#and one of them asked for my Instagram and he’s like 17-18 and I’m turning 26 next week

[spacebell]

im starting my yearly birthday existential crisis week early

[sturniluvr]

meet my girlfriend

Matt sturniolo x fem!reader

word count: 2,294

warnings: couple spelling mistakes, a couple swear words, lots of fluff (a bit cheesy😅), italics = flashbacks

summary: Matt and childhood friend Y/N announce their relationship on his personal channel.

A/N: Matt is 18 in this fic and reader is 17 as said in fic!

❗️semi proof read❗️

Matt sets up the camera on the dashboard, his best friend of 12 years and girlfriend of 2 years in the car seat next to him. Matt hears Y/N let out a sigh, he looked to his side and saw Y/N looking nervous. 

“It’ll be fine my love. The fans already love you, announcing that you're my girlfriend won’t change that, I promise.” Matt says, grabbing her hand and rubbing his thumb across her knuckles in a comforting manner. “We don’t have to tell the fans if you don’t want to darling. It’s completely up to you.” He added on as he lifts her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. 

“No, I want to do it. Just some silly nerves that’s all.” She replied, intertwining their hands and smiling at Matt. 

“You ready?” He asks. 

“Yeah, press record.” 

Matt hits record and started to talk to the camera, his hand still intertwined with Y/N’s. 

“Hey guys, welcome to my personal channel, where I will be posting content without Nick and Chris. I won’t post as often on here, but I will try my best.” Matt starts with a little laugh before continuing.  

“For my first video on this channel, as you could probably guess by the title, I’m going to introduce you to my girlfriend, she’s a girl that many of you will be familiar with and if not then she’s about to introduce herself.” He added on, Matt gestures for Y/N to introduce herself, she gives a little wave and smile to the camera. 

“Hi everyone, most of you already know me but for those of you who don’t, hi, my name is Y/N and as Matt said, I am his girlfriend. I’m 17 years old, unfortunately I’m still in high school unlike Matthew here” she points to Matt and he lets out a little laugh at her dislike for high school before she carried on introducing herself.

“I just started my senior year, and like the triplets, I am from originally from Boston and I have known the triplets since I was in second grade and they were in third grade I think, is that right?” She looked over to Matt for confirmation to which he nodded. 

“Yep. She’s been in our lives since we were 8 and she was 7. She’s known us longer than Trevor!” He jokes, the couple chuckled together at his random fact. 

“Anyway, today, in honour of announcing our relationship, we’ve decided to answer some questions. I posted a question box on my Instagram story and we’re just going to scroll through and answer some of them.” Matt states. 

He pulled his phone out of his pocket and opened up Instagram and clicked on his story to see the questions. He read out the first question. 

“Okay, first question is ‘how did you guys meet?’ you wanna answer it Y/N/N?” she nodded before answering.  

“So, I actually met Nick first out of the triplets, mine and Nick’s science classes got merged one day because my teacher was sick and me and Nick got paired for a project together. Me and Nick became friends and one day he invited me to his house after school, and that’s how I met Matt and Chris, and we were all inseparable ever since. I constantly got them mixed up until they were about 14.” she replies, Matt and Y/N both smiling at the memory of how many times she got the triplets mixed up. Matt handed his phone to Y/N to read out the next question. 

“Okay next question is ‘who made the first move?’ Matt surprisingly, made the first move, I’ll let him tell the story of how it happened.”  

“So, it’s a pretty cliche story, but we were at a party for our high school’s sports teams and cheerleaders which we both had to be at since she’s a cheerleader and I was on the lacrosse team. Me, Chris, Nick, Y/N and a few other people were playing spin the bottle and it was my turn to spin and it landed on Y/N. At this point I’d had a crush on Y/N since we were in middle school, but I just never ‘had the balls to do anything about it’ as Chris would always say to me.” He rolls his eyes, remembering all the times Chris had tried to get Matt to tell Y/N how he felt. He carried on telling the story.

“So obviously, me and Y/N kissed and then the day after at school, I left a note in her locker asking her out on a date, obviously, she said yes to the date and low and behold, 2 years later, here we are. Pretty cheesy but, hey, what can you do about a man in love?” He shrugged his shoulders with a small smirk on his face. 

“Fun fact, I still have the note to this day.” Y/N stated proudly, looking at the camera. Matt looked over at her shocked. 

“You do?” He asked, looking at his girl in pure adoration. She looked at Matt and nodded her head, smiling at him. She handed him his phone back so he could read the next question. 

“Okay, next question ‘what are you lockscreens on your phones? and what is the story behind them if there is one’”  

Y/N pulled out her own phone and Matt locked his so that he was ready to show his lockscreen. She turned her phone around and showed her lockscreen. (a/n: pretend it’s Matt😭)

“Mine is a picture of Matt from a couple weeks ago. Me and the triplets went to the safari park, and I got this picture of Matt looking at the map and trying to figure out where one of the rides were and thought it was cute.” she smiled at her lockscreen before turning off her phone. 

*flashback to safari park* 

Y/N giggled as Matt looked at the map in his hands, confusion evident on his face. The four of them were stood in the middle of the path, Matt trying to figure out how to get to the log flume. 

“Matt c’mon mannnn” Chris complained. Nick rolled his eyes at his younger brother.  

“Baby, do you need help?” Y/N asked. Matt shook his head. 

“Really? Cause you’ve been looking at the map longer than Nick was looking at the elephants.” she chuckled, and Chris laughed along with her, Nick had spent ten minutes staring at the elephants earlier that day. She walked over to him and looked at the map, trying to help him.  

“I got it, I got it, gimme a second.” Matt said. Another minute passed of Matt looking at the map, looking adorably confused with a little smile on his face, Y/N thought he looked absolutely adorable and quickly took a picture before Matt laughed to himself and smiled as he looked at his brothers and girlfriend.  

“I got it! It’s this way.” he pointed in the direction of the log flume, and they all made their way to the ride. 

*end of flashback* 

Matt turned on his phone and showed his lockscreen to the camera. (a/n: again, pretend it’s y/n and Matt😭)

“Mine is a picture that Nick took of us in the car about a month or so ago. We were going on our annual family trip and as always, Y/N came along with us, and we were parked at the gas station and I noticed Y/N had fell asleep on me and Nick saw and took a picture of us and sent it to me and it’s one of my favourite photos ever” Matt spoke. 

*flashback to the family trip* 

Y/N and Matt were currently sat in the very back on the car with Nick. Chris, Trevor and Justin sat in front of them, and Marylou and Jimmy were sat in the front seats. They were parked at a gas station filling up the car and Y/N was falling asleep with her head in Matt’s lap, sharing headphones with him and Nick was sat on his phone. 

“You tired baby?” Matt whispered, looking down at the sleepy girl in his lap. She let out an incoherent mumbled reply. 

“Look at this TikTok!” Chris said loudly, turning around to face Matt and Nick. Matt shushed him.  

“Y/N’s asleep Chris be quiet!”  

“Shit! sorry, look at this TikTok though” Chris repeated, much quieter. The boys collectively laughed quietly at the TikTok he’d shown them, Chris turned back around and showed Justin the same TikTok. 

Matt moved a piece of hair out of Y/N’s face, smiling at his sleeping girl. Matt was unaware of Nick looking at the couple with a soft smile of his own on his face, he’d always been their biggest supporter ever since they told him about their relationship. Nick quickly opened his camera on his phone and snapped a picture of the couple and immediately sent it to Matt, the younger brother opened the message and a grin automatically grew on his face. 

“Thanks man, I love this photo” Matt spoke as he set the picture as his wallpaper and sending it to Y/N, so she also had a copy of the photo. Nick smiled.  

“Of course, I’m your personal photographer.” He joked and the brothers softly laughed before going back to doing their own thing waiting for Jimmy to get back in the car after filling it up. 

*end of flashback* 

Y/N put her phone back in her pocket and Matt passed her his phone to read the next question.  

“Aww this one is cute ‘what is your favourite memory with one another?’ I love this question” she smiled.

“my favourite memory with Matt is probably last Christmas when Matt woke me up around 4 in the morning because it was snowing so much and he just couldn’t wait to go build a snowman, this kid literally had a jacket and coat and my shoes ready for me and just woke me up.” They both started laughing at the memory from last Christmas and Matt hit his head on the steering wheel as he leaned forward laughing, causing Y/N to laugh even more as Matt held his head in his hand.

“Laughing at my pain, I see how it is missy.” Matt exclaimed, he reached over the center console of his car and started tickling her sides causing the younger girl to yelp out and tears started streaming down her face as he continued to tickle her. 

“Okay I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Y/N shouted, out of breath, softly chuckling as she held her hands up in surrender. She passed Matt’s phone back to him.  

The couple continued to answer questions and laugh with each other replaying memories from as early as their childhood to as recent as last week.  

“Okay, final question, this was asked by quite a few people ‘what is your favourite thing about each other?’ We’ll do one physical aspect and then one personality trait, okay?” Matt spoke and Y/N nodded in agreement before Matt continued. 

“My favourite physical thing about Y/N has gotta be her freckles, I’ll admit that I have caught myself counting the freckles on her face before while she’s been asleep” he admitted with a slight blush creeping up on his cheeks.

“My favourite thing about her personality wise is how persistent she is. I’ve seen her get into heated debates with Nick over the most random things and most of the time she’ll win, and I could honestly sit there for hours watching them argue back and forth, it’s so funny” Matt adds with a laugh and he smiles in Y/N’s direction. 

“It’s true, I’ll never let up if I think my opinion is right.” She said laughing with him. “Anyway, my favourite physical thing about Matt is probably his smile, his has got to be my favourite smile ever!” She said proudly, the blue eyed boy next to her stared at her with a soft expression and a wide smile on his face as she carried on talking.

“My favourite personality trait of Matt’s is how attentive and kind hearted he is, like I remember before he made this channel, we were sat on the couch together and he said he wanted to make this channel to help people who may be struggling with mental health like him and to make it a safe space for everyone. And he’s just such a genuinely great guy and nowadays, that’s pretty hard to come by and I couldn’t be more thankful for him. I can confidently say, I can see Matt being the guy I marry when I’m older.” she finished talking. He smiled at her for what felt like the millionth time this video, his cheeks started to hurt from how much she made him smile. 

“I love you baby” Matt spoke, planting a kiss on her cheek, her cheeks flushed.  

“I love you too Matt. So much.” She replied, smiling at the boy she’d been in love with for as long as she could remember. 

“I hope you enjoyed this video guys, we both enjoyed filming it. We love you. Stay happy and stay smiling.” Matt smiled at the camera and Y/N blew a kiss to the camera before he stopped recording. He put the camera down and looked over to Y/N 

“Did you mean that baby? About me being the guy you’d marry?” He asked her, his eyes full of love. She nodded with a smile on her face. 

“Of course, my love. You’re the best person I’ve ever known. You’re my person” she replied. 

He stretched over the center console and placed a kiss on her lips, both of them smiling into the kiss. 

“You’re my person too darling. I’ll marry you one day I promise.” 

And he did.

They got married a few years later.  

A/N: Lowkey was inspired by @imwetforyourmom one shot that was like this. Hope you don’t mind me stealing your idea ahah🫶🏻😅

[fallingforel]

I also went through your prompt list and I’d love to see you write something for Sam with this 63: “I hate seeing you like this.”

Thank you so much!! 😘

THIS IS SO SO SO LATE!!! i apologise ive just been going through INSANE writers block so i think ive finally come up with something! i’ve decided to combine these and i hope your happy with it!!! I honestly had half of this written before my christmas series but I had just got around to finishing it now.

prompts 14, 17, 18, 21, 63: “That’s new.” “Are you okay?” “I’ve got you.”“Do you like it?” “i hate seeing you like this”

words: 680

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“honey, I’m home. I’ve got you something too” sam shouted up the stairs, sam and I had been together for 2 years now and it was going good, we were a well established couple, living together having just moved in to a new house together this spring. I was upstairs in bed just scrolling through my phone looking at everyone that went to the eras tour over the weekend. i missed the ticket sales though, having just moved in with sam everything was a bit hectic.

“Up here” I shouted back. Footsteps soon echoed up the stairs. and then to the door which opened up and sam popped his head round before noticing me in bed. “what you doing gorgeous?” “just scrolling on instagram. Whaddya get me?” “ahhh ever the impatient miss Y/L/N. I got you a couple things actually while I was out with mum. close yer eyes and hold out yer hands then.” I did as I was told and felt the bed dip beside me and something hook onto my fingers. “reet. this is yer first one, open them” I opened my eyes to be met with a bag from Primark. i looked through the bag to find a grey sparkly top and bottoms along with a pair of black heeled boots and a track suit bottoms with trainers. "Do you like it darling?"

“of course I do, I love it, I love anything you get me Sam, Thank you. But what’s all this for?” I ask turning my head to look at him. “reet, the tracksuit and trainers are because ye always steal mine and then I never have any left to wear but the sparkly set and boots are for something we’re going to tonight. but I can’t say until you’ve opened the rest of yer presents like.” “wowww more than one present from my boyfriend, that’s new” “shuddup, yer divvy” “i’m only kidding idiot” i say going in for a kiss but he swerves me for his cheek. “not until yer’ve opened the rest of yer presents, same position again” he says grabbing my hands and holding them over my eyes "oooh kinky" "shurrup yer divvy" he says and I hear sams bedside drawer open and i feel something being placed in my lap. "reet yer can look now" I open my eyes to find a card in my lap. "Sam are you okay? Why have you got me a card yer haven't missed an anniversary or a birthday." "Just open it will yer." he says getting impatient. I open the envelope to find a card that reads "just to say I love you" I open the card and a piece of paper falls out that has tonights date on it and eras tour. I start crying. "ohhh y/n. If I had known you would act like this I wouldn't have got you them, I hate seeing you like this darling" he says "I'm fine Sam honestly, happy tears I promise." "Okay if your sure. go and get yourself ready then darling we need to be at the train station in an hour, we're staying in london aswell" "Oh I love you sam" I say looping my hands around his neck and bringing him in for a kiss.

⋆｡°✩

2 hours later we arrived in london and had made it to check in at our hotel and dumped our stuff and walked to wembley stadium and made our way to the VIP tent.

It got closer to the evermore set and it wasn't long before marjorie started playing and I had broke down crying as I had lost my own nan who I was very close to at the start of the year. Sam saw that I had started crying so he held my phone for me and looped his free arm around my waist and nuzzled his face into my neck after whispering "I've got you darling" and placing a kiss on my cheek. It was definetely one of my favourite moments I've ever had with sam, and I will cherish it forever.

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end.

[newjenns]

^_^

tw for the dream situation

i find it sooooo fascinating when ppl are like oh i talked about the dream thing with irls and tney thought it was stupid LOL ! bc like i talked about it with my mom (what i said almost verbatim was “a youtuber i follow who’s like in his early 20s was exposed by a few girls for privately messaging them on instagram and snapchat - the problem ppl are having is that the girls were 17 or had just turned 18 and were fans of the youtuber and one girl alleged that nudes were exchanged. so it’s like this weird morality issue of this youtuber possibly taking advantage of his young freshly turned adult starstruck fans for less than savory things”) and like. my mom completely agreed with me. maybe it’s bc she’s a protective latina mother from the islands whose already raised a teenage daughter and spent/spends years worrying for my safety when socializing with men but she totally understood why i was so uncomfortable with everything dream had admitted to and the possibilities of worse things having happened that is still just a he said she said at this point. she thought he was weird and asked me if i was still following him bc he doesnt sound like a good man and like i had already come to my own conclusions and made my peace with it bc this was a few days later but i respect my mother’s opinion more than anyone’s in the world and she probably still has a worse opinion of dream than i do now LOL idk where i’m going with this i just think it’s interesting

[pterodactylterrace]

Guys Like You Chapter 19

Title: Guys Like You

Chapter: 19

Chapter Summary: Just a bunch of random fluff for the time being.

Rating: 18+

Warnings: Mentions of pregnancy, and so much tooth rotting fluff.

{Prologue} {Chapter 1} {Chapter 2} {Chapter 3} {Chapter 4} {Chapter 5} {Chapter 6} {Chapter 7} {Chapter 8} {Chapter 9} {Chapter 10} {Chapter 11} {Chapter 12} {Chapter 13} {Chapter 14} {Chapter 15} {Chapter 16} {Chapter 17} {Chapter 18}

“Faye?” Henry called out, wandering into the living room where she was lounging on the couch with Kal.

“Yes?” Faye asked slowly, lifting her head from the fluffy canine’s side.

“Would you mind looking this over? Tell me if you’re ok with it?” Henry requested, handing her his phone to look over his newest Instagram post in the making, several pictures lined up and awaiting her approval.

First, was one of his signature boomer selfies, his face and chest covered in pony and princess stickers, glitter shimmering on the planes of his face, almost shining as bright as his smile. Second was a snapshot of his feet, nail polish globbed on the ends of his toes, Briar’s tiny hands in the frame adding more onto the top of his foot. Next was another selfie, his curls now tugged up into random tufts, secured with bright glittery hair ties, another amused smile on his face. Last was a small video clip of Briar painting makeup on his face, chatting away about the differences between unicorns and pegasus’, Henry asking at the very end if he was pretty yet, only for Briar to very definitively tell him ‘no’ and continue brushing over his face with more eyeshadow.

The post was captioned as:

“Girl Dad

#girldad

#glitterbomb

#amIprettynow?”

“That… that’s adorable.” Faye gushed, throwing her arms around his neck, his nervousness fading away. He had yet to introduce his fanbase to Briar. They had seen Faye a few times, different paparazzi photos surfacing of the two of them out together along with her accompanying him to the Witcher premiere. Neither of them minded Faye being photographed. She knew what she was signing up for, and Henry was always careful to only show her the good comments and headlines. The last thing he wanted was for her to be driven away thinking she wasn’t good enough again.

They had yet to reveal Briar’s presence, however. He had a Zoom interview later on in the week, and they had agreed that he could mention her if he was asked about family life. This was just him wanting to reveal his daughter on his own terms before people began trying to invade the child’s privacy. He could already see the feisty toddler chasing after someone with a camera, smacking them with her stuffed rabbit, Kal dutifully chasing after her.

Though, in retrospect, Kal may actually not chase after Briar to back her up. In the last couple of weeks, he had been by Faye’s side almost constantly. Not that he was jealous or anything, but he wasn’t exactly happy about now being Kal’s third favorite human. He’d raised that dog since he was ten weeks old, then Briar comes into his life and suddenly she’s the best thing ever. Now that Faye was pregnant, he split his time between curling up next to Faye and playing with Briar. The only time Henry spent with him was when he fed him, literally drug him out for a walk and at nighttime when he would lay on Faye’s legs all night. The poor dog was going to go crazy after the baby was born trying to split his time between everyone.

“So, is it ok to post?” Henry asked, shooing Kal from the couch so he could be closer to his fiancé. The dog was less than pleased to be uprooted form his spot, but relented and laid at her feet instead, huffing in annoyance as he laid his giant head on her tattooed foot.

“Well, nothing is showing her face, and I can tell you’re about to explode if you don’t tell the world about her soon.” Faye teased, gently kissing his stubbly cheek.

“I’m going to disable comments on it.” Henry explained, taking his phone back to finish the post and upload it to Instagram.

“Might be a good idea.” Faye agreed, peering over his shoulder as the images uploaded, hugging his thick arm to her chest. “I love you so much.”

