a phenomenal actor and Gemini always acts his ass off, so I know they will have me in a fetal position every single episode clutching my rosary and praying for God's mercy since I'm already in my feelings about this. The heathens in the room better read up on some biblical references because if you thought I was doing too much over a cross necklace in Let Free the Curse of Taekwondo and the praying in The Warp Effect, I Saw You in My Dreams, and Marahuyo Project, block me now because that was only the tip of the religious iceberg.

#2 - Cat for Cash

Although I'm a vegetarian, I'm a Disney villain who strongly dislikes animals, yet even I was happy to see First getting advice from cats on how to make coffee and how to win over Khao. This is the FirstKhao romance we have been waiting for! It looks soft and sincere, and even though the plot involves hearing cats, First as the worst debt collector and Khao as a grieving sad boy are their most realistic characters they have ever played. The series also looks like it's going to make me cry, so thank goodness Satang showed up to make sure I would be emotional about every show GMMTV gives me next year.

#3 - That Summer

On the topic of Satang, I'm shocked that I clicked with this trailer. I was ready to write this off as a Hallmark series due to its plot about a prince with amnesia falling in love with a commoner until the trailer revealed that he doesn't have amnesia, and the commoner knows he is a prince. The trailer situated the problem will come from their class differences plus Mond is kissing a homie (in secret), and since I just asked for more series with sad wet boys on the beach, this show goes at the top for GMMTV delivering me something I didn't know I wanted but a show I definitely needed.

#4 - A Dog and a Plane

Tay and New got me by the throat in 2019 and 2024 with Dark Blue Kiss and Peaceful Property, and even when I wanted to be mad at Cherry Magic, I couldn't because these men always sell the hell out of a ship even when they shouldn't. I'm a Jaidee fan first, and a human second, but I'll throw on some polar bear and whale jammies any day to join the Polcas because Tay and New have not disappointed me once in their joint shows or individual shows. So here I am, super duper excited to see New play a GAY flight attendant (a stereotype I love to see) whose man is trying to screw Pun only for Tay to take the hush money yet still catch feelings AND FLIGHTS! Marc's there too, so it's time I was served openly gay men who are trying to join the mile-high club since it's been over a decade since I got Pedro Almodóvar's I'm So Excited.

#5 - My Romance Scammer

I support marriage equality, but I do not believe in the institution of marriage, so I'm thrilled that GMMTV decided to throw me some gay divorce the same year gay marriage was legalized! Next, I'm getting the odd ball couple of Ohm and Fluke with Fluke being a dummy who falls for the first man who is nice to him, only for Marc to think he has a great relationship with Junior, BUT IT'S ALL A SCAM! I will probably end up defending this show with my life because this is the romcom romcoN I deserve!

Side Quest - Tarot Card Series

The theme for this year's announcement was "Riding the Wave" but it should have been "Wheel of Fortune" because there were a lot of shows about destiny and changing the future, so I'm going to rank those in a quick sub-category:

1) My Magic Prophecy

This is the dynamic I want to see from Jimmy and Sea. Jimmy IS a doctor, so getting a clean-cut smarmy version of him will pair so well with muscular Sea being a jerk. I was going to make a quirky comment about how they can now see the future as a reference to Last Twilight, but I'm still salty about that show, so I'll just be happy for them and THIS show.

2) Head 2 Head

I'm excited for the Only Boo kids because I think they should've gotten the My Love Mix-Up remake since I think they do well with being complete opposites that make perfect sense being together. This is also how I found out that Surf from I Saw You in My Dream is now with GMMTV.

So although it was awkward to realize GMMTV had acquired another BL boy under my chismosa nose (am I slipping?), it's nice to see the company staying on brand as Disney BL in its attempt to capture all the Pokemon Avengers BL Boys.

3) Wu

Since I've been watching High School Frenemy through my dash, I know plenty of people will be ecstatic to see Nani and Sky play soulmates, again (because High School Fremeny is gay af!), but I'm showing up because I got the red bracelets of destiny tying the boys together!

The trailers this year were surprisingly lax on the colors, so I'm taking what I can get how I get it. Bring me the RED STRING OF FATE!

4) MU-TE-LUV

This is Club Sapan Fine with a different name so it's going to be campy and messy. But do I think GMMTV will handle fems well? No. Am I pressed about it? Also, no. Because I actually watch AND enjoy Club Sapan Fine, so if GMMTV wants to try its hand at wild wacky camp in an anthology-style series, I'm down to clown, at least for the queer episodes that is.

5) Melody of Secrets

This was originally going to be number three on my Tops List, but as the trailer continued, I got more confused. Then, Force's face blurred and it looked like he got snatched by a demon, so I got scared. Like real scared. I don't eff with los espookys, so I'll be watching this show with the lights on and my Care Bear squad to protect me.

Honorable Mentions

I watch ALL GMMTV queer shows (and even the ones that only I think are queer), so I'll still enjoy something about these shows, but they were just lacking that special razzle dazzle:

Burnout Syndrome

Director Nuchy. Gun in black lipstick. Gun being a sex worker. Off being an asshole. Thor. Poly(?). This should have been my Holy Grail, but I can't believe the show will give me a proper love conflict when OffGun are a branded pair. Also, Nuchy gave me ToddBlack, who I will NEVER be over, so even though I know she can and will give me *THE* toxic couple to root for above all other toxicitos, unless these two are about to drown each other in that bathtub and play Olympic-levels of mind games with each other, I'm reserving my excitement until it airs.

Me and Thee

A soap-opera loving mafioso. Pond in suits with slicked-back hair. Phuwin being beautiful. Santa looking delicious. Est back in his Naughty Babe assistant mode. Perth. COLORS! Just like Burnout Syndrome, on paper it looks like something I would devour, but a third of that trailer was Pond and Phuwin in a bathtub, and in my Michelle Visage voice, "stop relying on that body" even if that's the biggest reason I'll be showing up to watch.

Whale Store

Milk licked cat food off of Love's finger, and I fear this might be too lesbian for me. I don't kink shame, and I'm always down to eat a girl out go down, but cat food? Really, sis? On top of that, this felt like a JittiRain series with Love's character clearly hiding something that is going to hurt Milk's character, then the side couple was crying and making everything awkward. I support the lesbians. I support queer rights AND wrongs. I'll be repeating this even as I'm watching it.

Boys in Love

GMMTV was smart putting all the new kids in a show with Papang x Podd as the little older romance crumbs to keep us satisfied for the time being, but that's also why I'm being petty. If this is the stepping stone for Papang and Podd to be leads for GMMTV 2026, then I'll take what I can get, but I feel like Oliver Twist asking for more porridge, when I should already be getting a damn buffet!

Love You Teacher

This show almost had me in the first half. Sam's character was giving me everything. The premise was solid. Perth was an already gay man in a long-term relationship with his boyfriend. Things were going well even with the accident. Then, the show brought on the real plot --- seven-year-olds. Jesús Cristo. It was a lovely time up until then, and now, just like the cat food, I'm realizing new things about myself and my boundaries on a random Tuesday morning, and I don't like it.

Girl Rules

This is the female version of Only Friends saran wrapped in women's empowerment. No me gusta pero lo voy a ver because I support queer wrongs even when they are oh-so-very wrong.

The Love of Siam: The Musical

What. The. Fuck. But also, sign me up!

Dishonorable Mention - Only Friends 2: Dream On

I've reached new heights in my pettiness because this show is in Petty Prison before it even airs. My blog is a living record of how badly I wanted Minx Mix and Flirty Fluke in the first season of Only Friends. It was the only thing I could think about; then, I ended up hating the first season, so I counted my blessings that Minx Mix only showed up for two whole seconds and Flirty Fluke was nowhere in sight. And now this has happened. This is a lesson in "be careful what you wish for" because I have never been more upset that I finally got what I wanted. Unless the show gives Boston his cake and lets him eat it to, I'm not watching it. Not Minx Mix, Flirty Fluke, or Ohm's body could convince me to do this a second time.

[304files]

you don’t understand how mc is literally me and i am here. she’s me to a molecular level. no joke, i never read an mc that was so deeply similar to me it hit me like a gut punch.

reading this while listening to the playlist was truly an experience (which was so good btw i LOVE your music taste). can we talk about how absolutely gorgeous your writing is for a second??? the way you craft your sentences are so satisfyingly beautiful it’s insane!! some of my favorite quotes:

“It flutters frantically in it, making a grand fight to reach that false moonlight, only to drop away when it realizes that it’s being burnt. You watch it rinse and repeat, relentless and sure, for who knows how long. It’s no special moth—no luna moth or the ones with the pretty pink wings—but the light falls down on it and colors it a pleasant stardust silver.”

“Taking those steps, the massive and terrifying ones from adolescence into adulthood, meant agreeing that this form of your life was over.”

“That passion and love wasn’t gone from you, it blazed strong in your veins. This blaze wasn’t the kind that kept you warm and excited to push forward into life, though. It had morphed into something that scalded you when you got too close or started imagining yourself pursuing its call. It’s a taunting silvery glow, no longer a guiding north star.”

“You clutch childhood to your chest like a wild animal guarding scarce food; you refuse. You refuse to acknowledge its end.”

“‘You don’t get it. You are the music. Every single song is about you. Every single fucking song is about you. I want you to come with me, please. I love you, I have always loved you, and I will always love you, and I thought you’d loved me too, and I don’t want to do this alone. I can’t do it alone.’”

i don’t know if you’ve ever read this book, but the vibes of this fic reminds me a lot of the starless sea by erin morgenstern!! literally my favorite book EVER. if you haven’t read it then i think you would like it a lot!! ^^

this is truly one of those types of stories that you come across and it just makes you absolutely fall in love with reading. the type that makes you want to pick up a pencil and feverishly write out the story that’s been in your head for years. if this story was a song, to me it would be dog days are over by florence + the machine. it just gives you that feeling that everything will work out and everything will be okay and this too shall pass. i love it so so much and i’m so happy that you decided to share it with the world so that people like me and so many others could come across it and read it for themselves! ♡♡♡

𝑯EART 𝑊ORM ⸺ hueningkai ℘˒´ˎ˗

  ⨾𓍢ִ໋ ˒˒ 𝚑𝔢art𝚠𝔬rm

[𝑛]. a relationship or friendship that you can't get out of your head, which you thought had faded long ago but is still somehow alive and unfinished, like an abandoned campsite whose smoldering embers still have the power to start a forest fire.

⸺ listen to the playlist .ᐟ ‧˚

〝﹙ 📼 ﹚“I was just... wondering,” you say, blood roaring. "Well, Yeonjun wants me to come over to his place this weekend, and... I’ve never...” Sucking in a quick breath, you just spit it out to get it over with, “Would you be my first kiss, Kai?”  ˛ ､､

wc ➛ 17.9k

𝔭airings childhood bsf!kai x reader (lowkey soulmates?) ⤷ ft. asshole!yeonjun x reader

𝒢 ‎; smut ˒ angst ˒ some fantasy

𝔴arnings angst, family issues, fingering, jealousy (i’m sorry i just love ts), yeonjun really is an asshole, orgasm denial, thigh fucking, unprotected sex (they're stupid!), strength kink a lil bit, breeding kink, possessiveness, creampie, choking... i think that's all, lmk if i missed any

✎୭ ashlynn's note omg. this was such a fun palate cleanser to write. this wasn't supposed to be as big as it is, but it just kept getting bigger and bigger, and i got super into the story. this kai is SOOOO!! yeah. i’m so nervous posting this because i’ve only ever posted TSFAWC, but…. here you areee (^^;; this is not proofread, so if you see a mistake... give me a sec. i'll get to it. hehe

Though you fan your hand furiously over your face, the little breezes washing over your clammy skin are not enough. The air is thick and heavy with summer’s heat. So thick that you almost feel it each time you swallow. It’s better than just letting yourself melt away, though. The cushion at your back doesn’t help much. It holds your warmth and returns it to you the longer you sit slumped back into it. You suffer it though—you’ve gone too sluggish to move.  

You let a leg dangle over the arm of a chair, watching a hopeful moth dance in the light of the buzzing porch light overhead. It flutters frantically in it, making a grand fight to reach that false moonlight, only to drop away when it realizes that it’s being burnt. You watch it rinse and repeat, relentless and sure, for who knows how long. It’s no special moth—no luna moth or the ones with the pretty pink wings—but the light falls down on it and colors it a pleasant stardust silver.  

You delight in letting your conscious brain turn off to watch it. It lets you forget the sweltering under your skin, and also that Kai had drug you out here. His dad gives him shit when he plays inside, but it’s way too hot to be out here. Isn’t it supposed to cool off after the sun goes down? It doesn’t feel like it. The deep acoustics are drowned out each time a car whirrs by. Playing outside should be the best option, but you and Kai live right on a busy road.  

When the roar of some car going ten miles over the speed limit doesn’t obscure his playing, though, you admire the intricacy of it. His fingers work up and down the neck, jumping frets that you imagine would be impossible to anybody without those long fingers of his. You had always been a loud supporter of his playing, even way back when the most he could play were simple chords, but you became especially so when a few years back he put a guitar in your hands and tried teaching you. Even with his fingers guiding yours, it was quick to learn that the effortlessness with which Kai handles the instrument is hard earned.  

He practices on the acoustic guitar, but that’s not his domain. With houses just a dash across the street from each other, Kai had grown up at your home more than he had at his own. So vividly, you remember the stars in his eyes when he’d listen to your dad’s music. Metallica, The Smashing Pumpkins, Linkin Park, any of it. He had fallen in love with it a long time ago. Your whole life you knew that it was only a matter of time before he was in his own band, chasing his dreams with a boundless mind and an indelible vision of himself on stage. How had that time come so soon, though? You don’t know if the notebooks full of inky lyrics that live wherever he deems inspiration might hit him make you proud or nervous. He’s making good on his dazzling aspirations, and you? 

You speak finally into the air, cutting through heat waves and his music and the night. “Isn’t it weird that we’re not going back to school after this summer?” 

He doesn’t have to even stop playing to answer you. Playing comes to him as a second nature. “Kinda,” he answers, brown eyes flitting up to you. “But it’s not like you won’t be back to it in September. College is the same shit.” 

The leg you’d been dangling and bouncing pauses. That’s right; you’re supposed to be going to that college you’d chosen because it was only a three-hour drive away from here. You pluck at the seat’s threadbare fabric, and the moth, still there, becomes oh-so-interesting once again. When his playing stops, you drop your head back with a cushioned thud and a groan that you wrangle in your throat. 

“Why are you acting like that?” he says, voice gone sharp like accusation. He doesn’t even know the truth, but he’s known you too long.

Can’t you just keep secrets for yourself, sometimes?

Kai, arms clad in a well-loved hoodie even in this dreadful weather, lays the guitar down. You maintain your silence. “Seriously, what?” 

Some secrets have timers, though. This one could only last you until about September, or even August when he realizes that you’re not preparing to return to school. A controlled sigh from your chest isn’t enough to soothe the nerves that sparks. “Nothing.” 

“Secrets, huh?” Kai says. When you do finally look to him, black spikes of hair frame his eyes and the accusation in them. 

