#and he’s been a lot shittier lately

[a-sketchy]

the yosukeism tally as of 6/18. been a very busy 10 days for him

the yosukeism tally as of 6/8 btw

[coquettepascal]

cranberry christmas

part iii of my series "texas sweet!" texas sweet masterlist and my masterlist

summary: it's your first christmas with the miller family, which brings all sorts of new feelings out of you and joel. he relieves your anxiety in a few giving ways (tis the season!)

tags: 18+, smut, anxious!reader, dilf!joel, joel is kind of a flop (but in a cute way), gentle!joel, found family (a little), the miller family being cute, reader has an anxiety attack, mentions of troubled family life, dorky christmas cheesiness, reader celebrates christmas, heavy on the f!reader for this one, reader has boobs, reader has hair, reader wears lingerie, dryhumping, almost powerbottom!joel (?), begging, nippleplay, hickeys, coming untouched, praise kink a little, realistic people in unrealistic situations, establishing of relationship

part i -> part ii -> part iii

a/n: this honestly got way out of hand, but i LOVE IT!! i hope you all have a lovely holiday season <3

(5.1k, not beta read)

“How long have you been a dad again?” 

You’re staring at the pile of gifts that Joel has “wrapped” so far. The striped paper is wrinkled on a few of them like he balled up the paper before wrapping the gift, other ones have glaring bald spots that reveal what they are without having to unwrap them. 

Joel huffs, grumbling to himself as he’s hunched on the floor, cutting out another square of paper to wrap a book. 

“Long enough to know that if I stay down here too long my back’ll hurt tomorrow,” he responds. 

The Christmas tree in his living room has been thoroughly decorated, leaving the lights to reflect from glass ornaments onto his face. Joel looks stressed tonight, but he’s just been stressed all the time lately. The colder months have brought shittier weather, which has him worried about snowfall on sites that couldn’t take it at the moment. Anytime you’ve seen him recently, his skin has still been cold from the outside, his nose slightly red. 

He looks at your pile of gifts, which have been neatly wrapped and finished with stick-on bows, and then scrunches his face, quietly mocking your words. You laugh, feigning offense as you tilt your head.

“Oh I’m sorry, I just assumed you would have been better with your hands, Joel,” you retort in return. Instantly his head is back up so he can look at you, a shocked expression on his face. 

“You sayin’ I’m no good with my hands?” He asks, a bit incredulous.

Your eyes are rolling before you can help it, smiling as you shake your head.

“No–” you start.

“I can prove that I got perfectly fine hands. Fingers too for that matter,” he dares.

Joel shoves the wrapping paper out of his way as he scoots his way over to you, his knees scrubbing the hardwood floor. He’s smiling stupidly, clearly excited to get out of wrapping gifts.

“Joel!!” You huff, trying to squirm away from him as he gets closer to you. You’ve learned he has a serious personal space problem.

“What, angel? S’not like anybody else is home,” he grins, nosing at your cheek.

And God. Yeah, finally, nobody is fucking home.

You and Joel have been something for the past however many months. Time has flown quickly, with life and love brushing past your skin in a wind of smiles. Work takes over Joel’s life before he realizes it, and it happens a lot. Maybe that would be a problem for most people, but you live right next door. It’s not like there’s space between you, especially since you can knock on his door whenever you want to.

But you’re both adults, and spontaneity requires energy that you both lack. 

The current schedule you’ve fallen into is seeing him on Friday evenings, whenever he gets home from work, a small date on Saturday if you have the energy, and family dinner on Sunday. Yes, you’ve now worked up the courage to look his daughters and brother in the eye. After you started showing up more often they began to bond with you more, especially his girls. Ellie and Sarah are both young, both smart, and as different as they are, it just makes for a firecracker-y relationship that’s hard not to interact with.

You’ve fallen into place as Joel’s something, as someone to his family.

The only problem you and Joel have is actually getting alone time. Since you both work so much, and he’s so family oriented, it’s been hell actually trying to get alone time with him. Not even just time to… do stuff. Just having a private moment is tough. Someone is always in his house, and as much as you have your own house, his feels more like home. 

You didn’t even set up your tree this year. The living room is bare of holiday cheer, save for the growing pile of presents that you’ve built in the corner near the couch. Finding home in Joel has not helped you find your place in Austin still, the lack of familial familiarity has sucked the love from your walls. The whole house just feels like dead skin that’s ready to flake away anytime you’re there. You want to brush it from its plot of land and go back to the place next door, where warm light and voices hold the roof down and raise it all the same. 

So yeah, your house isn’t really where you want to be, ever. Sacrificing sex with Joel isn’t the best, but you want to be around him more than anything. As long as he’s there, you don’t care so much if he’s getting you there. At least not usually. 

“Yeah, no one’s home,” you repeat back to him.

The incandescent bulbs that are strung onto the tree are casting light through his hair. Tiny flecks of grey are all you can get a view of right now as he pushes his nose beneath your jaw, pressing kisses to the tender skin that tingles under his lips. 

“Mhm,” he grunts, biting at your skin then kissing over it when you wince slightly. “N’they won’t be home for at least an hour.” His hands are skimming over the waistband of your pajama pants, warm fingers dipping to touch the band of your undies. 

“Yeah,” you say again. You’re losing words. It always feels like you lose your words, breath, and brain around him, but maybe it’s because you don’t need it. Joel keeps kissing at your neck as he reaches around, tapping your bum so you lift up for him. 

The lights in the room flash into pink as your eyes slide shut and your pants are tugged down more. It’s been too long, you need this, he needs this. 

Joel doesn’t hesitate. As soon as your pants are down enough, his hand is in your undies, skimming the hair there and then pressing against you. A surprised huff puffs into your neck as he feels how wet you’ve gotten, how quick. 

And then keys. And then the front door is swinging open. And then your pants are shoved up and everyone’s home and you aren’t in your mind, but it’s fine. It’s fine. 

You’ll find time before Christmas. 

—

Today is Shitmas.

“Shitmas. Y’know, like the day in Christmas week where you do a bunch of Christmas-y shit,” Tommy had informed you about a week ago, after you had slowly turned to look at him in the living room.

The Miller family does Shitmas on the 23rd of December, and supposedly it includes, but is not limited to, family pictures in the living room, cookie baking and decorating (lead by Sarah), and sock snowman making. 

They do this every year, and you can tell because as soon as you show up on Shitmas, you’re greeted by little sock snowmen. They line the stairs, each one with a year labelled on the belly. The first few are singular snowmen, but somewhere along the way it turns into two, marking when Ellie joined their family. Over the years they’ve obviously improved, but there’s something special about the first few on the stairs. Mismatched eyes, splattered glitter glue, and Joel’s printing on their bellies, instead of Sarah’s, all grace the earliest dated snowmen.

Ellie was the one to let you into the house today, since apparently Joel is helping Sarah bake and his hands are “nasty,” in Ellie’s words. 

“Kinda ugly, huh?” Ellie teases as you crouch to look at them on the stairs. Sarah calls out somewhere in the house, over the noise of the electric mixer, and it makes you huff a laugh.

“I think they’re endearing. It’s nice that Joel keeps these,” you reply. She somewhat agrees, an “I guess,” begrudgingly leaving her lips before Joel finally walks up and she skips off back to the kitchen. 

Joel’s drying his hands with a dishtowel still as he embraces you, sighing deeply. 

“Hey angel, sorry. Fuckin… Raw egg all over my hands,” he mutters as he squeezes you tight. The two of you pull apart for a moment, but not before Joel’s going back in and pressing a kiss to your forehead. As your palms settle against his chest, you can’t help but notice how warm he is, the skin beneath his shirt, hot and giving plushly under your fingers. 

“I like the girls’ snowmen,” you tell him fondly, peeking over your shoulder at them. When you look back at him, he’s looking at them, a softness in his eyes.

“Ellie hates doing those, she only does it because Sarah likes to.” 

—

Shitmas has been stupidly fun so far. Watching Tommy and Joel try their best to decorate cookies while Sarah makes Great British Bake Off worthy ones, all while Ellie smears smiley faces onto each one in an effort to make her sister proud has raised your spirits infinitely. You decorated a few cookies, but mostly watched in awe as Sarah expertly pressed sprinkles into each of the cookies and piped patterns onto them. It kind of felt like wasting cookies to not let her decorate them, even though she bakes them each year so everyone can participate. 

Now, you’re sitting on the couch. The cookies are all sitting on the kitchen counter, abandoned as each family member bustles around the house getting ready for the picture they’ll take in front of the tree. 

Surprisingly, Tommy is done getting ready first. Honestly you figured it would have been Joel, but maybe he’s putting some extra effort in today, rather than just running a comb through his hair. Tommy’s appearance at first is only surprising because of how meticulous he can be with his hair. Joel has told you about the times they’ve been late because his hair was “fighting” him some mornings. 

“Hair cooperated with me,” he says as he takes a seat next to you on the couch. Sometimes it feels like Tommy can either read your mind, or just says shit to take up space. You respond with a nod and a mild expression of acknowledgement, a little off in your own world. 

“You forget your flannel or somethin?” Tommy asks next. You almost nod again, on auto-pilot, but then stop.

“What?” You ask, head turning in his direction. He laughs in disbelief, and for a moment you feel embarrassment start burning at the base of your neck in fear he’s laughing at you. Were you told to bring something and didn’t?

“Hold on,” Tommy says, grunting as he curls up and off the couch a second later.

He leaves you alone in the living room, left to listen to the crackling fireplace channel on TV and the sound of Ellie protesting over Sarah wanting to put hairspray on her. 

Tommy’s heavy footsteps clomp around upstairs, leading into Joel’s bedroom. Not dissimilar to the girls downstairs, the rumble of Joel’s voice hits the floor and you roll your eyes, holding a laugh. There aren’t words you can make out, but you’re sure that Joel is mightily unhappy at the random intrusion of his brother.

The more you learn about this family, the more you feel like you’re falling into place, and the more you experience being in it, the farther away your own family feels.

You sit on the couch, still as can be, as you listen to the sound of Tommy rummaging around his older brother’s room, the sound of the hairspray being spritzed while Ellie groans. The sounds are feeling increasingly farther away, even though the girls are downstairs and the boys are only upstairs. Your eyes move to the cookies sitting on the counter, the messy dishes in the sink, and suddenly the stickiness from the icing beneath your nails is too much. 

What are you doing here? What is this Hallmark movie family you’ve found yourself in? 

The thump of your heart ramps up, pumping blood to your ears and making it rssshhhh in the back of your mind just as you begin to chase your breath. It’s all too nice, and maybe you aren’t entirely undeserving, but this is all so unfamiliar. Your own family isn’t terrible, but in comparison to this, it feels so dull. Christmas was just lights and presents before, not tradition and excitement the way that fucking Shitmas has been so far. You’re one activity into the day and it’s already so much better than what you can remember from back home. 

Maybe this is what influenced your decision to stay in Texas for the holidays. Maybe somewhere in you, you knew that this would be better. You’re sitting here, in another family’s home, taking your own family for granted, and for what? Some cookies and some pictures? For the sake of a relationship that isn’t even labelled yet? You deserve this, you deserve to chase your breath and wipe your tears. Selfish girl, if you didn’t feel right in your own family, what right do you have to find a place in theirs?

Nobody in this house asked you to be here but Joel, and really, you just showed up on his doorstep. 

Your eyes are shut as you catch your breath, squinched together so tightly that you see sparks of colour behind your eyelids. Tears keep slipping out and you wipe under your eyes politely, trying not to choke on any noises. The bathrooms are occupied, don’t make a fool of yourself in the living room. 

Tommy and Joel’s voices increase in volume until they’re in front of you, and you open your eyes to see the pair staring at you. Tommy avoids your eyes as soon as you’re looking back at him, while Joel just seems a little shocked.

“Hey,” Joel says, a festive red flannel in his grip. “Why don’t we head upstairs for a second?”

—

You cry for a long while before you actually manage to tell Joel what’s upset you. 

Sat on the edge of his bed, you cry into your palms until your cheeks are red and blotchy, and snot covers the inside of your palms and the bridge of your nose. It’s ugly, nasty, and not what you want to be doing at all. Your family is fine, just boring and emotionally detached, and you’re crying about it to the hardest working single father you know, who has essentially built his life on his own with the help of his brother. 

“I just feel so stupid and– and totally out of place. What have I done to earn my place here?” You ask him, eyes puffy and sad as you stare up at him.

Joel looks hurt. He has looked hurt for a long while, but you couldn’t see it when you were buried in your palms. His brows are pinched, his eyes wrinkled at the outer corners as he looks at you, almost seeming to pity you. For a moment his eyes flash away, not to anything in particular, but just to gather himself.

“Earn your place? Baby, what?” He questions. You stay quiet, feeling just as confused as he sounds. 

His hands clench where they rest on his thighs, then relax as he sighs, head tilting to the side so he can look at you again. 

“You don’t… earn your place in our family, darlin, you’re invited.”

How could you be so fucking dense?

Anyone that’s in Joel’s life, apart from Sarah, is somebody he actively invited in. His allowance of Tommy to be a near second father figure to Sarah and Ellie, his adoption of Ellie on its own,  the majority of his family has been let in. It could have been just him and Sarah, but he wanted more so he allowed more, and he allows more because he loves what the more in his life is. 

Joel takes a deep breath, again, and seems to steel his nerves. 

“You are so much more than invited into our family, angel, you’re welcomed wholly. But, if that’s too much right now and it’s bringing you worry, it’s fine for you to just be my girlfriend.”

Girlfriend.

That is not the topic right now, that is so not the topic right now, but he said the word. 

Joel loves the more in his life, and now he’s added you to that “more” officially. A label, a name, a little add-on to your identity. You’re putting “Joel’s Girlfriend” on your imaginary nametag in a million different fonts in your head before you realize he’s still talking. 

“You fit right in with us, baby. The girls love you, Tommy loves you, I love you, but you know that one,” he laughs. “It’s up to you if you wanna think of yourself as a part of our family, but know that we already do.” 

