#any idiot can write poems. look at me!

[britneyshakespeare]

you know what i realized

is giving

[henneseyhoe]

Guess Who

Lewis Hamilton x BLACK!FEM!Reader

ORDER: Watermelon Lollipop (friends to lovers), S’mores (virginity), Chocolate Kisses (secret admirer), Vanilla Muffin (soft sex), Coffee(smut), Tea (fluff)

SUMMARY: no, lol

💌-mind you, this was supposed to be a headcanon, not a whole one shot and yall can probably tell, but i don’t listen, not even to myself lmfao. hope you enjoy, anon 💋

The Bakery<3

✮✮✮✮

When you and Lewis met, you both were nothing but children. You were younger, but it didn’t matter, both of you were impressionable, soaking up everything you saw. Lewis saw most of the world for what it truly was, you on the other hand, not so much.

You were sheltered by your parents for most of your years, nothing to be shamed about, but you just didn’t know as much as Lewis or any of your other peers when it came to certain things. You felt inexperienced with most things actually.

Because you two were best friends, you followed him nearly everywhere, clinging onto him like your own human safety blanket. Also because being by yourself made you nervous, but that was neither here nor there to you!

There was rarely a time you two were apart! That was up until your own work ramped up and you were forced to separate away from him, keeping busy in Monaco meanwhile he traveled for his work.

Not long after you were forced to separate, you began getting flowers and even poems delivered directly to your office, sometimes waiting there for you when you first clocked in. And not just any poems, sweet ones. Flirty, witty and charming ones. It left you puzzled. Who could be crushing on you? No one in the office, hopefully.

You voiced to your friends about your confusion, each and every one of them either swooning at the idea of a secret admirer falling for you and pulling you out of the shell you called being a grown woman with other things to do than mingle all the time or shrugging with the same confusion as you.

You then asked around your job like an idiot as if any of these grumpy men in their mid forties would give you a real hint, still you felt it was worth a try.

You got turned down three times by people who insisted it wasn’t them and they didn’t know and that left you with nothing to work with! Not even the girl who delivered the notes gave you a hint. yes, even after you bribed her, or attempted, I should say. You found yourself at a dead end again.

It wasn’t until you got yet another note that you had an inkling. One little detail made your thoughts clear from your mind, a bit embarrassment lingering, but mostly still clear. The note contained a secret not even your main circle knew, something you only told two people about in life, two people who you thought were your best friends.

“Did he write this? yes or no!?” You pried, holding Lewis down on the floor of your apartment while shoving the piece of drawn on paper in his face, attempting to get the man to crack. You were the least intimidating person he has ever went up against, so he kept that same goofy smile spread across his face as if he did know something.

“I keep telling you, I don’t know!”

“Then who?! I’ve never told anyone else but you and him! So either you’re lying or one of you snitched and told someone else!”

Lewis sighs and flips you off of him almost too easily, your back coming in contact with the hard floor as your hand still held up the evidence. You made a mental note to hit the weights a little more in the gym.

He pins your arms by your head and huffs, squeezing at your wrists to get you to stop moving, which you protested against by kicking your feet.

“Stop hitting me. If I told you the truth, you wouldn’t believe me” He expresses, an unreadable look on his face now instead of the smile that antagonized you earlier with information hidden behind it you desperately wanted to know. Your brows just furrowed, you already didn’t believe or trust a word he was saying.

“As if it’s so shocking. I know it’s him!”

Lewis rolls his eyes at your stupid assumption and laughs, letting you go with a warning look. “If you think me and him are on the same level of literacy then I need to step my pen up. Cause those poems were some of my best work”

Your eyes widened like a deer in headlights once comprehending what he said.

The bomb he dropped on you in that moment lingered in your head for days, nights even. You refused to dwell on it for long and buried your head in work and books to keep busy, but that damn note found its way into your thoughts at every second. Though Lewis knew casually writing in the fact that you were a virgin in his most recent love letter may have been weird and wasn’t the best idea, he also knew it was the only way he knew you’d knock your options down to only two possibilities.

You could barely fathom the fact that he liked you in that way. He knew everything about you, you’d think that would have scared him away by now, but apparently not. He was still consistent with his letters and roses, even apologizing if he made you uncomfortable or ruined the friendship.

You weren’t uncomfortable, you were shocked. Truth be told, you had always had some kind of a crush on him, feelings and emotions you’d starve until seeing him again and having the privilege of being close, passing it off as your same ole’ clinginess. It was obviously not just that to everyone else.

Lewis knew very well about the attraction, his had always been there, he just thought you rather not speak on it. He then grew tired of that.

With that being said, you were reluctant to follow up with him. He talked a good game, but you feared ruining something that had been amazing for years, which he reassured you if nothing worked, then it’d be no hard feelings. Eventually, you decided to throw caution to the wind.

Giving Lewis a chance may have been the best thing you had done this summer. He took you seriously even with lack of experience in certain areas, he took you into consideration with everything under the sun and made sure to go at your pace..With a few nudges here and there, of course. You’d get nowhere if he counted on you 100%.

As the relationship grew, there was an obvious connection missing. It was the elephant in the room when you two were alone and close together. You weren’t a square, damn sure wasn’t incompetent either. You just…had never had sex before.

It was never a need to lose your virginity, you truly didn’t care, or at least that’s what you told yourself on many occasions and days of ovulation.

You two had the conversation about sex multiple times and agreed it’d just happen naturally.. even though he wanted it badly and you found yourself daydreaming and thinking about it more often than you’d ever like to admit to anyone, even yourself.

It was almost unbearable not doing anything. Even though you had never went to second base, your body made it known it had needs. Your skin heated anytime his touches lingered anywhere on you. It started to become painfully obvious too.

When the moment you both had been thinking about for long enough manifested itself in the middle of the night in your bedroom, you felt your heart was gonna jump out of your chest the entire time. The soft caresses of your skin accompanied by sweet kisses along your collar bone left your head spinning and your tummy fluttering with butterflies that seemed to never subside.

Your face was hot and your mind was racing, he didn’t give you time to be insecure about anything.

You watched him go down on you, his wet tongue teasingly gliding between your lips, the tip of it landing on your clit as he completed one lick. You shuttered. Long before you had convinced yourself that masturbation felt the same as someone down there, but you lied to yourself, unaware until now.

The thought of someone pleasuring you, getting off to you getting off was so erotic, so nasty, but damn did it help to get you close. Soft moans flooded his ears in reaction to every flick of his tongue and it had him throbbing in his briefs, a wet spot from his precum darkening the fabric against his tip as he ground himself against your bed while he licked away at your sensitive pearl.

You avoided pulling on his freshly done braids, curtesy of you, and instead went for your fitted sheets.

He began sucking on your clit while two finger circled around your soaked entrance, you pulling at your sheets again so hard that one end popped off of the mattresses corner.

Neither of you gave it attention, too busy to care.

He encouraged you to tell him when it felt good, when you needed more or less, and you gladly followed instructions.

“Just like that”

You mumble out, toes curling. He was doing irreparable damage. You didn’t think you could go back to just self pleasure after this.

Flattening his tongue, he allowed you to buck your hips up into his face to ride his tongue at your own pace while simultaneously slipping two of his fingers inside of you, massaging your walls until they gripped to the point it where it was hard to complete a full thrust. From then, he just made a ‘come hither’ motion, pressing up against your gspot with skill as you moaned out a name you didn’t think you’d ever be moaning, his.

He covered your entire body with his when he entered you. It felt like he held your hands the entire time too, pinning them to the mattress as his hips collided with yours in a rhythm he made up on the spot just for you, customized with what he knew made you tick. The strokes were slow, but long, and deep enough to where it felt like he reached the end of your pussy, pushing the boundaries of the ‘wall’ any time he’d bottom out into you. You felt so full of him, so warm. You felt like melting into the bed just then.

“Look at me, baby”

You hear from above you, your eyes fluttering back open to look up into the honey colored pools he called eyes. You began getting flustered, but it was all too late for shyness. He had already unlocked something no one else had the pleasure of even getting close to. He loved the thought of it.

“You are so fucking beautiful. I could stay like this all night” He confessed, a breathy moan exiting his mouth after. The sound of his voice sent shivers up your spine and tingling to your clit. Your back arched off of the bed, your chest smashing against his as your legs closed in around his hips to somehow pull him deeper, needing him closer than he already was.

He could feel the constant pull of your walls, the muscles spasming and tightening around his shaft as his pelvis nudged your clit, the sensation being deliciously different from your fingers.

Soon enough he was quickening his thrusts just a little, one hand letting go of yours to cradle your face instead, now forcing you to look at nothing but him. You whined.

“Lew-“ Breathless and dazed, you could feel a tug in the pit of your stomach and somehow he could feel it too. He could feel how close you were, you didn’t have to speak. Both of your moans intertwined with each other and you could swear your neighbors hated you now just from the way your bed began knocking against your wall.

By now, he could barely pull out with his hips stuttering, but all you needed was the grinding, you could easily cum off of just that.

“I can feel it-“ You gasped as your eyes rolled back. You only had a small idea of what it really was, a sample from your own late night sessions, but this one felt completely different. Something that had you feeling a different warmth all over, your vision blurring in and out before everything around you except for Lewis became nonexistent. It was just you and him. Him and you.

His arms wrapped around your body to hold you as you came down for your high and he peaked at his, drenching the inside of the condom he put on beforehand. Thankfully, because you feared the mysterious “it” feeling would create a little person that looked like the both of you.

Panting and whispering sweet nothings into your ear, he refused to let you go again.

You two stayed there the rest of the night, bodies pressed together with you tracing his tattoos and him caressing up your sides, thanking you for giving him the chance.

✮✮✮✮

💌- the way i’m sooo sleepy and sooo shocked i got this out in one day? look at me go, oh em geeee!

[naneun-no]

On “Insecure Jikookers”…

Alright. I might lose followers for this and that’s very okay; curate your timeline and protect your peace babes. But for YEARS, every time the phrase “insecure jikooker” has come up on my feed my eyelid has done a little twitchy twitch 🤨🤨

And I have always ignored it, because I’ve never wanted to be out here policing ppl’s language and we are literally supposed to be having fun and celebrating love, like for me that’s the whole point, but —

I’ve been seeing the phrase popping up again surrounding the release of AYS and I just gotta say it.

You guys the term seems so culty 😬🥲

Like I think I get the origin (maybe)? It probably started when some of the early jikook bloggers (if you are one I salute you, I am not worthy, trust me this is NOT a dig at anyone, jikook bloggers are by and large cool and kind af 🙇‍♀️) would get these sketchy asks that were antis or cultists in disguise just casting aspersions on jikook’s bond or being blatantly homophobic and/or in general being rude little anonymous internet gremlins. Or maybe it was people who did want to believe that jikook was real but kept nagging and begging for reassurance at every turn, which I can totally see becoming annoying as hell and prompting people to start using the term.

But it feels like it’s used now as like a catchall for anyone who expresses any doubt or asks any critical questions? Even like… reasonable ones? And I used to see a lot of “hey believe what you want to believe but this is what I believe” but now it seems like the sentiment around jikooker communities has by and large become “if you don’t believe you’re an idiotic dumb person who has never known love — you’re either a rival shipper in disguise or WORSE (dun dun dunnnnn) an Insecure Jikooker — and we don’t want people like you around.”

And idk it just feels weird for a community that has always seemed to kind of pride itself on being the “rational, fact-based” ship… like we LOVE to be smug about how jikook don’t need edits to be obvious, don’t need slo-mo zooms with red circles and arrows because their chemistry and fondness and affection is just plain to see in basic footage. We’re the levelheaded ones 😌.

But doesn’t that mean that we should always be encouraging critical thinking, and if someone comes to a different conclusion than us, so be it? Like it or not, none of us have foolproof confirmation that jikook are anything more than very close friends. That’s literally all we know. The rest is our best guess based on vibes, anecdotes, dot-connecting, subtext and body language observation, experience, perception (!!This is a big one because confirmation bias is real!!), and suspicion. That’s literally it.

Look maybe I’m just projecting 😅 but when you criticize people for expressing reasonable doubt over something that is literally not confirmed, it’s just a little too religious fundamentalist for me! (This is why I was a bad Christian, because I always raised my hand and asked questions the Sunday school teacher didn’t like.)

Feel free to ignore me. I never want to come across as pushy or trying to stir up anything, it’s just a phrase that grinds my gears and I’m sort of hoping I’m not alone in that… but if I am, so be it! 🤣 would love to hear people’s thoughts because maybe I’m missing something.

(P.S. If you’re a troll who spams jikook blog inboxes this is not me defending you. You’re still annoying and you need a better hobby. Have you tried yoga? Snowboarding? Fly fishing? Filming food vlogs and/or painting? You should try cooking. You should stop being an anonymous internet troll stomping on everyone’s proverbial sandcastles and instead write a poem. K bye ✌️ )

[ljaylmaoo]

Only Yours

hook x fem!reader

summary: you and hook have a relationship that everyone wishes they could experience and someone tries to break you two apart

genre: very angsty, also extremely fluffy

warnings: hook is really soft in this lol, hickeyss, arguments, there’s a kiss without consent in this, I think that’s it

a/n: hii! this is my FIRST post and one-shot that I wrote out of pure boredom lol. if there’s any typos sorry, I wrote this from 2 am to 7 am in one go lol. please let me know what you think after, AND PLEASE feel free to send requests! as I had a lot of fun writing this and would love to write more! hope you enjoy! thank you :)

word count: 3.6k

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To say you were nervous was an understatement.

At the moment, you were doing the final touches of your makeup in anticipation of Castlecoming. You weren’t very fond of wearing a dress. Sure you loved fashion, but dresses? Most certainly not. But you promised Bridget that if she got Ella to wear a dress, you would too. You also wanted to surprise your boyfriend James who would never expect you to actually wear a gown such as this one. So there you stood, admiring your figure in the gold, arched, full length mirror that sat in the corner of your dorm after brushing on some highlighter on the highest part of your cheekbones and tip of your nose. You cursed at yourself for liking the way the gown looked on you.

“Wow..”

The sudden low whisper like voice from the left of you made you jump a bit then relaxed when you recognized the comforting voice of your boyfriend which instantly washed away the nerves you previously had. You glanced over your shoulder, a radiant smile that couldn’t be hidden even if you tried crept up as you caught the sight of your breathtakingly beautiful lover carrying a bouquet of your favourite flowers in one hand and a box with a bow that held a corsage that luckily matched your dress perfectly.

He slowly made his way up to you, taking in every detail of the rare sight that lied in front of him. He gently set down the box on your vanity, “Art has no depiction that’s fitting of your description. Even the most ignorant would applaud and long for my loves radiance.”

A soft blush washed over your cheeks, “says you, my pretty boy.” You giggle taking the flowers he presented to you with a bow and placed your arms around his neck with him pulling your waist close to him. James has always been a romantic. Every compliment he gives makes Shakespeare’s poems seem dull. Everyone in the academy ached to have your kind of love. And the girls were envious of how James showed his love for you. Always showing you off every chance he gets. He was proud to call you his. He also could never keep his hands off of you, always had to be touching you someway twenty four seven.

Though you two were infatuated with love for one another, there would be the odd argument that would leave you not talking for a day or two which was usually due to his mean and sometimes cruel words that he really didn’t mean. He was still a VK after all.

“Doesn’t my darling look ravishing today?” Was something he would ask the VKs daily as he watched from afar with googoo eyes while smiling like an idiot as you were laughing and talking with your friends, not taking his eyes off you once. Even if you were in a fight and not talking that day.

“Aren’t you guys in a fight?”

“Doesn’t make her any less breathtaking and heavenly to look at.”

These days were torture for him. He tried to be tough and not show how much he was suffering without you, but it never lasted long. By the time he finally breaks he comes knocking on your door with a teddy and “I’m sorry” flowers with him apologizing profusely almost leaving him in tears begging you to take him back explaining how lonely his bed is and how he missed being tangled up with you in your bed every night having the ability to hold you close to him as you drifted off to sleep, and of course you can never stay mad at him. Especially when he’s making himself look like a fool in front of others as they passed by not caring if they judged him by how pathetic he looked, his mind only being set on getting you back.

He was also very protective and possessive of you. If anyone was mean to you or dared try to lay a hand on you flirtatiously, he wasn’t afraid to handle them himself or he would aggressively yet still carefully grab your waist, sometimes with his hook, and kiss you in front of them before smirking at them and watched with satisfaction as they rolled their eyes and walked off. He’d also sometimes give you a few hickeys, making sure that they were as visible as possible. you both wore a necklace with each other’s initials engraved and a diamond heart.

He had also gifted you a beautiful promise ring for your one year anniversary and you’ve worn it ever since.

His favourite pastime was gazing at you while you did your schoolwork or as you slept in his arms. “My heart is so full of you, I can hardly call it my own.” Is just one of the many examples he would say whenever you got insecure and were in denial. He always made sure you knew his devotion to you was for eternity.

You were soulmates without a doubt. Twin flames.

He kissed you passionately, hungrily placing his soft plump lips on yours. You melted into his touch, smiling at his desperation to get as physically close to you as possible in anyway he could. You tried to pull away to catch your breath but he wouldn’t let you, “James” you laughed with his lips still attached to yours, lightly pushing him away at his chest.

He finally pulled away, “yes, love?” He smiled still staring at your lips, lovingly

“I could barely breathe” you laughed again, “I’m sorry darling, I just can’t ever get enough of you.” He shamelessly admitted. You both stayed close admiring each other’s features, leaving no room in between. His hands still firm on your lower back as you stroked his hair. His hair was probably your favourite feature of his. It was soft and always the perfect length, swept back.

“I love you so much.” you whispered looking into his eyes while fixing his collar and necklaces after messing it up a bit from the kiss

“Not as much as I do you, sweetheart.”

“I don’t think so” you replied knowing you always lose the ‘I love you more’ arguments. He laughed, “oh darling, we both know that’s not possible. My love for you will remain as infinite as the stars.” He said while caressing your cheek. You placed your hand on top of his and smiled shyly. He grabbed the box off of the vanity and took the corsage out, he gently took your hand and slid it onto your wrist then kissed your hand softly. “There you are my love.” He said while looking up at you. You had your hand on your chest, “oh my goodness! Thank you, it’s beautiful.” You said while looking at it in awe. He smiled, “of course darling.” He gave you a quick kiss and lead you to the door and opened it, “after you, gorgeous.”

︵‿︵‿୨♡୧‿︵‿︵

You and James entered the ballroom together with your arm wrapped around his and hands intertwined looking around the huge decorated room. It was everything you’d imagined it would be. Everyone dressed up in breathtakingly beautiful suits and gowns scattered around the room mingling with their friends or dancing with their loved ones as music played in the background. James watched you in adoration, the amazement in your eyes made them sparkle along with the light glistening from the chandeliers above. The two of you got some glances from your peers of course as you were named ‘Best Couple’ in the yearbook and everyone adored your relationship for the most part. Among the people who were jealous, there was one girl in particular that absolutely despised your relationship. That girl goes by the name of Aria. (if your name is Aria I’M SORRY LMAO) She hated how happy you guys were especially of how loving James was towards you and hated how much people adored your relationship.

She was also James’ ex girlfriend.

They were together for eight months and broke up just five months before you both officially started dating. During those eight dreadful months, they were extremely toxic. They would get into pointless heated arguments on a daily basis at school, some even resulting in James earning a slap to the face, but then would be seen back together by the end of the day making out by the lockers or something. You knew of James beforehand because he was part of Uliana’s crew and also because you had to pass his locker almost everyday in order to get to class and that was usually where they would have their fights. He never paid any attention to you at first, but when Uliana began tormenting Bridget, you caught his eye. He’d constantly try to flirt with you and you would often find him to be staring at you whenever you weren’t looking. One thing led to another and after four months of his many attempts to try and get to you, you finally gave in and decided to give him a chance and a month later, it was made official. You don’t know what changed in him for him to treat you the complete opposite of how he treated Aria and she hated you for it though she couldn’t do anything about it because she knew what he and the VK’s would do if she did. So she always judged from afar, only doing as much as giving you a glare everytime you made eye contact. She wanted to try and sabotage your relationship the night of Castlecoming and break the two of you up, so she came with a plan.

Aria was with her friends when one of them spoke up, “woah, they look grossly fabulous tonight..” she turned and her jaw dropped instantly when she saw the two of you on the other side of the room talking to Uliana and the rest of the group, James spinning you around to show off your gown. She boiled with rage and turned back to her friends, “yeah, we are definitely going to break them up tonight.”

As James was talking with Morgie, you spotted your friends Bridget and Ella so you lightly tapped his shoulder and leaned in to whisper making sure Uliana didn’t notice as she was currently talking with Maleficent beside you, “I’m going to go say hi to Bridget and Ella, okay?” He looked down at you and kissed gave you a quick kiss, “okay, love.” You gave one more kiss on the cheek before heading off towards your friends.

Bridget squealed with excitement as she saw you approaching them, “oh my gosh! Y/n?! You look amazing!” She came up and pulled you into a hug, squeezing tightly to express how proud she was. “I know, I know” you jokingly said after she let go while blushing a bit. You smiled and hugged Ella, “wow I didn’t actually think I’d see you in a dress, like ever.” Ella gave a small smile and laughed, “I could say the same to you.” You scoffed, “well of course I did. We wouldn’t wanna disappoint our girl here now, would we?” You said while patting Bridget on the shoulder who was bursting with excitement jumping up and down while clapping her hands, “okay we need! To take pictures, come on!” She insisted before pulling you both over to the Photo Booth.