It’s a simple poke, but it gets under your skin as sharp as any thorn might. It’s not like you don’t keep secrets from him, and you’re sure he keeps some from you too. But those are the little kinds, the inconsequential ones—like I ate already when asked why you’re not eating or like Yeah, I’m fine when it’s been a bad day. You don’t hide this kind of stuff from each other. Usually, you’d run over to his place to tell him whatever’s bothering you. Why not, when he’s known even the worst details of your life for almost the entirety of it? You’ve been holding this one close to your chest since somewhere around the end of senior year, though. The longer you let it fester, the worse your nervousness snowballs. “C’mon, Kai. Let’s not do this. Can you keep playing?” 

He doesn’t like that, of course. But you watch recognition dawn over his chocolate brown eyes, helpless to stop it. “You’re not going,” he says. It’s not a question nor a suspicion, it’s a bone-dry fact.  

Well. There that goes. You want to tear every hair on your head right out. Why had you even thought you’d keep him in the dark about it? When he’s not out in some garage making music, you two are together. The conversation was going to stroll by at some point; this was only inevitable. His disappointment radiates off him in waves and blisters you. He hasn’t even said anything yet, but you know exactly what he thinks of it. It’s why you kept it from him in the first place.  

Your silence is enough confirmation for him. “Why?” he says. “I thought you were excited to move out.” 

Wincing, you nod slowly. You were. Even went through the whole application process, along with most other kids your age. Ultimately, you never went through with declaring a college. You don’t exactly know why, but somewhere weaseled down in the shadowy recesses of your soul, you know. Taking those steps, the massive and terrifying ones from adolescence into adulthood, meant agreeing that this form of your life was over. It meant that at some point, you’d be moving away from here to where living your days away in Kai’s room would not be a choice. Everybody has to do it eventually, you know that. Kai’s music gig could take off any day, too. He’s going to make it happen. And then what? All this stalling and wishing on just a bit more time would mean nothing, he’d be off and chasing that dream. As excited as you are for it to finally become reality for him, there’s a nasty bitterness that’s budded in your chest, infecting your person.  

Can’t things just stay like this? 

“I was,” you say. It comes out of your mouth heavy.  

“Then why aren’t you going?” he says. Crickets, never seen but always heard, sing their song into the night’s darkness. “You didn’t get rejected. You’re too smart for that.” 

An ache sits heavily somewhere near the center of your chest, maybe over your heart. All those good grades, nights spent bent over a desk and AP paperwork—you’re wasting it. You shake your head. “No... just...” It’s an effort to dress your thoughts in a way that might appease him. A quiet moment stretches with your thinking before you continue, “I don’t know what I want to do.” 

He doesn’t like that, the yellow wash of the overhead light dancing over his taut lips and hard eyes. “Don’t know what you want to do?” he says, bringing his legs up onto the seat to crisscross them. He wears his favorite jeans. They’re heel-bitten and baggy enough over his legs that he can wear them around the house without any bother. “You’ve wanted to be an artist your whole life. You know exactly what you want to do.” 

Your chest only seems to ache harder. When the both of you were only young and hopeful, you both had big dreams. Kai was going to be the face of a metal band, and you were going to be an artist. A painter, potter, sculptor, even doing animation for those big companies like Dreamworks and Disney. You wanted any of it, just as long as you were doing art. You’d even promised him that you’d do the cover art for his albums with interlocked pinkies and flushed, hopeful cheeks. That passion and love wasn’t gone from you, it blazed strong in your veins. This blaze wasn’t the kind that kept you warm and excited to push forward into life, though. It had morphed into something that scalded you when you got too close or started imagining yourself pursuing its call. It’s a taunting silvery glow, no longer a guiding north star. Taunting words of family members stamped down on that hope hard. When you were little, it was said lighthearted and in passing. The older you got, though, the more serious their faces became. They wouldn’t say it outright perhaps, but you hear what they think well enough. Art is a dead-end career.  

Shifting in your seat, you tell him, “I don’t know.” 

“What do you mean?” Kai says. “There are good colleges for that.” 

“I just... don’t know.” 

Shaking his head, he tells you, “But you love it.” 

You do. In its every form, you love creating. But loving it doesn’t mean that it’s right for you, or that you should trust your future in its hands. “I think I can do it in my own time,” you say, finally pushing yourself upright from the cushion. “Don’t wanna kill the passion by doing it for a living, you know?” 

He thinks on that for a moment. “If you love it, you should do it,” he says. 

An awful frustration bubbles in your chest. Kai has always had a clear life path, the steps ahead of him set in stone and waiting for him to follow in them. It’s hard for him to see why you might not want to do the same. There’s nothing that makes you as happy as the fact that he has it all figured out, that he knows just where he’s going and that he’s so incredible at it that he doesn’t have to worry about meeting the requirements, but your path seems obscured and untrodden. Punctuating a deep, resonant sigh, you say, “It’s not that easy, Kai.” 

“If you’re not doing that, then what are you going to do? Are you just going to settle for a nine-to-five?” he says full of accusation, the tapping on his knees gone still.  

A dry laugh, you say, “Maybe I’ll marry a super rich guy and just do my art for a living. No nine-to-five.” 

His face flashes. He’d always been a bit reserved, especially around others, but he bared his emotions freely around you. You hold them dearly to your chest and made sure to do your best to make good on that trust. He says, “You’re more than some guy’s housewife.” 

Cheeks radiating in the heat, you snort. “I know, dork. I’m a rockstar’s best friend. It’s my personal favorite achievement.”  

His face sours when you reach out and pinch hard at his cheek, but he doesn’t pull away or brush you off. The skin there is warmed and clammy. Really, the two of you should go meet the cool AC inside before you suffer heat stroke. But this moment feels so nice—your shoulders feel tons lighter without something to hide. If you had it your way, things would stay like this forever. Just the two of you, sat here like you have so many times before, just taking for granted the time you’ve got together.  

His mouth opens to banter, probably something about how he’s not a rockstar yet or to get you back for calling him a dork. Wingbeat and sterling dashes about your face send the image into a blur, though. You’re a quick mess of limbs and a whipping head, as if it’ll chase the thing away from you. 

“Seriously?” Kai says. You’d climbed halfway over him, elbows digging into him and knee doing a number on his thigh. “It’s a moth. You’re not scared of moths.” 

Lingering for a few moments later to ensure the flying thing was nowhere on you or around you, you hold back a laugh before you climb off him and fix your hair with undignified tucks behind your ears. “He was in my face,” you say around a laugh, because you know it was a bit too much. Nobody likes wings in their ears and spindly legs in their face, though, and you’re in no control of what you do when anything with six legs tries and get too friendly. Even moths.  

“You just wanted me to protect you,” he says. A sarcastic, shit-eating smile tugs at the corners of his mouth.  

“Oh,” you scoff, batting your eyelashes and clasping your hands together all saccharine-sweet. “Yes, Romeo, won’t you kill that bug for me? This girl’s heart just can’t take it!” 

Kai’s nose crinkles, and the playful light twists into a glare. “Nasty.” 

“That’s how you sounded,” you say. “I only reacted accordingly.” Laughing, you kick your legs out over his lap and sprawl back out. He takes the guitar back into his hands. 

As much as you want to escape the mugginess, you’ll survive it for just a little while longer—if only with the force of an indulgent heart. The eternal moments are those you allow to linger.  

⚝⭒ 

Some things, you forget when you’re older. Maybe it’s time’s hand, eroding memories down and stuffing more in the longer you live to experience them. But also maybe because they’re the sort of things you can’t say in the adult world without a laugh in the face and a look from down their noses.  

This memory is one of those forgotten things. It’s moth-bitten and dusty, something you one day folded up in a moving box and decided to never revisit. 

You’d been down at the creek. Kai and you had spent so many summer days there. It wasn’t too far from home, just past the filbert trees and into the shallow neck of the backwoods, but there you were out of sight and free to get up to nothing good. It was a wonder your mom ever let you do it. Kai’s dad didn’t care too much where he went or what he did, but your mom dug her claws in deep. You like to think that she imagined you two would have each other, if anything ever happened. 

Usually, you’d be there holding your jeans up from the stream and Kai would be letting his jeans go dark with it. The bite of water was nice as it washed over warm skin. Fun was a simple thing to find, then. You dug your fingers into the mudbanks and tossed stones way too big to be throwing at each other, just because you two remembered how much the adults hated it when you did. Then, you’d drag tired limbs home avoiding sweetgum tree spikes that had fallen to the ground and dug splinters out from your feet.  

This day, you had been in the blackberry bushes. It was maybe late July or early August, and they’d gotten heavy on their branches. You’d waited until the smell of them, summer-warmed, was sweet and cloying in the air to pick them. With buckets in your hands, you plucked only the fattest berries from their bunches. Your fingers were stained a delightful purple and perhaps a bit thorn raw, but you didn’t mind much then. You plucked for hours, and it was dusk before you could catch it. Dinner was no doubt waiting for you back home. 

“There’s a bunch over here,” Kai had said. He reached a long boyish arm, still awkward and lanky with puberty, up high for ripe bush. You finished off picking before climbing around thick branches sticking out to take a peek. A bunch, there was. 

When you went to drop a handful of them into your bucket, Kai hissed. He’d been snagged by a vicious looking branch, those ones as thick as a finger with thorns to match and you’d warn each other tongue-in-cheek to watch out for that one. He’d worn those ridiculous shorts that day, the ones that looked half pants half shorts with how long and baggy they were, and the claws of the bush had jumped at the opportunity. At first the scrapes were white, but then red blood crawled out and down his leg.  

“Kai,” you said, some parts chiding and some parts just wondering how he’d managed that. You surveyed his leg for a bit, and then determined that he should wash his leg off in the stream. He walked there strong, but of course you noticed the hobble beneath his acting. When you squatted down into the dry grass and cupped water to wash off his leg, you laughed. 

“What?” he had said, holding the shorts up. You covered your laugh with a hand, but it erupted past your palm. You remember the glare on his face very well.  

You still laughed. “You’re stupid,” you had told him. 

“I didn’t see it,” he said. “I tripped over it because it was sticking out.” 

That time when you brought your hands to catch some water, there was a twinkle in its surface. You didn’t notice it for a second. The creek moved fast and you could see a lot of things in its reflection. When it lingered, that’s when your brows furrowed. It seemed to twirl, dancing around like alive over the stones. 

The sound of Kai’s voice remains with you. “Hey,” he had said, strong to call your attention but also wavered with uncertainty. 

When you looked up, there was silver dust dancing around you. 

It was fluffy and whorling, fine silver stardust. It’d moved weightless in the air, as though it barely existed. In the center of it were a few moths. They seemed to be made of sterling powder just as the dust was, and they glowed against dusk’s backdrop. If your memory serves you right, there had been a sweet hymn of coos from them. They beckoned you. Summer’s heat felt lighter, and so did your chest. You wondered where they had wanted you to go. 

Almost afraid that if you spoke they might have fluttered away, you whispered soft and low to Kai. “What is that?” He was stood frozen there, pant leg still scrunched up in his fist. Stardust glowed soft in his brown eyes while he took it all in, you remember. It wasn’t a scared frozen. You weren’t scared, either—rather, it was as if that lightness had found its way into the core of your being and brushed over it with mending hands. 

He whispered back, “I don’t know.” How could he have known? It was absurd. 

Those whisps had beckoned you, flowing toward the deeper woods. The soft moths, their murmuring brushing up against your ears, seemed to wait for you to follow. You remember a pull, soft tendrils wrapping themselves around your heart and the yearning it planted there.  

But there was also this reluctance, a bone-deep answering that had told you: No. You’re not ready. 

“Kai, I wanna go,” you told him. 

You didn’t even need to tell him twice. Berry buckets forgotten; the journey home was a stranger one. When your dad asked why you returned from berry picking emptier handed than you had left the house, Kai and you only shared a look. You pair kept that evening at the creek hidden so well that it became more forgotten than shared secret.  

⚝⭒ 

Once, you had been the type of girl that loved being around family. Some of your favorite days of your life were spent in this living room, T.V. roaring over bouncing conversation. Some of those nights ended in rosy cheeks and laughs, and some ended with words thrown angry like fireworks. You never knew which you’d be getting, but you endured the fear of not knowing because it was a simple love—the basic kind built with biology into you the moment your infant skin touched your mother’s. You endured it because eventually, sleep washed away the bad taste left in your mouth and you forgave them quick, sometimes quicker than you ought to, and things would go on as if it hadn’t even happened. You endured it because you could handle its burden, if only to feel the warmth you feel when it’s a good day.  

Kai was always there—his dad was hardly home, so he found family in yours. When you were younger, you’d been embarrassed he was there for caustic, spitted words and intimate fights. Now, you’re just grateful for his shoulder.  

So, yes. Once, you had loved being around your family. But things feel tenser now, nights spent all together less frequent and when they do happen, they’re tainted by a strange air. You think that this strangeness is new, but an awful worry also makes you think that it’d always been there, that you only feel it now because you’ve grown into your adult mind. A hollow ache stakes its claim in your chest, declaring that it won’t leave until you find that youthful ignorance and joy once more. You think that it might stay there forever. 

Bare feet bounding down the stairs, you make a rare appearance downstairs. The cupboard is only half open to make way for a snack raid before your mom’s voice cuts through the air. You know quickly just by the look on her face that you should’ve stayed upstairs. 

“Hey,” she says, gathering laundry into a basket. “You’ve been applying to jobs?” 

With an anxious belly, you tell her, “Yeah. A few. They’re not really, like, ideal, but I sent applications.” You don’t remember when it got hard to look into your mother’s eyes, but you can’t bring yourself to do so now.  

“Not ideal?” she says. “It’s not like you can be picky. Mcdonalds or wherever, I don’t care, you’re going to need to get a job if you’re staying here.” 

“I know. I applied,” you reiterate around a mumble. You close the cabinets, not so interested in a snack anymore. “I just... I don’t know, ma. I don’t want to do that for a living, going between those sorts of jobs.” 

Face hard and abrasive against the truth you bare, she does that awful taunting smile that makes you feel small. Stupid. “You’re not going to college, so that’s what it’s gonna be. You can’t sit up there and draw for a living. You’ve gotta get into the real world, get some real experience.”  

There’s a burst of hurt in your chest, dazzling and gnawing. She’s getting closer to saying how she really feels about your dreams out loud every day. Your face burns and so do your eyes, knot thick in your throat. “Yeah, okay. Got it,” you say, nodding. You’re at the front door before you even know it, slipping on shoes and fighting the greatest internal battle to will back tears. She’d use those against you, no doubt about it. “I’m going to Kai’s,” you throw over your shoulder.  

Whatever she barks back at you, you’re glad you don’t hear. Bells on some old Christmas decoration hung on the door that had yet to be taken down, even into summer, jingle and wash it away for you. 

Kai’s brows shoot up when he opens the door to your face crumpling. You’d done so well at damming it up, but the wall cracks and the water crashes through once you see him. If it were anybody else, you’d feel icky and attention seeking, but you’d held Kai to your chest through gut-wrenching sobs as much as he’s done it for you. Without question, he takes you into his arms, warm hand running up and down your back. The warm soothing is so familiar. You melt right into it.  

He keeps you there for a long moment. Then, his chest rumbles as he tells you, “Come on.” The walk through the AC to his bedroom is nice. Having a house like Kai’s to come to where it can just be you is nice, too. You step around the mess of clothes and scattered belongings on his floor like you have a muscle-memory roadmap of his room. Boxsprings creak and hard mattress welcome you back home. His room is dark as always, a night-dweller you call him. The array of peeling band posters plastered over walls you two had painted blue some years ago, when it’d been his favorite color, don’t help to lighten it up. He keeps a low lamplight on.  