A smarter response should come out of your mouth here. Joel has just said a lot of touching things that have sunk into the meat of your body, warming you, but a smart response isn’t something you can manage.

“I’m your girlfriend?”  You ask.

Joel’s brows furrow. “Yeah?”

He says it the way an eighth grader would say “Duh.”

Your look of “When did this happen?” meets Joel’s look of “Where have you been?” at the same time, and only then does he realize. 

—

His apology for completely forgetting to ask you to be his official girlfriend for the last however many months is by cleaning you up really nicely for the photo.

Joel starts by fixing your hair, letting you sit between his knees as he gently pulls it away from your face. His hands run through it so carefully, a tenderness that only an experienced girl-dad like him could provide. When he’s finished, he leans down and presses a kiss to the top of your head, adding a mumbled “sorry” in, just to really save his ass. 

With anyone else you’d be upset at them for forgetting something so pivotal in a relationship, but with Joel you lend as much patience as he gives you. He’s busy, stupidly so, and with how close and intense the two of you are with one another, it’s not absurd for it to have slipped his mind. In some ways it’s flattering, and you’d like to ask how long he’s been thinking of you as his girlfriend. 

You’re just about to when he holds up the flannel in front of you, the one that he and the rest of his family are apparently wearing for the photo.

“You don’t have to. Seriously. We just talked about family and stuff and if you aren’t ready for that, then that’s–” He’s talking fast, but not as fast as you move to grab the flannel from him.

“I’m your girlfriend, of course I have to be in the picture.”

—

The rest of Shitmas was less, well, shit. 

Ellie and Sarah did their yearly sock snowmen after the photo was taken and they turned out lovely, or at least Sarah’s did. Ellie purposefully overstuffed hers with rice just to see how big she could make the snowman before he exploded, which resulted in him exploding later that evening when his rotund body toppled down the stairs.

Now it’s Christmas Eve, and you’re prepping for tomorrow morning. Your house still isn’t decorated in the slightest, the only festive thing about it being a laundry basket full of gifts that you’ll tote over to Joel’s tomorrow morning. 

Your lower back is absolutely killing you from wrapping the last of Joel’s gifts, something he had warned you of, but you had foolishly ignored. You figured it was an old man thing, not a consequence of too many presents. It feels like heaven when your back finally rests against the couch, your head leaning back as you sigh.

Since talking with Joel yesterday about the family stress and what the two of you are, you feel a hell of a lot better. Your lungs almost feel like they’re more open than before.

Just as you’re relaxing, eyes sliding shut in stressless bliss, someones at the door. 

You grunt as you peel yourself off the couch, trudging to the door and opening it. It’s strange that anyone is at your door, especially since Joel is out with Tommy and the girls going Christmas light spotting.

Or at least he’s supposed to be.

Joel stands at your door in a loose shirt and grey sweatpants, looking sheepish. 

“Do you want to come over for a bit?”

—

Alone. Finally, alone. 

You’re sat halfway on Joel’s lap, sucking a mark into his neck as he leans back, cursing softly. 

“Fuuuckin’ god, you know I missed you,” he groans. You nod into his skin, teething at the skin softly before pulling back to lick at the reddened spot. 

Your hands grip up his sides, feeling the solid width of his body, the plushness of his tummy when your hands sink into the right spot, and you want to whimper. He’s so stupidly big, and you’re so grateful he took his shirt off almost as soon as you both started making out.

Under the lights of the tree, he already looks fucked out. Joel is almost completely limp against the back of the couch, head leaned back to expose his thick throat, bitten down and bruised with marks he might regret in a few hours. His eyes are halfway shut, but dark as ever even in the warm glow of the room which also illuminates the contours that form along his tanned skin. 

He feels your eyes on him, his own opening in an attempt to meet yours, but it only brings attention to his face. Pink lips sit pretty on his face, slightly parted and puffy from kissing you dizzy earlier. Again, his eyes squeeze shut as you drag your nails up across his chest, only to fly open.

“Wait– Wait I have something,” Joel sputters. He slides you off his lap, scrambling to the Christmas tree with boyish urgency.

Joel returns with a red present, one that he actually wrapped fairly neatly.

It’d be sweet if you weren’t literally two seconds from tearing his grey sweats off his body and riding him into next year before he had shoved you off. 

“It’s not Christmas,” you point out, but he shakes his head and shoves the gift into your hands.

Begrudgingly, you unwrap the gift and lift the lid off the box beneath the paper. Laying flat in the bottom of the thin box, cushioned by white tissue paper, is a red, babydoll, nightie. A blush lashes across your cheeks as you lift it out of the box, discovering that the top of it has no bra cups, or really anything to support your tits at all. Red ribbon frames the bust of the nightie limply in a triangular shape, a fluttery mesh making up for the remainder of the piece. It looks and feels expensive, and on top of that it’s totally sexy, even more so since Joel is the one that bought it for you.

Joel had gone out and picked this just for you, he had probably thought about you wearing this every night for the past week. The idea of it is making you increasingly more aroused, your eyes flicking to his, then down to the bulge in his pants. 

“If it’s too much then I’ll return it but,” Joel’s chest is heaving with excitement, biting his lip as he looks at the nightie, “but I kind of want to fuck my beautiful girlfriend before Christmas.”

The two of you are upstairs quickly, with Joel settling in bed and you changing in the bathroom. 

You look at yourself in the reflection of the mirror once you’ve put the ensemble on, if you can call it that. The underwear that came with the nightie are barely a scrap of fabric. Normally you’d feel really uncomfortable in something like this, hyperfocusing on small things, like how the pouch of your belly looks, or how your tits don’t look nearly as full as you want them to, but not right now. 

Joel Miller just gave you, his official girlfriend, lingerie for Christmas. Because he wants to fuck you in it. 

Shamelessly, you open the door into Joel’s bedroom, basically bouncing onto the bed. 

“It’s so nice,” you tell him right away, wanting to show your gratitude. He’s down to his boxers as he lays beside you, eyes scanning up and down your body as you sit in his bed, almost as sexy as you are naked. 

Joel is still like that for almost a minute, making your brain run haywire. Tonight, he’s left the bedside light on. It’s probably so he can see you, but it’s always special when he lets you see him while you both get intimate. He doesn’t touch you at all, just scoots up the bed so he’s sitting upright and unblinking, until finally:

“I want you to use me,” Joel blurts out. 

It’s more surprising than the gift. Your voice is a tiny whine in the back of your throat, your mouth forming the word “what,” but before you can finish, his hands are on your hips, lifting you onto his thigh. 

“There, I want you to use me there,” he near-demands. 

You’re speechless. Joel is vocal in bed for sure, always talking a lot and never really quiet, but he hasn’t been so… commanding before. He’ll ask for things occasionally, a certain position or act, but not like this. Your hips are still as he pushes you down onto his thigh, the hair on it smushing into the softness of your skin. 

“C’mon, angel, I can feel you. Fuck my thigh, use me, I want it.” He encourages.

Joel’s hands grab onto you tighter now, starting to make you move your hips until you do it on your own. It feels like you’re making a dumb face, eyes wide and brows pinched together, but you can’t help but feel surprised.

This is Joel, your Joel, who was hesitant to have sex with the lights on, or even let you look at his dick in general, and now he’s making you hump his thigh? It’s completely new to you, but you aren’t mad.

Once you’ve picked up your own pace, and stabilized yourself with your hands on his shoulders, he reaches up. Joel keeps his eyes trained on your face as he takes advantage of how your tits are on full display in the nightie, plucking and rolling your nipples in his fingers all while talking you through what’s going on. 

“I know, I know you needed this,” he nods at you, “I needed it too, baby. Missed you like this.” 

It feels awfully good grinding against his thigh, and something about this newfound side of Joel with the added fact that you guys haven’t had a moment alone in probably a month, is making this so much more explosive. You roll your hips just right and gasp as one side of the undies slips into the slit of your cunt, the less soft edge of the elastic brushing your clit. A pathetic noise is ripped from you as your hips stutter, body shocked from the sudden direct stimulation.

“No,” Joel says right away. His hand reaches around and cups the bottom of your ass, letting his fingers sink into the crease between your butt and thigh as he drags you forward again. 

“Want your messy pussy all over me, please angel I need it so bad,” he says, guiding your movements as you start to go limp, head falling back. You barely register the feeling of his hand on your waist, trying to balance you as he fucks your wet cunt onto his leg. 

You let out a tiny noise as the elastic of the undies bites into your clit again and for whatever reason it makes Joel groan too. 

“S’exactly what I wanted, angel. Wanted my pretty girlfriend to come all over me an’ have her tits in my face.”

Whatever the hell has gotten into him you hope it gets into him again. He keeps rubbing you into his leg until you’re begging for more stimulation, your limp arms reaching to grab at his hand and push it up to your breasts again. 

“M-my nipples,” you beg softly, tears pricking at your eyes from the overstimulation on your clit. He doesn’t hesitate, half smiling as he starts playing with your nipples again.

“Like this? Is this gonna make my pretty baby come?” He teases as he rolls your nipples repeatedly between his fingers.

All of it is too much, but it’s exactly what you wanted at the same time. Your orgasm completely fucks you out as you keep your eyes on his, mouth hanging open dumbly as he keeps one hand playing with your nipple and the other reaching down to cup your ass and grind your cunt harder on his thigh. 

“Good girl, fuckin’ God,” Joel says, staring down as your ruined undies mash into his skin. You can’t tell if you’re coming down or if this orgasm is just super long for no reason, but if it was ending, it’s extended the moment Joel’s thigh clenches up.

You look down as you whimper, wondering why he’s chosen midway through your orgasm to fuck you up again, but then realize that he didn’t choose. 

A fat, pearly, translucent bead, sprouts from where the head of his cock lays beneath his black briefs. You can see it grow bigger in the light, listening as Joel groans and curses, his lower half thrashing beneath you. His chest is heaving and the hand on your ass is digging deep. 

“Jesus– God, baby, what you do to me,” he grits through his teeth as his back finally hits the headboard again. 

Frankly, you’re speechless. You didn’t realize that would happen, or really that it could happen. You weren’t even touching him and he came, he was only watching you. It isn’t like he shot a huge load of come, but still, something came out. 

Joel seems to be coming to the same conclusion as he breathily laughs, looking down at the mess before tugging you down onto him anyway, burying his nose in your hair. 

“Good gift,” he mumbles, maybe to you, maybe to himself. “Definitely buyin’ you another one next year.” [ <3 ]

----

please leave comments, rbs/tags, or drop into my askbox ! i love to chat and listen <3 tags (people who i think will like this?? maybe??) @bambisweethearts , @pascalssbabyy , @ajps-posts , @starcaviar , @hisvision , @mrs-hardy-hunnam-butler-pascal , @joeloverture , @mochamadeleines , @taeslarityy , @theweedisasterxoxo , @pawnshopb1ues , @hellishjoel , @slutty-express , @kyloispunk , @rainbowcosmicchaos , @stefanibear003 , @pedrostories [i plan on making an updates blog or something soon, apologies!]

[waterkittywriting]

Again with me! I have a lot of ideas lately😭

I hope I'm not disturbing you

I request a clingy reader(fem!reader) with Chuuya(can be incest or no, your choice), I will say headcannons or not, so basically, they get in a argument, and Chuuya hits her!!! Out of anger! *gasp* :O

And chuuya tries and will make it up to her

Can be smut!

Angst to Fluff to maybe Smut????

I'll Make It Up To You

Warnings: Fem!reader, Slight manipulation, Hurt/veryminimalcomfort, chuuya being a freaking meanie, I'm much better at hcs but I wanted to practice doing oneshots, Kinda ooc

Characters: Chuuya

A/N: ilysm you are NOT disturbing me 💯 please keep requesting!!! You give me tons of motivation. All I have on this account is smut so I just made it hurt/comfort I hope that's okay 😇😇

Your front door slams, you hear shit falling off the walls and know he must be pissed. You creep down the stairs, tip toeing over to your boyfriend, pulling him into a hug. "Not in the mood." He grumbles, pushing you off by the head.

You wince a little at the pain of him tugging your hair, but say nothing about it. "Did you have a bad day at work?" You ask gently, taking a step back. "Oh my God, can't you just leave me alone? Are you capable of that?!" He snaps, turning around, glaring daggers into your eyes. "..Chuuya.. I just wanted to make sure you're oka-" Smack!

You look up at him, and he stares down with guilty eyes. Neither of you say anything until.. "Chuuya! What the fuck!" You take another step back, trying to stop the tears welling in your eyes from falling. "What is wrong with you??" You yell, your voice squeaky.

"Doll.. I'm sorry. You know I just had a bad day at work." He sounded exasperated. Really? Over him hitting you?? You storm back up the stairs, into your shared bedroom, and lock the door behind you.

You slide down the walls, head in your hands as you contemplate everything that had just happened. Was it really your fault for bothering him? No, it couldn't have been, those ads you see on YouTube.. those billboards on the road, always say it's never the victims fault. But are you really a victim? He only hit you once.. does the really count. You sat here for a minute, your mind pacing.

Your train of thought is broken by a small knock on the door. You stand up immediately to open the door, but you stand in the way of letting him in. He looked guilty, genuinely, really guilty. "Baby girl.. I'm sorry.. I just-" you cut him off. "Yeah, you fucking should be!" You yell, the tears starting to fall from your eyes. "..Isn't that a bit.. dramatic?" He groans.

"Dramatic? You're calling me dramatic now?" You scoff, staring at him in the eye. He sighs. "Bunny.. you know that's not what I meant, please, just let me make it up to you." Bunny, Doll, Babygirl, you were fucking tired of it.

"Stop with the fucking pet names you cunt! I'm pissed at you and you're calling me baby girl?!" You can't help but laugh. You're so angry and it's not funny but you just can't stop laughing. "What is wrong with you?" You ask, watching a pang of guilt in his eyes, "Ill.. um.. ill give you some more time." You swear you could hear his voice getting all squeaky and high pitched too, but you didn't comment on it.

You sat on your bed, contemplating the meaning of your existence, when you check your phone. It had been two hours since he came up to check on you, two hours since you made him feel shittier than he made you. You felt like such a terrible person.