“Aww. The baby’s making you all mushy.” Henry teased, dropping his phone onto the couch and wrapping his arms around her, kissing the crown of her head.

“Shut up.” Faye whined, leaning further into him, her face drawing into a pout.

“Please don’t cry, I was just teasing.” Henry requested softly.

“Sorry. Hormones are making me crazy.” Faye apologized, hiding her face in his chest.

“There’s no need to apologize.” Henry assured, squeezing her a little tighter.

“We’re going to have to tell Briar eventually.”

“We can’t just wait until the baby gets here and just be all ‘surprise! You’re a big sister!’?”

“No. She’s going to wonder why I’m getting so fat long before then. There will be questions. They might make me cry. Are you still going to love me when I’m huge?” Faye asked suspiciously.

“When you’re rounded out carrying my baby, tits full and just begging to be sucked on? I’m probably going to have a hard time keeping my hands off of you.”

“You can’t keep your hands to yourself now.” Faye teased, turning her head to look up at him.

“You aren’t wrong. I love feeling your skin on mine. In any way I can get it. Kissing you.” He whispered, gently kissing her neck. “Holding your hand.” He continued, tangling their fingers together as he nipped at her neck. “But best of all, I love being buried balls deep in that sweet little pussy of yours.”

“Bedroom. Now.” Faye hissed, Henry popping up with her in his arms, all to eager to carry her back to their bedroom, closing and locking the door before Kal had the chance to squeeze his way in.

~*~

“Just pull it off like a band aid, right?”

“Quick and easy and it’ll be over with.” Henry agreed, wrapping one large paw around her hip and pulling her closer.

“Briar, can you come here for a minute?” Faye called, resting a hand on his knee.

“Hi Mommy!” Briar greeted enthusiastically, practically tacking her mother as she launched herself into her lap, stuffed bunny still in tow.

“Hi.” Faye giggled, situating her daughter in her lap. “Briar, Mommy and Papa have something to tell you.” Faye started, Briar turning her wide innocent gaze up to her mother expectantly. “Henry?” Faye delegated, looking up at him.

“Princess, you’re a big sister. Mummy and Papa are having another baby.” Henry explained, Briar staring blankly up at him for what felt like an eternity, processing what he just said.

“Where?” She finally asked, Henry stifling a laugh at her innocent question.

“The baby is in Mommy’s tummy.” Faye told her, taking her daughter’s tiny hand and resting it on her stomach.

“You ate baby?!” Briar gasped, her eyes going wide as she frantically pulled up her mother’s shirt. “I get you out baby!” She yelled, poking at her mother’s navel, Henry unable to contain his laughter this time.

“The baby needs to stay in Mommy’s tummy until they’re ready to be born. They’re still too little.”

“How baby get there?” Briar asked, continuing to poke at her mother’s stomach curiously.

“Papa put the baby there so they can grow big and strong.”

“Big and strong like Papa!” Briar giggled.

“Yes, like Papa.” Faye laughed. “So, Mommy’s tummy is going to get bigger and bigger as the baby grows, just like when you were in my tummy.”

“I was in you belly?” Briar whispered in amazement. “Papa tummy get big too?”

“Yes, you were and no, I don’t see Papa getting a big tummy anytime soon.” Faye laughed.

“Nope, no tummy.” Briar confirmed after pulling up Henry’s t-shirt and taking in his still firm, furry abdomen.

“Thank you.” Henry chuckled, pushing his shirt back down and kissing the top of her head. “So, is that ok with you, princess? Would you like to be a big sister?”

“Yeah! I help with baby!” Briar squealed excitedly, hugging her stuffed bunny close to her chest and bouncing on her mother’s lap.

“Will you show Papa how to take care of a baby?” Henry asked, Briar nodding her head excitedly.

“Yeah! I show you!” She agreed.

“Ok, how do you hold the baby?” Henry asked, leaning down to look her in the eye.

“Like this!” Briar explained, cradling her stuffed rabbit in her arms.

“Ok, I think I can do that. How do you burp the baby?” Briar flipped the bunny up onto her shoulder, smacking it on the back and looking up at Henry to make sure he was paying attention. “Alright. What about feeding, how do you feed a baby?”

Without missing a beat, Briar pulled up her shirt and pressed the bunny’s face to her chest, Henry bursting out laughing along with Faye. “Very good, sweetheart.” Faye praised around a laugh, kissing the top of her daughter’s head. “Now why don’t you go play with Kal for a little bit?”

“Kal!” Briar called, hopping off her mother’s lap and running off to her room, the canine hot on her heels.

“I still don’t think I’m going to be very good at breastfeeding.” Henry lamented, Faye snickering and shaking her head.

“Yours are still bigger than mine.” Faye pointed out, playfully grabbing at his chest.

“I’m not so sure about that anymore.” Henry teased, resting one hand on the side of his chest she wasn’t groping and the other on Faye’s swollen breasts, pretending to contemplate as he shamelessly squeezed at her chest.

“You may have a point. The only bras that fit anymore are sports bras. I’m gonna need to buy more. Sports bras and swollen tits are not a fun combination right now.”

“You have my attention.” Henry purred, perking up at her declaration.

“Henry, I’m going to be getting ugly nursing bras, not sexy lingerie.”

“Why not both?”

“Really?”

“What? You’ve been pouncing me at least twice a day for the last week. How is me wanting to see my gorgeous pregnancy fiancé in something sexy out of line?”

“Ok, first of all, I haven’t been pouncing on you twice a day.” Faye started, Henry raising an amused eyebrow at her declaration. “I may have suggested we get closer a few more times than usual, but it’s not like I’m barging in while you’re busy to try and get some. I’m not some sex crazed maniac.”

“You barged in on me showering twice.”

“You do that to me all the time!”

“And I haven’t been able to complete a workout without you demanding I finish with a round of couples cardio.”

“Have you seen what you look like all sweaty with your muscles all pumped up? It’s not my fault you’re irresistible.”

“I also seem to remember you surprising me in the gaming room and riding me while I was on coms playing world of warcraft.”

“Ok, so like one slutty instance.” Faye scoffed, rolling her eyes.

“There was also that time last week when we went out for dinner. You had your hand shoved down my trousers before the driver even finished putting up the partition.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I was bothering you so much.” Faye grouched, crossing her arms and scooting away from him.

“You’re not bothering me at all.” Henry laughed, grabbing her hips and pulling her closer. “I’m just making a point. You can’t keep your hands off of me, and I’m loving every minute of it.”

“Wouldn’t mind your hands on me a little more.” Faye lamented, turning sideways on the couch and tossing her legs over his, leaning back to rest her head on the armrest.

“Are you hinting at something?” Henry asked, his fingers just barely skimming above the waistband of her leggings, a shiver following in their wake.

“Probably not what you’re thinking. My calves have been really tight lately. It would be great if my loving fiancé were to rub them down for me.”

“Are you sure that’s all you’re wanting?” Henry teased, his hands sliding down her legs to gently knead at her tense muscles.

“We’ll see.” Faye half yawned, already settling down for her usual mid-afternoon nap.  

~*~

“Faye.” Henry started out sternly, crossing his arms and raising a brow at his fiancé as she attempted to look innocently over her shoulder.

“Yes, my love?”

“What do you have there?”

“Nothing.”

“So, it’s not another cup of coffee that I’m smelling?” Henry challenged, crossing the room as Faye sat the cup down on the counter, spinning around to face him.

“But… the baby…”

“The baby is the exact reason you asked me to make sure you’re not drinking as much caffeine. Remember what the doctor suggested? Only one a day.” Henry scolded, gripping her hips to pull her closer.

“The baby wants coffee.” Faye whimpered, giving him her best puppy dog face.

“Then the baby will have to settle for decaf.”

“It’s not the same! Why are you being so mean?”

“I’m not. You told me not to let you drink more caffeine than you should, so I am.”

“Can’t you just leave me alone for two minutes? One extra every now and then is fine!” Faye growled.

“Of course I can leave you alone. I’m doing what you asked me to, so don’t yell at me.” Henry stated calmly, reaching past her to grab the pot from the coffee maker, dumping it out and taking it with him to his office, wincing at her irritated ranting. She had been very clear and adamant about him monitoring, and limiting her caffeine intake, especially coffee. Unfortunately, her most recent craving had been exactly what he had been told to keep her from. Why couldn’t she just crave normal things, like pickles and ice cream? No, she had to be obsessed with something she couldn’t have, and now she was extremely upset with him for doing exactly what she had asked him to do. He could almost feel more gray streaking through his hair.

He was just finishing up a phone call with a contractor when he could hear her again, this time strangled sobs and quiet sniffles meeting his ears rather than her ranting. He was up and out the door in a second, almost running into her when he found her loitering just outside the door.

“Darling, what’s wrong?” Henry asked, holding her shoulders gently and leaning down to look at her more closely.

“I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled at you.” Faye apologized, looking up at him with red rimmed eyes.

“Faye, please don’t cry.”

“I’m sorry, I just feel really bad. You’re just doing what I asked, and I started screaming at you!”

“Faye, darling, please calm down.” Henry soothed, pulling her closer and letting her cry into his chest. “I’m not mad, I know you didn’t mean it.”

“I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.”

“Faye, I’m not mad.” Henry insisted, kissing the top of her head. “There’s nothing to forgive. I love you.”

“I love you too.” Faye sniffled, wrapping her arms around his thick waist and squeezing him tight. “I’m sorry I was acting so crazy.”

“There’s nothing to worry about.” Henry repeated, rubbing her back softly. “The builders are going to be starting later on this week.”

“Really?” Faye sniffed, looking back up at him, Henry cupping her face and wiping her tears away with his thumbs.

“Yes. I told you we would get it done in time. It does mean we’ll have to watch Kal when he’s outside now, make sure he’s not getting into anything.”

“This doesn’t even feel real. I’m engaged to an amazing man, pregnant with his baby, living in a house with more than two rooms in it, and now we’re building a guest house out back.” Faye half laughed, reaching up to rest her hands on his wrists.

“Well, originally I wanted to move back to Jersey before we started expanding out family, but well… that didn’t happen. I don’t think moving out of a house we just moved into while you’re pregnant is a good idea, and we don’t have any family that lives close. Next best thing is building a guest house so family can stay without everyone being under each other’s feet.”

“Are you still wanting to move back to Jersey?”

“It would be wonderful if we could, but only if that’s also what you want. I just wanted us to be closer to family.”

“Maybe after I recover would be a good time. Kinda sucks that we’re building just to sell the house not long after.”

“We don’t have to sell it. Unless you’re not wanting to come back here at all.”

“Hen, you have to remember, I’m not the kind of person that owns multiple houses. I’m used to renting questioningly inhabitable apartments.”

“Never again.” Henry stated firmly. “Only the best for you from now on.”

~*~

Five minutes. They made it five minutes before being interrupted. Four minutes longer than he thought it would take. He gave Briar specific instructions not to come into his office until the door was open again. He never should have said anything. She normally never went into his office, finding the room ‘boring’ even after she put stickers all over the back of the door and window clings to the window. Now that he had told her not to come in, she was looking for reasons to do just that.

The interviewer had just asked him a question, and he opened his mouth to answer when he saw the door opening out of the corner of his eye.

“Yes, Princess?” Henry sighed, smiling and turning his head to see her standing perfectly still in the doorway.

“Hi.” She whispered, quickly running over to him and throwing her arms around his leg. “I love you!”

“I love you too, Princess.” Henry replied quietly, gently removing her from his leg and shooing her off towards the door, “Papa’s busy right now, so you need to wait outside, ok?”

“Ok.” Briar agreed, sitting down in the open doorway and staring at him again.

“Can you close the door, please?”

“But I wanna see you.” Briar pouted, her face falling at his stern look, standing herself up and closing the door again. He could faintly hear her crying her way down the hall, his heart shattering at the sound.

“Sorry.” Henry apologized, shifting uncomfortably. He wanted nothing more than to go and apologize for pushing her away like that, but the interview wasn’t quite over yet.

“Was that your daughter?”

“Yes, it was.” Henry responded, unable to keep the smile from his face.

“When are we going to get a peek at your family? There have been rumors of you settling down.”

“Yes, I am settling down.” Henry agreed, “I have found the most wonderful, amazing woman. We don’t want the children to be drawn into everything, though. That’s a pretty big boundary for us.”

“Children? As in, more than one?”

“We do see more children in our future.” Henry skittered around the question. Faye had been adamant about waiting until they knew what they were having before announcing it to the world.

“Papa, I brought you something.” Briar’s small voice cut in, peeking her head around the cracked open door, holding up a sticker she had already peeled from its backing.

“Thank you, princess. Papa’s trying to work now.” Henry chastised softly, leaning down when she crossed the room to let her place the pony sticker on his cheek.

“Almost done?” Briar asked hopefully, batting her lashes at him.

“Almost. Why don’t you go get Kal’s leash on him? We’ll take him for a walk just as soon as I finish up here.”

“Ok, Papa!” Briar gasped excitedly, rushing out the open door again.

“That should give us about two minutes.” Henry laughed, turning his attention back to the screen. “I’m terribly sorry about all the interruptions. I would have come in person, but my fiancé isn’t feeling quite well, and I didn’t want to leave her.”

“It’s alright, I understand.” The interviewer assured, flipping through their notes again. “Last question, do you have any future projects in the works?”

“I have one movie that is in post right now, but I haven’t lined anything up right now for afterwards. I’m focusing more on family at the moment.”

“You’ve stated before that having a family was your dream. What’s it feel like to have it actually happening right now?”

“I’m happier now than I’ve ever been.”

Tags:  @weallhaveadestiny @lunedelorient @summersong69 @mis-lil-red @lharrietg @amberangel112 @mansaaay @packerfan43

[horansqueen]

Stuck With You - Epilogue 2

Epilogue 2 : Anyone But You

🡪chapter 1  🡪chapter 2  🡪chapter 3  🡪chapter 4  🡪chapter 5  🡪chapter 6  🡪chapter 7  🡪chapter 8  🡪chapter 9  🡪chapter 10  🡪chapter 11 🡪chapter 12 🡪chapter 13 🡪chapter 14 🡪chapter 15 🡪chapter 16 🡪chapter 17 🡪chapter 18 🡪chapter 19 🡪chapter 20 🡪chapter 21 🡪chapter 22 🡪chapter 23 🡪chapter 24 🡪chapter 25 🡪chapter 26 🡪chapter 27 🡪chapter 28 🡪chapter 29 🡪chapter 30 🡪chapter 31 🡪chapter 32  🡪chapter 33 🡪chapter 34 🡪chapter 35 🡪chapter 36 🡪chapter 37 🡪chapter 38 🡪epilogue 1

College Enemies To Lovers AU

characters // masterlist // instagrams // mood board

I don't change my mind for anybody I won't waste my time on just anybody I won't share my life (with anyone but you)

It's such a long road (with anyone but you) That I couldn't follow (with anyone but you) Never anyone but Never anyone but (anyone but you)

THANK YOU! thank you for reading this story, for commenting this story, for reblogging and liking this story. Thank you to everyone on the update list, everyone who sent me requests and ideas, everyone who followed this story and everyone who was excited for every chapter. Thank you to everyone who messaged me, complimented me, thank you for all the emotions you shared with me through the characters. THANK YOU SO MUCH! i love you all. i can’t explain how much!

This is the final chapter. i hope you enjoy it and that this story reached your expectations. and i hope it makes you want to read my next story!

I LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH THANK YOU TIMES INFINITY!

NIALL

I stared at the painting on the wall as people walked slowly around me. I was proud of my girlfriend for her first exhibition but it was the very first time I was seeing this specific painting and although I knew no one had seen the picture it was based on, I recognized it immediately. She had asked me if she could expose the pictures but I couldn't see them anywhere. Instead, she had painted one of them and I was staring at it. The feelings invading me were the same than when I looked at the actual picture and I realized it was probably the moment that made me feel like that.

I felt her soft touch on my upper arm and detached my eyes from her art, blinking a few times to look at her. She raised her eyebrows slightly and bit her bottom lip nervously.

"You hate it."

"No!" I quickly replied, shaking my head and frowning a bit. "No it's just, so different than what you normally paint."

"I know, I think painting the human body is so complex and it really depends on how you see the person. It gets so much more emotional when you paint someone you love."

Her eyes found the painting and she breathed in before sighing. "Maybe I shouldn't have painted it, maybe I shouldn't have exposed it... I just thought it was a way to expose the pictures without really showing them to anyone."

"It's amazing, Devie." I whispered, making her turn around to look at me again.

Our eyes met and she sent me a shy smile. I turned to her and cupped her face, running my thumbs on her cheeks gently before bending down to kiss her lips.

"Dev!"

My girlfriend broke our kiss when she heard her name and I looked up to see Lewis, Daxia, Louis and Eleanor getting closer. We had been hanging out a lot recently and it was nice to be around people like them. Louis and I were also getting closer, probably because of Devon, and I liked that. I had missed him.

"This painting is beautiful." Daxia let out, making her glass turn in her hands as she stared at it. "I mean they all are, this one is just different."

"I was just telling her that." I smiled, glancing at my girlfriend.

"A lot of emotions thrown on that canvas." Louis pointed out, raising his eyebrows, and I immediately knew that he had guessed.

I thought about the real pictures that we had left at my apartment. Devon had created a mobile with them and we had placed it in a corner of my bedroom. Sometimes, I stared at it, just watching it move to see the lyrics written behind one of the pictures,. It brought so many memories to my mind and I knew It always would, no matter how many years passed.

"Hey, where are we celebrating tonight?" Lewis asked as Louis sent a smirk to Devon.

"Nope, not tonight guys, but we'll plan something soon." I quickly replied, shaking my head. "Tonight I'm just spending the night alone with my main girl."

"Seriously, why do you guys call each other like that?" Louis asked with a grimace. "Does that imply you have side girls and guys?"

Devon chuckled but I shook my head. "It's a secret between us, Tommo." I just replied, hitting his arm gently and making my girlfriend laugh.

I didn't answer his question because I knew he was joking, but it made me wonder if Devon really knew why I called her like that. It took an hour and a half before we finally arrived at my apartment and as soon as we walked in, I pressed her against the wall, pushing the door with one of my feet.

"It's my turn to be proud of you." I whispered, feeling her hands slip under my hoodie. "Your art moves me, Devie. You move me."

She grabbed my bottom lip between hers and sucked on it, making me groan.

"You know why I call you my main girl, right?" I wondered in a whisper, my lips brushing against hers.

"Mmhm, because of that conversation we had, when I said I wanted to be the protagonist." she moved closer to kiss me again and I let her before licking my lips.

"Not only that." I admitted just as low. "Devie, my real story didn't start before I met you. It was just a long prologue before the main thing."

Her lips parted and her eyes watered as I kept staring at her in the darkness of the room. I didn't know how to explain to her what she meant to me but seeing the way she was looking at me at that exact moment made me think she may know anyway.

She brought one of her hands in my hair as she stared at me. I loved feeling her fingers in my hair and I kissed her lips gently again. I thought I knew what love felt before but I really didn't. I knew it sounded cliché but it was true. I was ready to bet on anything that Devon was the love of my life and that what we had would last forever.

"I love you," she whispered, shaking her head slightly. "And we're going to your room right now."

I chuckled at her words and shook my head too. "No, we can't. I have a surprise for you." I admitted, making her frown. "Close your eyes." She stared at me and i smiled. "Do you trust me?"