“She never listens to me,” you say, crying gone to occasional sniffles from your chest. You rest your cheek on your bent knee. 

“I know,” he says. “But at least she cares about you. Pays attention to you.” His voice is soft and deep and right next to you. Always right next to you, there for you even when you might not appreciate it as you should.  

His dad cares too little what he does, and yours care too much. The grass is always greener on the other side, you know it. Still, you hold a fantasy where you’re able to do teenager stuff. Where you’d allow yourself to do bad things, because you weren’t so intent on painting yourself with their will. You two hold eyes for a long moment, your twinkling ones caught in that steady brown. “I just want to get away. Be my own person.” Your words are muffled in the softness of your skin. 

“You had the chance to do it,” Kai says, hand playing with your fingers. “But you didn’t.” 

Holding your legs closer, you lick your lips. What do you say to that? Would it ever be the time to tell him that you did it because you think that your soul is pathetically intertwined with his, and that it might snuff your lifeforce out to even try pursuing life without him? Without this? How do you tell him that you’re so frozen and unwilling to pursue any sort of future because it means accepting that this chapter is over? You clutch childhood to your chest like a wild animal guarding scarce food; you refuse. You refuse to acknowledge its end.  

“Kai,” is all you say, trembled and thick. It’s not just your mother’s words that dig at you and tear to shreds the last bits of what dreaming you had left in you, but so many other reality checks too. This isn’t the first time you’ve heard those sorts of words, urging you forward. You can only dig your heel into the ground for so long before you’re swept away in time’s ruthless, endless moving.  

He understands. Lifting your face with warm fingers against your cheeks, he says, “Hey. How about we go get ice cream, or something?” 

Ice cream does sound nice. “Dairy Queen?” 

Smirk tugged over his mouth, he says, “Yes, Dairy Queen. A blizzard. C’mon, let’s go.” Sliding off the bed, he offers you an urging hand up. 

But you falter. “I don’t know if we can. She’s mad at me. I don’t think she’ll let me go.” 

“Let you go?” he says, eyes narrowed. “She doesn’t have to let you go. You’re an adult now, you go if you want to.” He offers his hand to you again. 

It’s so him, freely going wherever he ordain it. The bullheadedness is very him, as well. Always the devil on your shoulder, he was the root of any rebellious thing you’ve ever done. He could never understand your apprehension, or why getting in trouble was such an awful thing to you. “I have to ask to get money.” 

Brows pinching, he says, “You think I’m not gonna pay for you? You don’t need them to give you money, I’ll pay. I’ll take care of it.” He drags you up from the bed this time. “Live a little. Do you want to go?” 

It was never the punishments or the getting in trouble that you were scared of, though. Disappointment was a scarier word than grounded. Sneaking out and those sorts of things, it’s not like you had angel wings at your back and never considered them. It’s that you are deeply, utterly terrified of changing how they look at you. You begin to tell him, “I do, but—” 

He cuts you off, adamant. “Then do it. Let’s go. If you want to go, then go,” he says. “At some point, your life needs to become your own. It’s not sneaking out when you’re graduated and eighteen years old, it’s going wherever the hell you want. You’ve... You’re gonna end up stuck here, in this town, forever. You don’t deserve that.” 

That sounds like both the best and the worst thing you’ve ever heard. You take his hand.  

⚝⭒ 

Your frozen fingers nurse your ice cream. The cup itself is cold, but the Dairy Queen on your side of town is always thirty degrees below what it should be. It’d always been that way. Even way back when you two couldn’t drive, you’d get dropped off here to escape the melting weather and get a frozen treat with a handful of dollars. Each time, you’d start off sagging with the relief of summer’s weight off your shoulders and left the place shivering and sugar-mouthed.  

It’s really only you two in here. You crinkle your nose when he takes a spoonful. “Out of all the flavors...” 

Unbothered and no doubt expecting you to say it, he offers you a flat, “You get your flavor, I get mine.” He makes a point of taking an extra-long bite. His lips linger around the red plastic of the spoon and his brows rest high in silent challenge.  

The corners of your lips twitch up. “Hmm. Well. I just have a hard time believing that Oreo... or, like, brownie fudge, is right there, and you actually want M&M. I don’t get how M&M your favorite.” A familiar banter falls over your tongues. Your heart buzzes and your cheeks radiate. This is the first you’ve done this all summer, and it’ll be weaning off into fall soon. Any other summer, you would’ve been here on all the hottest days. You hate that Kai’s been so busy with his music; you hate that you can hear the resounding ticks of the clock counting down your time. You also hate that the stubborn depths of you still believe that if you freeze yourself here in stasis that the world will relent and stop along with you. 

You look over the sharp lines of Kai’s jawline as it feathers with his chewing, and the broadness of his shoulders where his jacket stretches around it, and the starkness of his collarbones against his chest and the bobbing of his adam’s apple when he swallows. No, time doesn’t stop. Some of him remains the same, though. In it, you see the boy that had love creeping up on you so long ago, with all its aching and all its hope. That freckle on the column of his neck, the bump in his nose leading down to the button tip that beckons your lips to steal a quick kiss.  

And, those lips. They’re as soft as ever around the discontented grimace he pulls. “M&M isn’t my favorite.” 

With a pursed mouth and patronizing brows arched over your eyes, you say, “Oh, huh. That’s funny, because if my memory serves me right, it’s the only flavor you’ve ordered for the past... six years.”  

Kai husks a laugh at that. “That’s because they haven’t had my favorite for years,” he tells you, scooping up the final bit and then pushing it off to the side. “It was a blizzard of the month that they discontinued. The blackberry cheesecake one. I made peace with it, though. It lives on in my heart.” He grins, arms crossed over his chest and his back settled into the booth seat to let you finish your cup.  

“Blackberry cheesecake,” you say, voice made taunting. Your nod is slow and taunting, too. “Well, forget M&Ms.Why would blackberry cheesecake be your favorite? Ever?” 

His face falters, a moment where something flows over his eyes as if reliving a memory in a few short seconds. Then, he shrugs. “It just is.” 

You roll your eyes. “Whatever,” you laugh. “Maybe my palate is unrefined.” Imagining the tarte fruit in purple swirls of ice cream, you’re taken back to a humid July day and the scent of churned mud.  

The strange memory unfolds itself quick. As if it were waiting for you to find wherever it’d hidden itself away. With a sharp gasp, you say, “Oh my god, Kai. Do you remember that one day? That weird stuff we saw down at the creek?” 

He nods. “Yeah. I was just thinking of that the other day, actually...” 

Less interested in finishing your cup now, you let the spoon rest. “What?” you say, the word peaking in the middle. That day hadn’t crossed your mind once since it’d happened. “How weird is that?” 

Scoffing a laugh, he says, “Weird, yeah. Just as strange as two kids high on fermented berries.” 

That draws a breathy laugh from you. “Is that what you think it was?” you ask him with knitted brows. The berries had been fresh, and you two had popped plenty into your mouth. But no doubt, you’d have spat them right back out if they were that ripe. “I mean, we saw the same thing.” 

“It happens to animals all the time. Squirrells, and stuff.” He lends you a gallic shrug. “We just freaked ourselves out. Like that one time you said you saw the shape of something in the dark and we freaked out. And it was clothes.”  

Well, hallucinating, in tandem, a glowing mist because you two by chance ate fermented berries is a very long shot. However nonchalant he acts about it, he seems to have thought long and hard about it. Enough to reason it away with some far cry explanation. Would you have even been able to get drunk off a handful of fermented berries? And, god, you’re really sure that you’d have noticed. That taste isn’t really one you just don’t notice.  

Whatever. Maybe you were just drunk idiots. That’s a lot easier to swallow, anyway. 

“Okay, but you saw that. Did it not look sinister?” you say. With your spoon back in your hand, you punctuate the sentence pointing it at him. “You freaked out with me, too.”  

An unsatisfied scowl on his lips, he steals a spoonful of your dessert. You don’t even swat him away—your phone buzzes in your pocket. 

Catching sight of who’s calling, you share a long look with Kai. It’s funny, how fast those three white letters scramble you up. When you hesitate to answer, Kai tells you, “Answer.” 

You hope she can’t tell you’re not at Kai’s by the refrigerators’ dull buzzing. It’s an effort to tussle that invasive worry back. You’re at Dairy Queen. Getting ice cream with the boy she’s known since childhood. She should clutch her hands and thank the sky that you’re here, not out in some nasty frat house like you could be. You thumb the green button. 

Her voice comes through the speaker crackled and asking you to run over to do a quick dish load. For a heartbeat you consider telling her that you will and then start rushing home. Instead, you fork out the truth through resistant lips. 

The hangup tone sits heavy on the air between you and Kai. Having listened to the whole thing on speaker, he says, “What was so hard about that? The world didn’t end, did it?” 

The plush of your lip takes a hard gnawing. No, it hadn’t. “I know she’s not going to get mad at me for just going here,” you say as you rest your elbows onto the table. “It’s that they’re supporting me right now. I still live under their roof. The more I go around and insist I can do whatever I want, they’ll start reminding me of it.” 

His face drawn, he lets his mouth twitch to one side. “Yeah,” he muses. “I never thought yours would be the type to kick you out.” 

Kai’s dad had started threating him with getting kicked out years ago, when he first started telling him that he wanted to do music. How many times had he let reluctant tears flow into your shoulder over it? Because music wasn’t a real job? Back then, you’d whispered in his ears that he’d become everything he’d dreamed of and more as your fingers carded through shaggy locks of hair.  

“I don’t know,” you say, humming it out noncommittally. “Is your dad still... y’know?” 

Nodding slowly, his eyes tell. “Yeah. Always.” 

“Because you’re taking the band seriously, now?” you ask.  

“Probably. I don’t give a shit what he thinks about it. If I’m just his goddamn problem, I’ll give him what he wants soon enough.” His eyes blaze with promise of it.  

It takes a bit out of you to not wince. Kai living anywhere but in the house across from yours is wrong. “I don’t think he necessarily wants that, Kai...” You take his hand in your icy ones, the urge to reach out to him thinly veiled under the guise of searching out warmth. He’d always run warmer than you—your personal heater. “It’s probably because he can see that you’re doing it for real. Not just saying it anymore.” 

“Yeah, well,” he spits, “I can’t fucking wait to see what he’ll say to me when I make it. That piece of shit, though, he wouldn’t even care. It’s not like he ever gave a shit about me enough for it to matter.” 

But, it matters to you, you want to tell him. You understand his need to throw it all in his face. Though. “Is that one label going to sign you? The one you were talking about?” 

His tongue darts out to wet dry lips. “They haven’t yet. I don’t know. But I don’t need that money to get out of here, I’ve been working on it.” 

“They will,” you say. “But, where would you go? Not too far?” You try and keep it light and playful, even as your heart aches. 

“Come with me,” he says. It’s painfully blunt, as if it were that simple. “Let’s go get and apartment; you and me.” 

“Kai...” you say. “You don’t have to drag me along because you feel bad.” 

The idea doesn’t sound half bad, though.  

“What?” His face tightens, as if somewhere under the surface your words had scraped somewhere tender. “You don’t have to stay here forever. Please. I want... I want you to come with me. You wouldn’t have to even tell them; just bring all your stuff and go together. We could do it together. Like we said we would.”  

“We were like, five. Everybody tries to pretend running away at five,” you deadpan. It’s a washy attempt at lightening things back up. 

Living with him, moving out together, should feel like everything you’ve ever wanted. And, maybe it is. But, he’s not asking you to live with him the way you want him to. Not in the way that your aching heart wishes he would.  

Kai doesn’t share the laugh you give him. “Yeah, okay,” he says, leaning into the table.  

Perhaps you should consider the potent disappointment he’s terribly masking with a face of indifference, though. 

⚝⭒ 

Slowly, the knots in your belly have worked themselves out. When Kai had dropped you off, they’d been so awful that you felt borderline sick. You sat the whole ride there in his old beat-up truck picking at your nails and rambling to him. He listened to you the whole time. And then when it was time to walk in, it had least felt a little easier to do so with his eyes on you, watching to make sure you made it in safely. 

You’d gotten a job. It’s not too bad, folding clothes out on display. It would be nice if they kept the lights a bit brighter, but you’ll get used it eventually, you hope. 

Most of your coworkers are around your age, but the one showing you the ropes... your heart had fluttered. 

“You’ll get it,” Yeonjun says. The smile you find on his lips once he straightens up from placing product on a display is smooth and smug. Sleek strands of black hair fall over his eyes. You fluster under his gaze.  

With arms crossed over your chest you say, “Yeah, probably.” You reach into the cardboard box for stock to practice on. 

“Where’d you work before this?” he asks, leaning back into a wall to watch you. Suddenly, you make sloppier work of your folding. “Your first retail job?” 

Some obnoxious pop song falls down from the speakers over the store. Nobody’s in here yet, thankfully; you’ve got some time to try and get a handle on everything. “No, this is my first job. I was so nervous walking in.” 

Interest catches in his eyes. It encourages that smooth smile on his lips further. “Don’t worry, sweetheart, I’ll show you the reins.” 

Your mind stalls. The suggestive, sly flicker to it—are you looking too much into it? Maybe that’s just how guys like Yeonjun act. It’s hard to pretend that you don’t see how he’s looking at you, though. It has your belly twisted up in fluttery knots. It’s not like you hadn’t had your share of his type. But, for some reason you’d rather not address, he’s got your heart thumping in your chest. 

He laughs at your fifth attempt to fold up the shirt. When he takes it from you to help, he smells of musk and vetiver. “You going to college near here?” he continues.  

“Nah, just doing this, I guess,” you answer, watching him fold it up to try and soak it up.  

“Really? Why not?” he hums, crossing his arms about his chest. “You seem like a smart girl.” 

Buffering, your blood buzzes in your veins and your cheeks burn. “Dunno. Not really sure what to do. Are you in college?” 

“Nah. I’m trying to figure things out, too.” 

The both of you pop your heads up when the bell rings to announce the arrival of a customer.  

“Yeah,” you say, eyeing him. He’s a few years older than you, no doubt, and yet his life hasn’t fallen apart because he’s not done anything grand yet.  

Time’s hand around your neck loosens. Just a little bit.  

⚝⭒ 

You sit crisscrossed on top of Kai’s bedsheets. He’d thrown the windows open because the AC died, but it’s no help. The hot air wafting about the room sits heavy on your skin. You’d dressed in as little material as possible to let it breathe, bare thighs clad in a pair of loose shorts and a thin tank top, but it’s still miserable. 

Perhaps you two should be going over to yours, but you haven’t had time alone with him for a few weeks now. You hate this busier life, where you struggle to make room for this. 

Your new job isn’t so awful, though. Especially with Yeonjun there. A bout of nerves flows up through your stomach. That reminds you. 

Sitting up a bit straighter, you consider not doing it. In fact, you really shouldn’t. But your mouth moves before you can put a stopper on it. 

“Hey, Kai,” you say. The thickness in your throat makes you believe that your heart’s jumped up into it, caught. God, what are you doing? The unsure waver in your words has you regretting. 

His eyes flicker up to yours. He hums out a, “Huh?” 

No, this is wrong. You mess with the thin cotton strap of your tank top where it’d slipped down. “Never mind,” you tell him, trying to shrug it off.  

That piques his interest. “No, what?” His brow pinches.  

You lick your lips and shake your head. “Nothing, never mind. Really.” 

His eyes search you from where he sits up against the wall. “Tell me,” he demands. 