You get off your bed, slowly opening the door and creeping downstairs to the living room where Chuuya is sitting on the couch with a glass of wine and a book. He looked.. unbothered. Meanwhile you had tears and mascara streaming down your face.,

"Chuuya?" You whimper, he looks up, sighs and looks back down at his book, patting the couch next to him. "Come sit down." He mumbles, turning the page. You practically run over to the couch, digging your face into his side, he wraps his arm around your curled body as he sighs and puts the book down, keeping the wine.

"..I'm sorry. What I did was not right. There's no excuse for me to hit you like that." You hear his voice shaking, and you know he feels guilty. "It's okay.." you can't tell if you're telling the truth. You don't know whether it's okay. Can it ever be okay? "I'm sorry too.. for yelling at you and calling you a cunt." You sniffle, feeling, embarrassed? You felt overdramatic, like you needed to stop making a big deal out of such a little thing. It wasn't his fault, he was just stressed.

"Don't stress it." He sighs, leaning back into the couch. "I love you." He mumbles, and you mutter it right back, just like always. "I love you." That was true. And you knew that, and that's all that mattered. You two love each other and sometimes people in love make mistakes. Just keep telling yourself that.

"I'll make it up to you sweets." He mumbles, putting his glass down and laying his head on top of yours. "It's gonna be okay, I won't let this happen again." It feels like he's talking to himself more than you, but you still appreciate the sentiment.

"I love you." You whisper, one more time, before falling into a deep, well needed sleep.

[lychgate]

I am begging for more explanation about the Rex-gets-his-balls-cut-off AU

oh MAN its a few years old and very heavy themes but the summary of that part is that in this au post 66 Rex fallen way off da wagon and goes from shitty job to shittier job until he's getting traded around doing slave labor and one of the slavers he ends up with castrates their workers and then he got p feeble and weaker until he was basically a rat in a box and- oh yeah this is an au where Fives doesn't DIE because we all have one of those, so instead of being shot Fives is instead chased off world by some Corrie guards and his ship is shot down on a very remote planet/the reports labeled him then as deceased and Rex took that shit at face value (stupid) but it leaves a Fives stranded at the end of the war with that crucial information for the Republic that by the time he gets off world unfortunately is too late, we fast forward several years into Empire era where this AU begins, where Fives has made a (crappy) living off of bounty hunting and has a small task to put some feral critter out of it's misery and that feces covered mal fed creacher is REX and Fives actually hates him a lot at this point because he'd been mentally imagining Rex all these years as the visual epicenter of his blame for why all this Empire shit happened since he feels like he never listened to him back on Coruscant years ago. (he looked like this wet sock at about this point):

but u know now that he has the easiest opportunity to kill him it's literally so fucking pathetic looking that he can't so he like takes Rex on his ship to start fixing him up and taking care of him but it's more like when ur neighbor forces some old dying sick dog on u and u don't even like dogs but u had no choice so u just glare at the thing every day as it lays in ur house pooping on ur carpet and throwing up it's dinner every night. I only ever got crappy little doodles made of some sequences it's just a fun AU to poke around in but here's some when he initially brought Rex onboard and bro was just head to toe caked in dirt and scabs

ITS A REALLY metaphorical punching bag diary page like AU but it slowly deals with two WAY mentally fucked up people, who are approaching their issues at opposite ends of the stick, where Fives feels like he's been cheated out of a revenge kill, and Rex feels so pathetic and indebted to Fives that he's asking to be killed by Fives about every 35 minutes on his ship.

so yea doodles like these were made when he was like half a year into recovery, trying to gain some weight back, medically taking hormones to make up for his MISSING BALLS and just regrow some hairs, attempted recovery to atrophied muscles, and other bummer things like keeping radios on all the time so he can hear and keep track of surviving clones in the Empire for no significant advantage other then to know which ones are still alive and junk. IT DOES GET BETTER they do work to become close again but not without a lot of bumpy roads cause neither of them are healthy

[agentstarkid]

FOREVER IS THE SWEETEST CON ✦ DR3

✦ DEBRIEF: While isolating in a hotel room, some things can't be ignored any more and, as stars fade in the dawn's light, some bonds were meant to be broken, like whispers carried away by the desert wind.

✦ PAIRING: daniel ricciardo x famous!latina!reader

✦ CHECKERED FLAG: 4.3K words

✦ TRACK LIMITS: female!reader, latina!reader, established relationship, lots of angst, covid-19 & quarantine mentions, there's a nine-year age gap, forced proximity (if you squint), language.

✦ MAY'S RADIO: holis babes! before you all come for me with your pitchforks, I'd like to remind you that english is not my first language so I wanna give a big biiig thank you to Tally (@onceuponaoneshotfanfic) for englishing this baby and for encouraging me to write it when I told her I was thinking about it ❤️ I actually wrote this back in october and I can finally post it!! It is tied to Saudade, if you want more context to their story. This is not the end, okay?... or is it? hehe byeee

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Wednesday, just a day before his scheduled morning session, the symptoms began to show. They knew from the moment he started to complain about his body aching all over. The uncertainty and concern were present from the first moment, intensifying when, as a precaution, he underwent several medical tests to verify whether he suffered from Covid or not. However, the first test came back negative. It was a breath of relief, at least for a moment. But on Friday afternoon the alarms went off, and the Aussie driver's negative became a terrifying positive that further disrupted the false peace that they had tried so hard to preserve in recent weeks.

Practice for the opening race was scheduled for the following Friday, and having to isolate in accordance with local regulations meant that Daniel would go into the new season without having driven the car since last month.

Locked away from the outside world, tension brewed within the confines of a hotel room. This forced proximity only served to accentuate the strains that had long been present. The fraying edges of your relationship were now illuminated under the harsh fluorescent lights, magnified by the claustrophobic confinement of quarantine.

You entered the bedroom and found him lying on the bed, wearing a navy shirt and a pair of sweats, his feet locked at the ankles and his attention focused on his phone.

“How are you feeling?”

“’m fine,” he sighed.

“Do you need anything?” you tried again.

“Nope.”

You went to lay down on your side of the bed. “Heard Lando had problems with the car today.”

“Seems the car is even shittier than last year.” He let out a dry laugh. “But I wouldn’t know because I’m stuck in this fucking hotel room for the rest of the week.”

“Look on the bright side, you’ve got a couple of extra days to relax before the craziness of the season begins.” You gave a half shrug.

“Wouldn’t exactly call this relaxing. But you wouldn’t understand.”

“What does that mean? I know how you’re feeling-”

He shook his head and huffed, dropping his phone on the bed. “No, that’s the thing. You don’t know, sweetheart. How would you know? You didn’t get a fucking positive result and was forced to stay inside these walls, watching how everyone else gets the chance to freely try out their cars before they really have to focus on the season. You’re only stuck here as a precaution. It’s funny, you know…” He snorted. “You’ve been traveling a lot lately. And it’s been fine in the meantime. But as soon as you get here—”

“Are you saying that all of this is my fault?” The tension in the room was palpable as the argument raged on.

He rubbed his forehead as he looked up at the ceiling. He wouldn't even look at you — and somehow that annoyed you even more.

“Oh, I’m sorry for not being considerate enough to also get sick, it’s not like I can actually control that. But that might be my fucking fault, too. I’m too fucking busy being worried about your health. My bad.” You closed your eyes and took a deep breath, trying to calm your beating heart. You turned back over to face away from him.

You felt so tired and hurt. In the last few days, these walls have felt like a battleground, waiting for you to engage in combat. And all you keep doing is try to stand tall pretending to be the bravest soldier.

It all began with the relentless hate that had been heaped upon you recently. At first, it was fine, it was expected, and you would laugh about the things they were saying. You must have been blinded by the honeymoon phase, as some people call it, but all things must come to an end. Lately, Daniel's devoted fans had turned into a fierce mob, outraged and blaming you for his performance last year, saying it was all the time he's been spending with you instead of focusing on his career. The hateful comments and messages had started to poison the relationship.

You guessed that it was easier when you were the only target. It was bearable to an extent; you could take it. Wasn't the first time it happened, and you supposed it was all part of the “big show”. But once they started targeting him too – things took a 180-degree turn.

Daniel and you had been inseparable for two years, celebrating your anniversary not too long ago. Now, you both lay silently in your hotel room; the once fiery love now reduced to smoldering embers.

He sighed and turned his head in your direction. “Babe, I—”

“It’s okay.” You mumbled squeezing your eyes shut, trying to keep in the tears that threatened to fall. “Goodnight.”

He covered his eyes with his hands; he didn’t mean to snap at you like that. He could hear you taking deep breaths, and something in his chest felt heavy. This need to bicker, to fight with you had been present for a few weeks, but lately had reached an all-time high.

The 2021 Formula 1 season had brought with it a surge of emotions that Daniel hadn't anticipated. As he settled into his new role with McLaren, the pressure to prove he was the more experienced driver in his first year with the team weighed heavily on his shoulders.

Every race was a chance to show the world that he still had what it took to compete at the highest level of motorsport. The expectations were high, and the scrutiny was relentless. Fans, the media, and fellow drivers all wondered if the Honey Badger could return to his former glory.

The season brought a mix of highs and lows. The highlight, undoubtedly, was the victory in Monza. It was a moment that should have been celebrated longer as a triumph for both Daniel and McLaren. However, amidst the jubilation, there was a bitter undercurrent of frustration. It seemed that the team's focus was already shifting to the next race, their first win in 12 years overshadowed by the relentless march of time.

Daniel's frustration grew as he watched the spotlight turn away from Monza's victory. He yearned for the recognition, the culmination of a year of hard work and perseverance. But as the season continued, the pressure only increased. The wins were non-existent, and the losses weighed heavily on him, each one gnawing at his confidence.

The expectations for the coming season were higher than ever. He knew that he had to perform at his best to silence the critics and prove that he still had that competitive edge. The weight of those expectations seemed to hang over him, a constant reminder of the challenges that lay ahead.

Each race weekend would become a test, a chance to prove himself once again. The roar of the engines, the smell of burning rubber, and the pressure of the competition were all part of the Formula 1 world that he loved, but they also added to the mounting stress.

You couldn’t sleep at all.

Sleep evaded you that night. Your mind was racing a mile a minute, trying to figure out how to fix the fractured parts of the relationship. Where did it go wrong? The question replayed over and over again like a broken record.

You stretched your arm to grab your phone from the nightstand and check the time.

2:30 A.M. Just a little bit less than 4 hours until the sun would come out. And 5 more days until you both would be free to leave this room.

You stood up from the bed and went to Daniel’s bedside table to look for the fingertip pulse oximeter. Once you found it, you knelt down and took his hand, careful not to wake him, and placed the oximeter on the tip of his index finger. After a few seconds of waiting for the values to remain constant, you sighed with relief when a big 98 appeared under the oxygen saturation. Thankfully, his symptoms were not of great concern, and he showed constant improvements. But you didn’t want to risk it, so every few hours you made sure to check his vitals just so you could have a little peace of mind. Especially when he was sleeping.

You couldn’t help but look at him for a moment. He looked to be in a profound state of sleep, so calm and so beautiful. His features, usually animated and lively, rested in a serene calm. You observed the rise and fall of his chest, the tranquil expressions that danced across his face, and the gentle harmony of his breathing. In these hushed moments, it was like nothing had changed, where you were still you and he was still the same Daniel that promised you that you were a team.

As you gazed upon him, your heart was a mix of conflicting emotions. On one hand, there was the undeniable warmth and affection that comes from witnessing his vulnerability in slumber. Yet, a touch of sadness lingered, a bittersweet reminder of the unresolved tension from the previous fight. The serenity of his sleep served as a poignant backdrop to your disagreements, and you desperately longed for the chance to mend the rift and return to the peace you once shared.

It didn’t take long for the tears to appear again and you couldn’t help but curse being so sensitive. You stood up; you knew that going back to bed was useless, so you headed out of the room. You ended up curled up on the couch in the dark living room of your hotel room, the soft glow of your phone screen casting a bright light on your tear-streaked face. You debated whether calling one of the girls or just text them in need of letting all this helplessness out. But you didn't want to bother them with your problems, you knew they already had enough with their owns. So, you gave up on the idea.

Your relationship with Daniel had been a whirlwind of love and excitement, a passionate journey that had weathered ups and downs, but always coming out stronger on the other side. Now, you weren’t so sure you would come out of this unscathed.

Was it time to let it go? You couldn’t help but wonder. You weren’t new to this predicament. It happened before with your last relationship. But with Harry, the revelation that it was over came naturally and gently. You both were on the same page and knew it was inevitable. But with Daniel, your heart told you to continue, begged you to keep fighting while your mind was sending out warning signals that you chose to completely ignore.

The bright Bahraini sun shone through the big windows when Daniel, out of habit, rolled over to pull your body closer and instead felt the coldness of the sheets on your side of the bed. He opened his eyes and searched around the room. The bathroom door was open, and the lights were off, so you couldn’t be there. He stood up and left the room, yawning. He found you in the same place you ended up last night, curled up and holding a pillow to your chest.

The dark bags under your eyes were more prominent this morning. He couldn't help but feel a pang of guilt in his chest at the sight of you. He got closer and leaned down to place a tender kiss on your forehead and felt you stir for a moment before slowly opening your eyes. You rubbed your eyes before looking up at him silently.

“Hey.”

“Hi,” you said in a sleepy voice.

“What are you doing here?” he yawned, taking a seat on the couch as you moved back to give him space.

“Couldn’t sleep,” you replied in a muted voice, eyes downcast, fiddling with your fingernails.

And that was the routine after an argument: fight. One of you would try to walk away to calm down (most of the time it was you). Pretend nothing happened and go back to normal – well, whatever normal meant these days. Repeat.

A heavy silence settled between you. He leaned back on the couch, just staring at your face. He knew he should say something. Apologize even. But the words refused to come out. Meanwhile, thoughts swirled in your mind, doubts that had been lingering for a while now. Was it all in your head? Had you been the problem all along?