Instead to answer, she closed her eyes and breathed in before I turned the light on. I put myself behind her, placing my hands on her eyes and leading her slowly to the living room, making her stop next to the couch.

"Okay, keep your eyes closed alright?"

She nodded and slowly, I took my hands off her eyes, making sure she was not cheating, and I took a few steps back. I stared at her for a while, feeling my heart thump against my chest, a bit scared of what she'd say, and when I softly told her to open her eyes. I watched confusion appear on her traits until she saw the little puppy, laying on the floor, asleep. I had tried to put a bow on his head but it was falling down and Devon chuckled, her lips parted.

"Niall!" she let out without sending me a glance before getting on her knees and moving closer to the small dog.

Slowly, she took him in her arms and he woke up, making my lips curl. "It's a miracle he didn't bark before, would have ruined the surprise."

"Niall I... I can't." she shook her head, looking at the puppy with loving but sad eyes. "My parents will never let me bring a dog home, you know it."

"He can stay here." I just shrugged, pushing my hands in my pockets.

She chuckled and rolled her eyes, turning to me with an amused smile. "Ah, you bought yourself a puppy, then."

"No, it's your puppy." I explained after swallowing the lump in my throat. "And he's gonna need you 24/7. And... and I need you 24/7, too."

She frowned and slowly got up, walking to her, the dog still in her arms. "Niall, what are you saying?"

I breathed in and swallowed again, taking a few steps closer to her very slowly. I had no idea why it stressed me so much. Perhaps I was scared that she'd think it's too soon, or that it was a stupid idea, but deep down, I really wanted her to accept.

"Devie, I'm ready to spend forever with you." I confessed in a gentle tone, taking my hands out of my pocket to grab one of hers. I opened her palm and placed a key inside before sighing. "It would be an honor for me if you moved in here, with me. What's mine is yours, and all that."

"That... That would mean we'd go to bed together all the time, and wake up together all the time. And I could watch you get ready for work in the morning, and we'd take showers together, and cuddle in front of the tv, and make food together... Every single day?"

"No." I shook my head with a chuckle. "Sometimes I'd bring take out or we'd order."

She chuckled and rolled her eyes, putting the dog down before he just ran away, making her laugh. She brought her attention back to me and I raised my eyebrows. "So? Is that a yes?"

She got on her tiptoes as her lips curled and slid her arms around my neck, pulling me gently closer. "Yes. It's a yes." she whispered, making me sigh of relief. "Did you doubt it?"

I chuckled nervously and kissed her lips. "Was just nervous." I admitted, raising my nose up. "How are you gonna name your puppy? Something original!"

"No idea yet, but you're right, we need an original name for our main dog."

I laughed and wrapped my arms around her waist, pulling her closer. "Thank you, Niall." she whispered, licking her lips. The way she looked at me all lovingly made my heart jump in my chest. There was something about the way her body fitted perfectly with mine that I couldn't stop thinking about.

"What for?"

"For being you. For seeing me. For loving me."

"Easiest thing I ever did, petal." I admitted in a murmur. "I love you."

"I love you more."

[caspianjames]

BONUS Up And Coming: Julie and the Phantoms

Up and Coming: Julie and the Phantoms Jennifer McCreedy, Junior Correspondent 

On this month’s issue of Up and Coming I had the privilege of sitting down with one of America’s biggest up and coming bands, Julie and the Phantoms. Julie Molina (17), Reggie Peters (18), Alex Mercer (17), and Luke Patterson (17) began rapidly gaining popularity as YouTube stars last fall. They created music videos for songs they wrote themselves, editing them to appear as if the band were ghosts “popping in” behind Julie. Don’t understand what I mean? You can click here to check it out for yourself!

The band has a strong air of camaraderie, and it’s the first thing I notice when I walk into the room with them. They’re all piled on our big interview couch, Molina and Mercer are pressed together whispering. Patterson is bantering with Peters and flicks him in the forehead. They’re like any group of teenagers bordering on adulthood, excited and eager to please. It’s immediately apparent that to all of them, the band has a deep meaning of friendship and support. 

Of course, the first topic of conversation was about the band - what inspired the structure of their music videos, how they got their name, and which came first - the ghost music videos or the ghost band! 

“Since my mom died, my brother has really been into ghosts,” Molina explained to me. “It was actually his idea for the band to pop in like that. My dad does videography as his job, so he was able to help us film and edit. My best friend, Flynn Taylor, came up with the band name.”

The boys all laugh when I ask if they liked the name right away or if there were discussions before they went public with it. “Flynn doesn’t do discussions,” Mercer smiles at Julie like there’s an inside joke there. There probably is, seeing how close these four are. “They came up with the name and made us posters, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter before even asking us what we thought.”

“We loved it,” Peters is quick to jump in. “And we love Flynn. She knew we’d like it, or they wouldn’t have gone ahead with everything.”

Flynn Taylor, Julie’s best friend, doubles as the band manager - she is on tour with them, but opted not to be present for the interview. 

Since beginning their tour with Panic! At the Disco, all their videos have amassed over one million views each on YouTube and their music has been released on Spotify with startlingly quick success. Molina, I discovered, is actually the newest member of the band, although I would never have known from watching the four bandmates interact. She is also the youngest by a year, having just had her seventeenth birthday as the boys are all turning eighteen, but she holds herself with a quiet confidence that all the boys seem to look to. Even this early into the interview they defer to her to answer questions and look to her for reactions to their own answers. 

This made it especially surprising to find out that the band existed before Julie joined it, just under a different name. Sunset Curve. Clearly, it did not have the popularity that Julie and the Phantoms has even a few months into their creation. “We played a couple school shows and stuff,” Patterson told me, “but nothing clicked until we met Julie.” Luke Patterson carries a humming energy with him that comes across in his words. In true rocker fashion, he struggles to sit still, tapping his fingers on his thighs and softly bouncing on the couch. 

Unsurprisingly, Molina used similar words to describe the band’s first meeting. “The first time I sang with them at school we just clicked,” she says, smiling at Luke. 

Of course, given their success, I had to ask the question everyone wants to know. How did they end up opening for Panic! At the Disco, despite being relatively unknown outside the Los Angeles music scene previous to their debut at The Orpheum?

“We’ve seen some wild theories,” Mercer confides to me with a small smile on his face. He is arguably the most subdued of the group and generally seems content to watch his bandmates answer my questions. Don’t be fooled, though - not only is he a phenomenal drummer, he also sings backup vocals for Julie and the Phantoms. “My favouirte theory was one that caught a lot of steam on Twitter about us using ‘ghost powers’,” he adds air quotes with his hands and laughs, “to hide the scheduled opener’s tour bus and then pop into the venue in their place at the time they were supposed to perform.”

The whole band laughs at this - clearly it is a favourite theory amongst them. Peters adds, though, that it was clearly an unfounded theory given that “Julie doesn’t have any ghost powers, anyways. That’s why it’s Julie and the Phantoms. But I’d kill for ghost powers in real life.” When I ask what he’d use them for, though, he seems stumped. “I think it would just be cool to walk through walls.” We’re with you on that one, Reggie!

But what actually did happen to get them into the coveted opening spot at The Orpheum? Molina gives me a modest smile when I ask. “We were honestly just in the right place at the right time,” she explains. 

Patterson picks up the story from there with a little bit more flair, telling me that the opening band had actually gotten food poisoning - “from a street dog vendor, believe it or not” - and the manager of the Orpheum happened to be familiar with the Julie and the Phantoms YouTube page. 

“Since we were local,” Peters explains, “It was just a phone call. And then suddenly we were on stage doing a proper professional soundcheck for the first time in our lives.”

“Everything moved so fast after that,” Patterson adds. Each of his bandmates nod in agreement as he speaks. “We blinked and we were on a tour bus, suddenly.”

It seems that the band is handling the change well, though. 

“It’s definitely different,” Molina tells me. “We have to be responsible for our own school and make sure we’re turning in assignments on time. There’s a lot of driving and a lot of time to kill. We can get on each other’s nerves quite a bit, but there’s always a lot of time for songwriting, too.”

When I prompt her about who gets on who’s nerves, the whole band turns in tandem to look at Luke. He laughs and shrugs at me. “I’m an early riser,” he explains. “I like music in my hands twenty-four seven. I always have my guitar, but it isn’t always appreciated.”

“We’ve had to compromise,” Mercer says with a long-suffering sigh. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was the oldest of the group. “Luke isn’t allowed to start playing music until eleven in the morning the day after a show.”

As for being on tour with Panic!, none of them seem all too bothered by the fame of the headliners. “They’re really cool,” Peters explains to me. “They’ve been doing this a long time and they always have advice for us which I think we really value right now.”

Otherwise, though, the band seems to keep to themselves. When asked about their favouirte hobbies, Peters speaks at length about Star Wars. “I can’t watch the prequels before bed,” he says. His bandmates groan and shake their heads, although he seems unbothered. “Jar-Jar gives me nightmares.”

Other than Star Wars, “We try to make sure we get time and space for ourselves every day,” Molina says. “It’s a lot of us in a small space, and if we don’t get away from each other for a bit we argue a lot more.”

When I ask each of them who their favourite bandmate is to live with, all the boys say Julie and then turn expectantly for her answer. “I suppose Flynn doesn’t count as a bandmate,” she said with a sigh. “Probably Alex, but we live together normally so it’s not something that’s new.”

Mercer confirms this piece of information with a nod and a smile. “I prefer sharing a room with your brother to sharing a bus with you, though,” he says to Julie. She just rolls her eyes. 

When pushed, Mercer elaborates a little bit. “I’ve been living with Julie’s family for my senior year. It’s a better environment for me and is much closer to our school than where I lived. My parents are happy that it gives me more time to focus on school.”

Since I have Mercer’s attention now, I ask him a question I’ve been dying to know the answer to. Does he know what a role model he is to gay and questioning children and teens that get to see him be himself so publicly? 

As all the boys have been doing, he looks to Julie before answering. “I don’t think about it much, to be honest,” he says candidly. “If people think I’m a role model then I’m glad, but I’m just me. And being gay is part of me, a part of me that’s always been completely accepted by my band, just like my drumming or my singing.”

There was no tension, the band members explain, upon finding out about Alex’s sexuality. “No one was surprised when Alex came out,” Patterson adds. “We were only, like, twelve when he came out to us, anyway. It’s just a fact about who he is. Like, Alex is gay and hates mornings and I play the guitar and love mornings and we’re best friends.”

“Plus, I’m bisexual,” Peters adds, “So it would be hypocritical to have a problem with Alex.”

“I’m pansexual,” Patterson pipes up again. “And Alex being himself helped me figure out that part of myself.”

Molina doesn’t seem to have much to add. “Alex was already out when I met him,” she says. “It was never a surprise and someone’s sexuality shouldn’t be something that causes tension or makes people upset anyways.”

When I point out that it has seemed to cause some tension among fans, they all sigh. For unaware readers, the band has been stirring up quite the debate on Twitter and Instagram amongst fans and haters alike as to who is dating who. Patterson and Molina confirmed their relationship before going on tour and have been dating since before their band became popular. Recently, a Twitter user attending a Julie and the Phantoms meet and greet noted the closeness between Molina and Peters, causing fans to speculate that Molina is cheating on Patterson with Peters. When I ask if they'd like to address it, however, they all nod. 

“Luke and I have been dating for a few months,” Julie says, “very happily. Neither of us have cheated on each other, nor would we ever. But we’re both also dating Reggie.”

When I ask for clarification, Peters adds, “I’m dating Luke and Julie, just like Julie is dating me and Luke and Luke is dating Julie and me.” Although it doesn’t sound clear, it does seem to be clear for them. 

“We’d like people to give us our privacy, although we know that probably won’t happen,” Molina says. “We’re allowed to define our own relationships in the way that works for us, we don’t have to hold them up to anyone else’s expectations or preconceived notions of what a relationship should look like.”

When I ask if there’s anything they’d like to add before we wrap up, Patterson pipes up with a confident “Yes.” 

“We’re Julie and the Phantoms,” he says, prompting Peters to follow up with “Tell your friends!”

Tell your friends, indeed. You can find Julie and the Phantoms everywhere that Panic! At the Disco is playing for the next four weeks. 

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taglist under teh cut (ask to be added or removed!!)

@screamin-amuseum​ @angelwiththeblue-box​ @defultuser​ @peter-parkerson​ @willex-molina​ @thedepthsofhell​ @themongosianhorse​ @theamd426​ @k-padfoot39​ @wholitzukoonfire​ @invisibleraven​ @williesskateboard​ @leodolphin​ @moss-on-a-tree15​

[corvus--rex]

One from way back when i first thought of doing a model Au, and way, way before I did Dripping in Gold for Julance - which I think I actually like better anyway. So that means that this one is pretty well abandoned. Not much to say about this one except that Allura is evil and enjoys watching her friends suffer >;)

~*~*~*~

“Allura, why?” Keith asked flatly with just a tinge of incredulousness.

“Because, that’s why,” she answered, getting up and following her stylist. She perched in the chair and took a selfie, her fingers flying across the keyboard as she added a caption before posting it to Instagram.

Keith got the notification, checking it before going back to the private message she’d sent him. The new post was another perfect selfie, her aqua eyes sparkling and dark skin glowing. “Getting my hair straightened!!! Sooo excited!!!” read the caption. Allura had been teasing a new hairstyle, temporary, of course, for an upcoming shoot all week. Only Keith and their friend Shiro knew what she was planning. And since Shiro was busy on a shoot himself, Keith had been dragged along to Allura’s styling appointment.

He slid lower in the leather sofa, returning to the private message. All she had sent was the name of another Instagram user and fellow model. He had nothing better to do, and so decided that he would at least check out what LB_Lance was like.

Allura wasn’t entirely wrong. Keith hadn’t dated in months. Ok, closer to a year. But he was busy! His modeling career and college took precedence over all else. His double major in fashion design and business took up a lot of his time, modeling taking up the rest. His dream end goal of establishing his own fashion house wasn’t going to fund itself. Maybe he had been neglecting his social life. But only a little.

Either way, she had decided that she'd had enough of Keith’s asocial antics. Unless he was working or in class, he was locked in his apartment, studying or working on projects for his double major. Allura used her contacts at Castle Modeling Agency, getting the name of Lance McClain's Instagram. She had seen him there before, run across him at agency parties, and knew he and Keith would hit it off if they were ever in the same room.

Soft aqua body glitter and naturally golden skin were the first things he saw when he went to LB_Lance’s most recent post. The glitter dusted his cheekbones, shoulders, and collarbone. It was artistic and intentional, highlighting his natural beauty rather than covering it. The tightlined, hair’s breadth gold eyeliner made his vibrant blue eyes inhumanly intense. One corner of his perfect lips was curled upwards ever so slightly. His dark hair was slightly damp, giving it a natural wave. He was dressed only in turquoise and gold board shorts, elbows leaning on a weather-worn, thick wooden rail.

Keith gasped softly. Holy fuck he was beautiful. He didn’t even have a chance to scroll any farther before getting a notification of another private message.

LB_Lance: Hey, StarPrincess said I should check you out. So I did. Damn, you’re hot. I think I’d like to see for myself. You free Sunday?

Keith looked up, glaring in Allura’s direction. “Allura, I hate you.”

“Why? What did I do?” she asked, feigning innocence.

“You know what you did,” he shot back, “And he’s pm’ed me.”

She giggled. “Did you look yet?”

“Yes. I did. I hate you.” He knew she was referring to Lance’s page, not the message, and what she meant by looking.

“Pretty, isn’t he?”

“Still hate you.”

Allura snorted, going back to her phone, while her stylist Angel continued with her hair, and Keith went back to his.

Kei_Ko: I have a sunset shoot Sunday, but I have all morning off. What’d you have in mind?

Kei_Ko: And even if my being hot were true, you’re a fucking god

LB_Lance: . . . I . . . um . . . ok. I, um, I was thinking of – hey, you know Jack’s?

Kei_Ko: The diner?

LB_Lance: Yeah! Meet up for a late breakfast? Like 10?

Kei_Ko: Sure.

LB_Lance: I’ll see you then. Later, sexy. ;)

“OhmygodIfuckinghateyouAllura,” Keith hissed all at once as he threw his phone to the other end of the sofa.

She cackled at the rushed sentiment. “Oh. My god. What happened?”

“I have a fucking date Sunday morning thanks to you.” He folded his arms, glaring at her.

“Huh. That’s usually when your dates end. This is a step up for you,” Allura said, taking a not-so-subtle dig at Keith’s tendency for short-lived relationships.

“Wow. Really? You’re going there? I may just have to make you walk to the shoot in this heat,” he retorted, watching her face contort.

“You wouldn’t. Keith, please. Tell me you’re joking.”

Keith tried. He really did. But he couldn’t keep a straight face and collapsed to the sofa in a fit of giggles. Allura realized he wasn’t serious and felt her own giggles bubbling up her throat. It took them both a few minutes before they’d calmed down enough to speak.

“You’re horrible,” Allura finally managed, “Remind me why I’m still friends with you?”

“Because you love me,” Keith replied from his sprawled position on the sofa.

“Debatable.”

Keith rolled over to retrieve his phone from where he’d thrown it, flipping Allura off in the process. She snorted and went back to her phone while Angel worked. Keith also returned to his phone and LB_Lance’s Instagram.

“So, what’s this guy’s real name, anyway?” he asked.

“Lance,” Allura answered without looking up, “Lance McClain. I have told him yours as well.”

“So, what’s the ‘LB’ for?”

“Dunno. Never asked. But then, I'm not the one who has a date with him, maybe you should be the one to ask that,” she teased.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Allura.” Keith rolled his eyes at her and went back to scrolling through Lance’s Instagram.

<~>~<~>

Pidge launched herself onto Lance’s sprawled form. She felt it was only fair since he was taking up the entire sofa. He’d been on his phone all morning and completely ignoring her, and she finally got tired of it. Lance’s reflexes were good, and he grabbed Pidge by the waist and tossed her off of him and onto the floor, but not before she grabbed his phone. She landed on the floor with a grunt and a thud, but ignored it in favor of what had held Lance’s attention for so long.

“Damn, Lance, he’s hot,” she said, scrolling back up through the Instagram account of Kei_Ko, “You gonna be stalking him now?”

“Fuck off, Pidge,” Lance retorted, snatching his phone back, “And no, I'm not stalking him. I got a message that I should check him out from someone at Castle. Well, not just anyone. It was Allura. And for your information, I already pm’ed him. We’re meeting up for breakfast on Sunday.”

Pidge rolled to a sitting position and turned around. “You ass. Tell me everything.”

He sighed, rolling onto his side to face her. “I ran into Allura at Castle a couple days ago, and she suggested that I might want to look up one of her friends – who also happens to be a model – and that she’d message me on Insta. So, I did, and he’s beautiful, and I asked him out. There. That’s everything, you gremlin."

~*~*~*~

Links to the rest of the series:

1 | 2 | 3* | 4 | 5* | 6* | 7 | 8 | 9* | 10 | 11 | 12* | 13 | 14 | 15* | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19*

[prettyboyjackhughes]

-Maybe it wasn’t meant to be- |J. Hughes| [Part 2]

Jack lay in bed, by himself, for the first time in weeks. They had won last night in a shootout, Jack having the winning goal and winning the series. But it still didn’t feel like enough. He still felt empty. Whether it was because he didn’t have her or because he knew she didn’t care or love him anymore, he wasn’t sure. The fact that he still blamed this feeling on Charlie made him sick to his stomach. He rolled over, grabbing his phone off the bedside table and ignoring the 3 text messages from Mallory, the model he had been hooking up with. He had a few texts from family, telling him congrats on the series win. But the one text he was most concerned about was from Alex. Jack had seen the news about Alex’s trade and had been meaning to text him but with all his “extracurricular activities”, he had forgotten and never texted him. So seeing Alex’s name in his phone brought a smirk to Jack’s face.