Really, you shouldn’t have said it in the first place. It was a ridiculous idea. But now you know he’s not going to let it go. And, ridiculously, you say it. “I was just... wondering,” you say, blood roaring. "Well, Yeonjun wants me to come over to his place this weekend, and... I’ve never...” Sucking in a quick breath, you just spit it out to get it over with, “Would you be my first kiss, Kai?” 

Insects buzz outside as he looks at you, frozen in spot. You reject the urge to dart away or throw up. You’re honestly just as shaken as him. But really, who else could you trust with something like that? You don’t want Yeonjun to be disappointed if he kisses you, or to seem inexperienced to him. 

And, perhaps, the hopelessly in love part of you hopes to at least feel his lips on yours at least once. If you’re going to be alone forever in your longing, you just wish that you can have this. 

“What?” Kai says. He looks rattled.  

Of course, he’s shocked. You shift. “Forget I said that,” you tell him, unable to meet his gaze.  

String-roughened fingers wrap around your upper arm. “I didn’t say anything,” he says, voice strained and face less shock-fallen and more darkened. “But... I mean, you want me to teach you to kiss for some other guy.” He spits out the last bit as if bitter in his mouth.  

“You don’t have to do it,” you say. “I just... thought that I might ask you to do it. I don’t know, I’m sorry I said it. I’ll just wing it or something.” His room’s grown ten degrees hotter, if that was possible. Especially where you feel his eyes on your face.  

Almost imperceptibly, his hand tightens around you. He swallows hard. “You want to learn how to kiss?” he says. “Fine. I’ll teach you.” 

In a heart-stopping moment, your eyes snap to his. Brown and familiar, they hold you with an intensity that turns your limbs into jelly. The air is stifling. “What... do I do?” you ask when the silence becomes too heavy.  

A muscle feathers in his jaw, reflected in the low light of his room. It’s quick and so easy to miss, but it tells you everything you need to know about how this is making him feel. How much disbelief he’s in. “Come here,” he says, stilted around the absolute absurdity of it. He pats on his lap. 

You make a hesitant crawl across the bed toward him. It seems as though your elbows might buckle beneath your weight, but you make it despite the odds. A fog settles over your brain when you rest your hands on his shoulders and bring your legs to straddle his lap. 

But you shove it back; you want to live and breathe every last second of this. No matter how unbelievable or blistering it is.  

Breaths fan out over your face. It’s seizing your mind like undiluted liquor. “Where do I put my hands?” you ask him. It’s breathless, the air stolen right from your lungs though your mouths haven’t even touched.  

“There is fine,” he says. His words sound breathless, too. The weight of his touch on you as he runs his own up to support your back is unsure. “And then...” he says. It falls out on your mouth slowly, and then he’s taking your lips onto his. 

The walls melt away, sound does too. All that is real is the taste of his lips and how they move against you. Your lips start tentative, but you try his mouth movements yourself. It feels like a timid dance—it feels like deep, deep down, finally everything is right. That mist, thick and blinding, falls back over you. 

Something changes. Something in it, where you two meet, changes. He becomes hungry. Softly locked lips turn biting and nipping, shaky breaths exhaled slow through your nose. His hands on your back become surer, and one even ventures off to grab your chin. The other holds you to his chest, melded together despite the intense smoke and flame rolling off your bodies. You wonder if he can feel your heart beating a mess there. 

Reluctance paints you both when you pull back. You’re panting deep drinks of air. It’s hard to think; your mind’s run off and sits just out of reach. Licking your messy lips, stained with illicitness, you can only manage to brush your fingers against it to form words. “How... was that?” you say, searching his eyes. You find his pupils blown so wide that they consume the warm brown. You’re ready to jump out of your skin with that look pointed at you.  

Kai doesn’t answer, though. He slams your mouths back together as if starved by just the brief moment you’d parted for air. Nips on your bottom lip and emboldened hands—he moves like roaring water through a dam. A dam that he’d worked hard to fortify, and yet, at a crack it’s all falling down. Fingertips digging through the fabric of your shorts down to your soft hips, his chest rumbles. You feel it reflected in your core, electricity charging there and shooting up your spine and down your thighs. 

You kiss him for all the times you wish you would’ve, but didn’t. The slight rolls of your hips down onto him come easy. You love how it has him making a sound into your mouth and taking the fat beneath his fingers harder into his hands. He helps you. 

He drops his head into your neck. Your head swims for air and he has you shuddering with just the brushing of his nose against the column of your neck. The walls of his room spin around you. “Kai,” you whine, every bit of friction his jeans provide, even clothed as you are, just enough to rile you but not to give you what you need. 

“God,” he growls, thumbs hooking under your waistband. “You always fucking run around dressed in nothing,” he says, letting his fingers linger like a suggestion of undressing you. “Did you do it on purpose? Expect to make me crazy, knowing I couldn’t touch you?” 

And, in those words, it seems that he steals every last bit of breath from you. How often had you gone braless or worn something like this around him? Laid here, in his bed, like that? 

Grown tired of your fruitless grinding, he brings a hand down to support your lower back and says, “Turn around.” 

Though you explode with the prospect of what he might be intending to do or what’s next, if you’re really going to do this, you do so in a flash of eager limbs. His chest is solid against your back, you melt against the feeling of it. He’d become such a man lately, filled out, and you watched it happen. It was hard for your eyes not to catch on muscle-corded forearms while he picked at strings or to not appreciate the timbred rumble of his voice when you’d feel it come from his chest. How could it not do things to you? Now, he’s dragging your shorts down your legs and you’re in disbelief.  

“Fuck,” he breaths out. His fingers find your panties soaked through. “So, you’re the type to get dripping wet.” 

An embarrassed blush decorates your cheeks. Kai drags his index finger in circles around your clit through the fabric as if enamored with how much of a mess you’d made of it. Your hips twitch every time he rolls right over it. It’s strange how he’s got your body acting on its own volition with his touches. Even stranger that it’s your best friend doing it. “Sorry,” you tell him, wavering.  

He continues those terribly slow circles. “Sorry?” he says, chin on your shoulder. He’s got you wrapped up in him, with nowhere to go but to melt back into him and let his fingers work. Free hand on one of your inner thighs digging divots into the plushness there to hold it still, he tells you, “It’s nothing to be sorry about. It’s hot as fuck. You’re so excited for me to touch you, huh?” 

The words wreak havoc on you, feeding the flame that has your belly twisted up tight and the ignition point between your thighs pounding. To hear them coming from him, reserved Kai, has you digging your fingers into his forearm to prove that it’s real. You’d never have imagined him being so... filthy. You imagine him behind falsely nonchalant eyes, devouring you with a perverted mind all the times you’d spent innocently sitting together in this room.  

Your cheeks squish beneath his fingers as he takes your face and turns it to him. He wants to make sure you’re look at him as he asks you, “Do you want me to finger you?” 

Like a record, your brain skips. Between the blunt, lewd question and his hand on you, it’s in overload. How could ask something like that so simply? Stunned as you are, of course you want him to. You want him to do anything to you. You nod.  

Every last nerve and neuron in your system, just below the skin, cry out when his fingers slow down to nothing. “Hmm?” he says, ignoring the chasing of your hips and the opening of your thighs to invite him into paying your poor pussy the attention he’d ripped from it. He wants to hear you say it.  

About ten minutes ago, you lost your mind. It does not return to you now. “I want you to,” you say, chest beating in tandem with your cunt. 

“You want me to, right? Not some dumbass you met a week ago, huh?” he says. “Because you know that this is what it’s meant to be. Me, doing these things to you. Not some twenty-five-year-old piece of shit. He doesn’t deserve you, baby. Understand?” 

His fingers slider under your panties. Dumb brained and cognition gone muddled, you nod. All you can really think about is the moment his fingers slide over you. Fire licks up your lower belly and your insides as he brushes calloused finger tips finally right against your clit. 

Puffed breaths of a scoff raise goosebumps over your skin. “Teach you to kiss so that you can go over there and get his hands on you,” he says, middle two fingertips prodding at your entrance. “As if you were ever anybody’s but mine. You’d come crawling back to me, baby, because it was always meant to be us. He could never satisfy you.” 

His words might alarm you or have you asking questions if he hadn’t pushed his fingers into you and begun curling them with strong, pointed presses, pulling soft mewls and hums from you until he finds a spot that twists up your insides. Even through the palm you press over your mouth, your moans come out more like wavering grunts and croaks. Your thighs quiver and twitch, threatening to snap closed against your own will with each. Only your feet stay planted to the mattress. Like a cone of soft serve under the sun’s blistering attention, you melt down him. Just his frame keeps you upright. 

“Right there, huh?” he says. The smirk on his mouth filters his words into something taunting. “That’s where you like it.” It’s like he’s learning your body step by step, fulfilling all the questions he’d been forced to only guess at before this.  

“Uh-huh.” It comes out whiny and cracks in the middle, but you can’t find even an ounce of you to care right now. If this moment had been a long spiral, a fall from grace, down into a dark pit of forgotten inhibitions, you’ve just hit the bottom. Cheeks blazing cherry blossom pink and with your fingers curling into his pant leg, you don’t doubt that you are a picturesque mess. The kind of mess that’s beautiful because it’s dirty. Your teeth are not gentle on your plush bottom lip. It stings, tugged back and bitten and still a bit swollen with kisses. Perhaps you taste the tang of metal on it, but you pay it no mind. 

Kai redoubles his efforts. Now that he knows exactly how to play you, he’s fucking you on his fingers without mercy. The sounds coming from your cunt were wet, but now they’re different— nasty squelching. The only noises coupling with your pathetic keening. Forget anchoring yourself on his thigh, forget muffling your sounds. Instead, your hands fly to encircle his flexing forearm. Under your nails, angry red crescents dig into the muscle there. What had been a languid, building pleasure suddenly becomes everything. Your breaths run away from you, and you chase them frantically. Deep down in your core, the muscles spasm and rage against his fingers. “H—oh god,” you groan. Even the muscles in your thighs and tummy tighten up. 

“So whiny...” Kai mumbles, voice taut with the effort of eroding you down into pure, blinding-white pleasure. 

And then, in a swoop of mercy, your belly tightens. You hover here, on the precipice of something so consuming and voracious that your muscles and bones reject it, and yet your heart sings. Your eyes and cheeks and lungs and belly burn, the flame charring the edges of you in a beckon. You answer its call. Kai doesn’t mind the snapping of your legs shut around his arm, nor does your bucking or shaking deter him. He just holds you through it, arm like a metal bar around your waist. He’s everywhere, in this moment—the smell of him, leather and utterly familiar, his mouth dusting hot kisses over your skin, his fingers guiding you through orgasm. Where you’d gone silent in the initial crash of it, you devolve into mewls and grunts as you come down.  

He holds you even as you slump against him boneless. Afterglow simmers in your veins and has your brain all lethargic and lazy. Neither of you speak for a while, your pulse thumping a rhythm. His breaths rise and fall against you; it grounds you in this moment where you feel all spacey and gone. You become aware again of how disgustingly sweltering it is in his room, your skin sheened. 

That brainless bliss only lasts you for so long, though. When rational mind returns to you, no matter how you wish it wouldn’t, you’re hit in the chest with regret so hard it knocks the wind out of you. 

How will anything ever be the same after what you’d just done? Stricken still by the thought, you barely register him pulling his fingers out of you. After all your worrying about making sure no wedge comes between you two, look what you’ve gone and done. No; nothing ever will be the same again.  

⚝⭒ 

A couple of weeks ago, you ruined the one friendship you were supposed to have forever. It presses down heavy one you while you sit sprawled out on Yeonjun’s couch, his arm around your shoulder. His phone casts a glow over his features with all the lights out. 

It doesn’t smell like home. He, pressed against your side, doesn’t smell like home.  

Some stupid movie that he’d picked out, yet somehow you’ve ended up the only one still watching it, weaves a hum into the quiet of his apartment. Tangy hurt wells up in your throat. Even the moments when you and Kai would sit in mutual silence on your phones never felt like this. This is different.  

You haven’t seen Kai since that night. He’s been busy getting ready to move out, and you’ve been here most days. How fast all of it had changed. You wish you’d feel whiplashed, left empty, by the drifting that you’d been so terrified of. But you don’t. It’s just been you, locked on land, watching him being taken away by the ocean’s tide with no way to change its course. You tried and screamed to call him back, but now your voice has gone hoarse.  

And instead of watching him go, you choose to look elsewhere. It’s all you can do to protect yourself from the hurt. 

“Hey,” Yeonjun says, finally addressing you rather than whoever’s he’s got in his phone. “Did you bring anything to change into?”  

“I brought stuff to sleep in,” you say, eyeing him. You know that’s not why he’s asking. If it came down to it, you could just steal something from him and pull it on. He means going out clothes. Your jaw tightens. “But nothing nice. Why?” 

He stretches his arms behind his head in a flaunt of long arms and tanned muscle. Hours spent at the gym lent him those; you appreciate the look of it with a watering mouth. Kai had earned his build by hours spent outside with your dad, because his own could care less, helping him fix up cars and vehicles of all ridiculous sorts. You remember when Kai had first gotten his truck—junk on wheels, honestly—he’d spent so much of summer out there getting it running. And, well... the sun-kissed bronze of his skin and frame that came with it, you had no qualms with. 

But those memories only sit heavy in your chest as you’re sat here beside Yeonjun. You banish them elsewhere; you need to let him drift off. If you can’t have each other, and your feelings won’t permit just being friends, then you have to. You want him to do amazing things, and you fear that it’s your presence in his life that will interrupt that. As much as your feelings are real, they are selfish. You, your unsure direction and all your dead weight, should let him go. Because you love him. 

“The guys want to come over,” he tells you, pushing off from the couch. “You should probably into change into something less showy.” 

Less showy. Your mouth drops into a scoff of disbelief, looking down. A pair of shorts and a shirt, showy? You have to laugh, or else you’ll succumb to the strange embarrassment crawling at the back of your skull. What’s he trying to say? Is that what he thinks of you? “What’s that supposed to mean?” you say, face tilted up to him in a twist of distaste. “I’m wearing something comfy.” 

He shrugs, hands shoved into the pockets of his black sweats. “Don’t want to give them the wrong idea about you, that’s all, baby. They’re guys; I just want to protect you.” 

“No,” you say, the word falling out in a barked laugh. “Why would you even be bringing over dudes that you think will look at me like that? Why are you even friends with people that you think are gonna make moves on your girlfriend?” He holds a hand out to you, but your hands stay right where they are: crossed solidly over your chest. 

Throwing that hand up in audacious exasperation, he gives you a look that makes you feel small and petulant—like you’re throwing an overblown fit. And, maybe you are. You should probably just do it; him seeing you as some overbearing or high maintenance girl has that embarrassment flaring like wildfire that’s found dry brush. “C’mon, baby,” he says, a lazy smile on his mouth that gets under your skin. “Let’s just have an easy night. Don’t make it a big deal.” 

Let’s just have an easy night. As if you’re the one ruining the night. Something snarky tries to seize your tongue, but you hold it down. “I thought it would be just us. We wanted to watch the movie together, Yeonjun. Can’t you wait to hang out with your friends? Let’s enjoy our time together; you’ve got your shift tomorrow.” 

“My fucking god,” he groans, running a hand through his hair furiously. “You’re needy, you know that? The neediest I’ve ever had to put up with. I don’t put up with needy, baby. Can’t you just chill out a little? My last didn’t mind when I’d have friends over.” 