No.

As the seconds ticked by, the fog began to lift, and with it came a newfound clarity. It wasn't all in your head, and you weren't the sole problem. You had believed for so long it was your responsibility to make things right, to hold everything together. But it had been a shared responsibility, a partnership that had eroded in different ways.

Yes. You had both contributed to this.

You had underestimated the significance of his actions, his choices, and his words. In the process of taking all the blame, you had overlooked how he had let things slip away, how he had failed to communicate, and how he had allowed the distance to grow. You realized that it was a two-way street, and while you had been quick to accept responsibility for your part, it was time for both of you to acknowledge your roles in your shared demise.

Something within you was stirring, a growing realization that you couldn't keep shouldering the blame for everything. It wasn't fair to you, nor was it the path to a healthy and equal relationship.

"I can't do this anymore, Daniel," you murmured, your eyes brimming with sadness.

"No, no no— no we're not doing this—"

“Amor, please,” you pleaded in a whisper. Tears welled up in your eyes, but your resolve held firm. “We've been arguing about everything lately. All of this is hurting us. Your fans—”

Daniel's heart ached, but he lashed out in defense. “You know it's not that simple! I can't control what my fans say—”

Your irritation boiled over. "But you can defend me, Daniel! You can stand up for us!”

Frustration welled up in Daniel, his voice growing sharper. "I'm trying to protect what's left of my career, YN! Last season was awful for me, apart from one win, which was insignificant, apparently. I've got my own fucking problems!” He stood up forcefully and started to pace around the room.

Your anger flared and big angry tears streamed down your face. “You think it's only your career that's on the line? What about us? We're supposed to be a team, supporting each other. ‘Us against everything else’, remember? But you're making it all about you!” you screamed at him, standing up from where you were previously sitting.

He suddenly stopped in front of you. “You're too young and naive to understand the pressure I'm under. It's not just about us. It's about my career, it’s about my life! And that’s very rich coming from you,” he scoffed. “What about your fans, huh? The hate I'm getting from them and other people, it's taking a fucking toll!” he hissed. You stared at him, feeling shocked by his words. He kept going. “And let’s not forget how fucking clingy you’ve been. You suffocate me sometimes. Must be nice to have a job where you can just drop everything anytime you want and take paid vacations to follow me around.”

His words left you feeling as though the ground had been yanked from beneath your feet.

You're too young and naive. How fucking clingy you’ve been — You suffocate me sometimes. His words echoed incessantly in your mind like a stuck playback.

When did the insecurities shared transform into arrows, aimed at your most profound wounds?

You snapped, “You knew what you were getting into when we started dating. And I warned you. I gave you an out so many times, but you decided to stay.” A bitter laugh left your mouth. “You said I was the greatest risk you’ve ever taken and the greatest reward—”

“And I did think that, YN,” he uttered. “We lived inside a bubble for so long, but reality is different. Maybe we rushed into this too soon.”

“Come on, bury my heart deeper, Danielito. If that's what you're trying to do— it's working,” you said with a pained smile, eyes only focused on him.

The room seemed to grow colder, and your voices decreased in volume. But the damage had been done. Daniel realized the pain his words had caused, but his own frustration clouded his judgment. “This wouldn’t even be a problem, if you wouldn’t make one out of it,” he muttered bitterly.

“Please, don’t make this worse than it already is,” you agonized; your voice was shaky. Invisible claws of grief and anguish were tearing at the muscles and tendons in your chest. You never knew that emotions could possess such tangible, physical presence.

“If only we had met on different grounds. Then maybe things would have been different, we would be different.”

You couldn't help but add more fuel to the fire. You lacked the capacity for a graceful exit, and if you were aflame, you'd ensure that he, too, would turn to ashes. “Do you mean what if I was different?” A new wave of anger swept over you.

That question caught him off guard, forcing Daniel to pause and stare at you, honest surprise and confusion coloring his face. “What?”

Your voice trembled with a mix of frustration and hurt as you confronted him. “Heidi's constant presence in the paddock these past few months, the way you've been talking to her, and how people are speculating about you two... It's causing me to doubt myself and my place in your life.”

Daniel's brows furrowed, and his voice carried irritation. “YN, this is ridiculous. Heidi is just a friend. We've been through this countless times.”

You inched forward as you tried to make him understand. “I know she's your friend, but the way you've been spending time with her lately... it's different. I can't shake off the feeling that there might be something more.”

Daniel rolled his eyes, his frustration mounting. “You're being crazy, YN. We're just friends, and it's unfair of you to accuse me, and especially her, like this.” In a further defensive move, he shot back, “You're the one who had those cheating rumors circulating, not me. You should know how destructive and unfounded these accusations can be. And now, you're doing the same thing with Heidi?”

It felt like a hard punch to your gut, you took in a sharp breath, “So, you're bringing this up again? We already cleared the air about those false accusations when they hit us. I would never dare cheat on you!” Your frustration was palpable.

“And why is it so fucking hard to believe I wouldn’t either?” Suddenly, you could clearly see how sadness clouded his features.

The room seemed to close in around you both. Then, all of a sudden, you realized that healing from this and moving forward required a level of understanding and compassion that seemed beyond reach in the heat of this argument.

In that moment, you knew for certain that it was over. The love you had once celebrated, the memories you had shared, now felt like distant echoes of a happier time.

How did you both allow things to spiral into such chaos? This living room had transformed into a battleground, where words cut like knives. Where were the Daniel and YN who were deeply in love? The ones who, for the first time, felt safe to be vulnerable and discuss a future they had envisioned together; one with a couple of tiny little feet running around the farm in a couple of years and joking about how wild a perfect mix of Australian and Latino genes would be. Now, you stood face to face, unrecognizable, refusing to show any sign of surrender.

It wasn’t supposed to end like this.

It wasn’t supposed to end at all.

The silence in the room was suffocating. All the energy and adrenaline left your body at once. You felt emotionally drained, as though a storm had swept through your heart and left it battered and exhausted.

You took a sit back on the couch and ran your hands across your face, squeezing your eyes shut. “We can't go on like this.”

So, this is it, Daniel thought. Dread twisted in his gut; he felt like he might throw up. His shoulders slumped and he raked his fingers through his hair as he took a seat next to you. The vulnerability in your words cut him deeply, but he understood the gravity of the situation. "You're right," he admitted, his voice choked with emotion. “We tried, didn’t we? We gave it our best shot” a sad smile adorned his tired face. “For what it’s worth, I really am sorry. I never wanted to hurt you.” he murmured as tears shone in his eyes.

“I'm sorry, too. I wanted to make it work. I always just wanted to be the one.” Your heart seemed to shatter into even smaller fragments. As you wiped away a single tear that trickled down your cheek, the physical act of brushing it away only served to accentuate the profound pain that had settled within your chest. It felt as though each tear carried with it a piece of your shattered dreams and the love that was now slipping through your fingers like grains of sand. In that fleeting moment, your heartache intensified, and you realized that this breakup was leaving you more broken than you had ever thought possible.

As the final words echoed in the room, you, your tears spent, turned and walked out into the bedroom, leaving Daniel alone with the weight of what had just transpired.

As soon as you left the room, you locked yourself in the bathroom and texted Blake. You asked him if there was any chance, he could talk to the hotel so you could get another room for the remaining time you had to be in quarantine. The request took him by complete surprise, and you explained shortly that Daniel and you had just broken up.

He assured you he was going to do everything in his power to get you a new room. You were sure that as soon as you hung up the phone, he was already texting Daniel asking for a better explanation.

As you sat on the bathroom floor, the pain was all-encompassing, a relentless throb deep within your chest that left you gasping for air. It felt as though a gaping void had taken up residence in your heart, and you weren’t sure how to fill it.

Tears flowed freely down your cheeks. Numbness had started to settle in. A surreal feeling that this couldn't be real, that you would wake up from this nightmare at any moment. You wished that a switch would flip and make it all go away, but the pain persisted.

Bitterness and anger boiled within you. You felt wronged by the universe, by the cruel twist of fate that had torn you both apart. You resented the public scrutiny, the relentless judgment from fans and strangers alike, and the demands of your high-profile careers.

You felt unbearably alone. You longed for Daniel’s presence, for the familiar comfort of his arms, but he was no longer yours to hold. Your heart ached for the man you thought, for a short period, you would spend the rest of your life with, even though you knew that was no longer possible. The pain of heartbreak was, for you, an agonizing and inescapable reality, and you had yet to discover how to heal and move forward.

Turns out Blake went beyond of what you initially asked for. He arranged for you to take the PCR test again to confirm that you had not contracted the virus while sharing a room with Daniel.

After two slow and torturous days, where you spent your time curled up on the couch and Daniel spent his in the bedroom — a decision you made, he was the sick one after all. After two consecutive negative results, you were given the green light to leave. You had already packed your things after your call with Blake a few days ago, hoping you could change rooms. He had asked you if you needed anything else, saying he was willing to facilitate everything for you. He saw you as a fundamental part of this little dysfunctional family and had developed a deep affection for you. You couldn’t thank him enough.

Soon you had a plane waiting to take you back to L.A., to a house, not a home, all alone. You were leaving behind what you've come to realize was your home in the last two years.

You awkwardly said goodbye to Daniel. Your voice sounded tired, while he shifted on his feet on the threshold of the bedroom door. Curls wild, beard a bit longer than the past days and the bags under his eyes looked even more prominent. Despite the visible signs of weariness on both of you, you still couldn't draw any solace from the shared pain.

You knew you had to find your own path, to heal from these wounds, and to rediscover who you were outside of the relationship. As the plane took off, you made a silent promise to yourself to emerge from this ordeal stronger, wiser, and ready to face the world, no matter how unforgiving it might be.

[amymbona]

hii I wanted to make a request for Arthur from La chimera where reader is the younger sister of Beniamina who has been secluding herself from her family and others since her sister’s disappearance. she’s very soft spoken and shy. she finds comfort in Arthur when he returns from jail and the lines between them begin to blur from a friendship to a romance 🥲🥲 rlly hope that makes senseee

THAT'S SUCH A GOOD IDEA WHAT THE HELL. THE TRAGEDY OF IT. 😫😫😫😫😫

Ever since the disappearance of your sister, you haven't spoken a full sentence, completely secluding yourself from the outer world. And not just that. You've completely abandoned your past life, got rid of all the hints that have ever resembled your sister.

Out of the whole family, you are definitely the one grieving the hardest. Most of your siblings, even your mother seem to have accepted the current circumstances and got adapted to the life without Beniamina. But you're unable to do so.

Despite erasing every single hint of your sister's existence, which you initially thought was going to help you cope, you're totally unable to move on. Locked in the crumbling shack left after Beniamina's late boyfriend who you haven't heard of for good three years, you only go out to use the shittier, even tinier shack to resemble a toilet stall. Other than that, it's possible to say you haven't seen the sunlight in years.

The quiet, from the other perspective tranquil, way of living is disturbed on a random January night when the floorboards freak under a pair of heavy footsteps. With a startled gasp, you snap awake and almost fall down from the bed, immediately reaching a lighter to provide you with some light in the dark night.

In front of you, his figure outlined by the moonlight that peeks through the cracks in the walls stands the man you haven't seen for so many years. The lanky englishman with his usual pouty expression and slouched shoulders as he's struggling to fit under the low ceiling of the room. And he seems to be equally as bewildered as you to discover someone occupying his past home.

It could be read in both of your expressions, the dreamy glow in your eyes, the slight part of your lips and the way both of you release a shaky breath. It's so evident that some hidden parts of you two were longing to be met with the sight of one person only. And both of your hearts break to discover that mysterious intruder on the other side isn't Beniamina.

Without a word, you scramble out of bed and tumble towards Arthur, falling right into his chest. His arms envelop you instantly, face buried in your hair as your clutch tightly onto the linen of his jacket. The hold is tight, so tight that you two might actually blend into one another with the force he is pulling you into him, both of you seeking another person's body within the embrace.

You stand like this for so long, saying absolutely nothing, because no words at needed. Both of you know what you feel, what exactly is going on in your minds and how disappointed you two are to face the other person. That night, you fall asleep, for the first time in years, held and comforted by the warmth of another, not shivering under the assault of the winter air.

Over the next few days, your life improves significantly. The two of you barely share a word and yet it's undeniable that there's so some sort of a connection between the two of you, as you learn to co-exist in mutual presence. Arthur is there to help you with tough body jobs, able to carry bigger logs for a fire and repair a hole in the roof. Thanks to him, you actually spend some more time outside, allowing your pale face to catch some colour.

Much to your disappointment, Arthur keeps disappearing quite a lot, never telling you where exactly. Sometimes, he's gone for the whole day, leaving you alone and just with your thoughts, making you worry that he's gonna leave you too. And with how close you've re-grown to Arthur over the short period of time, finding a much needed substitute for your long lost sister, you couldn't handle losing him as well.

It's almost a miracle how much has Arthur managed to improve your life, to give it a new sense of importance, purely because he allows you to be yourself. He never tells you that it's time to move on, to finally find peace in the life you have at the moment and get over the loss of you sister. He simply accepts you and your feelings, allows to let your tears get soaked into the fabric of his shirt and strokes your back as you slowly doze off against his chest. He cries too, when you're asleep, because he can't allow himself to look vulnerable in front of you, not when he's your protector now.

Arthur has found a resemblance of Beniamina in yourself, the same set of freckles almost mirroring hers splayed over your cheeks, in the way your lips curve up when you eventually find a reason to smile - that being anything but genuine joy - and the dimples in your cheeks. You share the same mannerisms with your sister, the tenderness of your touch and natural care you take about Arthur, smoothing down the crumpled fabric of his shirt and making coffee for him. Too much things remind you of his sister.

And perhaps that is the main reason why he slowly falls for you, adorned the tenderness in your relationship. The softness and shared moments of silence that he longs for, the honesty in your shared glances. He adores you for who you are, but the more he sees his long lost love in you, the more he feels he needs you. Perhaps it's selfish, and Arthur is aware, he was never a particularly morally clean person. But his grief for Beniamina couldn't do enough to make him a better man.