︵‿︵‿୨♡୧‿︵‿︵

It was later into the night and you were dancing with James, Ella had to go home due to her strict curfew her stepmother gave her, and Bridget went back to her dorm to let you and James have some time together. Aria and her friends watched you with rage as you were gazing into each other’s eyes lovingly, waiting for the perfect moment to begin her plan. He spun you around as the song ended and kissed your hand before leading you off the dance floor, “could I get you another drink, my love?” He questioned, “yeah, sure. I’ll be over there I just have to go to the bathroom quick.” He nodded and the two of you went your separate ways.

Aria smirked at her friends as the first part of her plan had come. She slyly walked off to the fruit punch table and stood in front of it waiting for James to walk up. “Hi James.” She said suspiciously sweet, he only rolled his eyes and scoffed, “what do you want? Can you move, please?” Aria gave a fake pout, “what? All I did was say hi.” She said innocently, “oh did you want some punch? I’ll get them for you.” She turned and grabbed two cups, “two right? One for you and one for your little girlfriend?” James had his arms crossed and stood impatiently, looking away from her, “yup.” Aria giggled and poured the first one, “here’s yours” she smiled before turning to pour the other. James took a sip of the drink while he waited.

A few moments later, you finished touching up your make up after washing your hands in the bathroom and walked out towards the punch table but you stopped in your tracks. There, in front of the punch table was Aria who had forcefully pulled James into an unexpected kiss. Your heart shattered at the sight. You made eye contact with James who had a shocked and angry expression that you couldn’t see. Your eyes welled up with tears before you ran out of the ballroom. James pushed Aria off him, “get off of me! What the hell, Aria?” He scolded before shoving the punch into her hands and ran after you. She watched him run after you with a smirk taking a sip in satisfaction.

︵‿︵‿୨♡୧‿︵‿︵

You came bursting into your room as you cried, slipping off your heels and taking the accessories out of your hair and throwing them onto the vanity followed by your earrings and necklace. You ripped the corsage off your wrist and threw it into the trash can beside you. You studied yourself in the mirror, hating yourself for deciding to wear a gown only to surprise the one you thought loved you most only for them to humiliate you and look like a fool. You went and sat down on your bed as you cried into your hands. James came into the dorm in a panic causing you to jump, “Love, I can explain!” You furrowed your eyebrows in anger while looking at him in disgust, “no! I don’t want to hear it, James!”

“No, no, no, really darling! It wasn’t what it looked-“ you got up from the bed, “Oh yeah? Cause it looked like my boyfriend was kissing his ex girlfriend by the punch table!”

“Well yes but-“

“Do you still have feelings for her, James?” You yelled as you walked closer, “were you only using me to get back at her? Did you even love me?!” He was stuttering as he tried to answer every question you threw at him, “what? No! Of course I do!” He tried but you continued to yell at him, causing him to get angry and the screaming match began. It never ever got this bad before. If the dance wasn’t still going on, everyone would for sure be able to hear every insulting and harsh words you were throwing at each other. There were hot tears streaming down your faces as you continued. But as bad as it was, and as much as you wanted to, neither of you had the willpower to officially call the relationship off. You loved each other too much to do so and you both knew that.

You took the flowers he gave you earlier off your desk and harshly shoved them into his chest, “Get out! I don’t want you here! Leave!” You pushed him out the door and slammed it in his face. You took a deep breath and turned around, and started towards your bed. You didn’t know what to think or how to feel. You knew what he was saying made sense and knew he loved you far too much to ever do something to hurt you. But you don’t know why you kept going at him.

You sat down and stared down at the floor, your mind so lost in deep thought that you didn’t even realize you had changed out of your dress and into your pyjamas. You looked down at the shirt you’d just finished putting on and sighed, it was his shirt. You shut your lamp off and lied down on your bed and stared up at the ceiling as the thoughts in your head continued to flow. Why was he with Aria in the first place for that to happen? He shouldn’t have let that happen. But after a while you felt really bad for what you had said to him and the names you called him. But was he mad at you now too? You heard something that was slid under the crack of your door, you sat up and looked at the little piece of paper that was on the floor. You turned your lamp back on and slowly walked over and picked it up. You opened the paper, “My Beautiful Darling Y/n, no matter how much we fight, the love I have for you will never fade. You will never be unloved by me for you are far too well tangled in my soul. The only feeling stronger than my love for you is the ache that comes with missing you. I’m so very sorry I let this happen, My Love.” You wiped a tear from your cheek as you finished reading. You set the note down on your nightstand and lied back down on your bed.

You tried to fall asleep but you just couldn’t. You missed the feeling of being secured and safe in his arms while he whispered sweet nothings as you drifted off to sleep. Your bed felt cold. Lonely.

After a few more minutes of attempting to force yourself to sleep, you got up and crept out of your room and down the stairs and proceeded down another long hallway before stopping in front of an all too familiar door. You stared at it, contemplating whether or not it was a good idea. But before you could make a decision, you were already making your way inside the dark room. You quietly walked towards the bed, softly and carefully getting under the covers making sure not to wake him. The warmth and familiarity of his body heat made you feel at ease. You looked over at his sleeping figure who was facing towards you and traced his features with your eyes, admiring everything about him and couldn’t help but smile. You really did love this boy with all your heart.

You turned away from him and sighed before closing your eyes to sleep, but just as you were drifting off, you felt an arm snake around your figure, pulling you close. You smiled and melted into his body as you felt the warmth of him engulf your backside, placing your hand on top of his that was placed above your stomach under your shirt. Well, his shirt. He pulled you closer and you felt him softly stroking your hair. Though it has only been a few hours since you’ve felt his touch, it felt like forever. You turned in his arms to face him and wrapped your arms around him scrunching the fabric of his shirt tightly in your hands while burying your face deep into his chest, he had managed to somehow pull you closer though it was physically impossible already.

“I’m sorry.” He heard your soft voice cry, muffled from being buried in his chest. He shook his head and stroked your head, “shh, no, no, no. Don’t apologize. You did nothing wrong, my love.” You let out a quiet sob which was terribly agonizing for him to hear. He looked down and placed his hand on your cheek, bringing your gaze up to his. You looked into his eyes with a pitiful gaze, he saw how broken you looked. The moonlight that seeped in through the window above his bed glistening off your tearful eyes. “Don’t cry, love..” he tried but you rambled on, spilling everything your heart was feeling at that moment causing the pieces of his already broken heart shatter into a million more pieces. He stared at you not knowing what to say after you were done, only pulling you into a deep kiss, more passionate than ever letting his body do the talking without saying any words, pulling your waist close to his. He left sloppy kisses down to your neck, lightly gracing the sensitive skin with his teeth making you gasp in pleasure and gently pull at his hair before he continued to leave his mark with a smile while telling you how beautiful you were and how much he loved you.

This continued until both your neck and chest were covered with love bites. He trailed kisses back up and kissed you once more. He broke the kiss, breathing heavily while looking into your lustful, heavy lidded eyes that were threatening to shut and noticed as your breathing slowed. He pulled you back in and you cuddled back into his chest, “I love you.” You whispered, trailing off as you began to fall into a deep, well needed slumber.

“I love you too, Darling.” He whispered, leaving a delicate kiss on your forehead and rested his head on yours as you both drifted off to sleep.

[godmadeaterribleerror]

More Than You Could Ever Know - Part 3

Series Masterlist

Author's Note: Falling into my well-tread pattern of everything I write getting steadily longer chapter by chapter. Enjoy!

Title from All I Want For Christmas is You by Mariah Carey

Word Count: 12.7k

Chapter Summary/Warnings: You and Ben have a Christmas Eve date. Many gifts are opened. Usual Warnings.

Tags: Soldier Boy/Supe!Female Reader, canon divergence, tooth rotting fluff, established relationship, Christmas Special

Part 2

Read on A03!

When he wants to be, Ben is shockingly romantic. It doesn’t surprise you—you can feel the power and fervor of his love every second, its pious and wrathful devotion all focused on you—but he always manages to outdo himself. To be more romantic than any epic poem or tragedy, to know you better than you might know yourself, to be the best fuck you’ve ever had every single time. 

What does surprise you is how he still sometimes aches with mold in your chest. How you’ve shown him time and time again that, if he asked, you’d learn to raise the dead and travel through time and move planets with only your hands for him. You’d burn out the sun and create worlds fueled only by your love for Ben, and he’s always surprised that’s the truth. 

It’s always been the truth. It feels like more than the truth. A little more than a fact or law. It just fucking is. You’re Ben’s. He’s yours. That’s the end of it.

And you couldn’t do better than him. Nobody could do better than Ben, and it’s why you might feel really fucking possessive of him. The gossip magazines and Fake Face—you’re pretty sure her name is Deandra or something, but you don’t really fucking care—don’t look at Ben and see an angel. They don’t fucking get that he’s everything, and safe, and strong and warm and handsome. They don’t understand that he knows how to say every right thing, that he treats you like you’re holy, and cares more than anyone you’ve ever met.

They just want his body, and he’s not a fucking whore.

He’s a little bit of a fucking whore.

He’s your fucking whore. He’s your slab of meat to objectify and drool over, to tease and touch and pout at. Ben is fucking yours. And you’re his, and you trust him with more than your life, and you love him more than the whole universe.

And he’s such a fucking asshole. And you’re going to kill him.

Can I come inside now?

No, he grunts in your head, and you can feel him. Feel that instinct of Ben moving around inside the house, doing something that he refuses to tell you about. 

I never tell you no about coming inside-

Ben snorts. Smartass.

Is that a yes-

No. He says your name in the low hum of the stereo, and you feel rough affection start to cover your skin. Don’t lose your fucking mind, I’m almost done.

Done with what?

Nice try.

You sigh, leaning your head back on the seat. Are you ever going to tell me what you’re doing?

Are you ever going to tell me what that fucking secret shit was.

No, it’s still a surprise-

So is this. Fucking wait. You can almost see the cocky smirk on his face as hunger flashes through his blood. Patience is a virtue, darling-

Shut the fuck up, old man.

He chuckles in your head, and it still, somehow, rolls through your body. Brat.

Cunt. How about now-

Christ, woman. Ben in your head, and you know he’s about to open the door before he does, because your whole body starts to sing Ben. Ben, Ben, Ben, bigger than the universe and yours and Ben.

You smile at him when he appears, marching over to the car and opening the door with a glare you know is fake.

“You’re a goddamn menace,” he mutters, helping you out of the car. “Lucky I fucking love you.“

“I am, aren’t I.” You grab his face between your hands, your smile probably a little idiotic. “You’re so good to me, my love.”

He grunts, all his annoyance a good performance, but pointless when he’s still looking at you with an unyielding reverence and you can feel his love begin to pound out of his chest.

“Come on, Sunshine.” Ben offers you his hand, something alert and tight over his throat relaxing slightly when you tangle your fingers in his. “Let’s go.”

He’d insisted you dress up before you dropped Ryan off at Butcher’s for Christmas Eve. So you’d done full makeup and hair, put on your fanciest dress that was still slutty enough to make Ben’s nostrils flare and that part of him in you feel starved, and returned to the house with a strict order from Ben to stay inside until he was ready.

You’d been under the impression you were going out.

You’d been wrong.

But this is so much better.

Just to start, Ben cooked. And he’s turned out be an amazing cook. You think he doesn’t grumble and scowl about it because—in his mind—it’s another thing for him to do for you. Something he can make you, something he can care for you with. Something he can offer you, just like this. A stupidly romantic and dizzying gesture of dinner. Steak—eating birds is for fucking pussies, Sunshine—and potatoes and bread, laid out on a blanket in the living room, right next to the tree.

He knows you love the tree. Ben’s obviously figured out that you’ve been sitting in the living room so much—when you read or work or watch TV on your laptop—because of the Christmas tree. Because it makes the whole house smell even more like pine—even more like Ben—and is so colorful and warm it eases your whole body into simple happiness.

And this is making you feel high. Mindlessly happy and easy, Ben wrapped around your body—his chin resting on the top of your head as he waits for you to speak—and the whole world around you evidence of his love, and this is so good, and you love him so much, and-

“Thank you.” You turn in his arms, the smile on your face so real and made of purely love. “It’s perfect.” 

Ben grunts, and the glow becomes bloody and ardorous in his chest. “You like it.”

You give him an amused look, rising up to kiss him soft and long and slow. Allowing a little bit of your blood—of your love—to move from your body to his, allowing him to tangle a hand in your hair and pull you a little off the ground as he presses his tongue on your lower lip. As you part them for him, and he groans down your throat.

I love it. You whisper in his head, making a small, content sound of bliss as his tongue sweeps over your teeth. I love you, Benjamin. Thank you.

Neither of you rush to pull apart, and when  you to do there’s a long moment where Ben drops his brow to your, you curl your fingers in his chest, and you exist only in the feeling of each other. Heavy, traded breaths, bodies fit perfectly together, everything so easy.

This is so fucking easy.

It’s easy to let Ben guide you to the floor, and to watch him drop across from you with a wide, cocky grin. Easy to take whatever he offers you—food and affection and love—and smile the whole time. Easy to tug him to your side, because he’s barely a foot away, and that’s too far.

“The whole point is that it’s a date,” He grumbles your name, even as he shuffles to sit with your leg hooked over his, your body tucked into his side. “We should be fucking looking at each other-“

“I’m looking at you,” you shrug, smiling up at him. “It’s not that hard, Benjamin, you just sort of move your eyes-“

Ben leans down, kissing you until you make an undignified whimper and his chuckle sends a wave of thirst through your body.

“Fucking brat,” He mutters against your lips, pulling away with a slight shake of his head. “You’re happy like this.”

He’s talking about how you’re sitting. And you’re more than happy with that—Ben’s big and warm, still around you, still everything—but you make your words a little clearer, and little gentler. Filled with how fucking good this, he is, you feel. 

“I’m happy.” You whisper, pressing a soft kiss over his beard. “Really happy.”

Ben nods slowly and grabs his plate from across the blanket, pulling you fully into his lap and folding his body over yours as you eat.

“Butcher said we could go over early tomorrow,” you lean back to watch Ben as he eats, tapping your fork against your plate. “For Ryan.”

“We were doing that shit no matter what,” A little bit of potato falls into Ben’s beard as he grumbles, and he doesn’t stop speaking as you reach up to wipe it away. “He’s our kid, Butcher’s damn lucky he gets Ryan tonight.”

You hum. “He’s our kid?”

“Of course he’s our fucking kid, I don’t see anyone else-“

“I know.” You pull a piece of steak between your teeth, smiling backwards at him. “I just like hearing you say it.”

He rolls his eyes. “Brat.”

“Cunt. Do you,” you swallow, chewing on your lower lip. “Do you think we’re doing a good job? With Ryan?”

Ben shrugs. “Doing the best damn job we can, but the kid’s already seen some shit.”

“I know, but-“

“It’s a fucking miracle he can go to school and laugh, Sunshine,” he grunts, moving one hand to cup your chin, keeping your gaze on his. “That’s a good job.” Ben presses a soft kiss to your lips, speaking against them. “You’re doing a good fucking job.”

You let out a soft, happy sigh, and the constant tension over your lungs—that, just maybe, you were fucking up Ryan more—eases a little bit as you curl further into Ben’s arms. “Thank you.”

Ben scowls, but the glow blooms over his whole body. “Don’t. Tell me about work.”

“There’s not much to tell,” you mumble, setting your plate back on the ground. “It’s going well? Everything’s going smoothly, nobody is trying to kill anyone else, we- oh,” You grin at him. “Can you keep a secret?”

He nods, watching you carefully, and your smile grows.

“Hughie’s going to propose,” you whisper. “He showed MM and I the ring.”

Ben grunts, his fingers moving to touch your engagement ring, resting easier and natural next to your wedding band. “Good for them.”

“That it?” You tilt your head at him. “Just good for them?”

He rolls his eyes at your deep voiced impression of him, raising your hand to kiss your palm. “What the fuck am I supposed to say-“

“Congratulations?” You suggest. “Maybe call Hughie and offer him some advice?”

“Advice-“

“On marriage.” You smile at him, and the love in his body grow fervorish. “You’re doing a good job. Share your wisdom, old man.”

He scowls, but falls silents for a long moment. Rubbing circles on your skin as he scans over your face, pulling you carefully and reverently apart as he actually thinks about it.

“Keep your wife happy.” He mutters, and you think you might have melted from how firm and certain he sounds, how he’s looking at you like you’re the sun, how his love is alive and furious in your body. “And fuck her like she deserves.”

You giggle, the noise a little high and needy. “Romantic.”

“Shut the fuck up, brat, you love it.”

“I do,” you sigh, pulling his arms a little tighter around him. “How’s work for you-“

“Fine.”

“Just fine-“

“It’s easy shit, but I don’t fucking love it, darling. Christ, Butcher is my goddamn boss.”

“Well, at least he’s giving you the holidays off-“

“He fucking better be.” Ben glares into the air. “Pussy picks up another case, he’ll have to give me the best damn blowjob in history to get me to work it.”

You snort, giving him a fake pout. “I thought your dick was mine, Pretty Boy-“

“It is.” He grunts, kissing the top of your head. “So he’s never fucking getting me to go.”

“What if he asked really nicely?”

Ben raises his brows at you. “To blow me.”

“Yeah.” You hum, nodding, unable to contain the wide, bright smile on your face. “What if he begged?”

“Nobody,” Ben drawls, his deep voice moving through your whole body and settling, hot and coiled, in your gut. “Fucking begs me like you do, Sunshine. And Butcher would have to do it half as pretty as that.”

You flush, even as you whack his arm around you. “Fuck you-“

“I will,” he mutters in your ear, trailing one hand up your thigh and under your dress, his hunger starting to bloom and spread over your whole body. “We’ve got the whole house to ourselves, and you,” he kisses that spot on your neck, smirking at your breathy sigh. “Look fucking beautiful. I’d have to have lost my goddamn mind not to fuck you.”

You might have whimpered, but Ben swallows your every breath and noise with a deep, long kiss and everything turns into a warm haze of Ben.

I’m here. Ben traces his tongue over your lower lip, his hand resting at the very apex of your thigh, but not just touching you. What do you want, beautiful?

Right as he praises you, Ben presses his thumb over your clit, still covered by your panties, and your moan is loud and shameless as he starts to rub small circles.

Fuck, you throw your head back, reaching up to grab at Ben’s face, your fingers curling in his beard. Shit, Ben, please-

Please, what? He flicks you once, dragging two fingers over your clothed slit. Words, darling, need to hear that pretty fucking begging-

Ben, please, please more, need more-

He hums, latching his mouth to your neck and sucking, right as he presses his thumb firmly down on your clit, pulling a high whine from your throat. More what.

You, need you, need more of you-

I know, darling. He chuckles, resuming those slow, torturous circles. Bet you’re already fucking soaked for me, so fucking desperate, Sunshine, so fucking beautiful-

Benjamin, please- You cut your silent words off with a squeal as Ben pushes those two, broad fingers into your aching pussy through your underwear, his free hand palming at your breasts. Fuck-

You want to fucking cum, darling? That what you really need?

Yes, yes, please, Ben- You gasp as he slaps your dripping, still clothed pussy once, hunger and smug pride flaring in his chest at your whine. 

“Hold it.” He mutters, and before you know what’s happening he’s hooking an arm under your legs, standing up with you held carefully in his arms. “I’ve got something for you.”

You blink at him, still a little lost in his big, strong arms around you as he carries you upstairs, the power and zeal of his love inside you, the ache between your legs that’s only growing as you drown in warm and handsome and pine and Ben-

He grunts your name, and you swallow. “Are you-

“I’m good,” you whisper, offering him a small smile as he kicks the door to your bedroom open. “You have something?”

“For you.” Ben doesn’t set you down on the bed, but in front of the bookshelf, right next to your dresser. “Early gift.”

You tilt your head up to scan over his set, firm features, all watching you with an unraveling attention. He’s tensed in your body, sore in a way that doesn’t hurt, something electric in his hands and on his tongue. Ben grabs your chin and carefully guides your gaze back to the books, his chest pressed to your back and his words low.

“Try to burn them.”

You swat his hand away, your gaze shooting up to him with a glare. “Benjamin, there is no fucking way-“

“Trust me, Sunshine.” He wraps his arms around your waist, rubbing soft circles as he holds your glower. “Just do it.”

“But they’re books-“

“I fucking know that. Trust me.” He smirks, kissing your brow as your glare deepens. “Do I ever damn lie to you, darling?”

You scowl. “No.”

“Would I ever try to pull some sort of fucking trick?”

“Shut up.” You mutter, looking back to the books with a frown. “Burn them.”

“That’s what I said.” Ben rests his chin on your brow, his body still filled with that odd electrically. “Do it.”

You sigh. “If I burn down the house, we’re getting a divorce-“

“You’re not going to burn down the damn house.” 

“But if I do-“

“You’d remarry me a week later.” Ben says, his voice dry and bored. “Stop fucking stalling.”

You chew on your tongue as you raise hand, digging your nails into Ben’s arm and squeezing your eyes shut as you let a small amount of fire out from under your skin. Barely a spark, but enough to reduce paper to ash. 

Ben’s whole body starts to glow with pride, nothing smells like lingering smoke, and—when you wearily drag your eyes open—the room looks the exact same.

The books look the exact same.

“What the-“

“Got Frenchie to fireproof them,” Ben spins you in his arms, and the grin on his face is almost boyish. “He used some sort of fucking coating or some shit. And it took all goddamn month, he had to do one at a time so you wouldn’t notice.”