Your eyes burn. Your cheeks burn. He’d been with plenty of other girls before you; that, you’re well aware of. It’s been a corrosive source of self-doubt for you. You don’t want that title: the neediest he’s ever had. Don’t want him to think of you as some prude that won’t let him have fun. Just... hearing him bring up the other girls he’d been with before you stings and leaves welts no different from a slap in the face. Feelings of inadequacy shackle you and have you saying, “Fine. I’m gonna borrow some of your clothes.” 

Heavy resentment blooms on your skin where he bends down and presses kisses to your cheek, and then mouth, and then down your neck. “Thank you, baby.” 

And, where those ugly, wilted flowers of it bloom, you hear echoes of something. Something that tells you that Kai wouldn’t treat you like this. But you’ve made your bed, decided to do it yourself, and now you’ve got to lay on it. 

⚝⭒ 

The frat parties are the worst kind of social outing that Yeonjun insists upon. The smaller kinds, more intimate gathering with just his closer friends, you tolerate much easier. You’re not fond of the circles he chooses. Breathing in thick, smoked-out air surrounded by alcohol-coated breaths is not your type of fun night. Somehow, you end up doing that more than date nights. But that’s better than being here. The base rumbles up through your feet and makes your stomach sick, and it reeks of grinding bodies and body odor, and condensation coats your fingers from the red solo cup as full as when you’d first gotten it. 

But, still, you come along. Not every time, but when you don’t, you lay in his bed sickening yourself with images of what he might be doing here. How pathetic is it to attend parties with your boyfriend because you fear that otherwise, he might stick his tongue down the throats of other girls? 

You’re looking for him right now, awkward and left alone. He’d promised to stick around; you had begged him to. That was pathetic, too. You know that you put up with too much. If he loved you, or honestly even liked you, you two would be in the thick of the throngs dancing or off somewhere talking with others. Together. The frantic skimming and weeding of your eyes through the blur of faces is not right. That’s not how he should make you feel. It’s not how Kai would make you feel. 

Well, Kai would never have you here in the first place. 

Venturing out from your little corner, you sift between the bodies of people have a hell of a lot better time than you. Drunken, some you bounce off of like bumper carts. You press your palm over the round face of your cup to spare the floor from spillage threatening to pour over the lip. It’s not like a splash from yours would matter much, though. The linoleum has already been made a fetor mess of dirt off shoes and the sticky sugar of liquor. Your shoes peel from it as you walk. God, what would your parents think of you being here? 

You peek around corners and eye big groups. He’s not in the kitchen when you look there, either. Your stomach feels sick in a knowing way—a gut feeling that doesn’t justify anger or tears just yet, but you know. Right in the center of your chest, you know. 

It’s in some room that you find him. Sat on the floor along with a few faces you don’t know, he pulls from his bottle. And on his shoulder, he lets a girl with shining curls and pink cheeks rest her head. At your busting in on the intimate gathering, Yeonjun’s eyes slide to you. Recognition flashes over them and wars with bleary drunkenness. 

“Hey, baby,” he says. Their gazes all fall on you, but you can hardly see them through blurry eyes. 

The girl lifts her head from his shoulder. She’d caught the memo. 

“I think I’m gonna go.” You make it sound resigned, try to not let them see your shame, but your voice betrays you and crackles. Maybe it’s better to pretend it doesn’t feel like you’ve just been kicked in the stomach and left to reel against the force, but you can’t. You’re nowhere near shocked, nowhere near blindsided, but still you hurt. 

He follows you down the hall. “What’s your problem?” he says, the few, plain words mending and waving into a slurring. 

You’ve got one goal: get to the front door, away from the shitty music and him. His words, sharpened, fall off your skin despite his efforts. What good would fighting do you, anyway? It was always going to end up this way. This is just who he is, and he doesn’t give two shits enough about you to want to change that. 

“Baby, seriously? That made you this mad? I didn’t even fucking do anything. Stop being insecure,” he says. At the gritting of your teeth, he sees an opportunity and pounces on it. “You don’t need to be jealous. I don’t do jealous shit. We can dance, or something. Shit, I don’t know what you want! Just stop throwing a fit.” 

Didn’t do anything? You have to laugh. Maybe you didn’t walk in on him fucking someone else, but that’s not what this is about. Not even a little bit. You’ve checked out, and the fact that he thinks he can make you believe that it’s your fault this time only drives the killing stake in harder. 

Maybe you’re bitter. It claws at your insides—turns your face hot and screams in your face that you’ve been used. But beside it sits a sadness. Not the slow kind, but the quick sadness of hurt. Why hadn’t you been good enough for him to love you? To like you? You’d left behind Kai and rested your new life on Yeonjun’s shoulders. You’d wanted so badly for his approval, or for him to want you. You did your best to try and make this work out because you needed it to. You needed so desperately proof that you could fall in love with somebody else. But your best was not what Yeonjun was interested in.  

Pins and needles prick your skin as you step outside, like jumping into an ice bath. It shocks you out of dizziness. Words surge up and out in a flash flood like hard reality. You spin on him. “Jealous?” you say, choking out a scathing laugh. “The last thing I’d ever let myself suffer over you is jealousy. Get over yourself. I’m going, stay here if you want. I don’t care.” 

“How are you gonna do that, huh?” he says. The flickering yellow of the porchlight paints his features. The shadow of something fluttering around it cuts dark spots in the light, and then a small little moth comes down and jumps around in his face. He waves it off. “Gonna have bitch boy come pick you up? You can’t leech off him forever; he’s gonna get sick of picking up another man’s girlfriend.” It seems like you walking in on that had sobered him up, but his breath still curls out onto your face with the reek of alcohol. “It’s not a big deal. You’re making this a bigger deal than it has to be. Do you not trust me?”  

“You are such a piece of shit,” you grit out. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Ever. I don’t know how I let this go on for so long.” You don’t like him having Kai in his mouth, don’t like him trying to act like you’re conflating things, and especially don’t like that face he’s making. As if you’re acting crazy and overblown. “No, I don’t trust you. You didn’t fuck her, but come on, Yeonjun. Seriously? You think I’m stupid, and I’m sick of it. You thought this would be easy because I didn’t have the experience you have, but I’m sorry. I don’t like being walked over.” 

“If you’re gonna be so goddamn jealous, then maybe we aren’t gonna work,” he says. 

That moth, floating light in the air, is right back in his face. Yeonjun takes two hands and smashes it between a clap of his hands. He shakes its flattened, broken body off his hand. Looking down at it laying there on top of dirt-caked concrete, you get this... feeling. A tickling around your person.  

“See if I care,” you snap, throat aching against the onslaught of emotion and held back tears.  

⚝⭒ 

Rivulets of raindrops dilute the tears on your cheeks. Your hair plasters to your face and your clothes to your body.  

For a week, you’d went about it all as if it hadn’t happened. And then you came here.  

It’d not been this rainy when you first got down to the creek—just a gentle trickle, really. You hadn’t been crying then, either. But, watching the water work at babbling over stone, you let yourself feel it. Here, where you’d had so many good memories. You’ve gone and tainted it, now. But for whatever reason, you’d just wanted to be here. Arms curled around yourself and fingers digging into drenched sleeves, you don’t wipe away the tears or cover the sounds of your crying. You let the stream hear it; it’ll sweep it right up and down the way. Somewhere far off, where you don’t have to feel it anymore. 

You realize that, usually, you’d be over at Kai’s right now. The fact that his room was not the first place you thought you could go to anymore is a punch to the gut. You drop your face into your hands and cry harder. Really, you’ve got to stop doing that to yourself. Thinking of sad things—putting your hurt under the microscope to see it closer. It’d be easier to just fold it up and tell yourself that it’ll pass, and that relationships end all the time. 

It’s not him that you cry over. Well, maybe some of it is. Rather, it’s that you have absolutely no idea where you’re going. Where you are. Finally, you’d built yourself a raft to get off the shore and go out to sea, because that’s what you’re supposed to do, and it’s breaking apart right beneath you. And, stranded and alone in the water, you’ve got no way to get back to shore to build yourself another raft. You’re stranded, and the scariest bit is that you’re doing it all alone. You weren’t supposed to do this alone. You two made promises back then. 

You suppose that a promise is one of those things you were supposed to leave faith in back on shore. 

The raindrops are heavy over you. The fall of it roars against the ground, a torrent downpour. It’s not coupled with whipping wind or flashes of lightning—just straight, still falling. It’s a somber feeling no different from the gnawing in your chest. 

Like chimes, there’s a distant, gentle sound. Maybe water falling over creek rock, but it’s more like suggestion. A sweet sound that you shouldn’t even be able to hear over the rest of it, it’s as if it’s right in your ear. A whisper.  

You fix your blurry eyes with a wet sleeve. Rain falls right back into its place, but you see it: a silvery, whimsy haze. And the moths. They jump and call you, this time. Their glow bounces off the rainy mist against the grey of night’s arrival. Then, all you can hear is the whispering. Where you stand frozen, your feet beg to move. To follow them. 

So you do. 

Their entourage of moondust trails them where they go, wrapping you up and weaving between raindrop and space. You don’t worry where they’ll take you, or even try to wrap your head around this happening again. You just follow, mind glossed over and entranced with how beautiful it is. When you’d seen them before, it’d made you uneasy. Mostly because it looked so unearthly and unbelievable. But this time you just follow. 

A far-off voice, one oh-so-familiar, peaks through the haze. It’s not enough to stop you, but then you hear it again, louder and closer. 

You blink a few times. Once to break away the fog, and then twice to focus your eyes on Kai stood in front of you. His hair lays in wet spikes over his eyes and beads of rain trace the planes of his face. He’s as soaked as you. 

“Kai?” you say. Looking around you, you’ve ended up somewhere in the field between your houses and the creek. But you’ve got no recollection of walking here. Whatever that mist is, sentient or not, had swept you here.  

His voice is strained, but you appreciate hearing it. “Break up with him,” he tells you. 

In his eyes, as you search them, there’s stardust glowing like reflection. Your face twists up. “What?” you say, breath a puff of smoke ahead of you. Summer had come and gotten away from you so fast, and now it’s gone all cold again. 

“Break up with him,” he echos, face solemn. He looks ruffled. 

“Why?” you ask, “And why are you out here?” 

“Because I’m moving out today, and I think I deserve to at least see you before I go.” His eyes look over you. “And... your dad said you went down to the creek.” 

He’s moving out today, and you had no idea. And really, it’s your fault. You’d driven that wedge between the two of you. “I did break up with him.” 

Downpour fills his quiet for a few moments, his face swirling with emotion like the clouds above you. He nods. “Good.” 

There are a few more long minutes between you; just you two searching each other's faces, antsy to say so much that it bunches up in your chests and stalls. It’s what a summer of longing does to you. Even with Yeonjun, even trying to slowly chip away the stitching that had connected the two of you at the hip, you were helpless to stop the gnawing of the love you bear for him. Even just seeing him now, you feel those threads mending back up. God, why does it have to be so hard? 

He just looks at you. For a few beats, he just looks at you. There are so many questions in his eyes. They flit across and turn over, but all he settles on is, “Why?” 

There’s so much you want to tell him. Words pile up to the top, some threatening to spill over. But you know that if you tell him some of it, just to make up for all the time you’d missed out on together, it’ll all come crashing out. And you don’t think you want him to know just how much you accepted, the way you let yourself get treated. So, you shake your head and say, “It doesn’t matter.” 

Kai looks like he wants to push that issue, but whatever look he finds on your face deters him. “Come with me,” he pleads. “I want you to come with me.” 

Your throat tightens. Curling your arms around yourself harder, the rain only coming down on you harder, you say, “Kai, I want to. I want to. I just... I don’t want to freeload off you, because you’re doing great things, and I’m just...” Your tongue darts out to wet your lips, but they’re already as soaked as the rest of you. “I’m just going nowhere. And I don’t want to be a burden, or ever be the reason that you can’t do what you dream of. If staying here means that you become everything that you’re destined to do, then I’m happy with that, Kai. I am.” 

He shakes his head, stumbling toward you. “No, no you don’t get it,” he says, frantically taking your shoulders into big hands. Under his touch, every taut muscle goes slack. You melt. “You don’t get it. You are the music. Every single song is about you. Every single fucking song is about you. I want you to come with me, please. I love you, I have always loved you, and I will always love you, and I thought you’d loved me too, and I don’t want to do this alone. I can’t do it alone.” 

He loves you. Kai loves you. The enormity of it rumbles the ground where you stand on legs you fear might just give in. You flex your fingers to combat the tears pricking your eyes. It doesn’t work; they brim and well up, spilling down over your cheeks. “What?” you say, voice softly breaking. “Kai, I didn’t...” 

“And just when I thought I finally had you, you left me,” he says, throwing a hand up beside him in a big gesture. “You left me! I woke up thinking you’d be there, and that maybe you loved me too, and you had left me. And then you threw me away for some piece of shit, and you stopped coming around.” His chest heaves for breaths. 

Your face contorts. That night, the one where you two had slipped up, you’d fallen asleep curled up against his chest on undiluted contentment. When you woke up, you had panicked. You thought he’d wake up and pretend it hadn’t happened, or he’d be uncomfortable, or even be disgusted and regretting. You couldn’t handle that, so you slipped out before he woke up. It’d been an attempt to protect your tender heart, but looking at the twitching of his lip now, you begin to think it’s the most selfish thing you’ve ever done. He thinks you used him and left him. Your stomach twists. Voice thick, you say, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I left you, Kai. I thought you didn’t... I thought you didn’t see me that way. I was scared. I’m sorry I hurt you.” 

Brows knitted together, he says, “Thought I didn’t love you?” His hand cups your cheek, warm against the soft frozen skin he finds there. “I’ve... I’ve dreamed of you almost every night of my life. In my sleep, I see you, and you’re happy and glowing, and that damn... mist is all around you. I couldn’t get away from you even in my sleep.” 

Darting between his eyes, soft and reflecting your face back to you, it’s hard to breathe. Kai’s dreamt of you; he’s as sickly in love with you as you are him. Thunder claps, and the ground shakes, and the heavens open up above you, the trumpets belt, and you two are in love. Somewhere deep in your center, you feel it—your soul nodding yes. 

The mist. You know exactly what he’s talking about. “I saw it. That stuff, those moths. The stuff we saw back then.” 

“I did too,” he says, wet spikes of hair bouncing with a nod. “Not that long ago. It was the first time I saw it out of a dream since that day.” 

Back then, you two had only budding, innocent love for each other. Things hadn’t become mangled and lost to confused hearts or expectations. When they’d appeared to you, you hadn’t needed it. This time, you’d followed it. And it had led you here—somehow had led you right to the very spot you needed to so that every last piece might fall into place. For this moment to happen. You know why it did. 

“I’ll go with you, Kai. I’ll go wherever you go; I love you. I’ve loved you since forever,” you say, each and every word massive and lovely on your tongue. “I’m sorry I didn’t say it earlier.” 

So unlike the last times your mouth had met, he brings his mouth to yours with a dazzling clarity. No longer is it confused kisses; he locks his lips against yours with the urgency of so many years being unable to. Kai’s hands cradle your wet cheeks, hold you so tenderly into his kiss. His touch grounds you, makes the moment real. You melt into him—your fingers curled into his shirt as if holding him there so that he won’t disappear like something of an incorporeal dream. He sighs through his nose, kissing you harder. Even if it all were fake and this was nothing more than a feverish figment of your imagination, you think you could die happy just knowing this once. 