Alex-I just got done talking to Charlie

Alex-What the hell did you do to her

Jack’s stomach dropped again. He sat up in bed, his sore muscles complaining. Alex had gotten traded to Colorado, meaning Charlie was in Colorado. With Alex. Jack didn’t even think twice and pressed the call button. It rang a few times then Alex’s voice broke through the silence.

“What the hell are you talking about, Turcs?” Jack says, trying not to snap at Alex.

“I guess you got my text huh?” Alex says. Jack shifts, crossing his arm over his chest and grabbing onto his shoulder.

“Obviously now please explain to me what the hell you’re talking about. Charlie is in Colorado?” Jack’s chest tightens as he says her name for the first time in 3 years.

“She’s in Colorado. Tell me what you did to her.” Jack swallowed hard and let his head fall back against the headboard of his bed.

“I messed up Turcs. I made her feel like she wasn’t enough and that I didn’t want her. I was confused and wasn’t sure that I wanted to keep all the promises I made to her. I wasn’t sure that what we had was love, I mean we were only 18. But I look back now and I know, she’s the only one I can ever love like that. She’s the only one. But it’s too late.” Jack’s stomach churned. Alex was silent on the other end of the phone.

“So you’re telling me, you gave her up? And since she didn’t want to get hurt, she left? She ran away from you, Jack.” Jack’s head dropped.

“I know. And I shouldn’t be holding on to her after this long. She’s probably forgotten about me and moved on. I wouldn’t blame her if she did. I deserve that.” Jack said, running a hand through his hair.

“Jack, you made her drop all of us. She shut everyone out of her life that reminded her of you. The last time I had talked to her was 3 years ago! None of knew what happened and then you started to spiral. We had all figured you guys had broken up when she disappeared. I mean, come on man. This wasn’t just about you.” Alex’s words played in his head over and over again.

“So what are you saying? Do I try and reach out? Should I text her?” Jack asks.

“I didn’t say that. It’s been 3 years. She told you not to come after her, which was a stupid move you idiot. I’ve watched enough romance movies with Madi to know that when a girl says that, the guy is supposed to go after them.” Jack smiles a little, thinking about all the nights Jack, Alex, Charlie and Madi, Charlie’s best friend, would spend in the basement of his parents’ house back in Plymouth when he and Alex were in the NDTP, watching every movie from The Notebook to Miracle. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

“I was a stupid kid then. If I had the chance to go back, you know I would go after her.” Alex moves the phone to his other ear and clears his throat.

“Jack, I think you need to think this through before you do anything. I’m going over to Charlie’s later. I might try and get her to talk about all of this. I know she talked to Madi about it at the beginning but with Madi being in Germany for the last year and a half, they haven’t talked much. Who knows, she may just shut down if I even mention your name.” Jack nods, agreeing with Alex. It had taken him 3 years to even say her name. When she had first left, Jack had gone back home for a week. It had worked out that the team had a 3 game series against Detroit. He had sat in his childhood room, looking at the pictures on his walls. Most of them had her in them. They had been friends since they were kids. He had fallen for her the day she had looked at him, rolled her eyes and bet him 3 dollars and a piece of gum that he wouldn’t eat the sucker they had found stuck to the pavement in the cul-de-sac. That had happened when they were 11. She had been his neighbor, 3 houses away from his on the cul-de-sac, since he was born. Their families became friends because of the two of them. Charlie’s older brother went to college at the University of Michigan with Quinn, actually finishing his degree, unlike Quinn who ended up going to the NHL. Charlie’s younger brother played hockey with Luke for a couple seasons before deciding he liked baseball better. Every memory he had, she was apart of. Every birthday party since he was 7, every school dance; every little memory that he had from his childhood and into his NHL start, she was there. He didn’t want to let go of her because he thought it would make all those memories even harder for him. But sitting there, in his childhood bedroom, crying over something he had messed up, his mom had walked into his room. She had sat down on his bed, rubbed his knee and comforted him as best she could. But out of all the things she said, one thing still stuck with him, even now. She had picked up the picture of them from homecoming their freshman year. Homecoming had been about 3 months after Jack had asked Charlie to be his girlfriend.

“I see how you two are there. So happy and definitely in love. You loved her, and she definitely loved you. But honey, sometimes people love someone but it isn’t the right time for them to love each other. It’s just, right person, wrong time.” And that’s what he had held onto. That he and Charlie were just the right person, wrong time. Maybe they’d find each other in the future and things would work out.

“I guess it’s really her move. Not anything I can do. You can talk to her if you want, you don’t have to. I’ll talk to you later, Alex. Thanks for listening and letting me know. See you next time we’re in Denver.” Alex says bye and Jack ends the call. He falls back against the pillows and stares at the ceiling.  

Charlie looked down at the pictures and clothes scattered around her on the floor. The day she had left, she had thrown all of the stuff she had of Jack’s into a box. Every picture, every sweatshirt and t-shirt, every piece of jewelry that he had gotten her since she was 14. At first, she couldn’t even bring herself to look through the box or to even have it anywhere she would see it on a daily basis. But now, she was getting better. The box had moved from the hall closet to the corner of her room. When things got really bad and all she could think about was Jack, she would pull something out of the box, usually one of the sweatshirts or t-shirts, and think back on how things used to be. She knew she still loved Jack but how long could she go on loving him? Did he even remember her? Did he still think of her as much as she thought of him? Honestly, she probably would never know the answers to those questions, which hurt, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it because she wasn’t going to go after someone who had pushed her away all those years ago. He had decided she wasn’t worth it and never came after her. As she sat on the floor, staring at the promise ring he had given her when they were 17, Alex knocked on the door to her apartment. She quickly threw everything in the box and got up, running to open the door. She threw it open and Alex looked up at her from his phone with an amused look on his face.

“Excited to see me?” He says as he walks into the apartment behind her. She shuts the door and locks it behind him.

“Oh hush, Turcs.” She says, rolling her eyes. She and Alex had fallen right back into how they were before, with him constantly teasing her and her taking it but giving it right back.

“So how do you like the new apartment?” Charlie asks, walking in front of Alex who follows her into the living room. He sits on the couch as she collapses on the floor.

“You always liked sitting on the floor better than the couch, you weirdo.” Alex says, nudging her with his foot. She laughs and gets on her phone. Charlie scrolls through instagram, pausing for a second on a picture of Jack from the All-Star game a few weeks ago. Alex watches over her shoulder, trying to decide whether or not to tell her about his call with Jack.

“Hey Char...I talked to Jack before I came here.” He says, tapping on her shoulder. She stiffens for a second then turns to look at Alex.

“You...You talked to Jack. Did you tell him...that you talked to me? That I was here?” She asked, something that looked like fear but was more concern and interest than anything.

“I mentioned I had talked to you and that you were here. We talked about what happened.” She picks at her lip and watches Alex. Alex is being careful with his words, trying not to cause a breakdown.

“As in...why I left? You guys talked about why I left?” Alex nods, moving down to the ground to sit next to her.

“We talked about it. He explained what he thinks he did to cause you to leave. It all makes sense, Char.” Charlie nods, her head staying down.

“I know it makes sense Alex. Why do you think I did it?” She says, pushing her hair back out of her face and looking at him hard.

“It wasn’t the right choice though. I loved him and I knew he wasn’t going to hurt me. Why did I think it was a good idea to let him go? If we’re being honest, I still love him.” Alex’s eyes stay on Charlie, trying hard to hide his slight excitement.

“Charlie, have you ever thought about maybe trying to reach out to him? I mean, you two were friends before everything. You were best friends.” Charlie shakes her head.

“Alex, I can’t. I decided I wasn’t going to go after someone who had pushed me away all those years ago. He had decided I wasn’t worth it and never came after me.” Alex places his hand on her knee gently, distracting her from picking at her fingers.

“Char, you told him not to come after you. If he loved you, you told him not to come after you. So I understand what you were thinking but you wanted him to come after you, didn’t you?” Those words shatter Charlie. She starts to cry and Alex pulls her into a hug.

“All I wanted was for him to come after me. I wanted him to show up in Colorado and take me back home with him. Say I belonged with him, in Jersey. I wanted the whole dramatic movie reuniting. But instead he never came and I stayed in Denver, heartbroken. I don’t understand. I thought he loved me.” She chokes out the words, sobbing into Alex’s shoulder. Alex hugs her to his chest, his heart breaking for his two best friends. 

[generallybarzy]

hey there, stranger. vi

one, two, three, four, five

an: two months after you first met mat, you’re back in the same little coffee shop, in much heavier moods than last time. // So after last chapter, i'm sure you're all upset about what's happening to our favorite cute new couple. What began as a cutesly fluffy fic is turning into something a lot more serious and tough. Because all relationships come with hardships, and working through them together is something they're gonna have to do. Another thing, please comment and send asks about this story!! Even though this isn't the biggest fic I've planned so far, I'm putting all my love into these characters and their situations hit close to home, and I'd really appreciate some feedback.  warnings: mentions of domestic problems and violence (mostly verbal and mental), relationship doubts, talks of fear and self-worth tagging some lovely people:  @sunflowertimothee @deleausvp @dunnwithlyfe @smit41 @softboybarzal @fallinallincurls @matbaerzal @brokeninsidebutnobodyknows @hockeyhughes11 @folkloreflyers @nazdaddy word count: 2.3k  

You hadn't always been afraid of love.

But maybe you had, for as long as you could remember.

It began with your parents. They were unhappy, they argued, they fought, they pulled others into their arguments and eventually drew so far from each other that they were distant and cold to even their children. They seperated, violently and in the dead of the night, in the middle of your school year, and threw your life into a rollercoaster. It scared you. Made you feel, even as a young kid, that love just wasn't something that happened. Relationships didn't exist, love didn't exist without violence and arguments and fights. A perfect love was just not what you believed in. And even though it's true that every couple has their arguments, you believed that the fights were common. The yelling, the jealousy, the coldness, the raised voices, the fear. 

The last time you truly, honestly were in a relationship, it was your highschool sweetheart. If he could be called that. You were 17 when you got together, you got in trouble together, turned 18 together, and graduated highschool together. He started out amazing, as amazing as teenage boys could get, but somewhere along the way he changed. But looking back now, you could never truly call him your sweetheart, even at his sweetest. 

While you were studying endlessly to graduate high school with honors and applying to all the colleges and scholarships you could, your boyfriend was out partying and drawing further and further away, turning cold and careless. And though you hadn’t found out until afterwards, your boyfriend had spent the last six months of your relationship sleeping around with countless other girls behind your back. You didn’t find out until a sweet girl came forward and told you what he’d done, and that she was sorry and didn’t know he was taken. 

“He’s not, not anymore.” 

You found more proof. He didn’t even try to hide it, but you were too busy with school to notice all his tagged posts on Instagram, all the pictures of him openly kissing other girls while you foolishly had his name and a heart in your bio. You felt humiliated. When you finally confronted him, he laughed. As if he didn’t care that you found out. As if he was proud. “Maybe,” he looked at you with absolute lack of care in his eyes, “Maybe if you weren’t so fucking prude and put out a little more, I’d still care about you!” 

The only thing you did right in that relationship was to break it off right there. You’d think, after saying he didn’t care about you, he’d leave. But even after you walked out that door for the last time, his number was one that constantly popped up on your phone. “Wow, running away like always, huh? Fucking bitch.” “No wonder no one wants you” “Always such a clingy bitch but never wanted to fuck. Maybe if you would’ve slept with me I wouldn’t have to find other girls to satisfy me.” “You did this to yourself.” He’d send you pictures of himself with the other girls, taunting, saying “This is what you’re missing out on.” He’d flaunted the fact that he cheated on you, as if wanting to humiliate you. As if it’s what you deserved.

And, for a long time after it ended, you believed him.

Did you think Mat was like that? Deep down, no. But something made you fearful to open up to any man ever again after what happened. You’d truly loved someone, as blind as you were, and it all blew up in your face, and now, you were convinced love only ended with a broken heart. 

Mat sat across from you now, in this familiar little coffee shop, his eyes heavy and his brows furrowed in worry, his bottom lip pulled between his teeth as he watched you. His hair was the same as when you woke up tangled together this morning, dark and unruly after his morning skate, and he sat with his big hands resting on the table, just inches from your own, playing with his fingers- a nervous habit that you realized as of late and loved. Watching him scratch his wrists and crack his knuckles and fumble with his fingers was a strange sort of calming, and made you want to hold his hands in yours and kiss each joint and feel his skin against yours in that wholesome, comforting way. But he didn't reach out. He thought he did something wrong. He thought he ruined your relationship. He thought it was his fault. 

“That's not how I imagined our first morning together would go.” He gave a sad smile, always one to try and lighten the mood, while his mind drifted to the daydreams he had had of waking up surrounded by your warmth and your arms and getting to kiss and snuggle into you before practice. He had always dreamed of that. The softness, the domesticity, it's what he craved. But before you could find the words to make it right, his voice dropped and shook. "So, our first 'talk', huh? What did I do?" 

You couldn't find the words, and you just dropped your gaze to the table. His sad eyes made you feel so bad. "I'm so sorry, Mat."

"Why'd you run off?" The fear in his voice was enough to make your throat squeeze tight. He shouldn't feel this way. You really didn't deserve him. 

"I just…" your mind raced to find an explanation for yourself. "I freaked out." 

"About what? Help me understand. So we can fix it. Let me fix it, please." You looked up again, thinking you owed him at least your attention. His hazel eyes were glossy and as beautiful as always, searching yours for an answer, any answer, and you wanted nothing more than to tell him how amazing he was, to tell him this wasn't his fault. Someone as amazing as him should never feel pain. But you knew you had to open up to him.

"Listen." You reached your hands out on the table, centimeters from his own, and stopped just short of his fingertips, focusing your eyes on the smooth surface of the table. "You have so much love in you." You began. "That's one of things that I asked Rebecca for, remember? A big heart." You glanced up for only a brief moment to see his lips turn up a bit. "I need someone with a big heart, and I thought I could handle it right now, but…" When you trailed off, Mat spoke up softly, carefully, hesitant to interrupt you, but desperate for an answer.

"You can't handle me? Am I too overwhelming? We can slow down, even back up  if you want-." 

"Mat-" 

"We don’t need to hang out as much as I’ve been trying to-”

“-Mat-”

“I'm sorry. I'm sorry for interrupting you. And for being overwhelming."

There was no hint of sarcasm in his voice like there was in your exes, not judgement, no daggers, only pure care and genuine sorry. He hadn't raised his voice at you once, hadn't yelled at you for leaving a cold, empty hole next to him this morning like your ex would have. You found it refreshing to have a man speak to you so calmly, so gently, and carefully, and you realized that the last thing Mat wanted to do was mess this up. 

And you felt the same.

He was quiet now, after his little outburst, waiting for you to say anything. "Maty," his eyes shot up to yours at the sound of his nickname leaving your lips. You chose your words carefully, as carefully as Mat handled your emotions, as if one wrong word could shatter something amazing. "You're not overwhelming. You're amazing. It's me, it's my fault I can't handle it." There it is, Mat mused to himself, The 'it's not you, it's me'.

"No, don't say that..."

"Listen…"  I've been hurt before. I'm sure you have too, but I got messed up." Mat let out an upset little huff, his eyes going even more soft and watching you gently, as if he wanted to make it all better and erase any memories of pain from your past relationships. "The only other guy I was ever seriously with… he made me feel like shit. Like I'm… unworthy of love."

"You're not." He spoke up fast, urgent, but delicate.

"I feel like I don't deserve how amazing you're being."

"Stop, (Y/N), please. Just shush." Mat shook his head, absolutely heartbroken you hear your confession. "I know what it's like to be hurt, shit, do I know. But you deserve so much better than any of your exes have given you. I know that."

Your throat was suddenly tight at his reassuring words. "He hurt me, a lot. I'm still so broken because of him. He humiliated me, made me afraid. Of men, of relationships, of love. It hurts, Mat… It hurts to try and love again when I've loved so hard and only known broken ends. It's hard for me to trust people, and it's so, so scary to jump into a relationship like this." You glanced up momentarily to meet his gaze, feeling absolutely embarrassed to be spewing all of this dramatic sob-story to him.

"You're not…? (Y/N), baby," he whispered, shaky, as if it might be the last time he called you that,, as if by tomorrow you'd be nothing more than strangers again.. "You're not… breaking up with me, are you?" Before you could respond, Mat continued one, as if he didn't want to hear the answer that he automatically assumed would be bad. "If you are, if you need some space or some time away from dating, that's alright, I'll respect that. But I think we can work this out. I'm willing to try." 

For a second, you imagined going back to being single again after everything Mat had given you. You would never be able to forget him, forget what was, and what could’ve been. So you shook your head. 

"No, Maty. I don't want to break up." 

"Fuck, oh, thank god." He finally smiled, releasing the breath he didn't even realize he'd been holding all day. 

"The reason I freaked out so bad this morning, it wasn't the kiss, not really the cuddles either. I enjoyed those, even though they were a little awkward, being our first time and all…" you shared a little smile at that, at the memory of the first time you'd curled into each other and giggled and squirmed and talked, the most intimate moment of your relationship so far. "I like being with you, I just freaked because…. Well, Mat, I don't even know if you remember, 'cause you were asleep, but last night you said you love me."

It was a few long, quiet seconds, watching him process it in his mind, the look in his eyes going even more worried. His eyes widened as he sighed a nervous breath of air. "Shit, I did?" He reached up for a moment to scratch the back of his neck and his cheeks went a little red as he scrambled for his words. "I, uhh, heh." He let out an awkward, forced laugh. "I didn't mean for you to know so soon. I'm sorry." 

"You don't need to be sorry about how you feel."

"Yeah, then neither do you." His fingertips grazed over the cool surface of the table and up to your warm hands, slowly, carefully, asking for permission. When you didn't flinch away or tense up, you felt his hands cup your own, and there, cradled in the palm of his hand, you felt okay. "You don't need to feel bad about panicking at that. That's a big thing I said, even I can understand that. We can back up a bit. Maybe I'm pushing too hard to force feelings. Let's just take it easy, alright? Just hang out casually a little longer before calling this a relationship. Just see where things go. That sound better?"

You shook your head, and Mat's eyebrows furrowed in confusion, wondering what else he could suggest. "No, Mat, I'm not suggesting we step back from this relationship. I still want to be with you, I promise. I still want to be your girlfriend." 

His head dipped down shyly as he grinned at the table, still overjoyed at the thought of being with you. "I still want to be your boyfriend." He squeezed your hands in excitement, in content.

And you squeezed back. 

"Good." 

You knew Mat wouldn't kiss you, not before having that conversation about your boundaries, so you lifted his big hand to your lips and pressed a little kiss against one of his knuckles. He watched, his eyes wide and a content smile on his face, and slowly brought your own hand to his lips, reciprocating the appreciation. 

"Well…" he spoke gently, lips moving against your skin. " Then what do you want to do? Continue as we were? Slow it down a little?" 