Unbeknownst to Arthur, you feel the exact same way about him, too, finding more and more obvious hints of your sister in him. He's a warm human, with subconscious care for others, offering gentle touches to ease you in certain directions and sit you down when you begin panicking. As much of an idiot as he can be, he's witty and shares the same kind of ironic humor that is enough to make you chuckle. He is capable of guiding you and taking care of you in the exact way you need it.

For so many things you miss, that have been taken away from you, you've latched onto every bit that Arthur is capable of offering you. It's such an absurd situation, how the reason for your mutual loved is fueled by that even deeper kind of love you both felt for Beniamina. And it's such a long way to go before either of you figures out that the following reasons for the shared affection are much more than that, and that your sister's disappearance could be, as unreal as it seems, overcome.

[aphroditesmoon]

whatever fits together

gwen stacy x spidergirl!reader

summary: gwen meets your little brother for the first time (･ω･)

warnings: afab!reader, orphan reader, makeout session.

A/N: idk man I just want gwen to wife me up fr.

♡♡♡

ALL YOUR LIFE, you've only ever saw your brother in your future. There were other people, of course. Whatever friends left that you you haven't ghosted or the ones that haven't left you at the time. But the only constant present you've ever considered in the decisions you make for yourself, has always been your brother.

You were orphaned at 14. Technically only your mother had died in the bus accident, but you can barely remember your father's face, he was dead in your mind.

When Miguel scouted you in, you saw how he tiptoed around your story, and how he tried to sympathise with you, but if you were being honest, you can't really remember how you managed to raise your brother on your own for 3 and a half years while also learning to manage your newfound powers. You knew you it was hard, but you also knew that before you joined the Spider Society, every decision you made was for survival, it was your natural instinct.

There were no space in your life for you to sit around and be a child, nor were there any time to consider every emotional and mental consequences your choices could've provoked. You had to grow up. You had a 3 year old to raise then.

Once you've joined Miguel, you thought you'd finally find some sense of peace within yourself, with all the security and stability the spider society provided.

But coming home to an apartment you've been provided after your first mission, all you felt at the sight of your clothes, arranged in an actual closet instead of a duffel bed, and your brother sleeping in a room he could finally call his own, was nothing, except for a terrible and tremendous stab of pain in your chest.

It was all worth it for him, you truly believed that. And yet you felt like it wasn't worth anything to you.

The strangeness of feeling so alone around a place filled with so many people. You didn't know the first thing about making friends, or having hobbies. In fact, you weren't even sure if you knew what you really looked like anymore, with all the crime fighting and changing hotels every week, you didn't really have the time to be looking in the mirror. It was terrifying.

And yet despite all of that, the universe has somehow managed to slip in an angel shaped as a blonde and witty girl in your life. Somehow she was a lot more shittier in starting up conversations than you were, but from the first glance you shared with Gwen, a mutual understanding was formed.

And from there, a bond was made.

You love early mornings, even when you were often alone, the hours spent after the clocked reaches 11pm have always felt loud, and suffocating. Shops are fully opened and streets are filled with people off to work. So every day, like an automatic alarm clock, you'll find yourself waking up around 7 to 8am to fully enjoy that morning glory.

You've seen the sun sparkle everday in your life, but never have you seen it shine this beautifully through your light blue curtains. Looking below it, your eyes meet the sleeping form of Gwen Stacy by your side.

She was snoring lightly, and though it annoyed you at first, it was also a subtle reminder to you that she was there, next to you, as you tossed and turn in your bed trying to get used to the alien feeling of sleeping with someone else besides your smaller sized brother sharing your bed.

Checking the time on your phone, large numbers of 9:15 reflects on your eyes. making you let out a low sigh.

You came home and slept late last night. Arriving to your apartment through a portal past midnight, hand in hand with Gwen as you introduce her to your house, and to your roon.

It was a Saturday, you comforted yourself. And you were in your bed, making out with the most beautiful girl you've seen, what's the rush anyways. The sudden slam opening of your door jolts you up, and enters from there, a very loud and jumpy 7 year old who was expecting the joyous feeling of finally being able to wake up earlier than his older sibling and getting to brag about it.

He halts on his step when he sees the stranger at your side, who is now wide awake thanks to the slammed door.

"God's sake, what did I say about knocking?" You scolded while getting yourself out og bed, toes clencing at the cold tiles when your feet reaches the floor.

"There's someone next to you, can you see her?" He asks, ignoring you.

Gwen's face was dazed and confused, her eyes were squinting and she wasn't showing any signs of getting up. "Yeah I see her." You replied, walking over to him. "That's my buddy, yeah? Be nice to her."

You hear a incoherent mumble from him as he remains staring at her strangely.

"Why don't you help me get the eggs out? You can help me make breakfast?" You suggested, turning him around and kissing the back of his head. "Is she getting breakfast too?" He asks while walking away to the kitchen, his loud voice bouncing off the walls. "Yes, please." You shouted back to him before moving towards your girl again.

"Sorry about that." You spoke with a much hushed tone. Gwen has her upper body up and againts the headboard, eyes fully open as she takes you in under the sun's glow. "No it's fine, I actually forgot you had a brother to be honest." She admits, smiling as you crawl onto the bed towards her. "Really? I thought I must've been talking about him too much that everyone probably has his name memorised." You chuckled. She hummed and shook her head.

You let your fingers intertwine with her laid out ones, closing your fists into hers. "Do you like eggs?" You whisper at her, leaning in closer to her face. "Yeah, I do." She whispers back, booping your nose. "I also like your brother, he's cute." She adds.

A laugh sprouts out of you as your foreheads lay againts eachother's. "Oh no, he's a real fox once you get to know him, next thing I know you two will be teaming up againts me." She snorts and pulls away slightly to properly look at your face. "Also buddy?" She teases, recalling your early words. "I had my tongue down your throat like-" You groaned and shoved her playfully trying to hide your blossoming smile.

"Oh yeah, sure, lets tell him that." You intererject sarcastically. She rolls her eyes and presses a kiss on your cheek before climbing off the bed where you're still on.

She walks over to your desk and then to your vanity, last night's crumpled shirt still on. "You have a vinyl player." She noted, pulling out your vinyls.

"Japanese Breakfast-" She reads, "and Mitski. Of course you like Mitski." You huffed at her words, nearing her. "What's that supposed to mean?" Gwen makes an incomprehensible noise and shrugged her shoulders. "I don’t know, like, you're, emo?" You choked out a laugh, eyes widening at her explanation. "What?" You breathed out, still laughing. Gwen joins in with a giggle as she tries to reason.

"I've never seen you in anything but black, I mean except right now." She gesturesnto your teal shirt. "Also, having a Mitski vinyl is already one of the requirements, I think."

"Anddd, Radiohead? You're a cliche."

You scoffed, pulling her away from your vinyl player towards the door. "You would know." Gwen gasps loudly. "What is that supposed to mean?" You only smile while pushing her to kitchen with your arms around her waist, holding her from behind.

The smell of eggs fill your nostrils when you entered the kitchen, untangling your hands from Gwen, you swore under your breath before sprinting to your brother, cracking eggs on the pan. "I told you to get the eggs out only." Pulling him away from the pan, you tell him to take a seat while you handle the eggs.

"I've seen you do it, I know how to make them myself." He mumbles. "I can hear you." You voice out. "Elephant" He tries again. You gave him a glance, frowning. "I heard that too?" "Good." He responds.

Hearing Gwen chuckling quietly, you spare her a glare too. "Just like I said, already teaming up."

Your brother hops off his seat after a long minute staring at Gwen from the fisheyed view his glass of water gave, Making her eyes look ten times bigger than they are.

"My sister says you're her buddy." He says it like it's a question. Gwen raises a brow at him. "Did she? I don't know, I think we're a little bit more than buddies." You tense, turning around to glare at her again. "Gwen-" you called out in a warning tone.

"You're best buddies?" Your brother's voice speaks before shw could. "Oh my god." You groaned to yourself. Gwen actually laughs at that. "Yeah, something like that." He analyses her answer until he decided it was good enough. "Okay, she's never had any friends before." This time you actually spin around towards them.

"Dude." You chastised him. "I have friends, you've met them!" You defended yourself as he starts to giggle loudly at your offended state. "No you don't." He affirms, making you stick out your tongue at him before placing the plates of breakfast on the table.

"Don't worry little dude, I can tell." Gwen tells him, the both of them giving you a top from bottom look.

"One more word and I'm throwing both of you out." Your brother has the decency to look scared before digging into his meal, but Gwen only grins at you widely before winking. She also notices how much your brother likes to kick people's feet under the table and then immediately blaming someone else when you scold him. "Your buddy did it! My feet can't even reach you!" He yelled. "Yes it can, I can literally feel your tiny toes right now, don't make me kick you back." You threatened, earning another kick before he seriously stops.

Once everyone has finished eating, you went straight to do the dishes, profusely refusing any help from Gwen, enjoying the bits of control in your life you feel whenever you're cleaning up things.

"Can I show Gwen my spidergirl collection?" Your brother begged. You fight againts a grin, saying yes to him.

Despite keeping a very strict no contact rules you had for authoritative figures and the press, your New York has still found a way to capitalize off of you, which was the Spidergirl Dolls that came with many different stylesnof clothing fron the same theme of your suit.

Gwen gives you a smile and a thumbs up before following him, his voice echoing from the hall as he explains the difference of the dolls. "-and this other doll has a samurai sword too-", you shook your head.

How the hell did they even came up with these concepts?

Finishing off the last few dishes, you make your way to the hall, where both of your favourite people are sitting crossed legged on the flower patterned carpet.

"What's up here?" You ask him as you crouch down to sit.

"The sky." He jokes. "Funny." You respond dryly. Gwen gives you a look that says 'I wonder where he gets it from', making you toss a doll at her that she catches easily, smiling.

Gwen turns to your brother, holding up a caped spidergirl doll. "How much are these anyways, where im from, these kind of figurines are expensive." He looka at her dumbly and shrugged. "Figyu-?" She ruffled his hair, "Never mind."

Moving to sit closer to her, you explain the pricing. "If you buy directly from the store, they definitely cost like a $100 or more, unfortunately I don't think even the real spidergirl would've been give a discount." You explain, hinting that your brother has no idea about your secret identity.

Gwen snorted at your last sentence. "Foul, so what, you bought fake ones?" You slapped a hand across your chest, feigning hurt. "No, excuse you, I bought them second hand. You have no idea how many people there are online, giving up good quality figurines for less than $50." Gwen responds with a knowing 'ahh' while nodding her head. "That makes sense."

"Most of these were bought for his birthday, though I think this year he'd like something else, hm?" You question from his side, wiggling your brows.

"I want a Transformers." He answers simply. "A trans what?" Gwen exclaims, confused.

You smiled at her face expression that was similar to a terrified cat, eyes widening in a bewildered manner. "A Transformers." You repeat aloud. "It's a car robot, like its a car that turns into a giant robot." You were describing it horrendously, but it got the job done. "I don't think we have that in my place." Gwen justifies her reaction. "Are you from loser planet?" Your brother asks, receiving stutters from a baffled Gwen and a embarrassingly loud giggle from you.

"I'm from a very normal and cool place alright." You share a look with your brother, side eyeing her. "I saw that." She calls out. "No you didn't!" He yells out all of the sudden before getting up and running to his room.

You flinch at his movements and shouted loudly, "Where are you going?" After a few seconds of loud breathing and feet stomping, he finally responds. "Im showing her our Transformers CDs!"

"Oh." You exhange a look with Gwen. "Looks like you're in for a ride, feeling alright for a movie?" She looks suprised but accepts the offer easily. "Bring in the trans cars."

---

The little boy lasted two hours before passing out. His head on Gwen's lap triggered a slight jealousy in you. Although knowing that he will grow up and eventually meet new people he'd be fond of more than you, it was still jarring to see it play out right in front of your eyes.

You reach your arms out gently to him, "Let me take him to bed." You whisper to Gwen who only responds with an okay.

He's deep into slumber as you carry him into his room and gently place him onto his bed. After fluffing out his pillow, you let go of your palms holding on his head, letting it gently fall onto the soft material.

Gwen's footsteps are quiet behind you, the small sound of the creaking door tells you she's there.

Getting back up on your feet aftet tucking your brother in, you spin around to the curious girl who's eyes are roaming his walls. "Did he draw this?" She giggled, pointing at a drawing you made. "I love him but this literally looks like a deformed Mickey Mouse."

She glaces to you in hope of sharing a laugh but immediately turns quiet when she notices your frown. "That's mine you dipshit." You snapped and walked over to flick her forehead.

"Ouch, sorry." She apologizes in a groan. "It does look like a deform-" you shove her out of the room before closing the door behind you.

"It is not a rat, its a bear." She grins at your pouting face. "Whatever you say."

You thought she'd be opening a portal back to her universe by now. How is her father now worried? Does he not see what's he's been gifted with?

It was visibly dark outside, the clock barely striking 10pm yet. You'd spent the whole night yesterday with eachother, and the whole day too, binging Transformers movies. If it were you in her shoes, with someone else that wasn't her, you would've left much earlier, the tiring efforts of socialising was usually worst than any weekly villain.

She stops walking when she realizes you've halted in your steps behind her. Her head tilts to look at you. "What's wrong? You don't want to sleep?" She asks.

You open your mouth to speak, but nothing leaves your lips. Gwen's face contorts anxiously as she turns around towards you. "What's wrong?" She asks again. You force yourself to talk. "I want to sleep." Silence fills the space between you and her for a solid minute. "So do I." Gwen finally decides to say cautiously.

Your shoulders drops, letting your strained body and features relax. "Yeah, okay. Let's sleep." Gwen is cut off before she coukd even start as you continue where your words left off by intertwining your fingers with hers and leading the way to your bed. She says nothing about your behaviour after, accepting your returning affections. "If you wanted to makeout instead, just say that." She jokes earning a tired chuckle. "After that long ass movie? No, I'm wrecked."