But it is utterly real, and utterly yours. You kiss him harder, too. 

When your lungs start to burn and plead for breath, you two pull away from each other. Your eyes flutter open to capture his. Warm and brown and the same ones you’ve stared into so many times before, but not like this, you sink into them. He runs his thumb over your cheek as he sinks into yours. His tongue darts out to lick lips painted with you. In the inches between you, space no longer feels heavy or charged with grievances. Every last unsaid thing had been answered. 

“I have my stuff up in the truck,” he says, breaths soft. Brown eyes dart around your face. “I’ll help you add your stuff to it.” 

You shudder out a breath. Add your stuff to it. A nervous energy settles down over you, but it doesn’t seem so bad if you’re doing it with him. Together.  

“Okay,” you whisper, a balmy secret just like the ones you used to share in small, giggly voices so many years ago. “Okay.” 

⚝⭒ 

Shivers seize you like jittering bones, all wrapped up in a blanket. The velour cushion seats beneath you have soaked up water and become damp, but Kai’s got the heater blasting. You wind around back roads, headlights illuminating the way ahead of you. Stray droplets whip in them, but nothing much. Isn’t it funny how the rain had just stopped like that? That’s just how the weather is, out here. You wonder how the weather might act wherever you’re headed. 

Your teeth chatter as if your jaw had its own will. The two of you had the windows down thinking that the wind might dry you off, but all it’s done is lap at your bitten cheeks. You reach down for the handle to crank it up. You’ve got a long drive ahead of you—either you’ll eventually dry off, or you can pull off at a rest area to change in a bathroom. The wet clothes are really not helping. 

With an arm up on the steering wheel, Kai turns his attention on you. You know that smile. “Cold?” he asks, eyes darting between your face and the road. With the hand he’s not got working the steering wheel, he runs fingers over your thigh. Soft, gentle massages, yes. The number it does on your core is absurd. Each mindless digging into your thighs and brush of his thumb, sparks sputter there. You’ve sat here, right in his passenger seat, so many times before. Day trips up to the lake, the one he’d joined your family camping at for so many summers, all the times he’d driven you to school in this truck, and even just a quick run down to a convenience store for a late-night snack. You’d deemed it your seat. But never once had you sat in it like this. Your heart does a flip. All those times you’d wish he’d reach over and do just this—a small gesture that would’ve been so big then. And it’s your reality, now.  

“Freezing,” you say. A brush of his fingers nearer the apex of your thighs sends you pressing them together and shifting in your seat. “But not everybody runs as hot as you, though, so.” 

His eyes catch the movement in just the split second he looked over to you. “Huh,” he says. He turns to look at you, his gaze flickering with something anew. Something that you’d only ever seen once before. “Is that it?” 

It’s hard to swallow. His fingers brush higher, and higher, feather-dustings of calloused fingertips that sends tingles shooting up your spine at the slightest suggestion of where he’s headed. “Yes,” you say, feigning indignance to cover the shiver that threatens to overtake you. When his fingertips dance at the waistband of your bottoms, it does so anyway. “Kai,” you say, blood hot in your veins. “You’re...driving.” 

His eyebrows pinch into a taunting furrow. “I am,” he says, nodding. “Don’t worry about it, baby. I’ve got us.” 

And he does; fingers slipping under the band of both your bottoms and your panties, he doesn’t even tear his eyes off the road. He’d driven these roads so much, you think he might be able to do it asleep. Even drawing a mewl from you with a brush over your clit, he doesn’t look away more than a quick glimpse at your pinkened cheeks. 

Two fingers dragging up your folds, right over the source of the mess. “You get excited so easily, huh?” he hums. “You like it when I play with you.” 

When he presses those fingers at your entrance, you can’t help but be taken back to that night. It echoes and reverberates through you. Long fingers, strong and punctual brushes against the sweet spot—he was criminally good with his fingers. Playing guitar did more for him than just music. He seemed to know exactly how to utilize those roughened fingers and trained flicks. Your muscles flicker as he abandons your hole for more brushes at your bud.  

Those teasing, sly touches turn to something more serious. His fingers roll over your clit, slow but enough to have you sighing and rolling your hips against the seat belt. But last time had gone just like this, him touching you and receiving nothing. He should feel good, too. “Shouldn’t you pull over?” you sigh, muscles taut. Your breaths come out shuddering and half-controlled, interrupted by the tightness that each delicious swirl provokes. The door takes the brunt of your grip, white-knuckling the interior. 

He laughs, a husky sound that is tinder to fire. He knows what you mean. “Maybe,” he says. “But I think I’m enjoying this plenty. I think I want to see you cum on my fingers again.” 

Fingers pinching and flicking faster, you grow breathy and whiny, hips rolling against the seatbelt and back into the seat. Your muscles, all the way down your thighs and deep in your belly, jump and twitch each time his fingers run over your clit in just the right spot—that tender spot that’s so good that it teeters on overwhelming. The kind that makes you hiss and then want more. “Shit, Kai,” you whine. “Right—there, keep going."  

He doesn’t answer with any teasing words. No, he just doubles down right at that angle and pressure, leaned back into his seat and driving as if he wasn’t fingers-deep in your panties right now. His sculpted profile at total ease—it does something for you. A delicious tightness curls its fingers over your center, promising a sugary ecstasy that you can’t help but chase. Bucking into his hands as best you can, you go quiet. Right there—right there, you feel it. The cusp. Your fingers brush over it, clenching around nothing and squeezing your thighs tight around him. Every last drop of blood in your body reaches for it, singing and dancing through your veins and making you dizzy. 

And then he stops. Your mouth drops open, whiplashed and helpless to its slipping away from you. You whittle your gaze into something sharp and turn to him. “What—why?” you complain. The tide slips further and further and further back, but you still taste sea salt on your tongue. Frustration sets in its place as you feel it go. Seriously, you’d been right there. “You’re so mean.” 

He slows and then with the clicking of the turn signal, he’s off the road and pulling the truck into park on a little secluded side road. Where the headlights pierce the pitch black, nothing but gravel and field surrounds you. He doesn’t kill the engine, instead pulling his hand free from you. 

Your heart, still stuttering with your lost orgasm, kicks back to life as he smears your slick over your mouth, dragging it over your lips and then taking his thumb to run it right over the plush of your mouth. “Am I?” he says, fingers taking your chin to meet your eyes with his. Endless hunger, pupils so blown that his eyes look black, pins you. “I don’t think you’ve seen mean yet, baby.” 

Darting your tongue out to clean your lips, you look at him through your eyelashes. “Show it to me, then.” 

Something dark passes over his face. It has your skeleton jumping out of your body. Then, he says, “Is that what you want? You want mean?” 

Brain gone to mush that can only really think about him touching you, a slow nod is all you can manage. 

The engine’s hum prevails for some long, thick seconds. And then, he tilts his head in a gesture. “Get in the back.” 

Holy shit. You want to sit there frozen in an overwhelming sort of excitement, but his seatbelt clicks undone and you’re set into motion. In a flurry of giggles and clumsy limbs, you climb up over the center console and into the backseat. He slips out of the front seat, not bothering to even kill the engine. 

The door beside you opens in a swirl of cold wind. In nothing more than a blink, a strong hand has both your wrists pinned to the cushions and your back flush against it. Nose-to-nose, his breath hot over your face. “I’ve got plenty of ideas as to how I can warm you up.” 

You appreciate each other’s faces for a beat more, you looking up at him big-eyed and waiting. Kai breaks the moment to attack your neck in a procession of bites and kisses. Your mouth falls into a silent sound. 

“You know,” he says, free hand working your pants off. His eyes are trained on you, though. “I thought about doing this to you all summer. Touching you again.” He moves on to your top, pushing the fabric up until your chest is freed, clad in soft cotton. He eats the sight up. You want to reach down and cup the back of his head or feel his hair between your fingers as he presses his mouth against the soft beginning of your cleavage, but he’s got your wrists firmly planted. So much so, that you wonder exactly how he’s got you so secure with just one hand. Kai is strong, but maybe you hadn’t seen just how strong. Your skin aches under the purple bites he decorates you in. The sight of him—face in your chest and marking you up so lazily—has your teeth abusing your bottom lip. Whatever sounds you might make otherwise would be embarrassing. Kai lifts his eyes to you. “And I think you thought of me, too. Didn’t you?” 

“Oh, god, yes,” you say, writhing beneath him. He’s going so slow. You want him all over you. “So much.” 

He likes that. He takes your pebbled nipple into his mouth through the fabric. Soft grazes of teeth and sucks, you’re burning all over. When he pulls back, he’s left you dark wet patches when the bra had only just dried against your body heat. “Good,” he rasps, taking his big hands demanding and hungry over your torso. They swallow your frame up, soothing skin but lighting it aflame all the same. “Good girl.” 

You never thought just words could unravel you, but those did the job. Not a gasp, nor a sucking in of breath—no, you go silent and brainless, fumbling for rational thought. 

The dropping of your jaw has Kai delighted. “You’re so pretty,” he says. In a swift and powerful hoist, he’s tugging you down the cushions toward him with greedy fingers. He’s got your thighs pressed up to your chest. You’re bent right in half. 

Out of breath, you huff out, “You too.” 

A quick laugh falls from his mouth, lips pulled into a smug tilt. He nips at your calf up by his face. “So sweet, it almost makes me feel bad for what I’m about to do to you.��� Reaching down for your panties, he pulls back on the suffocating press for only enough time to drag them up your legs. Those get discarded somewhere on the floor. Who cares about that right now, though? All you can register is the metallic clinking of his belt being undone. It’s got your nervous system twisting up. 

And, those words. Electricity shoots bolts of pure, sizzling revery into your core. What I’m about to do to you. You imagine a great deal of things that he might mean, but still, you think that none could hold a candle against the promise his voice held in saying it. 

Kai presses his body to your thighs and hooks your calves over his shoulders, and it all becomes real. The press of his heavy cock to your folds, the digging of his fingers into your outer thighs, his pretty eyes sparkling with something feral. As real as it gets—more real than anything you’ve ever felt in the entirety of your life. Your hands find perch flattened to his broad chest. 

The position leaving you two no option but to look right into each other, he holds your gaze and begins slow drags of his hot length up and down your slit. Tantalizing, awful, awful drags. When his tip nudges your eager clit, you jolt. And then he does it again. And again. 

“Kai,” you mewl. A press against your hole has you hopeful, and he lingers there for a moment, but doesn’t give it to you. Can’t he just fuck you? You’ve never been more pitifully in need of something in your life. 

“Shh.” His ruts get more daring, smearing your slick up onto your belly. “Take it.” 

You wiggle your toes in the air and make passes at arching yourself into him in search of better friction. He’s got you pressed so suffocatingly into the seat that it does absolutely nothing for you. In fact, he holds your harder and changes tack so that your thighs press together. At the very apex of them, his weeping cock slips through the seam. 

Pressing his cheek into your calf, he watches you. Every gasp and shaky inhale, he watches. It spurs his rutting on, sticky sounds and pants eating up the air. Your nails claw at his hands as, finally, a knot tightens in your core. 

“Yes, please,” you breathe. He fucks your thighs harder. Faster. Every nudge at your clit and hole becomes euphoric. “Kai, baby—I’m gonna—” 

Just as furiously easy as last time, he rips it all away from you. The rushing away of the buzzing and promise of shaking thighs—he takes it from you again. It brings prickling tears to your eyes. “Kai?” you hiss. “Again?” 

His eyes aren’t playful. He pulls your calves back over his shoulders, handling your hips into a better position to press his cock right at your entrance as if you weigh nothing. Face utterly straight, he says, “I don’t think you deserve it, do you? Not after what you did with Yeonjun.” 

A swallow goes down your throat hard. He presses himself just a bit harder into you. Not in yet, but right there. 

When he does begin sliding in, the stretch of it... You cling to him and squirm between him and the warm cushions behind you. Each inch is a heady feeling, all the way up to the hilt of him. He shudders a controlled breath. “You’re so fucking tight, though,” he grits out. “Did he not fuck you right?” 

Slaps of skin bounce off the car interior and between your bodies. He starts off at a brutal pace; you know it’s meant to make your brain go foggy. Squeezing your eyes closed, you manage, “I... didn’t fuck him.” It comes out strangled, voice bouncing as he fucks you into the car seat. 

Thumb tugging your bottom lip down and then dipping into your mouth, he watches the show of your ecstasy down to every last detail. “Yeah?” he says, voice shaking and almost desperate. “Always thinking of me, huh? Such a good little princess. You know exactly where your heart belongs.”  

You want to answer him, even just with a whine or moan. You try to. But with his thumb pressing down on your tongue, enough to pin it to the floor of your mouth, it’s not gonna happen. He tastes salty in your mouth. 

His truck consists of his grunts and whines, and your taut groans for some moments that seem to stretch forever. The planes of his groin grind against your clit when he delivers occasional pointed rolls, but mostly it’s just an animalistic, feverish dancing of your two sweaty bodies, holds growing more frantic the closer you get.  

Thumb wet with saliva; he frees your mouth. The hand trails slowly down your face and your chin, brushing feather touches, until he finds your neck. 

Your eyes fly open, wide. He pressed his fingers into your neck—no real pressure yet, he looks at you through damp strands of dangling hair and says, “Want my fingers around your neck?” His thumb brushes over the buzzing pulse point there. 

“Yes,” you grit out, body bouncing and back raw with friction against the coarse cushion’s surface. Your breath stutters, your mind stutters. Even your blinks stutter, eyelids too lazy to keep up. “Please.” 

The pressure of his fingers there—it frightens you and has you tightening around him at the same time. But you would trust nobody more with your life than Kai. 

He presses his cheek to your calf to indulge in the sight of you like this: underneath him, folded in two, nowhere to go but to take his pistoning hips, cheeks blazing, and his fingers pressed into your windpipe. If the way he becomes sloppier and more desperate in his tempo has anything to say for it, it does something for him. 

“Gonna be my pretty little girlfriend, huh?” he says. His voice is tight—so is your belly. You’re both so close. Hopefully, this time he’ll let you cum. “Take you to every show; show you off to everybody. Fuck.” 

Brain like static and swimming with a pinched flow of oxygen, you slur your words. “You’re—hah—gonna have other girls all over you.” 

The taunting, split-second raise of his brows flips your belly. You tighten him again. If he keeps hitting that spot, tip ramming into the soft spot deep inside you that he’d taken such delicate care of finding last time, you’re going to burst into sparkling flame and firework. He growls, “Well, I’ll just have to knock you up so that they know I’m yours, huh?” 

Holy shit. You like the sound of that. Your nails dig into his wrist around your neck, but you cry out a pitchy, “Yes!” 

“Oh, you like that?” Kai releases your throat to take both your hips. You gulp for air, finding nothing but the thick air of sex and humid breaths, at the opportunity. He’s ramming into you like he’s found a purpose. “Isn’t this the perfect position to do it? Get you pregnant?” 

With every last bit of brain power you’ve got, teetering on the edge excruciatingly close to salvation, you groan a long, hoarse sound. “Fuck, yes! Please, Kai, inside—” A hot trail of tears roll down your temples. 

It’s all he’s got to hear to still inside you. His growl rumbles deep in his chest, holding you in place and filling you with his hot cum deep in your cunt. That feeling, coupled with his short grinds against your clit as he fucks his seed deeper, takes your soul by sinful claws and crumbles it down into nothing. You burst into a shaking, whimpering peak, sucking your lips into your mouth to bare through the sheer twisting of your insides and the flame that consumes up your thighs and cunt. 