"Just a little. I just needed you to know what you're dealing with with me. How scared I am to try this out again."

"Baby, we've all got our histories. Trust me, I would know. We all need different things in a relationship, okay? I'm not going to judge you for them. If your heart needs to be handled carefully, I can take it." 

"Thank you." 

"Can I kiss you?" 

"Please." 

And so, he leaned across the table and cupped one of your cheeks with a big hand, his fingers still tangled with yours, and pulled you into the sweetest, gentlest kiss you'd ever felt. From the moment you brushed noses, a smile lit up your face. And in that kiss, you could feel his promise. That he'd treat you better than your exes, that he'd give you what you deserve, gently, carefully, and with your heart in mind. And you brought your hands up to trace his jaw, promising the same thing back.

"So," he smiled as he sat back down, cheeks pink from the kiss. "That last thing I want to do right now is rush this, but I uh, I got you a ticket for our next home game. Call it an early Christmas present. I was planning on introducing you to my friends afterwards, but I feel like you're not ready for that." He smiled, showing you that it was no big deal for him. He was adaptable. If you needed a change, it was easy. "It'd mean a lot to me to have you there, if you want to come?" 

He still wanted you there with him even after you showed him just how broken you were. And you still wanted to be there, support him, share the passion he had for hockey. Watch him do what he loves.

You smiled, your thumb drawing gentle hearts on the back of Mat’s hand.

"There's nothing I want more."

[coochiequeens]

The Cut could have chosen from many articles if they wanted to cover “cancel culture”. They published one that made a 17 year old boy who released his ex girlfriends nudes look like a victim. And this shit was written by a woman?

Twenty months after he developed a crush, 18 months after he’d fallen in love, Diego, who is enormously appealing but also very canceled, boarded the bus with Jenni and Dave. They were going to the beach, and it wasn’t a big deal — except for the fact that pretty much all of Diego’s friends had dropped him, so, yeah, it was. The three, all 17, sat in a row of orange seats that ran the length of the bus, Diego’s eyes dark, goofy, and sad; his body freshly stretched to almost six feet; his oversize Carhartts ripped on skateboard ramps. This could have been in any American city this past January, on any bus. (First names in this article are pseudonyms.) Jenni kept her face tilted down toward her lap, hidden by a scrim of shoulder-length hair.

Then, a stop away from school, another high-school student boarded the bus. Just one more kid with a backpack in a hoodie, and at first Diego waved and Jenni smiled. Diego because he wanted to show he wasn’t scared, as this kid had thrown accelerant on a stupid mistake Diego had made, thus blown up Diego’s life. Jenni because she’s pragmatic enough to play along with social rules, plus this kid sat right in front of her in AP Statistics. But instead of waving and smiling back, this boy just stared, his eyes flat and certain. Jenni began to hyperventilate.

When, the month prior, Jenni first befriended Diego, he tried to warn her: You really don’t want to be canceled. It sucks. No one looked at him during the day at school. His teachers marked him present, then sent him to study by himself in the library because kids changed seats if he sat next to them in class. Diego no longer wanted to get out of bed. But he had talked to Jenni at the climbing gym, where he’d started going after the skate parks filled up with “opps” — kids who hated him. She noticed that Diego was surprisingly sweet and funny given how much his life had turned to shit.

She also asked him what had happened, which almost nobody did. She decided hanging out with Diego was okay.

This okay did involve putting a jacket over her head when she rode in Diego’s car near school. But it was too late to hide now. After the kid got off at his stop, he took a picture of Jenni through the bus window. Jenni started crying.

Later that night, Jenni, whom Diego described as “a solid, solid woman,” tried to do some damage control because, as she explained, if you get an Instagram post about you, your life is over. “I know what this looks like …,” she texted the boy. For months now, he had played the role of self-appointed enforcer. In Statistics class, he’d announced, “There are not many people that I would bash in the head with a hammer. Diego is one of them.”

“I was on the way to the beach,” Jenni wrote. “And I saw Dave, who I know.”

Dave attended a different school, but he was such a good wingman — his earnestness was so disarming, his golden curls fell so adorably into his eyes — that everyone, boys and 

girls alike, was at least a little smitten with him. Dave was the one friend of Diego’s who had never disappeared. “It never even crossed my mind, like, Am I able to handle this?” Dave said. “Diego is like my brother.” Still, he kept their friendship quiet — which is to say he didn’t post pictures with Diego on Instagram. That seemed to appease his peers.

The boy from the bus left Jenni’s message on read overnight, meaning he’d seen it and not responded, a very bad sign. In the morning, he wrote back, “Yeah, I know Dave, too, but I don’t go sit with him and Diego.”

Jenni wrote again: “I’m friends with Dave and I can’t help it.” She wasn’t involved in the situation, she explained, and she didn’t plan to be. Still, the day after the bus ride, the enforcer turned around in Statistics and said as a threat, “Fuck Diego. I love cancel culture. If you were to cancel anyone, who would you cancel?”

This nightmare began sweetly. Diego — fan of Nivea deodorant, Air Jordans, and Taylor Swift; dragged on annual camping trips by his parents; his father white, his mother Filipina; 8.5-by-11-inch prints of every school photo of him and his sister hanging in his family’s upstairs hall — started high school and met a girl. They dated for a month. (According to Diego, this doesn’t really count.) They broke up. He spent a lot of the next year hanging out in skate parks, learning to do frontside 360s. Summer after their sophomore year, the two started going out again. Fiona was Diego’s first real girlfriend, and she was almost psychedelically beautiful: pale, celestial skin, a whole galaxy of freckles, a supernova of red hair. This made everything, even the pandemic, okay. Diego would do online school and skate and hang out with Fiona. Sometimes she broke plans with Diego to go on hikes with her parents, which Diego’s mother loved. He said, “I know, Mom!” when his mother, who taught college courses on parenting and child development, reminded him to ask for consent.

Then, in the middle of last summer, Diego went to a party. He got drunk and — Diego really fucked up here: Everybody, including Diego, agrees on that, so please consider setting aside judgment for a moment — showed a nude of his beautiful girlfriend to a few kids there.

Three weeks later, school started — senior year, finally back in person after 18 months at home, woo-hoo. Within days, teachers and administrators started noticing that the ninth- and tenth-graders were acting like middle schoolers — wrestling, invading one another’s personal space. “It was really clear a lot of them hadn’t been in school since seventh grade,” said the principal, who had held her job for only seven months before the pandemic closed in-person classrooms. Juniors and seniors, she noticed, also had “big gaps” in the skills they’d need “to navigate complexity” and “a very low tolerance for relational discomfort.”

Everyone seemed scared of each other’s bodies and breathing and out of touch with each other’s boundaries. Soon students started streaming into the glass-fronted administrative offices asking school staff to intervene in their relationships with one another, saying they felt unsafe. Students also wanted their administrators — the principal and the two vice-principals, all young women who led with a big-sister, let-me-make-you-a-cup-of-tea vibe — to investigate interpersonal incidents from years prior, stuff that no longer felt right after 18 months stuck at home.

Yaretzi, a young woman in Diego’s grade with walnut skin and a gentle voice that masked her intense focus, started attending school-board meetings on Zoom and speaking up during public comment about how disregarded students felt by the way the district handled sexual harassment and assault. “We were given the space and a lot of time,” she said, half-joking, “to reflect on why that kind of behavior was tolerated at school.” No way was she just slipping back.

This was a common pattern: the isolation of the pandemic producing both pain and insight, followed by a need to assert new power dynamics as people gathered up the shards of their social lives and tried to reassemble them. Diego’s school began working up a curriculum on harassment, a “tier-one intervention,” as one of the vice-principals called it, meaning the whole community needed help.

Two and a half weeks into the school year, a friend of Diego’s approached him between classes. He was like, “Yo, I heard this kid was walking around bragging that he was gonna tell your girlfriend that you showed some random dude her nude.”

Diego was like, “Broooo, what?”

Then the kid did.

Fiona dumped him, which, frankly, good for her. She felt humiliated, betrayed, and startled that someone she trusted so much respected her privacy so little. “I had put so much care into our relationship,” she told me. “Then I got screwed over.”

Diego offered Fiona a raft of apologies — “ ‘I’m so sorry, I’ll never do that again,’ that kind of thing,” Fiona said. He then holed up in his bedroom, ashamed, heartbroken, and furious with himself. He started writing songs with bald lyrics: “It’s all my fault / I hate me for that / And I’ll do anything to get you back … / You’re beautiful and perfect / I’m sorry.”

Over the course of the next three days, everyone in Diego’s old friend group stopped talking to him, which he didn’t really notice at first because he was too disgusted with himself to pay much attention. But by the following week, most of the other students in his grade had stopped talking to him as well. Diego’s parents reached out to the principal for the first time on October 4, 2021, to alert her that students were broadcasting their son’s “errors” and telling kids throughout the school that Diego was an abuser and if they remained friends with him, they’d be condoning rape culture. The principal, who was still planning the anti-harassment summit for November, did not respond.

A vice-principal walked Fiona through how to file a Title IX complaint. Title IX established a quasi-legal protocol meant to protect students’ right to access public education without discrimination or harassment. Every public school is required to have a Title IX coordinator. The principal and a vice-principal both held this job at Diego’s school. (“There was so much to share this year!” the vice-principal said.) In terms of securing equal access to school sports, Title IX works well. But with regard to preventing harassment in high schools? The regulation is a sieve, a piece of ed code, the vice-principal admitted, that is “not really written to protect students” but instead “revolves around protecting district and school from liability.” The result is a law that both does a poor job of stopping harassment and leaves students feeling ignored and enraged. “Students come in saying, ‘I feel harmed and uncomfortable and sometimes unsafe,’ ” the vice-principal told me. What Title IX mandates from there is that the students fill out a form. That form is sent to lawyers at the school district’s Office of Equity. A verdict comes back in legalese. The lack of shared vocabulary between students and the adults meant to protect them created an added layer of hurt. “Assault has a very specific meaning in the ed code,” the vice-principal said. “So sometimes difficult conversations arise when we say, ‘I acknowledge you feel uncomfortable and unsafe, and we should attend to that. This wasn’t assault.’ ”

Through the end of October, Diego remained heartbroken and depressed. While half his school canceling him seemed a bit much, he hated himself too. He spent a lot of time alone with his pet rat, Toe (named because he didn’t like the rat at first, but she grew on him), sitting under his lofted bunk bed, composing music on his mini Korg synth-vocoder, staring at the haute-adolescent mash-up on his walls: family water-park photos, concert-ticket stubs, Junior Ranger pins earned at national parks.

He also wrote Fiona a letter, but it was too much “pleading love letter” for her taste, too little “straightforward apology.” Besides, she thought, he’d brought this extended exile upon himself. He’d acted like a jerk that past summer, partying a lot, even breaking up with her for a bit. That had left Fiona feeling, she said, like “this person patiently waiting for him to come back, when he seemed he couldn’t care less about how I felt.”

Diego’s father, a high-school teacher in a different town, took the day off work on November 1 to try to dig his son out of his dark hole.

That same morning, posters with blood-red lettering that read GET ABUSERS OFF CAMPUS started appearing around school. “I just got really fed up,” Yaretzi, who made them, said. “My friend had called me to tell me about how her abuser wasn’t being held accountable after multiple reports were made about him.” She’d heard this from other friends too. “I printed like 60 posters in an hour and ran around the school and slapped them on the walls.” She herself had suffered through the fear and humiliation of sexual abuse, but her abuser did not go to the school — a “privilege,” she said, in that this made her worry less about retaliation. Yet she saw how girls on her campus felt more unsafe than ever. So she taped the posters up in the long, locker-lined hallways, in the bright stairwells, in the girls’ bathrooms, in front of the fishbowl of an office where the administrative staff worked.

That afternoon, around five, administrators learned students were planning a walkout the next day over the school’s handling of sexual misconduct. They also found a list on the girls’-bathroom wall labeled PEOPLE TO LOOK OUT FOR. Scrawled on the off-white tile in black Sharpie were seven names. DIEGO was one.

The list caught Yaretzi by surprise. “On my way home from school, I started getting calls,” she told me. “I’m like, ‘What the hell list are you talking about?’ ” Her intent was to lay blame at the feet of the school district, not specific young men.

Administrators phoned the parents of all the students named to tell them about the list and the walkout, which immediately got paired in everybody’s mind. School staff also locked the girls’ bathroom and repainted the wall, but it hardly mattered. Photos were already bouncing around social media, accompanied by tags like “stay safe please look out for these people” and “I wanna add [names] to this list.”

November 1 was also Diego’s mother’s birthday. When a vice-principal reached her, she was heading to meet her husband and Diego, along with a friend, for dinner. She pulled her husband aside to alert him, then they limped through the meal for the friend’s sake. Afterward, Diego’s parents sat him down.

“This is serious. I don’t want any surprises,” his father said. Diego laid out the facts: drunk at a party, showed the nude. His mother was relieved he hadn’t done something worse. His father was pissed.

“It was not good, actually really terrible,” he told me. “It’s embarrassing as a parent. You thought you raised your kid differently. You wish you had done things better.” Diego’s father was upset with himself, upset with Diego. He wanted his son held accountable, though he wasn’t sure what that looked like yet.

At 11:39 p.m., Diego’s mother wrote an email to the school:

Subject: My Son Is Not a Rapist. This situation with my son has gotten out of control and needs to be stopped. I’ll be heading to campus tomorrow with my son to help him file a Title IX Violation for those “Spreading a series of sexual rumors about a peer.”

Early the next morning — the morning of the walkout — a classmate texted Diego and said, “Bro, you shouldn’t come to school today.”

On campus, from the moment students arrived, administrators tried to stay on top of the situation, but even the simple task of keeping the bathroom walls clean felt exhausting and futile. Lists went up; administrators scrubbed them down. Lists went up again, not always with the same names. Nearly 20 students (not even the principal knows the full count for sure) were named in all. “People would put names on the wall and then other people would cross off names. And then people would write on the wall, like, ‘How dare you take that name off’ and ‘You don’t know the story,’ ” the principal told me. Fiona herself did not write Diego’s name. The principal’s whole focus became “How do we stop the bleeding?” As she saw it, “students are acting as judge, jury, and executioner for other students.”

At 10:30 a.m., 500 kids walked out of class, many dressed in red, as the organizers, most of whom were girls and queer people of color, had urged. Some had red-inked NO ABUSERS ON CAMPUS signs taped to their bodies. Others had written in pen on their skin: MAKE SCHOOL SAFE on an arm, I AM A SURVIVOR along collarbones. In the quad, Yaretzi led the crowd in ten minutes of silence to honor survivors. Then everybody walked up to the parking lot for speeches. Students punctuated these by banging on drums and rattling keys. They chanted “No abusers on campus!” and “Fuck admin!”THE PRINCIPAL’S WHOLE FOCUS BECAME “HOW DO WE STOP THE BLEEDING?”

“I have been here for four years,” one of the organizers told a local newspaper reporter. “I’ve walked people, hand in hand, up to the office to go report their assault, and a lot of times, they were turned away or they said, ‘Okay, here’s a piece of paper, fill out this report, and talk about what happened to you.’ ”

“There are known abusers in that crowd right now,” Yaretzi added in that same interview. “There’s so much protection for the abusers rather than the victims. We’re just sick and tired of it.”

“It was a wild day, a wild day,” the principal told me in her office, choking up, her back to the treadmill desk she had started using to ease her stress. “I’m having a hard time talking about it even now.” She had students screaming, the calls for systemic change wrapped up in very public accusations against specific young men, a disturbingly high percentage of whom were boys of color, almost none of whom she knew anything about. She had a whole student body aching, telling her to fuck off. Just two weeks before, the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and Children’s Hospital Association had jointly declared a state of emergency in child and adolescent mental health.

In the popular imagination, the evolution of the crimes of the boys on the wall was rapid and steep. “You’re an abuser” quickly morphed into “You’re an assaulter,” which soon turned into “You’re a rapist.” The truth, according to Jenni, was most people didn’t actually care what they’d done. “Someone goes, ‘Oh my God, I heard he’s a bad person — don’t talk to him.’ And then people are scared to be on the wrong side. So they just do it. They don’t think about it. They’re just like, ‘Oh, I don’t know him, so I guess I won’t talk to him.’ ”

The unifying rally cry on campus was “We’re not safe here.” Even for students who’d never felt that way themselves, “suddenly there was a very compelling narrative to buy into,” the principal said. “There was a lot of social capital and relational capital to be found suddenly — I don’t wanna say it was a lie — in understanding your own experience within the context of this narrative.” That story line rested on the idea that the administration failed to do its most basic job. Parents started emailing the principal, asking if students were getting raped on campus.

This was not just Diego’s school. This was all over the country. A boy touched a girl’s waist without consent at a Spirit Week rally — shunned by his community and called a sexual abuser. A student accused a boy of touching her at a school dance — major investigation, lawyers on all sides. A student outed by the friend of a girl he tried to feel up after she reciprocated his affections while cuddling and holding hands — threats on social media, thoughts of taking his own life.

The case of Kathleen Kurtz and Robert Straub v. Lewisburg School District,in the Middle District of Pennsylvania, reads like a horror story in the form of a civil-action complaint. The plaintiffs were parents of a 14-year-old boy, Minor JX. In November 2020, classmates at school started calling JX a “rapist, pedophile, and child molester,” according to the complaint, and encouraged other students to do the same. Then, on March 19, 2021, a girl at his school made an anonymous report to ChildLine, the State of Pennsylvania’s child-abuse hotline, accusing JX of being a rapist. When a classmate was asked what JX had done, another girl said, “You know what you did, JX,” and refused to elaborate. JX started begging his parents to let him skip school. His parents sent a letter to the school principal:

JX is a sensitive soul and we fear this is damaging to his confidence at a very crucial time in his life where he is building his own Self-worth. These horrific verbal attacks he is undergoing can make or break what kind of human he becomes.        

The local police investigated the ChildLine call. As the complaint reads, “the allegations were entirely fabricated.” Still, the bullying continued. “JX’s Mother reported that, given the ongoing bullying and name-calling from November 2020 to the present, the School was no longer an emotionally safe place for JX to be educated,” the complaint reads. He told his parents “his life was so bad right now that he can’t see how it can get better anytime soon.” JX’s parents sued under Title IX. The judge tossed the case, explaining the facts failed to prove JX’s harassment was based on his sex.

At Oakland School for the Arts, vigilantism drew the attention of the NAACP. Before the pandemic, a group of students had been swapping nude images of female classmates. The administration disciplined the ringleader, but many felt his punishment was light. Then, while stuck at home for remote learning, some students formed a group chat to share experiences of sexual abuse and harassment and frustrations with reporting them to the school. They requested a Zoom meeting with the dean about how to make the campus feel safer. But the meeting was a disaster, two of the students told me. The dean wanted to talk about vaping, not sexual misconduct, and the students were incensed. “It’s hard to have somebody not necessarily believe you, but it’s even harder when it’s like somebody should be really concerned about you,” one of the students said. The group chat organized itself into the Student Safety Committee and in late September planned a walkout and rally in a park across the street from the school. The event devolved. While students, primarily women of color, shared their personal stories of sexual violence up front, students in the crowd screamed at specific boys, most of whom were Black: “Rapist!” “You need to go die in the ditch.”

The rally ended early, one of the organizers told me, after a school administrator approached her. “He was crying and was like, ‘You’ve got to shut this down,’ ” she said. “We don’t have the mental-health support for this.”