[hheartsdramas]

I guess this tumblr is just me documenting my live reactions as I watch dramas, here’s inside my head while watching the last 4 episodes of Blossom:

Ep 31

is her dad the biggest idiot on this show or a secret scheming mastermind?

ugh I thought we were shot of Lady Wei when her brother died

and why did Ji Yong have to go evil?? naughty boy and not in the fun way *shakes finger at Ji Yong*

the emperor sucks, I can’t wait for him to die

I don’t know what to think of Ji Yong anymore. like he’s keeping Dou Zhao safe but the way things have gone I can’t put it past him to let Song Mo die

this episode made me so angry, I want to smack so many smirks off of so many faces

Ep 32

Dou Zhao’s dad’s backbone always grows only when its way too late to really matter

I literally squealed “PUPPY!” because I am a cliche

oh god whatever this substance is I hope Song Mo can hold onto his sanity and stab Evil Eunuch Guy in the face

do you think spitting blood is written into every studio contract? what happens if an actor or director wants to try conveying illness/injury some other way?

this dream sequence!!!!

grandma’s back! girl where have you been shit’s been going down and could use a little matriarch smack down energy

did anyone else notice that the moon isn’t magically full in this episode? doesn’t actually matter to anything but it makes me laugh to notice what the moon does in cdramas

are they trying to make uncle out to be a good guy? a double agent of some sort? I don’t understand and I don’t buy it. he’s horrible and deserved a much shittier death

honestly this version of house arrest looks divine

Ep 33

I’m glad An Su has finally started recognizing that the flags are RED red but I fear t won’t end well for her

why do poisoned emperors always put things together when they’re about to die and not, like, the one of the first five times their wives smile evilly at them?

ohhhhhh okay so empress does have a backstory and now I totally support women’s wrongs. kill that rotten man!

this idiot emperor I—

how do you make taking medicine romantic? well you make one of them dying and delirious and the other trying to save them by doing mouth-to-mouth delivery of the medicine. like with a baby bird.

I’ve decided the white hair is hot, but it’s more that he’s hotter the less put together he looks. cuz this “I’ve been delirious but got tumbled by my wife” look with all the tendrils is a good one

there have been so many tertiary dude characters in this show I don’t even remember who this Gu Yu is or why he cares about Song Mo or why he’s easily convinced to commit treason

wait! Dou Zhao what are you doing there, this is so obviously a trap I can’t even

well this was obviously a trap, I shouldn’t have doubted…or should I have? oh no, I shouldn’t have

except that’s a lot of soldiers

FINALLY someone stabbed Evil Eunuch Guy!!!

are Song Mo’s soldiers wielding…trees? what am I looking at?

okay folks final episode!!!

so Ji Yong didn’t go evil? phew that’s a relief

damn that acupuncture point must really be something else

“kindly return” in Dou Zhao’s letter to the crown prince is honestly peak comedy

I’m sorry did you see that man duck because he somehow KNEW his wife was about to save his ass? destined for sure

Song Mo that punishment is DIABOLICAL my jaw DROPPED

“do you really want to leave me?” sir you are old and an idiot and his wife is beautiful and puts out. it’s really no contest

OH FUCK YEAH AN SU!! (I guess this is supposed to be emotional but honestly I feel bad exactly zero amount)

the emperor gave him the antidote? wait ARE YOU TELLING ME THAT AWFUL MAN HAD THE CURE THE WHOLE TIME

ohhhhhhhh. *grumble* I still don’t like him

I’m honestly surprised that we weren’t all terrified when we found out Dou Zhao was pregnant because with genes like that any child would be an absolute terror (affectionate)

personal headcanon: An Su and Official Su are girlfriends. (took til the last episode to find a decent sapphic ship but I’ll take it)

and they all live happily ever after yayyyyyyyy

I had a great time with this drama! Nothing spectacular or awe-inspiring, but highly entertaining and beautiful to look at with a satisfying ending, plus a well-matched, drama-free main couple. I’m glad MZY and LYR are getting their due for it!

[bellysoupset]

SOUP!!! i know you’re focusing on the thanksgiving stuff rn and slay yes go off but this is me begging you to torture wendy sometime soon <3333 i know you know i love her and i’m trying SO hard not to be annoying about requesting her too much but ,,,, the type of dopamine i get whenever i read one of *those* fics (wen as sickie) is truly unreal and i’ve been craving it sm lately (and i’ve already reread all your old ones *almost* too many times LMAO) 🤭 also PLS DONT TAKE THIS AS ME PRESSURING YOU OR EXPECTING THINGS FROM YOU‼️‼️‼️ THATS THE LAST THING I WANT‼️‼️ THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING YOU DO‼️‼️‼️ im just putting this out there to gently suggest that you torture her whenever you have the time and energy to lolll <3

the trope can be literally anything you want but i’m really feeling a migraine fic 👀 like a bad one!!! but having her kind of hide it until she can’t anymore? and then vin maybe feeling all guilty about not noticing it sooner + him being all soft and adorable and worried? smiling and blushing just thinking about this ahhhh

thank u sm i love u

🦦

And 🧷 asked:

HI Just jumping on board the girly request train (To add this to your hoard for if you have the time/will). Consider, if you will: Wendy sick at work with Jonah as a not-so-great caretaker having to call Vince like "Come get your girl." (Wendy does deserve belly rubs and also just... hugs. Lots of them. And a gentle smooch on the forehead) (And you know I love bitchy Jonah and I can't think of a shittier caretaker /pos /aff /very affectionate /I love him okay?) -🧷

----

Jonah was in a bad mood. Which he knew wasn't saying much, because these days he was always in a bad mood, but whatever. He was in a shitty fucking mood.

Graduation was closer than ever, happening in a little less than two weeks. Meaning he had exactly 4 days to finish all the documentation and essays and double check his hours and also pick an outfit and send the bloody invitation to his mother and stepfather and his father, fuck, he had forgotten about-

"Switch with me," Wendy interrupted his stream of thoughts, entering the office area. Jonah let out a scoff, rolling his eyes.

"Absolutely not," he said, turning back to the paperwork he had been filling in. He had already done his hours in the ER, there was no way he was gonna do Wen's too.

"Please," Wendy said, although she didn't sound like she was asking, "switch with me, I'll take your hours tomorrow-"

"Nope," Jonah shook his head, not bothering to look up from where he was filing up the report of each patient he had had all day, "you're distracting me, Wendy."

"Jonah, I really can't do the ER right now-"

"No one likes the ER," Jonah shrugged, signing his name with a little too much force. He really wanted to go home. It was almost 10 PM and he still hadn't had dinner and although he didn't have classes tomorrow, he had so many things to hand in. Did he revise his residency application?

"Jon, please I..." Wendy whined and Jonah's head snapped up, pissed off.

"Wendy no," he glared at her, "I'm not switching, give up."

She pressed her hands to her face, before letting out a sigh and turning around, wordlessly leaving the office.

Jon's stomach sunk and he felt a pang to his chest, but he stood his ground. He had worked his hours today and he really needed to go home and Wendy was not going to puppy eye her way into getting him to do a double ER shift, not when he was this exhausted, even if it was just the remaining one hour and half.

He got back to the task at hand and by the time he glanced up again, it was time to get going. 11:30 PM, Leo would probably be asleep, Jonah thought sourly, locking all the documents inside of his designated drawer and getting up.

Claire was just getting in as Jonah walked to the doctor's staff to strip his white doctor coat and grab his bag as well as his scarf. She waved at him as he unlocked his locker, "hi, Jon."

"Hi Claire," he yawned, folding his coat.

"Uh..." Claire frowned as she unlocked her own locker. She shared with Wendy, but Wen's clothes were still inside, "that's odd, I didn't see her in the ER..."

Jonah felt a weird sense of unease wash over him. He draped the scarf around his neck, "here, take mine. Just let Todd know when he clocks in..." he said, "I'm gonna check if she's still clocked in."

Jonah hated the guy who had been doing the last round with Wendy. Chris wasn't just annoying as hell, he was also a careless idiot who messed up constantly. Jon had lost count the amount of times he had gone toe to toe with the guy.

"Chris," Jonah said, managing to get him alone just as he turned the hallways, Chris probably going to clock out too, "did you see Wendy?"

"No," Chris scoffed, glaring at him, "not since she bailed on me. If you find her, let her know that she's fucked. I made a complaint with our supervisor."

"What...?" Jonah frowned. Wendy didn't bail, Jon could count in one hand the amount of times she had taken time out of her clinic hours. She often covered for others. She would never just quit and up and leave.

"Yeah," Chris rolled his eyes, "said she was gonna get water and I haven't seen her since. I had to go through all of her fucking patients. Peters is gonna chew her up tomorrow."

"How long ago was that?" Jonah asked, feeling anxiety prickling all over him. This was widely out of characters.

"An hour ago? I don't know," Chris shrugged, before stepping around Jonah, "excuse me."

Jon didn't acknowledge him at all, already fishing his phone out of his pocket and pressing the 3, Wendy's speed dial digit. It rang and rang and no one picked up.

Her car was in the parking lot still, getting covered with snow. Shit.

"Wendy, it's me. Please pick up your phone, I'm worried," Jonah send her a voice message, before immediately trying to call again. If the car was still there, then she was still in the hospital.

The question was where? Their university hospital was a big place, since they were the reference not just for their town but for other five around them. It had four floors and was almost as large as a whole block.

"Shit, shit, shit," Jonah chanted, heading to the main nurse station near the ER. The head nurse from Wendy's shift probably had clocked out already, the new one wouldn't know where she was...

"Marjorie! Nurse Marjorie!" Jonah ran down the hall, catching her just as she was about to walk to walk out of the door to the parking lot. She paused, looking confused and spooked.

"Dr. Banks-"

"Hi," Jonah panted, catching up with her, "sorry, I didn't mean to startle you- Did you see Wendy?"

"Wendy?" she frowned and Jonah nodded.

"Dr. Marshall?"

Marjorie's frown twisted into a grimace, "oh yeah, downstairs," she nodded, "about twenty minutes ago? She was in a bad shape, poor thing."

"A bad shape?" Jonah's heart squeezed and he looked around as if he'd somehow spot Wendy in the crowd that was coming and going, "where was she exactly?"

"Well, I entered the ladies room and she wasn't looking so hot, but she said she'd go home, so..." Nurse Marjorie shrugged, "she's probably left by now."

"Which side?"

"West wing-"

"Thank you," Jonah shook her hand awkwardly, before turning around and running back towards the stairs. He just wished no supervisor saw him running around like that, he'd for sure get called out.

There were two bathrooms down in the west wing, where they got the x-rays exams done. One was gender neutral, then two gendered ones down the long hallway. Jonah made a silent prayer before entering the female bathroom.

It was empty.

Or rather, it seemed empty, but a small sob cued him to the fact that it wasn't so. Jonah power walked across the room, before knocking on the last stall, "Wendy? Wen, is that you?" please let it be her.

There was a small groan from inside, a voice he recognized and he spotted her white shoes peeking out, with the lilac details.

"Wendy, it's me," Jonah knocked again, "can you unlock the door, please?"

"Uhm..." she grumbled from inside and he heard the sound of fingers drumming on the door, as she clumsily attempted to unlock it. It took a minute before she managed to do so and then Jonah pushed it in, regretting it as Wendy let out a whine as the door hit her thigh.

He waited until she moved out of the way to push the door again and Jonah frowned. Wendy was sitting on the ground, one arm draped over the toilet, her head resting on her hand. The little he could see of her face, Jon could tell was extremely pale.

"Goddammit, Wendy..." he crouched down next to her, "Wen? Hey, look at me, sweetheart-"

"Hurss...hurts..." she slurred instead of answering him, her voice barely above a whisper. The toilet was empty, but Jonah could tell she had already thrown up at least once, if the wet spot in front of her baby green scrubs were anything to go by.

"What hurts, Wendy?" he leaned in, planting a hand on her shoulder. She was freezing, even though she was wearing a long sleeved shirt under the short sleeved hospital clothes.

"Head..." Wendy whimpered, curling up even more, sounding dangerously close to tears. She hugged her knees, pressing her forehead to them and rocked back and forth, "I don't feel well, Jon..."

"I know, Dee," Jonah whispered, moving even closer and ignoring the smell of vomit, so he could cup her chin and force her to lift her head, "let me see your eyes, Wendy."

They were filled with tears, squinting from the pain. The minute he raised her face, she flinched from the overhead white light, and gulped nervously, shoving his hand off her face.

"I'm... I'm gonna be sick..." she groaned, leaning over the toilet again. Jonah scrambled forward to grab her hair, immediately gagging as he felt one of the front pieces was already wet and sticky.

He buried his nose in his shoulder, gagging fruitlessly. There was nothing for him to puke and clearly, nothing for Wendy to bring up either, because after a little more retching, she let out a sob and resorted to resting her forehead to the porcelain, sobbing.

"No, darling, don't do that, this is disgusting..." Jonah cooed, sliding his hand between her forehead and the toilet and wrapping his other arm around her waist, pulling her up.

Although she was unstable as a newborn fawn, she didn't immediately collapse, clinging to his coat with all her force. Jonah pushed the stall door open, slowly guiding her to the sinks and Wendy slumped over the granite with her whole body, letting out a whine as he ran his hands under the tap to turn on the motion sensor and then ran his now wet, cold hands on her face, washing her mouth and chin, as well as the sick covered piece of hair.

"Shhh, you're okay, I got you," Jonah whispered, more for his benefit than hers, as Wendy's whole face scrunched up in pain, tears leaking from the corner of her eyes.

"I don't... I don't want you," she groaned and Jonah's stomach turned for a different reason, simple and plain guilt.

"I know, I'm gonna get you to Vin," he answered instead, "I'm really sorry, Wen, I didn't know you weren't feeling well..."

She let out another groan, ignoring his apology and Jonah bit his tongue to stop the string of words he wanted to say. He wanted to apologize again, he wanted to grill her about her symptoms, why she hadn't started off by saying she was sick previously when requesting he switched with her, why she hadn't told him...