He falls on you heavy, face in your neck. Warm kisses against your clammy skin meld with your slow floating down, the two of you a beautiful, nasty picture of fucked out. He stays right inside you—the absolute stillness of him, you think he has no plans of pulling out any time soon. His long fingers card through your sweaty locks of hair. 

Finally, he presses himself off you. You get a glimpse of the window behind him—fogged up and filthy with your affairs. Anybody to see the truck from the outside would know exactly what went on inside, but right now, you don’t care. Not one bit. Your panted breaths drag in nothing but musk and thick, hot air. The drumbeat in your chest tells you that, despite how you feel ripped straight from your body, you are very much still alive. More alive than ever. 

“Warm?” he says, pushing sticky hair off his forehead. He’s a mess, too. His hair is ruffled with your touch, his clothes rumpled the same, beads of sweat rolling down the planes of his cheeks and neck, and his eyes a lazy smolder. As much as he looks like sex personified, a soft smile twitches at his lips. 

You snort. You can’t help but feel giddy, here with him. You’re with him. Nothing has ever felt more right. Unplugged when he pulls out of you, your mess trickles down onto the seat below you. “Yeah,” you say. “Very.” 

Warm is not enough to begin to describe how you feel. In your ears, you hear whisperings. Soft and gentle. Perhaps it was divine intervention, or the fates lending you their word, or maybe just rational thought. It says: 

Home. You are home. 

✎୭ ashlynn's note how do we feel about this pair? i really didn't mean for this to get so long, but i ended up RLLY liking their chemistry. i had to do their story justice. also, i finished this with kai as a guitarist and then his drummer performance came out... hmm.

﹙🏷️ ﹚@lvrs-street2mmorrow , @soohashits , @f4iryfever , @arcturus444 , @linqed , @serenityism00 , @immelissaaa , @luv4cheol , @lickingan0rchid , @20-cms , @hhoneylix , @beestvng , @hyucktapes , @bewitchless , @prince-jjae , @blankliving , @yaoizee , @stormy1408 , @missychief1404 , if your tag isn't working, check the mentions part of your settings!

[farahgzza]

I am sorry Sophie I am sorry bisso I can't protect you from death !!🦜🐈

I told you i would love you forever.. but forever wasn’t long enough for us.. i miss u both of you

Have you ever told me about your pets? I would be a great listener, because I have suffered the bitterness of losing them, I have seen their bodies when they became lifeless bodies.

Please tell me how you treat your cat? How do you feed her with your love? How do you play with her? How do you pamper her? Will you be better than me at doing this with Sophie and bisso?

I raised them together for more than five years, they were like my children, I was afraid for them from everything, oh my God, I can't believe how I lost them, when the occupation army raided us and forced us to leave our home, I ran quickly to take them, so I took them with me and we fled the place and went to the sea, the weather was very, very cold and suddenly, without warning, the gunboats started to bombard us with fire and I screamed at my brothers and we fled the place quickly, I went, quickly to the tent where I put my cat and my bird, to see that the shrapnel had filled their bodies.

I sat trying to get the iron out of them even though they were dead but I had only some hope that they were alive. The bombing intensified and we had to rush out of the place, but I didn’t even bury their bodies. Every time I see their pictures I cry a lot.

I sit with myself just remembering all the moments that these two little ones suffered with me, my beloved cat and bird, oh my God I miss you, I remember when we were displaced in Rafah, my mother, my brothers and I, we didn’t have money to buy food for ourselves at all, and the bird hadn’t eaten for two days, so I went in the streets of Rafah in all the places looking for any man who sells bird food, and after I found a man selling their food at a very high price I was very happy about that but suddenly I remembered that I didn’t have money and I returned to my mother and with difficulty I got money and returned to the man and bought food and fed him, I could bear the suffering but I couldn’t bear to see them suffer because they had nothing to do with this damned war .

Now I look at my family and draw their pictures well in my imagination and try to get enough of them, because at any moment I might lose them because of this war, at any moment I might lose them just like I lost Sophie and bisso .

At any moment, the same suffering may happen to me again and I may lose someone dear to my heart. I cannot guarantee that the one I love will be around me.

For this reason, I will not forgive anyone who can donate a small amount to help me and my family get out and does not do so !!!

For this I will not forgive, and for all the moments I felt the bitterness of loss, I will not forgive anyone who could donate or share and did not do so.

✅️Vetted by @gazavetters , my number verified on the list is ( #283 )✅️

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[readingiskeepingmegoing]

I have thoughts on the relationship of Acacius and Lucilla. 

I have thoughts on the relationship of Acacius and Lucilla. 

!!Spoiler Warning!!

If you haven't seen the movie yet, maybe swerve this one until you have.

I am in no way a writer, and this is essentially just a word jumble that fell out of my brain. Please be gentle with me.  

Massive thanks to @schnarfer and @jessthebaker for listening to me yell and sharing your thoughts with me. Your insights were invaluable.    We see Acacius and Lucilla deeply in love in the movie. But I think they came to this over time.     

In the flashback scene of Lucilla taking Lucius from the arena after Maximus and Commodus have died, it appears to be Acacius who is helping him onto the horse. So from this we can infer that the pair have known each other for a long time, and that Acacius is loyal to Lucilla, just as he was loyal to Maximus. It makes me wonder if Maximus had maybe sent word to him to protect Lucilla and Lucius. A role that Acacius take seriously and sees through to the end. 

  Lucilla is held in high regard by the Roman people and even called Queen, and that gives her power, but it also makes her dangerous to the incumbent Emperor/s, and keeps her in constant personal danger.    Acacius was trained by Maximus. He clearly remains loyal to him even after his death. The Emperor after Commodus would no doubt have been suspicious of him and anyone who had served closely with Maximus. If one General could defeat an Emperor, then why not another?     I see the Emperor initially using Acacius as Lucilla's jailer. "Keep her in line or we will know you are not loyal" sort of thing. While also making sure that Lucilla knew that she was being watched. Not even safe to confide in her maids.    There will no doubt have been a bit of resentment there, especially from Lucilla, who doesn't know what lengths Acacius is going to, to keep them both alive and as free as possible.    Acacius falls in love with Lucilla before she falls in love with him. He may have known about Lucilla and Maxmus's relationship. And it is easy to see why he would have been attracted to her. The Emperor/s probably would have noticed a change in how he is with her, how he looked at her and so the manipulation would have changed. "Do what we say or we will send your wife to you on the battlefield, wouldn't it be terrible if something happened to her on the journey to you?" 

During time away from war, Acacius and Lucilla may have found their relationship to be strained in the beginning. He will have been so much lower in rank that her, the only thing they would have really have had in common at the start would have been their love of Maximus. Over time cordiality will have grown between them, deepening to a mutual respect.    Acacius comes home from battle grievously wounded, and that is when Lucilla realises that she loves him. The Emperor/s send nurses to care for him, and she sends them all away and tends him herself, pouring all of her newly discovered love into healing him, calling on her childhood nurse who is skilled in the arts of wise women. And during this time they get to truly know each other and their passionate love grows in earnest.    

I also feel as though Lucilla will not have wanted more children. She will not have wanted to hand the Emperor/s more leverage over her, nor have wanted to see her children chewed up and spit out by what Rome becomes. So Acacius respects her choice and encourages her to get whatever contraceptive remedies are most effective from her nurse, so that he can be her husband in every way. 

  They clearly have no secrets, he knew that Maximus was Lucius's father. He did not hesitate to try to free Lucius at Lucilla's request. This, to me, makes his sacrifice in the arena more heartbreaking. He is trying to protect his beloved wife from losing her son again, and upholding his loyalty to the man who trained him.  

If you made it all the way to the end, thank you for bearing with the rantings and ramblings of a madwoman.

Tagging because you asked so sweetly: @ghotifishreads @jennaispunk @missredherring

@noisynightmarepoetry @schnarfer @jessthebaker

[gamercookies]

Giving thanks for..

Genre: smut, enemies to lovers.

Word count:2.8k+

Warnings: rough!ni-ki, shy!y/n, fingering “under the table”, worshipping, unprotected sex, teasing, dirty talk, praising, throat-fucking, hate-fuck.  Note: I love making these stories idk why but they peak my interest so much!! I know it’s not thanksgiving yet but imma be busy on those days I’m off, but plz enjoy :3 and take care of urself 💕🙏🏼

You’ve been enemies for a really long time. Ni-ki, which you couldn't stand him, had been teasing and humiliating you throughout school. But then, out of the blue, he invited you to his family's Thanksgiving dinner. Sure, there would be the usual “I‘m grateful for…” moments, so you figured nothing too surprising would unfold, right?

Today you were just chilling at home alone while your parents were at their hometown enjoying thanksgiving dinner, you felt bored, alone. Of course you didn’t want to go because you didn’t feel like it. But once you finished an hour call with them, you stared up at the ceiling from the bed. 

You sigh in boredom, sitting back up from the bed. “What am I gonna do, I’m all alone.. I guess I can make dinner for myself and watch some Netflix or something.” Suddenly you receive a notification from your phone, you assume “oh! Maybe my parents sent a picture of themselves!” You check but your excited expression turns into shock and confusion.. it says: “Hey y/n, sorry to annoy you as always lol 😂, but anyways I was wondering if you’re interested in coming over to my house for thanksgiving I have no one to enjoy besides my parents.” 

“What?! Ni-ki.. he seriously invited you to his thanksgiving dinner, seriously?” You tell yourself blankly staring at the message for minutes. You roll your eyes and reply: 

“Fine. 😒Only because I also have nothing to do, fine I’ll come over. What time?” 

He types back: “Around 6PM, it will just be a normal thanksgiving, nothing out of the ordinary. 😊” 

… 

It’s 6PM and you’ve just arrived in front of his home, and you ring the doorbell. You stand there waiting for him or someone to open. You know you look stunning in that red dress, which perfectly highlights your curves without being overly short. Then Niki opens the door, “Hey y/n, come on in, I’ll introduce you to my parents.” As he gestured you to walk in. “Thank you.” You say, as he shuts the front door leading you to the dining table. You see a neatly organized dinning table, with a candle in the middle.  

Ni-ki clears this throat and speaks, “Mom, dad. This is y/n, a “friend” of mine I invited, I hope you guys don’t mind her.” His mom replies, “N-no we don’t mind! Hello, y/n. Please I don’t mind you inviting her over, please sit down and join us for dinner today.” You look at his mother and smile politely, as you take your seat. “Hello, Mrs. It’s nice to meet you, it’s kind enough of your son to invite me over, since my parents are at their hometown enjoying thanksgiving.” His father speaks behalf, “Oh no worries! That’s very nice of our son to do that, inviting someone like you over, you seem a very well polite girl so there’s no harm in that.” Ni-ki then sits down next to you, “Yeah, I felt like that’s a nice thing to do behalf that it’s thanksgiving, we should be kind to each other, right y/n?” As he says that sarcastically. 

You feel a bit nervous about meeting his parents, but you manage to smile and nod. “Of course, it's a good thing to invite friends over." You say softly, trying not to show how anxious you really feel. To pass the time waiting for the dinner his parents and especially you talk about how you’ve been, your parents, mostly about your life. But then his father asks, “Do you have a boyfriend yet, young lady?” 

You blush slightly, feeling a little embarrassed by the question. "Well, I haven't found anyone who really catches my interest yet," you admit shyly.

"Maybe one day soon though!" You add quickly, hoping to change the subject before things get too awkward. 

But it gets interrupted as soon as the food arrives. You smell all of the delicious aromas wafting from the dishes. "Wow... everything looks amazing!" You exclaim enthusiastically, trying to cover up your earlier blunder. “Who’s cutting the turkey today?” 

Niki looks around, his parents and you seem to be waiting for someone to cut into the turkey. He takes a deep breath and stands up. "I'll do it," he announces confidently. "After all, it's Thanksgiving.” With that said, he walks over to where the turkey is sitting and grabs a knife. He gives it one swift stroke, carving off a piece of meat before placing it onto a plate. You can’t help but deny the way he looks in that suit, the way he picks up that knife, it’s like you wanna touch him.

But you then take a bite of some turkey and gravy - it's even better than it smells! As you all savor the meal throughout the evening, saying what you’re grateful for, besides Niki.. and of course, remembering to keep dinner etiquette in mind, everything was smooth. But soon enough you feel ni-ki leaning against you, his hot breath in your ear. “You look damn good in this dress.. I can’t help but notice it so much.” You blush deeply at his compliment, your heart pounding in your chest. You're not used to receiving compliments like this, especially not from someone as attractive as him. “T-thanks.. I mean I have to look presentable to your parents..” After you finish your food, you place your fork down gently and lean back in your chair. You take a deep breath to calm your racing heart. “Was the food good, sweetie? I made it this morning.” His mother smiles softly at you. 

Before you could respond, you feel a hand sliding up and down your thigh making you gasp quietly. “What the..” you mutter to yourself, as Ni-ki continues doing that under the table. You try to play it cool despite losing focus on the conversation. 

"O-oh, your food was amazing!", you respond sincerely, doing your best to ignore Ni-ki’s wandering hand. "I've never had such delicious mashed potatoes before..." He then leans over you and whispers with a small smirk, “I didn’t invite you just for a normal thanksgiving, I also wanted something else.. to tease and make you feel humiliated in front of my parents.” But then, Ni-ki’s mother speaks trying to get your attention, “Sweetie? You okay..? I was asking you where do you plan to go for vacation next month with your parents?” Ni-ki then slides your panties aside and inserts 2 fingers inside you without warning.

“O-oh! I was thinking maybe Thailand-ah!” You say making you blush in embarrassment, “Sorry about that.. it’s just something accidentally hit me. You shift uncomfortably in your seat, doing your best to keep a neutral expression. 

“Thailand sounds lovely! It’s a wonderful place to travel.. when I was young..” she continues talking while you continue trying to hold your moans infront of them two. “Ni-ki.. stop that.. it’s embarrassing..” you whisper to him. “Come on~ your pussy deserves my fingers in you now, you make me crave you so much in that dress.” He says in a low, sultry voice. 

His mother notices the blush on your face and the discomfort in your voice, but assumes it's due to the heat of the room or perhaps nervousness from being in new surroundings.

"Oh dear, I apologize if we're making you uncomfortable. We just love sharing stories about our travels!", she says reassuringly. 

“N-no Mrs.. it’s not your fault it’s just it’s a bit hot right now.”, as you manage to choke out between stifled moans. Ni-Ki’s father then speaks, “We’ll clean up the mess, why don’t you show her your room.” 

Ni-Ki inserts a third finger, making you moan quietly. “Yes of course father, I’ll kindly show her my room.” And with that both of his parents head to the kitchen with the dirty plates, and utensils. You finally pull his hand away from your pussy, “What was that for Ni-ki!? You can’t just do that while I’m talking to them.. that’s embarrassing. I nearly came all over your hand.”  He winks, “Oh really? because I really wanted that pussy of yours.. I couldn’t resist.” “Now come on, let’s head to my room, shall we~?” He takes your hand to make you stand up so you can follow Ni-ki upstairs to his room. Once the door is closed behind you, he pins you against it.