The organizers spent the next day in the school administrators’ office. “It was just, like, a horrible experience,” one said. “It was like talking in circles or like talking to a wall.” Parents of accused boys showed up as well.

“How are you going to put that genie back in the bottle?” a Black woman whose sons were called rapists asked the dean. She had no doubt that the girls who had singled out her sons had experienced real pain. “I’m not saying that they’re not harmed,” she said. “What I’m saying is that hurt people hurt.” No individual had accused either of her sons of any specific abuse or crime.

In the weeks and months that followed, parents and grandparents began showing up at Oakland School for the Arts board meetings, saying they were scared to send their children to school because of all the sexual violence. Families of the accused boys reached out to the local NAACP chapter to talk about consolidating a case. Parents told Black children about the Central Park Five. “This can ruin your life simply because she says so … The school empowered a group of teenage young ladies, little mini-Karens,” one of the mothers said. Another mother told me her son struggled with returning to a place where everyone thought he was a rapist. “To survive every day, going to school like that,” she said, “having to prove he’s worthy, a good person, when he feels like he’s going to a school of hundreds of kids who think otherwise?”

Oakland School for the Arts eventually sent a letter to the school community acknowledging that most of the “allegations of sexual assault against a number of predominantly African American boys” were “either not backed by evidence, unfounded, or in some instances a result of mistaken identity or assumed guilt by association” and that the community had real healing and soul-searching to do.

On November 4, Diego lost his job with a youth organization in town. “You suspended my son due to graffiti on the wall that you saw on Social Media?” Diego’s mother wrote to his bosses. “NOT ONE person has accused my son of sexual assault.”

One of the bosses wrote back that she was “not in a position to say that Diego has sexually harassed or assaulted anyone,” but the truth was not the issue. Other kids in the program, which was entirely online, now said they felt unsafe with Diego. The program had to distance itself from him “based on the fact that this has gone very public and has compromised the way participants feel and/or interact.”

The Title IX claim about Diego ended up with the incident being declared outside the school’s purview. The vice-principal told Fiona she could file a police report. She didn’t want to do that. In communication with her family, however, the school made a plan to help Diego and Fiona repair. Fiona’s family, the vice-principal wrote in an email to Diego’s, made two requests:

1. That all pictures are deleted from every possible device, cloud, storage/media platform, etc. 2. That it be made clear to Diego and his family that this was a serious violation that is having an impact on the student’s overall well-being.

Done and done. As individuals, at the beginning, the two had managed this incident okay. Fiona had no interest in getting back together. But a couple of weeks after their breakup, when Diego was still eating only a handful of peanut-butter pretzels a day, they’d met at the beach and talked. “I was like, ‘I don’t appreciate getting treated like an abuser,’ ” Diego said. “And she’s like, ‘I don’t think you’re an abuser at all. I know that.’ ” But this had grown way beyond them.

The public conversation recast Fiona’s view of Diego’s actions in a worse light. She was mortified knowing that every time people thought about Diego now, they thought about her nude photo. Still, she felt validated and supported by the list. After the clinical and pointless Title IX claim, “it was refreshing to know that, like, Wow, someone else is standing up for me,” she said. “Someone does care about my story.”

Everyone hoped that after Thanksgiving break Diego would feel comfortable returning to school. That didn’t happen. Other boys whose names had been on the list were doing horribly too. One had hitchhiked away from home earlier in the year after his ex-girlfriend called his mother one morning to tell her she was going to cancel her son that day. Then she did. He returned a day later at the ex-girlfriend’s urging. (“They couldn’t stay away from each other,” his mother said. “She didn’t want him to leave.”) But being in a town where everybody shunned him, except for the person primarily responsible for that shunning, was just too painful. His mother stayed up all night with him so that he didn’t slip into the bathtub with a kitchen knife. Then he ran away again.

Yaretzi tried to keep the focus on systemic change. One simple ask, which Fiona would have appreciated, too: more counseling support to complement the reporting process. Yaretzi spoke with the superintendent and the Office of Equity, pleading with them to, at a minimum, connect students with outside mental-health resources. “They’re like, ‘Well, what would you propose?’ ” she told me they said right after she made her pitch. “And then I just started laughing. I was like, ‘I just told you what I proposed!’ I mentioned the possibility of a Linktree. Have you ever seen a Linktree? It would take ten minutes and cost zero dollars.”

A scarcity mind-set — not just in terms of money but in terms of care, morality, and protection — set in. Students kept coming into the principal’s and vice-principals’ offices “upset over the fact that in the days after the protests, the school helped create safety-and-support plans for some of our male-identifying students who have been named,” the principal said. “And our female students saw that as ‘Who are you protecting? Whose narrative is more important to you? Who do you believe?’ ”

For instance, the school put Diego on independent study for the month of November. “The guy who caused a lot of pain to me now gets kind of like a GET OUT OF JAIL FREE card?” Fiona asked. Shouldn’t there be “something offered in the other direction?” (The school did offer her a safety-and-support plan, but she declined because she didn’t share any classes with Diego.) Meanwhile, some of the families of accused students had started deploying what has become the standard legal tactic in the Me Too backlash, displayed most publicly at the Depp-Heard trial: going on the offensive. The families demanded disciplinary action against the students shunning their sons. “But I can’t make your kids be friends,” the vice-principal told those parents. “I can’t stop kids whispering and laughing when your kid walks into the classroom.”

In the worldview that set in, being kind to a canceled kid is all downside. If you’re kind, you’re an apologist, then you too will be shunned. As another canceled kid told me, he’d really tried to press his ex-friends on why they ostracized him, but there was no point. “They were like, ‘You know why.’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know why.’ And they’re like, ‘You know why.’ And then I just ended up leaving because how can you argue with that?”

The school’s official protocol on how to deal with ruptured relationships was to use restorative practices. This usually meant a facilitated conversation among the people directly involved, with the goal of creating empathy and coaxing kids out of angel/devil, black-and-white thinking. But Diego’s school had a countervailing policy: You couldn’t use restorative practices in cases of sexual misconduct. You also couldn’t make anyone participate in restorative practices. Given that the students existed in a universe where just talking with an alleged abuser made you an apologist — where you could lose all your social capital simply for suggesting that someone might deserve compassion — who would agree to restore?

It was an impossible situation, a whole world supersaturated with emotion, starved for common ground and facts. The school tried to get the stalled anti-harassment training back on course, but the advocacy group it had hired to run the workshop declined. “This is not the time for us to come,” its representatives said. “People need an open mind to learn.”

Diego barely ate for weeks. He slept 12 hours a night. He wrote bad poems. He stared at the pink Post-it note he had put in his phone case on November 1:

Reminders — Compliment people always — be kind and respectful to everyone regardless of previous encounters — be generous — Not wish for more or better — Think before acting — “He who is not satisfied with what he has will not be satisfied with what he would like to have” — don’t talk shit ever

What else did he do? “Cry? I don’t know,” he said. Eventually, he agreed to go with Dave to Dave’s family’s cabin for the weekend. On the way there, they stopped at a taco truck. Diego said, “Bro, I’m not hungry.” But Dave made him order three tacos anyway and stood there while he ate.

Diego’s parents kept pressing the school to do something, to at least use restorative practices with Diego and the students threatening their peers with social ostracization if they talked to him. Yet on December 2, 2021, the vice-principal sent an email explaining to Diego’s parents that a restorative circle was not going to happen. Those students canceling him, she wrote, “have no personal ill-will toward Diego but that the social pressures on them are so great that to be associated with Diego would cause too much harm for them.” She also said she’d reached out to “their peer groups, teachers, or classes but they believe these interventions would cause more conflict (at least at this point).” So that was that.

The bullying and harassment complaint that Diego’s parents had filed in November was closed on December 17. The outcome letter acknowledged “that the situation” — which in this case referred to Diego’s cancellation — was indeed “both severe and pervasive” and, as such, violated the district’s bullying-and-harassment policy. To remediate this, the letter continued, school officials had counseled the offending “students to stop that behavior.” Yet in a tacit admission that this made no difference, Diego now would be excused to eat lunch early and leave campus early so he could avoid interacting with other students. His teachers would also excuse him from class because they couldn’t stop the bullying.

Over Christmas break, Diego’s sister, two years older, came home from college. The whole family got in the car, as they did every year, to chop down a Christmas tree.

Diego’s sister had made the best of shelter-in-place, which she’d spent in her apartment near school — she pulled through all her STEM courses. She even earned a commercial driver’s license and now worked as a public-bus driver. Diego’s friends used to tell him they were jealous of how close he was to her. Now her politics, according to Diego, involved spending a lot of time on Twitter and, according to her dad, thinking he was a privileged white guy with a beard. He’d taken to saying to her, “Key word: Nuance!”

Diego drove the family car to the Christmas-tree farm. On the way, his sister called him a bad driver. He told her to shut up. She then said, “Abusers deserve to be canceled.” Like virtually all young people in their town, she’d seen the image of her brother’s name on the school-bathroom wall, posted and reposted many times.

Diego: “Bruh, that was a little out of pocket. Get the fuck out.” Sister: “Oh my God, I don’t want you in my life anymore.” Everyone started crying. Their parents kicked her out of the car and told her to find her way home.

New Year’s came. Then February. The experience kept rooting in the dark rut of its own logic. A kid spat on Diego in a stairwell. (It wasn’t clearly caught on security video, so no one took disciplinary action.) Diego’s mother started losing her own friends. (“There are levels of abuse, you know,” they’d tell her. “You don’t know what your son did.”) She started making Diego drive her to work to get him out the door to school. But he often drove to school and just sat in the car. His whole day was working by himself in the library anyway. Why enter the building at all? On occasion, he’d see other boys in the library whose names had been on the wall, and they’d sit together. But mostly he felt invisible.

Race remained a topic almost too toxic for the school to touch. “You are telling us that most of the boys that were accused were Black and brown students, and all of the kids who are canceled are brown or Black, and the white boys were able to walk back on the campus, no problem,” Diego’s mother said to the principal. “And yet you’re not telling these white kids this? That’s called white fragility and being afraid of these girls.”

A reprieve finally came in February, when Diego and Dave traveled to the South on a trip organized through Sojourn Project, a social-justice nonprofit that takes groups of students to places like Selma, Montgomery, and Birmingham to learn about the modern civil-rights movement. It felt so good to be in a different place with different kids, tune in to the arc of history, focus on justice with a capital J. They talked a lot about how people use and respond to negative power. Diego described the trip as “one big therapy session.”

The universe snapped back into perspective for a moment. Diego had fucked up and hurt someone; people had ostracized him. That wasn’t the whole world. But the good feelings did not last long. Emboldened from their travels, Dave and Diego posted trip pictures together on Instagram: the two of them goofing off on buses; Dave, smiling, his body held up parallel to the ground by Diego and a pack of kids. This got Dave fully canceled. Within two weeks, he, too, was eating lunch out of his car, thinking about an MLK quote he had learned in the South and half-remembered now: “It was something like, ‘It’s not about what will happen to me if I help this someone,’ ” he said. “ ‘It’s about what happens if I don’t help them.’ ”

“When we’re home,” Dave said, “I feel like we’re in a bubble of hate.”

By this point, the guardians of the social order had changed. “Boys are worse, I’m not going to lie,” Diego said. “Guys just want to feel powerful, and they feel entitled to be mean to other people.” And they really didn’t want the girls to think they stood with abusers.

“My friend Ethan — I mean, my previous friend,” Dave said. “I have three classes with him. And he made it clear. Like, ‘I miss you. It’s just, like, this situation is so dumb, I just can’t hang out with you.’ ”

Dave tried to get his school to help. He approached “the counselor, dean person, I forget what she is, really,” he told me. “She said, ‘Canceling is very new to me, and it’s a very hard thing to deal with.’ ” He asked if she could set up a restorative conversation. “And she said, ‘Well, I can ask, but I can’t force them to do it.’ And so she asked and they said no.”

Reason and control felt like distant concepts. Diego and his sister pretended the fight had never happened the next time she came home, but Jenni was still putting a jacket over her head when she rode in Diego’s car. “I feel bad for putting my reputation before my friend,” she said. “But, ummm …” A boy threatened to beat up Diego while he was visiting Dave at school. Diego’s father thought about going over to this boy’s family’s house because the school district, obviously, was not going to intervene. Everybody was exhausted. Diego’s principal had decided to quit.

The absurdity of the situation caused something in Diego to crack, and that release allowed for new clarity: You’re only canceled if you’re trying to hang out with the people refusing to associate with you. The rest of the world doesn’t know — and probably doesn’t care. Diego and Dave started taking the bus to the beach on Friday nights and talking to anybody who looked their age. “Everyone I met, I was like, ‘By the way, this is what is happening at my school right now,’ ” Diego said. “ ‘It’s better to hear it from me than from some kid: ‘He’s a certified abuser. Oh my God.’ ” But almost no one met his disclosure with much besides sympathy. “They were all like, ‘Don’t worry, bro. You’ll get through it.’ ” Or: “ ‘Your school is wack as hell.’ ”

Let’s just come out and say it: It’s a horrifying time to be a young woman. The world is burning and bleeding out. Adults are not fixing it. Teenage girls are poised to have fewer rights over their own bodies than their mothers had. The sane response — the awake, healthy, non-nihilistic response — is to feel panicked, frantic, hung out to dry, devalued, and unsafe. Who are they supposed to believe is looking out for them: the schools? The courts? Elected officials? Will anything get done to make the world better if they don’t do it themselves? So we can ask, “How is this mob justice possible?,” and leave it there. Or we can ask, “What happened to this cohort to unleash what Northwestern legal scholar Deborah Tuerkheimer described as ‘a primal scream’?” — a scream that conveys in its raw, messy, full-of-collateral-damages way that “we don’t trust our institutions, we’ve been betrayed by our institutions, and so all that’s left for us is to do this.”

The principal at Diego’s school had not just quit her post; she was considering leaving education. “I have a lot of love and empathy for people who are trying to run schools and work in schools right now,” she said. How was anybody supposed to hold teenagers together through this? The mental-health crisis? The country’s convulsions around race and misogyny? The threats to democracy? The school shootings where adults in bulletproof vests stay in the hall while kids whose classmates are dying cower under desks and call 911?

Six weeks before the end of the year, students at Diego’s school taped up posters again: WALKOUT TO GET RAPE CULTURE OUT! THIS ISSUE IS STILL HERE — AND SO ARE WE! At 11:45 a.m. on April 15, 75 kids left their classrooms and gathered in the concrete quad. Diego stayed home from school that day. The principal was on vacation. The tribal, exorcistic energy of the fall walkout had burned off. The agenda included a teach-in on Title IX and how to work through school-district bureaucracy. How can students exercise their rights if they don’t even know what they are?

Yaretzi was clear-eyed about how the year had unfolded. She’d raised awareness and created social cohesion more than she’d fixed anything. “I’m gonna be so honest with you,” she said. “I’m so sick of the walkouts. They are calls to attention, but they aren’t effective when it comes to long-lasting change.” The list on the wall had derailed her efforts for real change too. Nobody wanted their name attached to this admission, because parents had threatened organizers with lawsuits, but students acknowledged that some on the list were falsely accused. The whole thing was a distraction, counterproductive, pulling focus away from the school district’s failings. This is not to say everyone was innocent — they weren’t. Students at Diego’s school were sexually harassed and harmed. Yet this is also true: 

Rather than, like, the actual perpetrators, a lot of names put on that list were just random people,” a student told me. Classmates wrote them “out of anger and pure emotion.” This made the act reckless and destructive but not meaningless. “We need to look,” the student said, “at why those emotions are there.”

A few weeks later, Diego decided to attend his prom. He bought a black suit for $79 at H&M, pulled on fancy white sneakers, and took a girl with cupid’s-bow lips who lived in a town 45 minutes away. “It was like a Disney movie,” Diego said. So much buildup, “hella drama.” While there, a student pulled his date aside to tell her that Diego was an assaulter. “We had fun after we left,” he said.

The school hadn’t healed. The vice-principal announced she was quitting too. So was the principal at Dave’s school. Fiona rejected the narrative that Diego was canceled. That made it sound, she thought, like other people had done something to him. Time had caused her view of Diego’s actions to harden, not soften. She didn’t think he deserved to be friendless. “I guess it is harmful when people are jumping on the bandwagon,” she said. But his behavior had really hurt her. In hindsight, maybe he was emotionally abusive? Was it wrong to warn other students to stay away from him?

One morning in May, after sleeping late — because why hurry to get to a class you’re not going to attend? — Diego sat alone in the library in his ripped Carhartts listening to songs he’d written over the past nine months for his final capstone project: a presentation for his teacher “on the emotional roller coaster I went on this year.” He played all the instruments, wrote all the lyrics, sang all the vocal tracks, one song after another about love and regret: “I’ve never seen anyone as beautiful as you.” “I really shouldn’t have done that / It was asinine of me.” “It’s all my fault.” “My frail heart has crumbled — no one has seen it / Your incandescent glow could help me find all the pieces.”

A girl walked up and said hello. “She’s canceled too,” Diego said. That girl’s boyfriend’s name, he explained, had been on the bathroom wall, and she didn’t break up with him. It later came out that his name had been written entirely by mistake. His accuser meant a different kid with the same first name. But it didn’t matter. The photo spread. The story turned into he kidnapped someone and raped them at gunpoint.

Around lunchtime, another student, this one in braids, overalls, and a black beanie, sat down with Diego. “She’s canceled, too,” he said. At the start of the school year — her sophomore year — she had made a comment to a new Black friend about his “monkey ears.” The remark was dumb, full of implicit racial bias. She caught herself in the moment and apologized. The two discussed it. Then, on the second day of school, her second day in a building with students since the middle of eighth grade, he called her a racist in a crowded hallway. Now, despite all the public and private apologies she had made, all the months of therapy and reading, she was still “that racist kid” and probably would be until she graduated in two years.

“There’s no room for growth,” she said, eating the quesadilla she brought for lunch. “You do something wrong, therefore you’re a bad person.” There was no community that, as part of holding you accountable, made space for you to learn; no presumption that you could — and will — change. Who could survive adolescence like that? “My brain isn’t fully developed,” she said. “None of our brains are fully developed.”

She was stoned all the time now — her way to manage her anxiety and get through the day. “People are trying so hard to, like, be the good person in the situation. They always want to be the bigger person. They want to feel like they’re right.” Some girls recently tried to fight her in the bathroom. “I was just like, ‘You need to calm down, you’re acting like a child, please grow up.’ ” She waved to her ex–best friend in the hall.

All around us, kids were falling asleep on the library couches. Staring. Flirting. Scrolling through TikTok. Being teens. Sometimes, Diego wondered what his peers would think when they were older. “If they’ll look back with their kids and be like, Damn, I was so hateful in high school.”

Diego skipped his own graduation. He attended four proms, and after the last he found some drunk kids from his school waiting on his block, at 1 a.m., just to tell him to fuck off. Soon after, the school emptied for the summer, nothing fixed, the clock run out. In three months, Diego was leaving town to go to college hundreds of miles away. He didn’t know if he’d return.