She shuddered, hugging herself and Jonah stripped his coat, wrapping Wendy in it and closing the first button on the front. It was far too big for her, it reached the middle of Jon's thighs, but on Wendy the coat was brushing the floor.

Wordlessly she slumped forward, pressing her forehead to his chest and Jonah wrapped an arm around her, guiding her out of the bathroom.

As soon as they reached the ground level floor, she let out a loud whine. The place was much more crowded, so much more noisy, and Wendy let out a sob, pressing her face to his chest with even more force.

"Hurts..." She said, grabbing at the roots of her hair and pulling, to try and escape the pain inside her skull.

He left her planted on the couch in the waiting room, as he sped back to the staff quarters to retrieve her purse, as well as her other belongings. Wendy was rocking back and forth when he got back to her, much to the unnerving of the other patients, who kept glancing at her nervously as it looks like she was going to throw up.

"Okay, let's get you out of here," Jon whispered, wrapping his arms around her and guiding Wendy to the car. She shivered violently once they walked out of the hospital, the drastic temperature change hitting them both. Jon's teeth started to chatter and he forced Wendy to keep moving, pushing her inside her car.

"No, don't do that, Dee," Jonah whispered, holding her head as Wendy tried banging it against the window to stop the pain inside, "shhh, lie back down, lie down..." he lowered her seat a little bit, smoothing the hair out of her face.

Wendy let out a pitiful sniffle, curling up on herself, his coat serving as a blanket on top of her. She turned her head, away from his touch and Jonah's stomach sunk a little more.

He parked inside her building, in her designated spot and then scrolled through his contacts. Wendy seemed to be asleep and he didn't want to wake her up unneededly so.

"Hello?" Vince sounded half asleep and Jonah glanced quickly at the clock. It was almost midnight, no wonder, "Jon?"

"Hey," he whispered, "I have Wendy with me, can you unlock the door, please?"

"Wen... Why? What's wrong with her? Are you outside-" there was rustling around, "I don't see you outside."

Jonah rolled his eyes, "I'm downstairs in the parking lot, she-"

"Is she okay? Let me talk with her."

"She's asleep," Jonah started to say, but Wendy stirred and groaned, turning to blindly grab his phone.

"Is that Vin?" she whined, not bothering to open her eyes and, in Jonah's ear, Vince exclaimed.

"Wendy!"

Jonah let out a scoff, "just unlock the door," then hung up, turning to Wendy, "can you walk?"

"Yes," she said, sounding annoyed. She pushed the door open and stumbled out, bracing against the car and taking deep breaths, "my head is exploding."

"You sound better than before," Jonah said hopefully, circling the car to hold her arm, "c'mon, Dee."

"Uhm..." Wendy slumped against him, letting him guide her the rest of the way and Jonah chewed on the inside of his cheek, pressing the elevator button.

"I'm really sorry about before, Wendy. I had no idea you were sick, if I knew I'd have switched."

"It's fine," she said sourly, crossing her arms, "it's fine."

"Wanna say that one more time?" Jonah said, "doesn't sound fine."

"Shut up, Jonah," Wendy groaned, pressing her forehead to his bicep with all her force, "I don't have the energy for this, just shut up."

As soon as the elevator came to a stop, Vince was already there. In the middle of the hallway, wearing just sweatpants, socks and a huge orange hoodie that made Jonah cringe in distaste. His curls were a messy mane around his head and he had been clearly about to fall asleep.

"Hey, hey..." he crossed the hallway in two steps, cupping Wendy's face, "what's wrong, honey?"

She let out a groan, that quickly morphed into a whimper, "my head..."

"Migraine?" he guessed, glancing up worriedly to Jonah, who flinched as if he was somehow guilty for Wendy's migraine.

"Yes, she threw up earlier-"

"It's not as bad anymore," Wendy scoffed, glaring at his direction, before snuggling up with Vince, wrapping her arms around his middle, "I just wanna lie down."

"Thank you for bringing her home," Vince whispered, offering Jonah a big, relieved smile, which only made him feel ten times more guilty. Vin was unaware to his little conundrum, hugging Wendy to him and bringing her inside the house.

Jonah followed them in, planting Wendy's keys and her purse on the little living room table that was littered with books and notecards, where Vince clearly had been studying.

A minute later Vince emerged from the room, having tucked Wendy into bed, Jon's coat draped over his arm, "here. Thank you Jon..."

"Please don't say that," Jonah cringed, taking the coat back, "tell Wendy to call me when she feels better."

Vince frowned, confused, but he nodded, "yeah, of course. Are you calling a taxi?"

"Yes-"

"You can wait in here," Vince said hopefully, "or just crash the couch, it's no problem-"

"No," Jonah shook his head. He was feeling terrible, he really didn't want to stay and witness anymore of Wendy in pain, "no, I have to go home. Leo's probably having a heart attack, I should've been home two hours ago."

It was a little lie. Yes, Leo would be stressing if he was aware, but more probably he was simply asleep by now.

"Okay," Vince crossed the room and then pulled Jon into a hug, causing the man to let out a startled yelp.

"Let go of me."

"Thanks again, man."

"Yeah, let me go..." Jonah shoved him off, "and tell Wendy not to worry about tomorrow, I'll explain to her supervisor what happened."

"Thank you," Vince nodded, although he wasn't sure what he was nodding along with, "you're a great friend."

Jonah grimaced, "yeah, bye."

[starrylayle]

what are your opinions on Severus snape and lily evans, as individual characters and as friends?

oooh thanks for asking!! i love talking abt hp characters and their relationships with each other ajhkasgfi. warning tho, this is very looooooong.

ok let's start with severus first because i feel like my relationship with him has been the most... turbulent lol.

SEVERUS SNAPE

i was pretty neutral on snape's character when i was first reading the series, perhaps leaning more to dislike. It wasn't until DH where it was revealed that snape was in love with lily the whole time 13 year old me was SHOOK. i became the biggest snape stan and snily shipper. I hated both James and sirius (still loved remus tho lol). and i remember watching so many snape youtubers and yeah i would write praragraphs defending this man and how lily should have chosen him. lmao now u all know abt my snapie past.

However, during my next reading, in about 2018, i began to see snape's flaws more. I was also very active on the wattpad hp fandom (yes shhh ik) and a lot of my friends loved the marauders as characters (they were not in the marauders fandoms, they just liked the characters) and a lot of them hated snape. And then i began to hate snape too lol. However, i really enjoyed reading and watching videos that dissected his character. and i still watched videos from snape stans

i then joined the marauders and atyd fandom in 2021 and now was a pro snape hater. like mans was now the definition of pure evil. Made hating snape a personality trait lol. Though he was the worst of the worst.

it wasn't until late 2023/early 2024 when i became fed up with mauraders fandom and how they fanonise everything. especially considering so many of them stan regulus (which the way they characterise him in fanon is how canon kid snape was depicted anyway) and barty and evan and all those fucking death eaters who were wayyyy worse than snape ever was -- but no, snape is sill for some reason the No.1 evil.

now, i feel like snape is a much more interesting character than people give him credit for, and especially as a kid, was not as bad as marauders fans depict him to be. However, I don't really interact with the snape fandom so much because i feel like they either ignore excuse the shittier things he did as an older teen/adult. I am also of the opinion that James and sev were rivals, and it wasn't a bullying situation but yeah. i wish there were more people who enjoyed both the marauders and severus who didn't make either or both to be saints lol

LILY EVANS

Ok, I'll be honest, Lily's character did not really interest me until I read atyd. To be fair, jkr spent a a lot of time characterising harry's dad and his friends, but we were not given too much info on Lily, and almost no info on if she had any other friends besides severus.

I loved Lily's friendship with Mary and Marlene in atyd, and of course with Remus. and i loved how her personality in that fic to. I don't consider that fic to be canon compliant now and don't agree with a lot of the characterisations but it was still pretty good.

Lily was a bit too sensible in atyd, and whenever we're given descriptions about her from slughorn for instance, or her personality in SWM, she's presented as 'vivacious' and cheeky' so i like to think that she wasn't really a hermione 2.0 but rather more similar to snarky and sassy harry, tho perhaps more popular and well-loved. Her and James were totally academic rivals to lovers omg.

SEVERUS SNAPE & LILY EVANS

ok now onto what i think u really wanted me to address - sev and lily's relationship.

No, i don't think sev was 'obssessed' with Lily, i think he truly loved her but he was also a selfish person. (however tho, how would sev convince voldy to spare harry,, like that was literally all voldy was after like....)

anyways, as kids, they were very close -- maybe a little codependant. I imagine Lily was always facinated with Sev his talk about magic, and to sev, Lily was an escape from his abusive homelife. I think they both may have had a little crush on each other pre-hogwarts.

As they went to hogwarts, they grew apart as they were placed in different houses. Snape was surroundd by pureblood facists which slowly radicalised him, and Lily began making friends in Gryffindor. A war tensions grew, i can imagine snape and Lily's relationship became more tense and strained, and no one knew why they stuck together. But they knew things about each other that no one else did and understood each other in ways no one else could. However, after SWP, it was clear that they were heading down different paths so lily cut him and that was that.

Lily always felt hurt after their break up, but she had supportive friends to keep her afloat. Snape however, was filled with guilt, bitterness and regret and thus became deeply radicalised. I don't think tho that Snape was very high in the death eater rank until the search for harry/prophecy was on.

anyways still mulling things over but yeah, i think they're both facinating and i'd love to see their relationship explored in complexity in more fics!

[waugh-bao]

I know you don’t really like Mick’s solo output, but what do you think about Keith’s?

I have mixed feelings about it. If I were to rank all of the Stones solo musical ventures, it would definitely be Charlie > Keith > Ronnie > Mick. Which, naturally, was also Keith’s opinion on the matter:

I’ve never been a fan of the Stones covers he did with the Winos, the tempos are always a mess and they drag.

As for the stuff that’s solely his, I think it’s a mixed bag. He’s genuinely very talented as a lyricist and I like the subject matter he tends to focus on, because it’s a lot about complicated and long term/older relationships, which isn’t necessarily a mainstay of mainstream rock. And I also enjoy his voice, he’s not Pavarotti or anything but he knows how to write for his own range and vocal quality.

That said, I feel like the music/band itself tends to be very hit or miss, and I actually tend to prefer the songs where it’s Charley Drayton playing drums instead of Steve, he’s got a lighter touch that suits Keith’s style better. I was at performance the Winos did at the Beacon Theater 2 years ago as part of Love Rocks NYC and for unexplained reasons (what I heard on the grapevine is that Steve and Charley had some kind of falling out related to Charley’s late wife) Charley wasn’t there. The choice of songs for the set kind of sucked and the replacement bass player was no good, but I don’t think that performance is probably representative of what they were like in their heyday in the late ‘80s/mid ‘90s. Still not thrilled with how much money I spent on a ticket for such a mediocre performance. Hozier and Mavis Staples were great, though.

His collaborations with Levon Helm and Tom Waits are both gorgeous and there’s some beautiful covers by him of Mingus and other artists floating around out there. It’s not *really* solo Keith, but for my money his best stuff in that realm will always be the songs he sings solo on the Stones records, particularly “Little T&A” from Tattoo You, “How Can I Stop” from Bridges to Babylon, “Thru and Thru” + “The Worst” from Voodoo Lounge, and “Slipping Away” from Steel Wheels. Also “Alteration Boogie”, even though nobody was ever kind enough to give us an official release.

Ironically, I listen to him most often when I’m exercising, especially running or doing boxing drills with a heavy bag. I will say that I have a special place in my heart for “Hate It When You Leave.” The lyrics are so him, of course, but it used to be a song that was perpetually on my playlist for nighttime runs in London, and I have many fond memories of listening to it while flying through the shittier parts of Shoreditch and Camden Town.

[honouredsnakeprincess]

Well, friendos, you probably didn't expect three notes in the course of an evening, even if the first was kind of nothing! Season 3 Episode 1 has given me a fair few things to say, though!

First, the pettiness and minutiae:

I like the new yorker fellow. Didn't quite catch his name, but I like his accent (is that a new york accent? don't rightly know).

This might be another 'seeing 3d models where none actually existed' incident, but I couldn't help but notice that ECorp was marked as "Evil Corp" when Mr Robot was going through that power plant search engine, which is something it isn't changed to when Elliot isn't present. I don't recall if Mr Robot does this too, but if he doesn't (and part of me suspects he does not) then Elliot might be more aware of things than immediately apparent.

It really seems like the calm relationship between Elliot and Mr Robot has gone away. :( That's pretty sad, I was happy they were getting on better for a while there, but I guess that wasn't set to last given how much of the show's core drama relies on that conflict.

Angela seems to have been largely stripped of her dynamism and pluckiness. Previously she has been a very active character, moving from one plan to the next and constantly adapting, but that seems to have ceased following the surrealism. We'll see where this goes.

Anyways, the main thing I want to talk is politics. Boo! The scary communist is going to be mildly critical of 2017-era American liberalism!

This show really is a product of its time, and I kind of adore it for that! I regard it almost as a work of fantastical historical fiction, even though I was obviously very much alive in 2017. Still, I think sometime in my coverage of late season 1, I expressed some hesitancy towards how the show portrayed revolutionary activity; obviously the actions of a small cadre of individuals will not be sufficient to usher in a revolution, and merely disrupting large financial institutions is unlikely to actually have a substantial destabilizing effect on capital-at-large. I think I expressed some hope that the show would grapple with this.

It seems to have sort of done so, but in a way I'm not sure I agree with entirely? The 5/9 attack did not meaningfully damage capitalism, or even destroy Evil Corp, it just caused what seems to be a depression and some infrastructural failure, and enabled economic meddling by the Scary Chinese. Mostly, it just made the lives of individual people kind of shittier by disrupting financial services and depriving them of their savings, mortgages, etc. The richest characters we meet in season 2 are largely unaffected in their personal holdings and comforts.

In this episode, Elliot decides to take the blames for every stress and strain caused by these events onto his own shoulders in a montage cutting between clips of Donald Trump, Angela Merkel (I think? Might've been her British counterpart, I've a bad habit of failing to differentiate between German Bundeskanzlers and British Prime Ministers and I don't care enough to check at this point), the construction of border walls, and scenes of abject poverty, and this speaks to a view of politics I don't specifically think is sound.