You gape at him. At his bright smile, and chiseled, rough features, and the pure love and adoration in his eyes. Your whole brain is just a hum of Ben. All yours. He’s all yours, and he’s everything, and you might start crying because, fuck, you really couldn’t ask for anything more than him-

“Ben,” your voice is a little hoarse, your body slumped fully into his. “I, I don’t-“

There’s a flash of soreness over his skin, his arms tightening around you, and you’re moving before it can settle into his bones. Throwing yourself into him with everything you have, before he can even properly doubt the gift, can start to think that you’re not happy. That this—that he—isn’t so fucking amazing it’s making you stupid.

It’s perfect. Your hands tangle in his hair, smiling against his lips as you melt fully into his body. You’re perfect, Ben. Thank you.

Don’t. He grunts, but it turns into a long groan that sparks in your gut and presses your thighs together. You’re-

I know I am. You press your brow to his as you separate. But you are as well. And I love you.

“I love you too,” Ben’s voice is low, his hands drawing rough patterns on your hips. “And you’re still the perfect one, darling. You’re a fucking miracle.”

You swallow, leaning back to watch him carefully. “I got something for you as well,” you whisper. “But it feels kind of, um, bad now.”

He scowls. “It’s not fucking bad.”

“You don’t even know what it is, Benjamin-“

“You got it for me.” He mutters. “Can’t be fucking bad.”

“Oh. Okay.” Your smile is a little idiotic, and you press a soft kiss to his cheek before taking a long step back. “Let’s find out, then.”

Ben looks like he’s going to say something—his brows knit and a small frown on his handsome face—but it’s gone the moment you pull off your dress.

It’s a little cocky to make yourself his gift. But Ben’s nostrils are flaring, his jaw clenched so hard you’re worrying he might break it, and everything in his body is hunger. Raw, feral hunger that’s making his eyes dark with lust and his muscles flex under his shirt as he takes you in. Scans over the lingerie set you’d bought specifically for him, dark green and lace and very easily rippable. Leaving more of you exposed than covered, possibly the sluttiest thing you’ve ever owned, and all for Ben. All for how he’s watching you like he wants to ruin you, and you’re more than happy to let him. 

“Christ on a fucking cross,” he mutters your name, shaking his head slightly. “You’re, fuck, Sunshine, you’re perfect. So fucking perfect.”

“Thank you,” you whisper, lowering yourself to your knees with your best innocent expression. “You’re not so bad yourself, Benjamin, my love.”

“Fucking-“ He groans as you crawl forward, stopping right in front of him before smiling up at his lust-blown expression. “Are you trying to damn kill me-”

You shake your head, your smile growing. “No. But,” you run a hand up his thigh, squeezing your legs together as you see his bulge, proud and straining at his pants. “I might be trying to do something else.” You rest light fingers over him, swallowing at his low growl. “If you want.”

Ben’s chuckle is animalistic, a big, warm hand tangling in your hair and pulling your face fully back. “Fucking hell,” he says your name with an awe that’s so out of place in the hot, undying desire etched over his every feature and organ, but still so painfully natural. “You want to suck my cock, beautiful?”

“Yes, please,” you grip his wrist as he traces his thumb over your cheekbones, not trying to hide the need and borderline desperation in your voice. “Ben, please-“

“So fucking good,” he mutters, and you moan when his thumb presses on your lower lip, his throat bobbing as you open for him without thought. “Christ, Sunshine, you’re a goddamn marvel. So fucking pretty on your knees, when you fucking beg and say my name. So fucking beautiful and perfect, fucking, shit-“

You’d been fiddling with his belt as he drawled, and the moment you get it off you’re moving. Freeing his huge, already throbbing cock from his pants, swiping your thumb over the head of him before licking a long, slow stripe on the underside. 

“Fuck,” Ben’s words are pushed through his teeth, his hand now braced on the dresser as you smile up at him, slowly pumping your hand over his shaft. “You’re, fuck-“

You take him fully in your mouth, bobbing your head slowly up and down as you swirl your tongue around him, moaning when he bumps the back of your throat and squirming as he groans above you. 

“Jesus, fuck, you’re a goddamn miracle, darling, such a good girl, look so fucking pretty with my cock in your mouth-“ He’s groan rolls through your whole body, and you start to grind onto the air. “Fuck, Sunshine, you’re so fucking beautiful, feel like a fucking sin, so- Fuck, you were goddamn made for me, fucking mine-“

Ben’s praise starts to slur as you move one hand up to play with his balls, your eyes never leaving his as you pick up your pace. 

Ben, you whine around him when his hips jerk. Please, just-

You reach back to grab his hand in your hair, squeezing his balls once and sucking on the very head of him as you pull almost fully off, and he understands without question. His grip tightens, his hunger and pleasure so close to bursting in his gut, and begins to fuck your face. It’s unrelenting and brutal, your teeth grazing his cock as the wood creaks under his free hand, and it’s all you can do not to climb up his body and beg him to fuck you. To just rolls your hips and rub your thighs together as Ben watches you under lidded eyes, his words barely a growl and his cock twitching as drool falls out of your mouth.

“Fucking Christ,” he groans, slamming you down on him until your nose hit his abdomen, your nails curling in his skin. “So fucking good, darling, fucking beautiful, goddamn perfect, smart fucking mouth stuffed full of me, going to make you taste me for a hundred fucking years, fuck-“

Ben’s orgasm crashes through you like a storm, washing all of you away and turning everything into Ben. His cum hot and sticky on your tongue and down your throat, his eyes flashing as he loosens his grip and pulls you off of him with a pop. Big, careful hands wiping a stray drop of his release from lip before smearing it over your cheek, and a deep voice like a song chuckling when you moan stupidly at the gesture.

“Like that, Sunshine?” He mutters, his face drawn in amusement but his touch and tone reverent. “Like me fucking marking you?”

You whimper of his name, and Ben shakes his head in slight disbelief, his hunger already ravenous in his body. 

“Already so fucked out you can’t damn speak?” Ben’s hand in your hair drifts down as he lowers down to his knees, pulling you into his arms and scanning over your face with a narrowed gaze. “Need to hear you, darling. Fucking words-“

“Fuck me.“ You whimper, because your body has decided to listen to Ben over anything else. “Please.”

Ben’s face is predatory. It’s made of the hunger in his body and this raw adoration that’s roaring in your chest. There are promises in his eyes, darkened and starving and primal, and his attention and touch seem to be searing into your skin. All of him is focused on you—Ben’s always just focused on you—and he’s massive and safe and warm, so you might have a small, mind-numbing orgasm just from his hands rubbing firm patterns on your skin and the growling promise of his voice.

“I need a minute,” he grunts, keeping you steady in his arms as he moves you onto the bed, laying you flat on the mattress. “But darling,” his mouth curving into a smirk as he takes you in, already writhing under him, your underwear soaked and expression slack with need. “I’m not fucking stupid enough to tell you no.”

“Ben,” you reach up, trying fruitlessly to grab his shirt and pull him down to you. “Please-“

“Fucking patience, beautiful.” Ben rises fully up, his eyes never leaving yours as he pulls off his shirt, his grin only growing as your hips jump off the bed from the sight of him. “Fuck, you want me that damn bad-“

“Yes, Ben, need you, I-” You cut yourself off with a gasp as Ben drops to his knees on the mattress, shoving your knees apart with a low grunt and ripping of your panties without effort. “Fuck-“

“Christ,” he mutters your name, running a finger over the lips of your pussy, his hand on your inner thigh tightening as you moan. “You’re fucking soaked. So fucking wet, Sunshine, fucking wrecked and I’ve barely touched you-“

“Ben,” you grab his hand, trying to hold it against you as you grind onto his fingers. “God, please-“

He yanks his hand away, and you make a long sound of desperation at the loss, but you’ve barely started squirming when you feel his mouth latch onto your clit, one hand planted on your stomach to keep you pinned down as he begins to suck. 

Your whole body lights up. Ben’s tongue keeps drawing circles around and over you, his teeth bumping whenever his lips pull you far enough in, and you’re not even sure you remember how to moan. All you know how to do is pull at Ben’s hair and try to fly off the mattress, to hump his face as his beard brushed your thighs and the pressure on your clit becomes painfully blissful, perfect torture, and to moan words that are supposed to be pleas and screams of Ben, Ben, Ben, fuck, please, Ben, fuck, Ben, I love you-

Love you too, Sunshine. Ben growls against you, and it vibrates over your pussy and makes your eyes roll back in your head. Taste so fucking good, need you to squirt on my goddamn face- Your body obeys, something snapping and rushing through your body as Ben groans around your clit and pushes a finger into your cunt, crooking it and playing that one spot inside you until you’re a moaning, dripping mess under his touch.

And he doesn’t stop. Your eyes blur with dizzying relief and you’re wet over his beard and skin, but Ben just keeps going. He starts to flick and nip, to pump that finger inside of you, and your mouth falls open with a strangled noise as you cum again. Your thighs start to crush his face, your hips bucking and rolling in the bed, and fuck it feels so good, you can’t really think but you know this is good, and Ben doesn’t stop. He goes and goes and goes, growing sloppier and rough on your pussy as you come apart over and over and over. You’re flying and falling and singing and drowning in Ben, touching you so right your brain is fuzzy and your whole body is just for Ben. For his hands and tongue and teeth and lips to devour, to try and pull inside you as you scream and unravel for him, as he ruins you- 

When he pulls away, your jaw is slack and your face might just be an open, drunken expression of Ben.

“You’re good.” Ben reappears in your vision, his handsome face coated in your release and his attention so devout—eyes searching over your face, voice low and firm, hands drifting over you like you were made for him to touch—that all you can do is whimper.

Ben, please. Just, you thrust your hips up, the movement uncoordinated and jerked. Fuck me, please-

His nostrils flare, his hands stilling on your body. “You want fucking more?”

You nod, flushing slightly, and Ben groans.

“Christ, you’re fucking perfect.” He presses a slow, long, kiss to your lips, chuckling when your lips fall open without thought. “You’ll never fucking understand, Sunshine, you’re-“ He cuts himself off, rising up to grin at you. “Fuck, you’re so good. Fucking love you.” He dives down to your neck, sucking and biting at that spot until you’re wiggling under him. “Love you so much it’s going to fucking kill me-“

Love you too, Ben, I- You almost scream as he moves to your breasts, ripping off the bra to pinch at once nipple as his mouth latches onto the other. God, Ben, please just fuck me, you fucking asshole-

He rises back up with mocking, raised brows. “Words. Tell me what you want.”

“You.” Your voice is hoarse, barely even a breath. “Please, Ben, I want you-“

He hums, and you gasp as the head of his cock nudges at your entrance. “You want my cock? Want me to fuck that perfect pussy until you’re screaming?”

“Yes,” you whisper. “Yes please.”

“Say it.”

You swallow, your nails digging into the bare skin of his back. “I want your cock. I want you to fuck me until I scream. Please-“

Ben’s mouth slams down into yours right as he thrusts fully into your already raw, aching pussy without warning, and you’re already on the brink of another orgasm. You’re so full, and Ben’s right up against that deepest spot, and his kisses are bruising but his hands on your skin are so careful, and he tastes like salt and vanilla and Ben-

Then he starts to move, and it’s a miracle you can still breathe. His hips snap, skin slapping against yours and cock hammering into your abused and weeping cunt, and you’re scratching at his skin and grinding into his movements but it’s still not enough. It might never be enough. You might be able to die here, with Ben deep inside you, with his own hunger and need so powerful he’s only groaning into your ear, any praise low and slurred.

“Feel so fucking good,” Ben rolls his hips as he hits that spongey spot inside you, and you whine. “So tight, Sunshine, so tight and warm and good, fucking perfect, so fucking pretty and good and perfect-“

You squeeze around him, and his head falls to your brow, his movements becoming rough and uneven.

“Best fucking pussy in the goddamn world, you’re, fuck, fucking love you, want to fucking live here, want to fucking worship this perfect fucking pussy until you’re fucking ruined-“

You’re already ruined. Ben’s stretching you out and fucking you so good you can only stare at him and take it with the hope that he can feel all of your thirst and need for him. You think he can, because you whimper a sound that’s meant to be his name, and Ben’s mouth returns to yours. This kiss is almost gentle. Passionate and deep with Ben’s tongue down your throat and your mouth hanging open for him to take whatever he wants, but laced with pure love and edged with how he’s rutting into you like a dog.

Then one of his hands glides between your bodies, over your stomach, and between your legs. Two strong fingers pinch at your clit, and you might have died and been reborn in the same moment as you cum, dragging Ben with you. You’re high on him, on his growls and groans down your throat as his stuttered movements as he fucks you through your orgasms. Everything is warm and hazy and Ben, and all you can remember how to do is lay there, breathe, and smile.

Ben brushes hair from your face, his ring cool on your skin, and his eyes are carving right into the deep, most delicate part of you. A part of him you always offer him, and a part he always keeps safe and tended to.

You’re-

I’m good. Your smile widens, and you manage to raise your hands up to cup Ben’s face. Really, really good.  

He nods, wrapping an arm around your waist and rolling you both over. “Fuck,” Ben presses a kiss to the side of your head, rubbing patterns on your skin as you shift above him. “I love you, Sunshine. More than goddamn anything.”

“I know.” And you do. If you’re sure of anything, you’re sure Ben loves you. That he’s yours just as much as you’re his. That you could give him everything, and he’d still find a way to give you more. “I love you too.”

You lay there for a moment, just inhaling Ben and letting him settle into a strong, pious hum in your chest. You drift off into an easy sleep that hardly feels like a blink, and when you wake up there’s light leaking through the windows and a massive weight over your body.

It’s always a little amusing when he does this. When, somehow, without fail, Ben manages to roll on top of you almost every night. Wrapping his arms around your waist, burying his face between your breasts, and snoring so loud it rolls through your bones. It would be a miracle you ever got any sleep, but he’s also warm and safe and touching you so carefully you’d never choose to be anywhere else.

You’re careful not to wake him as you twist to check the time, and any sleep vanishes from your body as you read the little number on the clock.

“Ben.” You hiss, shaking him slightly above you. “Benjamin.”

He makes a low grumbling sound, tightening his grip around you and tugging himself impossibly closer to your body. 

“Benjamin, wake up, we’re, shit-” You give up on trying to wake him gently, grabbing his face between your hands and raising it level with yours. “Ben!”

Ben grunts, and it’s the grunt that means you’ve got him. His hands start to knead slow patterns on your hips, his eyes still drooping as he yawns, and it would be the most adorable thing you’d ever seen if he wasn’t being so slow.

“What the fuck is going on.” He grumbles, slowly scanning over you with a small frown that turns urgent when he sees the wide-eyed expression on your face. “Are you-“

“I’m fine.” You pull him up to kiss his nose, and that seems to ease the hot, vigilant fury in his body back to concrete protection wrapped easily around your skin. “I’m good, my love. But we’re late.”

Ben scowls. “Late to-“

“Butcher’s.” You give him a pointed look. “Ryan.”

“Fuck, what time-“ Ben pushes himself up on his arms to read the clock, and drops himself back down with a scowl. “We’re not fucking late, Sunshine, we’ve got an hour-“

“Which for us is basically ten minutes-“

“It’s a fucking hour-“

“Benjamin.” You grab his face back between your hands, raising your brows slightly. “Can you honestly look me in the eyes and tell me you think we’ll be able to wake up, get dressed, grab gifts, and drive to Butcher’s all in an hour? And-“ You roll your hips slightly, Ben’s proud morning wood poking into your thigh. “Keep in mind I might be willing to help you with your problem if you’re honest.”

Ben rolls his eyes, but there’s a glow over his ribs and rough affection rooted deep in his muscles when he sits up, hauling you to flop onto his chest. “Brat,” he mutters pulling you into a long, slow kiss that makes your brain happy and fuzzy, and doesn’t help the situation at all. “Butcher knows we’ll be late. Told him to tell Ryan whatever time you told him, plus an extra hour.”

You blink at him for a second, then shove his chest. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me that-“

“Because,” he catches your hand, pressing a kiss to your knuckles. “You thought we had an hour, got us up early as shit, and now we have all the goddamn time in the world for you to help me with my problem.”

You wish he wasn’t right. That he wasn’t such a stupidly good husband, that you could at least pretend to maintain the illusion of being shrouded in mystery, having some sort of intriguing allure to him. But he also doesn’t seem to really fucking care about that. Ben seems to be more than happy knowing all of you, because there’s a wide, smug grin on his face and a radiance pounding in his chest that’s golden and molten and folds you into him without resistance. Ben doesn’t want allure, and you can’t really find it in yourself to really want it either. Not when he starts to squeeze your ass and suck on your neck until you’re moaning and squirming in his arms. Not when he does know you, so painfully fucking well, that he gets you to cum three times before you’re out of bed. Once his fingers and twice on his cock, throwing in a fourth when you’re half-dressed and he backs you up against the wall, pressing his knee between your thighs and watching you chase relief with an ardor and devotion in his blood and a look of awe in his eyes.

After that you have to make a no sex for the rest of the day rule, giving him a stern glare he shrugs off as you shuffle off to take your second shower and Ben sets out all the gifts for inventory. 

He’s standing at the edge of the bed when you get back, frowning at the bags before him. 

“We’re missing three,” he grunts as you join him, hanging slightly off his arm as you scan over the bed. “Should be seven.”

You shake your head. “No, this is right. You said one of Ryan’s was too big to transport, and I dropped the Secret Santa gifts off with Ryan last night.”

Ben pauses, still glowering at the bed, then nods and starts to grab as much as he can hold—which is all of it—to move to the car, pressing a kiss to your brow before vanishing through the door.

You don’t get to drive. Ben grabs the keys while you’re in Ryan’s room, feeding Bowser, and the asshole is standing at the car with a smirk when you stomp outside. You’d push him on it more, but you’ve never been more okay with not driving in your life. Everything is a blur of cold white, the pavement coated in black ice, and you hate the winter. No amount of stupid holidays are ever going to be able to fix how much you hate the winter. It’s too sterile, too blinding, too cold. So fucking cold.

And Ben knows that. It’s why his grip on your thigh is firmer than usual, his speed a little reckless to get you out of the car that’s heated, but still too cold. Metal that bites your skin and glass that still radiates a chill when your skin gets too close to it. Which that means you can just talk to Ben, and pretend there’s not cracks on your skull that open up a little more when you’re frozen. 

“MM said he’ll be there early as well,” you hum, playing with Ben’s hand between your own. “He’s heading up to New York to see his daughter tonight, but he wants to make sure his gift gets given.”

Ben grunts. “You know who his is?”

“No, Ben, because it’s a secret-“

“Stupid fucking secret.” He grumbles, glowering at the road. “You’re never going to tell me what your damn surprise was-“

“Not if you keep bringing it up.” You smile at him, dropping your head on his shoulder. “Then it won’t really be a surprise. You’ll be ready for it.”

Ben frowns. “So it’s for me.”

“Obviously.”

“But not your Santa shit.”

You shake your head, biting your lip to stop a wide, stupid grin from overtaking your face. “Not my Santa shit. And don’t ask me who my person is-“

“Don’t have to.” Ben shrugs, parking on the curb outside Butcher’s apartment. “It’s fucking Hughie.”

You only hum. “Well, I guess you’ll have to find out with everyone else in two hours.”

Ben rolls his eyes, climbing out the car and carefully guiding you upstairs with an arm around your shoulders. Ryan’s waiting for you when you knock on the door, dragging you into a hug before you can even really see him. 

“Merry Christmas!” Ryan moves to Ben, and you giggle at the low grunt that escapes Ben’s mouth from the force of the hug. “Do you-“

“Brought all the gifts.” Ben says, giving Butcher a curt nod over Ryan’s head. “In the car. I’ll go back down-“

“Nah, Gov. I’ve got it.” Butcher moves to the door, giving you an awkward pat on the shoulder as he passes by. It shoots something sore, but not rotten or painful, through your body, and there’s an edge of something still and quiet over it. It’s like rest, where Butcher had previously be hateful and bloodied, and it’s better than most anything you’ve felt from him before.

Ben and Butcher exchange low words about getting the gifts as Ryan shuffles over to your side, and when Ben starts to feel hot and loud in your chest you clear your throat, raising your brows at them.

“What if you both get them?” You try to hide the slightly amusement in your voice, and you don’t really succeed. “That couldn’t hurt.”

There’s a moment where they both look like they’re going to protest, but MM’s voice calls from somewhere deeper in the apartment, cutting them off. “Both you alpha male motherfuckers better go get the gifts, or you’re not eating my goddamn delicious gingerbread!”

It works. Ben and Butcher shuffle out the door with low grumbles like they’re teenage boys being sent to their room for bad behavior, and you smile down at Ryan, letting him guide you into the kitchen.

MM gives you a mumbled greeting—mostly focused on the food and not letting anyone interrupt his process—as Ryan tugs you over to Butcher’s table, where a large gingerbread house is on display in the center.

“Look!” He gestures proudly, and your smile might consume your face. “Isn’t it cool! Butcher did all the crackers, but I did everything else. And you can eat it. All of it.”

You nod, and pretend to inspect the house like it’s the most important thing you’ve ever seen. It might be. “Did you use-“

“Licorice!” Ryan points to the roof, lined with black licorice. “They’re gutters. It was MM’s idea, he said houses need drainage.”

You shoot MM an amused look over your shoulder. “Drainage?”

“You ever dealt with water damage?”

“No,” you shrug. “But this is the first time I’ve ever owned a house.”