[juggey]

tessa summary. cut for length

she doesn’t know anything about adam

she condemns the doxxing and harassing of coworkers and nude leaks

they met in 2017 at pax when she had just turned 17 and he was 36.

she was a major fan. day 1 of pax they chatted casually. day 2 she hung out with him and a cosplayer (pamela something) for an hour and they walked the floor. she has a selfie of them meeting sep 1st 2017. she acted as an impromptu stream mod and informally took on the role for the day as ryan’s liason--she mentions that people got the impression she worked for rt or ryan, mentions she was visible on stream when he was playing ovw. 

she says she was active in his twitch chat as tesslbbh and talked with him on snapchat and instagram both and he was “nice and great” 

she accidentally sent him a selfie showing her bra strap and was shoulder up, stresses that it was a joke photo where she wasn’t trying to be attractive and her intention was to send it to a friend as an inside joke

she immediately apologized for how inappropriate it was. he responded positively and things escalated from there to nude exchanges on and off for two years. they made plans to meet up for sex, he wanted her to come to austin (she lived in georgia at the time) and he went as far as offering to pay for her hotel.

she stresses that he was unaware that she was 17 and was under the impression she was 18. it ended in 2019 at pax when they were supposed to meet up for sex and she became uncomfortable which she didn’t mention to ryan and “awkwardly avoided it” until it fell through. 

she reads a post from her finsta she made when austin carlile stuff was going around because she was also in bandom--i don’t know who this man is but when you google him a sexual assault lawsuit is one of the first results. “when i met ryan i was 17. to be in that situation is something if you haven’t been in that situation i don’t know if you’ll ever understand. it’s like this is what fanfic has been training you for.  to have that attention from someone you idolize is insanely addicting and you’re willing to do things that normally you wouldn’t do. you’re in this situation and all you can think of is this is a situation that people fucking envy and why would you turn your nose up at this gift of attention and prestige that has been given to you.”

she talks about how she was in bandom and the culture of groupies meant if you slept with band members you got status. she mentions she knows in hindsight it was stupid but didn’t back then because she was a child in high school who didn’t know what she was doing and thought “heres someone i idolize who’s giving me attention and all i have to do is send him photos of my ass and my tits and moan for him and he’ll send me photos of his dick and i don’t really care about his dick but whatever.”

she says part of why she waited to come forward was because she went into it lying to him about her age and she knew about the wife and kids and did it anyway and “i hate myself for that every goddamn day” the other reason she waited was because she really hoped that she was the only one and she didn’t want to cause problems for his coworkers and family and friends if she was a one off incident. she’s very clear about how she doesn’t want this to happen to anyone else. 

she says she’s going to post confirmatory images + ask people from her life at the time who can vouch that it happened to vouch.

she apologizes. “i’m sorry, i really fucking hate this, i’m sorry.”

[pamouche]

Thanks a lot for tagging me @phascinationphases @borborai and @onzeziggy it's sweet of you, have a great day🌼🌼

fav wtfock s3 things Soundtracks , Robbe, Sander, Sobbe's kisses, THEY ARE THE DEFINITION OF CHEMISTRY AND LOVE ,Teasing, Croques and traditions, Casa Milan and Zoënne, Jens who was there for Robbe, the end with everyone together to celebrate Christmas and "dat we nu leven" I would say in conclusion everything, this is the best remake that has been done this season (it's my opinion) The acting of the 2 Willems was impeccable, the emotions were strong. They deserve great oscars

fav clip Everything in fact ahahaha. More seriously I would say the clip at the hotel (= Vrijdag 22:21 / 22:52), the shower scene=masterpiece and when Sander talks about his future project of marriage, their look for each other, their smile, their kiss, their hug... It was just them and nobody else. "Nowhere as happy as we are" and it's true (here's another iconic line that makes me emo as fuck) plus there is literally my favorite kiss, it's the one after Sander said "take it or leave it", I am obsessed with this kiss ahaha. It's so perfect, happy young in love and so well together

fav scene I love the scene of the Vrijdag 22:53 clip (the beginning, not the end you know why) they are boyfriends and bestfriends and I love this relationship. Robbe and his magic trick, Sander and his little tap on Robbe's cheek because he doesn't believe in this trick, their big smile and the look game and then the moment of the hands, on the hair, near Sander's mouth... Sander whispering sweet things in Robbe's ear and when they leave the bar, happy and in love, Robbe getting on Sander's back and then when he answers Sander "bij je" and Sander's little snort after that and their looong kiss<3 Their first date went so well until ....

fav shot I would say the shots of their eyes before they kiss. I could look at their loving looks all day long because you can tell they love each other so much and just want to never leave each other. Their eyes really shine before they kiss, just at the sight of the other, and then their smile before kissing omgg , I think in particular of the clip of Woensdag 16:36 where these shots are abundant

fav kiss that Robbe initiates I think it's in the Dinsdag 07:27 clip when Robbe tells Sander he's going to school because he has an exam. Sofffft morning kiss, I can't stop watching the gifs on it, it's so beautiful. The way Robbe is caring while doing this and Sander asleep but receptive because how can you not...They were really taking every minute, nothing was in a hurry it was just the two of them in their world and the music in the background was really nice. I love this clip.

fav kiss that Sander initiates I think directly to the kiss of this clip(= Zaterdag 09:41) It was my end, the way Sander touched his nose on Robbe's (while Robbe was smiling) before kissing him and then rocking him on the bed is for me ahaha. Even the continuation is perfect with Sander's sentences so sincere and too many emotions when I hear them... and between these sentences the kisses, a little teasing but so beautiful and soft to see. Anyway I loved "from now on it's just the two of us" qarrggg I'm going to cry again

fav Sander dialogue We won't lie, Sander has the most iconic lines. I'm going to select two that really stood out to me: "Gij en ik, honderd procent voor altijd, in elk universum" and "Het maanlicht scheen op je en ik wist direct he is the one" Can you also hear his voice while reading? I think I'm going crazy ahaha I miss him and his boyfriend

fav Robbe dialogue At first instinct I would say "altijd" after Sander asks him if he's going to come back, but I think it's short so I would then say THE phrase "You touched me and I've never felt that before.. Ik hou van je" It's the most sincere sentence he ever said, and I actually had chills while I was crying when I listened to it because Robbe means it and Sander doesn't destroy everything he touches on the contrary...

fav hug I have 2 because I can't choose. The first one is of course the one of Dinsdag 07:27, Robbe caressing Sander's hand while Sander is sleeping and sticking to Robbe, impossible to go closer because he wants to feel Robbe's warmth, Robbe's body.. just Robbe. And the second one is the one of Woensdag 17:21 sooo perfect with the kisses super affectionate, cute, soft and Robbe who rests his head on Sander's hair while this one hums of satisfaction bc he has found his home, it is Robbe. Real soulmates aren't they?

fav 21:21 I am leaning towards Vrijdag 21:21. Woensdag 21:21 is just as good, it's the beginning of their story. But the Vrijdag 21:21 is a big step towards their eternal love story, no more turning back, it's the reunion, it's two soulmates in symbiosis who promise each other their love, it will always triumph because it's the most beautiful one humanity could have known. No more Britt, no more confusion, it's now that everything starts to take shape, it's always been them since the beginning... and then this scene is beautiful, it's clearly art. Also when Sander intertwines fingers with Robbe's it's definitely too much for me. I was so not expecting it and when I saw that I understood that these are really sincere lovers. It's such a true act that gives off incredible emotions, full of love and comfort. Sander seems to say that he is there and that he will always be there for Robbe, it is them welded like the fingers of the hand, no but just think about it one second, I don't have the words... Sander means everything he said before, it's them 100% voor altijd in elk universum. Excuse me I'm crying while writing this...

fav Sobbe instagram pic Idk if it is because we are in the context of the crisis with the virus but I like this picture very much. It's so original, so them, in b&w aka the best filter for them aka love at first sight for me but moreover this pic is so meaningful... It looks like I was waiting to see Sander wearing Robbe in this way ahahah. No but they are the most iconic couple I've ever seen, you don't change a winning team as they say. And then the quote "different supermarket, same love" to make us all emotional :') I'd like to say a lot more but I have to stop, I feel like I'm writing a novel with each answer

fav scene x song pair Here I can talk about Woensdag 21:21, absolutely perfect, Sobbe cycling, their tunnel, they were already in love, their teasing, "nee, better" , the swimming pool, their KISSS and the most important, their song : Wildfire <3 I won't say more, you understood

fav message between Sander & Robbe The messages during wtfockdown are the best!! I selected these ones from the clip Vrijdag 18:37 (Sander does his walk in their tunnel)

Sander: Ik zie u graag, Robin

Robbe: Ik u ook. Niet normaal hard!

In fact they are simple but so passionate and when I look at them I have a big smile because I know they meant it more than anyone else and it's mutual and my heart melted every time they say it, I can't help it

fav banter on instagram Everything!!!

Sterkerdanijzer : Happyiest year of my life😊❤️

Earthlingoddity : Only 99 more to go ❤️

Sterkerdanijzer : 💯

I also really like these ones: s o b b e

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

I tag in my turn my cutie @hereforsobbe and @happilyinsane @foxsake5 @jackfrostsander @maade-of-stardust @pepethehobbit @robbesdriesen @vataraxia @remy3010 @sandersdemaury @sanderxrobbee @in-elk-universe-voor-altijd @undcrthesun @annonymannonym @justalina @skam-wtfock-sobbe @gele-gordijnen @debussyatmidnight @artisticsander and ofc the others who would like to do it ! I really enjoy reading you ahaha also feel free to ignore

[insomniziam]

Analysis of the PR Relationship between Liam and Maya

Okay, Liam and Maya made their relationship official in September 2019 through Liam’s Instagram post:

(notice how there are only two points of contact on his behalf, the two fingers on her waist and their foreheads. Doesn’t come off very relationship-y to me. I can’t say for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this were photo shopped) 

Conveniently, this news came to light a few days after the release of his new single at the time, Stack it Up (shocker, I know). And what did we get? The same thing that happened with Zigi:

Bringing attention to Liam’s new single and of course, the new up and coming model (sound familiar to you at all?)

Maya Henry

But who is Maya Henry? The first real news we ever get about her is due to her father spending a whopping 6 million dollars on her fifteenth birthday party back in 2016 (more on that later). But what does this prove? That her father is incredibly rich, and has no issues spending millions of dollars on a single night if it means getting his name in the papers. He hasn’t just done this with Maya, he spent another 4 million on his son’s 18th and another 4.5 million on his own 56th birthday, and both somehow made headlines (paid promo maybe?)

That’s not even the best part... They tried to do their own Kardashian style reality TV show but it flopped massively. 

(Literally the only place I could find it anywhere was dailymotion...)

They have a Facebook page, but most of the videos have been set to private on YouTube so you can’t watch pretty much anything on the page anyway. There’s probably on average 50 interactions per post (and that’s me being generous).

Maya started her own YouTube channel early 2018, but that didn’t gain any traction either (it’s currently sitting at 16K) and there are no videos on the page at all (I’m pretty sure she’s deleted them off, although I can’t find copies of them any where, probably because no one actually cared to download them).

I will admit, she was doing pretty decently before she was connected to Liam, had even done a few international covers for magazines like Elle Romania and Vogue Ukraine.

But Gigi had walked the New York Fashion runway at the age of 18, a feat Maya herself didn’t seem to be nearing. However, Gigi also has a lot of connections that no doubt helped her gain a following (her “friendship” with the Jenners, as well as her connections with Swift and her mean girl posse). 

(If ya’ll don’t see how this was a publicity stunt, I don’t know what to tell you)

But how does an increase of following help you career wise, isn’t about talent? You may ask, and I would have a hard time not chuckling at the question, because talent has nothing to do with it (Miss Gigi “I’m still learning how to cat walk” Hadid is a testament to that).

As for the answer, an increase in following leads to an increase of fans, which leads to an increased likelihood of more people buying the shit her name is attached to - makeup, accessories, clothing lines ect. - and increased viewership that have her (and her ‘best friends’) starring in. *cough* Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show *cough*. 

But one thing in particular that really stood out, was Gigi’s ‘relationship’ with one Zayn Malik... you see where this is going?

Why Liam?

Now, unlike Zayn, Liam didn’t really have any bad press he needed to distract the general public from. However, he pretty much only had three different talking points in interviews; ‘his son’, Cheryl and One Direction. Those three subjects no one really cared to listen to anymore, because it was the same bullshit over and over again. Enter new (but also extremely old) topic: a new girlfriend!

It gave the papers something new to talk about (although funnily enough, they would always end the article talking about Cheryl and her kid), someone Liam could use to promote himself a little more. So although the benefits were heavily leaning to her side, there still was something in it for Liam, and she had already been linked to him in the past, an easy set up.

Maya’s Age (this is where you’ll either feel really grossed out or extremely pissed, fair warning)

Now this is where shit gets hella shady. According to articles, Maya has been 19 since last year: 

Using the fact that Maya’s 15th birthday was in 2016 as according to this Daily Mail article detailing all the expenses and a little bit of quick math, it’s easy to see that she only turned 19 in February of this year.

Now, your eyebrows might be furrowed right now, and you may be asking why does her age matter?She’s still a legally consenting adult. However according to articles, Liam and Maya had actually met back in 2015 at a One Direction Meet and Greet:

Sound familiar at all?:

This shit has me feeling sick to my stomach (I did give you a fair warning) because this is the second time Liam has been linked in some way to what some could argue somewhat child grooming behaviour. Because not only did he meet her back in 2015, when she was actually 14 despite what the papers are trying to tell you she was 15, he apparently started dating her back in 2018, when she was 17 years old:

Realising their mistake, my guess is that Liam’s team tried their best to have her birthday changed a year earlier, so as to make people think they started dating when she was 18, to make their relationship more acceptable. But the damage had already been done, and when someone made a thread on their twitter pointing out this fact, some absolute idiot decided to use Liam’s twitter to try and discredit them:

Despite the fact that neither Liam or Maya were tagged in the thread, meaning that whoever was behind the keyboard would have had to go searching for it, especially since the thread probably only had a few hundred interactions before, they drew eyes to it. (The tinhat in me wants to believe that this was actually a smart move made by Liam to show people just how shady their relationship is, but I highly doubt that fact considering how creepy it makes him look 😒)

And, because people were smart enough to actually read through the thread, they weren’t buying what whoever was running the account at the time was selling:

It’s not a good look, but I guess any press is good press according to Liam’s team.

Conclusion

Maya and her family are crazy thirsty for attention. They tried to acquire that attention through spending millions of dollars on birthdays parties to gain headlines. Obviously not enough for them, they tried out their own reality TV show which somehow made it to season two before scrapping the whole thing entirely due to low ratings. Maya started a YouTube channel, it didn’t go as well as she hoped and then focused on Modelling full time. However she wasn’t climbing anywhere near as much as she would like, and since her father had no issues paying for celebrities in the past, probably had no issues with paying Liam’s team for him to play boyfriend, and try to recreate a Zigi situation.

Liam’s team saw this as an opportunity for a new subject to be brought up in interviews and headlines and decided to go for it. They fucked up with the age, tried to fix it and just made the situation worse, and hoped eventually everyone would just forget about it.

At least, that’s my best guess

[horansqueen]

Stuck With You - Chapter 24

Chapter 24: Move Along

🡪chapter 1  🡪chapter 2  🡪chapter 3  🡪chapter 4  🡪chapter 5  🡪chapter 6   🡪chapter 7  🡪chapter 8  🡪chapter 9  🡪chapter 10  🡪chapter 11 🡪chapter 12 🡪chapter 13 🡪chapter 14 🡪chapter 15 🡪chapter 16 🡪chapter 17 🡪chapter 18 🡪chapter 19 🡪chapter 20 🡪chapter 21 🡪chapter 22 🡪chapter 23

College Enemies To Lovers AU

characters // masterlist // instagrams // mood board

Speak to me When all you got to keep is strong Move along, move along like I know you do And even when your hope is gone Move along, move along just to make it through

Your hands are mine to hold

click here to be on the update list

NIALL

                                           At first, I wanted to argue, but the way she was looking at me was telling me she was serious. I was not the type to face the persons I had a problem with. I preferred to ignore them or avoid them, but when it came to the guy who broke Devon's heart, I had a different opinion. I knew it was not a solution to hit him but that didn't mean I was not fantasizing about it. He was the kind of guy who did whatever he wanted without consequences and it made me angrier than I thought it would, especially now that he was so close and I could actually see his face. Devon was humiliated, pointed out, and had to leave her college, but him? He just denied the whole thing and continued his life. Devon had to start over while going through a heartbreak, and although I was glad she was here now, it was still a horrible thing to go through.

I placed myself in front of her to shield her from his sight and moved closer, bending down slightly to reach for her hand. I was not expecting it but her fingers immediately squeezed mine and she closed her eyes. I pulled on her hand gently, bringing her with me as she kept her eyes closed, guiding her to my car before she leaned her back against the passenger's door. I stood in front of her, as close as possible without touching her, and let my eyes roam slowly on her face. She seemed sad and hurt and I didn't know how to make her feel better. I wanted to kiss her but I decided against it, telling myself that doing that right after she saw her ex boyfriend would probably not be the best idea. Weirdly, it was the first thing that came to my mind when I thought of a way to comfort her. I held my breath for a few seconds as my heart thumped hard in my chest and finally brought my hands to her face gently, cupping her cheeks.

"Devie, are you okay?" I whispered with concern. I knew she could hear how worried I was in my voice and her eye fluttered open.

She nodded slowly, sending me a soft smile as my thumbs brushed on her cheekbones, making her eyelids flutter again. It took me a while but eventually, I took a small step closer and wrapped my arms around her neck. I was no sure of what she would do but she slid her arms around me, pushing her face between my upper arm and my chest. It felt good to have her so close and I wondered if Devon was affectionate like that because of what had happened to her, or if she had always been like that. Did she need that type of love and asked for it or was it just something natural for her?

"I'll make a deal with you, okay?" I proposed gently, leaning my chin on her head. "We'll go to that conference and we'll ignore him if you want." I felt her try to pull away from me but I held her closer. "And then we'll grab our stuff and drive to my apartment. We'll miss a few days of school and just do things that you like so you can stop thinking about him."

She seemed to relax in my arms but her hands gripped my shirt in my back and I felt her rub her nose on my arm.

"Where do you live?" she asked low, turning her head slightly so make sure I understood what she was saying.

"A few hours away."

"You have too much money." she mumbled, making me laugh and shake my head.

"Maybe." I shrugged, loosening my embrace. It took her a few seconds to move back and she tilted her head. "Do you have anything important this week?"

"No, but I don't know If I should leave."

My eyes roamed on her face gently. "You told me to take you far away from here, yea?"

Her lips parted slowly and she nodded. "Okay."

"Okay." I repeated, bringing one of my hands to her shoulder. "Hey, we'll go there, stay close to the door, and ignore him." There was a short moment of silence and I breathed in. "Come on, let's eat."

"I'm not.. really hungry anymore." she admitted, glancing down and then looking back in my eyes. "I'll just go back to our room."

I knew what I was proposing to her was not ideal, but attendance was required for that conference and failing a class just because of his stupid ass would just make things worse. I wanted her safe and happy and I was really hoping she'd agree to spend some time away from here. I had to admit I wanted to stay far from him too, if only because I had no idea how I'd react if I was near him.

"You need to be alone?" I asked in a low tone,, raising my eyebrows. "It's okay, you know. But I'll bring you back something to eat. You have to eat something."

She rolled her eyes a bit but I saw a smile draw itself on her lips as she nodded. I wanted to walk her back to our room but that sounded a bit controlling and when she walked past me, I turned around and called her name. She stopped and turned to me too, making my lips part slightly. I didn't know why but as I stared at her at this exact moment, something inside me seemed to hatch, and an intense feeling spread all over my body. The girl standing in front of me was the person I loved the most in my life, and I was ready to do anything to ensure her happiness. This is what I wanted, and that was what I was going to aim for, from now on.