Certainly, economic instability is something that is latched onto by reactionary elements in government, but I think to contextualize this properly we have to situate Mr Robot as a historical text~! I am not a historian of 21st century Americana, nor do I much want to be, but I think I have the broad strokes down.

The Occupy Wall Street movement, from which this show takes a lot of its first season's politics, was fundamentally not a consciously proletarian movement. It was overwhelmingly white office workers, who tend to hold themselves apart from the wider proletariat (even when they ultimately share most of their interests with said class) by virtue of being "management", and lacked a strong political programme. Ultimately, these were liberals protesting against a liberal system that had mistreated them specifically, they were not protesting against the general predations of capital.

Many of the same people who were strongly supportive of the Occupy movement during its height were shocked and appalled when Donald Trump ran for public office, and even more upset when he won the Presidency despite projections that his opponent would easily best him. This was not inherently an unreasonable reaction, the man's a fucking reactionary and there isn't much to like about him or his policy!

The great difficulty is that many of these liberals took to exceptionalizing Trump as a far more significant figure than he actually was, likely due to his almost complete abandonment of euphemism and modesty when going about the horrid business of American governance. Border fascism had long been a bipartisan position (as we can see by recent criticisms of Trump during the 2024 elections not being for calling to build a wall, but for failing to deliver on said promise), but under Trump this took the form of loudly and belligerently calling to "build a wall and make the Mexicans pay for it". Similarly, travel restrictions on muslim-majority countries and on people with arabic-sounding names were not new by the time of the Trump administration, but calling such measures a "muslim ban" certainly was!

Essentially, Trump and his broader wave of reactionary politicians, while certainly a step in a rightward direction generally, were more significant in the respect that they raised the volume of what were already mainstream right-wing or bipartisan political beliefs! Courting white nationalists was not new; courting white nationalists as blatantly as this was new and outrageous!

This was scary! This was apocalyptic! Had fascism finally come to roost in its ancestral homeland? The astute commentators noted that in some respects it had lived in America for decades at that point, and still some elements of fascist politics had yet to arrive. At the end of the day, Trump was only a little bit outside of the norm in terms of actual policy, the horrors of "trumpism" were much the same horrors his immediate predecessors had carried out, and would be carried out by his successor in the presidency as well. Still, this shakeup in discourse if not in policy created a certain millenarian feeling in American and broader "Western" politics, a sense of doom that had long been impending but which now affected the specific type of white, "not rich but comfortable" liberal office-workers who had driven the Occupy movement.

So here is Mr Robot, which has spent two seasons criticizing corporate America, and whose viewpoint character must now absolve everyone from Adam Smith to money to the corporate structure and on and on of their guilt in the deterioration of conditions, in order to place the blame squarely on his own shoulders, and resolve that the current crisis must come to an end, and everything must return to some kind of status quo.

Mr Robot does not want to return to the status quo, for his part, but now he is in the company of a woman who has literally been brainwashed, a murderer/former corporate executive, a shady hacker circle with no ethical standing, and subversive foreign elements from China. I don't think he is meant to be right here!

I don't know where this is going, but the more I think about it the more apprehensive I get, frankly. I could be entirely wrong about this, too, and I'm still enjoying the show quite a lot, so I will keep watching in the future.

Angela's monologue at the end of the episode also had a certain millenarian quality to it, even more literally with talk of the birth of a new world and it being ended by the return of light to the city. I wanted to work this in somehow to my commentary on historical and political context, but I forgot how I was going to do that. Good song, too.

[thedawningofthehour]

Oh. my. god, seriously, every time a chapter comes out my hands start shaking, I was shocked to wake up to see that the chapter had not been posted, only for it to be posted a couple of hours later, and for the record I woke up at 8 am and there is only like a couple of hours difference between US and where I live! Woman! Do you even sleep?

My mom gets furious if I go to bed at 12 pm and I'm a 22 year old grown woman!

Uhhhhhhhh~ it looks like the 'Galois discovers the truth' arc is already taking it's first steps, I want to see the faces of the Draxum squadron when they see the wanted posters, especially when they realize they used a picture of Donatello for 'Galois'!

The guy's reaction when Annie told him about his family, one of the things I'd like to see in the recovery arc is how the humans will adapt to the Yokai, I love Worldbuilding stories.

So while they won't sentence Donnie to death there's still a chance he'll be lynched? Yikes, I hope Bella and Leo's testimonies help with their public opinion, again, it's all Draxum's fault, the guy had the kid for a year and already has like four 🎯 in his head, Splinter was right to take the kids.

Oh, my mother bothers me too if she thinks I'm up too late. But she's usually asleep by then, and I try to get to bed before she gets up for her middle of the night smoke.

Just part of living with your parents as an adult, I guess. Today she drove me crazy going through every item in the kitchen and playing twenty questions with me about it to make room for Thanksgiving supplies. Is this yours? When did you buy it? Is it still good? What kind of cheese is it? When do you eat this? Are you sure I can throw it out? But are you actually going to eat it? (she does this when she goes through anything, it drives me nuts) I literally did a fridge purge less than a month ago too, all the old stuff was hers.

But our rent's been the same since 2013 and our landlords are actually cool people, so fuck if I'm moving out and paying more for a shittier place to live.

It's pretty unrealistic, the Hidden City as a whole places a lot of value on children (so many of them have trouble having bio-kids) and their life stages all scale upwards, so 15-16 is so very very young for them. So the idea that they'd condemn someone so young goes against much of the overarching culture there.

However, Hueso's seen bullshit before. He knows emotions run much higher than reason in times of strife, and he worries about the dehumanization of mutants and the effects that will have. If Yokai see mutants as scary 'Others' who just exist to destroy their way of life, then they'd have no qualms about killing people like Leo or even the kiddos like Fatimah and Jenny-because they're not really people to them. And they would be furious at one of those 'Others' who played a direct part in their hardship.

To be fair, some of it probably would have happened anyway. People like Big Mama (if she was an actual crime boss and not a cartoon version of what a kid thinks a crime boss is) and other rich weirdos would have taken one look at him and been like "sweet! You work for me now. Say no and I'll cripple your legs so you can't run away. :)" Draxum's reputation and being legally his son does protect him somewhat.

[clunelover]

Agh I had a bad phone call with my dad. So background is - my sister from NC was here for thanksgiving with her GF. She got in Thursday morning and left early Sunday morning. We had thanksgiving of course, and then Friday I had been planning to go out on the town with her and my other sister and their SOs. But everyone got too drunk on thanksgiving and we were tired and mutually agreed not to go out. But I did still see her Friday, just more low key dinner and arts and crafts at my stepmom’s house. Then Saturday I was supposed to go to a comedy show with her and her gf - but that was the day I just kept feeling shittier and shittier, and then tested myself for covid, and sure enough positive.

A few days ago he said he’d like to go to coffee with me, his treat (🚨🚨🚨). I said I was still recovering from covid and wouldn’t be up to it. He said let’s talk on the phone. My assumption was that I was in for some kind of lecture, and of course I was! It basically went like:

Dad: “I wanted to reach out to you, cause I’m disappointed that you didn’t get a chance to connect with [sister] while she was here. And [sister] and [stepmom] both told me that you’ve been suffering from a lot of anxiety. And you know, when I was your age, I was scared of the world—”

At which point I just started saying “Stop. Stop. This is not helping. Do you understand that the reason I didn’t see her on her last night is because I had covid? Which I am still recovering from?”

And he said “oh, Meredith…I know” but in this patronizing tone like he thought I was making it up.

I said “Does that not count?”

And he said “well, one doesn’t rule out the other” (ie having covid doesn’t mean I’m not ruled by anxiety).

So then I said “Yes, I do have anxiety. But I have a therapist and a psychiatrist. I have supports in place. I don’t need you to tell me how to deal with my anxiety.”

And he said “All I said was that I wanted to reach out to you. So, I’m sorry I did.” And then he quickly got off the phone.

—

I was furious and so sad - but also proud of myself for stopping him before I could hear the lecture. Also by the way, he is always so hurt that I don’t want to see him much or talk to him on the phone - ahem, this is why! I cannot trust that he’s not going to do something like this. Or be high (actually, credit where credit is due, I landed into him once for calling me high on weed and he never did again that I know of - but the point is I just still can’t trust him).

—

So I texted him this:

Dad, I’m sorry I got reactive. I do suffer from anxiety, among other things. And I appreciate your concern. I know you want me to be happy and healthy. But I don’t think you understand that when you start off with “you know, when I was your age, I was scared of the world” - it really seems like you were gearing up to give me a big lecture about all the things you’ve learned, that you can teach me. I would love to be supported by you, as a dad - but you often come at it from a perspective that’s more professorial, like you’re an expert on all things mental health and recovery and you’re going to lecture me into being better.

But, from my perspective - I am a very successful person, with a great family, who has excelled in my hobby of writing and been achieving more in that area lately, and who also suffers from several mental illnesses. This is my struggle, and it will be a lifelong one with ups and downs. And I do think I’ve done a pretty good job of putting the supports in place in my life to deal with this! I am not scared of the world. I also want to gently say that one thing I’ve worked on in therapy, is this pervasive feeling that someone is always mad at me. And that is a feeling I got from childhood - from mom, but also from you. Just now you reinforced this idea, that you are observing my behavior and disapproving and gearing up to lecture or yell at me. This is how I felt growing up, so admittedly it’s a trigger.

I could use your support in the form of, I don’t know, just being there for me - listening if I want to talk, but otherwise trusting that I don’t want to get most of my mental health support from my parents. And not lecturing me. Even if it’s coming from a really well intentioned place, I don’t think it’s ever going to land with me. Does that make sense?

—

He just replied with a few brief words of apology, but the more I think of it, the angrier I am.

I’m like, okay I’m sitting here with a masters degree, a great career, a really nice house, a loving husband, a couple of smart, sweet, and fairly well raised kids, a few close friends and a couple passions and hobbies - but he makes me feel like I’m not living right somehow. I have struggles, big ones, but I must be doing something right!

I think part of it must be jealousy - like, he’s a thrice-divorced, recovering alcoholic and drug addict with PTSD, who has a PhD and was a professor and expert witness, but has been unemployed due to physical disability but also those other issues, for quite some time, and now lives in a studio apartment and drives Uber. I’m sure it’s hard for him to see me having some similar mental health issues but be more stable and successful. When I moved into this much larger house I think all he said was “won’t it be hard for you to keep this place clean?” But it sucks that he doesn’t process that, and instead gives in to this urge to feel better by taking me down a peg. And that it still works on me! He makes me feel like I’m a bad kid who did something wrong!

[wafflesetc]

I wholeheartedly believe that Upstead will be just fine. They could have broken them apart or done whatever when they wrote Jesse out but they didn't. And they want us to keep loving that couple. Writers keep using them for drama sake/factor just because they can and just like they have done pretty much every single season especially since they became officially a couple. Basically the same crap but in different font. It's just a recycled stroyline (like pretty much everything lately) but it's shittier and hurts more because one half of the couple isn't on screen right now and they are simultaneously disregaring everything we know about said half of the couple. They'll soon be riding into the sunset together. Just wait and see.

(Watch this come and bite my ass in May)

I lean more toward them being just fine too. I say that, because I agree with you... I think if they were going to do something drastic it would have already been done. It's in a lot of ways, harder to have to carry this story on - which they are choosing to do. I would think that them continuing to drag out the storyline and purposefully dangling it in front of viewers would mean that eventually it will all make sense, somehow. (And listen, it could be done with him making an appearance and it could happen without him making an appearance - I personally don't think that an Upstead ending/happening is necessarily dependent on whether or not he makes a guest appearance. Sure it would be so much sweeter to see him come home to her.. But if Tracy doesn't renew and they decide to have her leave Intelligence, I could see her leaving the building, his name popping up on the screen, she answers... "I'm on my way to get you, Jay." Or something like that.)

And yeah, it most definitely might come back to bite us in the ass too, but I'd rather try and be hopeful until I see all the episodes.

[zumpietoo]

I mean, dude, Zumpie, I still can’t get over that the only reason that Lili is dating this guy is he’s a legit copycat of Cole. Looks wise and that he attempted to parody him, and before that he was making fun of riverdale in general. Like the only reason Lili even heard of this guy is because he was making fun of her working acting job. Does riverdale suck? Obviously but don’t think that would be someone I would date. And the only reason she did get with him is because he made a tik took making fun of Cole.

I very much doubt she was interested in dating him before that popped up on her explore page. My guess is she saw that and had her agent or maybe one one of her cult people because I doubt her agents Are even working for her much lately Call him up and make connections. and that’s some scary shit. It’s not cute or even as her fans have been saying on social media “Bad ass” for her to date this guy because he made fun of cole, it’s batshit creepy. It’s also especially creepy that even after this she doesn’t distance herself from Cole. Case in point that hug when shooting wrapped, she was dating this guy and she went in for a hug because she knew there were plenty of camera s and Cole being polite would accept a hug. Why did she feel a need to hug him? In reality before that according to her Instagram she hardly acknowledges Cole on set but she needed to hug him in that moment?  She’s a creeper. And her behavior is insane.

 ITA on everything.....tho, also, consider: Cabana Boi is (or was), himself on an even shittier show and he’s worse on it than like FT and Droop on a baddd day, all the time.....

Oh and all his friends fucking hate her, super publicly----including making fun of her specifically, super publicly....

So yeah, it’s beyond uber creepy on her part....and similarly, tracks with how she and CreeBreetch are now friends, as well....

Also, how pathetic is that? “How did you meet him?”

“ummm......he previously made fun of myself and the job that made me rich and famous, then he bagged on my ex I’m still stuck on and looks like my ex/cosplays him/seems even moar obsessed than I am”.

In other news, here’s PP in 10 years, tho a lot less eloquent, I’m sure:

https://variety.com/2023/tv/features/bethany-joy-lenz-cult-one-tree-hill-interview-1235692328/