“Fuck, that’s right.” MM frowns. “Ben teaching you all the shit about upkeep-“

You nod, even if it’s not the full truth. Ben will guide you outside to point at the roof and ask you why should we be worried about that, Sunshine, and you’ll offer an answer that’s usually correct, and he’ll tell you how to fix it. But then he fixes it, because you’re not really good at it and he always grumbles that your hands shouldn’t be dirty. If you really want to know he’ll just break whatever was wrong again and let you fix it yourself, but he tends to hover—big and warm around you, muscles flexing and face so ruggedly handsome covered in grease and dirt—and you just end up almost fucking in broad daylight. And it doesn’t really matter, because you love watching Ben do stupid, domestic shit like that. Fixing your house, that you live in and own with him, that he wants to take care of because that’s taking care of you and Ryan.

When Ben and Butcher return, you think that might be why you love the sight of him with three boxes in his arms—Butcher scowling behind him with only one—and a little snow still melting in his hair. It’s so easy and normal and boring, but still Ben. Still full of the wrathful, focused love he’s always had when he dumps the gifts on Butcher’s couch and pulls you into his arms for a deep, heavy kiss that makes your head spin and your knees shake, but now lined with something easier. Something that’s set so deeply in it’s barely noticeable, but that you can feel in yourself as well. Comfort. Real comfort seeped into your heart because there’s no fear it’s going to be taken away. Nothing could ever take this—take Ben—away from you. Nothing could ever even dare to try.

Ryan bounces over to the gifts, sorting through them with a bright-eyed focus and pulling out one that you know is for Ben, and another that you assume is for Butcher. He shuffles up to you wide a wide, nervous expression, his voice soft when he says your name. 

“I, um, I did get you something. But it’s at home. I can wait, or tell you now-“

“Do you want to wait or tell me now?” You ask, giving Ryan a soft smile that seems to ease some of his anxiety, because his voice becomes a little more confident.

“Tell you now.”

You nod in encouragement, and Ryan swallows.

“It’s a bush. A butterfly bush. They, um, attract butterflies? And Ben helped me pick it out, and he said we should get the pink one. They’re kind of easy to take care of, I think, but-“

You pull Ryan into a long, firm hug, cutting off his spiraling. “Thank you,” you whisper, and you’ve never really meant it more. “I love it, Ry. Really.”

Ryan seems to believe you, because he squeezes you tighter and grins before moving to Ben, standing tall and silent at your side. 

“This is for you,” he passes Ben the larger of the two boxes, and turns to Butcher. “And you.”

They both grunt thanks, and you don’t both to hide your smile as you watch Ben open his. Ryan had come to you with the idea a few weeks ago, and you’d bought it the next day because it was an amazing idea. You’d known that because you know Ben, but if there was any phantom doubt inside you it’s erased when he flares in your body, and you know he’s seen the gift.

“Fucking Christ,” he mutters, and that’s a positive fucking Christ. That’s the one where he thinks what he’s seeing is a little too good, and can’t really believe his eyes. “Ryan, you got this for me?”

Ryan says your name, rolling on his feet as he watches Ben with wide eyes. “Um, she bought it. But it was my idea. Do you like it-“

“I fucking love it.” Ben mutters, and Ryan looks like he might burst with pride. You might burst with pride, because Ben whole existence in your body is just unrestrained, furious joy. His hands are so careful as he pulls out the refurbished Gramophone, glossy and bronze, complete with the stupid horn. You don’t own any vinyl’s right now, but you’ll find some. For the look of child-like joy on Ben’s face, you’ll buy a whole record store. He’s not crying, but there’s a look of softness that’s glazing over his eyes, his voice is a little hoarse, and you know it’s the closest you’ll get right now. “Good work, kid,” he mutters, running a hand over the polished wood. “Really fucking good.”

Ryan nods, shifting slightly on his feet, and you’re about to kick Ben’s shin in a silent reminder when he sets the gift down and opens his arms, pulling Ryan into a hug you’re sure would kill anyone else, but just makes Ryan’s smile wider and whole body relax. 

Butcher clears his throat, holding about five Hawaiian shirts in his hands. “I like mine too,” he mutters. “Nice fuckin shirts. Good material-“

Ryan grabs Butcher in an equally rib-breaking hug, and there’s only a brief moment of shock on the man’s face before he returns it. Ben takes the moment to grab his and your gift for Ryan, waiting until Butcher’s released to all but shove them into Ryan’s hands. 

“From me,” Ben point to one box, then the other. “From her.”

Ryan nods, dropping onto the couch as he opens Ben’s first. He’s barely halfway through carefully peeling the paper when a third one gets added to the pile, dropped by Butcher.

“Got a few more,” Butcher mutters. “Mostly just some of your mums old shit. Neuman got it with the Vought raids, should be fuckin yours anyway.”

“Oh. Thank you.” Ryan swallows, and when you pull away from Ben to sit at his side, he’s filled with an aching, heavy grief in his lungs, but a little lighter in his heart. And it’ll be like that for a while. But it’s better than even a month ago, and that’s more than enough for you.

Butcher grunts, making a loose nod for Ryan to continue on Ben’s gift, and you don’t have to look up to know Ben’s moved behind the couch. Only a second later his hand on your shoulder as he leans down to kiss the top of your head, and you hold him there as Ryan finally discards all the wrapping paper. 

“It’s built for people like us,” Ben explains as Ryan pulls out a brand-new, firm baseball glove. “Had Frenchie make it, so it shouldn’t fucking break or tear like that pussy shit at the school. Got it a few sizes too large, so you can grow into it.”

“Thank, Ben.” Ryan whispers, giving Ben a wide, toothy grin that you feel spark and glow in Ben’s chest. “I love it.”

Ben grunts as Ryan turns to Butcher’s gift, and you lean backwards to give him an amused smile.

Are you abusing Frenchie’s services? First my books, now Ryan’s glove-

I just fucking asked, Ben glares at you, his mouth tugging slightly upwards. Not my fault the pussy said yes.

Okay. You give him a look of fake, overly sweet innocence. Whatever you say, Benjamin, my love.

He rolls his eyes, running his thumb over your knuckles. Brat.

Cunt. You return your attention to Ryan, watching Butcher with wide eyes as he explains how the book in Ryan’s hands was one of Becca’s favorites, and that there hadn’t been a copy in the boxes Neuman turned over. Ryan’s nodding, looking happier and happier by the second, and when he finally turns to the last gift—your gift���you think your nail might be trying to break into your skin. He’ll love the gift. You’re pretty sure he’ll love the gift. You’re usually pretty good at gifts, but you kind of have a cheat-code with Ben, and there’s a slim chance you might have gotten Ryan’s wrong-

Ryan lets out a small gasp when he opens the box, and it sounds good. His excitement looks real. But it might not be. What if it’s not-

Breathe, Sunshine. Ben mutters in your head, squeezing his hand against you. Look at him, he fucking loves it.

He does look like he loves it. Ryan’s holding the Kindle in light hands, his mouth slightly open and his eyes shining as he turns to you. 

“I put some books on it already,” you say, leaning around him to turn the device on, trying not to be knocked out by the sheer fucking happiness in Ryan’s body. “And we can buy more. You’re allowed to take it to school, and keep it in your room, but you do still need sleep-”

Ryan sets the kindle carefully on his lap, and pulls you into a long, tight hug. His head buried in your chest, his arms around your waist, his strength obviously controlled enough not to snap you in half.

“Thank you,” he mumbles against your shirt. “And I promise I’ll still sleep.”

You huff a small laugh, squeezing him back. “Thank you. Merry Christmas, Ry.”

Everyone else arrives not long after that. You’re not entirely sure why you’d all agreed to do this at Butcher’s, because no one seems to really be benefiting—It’s loud enough that Ryan shuffles off to his room to read, busy enough that Butcher’s always shouting at someone not to touch something, and crowded enough that you’re all a little on top of each other—but you’re all here, and that’s what matters. You’re curled into Ben’s lap on one side of the couch, Hughie and Annie on the other sie, Butcher glaring at you all from his chair as Frenchie and Kimiko sit cross legged on the floor. There’s no talk of death or pain or blood, only sharing old stories about previous Christmases—Butcher once had to play baby Jesus in the naivety, and he doesn’t seem to find that half as funny as you do—and talking about the easier parts of work. Frenchie’s missing an eyebrow because of a flamethrower incident. Annie got to yell at someone in Singer’s cabinet last week. Ben broke the printer again.

Again? You grin at him, and he scowls.

It’s a stupid fucking machine, why design something with so many goddamn buttons that doesn’t even work half the time-

Benjamin, how many times have you broken the printer? 

There’s a pause, and then, Twelve.

You gape at him slightly, Holy shit, Ben, just let Kimiko print things-

I fucking do, but she can be busy, and I’m not just going to sit on my goddamn ass like a fucking pussy-

You pull him down into a long, soft kiss, opening for him when he presses his tongue on your lower lip, humming when his hands resume their slow patterns on your thighs.

Grumpy. You whisper between your head, and Ben snorts.

Shut the fuck up, Sunshine, you-

“We’re eating in 20,” MM’s voice cuts through the air, and when you pull away from Ben he’s standing in the doorway to the kitchen, arms crossed. “Let’s do the gift shit now, so I can get on the road right after.”

Everyone nods, and slowly makes their way back to Butcher’s table, cluttered with the Secret Santa gifts. You all sort through them, passing each other the bags and boxes tagged with your names and holding onto them until you’ve all sat, gifts in your laps.

“I guess, uh,” Hughie looks around the group, scratching the back of his neck. “We can just go in a circle? MM, do you want to-“

MM grunts an agreement, not waiting any further before he carefully removes the paper from his bag, sets it off the side, and pulls out two paper tickets. 

“Children’s science museum.” He reads off of them aloud, looking around the group with a frown before settling on you, and grunting your name.

You shake your head. “No, but that does sound like something I’d do. Are they-“

“For the Boston one,” MM mutters, scanning over the rest of the group. “Annie?”

She nods, a wide smile breaking over her face. “That’s supposed to be the best one on this coast, I thought you could take Janine while you’ve got her for the new year.”

“She’d like that,” MM mutters, giving Annie a grateful nod. “Thanks.”

Butcher clears his throat, making it clear that he’s next, and you realize that—if you keep going in a circle—you’ll be penultimate, and Ben will be going last. Good. It’ll help.

Butcher’s not nearly as careful with his packaging as MM was, tossing the bag’s paper aside without thought and freezing slightly when he sees what’s inside. His glare shoots to Hughie, who’s watching with a slightly red face.

“This you, lad?”

“Uh, no-“

“MM?”

MM shakes his head, and Butcher glowers around the rest of the table. Frenchie and Kimiko seem to take pity on him, shaking their heads and leaving Butcher’s scowl on you and Ben. You give a half-hearted shrug and jerk of your head to Ben, and Butcher scoffs.

“Ain’t no bleedin way it’s the old cunt.” Butcher glares at Ben, who tilts his chin up and tenses at your side. “I don’t believe it-“

“Start believing it, you fucking pussy.” Ben snaps. “Tell her you’re welcome.”

Ben nods to you, and you sigh. If you’re being honest, you’d seen this coming. But you still have to pretend to be annoyed with Ben and act like you’re not completely turned on by the way he’s rubbing your thigh, filled with love and pride, and holding you against him like you’re the most important thing in the world. You have to glare at him, and sell the act that you don’t want to grab his stupid handsome face—glowering at Butcher like he can’t believe the man’s nerve—and kiss him until he groans, pins you to the table, and fucks you stupid.

“What do you mean thank her,” MM looks between you and Ben with a narrowed gaze. “Which one of you got Butcher the gift-“

“I did.” You mumble, giving MM an apologetic grimace. “But it was Ben’s name. He told me though, I didn’t ask, and he doesn’t know mine-“

“What is it?” Hughie leans over Butcher, frowning at the bag. “A dog collar?”

“I found Terror.” You explain, chewing the inside of your cheek until it might bleed. “There should be a card in there as well, with a number. You can call it and get him back, if you want. If not it’s just kind of, uh, a dog collar.”

“Ah.” Butcher looks between the collar, now in his hand, and the bag, his words a little lower than before as he turns back to you, something flashing in his eyes that might be a real, good emotion. “Thanks.”

Everyone seems to forgive Ben for breaking the rules immediately—you don’t think they had a lot of faith in him to begin with, which you’d be angrier about if they hadn’t been so entirely correct—and move on to Hughie, but you whack Ben’s chest, glaring up at him.

What the fuck, Benjamin.

It was a good fucking gift, Sunshine, you deserve the credit-

I didn’t care about the credit, dummy.

Well, I fucking do. Ben presses a kiss on the space between your eyes, right where it’s wrinkled from your glower. They should be thanking you all the damn time. 

You wrinkle your nose at him, but smile when his lips move down to your own, the kiss sweet and gentle, letting you sit in the taste of coffee and strawberries in his mouth, drown in the best possible way in Ben, warm and strong and all around you.

When you look back to the group, Hughie’s holding a small, strange device in his hands, having already made his guess and frowning at Frenchie’s explanation.

“Petite Hughie, you are not understanding. You can listen to Billy Joel entire catalogue of music, all on this!”

“So it’s, uh,” Hughie glances down at the device, shoved into his hands. “An iPod?”

“Non, it is a Billy Joel Musical Player.”

“Oh.” Hughie nods slowly, and you and Annie exchange a wide-eyed expression of we can’t laugh. You don’t succeed—breaking out into muffled giggles, Hughie shooting you both glares as he pats Frenchie nervously on the shoulder—but it’s the effort that counts.

After that, with slightly more limited options, it goes a little faster. Butcher got Annie tickets to a pop concert, insisting that she takes photos of Hughie looking awkward and nervous. Frenchie opens his bag to find only a key, and—after guessing Kimiko twice—learns that MM got him a large amount of completely illegal chemicals from questionable sources, only asking that Frenchie try not to murder anyone. Frenchie just shrugs, but before MM can demand a more solid no murder promise, Kimiko is ripping into her own bag, pulling out two Broadway tickets, and pointing to you with a wide smile. When you shake your head her attention moves to Hughie, who nods and tentatively signs that he tried to have them for Decembruary, but they don’t do singing until Walk, and he’ll pay for their sleeping.

That leaves you and Ben. You raise your brows at Kimiko, having done the math, and she gives you a bright smile, gesturing to the bag in your hand as he signs. Open it!

You nod, and find a disgusting wad of cash and sheet of paper with I promise I can cover written out in slightly uneven letters, signatures from Kimiko, Frenchie, Annie, and Hughie at the bottom. Ben frowns as he reads it over your shoulder, and when you look up to Kimiko with raised brows, her smile grows. 

You and Ben never got a real honeymoon. She gestures, and you feel Ben tense slightly at your side. You think he recognized his name. I didn’t know where you’d want to go, so I just gave you money for it. We’re going to cover you at work, and you can finally do that.

You don’t bother to put the card down when you pull Kimiko into a long, tight hug, basking in the genuine, bright sensation that’s in her hands and teeth when you touch. Affection for just you, and something that’s a little more wired, but still warm, for Ben. 

“Thank you,” you whisper in her ear, squeezing her once. “That’s amazing, Kimiko. Thank you so much.”

Kimiko just hugs you back—hard enough to bruise if you could be bruised—and Ben’s hand snakes onto your back, rubbing up your spine with warm, careful hands.

What the fuck is it.

I’ll tell you later. You pull back from Kimiko with one last smile, returning your gaze to Ben with a joy you know he must feel, because it’s too big to be kept in your blood. Open your gift, Ben.

He grunts, glaring around the table, and you know the exact moment it hit him. He sits a little taller, his hand stilling on your body, and something golden bursts and sings in his chest. 

You had fucking Hughie. 

Did I? You make a dramatic look of fake thought, unable to contain the grin on your face. I thought Frenchie did?

Ben’s eyes narrow on yours. Did you fucking rig it-

Me?! You gape at him, your smile full on idiotic now. Rig something? Benjamin, how dare you even imply-

He snorts, leaning down to pull you into a teasing, too-chaste kiss. Brat. 

Cunt. Your reply is a little weak in your head, most of your mind focused on Ben’s hands, opening the box with your gift inside. Ben, wait, I’m going have to explain it-

Ben pulls out the shirt, frowning at the bright words over the graphic of genetic, vanilla ice cream in a cone. “Bassets Ice- Fuck, this place is still open?”

MM frowns. “What place.”

Ben turns the shirt for MM to read, his eyes still on you. “Why the fuck did you get me an ice cream shirt.”

“All dad’s should have weird brand-shirts, Benjamin.” You mumble, leaning a little into his side. “It’s a hallmark. My father had a sriracha shirt.”

MM nods off to the side. “Hasbro.” 

“Ford.” Hughie adds, frowning into the air. “My dad didn’t even like cars.”

“See?” You gesture around the table, suddenly slightly nervous he won’t like it. He has to like it. If Ben doesn’t like it, you watched five hours of old Solider Boy interviews—watched Ben not be Ben, wearing that stupid helmet and grinning at the camera in a way you know is fake—for nothing. “And it’s, um, it’s not just the shirt-“

Ben grunts your name in your head, drawing a firm pattern on your thigh. Calm the fuck down. If it’s just a shirt, it’s a damn good shirt-

It’s date! You blurt, grabbing his hand and keeping it pressed on your skin. You said in the 50s that Bassets was your favorite ice cream shop growing up, and you didn’t say it like you said all the other lies, so I thought maybe that it was true and we could go get some ice cream there or something. And then, um, just kind of fuck around? Whatever you want, it’s your date, and it doesn’t have to be ice cream-

Ben, in an act of mercy, wraps an arm fully around your waist and pulls you onto his lap, kissing you long and heavy and deep until you’re slack against him, your arms around his neck and your whole body filled with only Ben’s thunderous love. 

It’ll be ice cream, he mutters in your head, squeezing the skin of your hips. And we can always fuck around, Sunshine. 

Horny- You swallow down a moan when his hand moves to your ass, only vaguely aware of your friends, now faded into the background. Horny old cunt-

I fucking hope so, darling, I’ve got a perfect wife who needs to be fucked stupid later-

MM clears his throat, and you pull away from Ben with a high, slightly whining gasp. “You two either get a room,” he mutters. “Or stop fucking Frenching each other at the goddamn table. Where we’re about to eat.”

You flush, mumbling an apology as you push off of Ben to go get Ryan, pretending you can’t feel the hot, cocky pride and hunger in Ben’s body that feels like another promise. 

Dinner is quick and easy. The rest of the night is quick and easy. MM put together a feast that could probably feed twenty people, but over half the table is made up of supes, so there are only clean plates with no leftovers. MM rolls his eyes, grumbles about being surrounded by a bunch of animals, and leaves for New York with tight hugs and firm nods. From there, it’s all drinks that only send a slight buzz of warmth through your body—Frenchie tells you he spiked yours and Ben’s, the fact that you can feel anything at all likely a sign that he may have just used straight crack—and a game of poker that devolves into threats, cursing and near-injury remarkably fast. You fold quickly, joining Ryan in the corner as he reads, and as the day creeps on into night you’re mostly just happy. Ryan’s slumping slightly at your side, your hand in his hair as you watch Ben call a pale-faced Hughie a pussy-assed lying motherfucker for the fifth time that game, and lose the game for the seventh time tonight.

And it’s easy. Hughie doesn’t flinch at Ben’s words, and Ryan doesn’t cower at the raised voice. He just yawns, eyes drooping slightly, and keeps trying to read when you can feel the daze of sleep creeping over his brain. 

You look up at Ben—glowering at Butcher as he deals the next hand—and he must feel your eyes because he turns in barely a moment.

What- Ben’s eyes land on Ryan, his frown deepening slightly, and looks back to you in a silent question you’ll always understand.

I’m okay, but I think I’d like to go home. You mumble between your heads, fighting a yawn of your own. You can finish the game though-

Ben shoots to his feet, and before you even know what’s happening he’s at your side, scooping a completely asleep Ryan up in his arms. 

“We’re leaving,” he says to no one in particular, glaring around the room at the scattered gifts and down to Ryan in his arms. “One of you pussies-“

“I’ll get the gifts,” you stand up, blinking away sleepiness from your eyes. “Annie, could you please start the car for us? It’s cold and I don’t want Ryan to wake up-“

Annie nods, grabbing Ben’s keys from the table and pulling Hughie with her out the door. Ben doesn’t fight you as you gather the gifts into one bag, but you can feel him tracking your every move, waiting for you to so much as stumble so he can insist you let him carry everything. But when Hughie returns—saying Annie’s waiting by the car—you’re on steady feet, and every good night is a warm hug, soft joke, and smile. Even Butcher lets you give him a strange, uncoordinated side-hug and nods at Ben with a respect that doesn’t seem forced. 

Downstairs, Annie gives you one last hug as Ben loads Ryan into the car, and the night is done. The drive home is short, Ben not helping your bid to remain awake by rubbing your thigh and humming something that you think is supposed to be a lullaby, low and off-key. He’s a little faster than you are, somehow getting Ryan and the gifts, opening the door, and refusing to walk upstairs until you’re clinging to his arm.

Get in bed, Sunshine, he mutters, kissing the top of your head outside your room. I’ll be there soon. 

You nod, shuffling through the door and not bothering with the dresser. You shed your clothing like they’re poison on your skin, pull on one of Ben’s shirts—cast thoughtlessly onto the bed—and crawl between the sheets to wait for him to return, wallowing in the smell of pine until he does.

He frowns when he sees you, his words low and stern. “You need to fucking sleep, darling-“

“No.” You shake your head, reaching for him a little pathetically. “Need you. More gifts.”

Ben shakes his head, pulling off his shirt as he joins you, a slight smirk on his stupid, handsome, amazing face. “You need me,” he drawls your name, and your thighs squeeze together slightly. “You have more perfect shit to give me-“

“Shut up,” you wrap your arms around his torso, burying your face in his chest. Maybe I do have more shit to give you-

“Good. I have more shit to give you,” Ben mutters, tugging lightly on your hair until you meet his gaze. “And I’m first.” 