"Don't go there okay? Not without me. Please."

"Don't worry, Niall." she replied, shaking her head and sending me a sad smile. "I don't even want to go. But since I have to, there's no way I'm going there without you."

---

I walked back in our room about half an hour later, throwing my keys on my bed and placing the box with our food on my desk.

"Honey! I'm home!" I joked with a grin.

I turned around swiftly when the bathroom's door opened and my smile fell immediately when I saw her. She had changed into a dress, a different one than the one she wore that time I saw her at Lewis', and she had put make up on. My eyes fell on her red metallic lipstick and I don't think I ever wanted to kiss her more than at this exact moment.

"W-What do you think?" she asked a bit shyly, pressing her lips together as I took a step closer.

My eyebrows raised and I pushed the air out of my lungs, shaking my head slightly. My eyes traveled on her body and when it met hers again, I smiled.

"I think anyone who's ever broken up with you will regret it, and anyone who never dated you will wish they did."

She rolled her eyes and pushed gently on my chest with both her hands, making me smile even more. She walked to the food and checked. I saw her grab some whipped cream with her finger and suck on it before turning to me with a smile.

"Thanks for that." she let out. I didn't know if it was for the food or for the compliment but I decided not to ask. "We can eat on my bed if you want, I know how much you hate it when we eat on yours."

I nodded and we sat in silence, facing each other as we ate our pancakes slowly. I kept glancing at my watch and it made me realize that I was actually nervous for that stupid conference. I wanted everything to go well but I was scared she'd end up being hurt and it would sort-of be my fault since I was the one who insisted that she'd attend it. I was about to tell her we should just forget the conference and leave now but she took me out of my thoughts.

"I'm not doing that for him, you know?" she pointed out as I looked up at her. "The dress and all that," she shrugged, glancing down. She looked embarrassed and I was not sure why. "I'm doing it for me. I don't want him to regret me, I want him to know I'm totally fine without him. That he didn't break me. That I'm not hooked on him anymore, and that he didn't fuck me up."

I swallowed hard as I stared at her. I didn't know what to answer to that. She didn't need to justify the reason why she wanted to dress up to me, but the fact that she trusted me enough to tell me was important.

"Devie, you look amazing." I confessed cautiously. "But you always do. With or without make up. In a dress or in a pair of sweatpants. And he doesn't deserve you in a dress or in sweatpants. You're too good for him and I hope karma gets to him, someday."

Her lips curled a bit but she didn't answer and I smiled back at her. She seemed nervous but when we walked in the room, I could feel her tense next to me. We took a seat on the last row, near the exit and when he walked out, everyone stopped talking. I felt Devon's fingers grip my thigh tight and glanced down at her hand. Her knuckles had turned a white color and I cleared my throat, bringing my hand over hers to try and calm her. It was tough for me to listen to anything he had to say, even if the History of Art has always been a fascinating subject for me. All I could think about was Devon riding him, or how vulnerable she seemed to be earlier when we saw him for the first time. Both emotions seemed to fight in my brain and I had to force myself to get out of my thoughts a few times.

However, when his eyes fell on me, I squeezed Devon's fingers tighter. He stopped for a second as he stared at us and without thinking, I wrapped my free arm around Devon's shoulder. I was not sure if once again, I wanted to shield her from him, or if I did that to prove him something, but I knew I wanted to protect her, and that's all that mattered for now. I thought she'd tense again but the opposite happened. She seemed to relax against me and the grip of her fingers loosened a bit. He finally turned around and kept talking and I waited a few more seconds to turn my head slightly her way and lick my lips.

"You still okay Devie?"

She turned to me and I didn't expect it. I held my breath, my gaze falling on her lips again, but she was so close I could kiss her. I couldn't stop thinking about the taste of her lips with lipstick on and I stopped moving. I even stopped breathing. Her thin lips parted and so did mine, but it's only when I received something right in the cheek that I got out of my thoughts. Clearly, Devon and I were not alone and apparently, some people wanted to bring us back to reality. I looked down at the small ball of crumped paper on my lap and spread my thighs to let it fall in the ground. I looked up, trying to find out who had done this, but as my eyes roamed on the people around, I realized there were some whispers and glances sent our way. I had no idea why everyone was looking at us, especially since I believed we were well hidden in the back, but I  just crossed my legs and ignored everyone, pulling slightly on my arm to bring Devon in a quick hug from the side.

I got up very quickly when the conference was over and stretched a bit before leaving. Devon followed me, gripping my arm to make sure we wouldn't lose each other and when we got outside, I turned only to see her frowning at the screen of her phone.

"What's wrong?"

She looked up  at me, her eyebrows raised and her lips parted, but she just shrugged. It made me frown too but my phone beeped before I could ask her again. I grabbed it and when I saw the words written, I chuckled in surprise. The text message was from Lewis and the right corner of my lips raised up.

'Are you dating Devon now?'

"Why is Lewis asking me if we're dating?" I frowned more, looking at her. "He wasn't even here."

"No, but Daxia is." she explained, raising her nose up in a cute grimace. "She just texted me about the same thing."

I realized what she meant and I tilted my chin up while rolling my eyes. That was exactly how rumors started and I hated it. I was not in the mood to answer questions or to have people discuss my relationship with Devon together.

"What do we answer them, then?" I asked, shaking my head as she shrugged.

"Nothing."

I chuckled but my smile fell immediately when I saw him walk closer. I knew it was too late to leave and running away would be awkward and would generate a lot of questions. Instead, I cleared my throat and whispered very quickly.

"He's coming here."

Once again, she tensed and I took a step closer but I was not quick enough and when he touched her shoulder to get her attention, I wanted to hit him even more. She turned to him and forced a smile but I knew it was fake, even if it probably looked real to everyone else. She was good at hiding how she felt but I could always decipher her expressions and I had no idea why.

"Miss Eaton, it's been a while, how have you been?"

His light eyes roomed on her and she cracked a bigger smile before shrugging a shoulder. "Oh, uhm, great, thank you."

"You should introduce us." I let out a bit louder, making both of them turn my way.

"Oh yea, of course, Niall, this is Mister Henry Thompson." she let out, taking a step closer to me subtly. "He was one of my teachers at my old college."

"Nice to meet you, Niall." He reached his hand out to me but I just glanced at it and crossed my arms on my chest. There was no way I was going to shake hands with that guy.

"Good conference." I let out after he took his hand back. "But hey, you know what they say. Those who can, do; those who can't, teach."

His lips curled and he chuckled low. "Apparently."

"That must be why some teachers enjoy the... power they have, you know? On young minds, I mean." I kept going. "Oh but not you, right? You'd never abuse the power you've been given. I was talking in general."

I knew it felt very awkward between the three of us suddenly but I couldn't feel bad. It's only when Devon took an other step back that my heart seemed to skip a beat. I felt her back against my chest as a girl walked our way, her eyes glued to Henry who smiled back at her.

"Cammy?"

The pretty blonde girl turned around and when her eyes met Devon's, her face changed completely. She seemed uncomfortable and now this whole thing had just became a shit show.

"Dev, hi." the girl said, wrapping her arms around herself in an embarrassed way.

"Cammy used to be my best friend." Devon explained, her eyes never leaving the other girl.

"Oh, the traitor?"

Cammy's face suddenly changed but I couldn't get to feel bad about anything I had said in the past few minutes. They both deserved way worse than that and feeling bad and uncomfortable for a while didn't even come close to the pain they put Devon in. Perhaps, it was not my place to do that, but I didn't care.

"Devie, they're fucking, you realize that, right?"

Their faces changed but I noticed Devon's lips curl slightly. She was trying to hide her amusement but it made me smile too. I had no idea why we were still there, standing near them and trying to pretend we wanted to be there.

"You wanna leave?" I asked, raising my eyebrows before she nodded.

I smiled softly at her and extended my hand. She seemed to hesitate as she stared at my palm but when she looked up at me, her lips curled more. I felt her hand slide gently on mine and I squeezed her fingers. We walked away slowly and I brought our hands up, twisting them to make her twirl on herself. She giggled, her dress dancing around her and when she turned her head to look at me, I bent down closer to whisper.

"Don't look back okay? Don't give them this satisfaction."

---

We held hands until we got back into our room and when I closed the door behind us, Devon started laughing. We stared at each other but she wouldn't stop laughing, so hard that it made my lips curl and I chuckled too. She seemed happy and I was not sure why, but witnessing it was an incredible gift. I thought she'd be devastated but here she was, laughing while staring at me, her eyes sparkling with joy and softness, and I took it all in, letting her happy feelings invade me too.

Suddenly, she walked very quickly to me and got on her tiptoe. I only had time to hold my breath when her mouth crashed on mine. She didn't deepen the kiss and I didn't have the guts to either. It didn't feel like a passionate kiss, just a thank you kiss, but it was enough for me.

"Their faces, I swear!" she giggled some more as she took a step back.

I felt a shiver cross my back but I didn't know if it was because of the kiss or because now that her body was far from mine, I could feel the cool air from outside reach to me.

"I was stuck. I normally am quite good at talking back or being sassy but.. I just couldn't say anything." she admitted with a big grin on her face. "I thought I was just going to look like an idiot and spend days thinking of all the come backs I could have thrown at them but.. Niall, you were perfect. Thank you."

"You... You're welcome."

She tilted her chin up to look in my eyes and I looked down at her. She reached for one of my hands and tilted her head as a fond smile draw itself on her still red lips. It made me wonder if I had some stains of it on my own lips.

"I like you, Niall." she whispered, her eyes never leaving mine. "I really really like you. And If I hadn't sworn I'd never date anyone ever again..."

She didn't finish her sentence, she just sighed and closed her eyes for a few seconds.

"Okay," she nodded firmly, looking at me again. "Let's pack our stuff and leave."

[fictropes]

oh boy i sure did write many words in 2020

Hi! I am copying people due to i want to.  This is a lil (well... 63) round up of all the fics I wrote this year! Cos i’m very evil @ myself and writing fic and think i’m either not doing enough, or not doing it good enough, so i wanna full list of what I actually did so I can see my own accomplishments and can maybe... clap 4 myself for once. And honestly writing has helped MASSIVELY with my depression so.. that’s a bonus. 

ALSO. this is a big huge thankyou to everyone! I only joined here + started writing in august and you’ve all been so so nice and welcoming and supportive  <333 ;_; and I know they say write for yourself... but honestly peoples comments and excitement about my stuff has just been really, really lovely and I would never have written this much without all of you cheering me on<3. 

so here is a list of everything i’ve written, organised by length and everything, so if you find yourself bored over the holidays... have a lil browse. (Sorry if u are on mobile and this doesn’t show as a read more) 

Chaptered:

Can we try again? series (M) Complete - 35k  - “Yeah, Phil. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Dan answers, softer than he’d wanted because he already knows what he’s about to do next.(or Dan doesn't turn up in 2009 and bumps into Phil 11 years later at a youtube convention 2. I like cupcakes, especially the gay variety (M) Complete - 30k - Firstly, Dan was 29. How was that a mature student?Secondly, his actual book was on the university fucking syllabus.(or the one in which Dan tries university again in a desperate attempt to prolong his procrastination, and his lecturer Phil is apparently something of a fan) 3. 7 Letters series (M) Complete - 9k - Your penpal can be the person you live with, actually. 4. There's Beans in Here (T) Complete - 2k - Phil has his wisdom teeth removed; Phil says many questionable things. 5. Roadtrip (E) Complete - 8k - “Exactly. I am right, as always.”“As always.” Dan agrees.Series 6. night shift, please (E) Wip - 27k I PROMISE THIS WILL COME BACK IN 2021 - Ten years and he’ll never get over how early he has to get up sometimes. In all honesty he prefers the night shift. 7. Still Not Calling it Fate (M) Wip - 14k - It’s become a bit of a thing, a bit of a thing that everyone he crosses paths with takes the piss out of him for 8. when i met you, a blue rush began (M) Complete - 5k - They end up in a small restaurant overlooking the sea, everything here is so blue. The sky, the sea, Phil’s eyes, the shirt he’s wearing buttoned up all the way to the top. 9. Luggage Tags (E) Complete - 2.5k - Just because it looks like your suitcase, it doesn't necessarily mean that it is. 10. Demon in the sack (E) Complete - 2.5k - Dan’s leg jiggles beneath his desk, knee hitting the table as he tries to force himself to hang up and ring the number he was supposed to ring— he doesn’t, he can’t. Long ( for me) oneshots (3k+) 11. Electronics and the Phil's who break them (M) Complete - 9k - The first time’s an accident, a proper accident— a Phil forgot how to hold his cup and now he’s watching his coffee seep into his keyboard type accident. 12. A Letter of Specifics (T) Complete - 4k - You'll know it's your soulmate because no one else on earth could be doing what they're doing. 13. The Benefits of A Weak Floor (M) Complete - 4k - He quite literally falls through Dan’s ceiling. 14. 10:35 on a Thursday (E) Complete -  3.7k - He’s tapping his pen against the paper, acting as though he isn’t asking Phil to take a sex quiz at 10:35am on a Thursday morning. 15. 2009, catboys (T) Complete - 3.2k - “You have your own ears, can’t have four.”“Why?” 16. Wrong Room (T) Complete - 3k - “Congratulations!’’ And he was expecting to hear a cry, or at least his mother telling him to be quiet because a certain baby was sleeping. Instead he heard the deep clear of a throat, a rustling of sheets. 2k-3k oneshots 17. Dinner with a stranger (T) Complete - 2.5k - @amazingphl hi! second year of doing this, sooo if anyone has nowhere to go for Christmas dinner I am once again offering..my flat (and by extension me) ;oSeries 18. Easy Lover (M) Complete - 2.4k - ''Yeah. We're always fine.'' It was always fine. It was always easy, despite always behind hard. 19. Cold Season (M) Complete - 2k - Dan is ill, insatiable and another word beginning with I. 1k-2k oneshots 20. Morose men on rooftops (T) Complete - 1.9k - “Dunno, maybe chatting up morose men on roofs is my thing.” He laughs, and it’s a nice noise. 21. Love with tongues of fire (T) Complete - 1.7k - So when Dan waltzed into the room, declaring his hunger Phil thought nothing of it. Just another night for another takeaway. 22. Your Rocks are my Rocks (T) Complete - 1.7k - Phil wants a new rock for Norman, Dan wants a peaceful life. 23. Joint Content (M) Complete - 1.6k - It started of a as a joke— a Joint Content joke. 24. 24/7 Fantasies (M) Complete - 1.5k - He thinks about Dan 24/7, constantly in two separate fantasies 25. A Conversation in Multiple Hallways (T) Complete - 1.5k - You're still here then? 26. Sharing Space (T) Complete - 1.5k - It's 2010 and dan has had a day. 27. The Obvious (T) Complete - 1.5k - "Can I use that?” He doesn’t wait for an answer, already scrawling it beneath the only three words he currently has— I love you. 28. I'm Thinking of Ending Things (T) Complete - 1.5k - Dan hears half a conversation, jumps to one whole conclusion. 29. Love Language of the Tactile (T) Complete - 1.4k - “I’m just— that’s a hypothetical.” Dan leans in this time, takes the touches that Phil always so freely gives away. “Can’t kiss in secret rooms if I leave.” 30. Don't Let the Self-Doubt Ruin You (T) Complete - 1.3k - “I’m here.” “Yeah, you’re here.” 31. Conflict Resolution (T) Complete - 1.3k - Following recent events we’ve decided it best we take a combative approach to your current workplace issues, we have booked you into a conflict resolution class this Thursday afternoon - we will not be paying you to attend. 32. when it comes to love (i want a slow hand) (E) Complete - 1.2k - And there it is, the refusal of anything in return. This is just for Dan and it always will be. 33. You're Still The one (T) Complete - 1.1k - “What’re you thinking about?” “You.” 34. Teach Me, Dad. (T) Complete - 1k - "Do you think I could be the next Mozart?” 35. The Logistics of a Clone (M) Complete - 1k - “I don’t think that’s a clone, though, like maybe more of a Doppelgänger.” Dan doesn’t know why they’re delving so deep into this, why he’s so damn bothered about being right. “It’s just literally you.” 36. All's fair in Love and Monopoly (T) Complete - 1k - Phil does not play by the rules, Dan lets him win anyway. Under 1k oneshots 37. Hide out in your heart (E)  Complete - 0.9k - The second time Dan comes to visit it’s different. 38. Oh, there you are. (G) Complete - 0.9k - So after all this, after everything, he doesn’t think anything of it when someone else slips into his dms. 39. The Boy has Attitude (T) Complete - 0.9k - “You didn’t tell me you looked like this.”“Like what?”“This!” Phil’s waving a physical copy of the magazine in his face— so that’s where he’d been. 40. Hairties (and how not to use them) (M) Complete - 0.8k - “Why would you do that? Let us settle in, nice and slow and— gently does it.” 41. The Second Apartment. (T) Complete - 0.8k - It’s a stop-gap apartment, a we’re going to get our forever home after this. 42. Japan, 2019. (G) Complete - 0.8k - NO summary, just an obviously I was going to write this after phil's post 43. Doting Man (T) Complete - 0.7k - They’re both drunk, Phil more so— definitely more so.Series 44.  Imposter (T) Complete - 0.7k - Among us is.. a bastard. 45. Ratemyprofessors.com (M) Complete - 0.7k - ‘Maybe if that Phil bloke from the English dep he’s always staring at fucked him he’d stop being so uptight’ 46. Failed Attempts (T) Complete - 0.7k - Dan enlists the help of Phil for his latest Instagram. 47. Bonus Prize (M) Complete - 0.7k - Phil Trash Number One 48. Feels like home (G) Complete - 0.7k - Home is where the Phil is. 49. We can make Forever work (T) Complete - 0.7k - It’s a moment of realising forever may sound too much to people, but we’ll get through everything together— we don’t have any other choice. 50. Scene in the Kitchen (T) Complete - 0.7k - New place 51. 4'11 (T) Complete - 0.6k - Dan is baby 52. Pillow Imprints (T) Complete - 0.6k - Dan is a menace, and Phil loves him anyway. 53. Parachute Jacket (T) Complete - 0.5k - Dan thinks Phil is obsessed with them Those few times I thougt I was goddamn Ri**ard S*ken 54. Home (G) Complete - 0.7k - It’s their forever home, because their actual forever lives inside of it. 55. secrets spoken in empty rooms (T) Complete - 1k - So he wants to be the same, but he wants Dan more. 56. Separately Together  (T) Complete - 0.9k - Phil’s soft hands and even softer words. It gets harder to leave. Gets to the point where Dan turns off an alarm just so he misses the train. 57. It's not hard to fall (T) Complete - 0.7k - Still a little bit of your words I long to hear Some more Epistolary (apart from 7 letters)  58. A Play in One Act (T) Complete - 1.1k - [Manchester Piccadilly train-station, midday, October 19th, 2009.] 59. R/AITA (T) Complete - 0.8k - AM I THE ASSHOLE FOR MAKING MY BOYFRIEND BE A WORM?Series 60. Lonely Hearts (T) Complete - 1.8k - I will not say you were crying on the tube (out of politeness) 61. Conversations of the Lazy Kind (T) Complete - 1k - eggs? wot? Smells like eggs