"You know," he murmurs seductively, "Your little moans were music to my ears..." Before you can respond, he silences you with a passionate kiss. His tongue explores your mouth while his hands roam freely over your body. “I should worship your pussy.. eating you out, making you moan..~” 

You quickly responded blushing deep red. “N-no that’s a bad idea.. especially right now..” Hearing your protests, Ni-ki pulls away with a playful grin. "What's the fun in all this if we don't take risks?" He teases, pressing himself closer against you. “No im going home, I’m not doing your kinky ideas with you.”  Ni-ki seeing you attempt to leave, grabs your wrist tightly. "Running away so soon?" He chuckles darkly, pulling you back towards him. Without warning, he kisses you passionately once more. His other hand reaches down to cup your breast roughly through the fabric of your dress. 

“Mmph! F-fine I want it! But this is a one-time thing, we are still enemies.” You stumble to say, as he releases your wrist and moves to unzip your dress hastily. "Just remember..." he whispers into your ear, "This doesn't change anything between us..." And with that, he pushes you onto his bed and begins undressing you fully, and he kneels in front of you. “Let me worship your pussy.. I can tell it’s already wet from my fingers, naughty girl..” 

"F-fine! Go ahead," you finally relent, biting your lip nervously. “But only this once."  His tongue laps at your clit with expert precision, causing waves of pleasure to ripple through your body.

"Mmm...so tasty..." he murmurs against you before continuing his relentless assault on your sensitive nub. “Ah~! Fuck.. k-keep going..” you moan but you quickly cover your mouth making sure no one hears you. Ni-ki increases the pressure of his tongue on your clit. His hands grip your thighs tightly, holding you in place as he devours you and makes your legs tremble, "Oh God...I'm close!", you gasp out, writhing beneath him. Noticing your impending climax, Ni-ki slows his pace slightly, prolonging your torture. He looks up at you with a devilish grin.

"Not so fast, sweetheart..." he purrs, "I haven't finished yet." You whine desperately, “N-no please I’m close! I need to cum..”

"Oh, is that so?" he teases, trailing his tongue along your inner thigh. "That's the point isn't it?" he teases again, "To feel pleasure so intense that you can barely stand it?" “N-Niki!" you cry out, clenching the sheets beneath. "Please...don't tease me like this! I really need to cum.. come on.” Niki chuckles darkly, his eyes filled with mischief as he watches you squirm underneath him. He knew how to push your buttons, knew exactly what to say and do to get a rise out of you. “What's wrong, sweetness?" he purrs mockingly, "Can't handle a little teasing?" You whine again and looks at him with pleading eyes, “No! I mean yes! Just shut up and let me cum! You asshole! Please.. I need to cum so badly..!”

Niki laughs, his hot breath tickling your skin as he leans in closer. 

He takes a moment to savor the desperation lacing your words. "Fine," he concedes, sliding a finger inside of you. "But only because I want to see those pretty eyes roll back into your head." “Yes please..! I’m gonna.. fuck! Gonna..”, You quickly grab a pillow to cover your moans as you cum onto his face. Niki licks up every last drop of your sweet release, savoring the taste of you on his tongue. He pulls back slowly, standing up to look down at you with a satisfied smirk. “Good girl, I might just fuck you right now while we at it, how about you ride me?” 

"No way I’m not riding you! You’re an asshole!” As you stand up from his bed. “Plus your parents are washing dishes, we can’t just do that..they might hear us!” He smirks pushing you back onto the bed, “Oh come on.. we could make some noise, who cares about them..” He tries to persuade you. “You might like it when you’re handcuffed, I have them.” 

You roll your eyes and scoff at him, “Ugh.. whatever I’ll ride you while I’m handcuffed…” “Really?” Niki asks surprised, “Well alright then.” He goes to his drawer and takes out a pair of handcuffs. “Put these on.” “Alright.”, you say as you hold out your wrists for him to cuff you. Once he locks them, he smirks, “Fuck, you look sexy like this, handcuffed.. I can easily do anything to you.” He reaches down and unzips his pants, freeing his thick member. It throbs slightly as it bobs free from its confines.  "Here," he says, offering you his shaft. "Why don't you start by sucking on this?"

“Alright, I’ll please you..” You say as you lean down taking his cock in your mouth. You bob your head slowly licking his tip before sliding down further, taking half of his dick in your mouth. Without warning, he thrusts deeper into your mouth. His cock hits the back of your throat, causing you to gag around him. “Mmph!~Too big and deep.!” You manage to say while he doesn't stop though; instead, he continues to fuck your face ruthlessly.

You tease him back by saying, “I’ll pull my mouth out-” “No you won’t,” he says. “Or else I will kick you outta of my house and make sure you never return.” Then he forces his way inside your mouth again, his member hitting the back of your throat, forcing another round of gags from you. As he keeps fucking your throat, you slap his leg hard, trying to signal him to stop. Ignoring your weak attempt to resist, Niki continues to thrust into your mouth. He can feel the familiar tingling at the base of his spine, signaling his imminent release.

"That's it..." he groans, "I'm gonna cum..."

Before long, he explodes inside your mouth. His hot seed fills your mouth and spills onto your chin as he rides out his orgasm.  "There..." he pants, "That wasn't so bad was it? Now why don't you get those pretty legs of yours moving and ride me like a good girl." “O-okay..” You stutter out as you position yourself to sit on his cock despite being handcuffed. With a single thrust, he buries himself deep within you. 

"Fuck..." he groans, "So tight..." As he begins to move beneath you, bucking his hips upwards to meet each of your downward thrusts. The sound of skin slapping against skin fills the room as they make love roughy. "Ride me baby," he growls, "Show me how much of an asshole you think I am." “Fuck.. you..! Ah~!” , you moan out quietly. “J-just don’t thrust up more..” “Oh, is that what you want?" He teases, "Don't worry, I'll make sure to keep things gentle for you." Despite his promise, he continues to thrust up into you ruthlessly. His large member filling you over and over again until both of you are panting heavily. "You like that?" he growls quietly, "You like being fucked by an asshole like me?" 

“I hate you so much! Ahh~” you continue to moan out as you start to ride him faster, grinding your clit against him as you ride him. Niki groans deeply as you grind against him, his hands gripping your hips tightly. He can feel the heat building up within him again.

"Fucking hell..." he mutters, "You're such a naughty girl..." With one final thrust, he buries himself deep inside of you. His hot seed spurts inside of you as he releases inside of you. “Fuck.. I’m cumming too..!” Niki grunts as he feels you tighten around him, your own climax rippling through your body. He can feel every spasm and twitch of your pussy as you cum. "Good girl," he murmurs, "That was quite the show." As he uncuff and removes the handcuffs from your wrists, “There.. am I still an asshole to you, y/n? Despite panting you responded, “n-no.. you were good, I give you that. I guess we aren’t really enemies anymore.” 

Suddenly you both hear a knock, his father was yelling from the door while Ni-ki’s mother was standing next to him, “Ni-ki, y/n, Are you okay? I hear some noise and wanted to make sure you guys were okay!” 

Niki sighs as he hears his parent's voices, realizing that they've been too loud. He quickly pulls up his pants and straightens out his shirt. "Yeah dad, we're fine," he calls out, "Just having a little fun." He looks at you with a smirk, "Guess we better clean up real quick."

You smirk and laugh at him, “I told you this could’ve happened.” He laughs softly, "Yeah, you did." Niki gives you a playful wink, "Maybe next time we should try to be quieter especially you, y/n." As he listens to his parent's footsteps fade away, he relaxes again. Turning back to you, he grins mischievously. “One last thing.., I’m grateful today for eating your pussy, y/n.” 

[unhinged-as-hell]

Yknow-you can hate someone and still find them interesting at the same time- I am aware of what they bring to the story, they're very interesting and I'm glad they add what they do to the story-and I still hate em. Snape bullied children. He bullied Neville so much he became the kid's Boggart. Boggarts show a persons worst fear. At the time a infamous killer was supposedly on the lose, and his worst fear was his teacher. He bullied their kid. He didn't care about anything else except for Lily-He called her a slur though. And people wonder why she ditched him.

He told Voldemort to kill James and Harry but not Lily. He told Voldemort to kill a newborn.

You're saying this like I don't acknowledge the good things he's done. Again since they were influential to the series I kinda have to. But to overlook all the bad? Yeah not happening. I've dealt with my fair share of emotionally abusive teachers for that to happen. I've dealt with my share of emotional abuse.

You're assuming quite a bit about me. I've read the Harry Potter books a dozen times over. There what got me into reading in the first place. I've watched the movies more. It's my dad's and I favorite movie series. We watch them literally at least twice a year together. (by the way I'm quite alright with movie Snape. RIP Alan Rickman). My favorite memories are of talking about Harry Potter with my friends and dad. One of the only memories I remember from my childhood is when my parents would put on movies every single day. I've never read All The Young Dudes because I dislike how it characterizes some characters, and because I've been told it's very T swift coded and I really don't like her.

I am not a senseless hater. I am not senseless. I need reasons for my hate. I need proof. And I have it. That's why I changed my outlook on him. You have proof to 'love', I have to 'hate'. Let's go on our separate ways. Where either you block me or I block you. Or you just get off my blog. Love with the people who love with you. Leave me be.

I will use the anti snape tag. I'll still get interaction. I already have by fellow 'Snaters' I mean have you seen the likes and reblogs?

RIP James and Lily Potter you would've never let Harry name his kid 'Albus Severus' Potter

[letsbangts]

thank you || jjk

⤷ summary: your appreciation for the man you married

⟶ pairing: jungkook x reader

⟶ word count: 1.4k

⟶ genre: fluff, married couple au, established relationship au

⟶ content: husband!jk, fratboy!jk briefly mentioned, sweetheart kook that could cause cavities

⟶ warnings: none just pure fluff

a/n: so this is inspired by you may want to marry my husband. hope you enjoy! :) as always hope you enjoy & let me know what you think!

masterlist

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I have been married to the most extraordinary man for four years. I am planning on many more (a plan that has been in effect since our first date seven years ago and will continue to be). And for that, I feel I should express my gratitude.

Thank you. 

Honestly, I do not know what I am thankful for, for everything, I guess? For him always being there, for him staying by my side. For loving and treating me exactly how I have always wanted a man to. 

Now, you may wonder who this gentleman is, and I am so happy to tell you, Jeon Jungkook.

He was an easy man to fall in love with. I did it in one day.

Let us take a trip down memory lane, shall we? Seven years ago, a young lady struggling with dealing with college and her part-time job gets dragged out by her best friend (I guess I should be thanking her too) attends a year-end party at a frat house one late evening. About an hour later, she bumps into a boy who spills his drink on himself, though all he can do is say to her with the brightest smile: You okay there, Clumsy?

And when she looks up at his face, she realizes that this is no douche frat boy with beer on his shirt, but an unbelievably attractive high-spirited young man. She shyly replies: Yeah, I'm okay. That is when what was supposed to be quick party banter with a stranger turned into a night of great conversation and a polite walk home. That then turned into sweet exchanges of subtle flirtatious texts and small phone calls that had this young lady thinking: Uh-oh, there is something loveable about this person.

As the couple enjoyed many hangouts during the beginning of summer (by the end of the summer, I knew I wanted to marry him) amidst the ever-growing flirting, they finally acknowledged their immense attraction. Then the hangouts turn into dates when that lovely young man finally asks her out. That is when they would have officially kicked off their step from subtle flirting to very blatant obvious flirting—the beginning of a couple that would only continue their journey together.

So that was the start of us.

I am a bit biased, but I will create a list based on my experience of coexisting with him for about 2,556 days on the reasons I am thankful for him and thus love him. The following list of attributes is in no particular order because everything about him is so important to me.

Starting with the basics: His blindingly contagious smile, his gorgeous body filled with pure joy and positivity (and muscle), his adorable fluffy hair that falls over his forehead to match his striking brown eyes, and his effortlessly breathtaking passionate singing, of course.

He always knows how I am feeling and how to match his mood to whatever one I am in. He can read my face with just a simple glance. I have always appreciated how he adjusts his mood to fit my own. If I am in the dumps and his spirits are up, he brings them down to comfort me; even if he is down in the dumps, he lifts his spirits to keep a smile on my face. And for that:

Thank you.

If I could list just one of the things that made me fall in love with him from day one and still makes my heart flutter to this day, it would be his little acts that are natural for him, which shows how much of a gentleman he is. From always opening doors for me, making sure I walk on the inner side of the sidewalk, giving me his jacket to wear, or carrying me into the bed when I fall asleep on the couch. He may not know how much I appreciate the little things, but those little things always remind me I sincerely have the best man out there. 

Silently suffering with the things I put him through that he may not want to do. Sitting through the cliché chick flicks, trailing behind me in the store as I look at three different tops that he says all look great on me but always end up picking the one he can tell I want more, or even giving up his personal space and all feeling in his right arm because he knows I sleep much better entangled with him.

That brings me to something he may not know that I know about him. He holds in a lot more than he leads on. The song he tells me he is struggling to perfect but tells me it is only a little bit of writer's block. Yet I can see in his eyes that it stresses him much more than he says. Yet he is always quick to change topics with a:

How could you have gotten prettier while I was gone?

Or

So tell me about your day. Did anything interesting happen today?

If I did not know him so well, I could have easily missed these things, but I have come to learn about the kind of person he is. He is the type of person who always puts others before himself. He leads himself to take on the role of making sure others around him are okay. He already knows he does not have to hide his worries from me, but Jungkook still always tries to keep the minor worries to himself because he believes they are things I will excessively stress over on his behalf. (and he is right, I would, what can I say I love the guy)

We have come to know each other so well over the years, huh?

When looking for a dreamy, last-minute adventure, he is my man. He always comes with me on random just-cause trips, be it a road trip to the countryside for a break from the city or a train ride to the sea to walk by the shore.

Thank you.

If it is still unclear, here is the kind of man Jeon Jungkook is: He surprised me on my first day at my new job with flowers because he knew how nervous I was. He is a man who is always up early and goes out to surprise me every Sunday morning by putting a different kind of flower on my nightstand with a love note. A man that comes out from the minimart or gas station and says: Hold out your hand. And, voilà, a plastic ring he got from a gumball machine (had that been his proposal, my answer would have been yes).

I am sure you understand what I am trying to say by now, and he already knows how crazy I am about him. Wait! Did I mention that he is incredibly handsome? I will never get tired of looking at his handsome face.

If I am making him sound like a prince and our relationship sounds like a fairy tale, that is not too far off. I consider his proposal one for the books: Ever since you stumbled into my life, quite literally. I have never been able to picture being without you. Will you marry me, Clumsy?

Jungkook, I was serious about what I told you in our vows:

I always want more time with you, Jungkook. I want more time with the guy who takes me to get ice cream in the winter. I want more time sipping beer in bed with my drinking buddy. Although I desire our time together to be endless, we cannot live forever. But as long as I am alive, as long as I am a person on this planet, I will continue to follow you wherever the road takes us. So let us walk it together, alright?

Your dependability and loyalty are the qualities that show you are the most extraordinary husband, the most extraordinary man, and will be the most remarkable father one day. I know you will lead our future family into a lifetime of happiness because that is where you have been leading mine for seven years. I know you will continue to do so.

I will wrap this up because I can go on and on about how you are the most genuine, non-self-oriented gift I could have received. So, thank you for being you. I hope for the day that I get to tell our children about the kind of man their father is, the man Jeon Jungkook is, and about the love story I am honoured to be a part of.

(P.S. That day I mentioned will be coming in approximately nine months!)

With all my love, Clumsy xo