You’re too tired to argue, so you let Ben shift you fully over his body, twisting your head to watch him reach into his bedside drawer and pull out two tickets.

“Everyone’s getting tickets,” you mumble, letting Ben pass them into your hands. “Are we going to see Frozen off Broadway?”

He frowns. “I don’t know what the fuck a Frozen is. These are for the opera.”

You blink at him, unsure if you heard correctly, and when you speak your voice is small. “The opera?”

Ben grunts an affirmation. “The internet said this one has cannons. And after they’re going to let us have the whole place, and you can sing, or we can dance or just fuck, but we’re not allowed to break shit or they’ll sue us.”

You want to kiss him. You want to pull his tongue into your mouth until he can’t ever stop tasting you, and let him push himself inside you until you’re melded together for the rest of time. But if you start that now you’ll never give him your gift, and it suddenly feels incredibly critical Ben sees your gift now.

“Do you want to know what my secret was?” You whisper, and something sparks in Ben’s chest.

“So it was a fucking secret-“

You wrinkle your nose at him. “Do you want to know or not, Benjamin-“

“Know.” He grumbles. “What the fuck was it-“

“Open my drawer.” You nod lazily to your bedside table, a little too drunk on Ben to move. “Please.”

He snorts, shaking his head, and any grumble of never having to fucking ask him please dies when he opens the drawer and sees what’s inside. 

“How the fuck…” Ben trails off, and you’ve never been more grateful for being able to sense his emotions than you are now. He’s reduced to silence because his love has turned to a roar in his body, and his head seems a little light from the raw joy and confusion clouding his skull.

“I got some old government files,” your voice is soft, scanning over Ben’s slack expression carefully. “Found your childhood home. Then I, um, I visited it and asked what they did with the old owners possessions. They said the government took a lot of it, so I made Neuman tell me where they were stored. I was, I was going through all the boxes, and I found that. And I’m just, I think I’m ready. Soon. When you are.”

Ben’s love becomes almost primal in your chest, but he still doesn’t look away from the baby blanket. His old baby blanket. Pastel green and soft, somehow not moth-ridden and unraveling, so small in Ben’s massive hand.

When he speaks, his voice is hoarse. “You’re sure.”

You nod, swallowing slightly. “I’m sure. I’ve been sure.” You trail your fingers over Ben’s beard, offering him a small smile when his attention returns. “I’m always sure of you, my love.”

That seems to be enough for Ben. He sets the blanket down with heartbreaking gentleness, and brings his lips to yours in a painfully loving and devout kiss. He doesn’t deepen it—even as his hunger becomes primal—only rubbing patterns on the back of your thighs and grinning against your mouth.

“If Ryan wasn’t asleep down the hall,” he growls into your mouth, igniting a heat in your lower gut. “We’d get started right fucking now. But,” he pulls your upper lip between his teeth, smirking at your soft moan. “I waited a hundred goddamn years for this, for you.” Ben says your name like it’s holy, and you can only grind weakly against him. “I can wait a few more nights.”

You nod, pulling away to give him a nervous smile. “So yes?”

“Fucking yes.” He grins, pulling you back into him. This kiss quicker, but filled with more undying heat and need, and it leaves you a little dizzy when he pulls away. “For you, darling, it’s always fucking yes.”

“Oh.” Sleep starts to catch you again, and you begin to sink fully into Ben. Warm and big and strong and Ben. “Good.”

“Damn right,” Ben grumbles, helping you squirm back down his chest. “I fucking love you. I’d have to have lost my goddamn mind to tell you no.”

“I love you too,” you hum, a little too lost in Ben to say much else. “Merry Christmas-“

“I think Christmas is fucking over, beautiful-“

“It’s not midnight,” you mumble, burying your face in his neck. “Take my Merry Christmas, Benjamin.”

Ben chuckles, running a hand through your hair and pressing a kiss to the top of your head. “Merry Christmas, Sunshine.”'

End Note: Happy Holidays Squad!!! Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the pure fluff and smut of this miniseries!! See you soon!

If you like this story, please reblog, share, or leave a comment! <3

If you want to be tagged, just ask! (Separate from main taglist)

Taglist

@manicjk @lordofthunderthr @artemys-ackles @brtodd @ej13928

@deansbbyx @generalmoonpolice

[wolken-himmel]

In which Sebek discovers (Y/n)'s passion for writing poems and decides to be supportive — perhaps aggressively so.

He just wants to see that smile again.

Request by anon.

"Human, have you already finished exercise four? Do you still require my help?"

"Yeah, that would be nice. I've been stuck here for quite a while now."

Sebek and you had chosen to occupy a table at the far end corner of the hall. Studying together had always been something that both of you looked forward to eagerly, although none of you dared to voice your excitement. Instead, you continued to sit there in silence, each busy with your own identical sheet of exercises.

The sheepish smile you shot him drew an exasperated gasp from him. Without wasting any time, he scooted his chair over to you. "You could have told me, idiot," he grumbled under his breath, although a playful look flashed across his face. "But fret not, for I am willing to help."

You couldn't help but chuckle at the boisterous and proud look on his face — the sight brought you amusement somehow. So, with your gaze trained at your sheet, you uncapped your pen again. "Thanks, Sebek. Thanks," you murmured with a silly smile on your lips.

"If angel berries and aspen leaves react with one another, what does the reaction produce without a bother?"

A gasp escaped your lips, and you couldn't help but suppress the giddy feeling in the depths of your stomach. "That rhymed!" Your eyes shimmered brightly as they bore into his.

He didn't reciprocate your enthusiasm, however, due to the confusion that inhabited his eyes. His eyes eyed you up and down carefully. "What...? No, the reaction between angel berries and aspen leaves doesn't rhyme, stupid. They produce a viscous and purple fluid," he muttered and slapped his forehead in frustration.

"That rhymed again!" you cried out with even more excitement lacing your voice.

Finally, Sebek threw his hands into the air and let out an annoyed growl. "I still don't get what you mean!" he yelled before gritting his teeth.

The volume of his voice immediately caused an annoyed head to peek out from behind the tall shelves. "Please keep your voices low..." the student muttered and rolled his eyes. "We are in a library after all."

"Oh right, I apologise!" With his pale cheeks tinted a slight pink, Sebek lowered himself into his chair beside yours again.

You, however, seemed to have forgotten your alchemy homework altogether. Your mind whirred with such excitement that you dared to grab his hands and squeeze them tightly. "Sebek, you never told me that you had such a talent for poetry. It's like you were born to write poems," you exclaimed enthusiastically. "You rhyme without a second thought. You're amazing!"

"You..." Sebek stuttered out, "...think I'm amazing?"

A series of chuckles escaped your lips once you noticed the bashful yet proud expression on his face. You would have never dared to say it out loud, but he was awfully adorable like this. "Yes, I do. And you should think so, too," you joked and shot him a wink.

He finally snapped out of his stupor, and his face returned to the usual stoic and constantly annoyed scowl. "Oh, stop it... Flattery will get you nowhere. Nice words, about those I don't care." His shaking voice betrayed his strict words, and you couldn't help but begin laughing. Although he sheepishly waved you off, he couldn't hide the blush on his face. "So you like poems, human?"

His question prompted you to nod eagerly. "I adore poems!" you began, your eyes vivid and bright — so full with life like he had never seen before. Your shyness was gone. "Poetry is such a beautiful way to express your feelings... Every poem can be meaningful in one way or another and that is what makes poetry great without being repetitive—"

Sebek listened and watched you with great interest, observing all the small details of your face and voice. His surprise of your sudden outburst — you used to be rather reserved, after all — ebbed away after a while. He found himself comforted by your voice, so soft and excited at the same time. And at first, he thought he would grow blind due to the brightness of your smile as you talked. He never averted his gaze though, even when you eventually stopped.

A sheepish chuckle escaped your lips. "Oh, but I'm rambling again... I'm so sorry..."

After he had snapped out of his trance, he shot up and waved his arms around in protest. His voice was loud and echoed through library. For a moment, you feared the student from earlier would return to complain. But, you somehow didn't have the heart to stop Sebek when he was this worked up. "No, (Y/n), continue speaking! I can clearly see that you're passionate... it reminds me of myself, in a way. Also," he muttered quietly, "it's endearing when you just talk away."

"People are usually bored whenever I start talking about poems... They think it's a strange interest to have." You rubbed your neck sheepishly. "I'm surprised you'd like to know more."

His lips curled upwards into a proud grin. "I'm full of surprises, human."

°

°

°

Later that day, Sebek found himself bursting with the need to tell someone about the incident at the library. The usual tension in his muscles replaced by a fleeting swiftness, the first-year pranced around the hallways of Diasomnia in search for a certain fae that he always consulted when he needed advice. And lucky him, he found exactly the person he was looking for busy in the kitchen.

"Lilia! Lilia!"

The fae in question began grinning once he saw the happiness that the first-year exuded. "Yes, Sebek? What's gotten into you?" Lilia teased while holding back chuckles. "You're... smiling. That's a nice sight."

"(Y/n) said I was amazing," Sebek announced between wistful sighs.

The third-year's lips curled up into an amused grin. "You have hearts in your eyes~" His loud laughter soon ceased to be, and he wiped the last tear of amusement from his eye. "But," Lilia continued in satisfaction, "I'm very glad to see you get along so well with another first-year. I worried about your... erm..."

Silver chimed in, "...obsession with Malleus."

A pout appeared on Sebek's face, and he crossed his arms with a sigh. "You two are always teasing me..." he grumbled under his breath. Yet, when he turned on his heel and prepared himself to leave the kitchen, his grumpiness turned into excitement again. "Anyway, I shall be off! I've got all sorts of poems to read— and to write. After all, I need to support (Y/n) with all my might!"

"That's cute..." The smile on Lilia's face couldn't be wiped off, so it seemed. He watched in satisfaction as the half-fae pranced out of the kitchen with feathery steps.

"I'm happy Sebek finally found a friend," Silver said between yawns.

"Perhaps," Lilia drawled mischievously, "more than a friend, even."

[changingplumbob]

CW: Low level sim spice & Language - Guide to Content Warnings

Coleman: Was he making fun of my name or was that an old person joke

Jackson: Fucked if I know. Hey Glenn, Glenn, did you get a prize for second place

Coleman: Don't worry if you didn't because we know just what to get you

Glenn: And what would that be...

Jackson: We'll... throw you a pity party!

The twins burst out laughing but Glenn finds it easier to shrug off than he thought he would. Hey if their taunting was going to help him move on, bring it!

Glenn: Wow, did it take you all day to think of that? Or did you need to workshop it the entire time I was busy

Jackson: *laughing* A pity party! Watcher I'm hilarious

Coleman: I'll play you a moving ballad on my violin so everyone can cry as much as you

Jackson: And I can write a special poem on the death of your relationship, it'll be all poignant and stuff

Glenn: Because you know all about relationship death right

Coleman: Oh, want some ice for that burn bro

Jackson: At least I get laid. You went for how long and didn't get any tail? Embarrassing

Glenn: Not really. Some of us are looking for more than just physical connection

Coleman: Unlike those guys that got it on in Grayson's bed

Jackson: *chuckling* Dude that was so funny

Glenn: Actually that was beyond a violation of privacy and trust

Coleman: What do you think? Glenn's mad because he wasn't invited to join them for a threesome

Jackson: Like he'd even know what to do with a dick other than faint. First or second loser probably still has his cherry

Coleman: If you're nice to us Glenn maybe we'll let you practice on us. But one at a time because we're queer not incesty

Glenn: Thanks but infant is not my type. Neither are people who make up words like incesty. A real vocabulary is attractive, you should think about investing in one sometime

Jackson: You're just mad we're young and fresh faced

Coleman: And depressed you're going to be single forever

Glenn: I survived far worse than your taunting when I was growing up you know

The twins smirked and stood up. For a moment Glenn thought through what shielding spells he knew but it turned out that they were just refilling the food bowls for their dogs who were coming in. Thrash was white with a blue harness, and Throttle was black with a red collar.

Jackson: Thrash! Throttle! Food!

Coleman: Oh hey Glenn, why didn't you pet Olive? The challenge for that day was literally interact with Olive. Did the producers not tell you

Jackson: Are you like anti dog or something

Coleman: Even idiots know if you want in with the owners you spoil the pets

Jackson: But not so much that you're stealing their affections. One time I tried befriending this girls cat and she said she'd rather I sleep with her sister so I did

Glenn: Look, I'm not actually here to talk to you two

Coleman: Oh no, we've been slighted. I'm gonna die from that blow

Jackson: How will my social life ever recover if Glenn the first or second loser won't talk to me

Glenn: Phoebus said Henri would be here

Coleman: He'll get back from the bakery in a bit unless he's shagging another customer

Jackson: He can't stand to be without us for long

Coleman: We're his favourite people

Glenn rather doubted it but it seemed in poor taste to criticize legal orphans for claiming to be beloved so he let them carry on.

Previous ... Next

[sorencd]

HANDLE WITH CARE

pairing: todd anderson x reader

word count: 0.6k

a/n: the title is from this song! i love it sm hdhhd sorry it took me a bit to answer this anon!

masterlist

picnic dates were more preferable when you don’t have another person flirting with you when you clearly have stated numerous times that you have a boyfriend, you concluded. lucas, the bloke who undoubtedly fancied you, was blatantly flirting with you. and no matter how many times you’ve tried telling him to stop, ignoring him, and even moving spots to get away from him, he’d quickly be hot on your trail and insist on joining the two of you, invading both you and todd’s privacy.

“come on. just give me a chance and i bet i could treat you better than he could.” he gave todd a repulsed glance as arrogance dripped with each word that came out of his mouth, it irked you to no end. who was he to look at todd like that? where’d he get his confidence? “one date with me is all it takes. whaddya say?” that was your breaking point.

“can even the word ‘no’ not get through your extraordinarily thick skull? are you that hurt that you won’t take no for an answer? what, you’re too scared to tell the lads you got rejected?” you spat at him with a heated expression, “just piss off- actually, no. todd, let’s find somewhere else to eat.” you started returning the jars and containers back into the basket and tugged on todd’s hand, you two started walking to yet another space in the park, not sparing lucas a glance and anymore of your time. thankfully, he left you two alone this time. 

now, you were spreading jelly and peanut butter on toast while todd was munching on the cookies you brought with a dejected and spaced out face. “is there something wrong?” you asked, concerned. todd shook his head, trying to dismiss your question. 

“don’t listen to what he said, he’s just desperate.” you tried comforting him. thanks to the idiot from earlier, the once happy mood was now soiled, to your and todd’s dismay.

“but what if he’s right?” as soon as the words left his mouth, you stopped your peanut butter spreading and turned your head to look at todd, who already held a gaze on you. he was heartbroken because of what lucas said. his eyes carrying a doleful weight to it and his body movements no longer showed the lively side that only you and the poets get to see. you desperately wanted to wipe off that sunken expression.

“what if, just maybe, he’s actually better than me? what if he can make you happier than i ever could?”

you abruptly took a hold of both his shoulders, hardening the stare you had on him. todd was expecting you to get angry at him for thinking that way, he feared that his tendency to overthink and dissect everything that he probably shouldn’t even give that much thought into would drive you away from him. but instead, you hugged him. the most tender, warm, and genuine hug he could ever receive.

“don’t say that.” 

“but i want what’s best for you.”

“i don’t want what’s best for me, i want you. i don’t care if he’s somehow better, which i doubt.” you shrugged and rolled your eyes. in what world would lucas be better than todd? none. exactly. 

he tightened the hug and rested his chin on your shoulder, the both of you quickly forgetting about the food. what you said had him in tears, he had always wanted to hear those words he didn’t know he needed so much. in his hands, he found the perfect muse not only for the endless poems he’s bound to write, but the muse to his own love story.

“i love you, (y/n).” he broke away from the hug to give you a sweet kiss on the lips, you beat him to it first though.

“i love you more, todd. and besides! even if he was, which i again, doubt, i’d still choose you. because he’s not you. in every lifetime, every universe, i’d always choose you..” 

© sorencd . 2023 ─ do not copy, repost, translate or claim any of my works as your own.

[agoodficforchii]

M’lady

Fandom: Genshin Impact

Pairing: Alhaitham, Ayato, Diluc, Kazuha, Tighnari x Reader (Separately)

Summary: Cute little things they would do that are (extremely) romantic

Word Count: For all - 727, Around 120-180 for each

Warnings/Extra Notes: None (lmk if there's any!!)

Al Haitham:

See the thing is, I don’t think he’d be big on PDA so anything he does is lowkey

I feel like he would be the type to do small gestures like the sidewalk rule

(IF ANYONE DOES THAT TO ME I WOULD DROP ON ONE KNEE AND PROPOSE-)

It was one of the rarer days you got to spend with the scribe, deciding to venture out into the markets. The streets of Sumeru were always busy and it was easy to get lost. But since you were with Al Haitham that would now be impossible. He’d always pull you away from larger crowds and wait until a stall is less crowded. He’d also always have an eye on you and his hand was always ready to whisk you away. Like just now, when someone bumped into you and Alhaitham immediately pulled you to his side while throwing a glare at the person. After that he would position himself so he would be on the receiving end of any harm. 

“You should be more careful, you know?” him after calling you an idiot in his mind

Ayato:

HE’S SUCH A TEASE

Look me in the eyes and tell me he wouldn’t get on one knee and kiss the back of your hand. 

A cool breeze flew past you while you were waiting outside the Kamisato Estate. Just like any other day you were waiting for the head of the Kamisato Clan. And just like any other day Ayato walked up to you with a charming smile on his handsome face. Ayato believed you were nothing short of perfection and so he treated you like royalty. Taking your hand in his, he got on his knee and placed a gentle kiss on the back.

“How was your day my love?” he asked looking up at you smirking

Diluc:

I can see him having drinks ready for both of you whenever he’s working at the tavern 

He knows you’ll visit him so he just has them ready

It was finally night in Mondstat, the time when you would clock out from your job and Diluc would clock into his. Like clockwork, you would visit him every night after your shift. Opening the door to the tavern you caught a glimpse of a familiar redhead behind the counter. Smiling, you approach the seat right in front of the man and patiently wait for him to turn towards you. After a short while Diluc turns around and faces you with two drinks in hand,

“Hello darling,” he’d say with a slight smile while handing you your drink.

Kazuha:

He would write you poems!!

Yk how he sits on the arrow shooter thing on the Alcor? Yeah he would sit there at night and think about how amazing you are.

And then write you poems!

It was a calm and peaceful night. The perfect night to sit outside and enjoy the fresh air, especially if you’re on the Alcor. Kazuha was sitting out and thinking. Thinking about what? Why about you of course! About how pretty you look under the moonlight, how your sweet voice could calm anyone down, how anyone would fall in love with you if they met you. Unbeknownst to him, you had silently sat down next to him. You yourself were also thinking. About Kazuha of course! Finally, you let out a small chuckle to which Kazuha quickly snaps his head towards. His once wide eyes now turned to a soft stare once they landed on you. 

“Come here, I want to share a poem with you.” he would say, slightly dragging you towards him.

Tighnari:

He’d give flowers nicknames after you

Like instead of calling a rose a rose he’d call it [Name] because he thinks you’re as pretty as a flower

Something cheesy like that.

He’d also give you a bunch of flowers whenever

You were out on a stroll in Gandharva Ville when you decided you’d drop by and visit Tighnari. Walking up to the small building you proceeded to knock twice before walking in. Tighnari immediately perked up at the sound and turned his attention towards you. Noticing it was you, he picked up a Qingxin flower on his desk and met you halfway. 

“What are you doing here? Did something happen?” he’d ask, tilting his head slightly while presenting the flower.

NOTE: I haven’t slept in days. But I wanted to get this out before I passed out sooo Also I spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to pick out a flower to use in Tighnaris part like. I ended up with Qingxin because 1) I like xiao and 2) I googled it (which took way too long.) and it apparently means purity/pure heart/gentleness and I think Tighnari would think of you like that (or something similar). Also fluff because the angst hurt me &lt;33

[le01zk00l]

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES 2012 ..BUT THEY GET TO BE ACTUAL TEENAGERS (let them be happy please..) PT 2 !!

LEO LORE !!!

-Leo was placed as the role model by master splinter since day one, tho his father never really meant any kind of harm to Leo, this costed him his stability WAY TOO MUCH, Leo is NOT a born leader..tho he was (unintentionally) tricked into believing that he is one. Any time he would fail to lead or help his brothers he’d be too hard on himself, asking why couldn’t he just be the perfect leader he was supposed to be! The one he always wanted to be..and ended up finding comfort in Tv shows and cartoons, which began his love for Space Heroes ^_^!

As time went on, Leo realized that trying to be something he wasn’t was really just taking a toll on him..to which he decided to split the leader title between his siblings, Leo would be the front man, and whenever he had no plans,one of his brothers would take on the leader title and get all of them out of a situation together..Nowadays Leo is still learning to be a good leader by himself , tho taking his time and actually enjoy what being a leader is.

LIKES !! : cartoons, old animes or indie films, traditional Japanese culture, SPACE HEROES, Space!, his brothers ^_^!

DISLIKES : having too many pressure on him, loud noises, spicy food..

FUN FACTS BOUT LEO !!!

Leo likes to use traditional Japanese clothing, mostly cuz he thinks it’s really cool, plus Splinter wears it too..so..yeah

Daddy’s boy, he can do no wrong in splinter’s eyes

Sweet tooth! He loves candy in general..

WOULD’VE been emo..If splinter allowed him to, tho splinter never let him and he grew out of it really quickly..

Drags Raph to see old animes with him

NERD ..like..”I’m gonna into dump you about my favorite show cuz you’re awesome!” Kind of nerd

Has begged Donnie to make him some space heroes related stuff..(Donnie has NOT done that)

Mostly listens to indie music, would like Alex G

“GUYS CAN WE PLEASE STOP STARING AT EACH OTHER AND DO SOMETHING WITH THE BROKEN VASE IN FRONT OF US…PLEASE? GUYS!!??”

Would totally write poems

They suck, but he tries..

Was pretty selfish for some time..due to his older brother status, but he turned out to be a really sweet lil guy

Undiagnosed neurodivergence probably

“What? No I don’t have any hyperfixations..I just really REALLY like space!”

Refuses to cut down his hair cuz it makes him look like a “Real Samurai” or something…?

Tried picking up an instrument cuz he wanted to have an excuse to talk to Raph more

In his mind “If my brother plays an instrument..and I try to play an instrument too..maybe we will have something in common and he will talk to me!”

That failed

The main reason He and Raph’s relationship is so rocky is because of stuff that happened between the ages of 6-13 yrs old..I will elaborate later on..probably 

Listens to vocaloid..his favorite is either MIKU or Gakupo (idk if that’s his name ..)

Really talented with his katanas! Tho he has tried using other weapons before

Likes pineapple on pizza ..

“ I love my brothers!..I might’ve been a bit of an idiot when we were younger…but I’m trying my best to be the best older brother ever now!..PLEASE BELIEVE ME PLEASE PLEASE PLEAS-“ (He has improved a LOT..he is getting that best big bro title!)

[clevercatchphrase]

2024 Year in Review~

Getting a head start and typing this on December 26th at 3pm, though I don't think I'll get it done on this same day. I'll probably get it up exactly on January 1st, though.

This is the sixth time I've made one of these retrospectives of my year. these are mostly just for me, talking to myself so I can look back at it later in the year. These recap posts always end up extremely long, and never get a lot of notes, but that's fine~ You're welcome to take a peak into my thoughts and read along if you'd like. I'll mostly be talking about the goals I set for myself, what I achieved, what I failed, and thoughts and feelings I had throughout the year.

Let's begin...

As always, I'll start with my New Year's Resolutions for 2024. this year I had 9 serious goals and 4 casual goals. The serious goals being;

Read twelve new books (one book a month)

Reach 312 pages of Ghost Switch by June 18th (the 6th birthday)

Build (and maintain!) a comic buffer of 8 pages

Go walking on 3 new greenways around my neighborhood

Go camping by myself

Make at least one new song comic

Finish 4 video games to as close to 100% as I can

Finish the first rewrite of my 2023 nanoproject, and

Write 4 one-shots for BSapT

The 4 causal goals were;

10. Get reacquainted with Neocities and make a personal website

11. Learn to code to improve said website/learn to make games

12.Listen to the entire royalty free youtube library for reasons

13. Research every d.o.n.g. ever featured on VSauce, for neocities reasons.

13 goals in total. Let's dive into them one at a time in the order of appearance.

Read twelve new books a month. I did this! I actually did double and read 27(OR, you could argue I did QUADRUPLE because I bought and reread the entire 27 volume set of Fullmetal Alchemist this year in October). I am mostly going to copy and paste the discord entry I made for the notes on each book, so please pardon typos. It was mostly stream of consciousness. The books I read this year were; 1) Whitefoot the woodmouse. Cute, average. Very similar to the johnny chuck book with the main character starting a family. I think this is the first t.w.b. book where a character used the word "idiot". I liked the short section with the rabbit, snowy owl and ermine the best.

2)The adventures of Benny Badger. Fine~ feels like an older book with the inclusion of a Mr. Fox character, no poems at the beginning of each chapter, and no hint of the next book at the end of the story. Almost thought the mouse at the end of this one would be eaten, but Thornton continues to stay pg for this series.

3)Dire: Feathers and Flame Fine. Needs more world building. Quite a few grammar mistakes. Griffin society doesn't make sense, and it feels like the characters are set up to fail. Bad names. Eural sounds like 'urinal' in my head.

4)Griffin QuestWritten by a 16 year old and it shows. Very short and very rushed. No grammar or spelling mistakes, but characters have little to no development/form relationships to quickly without any true connection shown.

5)The FifthOkay! Solid for a debut. Too many characters honestly, and some don't get enough development because of it. This world is too trusting. Polara was never challenged enough. Confusing that "dragon" is used as a catch-all term for people, and actual dragons are called drakes/wingless drakes. I don’t like the phrase “wingless drakes,” honestly. It makes them feel… lesser? Othered? Compared to the drakes with wings. It’s as if saying “having wings is the default, therefore, they are “normal” drakes, and we have to specify that you’re different.” If it was Winged Drakes AND Wingless Drakes, (both having the descriptor), this wouldn’t be a problem. Think of it like… the humans and the black humans. Why you gotta specify, right? Makes it sound like they don’t belong.

6)The adventures of Unc'a Billy Possum Pretty good! I like the different speech patterns used for billy possum. Gives billy possum a very distinct character compared to all the other animals.

7)The adventures of bob WhiteEasy going~ I feel all Thornton books are actually about 2 characters instead of just The one mentioned in the title. Peter rabbit showed up a good amount in this book, and then, like, the last 3 chapters switched to one of bob white's sons instead. Still a good book over all~

8)The adventures of Old Man CoyoteAn… Interesting one of Thornton's to be sure. Younger me would have spent days sorting out my feelings on this one without being sure why, but older me knows the true heart of the problem. I was not sure if this was an immigrant's story or a colonizer's. Thornton does a great job of balancing both ideas. Coyote is a predator and unashamed of it. He's crafty and sly. All the current residents of the green forest are wary and afraid of him and rightfully so because he will eat them with no hesitation. The other predators (granny and teddy fox) do not want him their because he competes for their resources. Their worries are justified. At the same time, he is just one coyote. He is an animal filling an unoccupied niche. He must eat to live and hunt to eat. That is not his fault he was made that way. Are the foxes merely being greedy and xenophobic? In the end, coyote stays and the status quo changes, but the current residents aren't subjugated. They dimply must learn to live with this new predator. A shaky kind of peace is formed between some of the forest people and coyote, like that between the porcupine and peter rabbit, but I know from Thornton's previous books that that peace only lasts as long as stomachs are full.

9)The Adventures of Prickly PorkyRather short? This book would have bothered me for accuracy reasons if I had read it as a kid. On the whole, Thornton's books to not anthropomorphize to a wild degree. But there were two instances in this book that stuck out to me. One was when prickly porky was choking and un'ca billy possum reached in his mouth and pulled the stick out of his throat. The other was insinuating that porcupines curl up and roll down hills as a method of travel. The latter became the focus of a good half of the book, too, and it kind of annoyed me by the end because nothing else creative was happening in the story.Just remembered a third thing that bothered me about prickly porky's book! There's a continuity contradiction! In old man coyote's book, he was a new comer meeting all the other characters for the first time, including prickly porky, who was written to sound like an established resident. But In porky's book, HE was the newcomer from the north meeting all the characters for the first time, including coyote, who was written to sound like an established resident. Which came first?? They cant both be the new guy while other has lived there their whole life. (According to Wikipedia, porky came first and coyote literally second as that's the order the books were published, back to back, but I think I like the idea of porky being there before coyote.

10)Griffin Quest 2Shallow and simple as the first. The reveal that both sora and draven are related to Helios and selene felt contrived. The whole concept of a city surrounded in flames didn't feel thought out. At least in the first book they mentioned the struggle the gryphons were going through just to get water and sleep in eternal day, but after helios takes over, are those not problems anymore? How is everyone not starving or dying of thirst? How is everyone BREATHING? doesn't fire burn oxygen? Or is it a magic fire that's just hot and doesn't actually produce smoke? Does ariana have ice powers too since she's also related to selene? Mel's character was dumb. Was he a gryph from another kingdom or just highborn? If the first one, then how the hell did he and draven go to school together? What was up with the blind spirit gryph in this book? She was never mentioned before, just showed up with some deus ex Machina, then fucked off. This book has no depth, no meaningful message and no compelling themes. Everything is so rushed and surface level. It's actually kind of fascinating how bad it was.

11)The Adventures of Danny Meadow MouseActually kinda forgettable? Not bad, but ive read better. Cant really remember much of it, even though I finished it less than a month ago. The use of fully voiced cast for each of the characters was actually more distracting than immersive.

12) Old Mother West WindFun! A short story collection. Very gentle and kind. Predators were even friends with the prey in this book, which was a nice change of pace.

13) Griffin in Light First 1/3rd was good, 2 third was a slog, final third felt like a retread of The Silver Griffin. I will read the second book when it comes out, though. I love all the fantasy races that lackey comes up with.

14) Hunters UnluckyFound this book by typing "xenofiction" into the Amazon search bar then looked it up on a book pirate website. It was pretty good! I'll probably buy the ebook to support the author. It's very long. Over 200k words, I believe. The first 10 or so chapters of the first "book" were very short and exposition-y and I did not like it at all, but it got better and less info-dumpy as it went along. Interesting creature creations, though an omnivorous ungulate that can climb trees feels a liiitle too improbable sometimes, and the cresea just felt like lions/pumas. The world building was fun if not a little too socio-political at times. Got a little confusing since these creative's social structures were so different from our own. Books 2 ad 3 were the best. Book 4 was probably the worst. Book 5 dragged with its sudden new pop up villain of treace, and then with the lishtees. But I'd like to read more stories from this world. Apparently has a small, active fandom on tumblr to this day!

15) Mother West Wind's Animal Friends StoriesBehold! The first Thornton w Burgess book I didn't like! I really did not care for the first 2/3rds of this book. It feels like a collection of his earliest stories where all the characters are way more human than normal. They talk about the animals wearing clothes in a very literal way, the characters used tools like baskets, which just pulled me out. The last couple of stories were fine, but I cant recommend this one as highly as the others.

16-26) Arc's 2 and 3 of Wings of Firereread the second and third arcs of wings of fire again (this time in audio book form) the second arc is just so slow?? I forgot how much time was spent in the school in moon rising (aka the whole book). I forgot how annoying winter was. Escaping peril still remains my fave of this arc. Turtle’s book was also growing on me this reread, but qibli's book was just so unnecessarily long that it hurts. The third arc (which I'm still in the process of listening to, but will def finish before the year ends) still holds up in books 1 and 2. I remember liking 2 the most for all the imagery (and 1 as well. Fun new places, even if I don't care all that much for push over blue) but the 3rd book is pretty sluggish. Sundew has so much pent up anger with no real outlet for it, and its starting to get annoying. Bumblebee is not cute. She is annoying, too, and while I'm all for gay relationships, I just do not like willow as a character. She does not support sundew enough or take her side as much as she should. She's too passive and complacent.Book 14- better than I remember! I think I even like it more than sundew's book. Book 15- just as bad as I remember. Pointlessly long like book 10, and the whole mindspace location is still just as confusing and nonsensical as I remember. I do not like freedom. She's not tragic, she's annoying, but at least less annoying than bumblebee.

27) Dragonfall I bought this book at the Barnes and noble grand opening. Interesting narrative style with first person direct, first person (regular) and third person. Sometimes I felt emotional or logical transitions were missing. Like, "I thought this character felt one way, but now we're doing something that contradicts it." Like…. Everen was excited to chase a prophecy and willingly jumps into a magic storm, but once he's in the human world he's mad that he was pulled through?? Like?? He knew the storm would take him there and he went on purpose, so why is he upset?? I like that arcady is a genderfluid protagonist (though the only reason I think Everen used 'you' pronouns for them was so the author didn't have to say "they") didn't realize this was a heist + enemies to lovers book. Didn't really care for the romance. Probably will not buy book 2. 3 stars from me.

28) Impossible creatures.Saw this one at the b&n grand opening as well, and glad I didn't get it. Too fast paced. Definitely for younger readers. Character personalities were a bit thin and shallow. Kinda just an over all sad book. 2 major characters die. A little too rushed. Not very deep or thought provoking. Nothing ever felt "dangerous". But the illustrations in the book? Fucking beautiful. 10 outa 10 for the artist.

Overall, a good year for reading! Griffin Ranger 4 came out this year, and I bought it as soon as I could, but I am still waiting patiently for 2025 to come around so I can read both books 3 and 4 of that series and have it count for next year’s reading list. Shadow Sun, the sequel to Rise of the Dragon Star, also came out in the second half of this year, and I will definitely be looking into that one as well! I think The sequel to The Fifth also came out this year? I have to double check. Great year for griffin book publications that will really help me hit my goal for 2025.

Goal Number 2! Reach 312 pages of Ghost Switch by June 18th! (Ghost Switch's 6th birthday) I did this one with relative ease! Great year for Ghost Switch over all, imo. We hit the half way point, we're chuggin' along through waterfall, and I got the majority of the comic mirrored to Pillowfort.social, as a back up in case tumblr goes down in flames. In fact, because I want pillowfort to succeed, I'm going to try and have pages be one week ahead over there to help drive traffic to the site. (patreon will thus be 2 weeks ahead). I'm also looking into comicfury to host Ghost Switch, but I may hold off on that until the comic is almost done. Having it update on 4 sites (patreon, tumblr, pillowfort and DA) is a lot to maintain already. I know I also thought about crossposting to webtoons as well, but I heard a lot of shitty things about webtoons this year, and I don't think I want to any more. (not like they'd make this comic an original anyway since it's not my IP, but I don't want to give them any more traffic if they don't start treating their creators fairly) So yeah! Go check out pillowfort if you aren't there already! It's free! It's small and a little quiet, but I believe it has the potential to grow and be like tumblr of old~

Goal 3; Build and maintain a comic buffer of 8 pages. Nope. Didn't do this. I got waaay too burnt out by september and could barely manage one page a week. whenever I make a buffer, it always ends up running out. The only way I could keep up a buffer at this point is if I make the comic in its entirety before I even post it.

Goal 4; go walking on 3 new greenways around my neighborhood. I didn't go walking once this year, aside from when I camped. I don't even know why I put this one on the list. As if I thought I would actually go outside on my own accord.

Goal 5; go camping by myself. I did this for the eclipse in april and it was wonderful. I should do this every year. you can read more thoughts I had about my camping trip further below.

6) Make one new song comic. I had planned to do this. I honestly thought I WOULD do this one, since I have a good track record of making one song comic at least every two years. I had even had this one planned for at least 4. It was going to be be a chara-centric comic to the song "It's Only" by Odesza, for Undertale's ninth birthday. I was going to try something new for this comic by using a limited color palette of 4 colors, those being solid black, pure white, determination yellow, and soul red. I thought it would have looked cool. I scripted the whole thing, but then... as the deadline got closer and closer, I just... didn't have the heart to do it anymore. I don't know why. When I opened up SAI t start drawing, I just... suddenly had no more drive. I'm kinda glad I didn't do it in the end. It was going to be a bit more of an edgy/dark lyrictale focusing on the no mercy route, but after we got some asriel/chara lore on the ninth birthday, I'm glad I didn't make it. if anybody else wants to make a limited color palette, chara focused lyrictale to the song "It's Only" by odesza, be my guest. I would love to see how it comes out~

7) Finish 4 video games (as close to 100% as I can.) I did this~ The games I played and completed this year were; Horizon Forbidden West, The Talos Principle 2, Original Pokemon Silver, and Carto. I had a lot of fun with all of them, even if I never 100% any of them, I did play them to completion. (I never fully got the hand of Carto's controls, though. Adorable game, terrible control scheme.)

8) Finish the rewrite of Featherlight's Sequel. I did not do this. I mostly focused on Featherlight instead. Made a lot of progress and even got half of it posted on line! (on pillowfort, where you need to log in to read it, but again, Pillowfort is free! Come check out my story if you like xenofiction and gryphons!) After working on Featherlight for most of november, I think I just need to do a major overhaul of the sequel, Greyscale, from the ground up. Even though I had forced out 50k words for it in 2023, it just wasn't working, honestly.

my last serious goal for 2024 was to write 4 oneshots for Blankets, Socks, and Pillow Talk, over on ao3. I didn't do this this year because I just didn't feel inspired. I don't feel "done" with writing Undertale fanficion, not by a long shot, but I don't want to force it out if I don't feel inspired. Writing is hard, I know that from experience, but trying to write when I'm just not in the mood is even worse. I still have ideas and prompts for BSaPT that I've had for years, but I just don't know how to go about executing. (I can promise you, though, once I know how to get the story started, the rest comes easily, so it's just the problem of getting over the initial hump)

So! 4 out of 9 of my serious goals were met this year! That's!!! not a good ratio. I had 4 additional casual goals, and just re-reading them I know I only did 2 of those four, those being "learn to code" and research every D.O.N.G. collected by Vsauce in the past. The reason I did both of these things WAS to work on my Neocities website that I made in 2023, and haven't touched since. I've been doing coding lessons on Sololearn and Mimo coding, (though I had to stop the latter after a couple months when I ran out of free lessons to do). It's been fun brushing up on my old html skills, and learning python for gaming reasons as well. I've made a couple of my goals for next year related to my neocities website, so let's see if I actually put those coding lessons to work!

So! in total, over all, 13 goals were made and six were met! That's about 50 percent, but that's usually what my record tracks to compared to past years! Now on to next year!

My Goals for 2025 are;

Read 12 new books (one a month)

Work on neocities website. (add at least 4 new pages; my song comics, my fan fics, my original writing, fun links)

Get to 400 pages on gs before Dec. 31st (CASUAL GOAL)

Write one fan fiction for one fandom that isn't undertale (Wandersong, fma, wof, the crackfic)

Watch 4 new anime (dungeon mesh, mha, hunter x hunter, mob psycho)

Start and stick to an abs and back exercise routine (CASUAL GOAL)

Get all of Featherlight up online (royal road?)

Do something for undertale's 10th anniversary

Play at least 4 video games in my steam library that I haven't touched before.

Start experimenting with Ren'Py and Godot (CASUAL GOAL)

Post one chapter of clemency

Don't really have any casual ones this year. I guess 3, 6, and 10 can be considered casual. I just hope I find the time to actually do most of these. I feel if I didn't have to work in order to maintain my right to exist, I would be reaching my goals much easier. But that's capitalism for ya, baby.

Now onto my thoughts that I had over the last year! I am mostly going to copy/paste these from discord as well, minus the ones that are waaaay too personal, so please pardon any spelling errors. Most of these are stream of conscious writings.

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January 7th. New schedule at work has everyone on reduced hours as we enter the off season. I got to leave at 1pm. After going home and changing, I went back out to academy to buy new work and house shoes. It was CROWDED at the store. I saw these obnoxious purple nike shoes, and wanted to buy them so bad, but they didnt have them in my size. Bought some stupid bright ass white and blue shoes instead. I tried wishing Allyson happy birthday on the 1st, but my text sidnt go through. I wonder if she blocked my number. I wonder if she's doing okay..

January 10th. 1/3rd of the month is over already. On January 8th, I had to do a closing shift. It is so weird staying until 7pm and driving home in the dark. Why did it feel like people were more likely to tailgate me on the highway after 7pm? Should have worked on my comic or novel while at work, but was a little to anxious with the time change. I need to build a big buffer of comic pages in order to get to 312 by June 18th. I want to do so much creative stuff, like write fan fiction and animate and crochet, and I actually have the time now to I, but I'm getting paralyzed by choice.

I watched "undertale under event" late last year and I'm kind of curious if I can join for this year 👉👈 wish I knew about this showcasing project sooner. It's finally getting cold! The weather is below freezing most mornings, then warms up during the day. I hope it doesnt rain ice or snow or I will be screwed because my car cant handle that weather. (Fun Fact, I completely forgot to apply for Undertale Event 2024, and absolutely missed it this year)

Been playing horizon forbidden west some more. Still just grinding for weapon and outfit upgrades. I looked it up, and there are 2 "comic days" each year, 24- hour comic day on the first Saturday in October, and comics day on February 1st. Ive always wanted to participate, but never knew the right date. Feb 1st is a Thursday this year, so I will likely be at work, but I want to do an all-day art stream on weds the 31st instead, and make it public for everyone just because I can.

January 19th, Been having a blast looking into old d.o.n.g. sites. A good half of them are defunct or broken due to the discontinuation of flash, but for the ones that still work- it is the old weird internet that I missed having as a kid. I need to learn to code so I can build a neocities website. Ive been doing Mimo daily for a month now. A lot of the lessons are locked behind a paywall, though. Might try to switch to sololearn once I finish all the free stuff I can access. Ive also been doing a free ASL app daily too. The app needs more work, but for what I can access for free, its pretty decent.

January 30th, I cant believe January isnt even over yet. One more day and then we're finally on to a new month. The one week of texas winter has passed. I highly doubt it will get below freezing again. Most days lately have been pretty nice. Low 40s in the morning, high 60s by the afternoon. I had another/first anxiety attack of the year! Work related like the last two. I was worried I'd be forced to go to a pet cpr class that I was signed up for without being asked. Been reeeeaaaally into learning ren'py and godot tutorials lately. It's exciting to learn code and how to program. I'm still chipping away at all the free lessons on mimo, but have started doing sololearn along side it. (Might just zero in on python because of ren'py and for it, and maybe c#). Still slowly going through dongs. Successfully clicked through 200 out of 1500. Been REALLY back into neopets as well because unconverted pet art was re-introduced to neopets. I am ashamed to say I spent over 150 actual real life dollars on the websites in order to buy slots and style kits. I'm finally transferring all my old pets onto 2 or 3 accounts instead of the 10 I rotated on as a child across my two emails(dont tell neo, I’m abiding by the rules now). Having fun pound surfing on lost and pound for old pets and cool names. Might get rid of some poorly named pets ive had for years, like the bori adopted back in... 2006? It's been so long and he was never a favorite because of his name. (I plan to straight-up "redo" him, by making a better-named pet his identical match, lol.) I lost my old pet stories on their pet pages when I transferred them over.

I plan to do an all-day comic stream tomorrow, so I need to go to bed early. I also need to sketch/scan some more pages.. Hope a few people stop by. I also want to make an April fool's post this year, but dont know if I'll have the time (or if it will line up with the comic's pacing for what I want to do.) I went to walmart and bought more seeds and dirt again. I started planting my seeds last week, extra early this year because im scared the extreme heat of the later months will kill them all again. But the temperature is perfect right now. I'm growing peas, carrots, asparagus, and even watermelon. Im also growing cat grass and a few different types of flowers. I hope my flowers have better luck this year than last.

March 7th, Been trying to be more conscientious of how happy i am. If things bother or upset me, i try to change them. If I'm bored or anxious I find activities to do to cheer me up. One of the things ive been doing this year was looking through old vsauce dongs. I found a website that does multiplayer puzzles and I've become hooked. The reason I started looking at dongs was to build a list for a personal website that harkened back to the early 90s internet days. I miss how weird the internet was back then. A lot of the old dongs are defunct, but a good handful still work. Sadly, a lot of them are not that interesting. Speaking of my personal website, i need to get back to it. I haven't touched it in a year, but I have been trying to teach myself code in order to improve it. Ive been using mimo and sololearn to practice coding, but only the free stuff they offer. I'm almost out of mimo courses, and the sololearn classes dont really have you practicing the code you're actually learning, so the lessons dont really stick. Ive also been looking into games that teach you how to code as you play. At work on my work phone ive been watching a lot of youtube videos that talk about video game development. I want to learn and do so much but all at once. It's almost paralyzing.

I started packing my suitcase for my camping trip next month. My trunk is already full of sleeping bags, the tent and a chair. I need to finalize my menu and shop for food. I'm excited and nervous, mostly about driving up there on my own. Pulling my suitcase out made me realize I really need to clean out my closet and organize my room in general. I have so many papers just strewn in my desk and so many knick-knacks crammed in my closet. I kinda want to itemize everything. Random memory- I got real obsessed with an old Wendy's ad campaign called "it's good to be square". Those commercials were so funny to me. Never made me want to eat at Wendy's though. I voted on super Tuesday. I wish voting wad mandatory and punishable by fine. I'm scared for this November, but I will vote for sure. Been slightly re-obsessed with neopets ever since they rereleased unconverteds. Bought neocash to buy extra pet slots and moved all my side pets over. Now I'm training them up just because I can. I gotta look into neocash item trading. There's a couple of things I want that are retired now..

In a fit of motivation, I edited the second chapter of featherlight yesterday. It took me hours, and im still not done, but it flows better than it's first draft. Hope I can stay motivated to edit the rest. I keep daydreaming of putting copies of my book in little free libraries that they have around neighborhood parks and such. Still debating if I want to publish my book to be free or to be bought and sold.. It should be nice to make a living off of my writing, but I doubt I ever will.

March 13, I went to half price books for the first time in a couple of years. The building hasn't changed at all, but I think they did away with plastic bags. I found the 3 gryphon books by Mercedes lackey and bought them, as well as joust, the dragon book she wrote, and two CDs, one being a Jesse cook CD. I recently bought a CD/dvd player to hook up to my laptop, but I wonder if I can find just my basic CD player that you use with headphones. I hate how many things are "wireless" and use usb and have rechargeable batteries. I want good ol' devices that need double As. Any way, it was healing to be in a h.p.b. I also went to 3 thrift stores to look for work pants. Goodwill and the salvation army sucked, but thrift city is always there for me. I found 5 pairs of men's shorts that fit me great and all of them have nice deep pockets! Hopefully I wont have to go shopping for work clothes again for a while.

March 21, Nani's gotcha day was on the 18th! Ive had her for a full 4years now~ I watched two movies on Netflix yesterday; puss in boots and the last wish, and the Mitchell's vs the machines. The puss movie was very fast pace, but had very tight writing. It was great, despite me being spoiled on it for well over a year and knowing every beat that was going to happen. (I do NOT like the new dreamworks opening though) the mitchells vs the machine movie was surprisingly funny! But also so. Damn. LONG. It was also a good soul cleanse, being so sincere and genuine despite the irony poisoned world we live in right now. I want more movies with this kind of heart. For the first time since January, ive noticed I haven't been as happy or content as I want to be. Boredom sneaks up on me and periods of anxiety are sneaking into my thoughts. For example- I've been a lot more strict with my "watch later" list on YouTube. It used to be so long. I'm slowly cutting it down, but ive noticed that not many of the videos make me happy, nor do I remember much of what I watched. I find that I mostly just watch/play youtube videos for background noise. Im not really multitasking like I thought. Now, as soon as I realize I'm not retaining what im watching or the moment I lose interest, I click a way. I don't want to waste my time on things I don't care about anymore. Been really interested in going back to my fox game. Maybe I will this year.

March 31, Watched nimona finally. Very good story! Sometimes the lighting of the animation was distractingly flat, but the narrative was so strong you hardly pay attention to it. (Unlike in Wish, where the story was so unengaging that you DO notice all the tiny flaws.) Nimona's character actually kinda bothered me at first. I get that she's headstrong and boisterous, but even I think she'd want to keep a low profile and STOP TRYING TO MAKE BALLISTER LOOK BAD. If she KNOWS people are likely to jump to conclusions, why validate those fears around her to begin with? WHY would she especially do this to blackheart when she knows he's trying to prove his innocence? I wish this aspect of prejudice had been explored more in the movie. Oh, and also, am I really supposed to believe that in A THOUSAND YEARS ABSOLUTELY NO ONE ELSE HAS QUESTIONED WHAT IS OUTSIDE THE WALL OR WHY ONLY THE UPPERCLASS GET TO BE KNIGHTS?? I could suspend my disbelief juuust enough to enjoy the movie, but these thoughts WERE on the back of my mind. Maybe I'm too aware of social inequality today to not have these ideas in mind when watching a queer coded film like this. I read the nimona comic in full the day after I watched the movie. It's.... Different. Not bad, but different. You can clearly see where the movie got inspiration and direct homages. I do think the movie is more coherent, and the action and gesture... Readability? Intensity? Is sorely lacking in the comic. All poses are rather flat and generic. Not a lot of interesting angles or poses. (Granted, the comic was updated twice a week for 3 years straight so I understand the artist had to streamline the process as much as possible to keep up such a pace.)

Watched another movie on Netflix called latte and the waterstone. Its... Passable. Okay story, bad character design (especially for the squirrel) weak dialogue, nice music. I reeeeaaallllly hated how tjum the squirrel would hiccup whenever he was nervous. The tick is never addressed, but his hiccuping is a minor plot point so you'd think they'd at least put a little light on it? Based of a book of the same name, I think this film was originally German? The lip sync seemed weak near the end.

April 1st dream; got fucking pranked by my own subconscious. I dreamed my neopets account got terminated right after I managed to get all my pets unconverted again. Not because I broke any rules, but because someone didnt like the original stories I wrote for my pet's backstories when I was 13. They said the stories were all too problematic, and so TNT just deleted my account. Not even froze it. Just erased it from existence.

April 7 Been trying to be more mindful of myself and my emotions. For the most part, ive been happy and content, but last night I suddenly got very anxious for frivolous reasons. Found out that kique N, creator of a webcomic I hate called asmundr and home, is sooo insecure and creepy, that he would watch videos critiquing him, then investigate everyone in who talked about his work in the COMMENTS of those videos and block them on as many sites as he could find. My fan art deviant art account is blocked by him (but not my personal because he doesnt know it, lol) and I'm even blocked by him on PATREON. How delusional can he be? I learned his longtime girlfriend broke up with him because she finally caught wise to how insane he is. Im not too torn up about it because I just know I'm one of COUNTLESS people he's blocked, so it's nothing personal, but it is kinda unnerving how far he'll dig to find you on the internet.

April 8th. Took 4 days off from work to see the eclipse and go camping. It was cloudy today, and I couldn't see a goddamn thing. Caught glimpses of the sun becoming a crescent through the clouds but saw nothing when we went into totality. I could hear all the kids at the nearby elementary school screaming when it went dark. I took Nani outside for her to experience, but she did not care at all. It didnt get as dark as I thought it would. Probably as dark as thunderstorm weather.

April 9th. I cleaned up my room, packed the ice chest, and drove 100 miles out to Fredericksburg to go camping. The drive there was nice and uneventful. I mostly followed behind a FedEx truck for all of i10. Fedex ground double length truck #56132... You were my friend on that open road and I will miss you... Got to enchanted rock pretty much bang at 2. Quite the line for camping check ins at that time! I was the first in my camping area to arrive. I parked next to a truck whose license plate said freeedom with 3 'e's. I also saw a license plate that said chiken with no second 'c'. I set up my tent (incorrectly, I later learned) and unloaded all my stuff. There were 3 other families in the same camping area as me. By the time I finished setting up, it was already 4pm. It was hot and I didnt want to climb the rock that day, so instead I hiked some of the short trails around the front of the rock. I was already drained by, like, 6;30 and turned in early for the night. That night I had a ham and cheese sandwich for dinner. It thunderstormed at 7pm and the wind was SO. BAD. That night, I thought the rain cover was going to be ripped away. I kept waking up every hour or so because of the wind. Around 12, it stopped long enough for me to run to the bathroom to pee. I heard coyotes howling around 2-3am.

April10th. I woke up early, but I didnt want to get up too early compared to everyone else. I told myself to rest, relax and take my time. Other early hikers were already headed to the rock. I should have gone too to see the sunrise. It was windy in the morning. All I ate for breakfast was a banana and some oranges (and a chewy bar, I think. Cant remember now). I did leave my campsite by 7:30 and started hiking the rock by 7:40, because I distinctly remember getting a text message at 7:50 from my mom. I learned then that the only way I could get cell service at enchanted rock was if I was at 1000ft or higher above sea level for my phone's internet/Wi-Fi to function. I then quickly took the opportunity to check all my websites, duolingo, neopets, tumblr, etc, to keep any streaks I had going. My sign language app worked regardless of if I had Wi-Fi or not, which leads me to believe it's not as frequently updated/maintained as I would have believed. I made it to the top of the mountain by 8:20 and it was fookin' WIMDY up there. I couldn't hear anything by wind. When though the sun was blazing, the wind made it like 20 degrees colder. It felt like I was being fucking scratched! I wanted to climb little rock next, but I was too cold, so I went back down to get a wind breaker and ear muffs.

I rested for an hour before going back out around 10. This time I blazed my own trail, climbing up the fallen uneven boulders like an idiot. I made it to the top of little rock, which is much prettier than enchanted rock, I must say, and wondered around for an hour. There was a third rock to the west of little rock I wanted to climb, but it was getting close to lunch, so I scrambled down little rock, again striking my own path, and stumbled out through someone else's camping site before getting back to my own. The wind was so violent I couldn't start a fire. I ate a lunch of a peanut butter and banana sandwich with Pringles on the side. I tried to read and write, but the wind was too distracting And shaking my tent. I tried to sunbathe and tan in my tent, but it was too cloudy. I tried to nap, but it was too noisy. Instead, I went on an interpretive trail, found a spot of Wi-Fi, downloaded a book to read off line and checked the weather. The wind was supposed to stop by 7pm. The longest hiking trail at enchanted rock took 3 hours to complete. I rested in my tent until 3, then went out on the loop trail to kill time away from the noise of my own tent. The loop trail was gorgeous! Prettiest sights and landscapes by far. I climbed some weird rocks and ripped my pants sliding down one. Thankfully I still had my windbreaker, so I did the tried and true middle school trick of tying your sweater/jacket around your waist, and thus my ass was covered and noone could see my underwear!

The trail was so quiet and lonely, I only encountered 2 other groups going the other direction. At one point I heard a family catching up to me from behind, so whenever the trail sloped down hill, I jogged to keep distance, despite aching feet. Once I passed the buzzards roost camping site, I lost track of the trail and walked in the river bed. I managed to spot two other hikers on a cliff a bit above me and scrambled out of the river bed and found the path again. It was so narrow and rocky. The last third of loop trail isn't worth it imo. If you take loop trail in a clock-wise path like I did, turn and follow the baseline trail at the 2/3rds mark. Far prettier and easier to keep track of. Anyway, it was about 5:30 and still broad daylight when I heard a pack of coyotes howling from around turkey peak. I do not know if turkey peak or buzzards roost are off limits to climbing, since it has no dedicated paths. I was curious about climbing them, but if coyotes live there, then I think I won't. I made it back to mt campsite by 6, the wind had died down enough for me to light my propane stove. I grilled 2 hotdogs and they were the best thing I'd eaten all day. I took a full dose of sleep aid that night and was out by 9 thanks to physical exhaustion. I did take a shower around 730, but it was just a glorified whore bath with a scrubby because I forgot to bring soap. I read the offline book i'd downloaded for about an hour before passing out. If there was any wind or coyotes that night, i didnt hear them. (Oh, I did try to stargaze Wednesday night, but it was too cloudy. I saw a couple Tuesday night, but was too tried to hike out to a good spot, plus it rained.)

April 11th. I woke up early again today, but forced myself to stay in my tent until I could hear other campers waking up. I finally had to get up around 6:30 because I really needed to pee. I ate a quick breakfast of grilled sausage patties and the rest of my oranges (mostly for the juice) then began to roll up my sleeping bags and pack my suitcase and car. It seemed that 2 of the 3 other families also only planned a camp trip of 2.5 days and 2 nights, because they began packing up too. The sight of them packing kind of... Upset me? And it makes me wonder if I have abandonment issues that I don't know about. I don't like the idea of people leaving before me. Leaving me behind. I got all my belongings fully packed away by 8am, and my campsite was cleared before anyone else, but I decided to hike one more trail before I left (mostly to kill time so I could then by some souvenirs from the gift shop that opened at 8:30).

I hiked the turkey pass/baseline/echo canyon trails. When I got up high enough (around 9:30) I told my mom I was heading out soon, letting her know I'd be home by 1pm. I got lost on the trail change from pass to base, and ended up hiking an extra .6 miles. I saw some rock climbers/repellers on the back of enchanted rock. The saddle area between enchanted rock and little rock was like out of a fantasy (and the only place I saw any graffiti my entire time there). I got back by 11:30, bought some art by ira Kennedy that really inspired me to try a dot style like his, bought some enamel pins and an eclipse magnet to commemorate the trip, even though I didn't get to see the eclipse there myself. (Apparently they didn't have much better luck that day either. It was mostly cloudy during the critical 2 minutes totality happened). It was fun camping by myself, and I think 2 half days, 1 full day and 2 nights was the perfect length. I'd like to go again, with friends to show them the trails, or by myself to climb the more dangerous peaks and that third flat one I skipped. Id also like to go again to really try star gazing.

Just being at enchanted rock was really... Mentally cleansing. I didn't talk to anyone, not even out loud to myself. I didn't think once about work (though I did think about Nani because I missed her). I saw a lot of cool plants, reptiles and birds, but no mammals. I did hear the coyotes howl the morning I left, though. I got sunburned on my face. Most of the other camper's cars were gone by the time I finished my last hike, which still made me feel weird because they left before me, but after I got my prizes from the gift shop, I went straight to my car and left too. (I was really nervous about the drive home because my gps didnt work inside of enchanted rock, and I had to drive about 7 miles off of memory before I got a signal).

Camping at enchanted rock felt surreally long and surprisingly short at the same time. I had no schedule or itinerary. All I did was wonder and explore for roughly 48 hours while there. By the time I left, the eclipse felt like it had been a month ago. The drive back felt shorter than the drive there. Once I got to 1604, I knew my way home. Arriving home in the mid afternoon was weird too. I unloaded my car as fast as I could because I knew I'd be too tired to do it later, but p much as soon as I stepped inside I turned on my computer, snuggled my cat for an hour, and took a full shower to get truly clean before bringing most of my luggage in from the porch. I watched 2 nature documentaries on pbs to relive the wilderness I just returned from. I caught up on 2 days worth of tumblr posts I'd missed and learned oj Simpson died. I slept great last night though my body is still sore from all the exercise I did in 2 days. (I also slept like a rock Wednesday night, but I think that was mostly in part to the sleep aid)

April 14, Youtube is being a shithead and "updated" their UI. I must've been a "lucky" random beta tester, because when I did a Google search on an extension to undo it, nothing came up. (That, or YouTube's parent company, which IS Google, is suppressing results). I remembered the next day that I have tampermonkey, and when I did a script search on greasyfork, I found quite a few userscripts that could undo the change (and several had spikes in "recent downloads" over the last w days, lol).Also discovered a completely random deviantart user who has me blocked for some reason. Probably because they're overtly Christian and I dared to portray their religion in a negative light in my undertale comic. Doesn’t bother me none. Lord knows I’ve blocked completely nice people just because I didn’t want to see their art pop up in the groups we both submit to. Speaking of deviantart, they recently "updated" all the groups on da, and now submitting stuff to them is waaay more complicated than it was before with so many extra steps and clicking. I think once I'm done putting my undertale comic up there, I'll stop using tje site for good. Too bad there arent very many other good art community websites out there. I should really get back into making my own neocities site…

April 20, It's not even been a week since I last wrote in my monthly journal but I feel as if so much has happened. Amber, one of our new hires, silently quit only after being here a week. I hope she found something better.. Ive been wanting to get back into writing my gryphon book, especially after finishing the extremely underwhelming "griffin quest" duology. I could write something so much better. I HAVE written better than torro's has. I'm getting close to the half way mark of my fan comic. I wish I had endless energy to work on that too, so I could build a buffer (or just make so many pages that I'd be done already). It takes up so much of my free time, Idk if I ever want to tell stories in comic format ever again this way. (I half wanted to translate Featherlight into comic, but the story just may be too damn long if this is how long it takes me to make a fan comic. I still may do it for other short story projects like dragonfruit or dogs cant see color) Steadily still working my way through dongs. I found so many good ones, but at least a good half are dead. Im still doing sololearn everyday, but I may quit that soon. I still want to learn coding for my neocities site, but sololearn isnt helping me as much as I thought it would.

Aurgh! I want to write! I want to code! I want to draw! I want to create!

Deviantart is still getting worse and worse. Ive seriously been considering looking into art community alternatives like Sheezy art, inkblot, and artfol. I wont completely jump ship yet, but after my fan comic is done, I don't think I'll post to da anymore..

May 8th, 2024. I beat horizon forbidden west today! The ending was shorter than I thought it would be. Easier, too. I think I had a harder time with zero dawn's final battle, honestly. Maybe this felt easier because I spent well over 100 hours just grinding upgrade items for better gear. I was already maxed out on level and most abilities by the end, but honestly I could have finished this game 2 months ago if I wanted. I feel like tilda's heel turn was kinda forced. I wish she'd stayed a good guy. Alva is my favorite, but I do love ketallo and erand as well. Sad (pissed) that varl had to die. And while I'm curious about horizon 3, idk if I'll ever play it. It sure isnt coming to ps4, I know that. (I honestly thought we were gonna fight nemesis at the end of this game. I was shocked when it was a to-be-continued)

Yesterday I finished 6 comic pages. I was up till almost 1am. I want to hit 312 by june 18th. I still need to make 8 more. (9, if i want patreon to stay ahead). I am exhausted already just thinking about it. I want to write and read more.

Scared for the world, this year's election, war over seas in countries I dont live in. Why do I feel like we are progressing backwards. I dont watch the news and I hate it when mom turns it on every day. It's too sad and stressful.

I stopped doing my daily sign language app after I forgot a day sooo close to a 100 day streak. I was just doing basic lessons over and over anyway. Might look for a new asl app. Might not.

So tired of the repetitiveness of work. We've got a lot of new hires. I wish we could all have 4 day work weeks. I need a break, though. The general air of unease is slowly coming back to me, like something is wrong or something bad will happen to me. I try to do my best, but I'm scared I messed something up without knowing, and no one will tell me because they want to use it against me in the future in order to fire me. All the more reason to get back into writing, create a well-selling novel and have no fear of losing my job because I will live off my book sales instead. Daydreaming is fun, but not the best coping mechanism..

Made banana cookies today! Came out great! They're more like mini banana bread bites if I'm being honest, but I just wanted to use up this one over ripe banana we had before it rotted.

Been rewatching a lot of old caleb joseph videos recently. I feel like I had stopped doing that for a while. He hasnt been active on patreon or any social media for almost 3 months now. His twitter was hacked, but recovered. Hope he's doing alright.

May 21st. I am sick with a fever. My body aches all over and I cannot get comfortable to sleep no matter what position I try. I'm hot and sweaty. My throat is scratched raw. A bug has been going around at work, and I caught it. I went to target for the first time in... I think since January? I remember going to buy flower seeds. They completely reorganized the interior. I went to target to find a nightlight because the one in my bathroom finally died. None of the night lights they sold were cute or fun, though. I ordered one from Amazon instead.

My fever brain has been obsessed with chillchuck and senshi from dungeon meshi, when though I have not watched a single episode or read the manga. I don't know why, but that's all I could think about last night as I tossed and turned with my body on fire.

June 16, Has it really only been 10 days since I last put in a journal entry? It feels so much longer than that. It dawned on me this morning that I haven't been playing a lot of my steam games recently. Granted I just spent months grinding and completing horizon forbidden west, but I haven't touched carto in months. I still need to catch back up on snakebird. I still want to play the talos principle 2, but still havent bought it. I have so many steam games I own but never played... I should fix that, but i feel I dedicate so much of my free time to my comic/fan project instead. Dont get me wrong, its fun to create stuff, but I wonder if I'm ever gonna have enough time to do everything I want, recreational or creational. I slept really hard last night, which is good because the night before I only slept, like, 4 hours. Ive been going to bed early, which is good because I get more sleep and feel more rested, but it feels like I'm losing what little free time I have. I dont want to wait until my weekend to do everything I want to do. I want to be able to do things I like/want to do even on days I work. I dont mind if I have to do them before or after, but I just need the time and energy. (Aka, work days are too long. 8 hour days should be made illegal in favor of 4 hour shifts to allow me to have time and energy for my own hobbies and needs) I hope one day my creative projects are profitable/sustainable enough so I dont have to work full time.. I daydream about it often, but doubt ill ever get there..

Also just realized I havent looked at any d.o.n.g.s in a few weeks as well. Need to get back to that, and website coding, and game dev education, and learning how to do every hobby under the sun. Maggie recently pit up a short story on her writing website. I think it was supposed to be a horror story, but I gotta be honest. Nothing maggie has ever written has ever scared me. (Maggie, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry. Please don’t be mad) It's made me laugh with how ridiculous it is, but never ever creeped me out or unnerved me. Its probably a "me" thing. I remember not finding hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy funny out side of one suicide joke which got a snort out of me, nor did I find Guards! Guards! Funny either, and have never had the urdge to pick up another terry pratchet book because of it. I think it has something to do with the way I read and my internal voice I have in my head. I have a feeling if a snarky British person read guards guards to me with the correct inflection on all the right words, the humor would have hit better. I think I'm just too serious a reader. Then again, I remember reading Marley and me when I was younger and absolutely laughing out loud at that book. I think that author's writing style was more my taste and allowed the humor to resonate with me more. Ive been on a real kick editing Featherlight. So much so that I almost dont want to draw a comic page this week. I suck at multitasking. Its hard for me to put one project down and start another if I'm really into it. I just wanna keep going and see how much I can accomplish and finish. Ghost switch's 6th birthday is on Tuesday. Im about half way done with the story. I'm already trying to plan what I will do next after it's completed, especially patreon-wise. I think ill take a break, work on some fan fics, then do some short story comics, like dogs cant see color, or dragon fruit. I kinda had half an idea to make a comic version of Featherlight, but just seeing how long ghost switch is going to take? (12 years of my life!) I dont think I will.. Or, at least not all of it. Maybe ill illustrate a chapter or two to entice people to read the book instead?

I remember at the beginning of the year I told myself to monitor my happiness. I think I've been slipping a but since may. Ive been more neutral, but no anxiety/panic attacks yet this year. I think work is really just what's been bringing me down. All these new changes and new routines that is NOT making our jobs more streamlined or efficient. They keep piling on new expectations without realizing were already maxed out. I wish my managers would work beside us just to see how much they are asking of us. At least the rest of the staff are pretty strong coworkers. That is at least one thing for me to be grateful for during these fucking hot summer days. I miss my friends. I need more friends. But it's too hot to go anywhere or do anything. I want to go swimming. Maybe I will this summer. I think the school district's natatorium is open to the public in summer. Today is father's day. I dont think I'll call my dad. I have nothing to say. It's also been almost 1 year since my grandfather died. Two nights ago, Milton, my neighbor and Alice's husband, passed away from Alzheimers. I dont know how to feel about this. I dont like alice, but Milton was always pretty nice.

Yesterday I saw a humming bird! Sometimes I fear they'll go extinct in texas due to their high need for nectar, but all the flowers dying from the stupid heat.

June 18, Had a dream last night related to work and prepping food bowls. One bowl was custom made, and called "the piñata pancake" that was as follows; 4 waffles heated up in the toaster. Use a cookie cutter to cut a whole in the center of three of the waffles. 'Glue' the three waffles together with syrup and cool whip. Fill the hole in the three waffles with a candy of your choice (in my dream it was m&ms) glue the last waffle on top with more syrup and cool whip. Add sprinkles if desired and serve.

This recipe was for a dog breakfast.

June 30, Made a financially unwise decision yesterday and spent 50$ on 7 video games from steam. Don't know when ill have the time, energy or desire to play them, though. Curse the steam summer sale.

Raven, one of our newer hires at work, got fired yesterday for falling asleep and lying about it. Honestly, she will not be missed.

It's been a while since I listened to an audio book. I did listen to 12 this year, and I want to save more for next year, but I enjoy listening to stories on my commute to and from work. (Better than drama videos anyway.) Listening to overly negative videos is kinda starting to make me feel... Sick in a way? I'm constantly asking myself now "do you REALLY want to listen to this even though you know it will make you upset?" Sometimes it's hard to say no, but I'm getting better.

Played flightrising for the first time in over 2ish years for the light flight holiday event. (I honestly just wanted the familiar. They're doing gryphons this year~)

I always have so many little things I need to do on my weekends, but then I just don't do them when the time comes. Like cleaning my book shelves or buying new socks. I don't want to go anywhere. I don't want to do anything. All these small chores are starting to pile up. I have Thursday the 11th off, but, like, I think I need a whole week's vacation to stay sane now.

Been thinking a lot of writing/drawing more short stories/comics. Ever since ghost switch turned 6 and we hit the halfway mark. It's still gonna take me another half decade to finish gs at least, but I'm already trying to plan for what I'll do after, if I'll do anything after. I always premeditate this stuff for years in advance, it seems. I think for the first time since I started drawing the comic 6 years ago, I'm finally getting tired of it and really want to do something else. (This inst entirely true. I just have to draw action/fighting poses next week which I'm not looking forward to. I usually feel better once I draw them and get it over with. I also miss having a buffer. Getting out 3 pages a week felt great and rewarding with all the constant feedback, but now back to a page a week feels very slow) I keep wanting to try to make another buffer, or at least plan/block out a couple pages in advance, but when ever I sit down to draw, I just want to nap instead.

July 16, Has it only been two weeks since I last updated this? I feel like so much has happened since then. I kept meaning to update sooner, but kept forgetting. The 4th of July came and went. It got a bit busy at work, but nothing unmanageable. Bri got appendicitis and had to have surgery. She was out for a week, but is back now. Ashton quit, but I feel like it was under duress, Austin was "on leave", but ally crossed her name off the contact list as well as her position, do I dont think she's coming back, and Alex wad fired for reasons I dont know and dont care about. All of our current staff is really on top of things and pretty good at communicating. I really like our core group of people at work right now~ I took the 11th off, and boy did I need it. I slept, like, 14 hours on Wednesday the tenth. I also got five comic pages done that week! It's a tiny buffer, but a needed one. I wanted to make more pages and get even further ahead, but I am going to see my friends tomorrow for the first time in about 9 months, do more comic pages will have to wait until next week. I want to buy a new mattress. I think I might have a uti. Not sure if that's causing me back pain or if it's bad bed springs. Caleb Joseph uploaded a patron video for the first time since... March? He sadly broke the news that his dog wally had unexpectedly passed in mid april. He wasn't even 6 years old yet. I no doubt blame the Amish breeders wally came from. (I gave my condolences, but did not say anything about bad breeders) now I've been researching all he old videos with wally in them since I now now we won't see him again. The last time he showed up in a video was the shaggy d.a., and he was barely over 2.that was 4 years ago.

August 2, Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race and it is likely that kamila harris will be the next democratic nominee. I was really worried at first that people's hatred for women and poc would hurt her chances, but the republican party has been shooting itself in the feet a lot recently, so I'm feeling more hopeful. Oh yeah, there was an assassination attempt on donald trump about 2 weeks back. The shooter was a white republican registered man. He missed, but good try. It's been raining a lot this July. It's certainly helped keep the heat down. I want to do more puzzles before this summer ends. So far we only did one. I learned how to download an emulator, and ive been playing a looooot of pokemon silver. Its been so nostalgic~

Mom told me she's been dating a guy for about a year now. I kinda figured since she's been constantly leaving the house to spend time with "a friend". I don't like that she's been hiding it, but this is her house and she's an adult so it's not really my business. It does make me want to move out faster, though. When will the housing market crash... I want to buy a house with no hoa so I can paint it purple. That is my current life goal.

July went on foreveeerrrrr. Artfight is over. I cant believe it's august. I need to start working on a song comic for undertale's ninth birthday. Ive been slowly editing my griffin book again, but I need to do some major overhauls for some sections and massive rewrites. I bult a small buffer of comic pages for ghost switch, but that's almost used up, so I gotta draw more of that too.

The Olympics are happening. Funny I forget that that's going on. I dont think we had one in 2020.

August 11, Two Saturdays ago it rained in the early morning and I saw a rainbow at work. I couldn't remember the last time I saw a rainbow irl and that made me kind of sad. The rising sun through the falling rain was quite beautiful. Liquid falling gold. I wish I could use the phrase golden showers but I cant because of kink reasons. Not to yuck someone's yum, but the piss kink community really stole such a nice descriptive phrase from us writers with that one.

August 17, Today I learned that the version of Mad World who I thought was written by Gary Jules was actually a cover of a tears for fears song. I do not know how to feel about this. It was disorienting and upsetting a bit. I wanted to deny it so hard. The original song is more "new wave" and waaay too up beat for my liking. I like Jule's version better.

I looked at pictures of lemurs today and was filled with joy.

August 25, Ordered a new mattress for myself on Friday. I felt that I had to for weird mental reasons. I told my mom and she gave me a disappointed look, saying "paqui says those mattresses aren't good".

Well, paqui isn't my friend. And even if she thinks its a bad idea, why can't she just try to be happy for whatever decisions I make? Speaking of mom, she's been spending so much time with her new boyfriend al. It makes me upset. I feel like she's rarely ever home anymore. It's really fucking up how we cook/eat dinner. I hope she doesn't plan to move in with him, or him to here. Makes me want to move out more and not tell her I'm doing it. She spent a lot of nights at his house.

September 3rd, 2024. Super busy day today. The helix mattress I ordered arrived on Sunday, but no one was home when FedEx put it on my porch. I got the alert at 11:51pm. I told my manager I had an expensive package waiting at home for me, so on my lunch break I sped home (avoiding no less than 2 cop cars) hauled the box in my house as soon as I pulled up, kissed Nani on the head, then immediately turned around and drove right back to work. 80 minute round trip. 4 gallons of gas burned that day. Today I was finally able to set up my mattress. I woke up at 7, pulled my old mattress off, then put my new mattress on and let it expand for 2 hours while I then went to the dentist. It has been POURING all day. As soon as I got on the road, all through out my dentist visit. After the dentist I went to the vet to buy more cat food for Nani. Visibility was so low even for those 5ish miles. After the vet I went to petsmart. The drive down down one street took nearly 30 minutes because the roads were so flooded. I wanted to get a heated cat bed for Nani since my heat pad broke, but they didnt sell any. Neither did target or Wal-Mart. I went to the chiropractor but the guy who adjusted me wasnt very good at it :\ my neck didnt crack at all. The rain lessened a bit on my way home. My mattress was pretty much fully expanded by now. I washed my bed sheets and made my new bed. It's noticeably taller than my old mattress, but the old mattress is also over 10 years old. I did my laundry and ironed some patches on some warn down parts of my work pants. I still need to sew them down, too. I listened to wings of fire audio book 15. Almost done with the 3rd arc.

September 18, Been a couple weeks since I last wrote a diary entry. Let me see if I can recap the last half month. My new mattress is amazing. For the first time in months I woke up without back pain. In fact, I can actually sleep on my back now without it cramping up! Its wonderful! It is extremely firm, which some people may not like. Heck, even I found it a little weird at first, but knowing how much better my back feels in the morning, you grow to like it really quick. I should start exercising more. Work has been fine. Same old grind. Still pretty slow. I have a 3 day weekend this week just because. I have to work my least favorite area on Friday, though, which sucks. Been having a lot of spiraling negative thoughts lately. Not sure if I should specify which things I keep remembering, or dont list them to help me forget them. Old middle school memories and family conflicts that never properly got resolved. I can't help but fall back to them when I'm doing mindless cleaning at work, usually in the morning. I need to try and think of better things. Maybe try distracting myself with story ideas I need to work on. That might help. I know at the beginning of the year I said I wanted to monitor my happiness. I think ive forgotten about it in these past 2 months, which is why I keep returning to the past. Never got around to making a song comic for undertale’s birthday this year, but it honestly wasn’t a huge loss. We got some nice asriel/chara lore, and if I had gone through with my comic idea, it would have come across as tone deaf (it was a no mercy comic when the chara lore we got heavily implied they Went Through It ™ on the surface)

For the first time in my life, I went to a grand opening. It was for the new barnes and nobles. I went with my friends. It was exquisite! There was actually A LINE wrapping around the building when we got there right before opening! We were afraid there might be a capacity limit inside. The inside of the Barnes and noble was completely redone. It was not like any I'd ever been in before. Taller book shelves, more intimate lighting, a nice flowing floor plan that felt well connected with no one section walled off from another. Sadly, it did feel a little smaller than other BNs ive been in in the past, with smaller selections per genre, and an absolutely pitiful digital media section that was poorly organized. Still, I spent almost 200$ on new books, mostly hard covers that were reference books on animals and one fantasy book about dragons. There were a couple author signings and we saw the Arthur Reed in the fursuit. I'd like to go back soon to get more books I left behind this time. I never got a chance to ask the authors there if they were local. This new bn used to be an office max, which I think sadly went out of business and doesnt have any physical stores anymore?

We explored the bn for 3 hours before leaving, and then we went to a daiso right across the strip. I bought some Japanese snacks. Then we had a late lunch at kneaders, which I have driven past many times but never eaten at. It was really good! Then we went back to my house where maggie did palm readings for us, Bee did tarot readings for us and Nani as well. Nani was being super affectionate and attention-needy. It was so nice to see my friends after, like, 2 months. I hope we can get together again. And who knew grand openings were so much fun? I want to go to more, now~.

October 4, 'S been about 3 weeks. What's happened in that time? I finished reading 2 books I saw at barnes and noble (one I bought, the other I read online) I finished my first play through of the talos principle 2 and have started a second play through for achievement hunting. My back's been acting up again. Im waking up a little sore, but it goes away quick. I don't blame my bed. We're getting a new hire at work. Her name is kaitlyn. She has a service dog. Been prepping for nanowrimo. (Honestly im just excited to not be doing comic pages for a month). I think I'll either re-write greyscale, or do some charisk one shots. Maybe both. I feel like mom's out of the house a lot more these days with her boyfriend. I dont want to cook an entire meal if she's not going to be there to eat it fresh. On the 24th, I got a note on da from a user called fancomics-official asking me to check out their website, which was to be a hub for fan comics. It didnt impress me, so I ignored it, but then 4 days later they messaged me again asking for feedback, so I gave them a scathing review of their website and how sketchy I found it. I knew they'd delete my comment, so I took screen shots for the internet archive, and would you believe that they completely deleted their da account yesterday? Big red flag and I feel like I dodged a bullet. I'm gonna expose them more in my year end review~ I can't wait~

I finally met my mom's boyfriend today. I got to leave work 30 minutes early and found him fixing our sink. He's nice enough but I wish he was weirder. Polite but a little awkward. He drank 2 cans of beer at dinner then drove home with my mom (separate cars) but that makes me uneasy.

October 20, Another 2 weeks. I meant to update sooner, but got busy, as is always the excuse. Went to pep boys for a routine oil change and tire rotation. What originally would have been a 45 minute procedure turned into a 6 hour ordeal because they alerted to me that my shocks were bad and the ball bearings in one of my rear tires was worn down to nothing, which isnt good. I agreed to have them both replaced but none of the replacement shocks would fit my car because it's such an "old" model. Thankfully the 4th set of shocks they tried did work, but if it hadnt, they would have had to call the car manufacturers. I love obsoleetism.🙃 I did read about half of the book "illborn" while waiting. It's an interesting indie fantasy, very character driven. My favorite character is corin, followed by allana (because she's a hot mess) then the priestess, then the soldier, who I forgot the names of. I dont like reading about religious abuse and the political games go over my head, so those story lines lose me a little. While drawing page 331 of ghost switch, I remembered the song "ready steady go" by larc en ciel which was used as an fma opening. Out of nostalgia, I rewatched brotherhood and binged it in a week. I then ordered the entire dvd set, manga collection, 2 art books and 3 enamel pins. I forgot how good this show was. I'm currently trying to rewatch 2003, but it is painful in comparison. Good thing I'm not lactose intolerant, because 2003 is FULL of cheese.

November 3, I forgor today was daylight savings time. Im sitting in tje parkinglot at work an hour early. Fml.

Halloween came and went. I voted. Hopeful about the future but terrified for the worst outcome. Doing my own thing for nanowrimo. Finally gonna share the story ive been working on for the past 2 years. Hoping for feedback.

November 6. Well this is the shittiest birthday of my life to date.

November 23, Jeez, it's almost been 3 weeks since I wrote a diary entry? November has been.... Going. Not too hopeful for the next 4 years, but im going to keep living out of spite. This country just really fucking hates women, huh. Worried for online privacy and the destruction of communities both irl and online. There's a bill trying to be made into law that would tax nonprofits which is horrible in its own right, but would also target ao3. You want to donate to charity? Fuck you, they have to fork over some of your donation as taxes so we can continue to fund genocide over seas.

Not doing comics for a month has really recharged me mentally. So much so that I went ahead and made December's first comic page already, so I dont have to worry about it next week, lol. Been slowly editing my xenofiction novel. Stuck on chapter 9. Wanted to get at least to chapter 10 (50%) before the month is done. I have been able to write some new stuff, this month. My rewatch/reread of fmab really inspired me. Now I'm planning a song comic for it, which I hope to do by 2026, which would be the 25th anniversary of the manga's first printing. I'm going so far as to do some armature music editing to extend the song I want to use. Might get fancy and make it a song comic/video hybrid and add some flashy effects to the video (if I can figure out how. I need to learn how to use shot cut) Been listening to English covers of all the fma openings and endings almost every day on my drive to and from work for the past two weeks now. Kinda want to ranks them for fun. It's so nice not to worry about comic pages for a while. I kinda want to start taking 2 months off out of the year, maybe 6 months apart or something? But I know if I do that, it will take me a whole extra year to finish this comic. I really just gotta get better at making/maintaining buffers, honestly. Work has been fine. Very slow, which is unusual Right before thanksgiving. We'll probably fill up literally the day before.

My cat has been extra clingy and vocal before feeding time. Sometimes I wonder if she threw up somewhere I cant find. She's not under fed by any means. (In fact, the vet might even say she's overweight at 10 pounds) Still trying to stay happy. This month has made it more difficult though. Can't say it's entirely my own fault though

December 5, I made creamed corn on thanksgiving and it came out FANTASTIC. Tasted just like bill Miller's recipe. I might stick to making this every year instead of a new desert. Saturday was the first day I had to wear long pants to work because it finally got cold... On the last day of November. I was back to shorts on Monday, but today was wet and rainy so I'm wearing pants again.

November flew by in the blink of an eye! I can't believe the year is almost over. I lazed around on Tuesday and did errands, and I spent a lot of time online ordering gifts for myself. I'm buying 4 shirts from redbubble. Two are fma related, one is stitch from lilo and stitch, and one is a "redo" of a kingdom hearts shirt I own, but the sleeves were too tight. I'm trying to get all "essential" style shirts instead of "classic", because I find their shirts are rather.... Thin? And the sleeves too short. Hopefully essential is the style that I like. I have one other kh shirt from them that I love, and it fits just fine. I cant remember what "type" of shirt it was, but it feels great and fits great. I also ordered them all in xl because I dont think I'm ever getting skinnier.

Yesterday, wed, Dec 4, maggie came over and spent the day with me. I drew one comic page and read entries from my middle/high school journals. I laughed until I cried, it was so funny. I also finished looking through all of the vsauce d.o.n.g.s, which was a new year's resolution of mine. It's about that time I start thinking of new ones for 2025. I think I'll brainstorm some here before making an official list.

As of today, december 5th, 2024, I have successfully maintained a streak on duolingo for 10 years. (And I only practice 2 languages (and am still not fluent in either)

December 15, It's only been ten days since I last wrote here, but it feels like a month. Work is unnervingly slow right now, but will ramp up this Friday. Can't believe christmas is in 10 days. I watched all of frieren; beyond journey's end. It's... Alright. Pretty middle of the road as far as story goes. Animation is nice, but that's a given nowadays. The story doesnt do anything groundbreaking or innovative so far. Maybe the manga is better? Overall, I just dont understand why it's currently number 1 on myanimelist (as if this site is the end all, say all on anime) I might watch season 2 when it comes out next year, but I'll probably explore other anime first.

I wrote 1.5k words of smut in 4 hours last night since I was drugged up on caffine and couldn't sleep. Ive been writing a bit more since rewatching fmab. Hope this motivation carries over with me into the new year. (I hope it just stays with me through Christmas, tbh) I saw wicked in theatres with my mom and her boyfriend. It was right before thanksgiving. It was good! Amazing choreography, beautiful sets and fantastic acting. Some of the songs went on for just a little too long (like dancing through life and defying gravity) but overall enjoyable experience. There's one line that sounds kinds low-key racist (the milk flowers one) and bok is way too tall to be a munchkinlander, but I'll probably go see part 2 next year.

Been spending a lot of money recently. Mostly on stuff for myself. Im trying to order a book from Japan. The seller is trusted, but shipping times are long and slow. I hope I didnt just throw away 33$ for nothing. (Im trying to order the book; fma chronicle. It is only printed in Japanese and French, and I am going to attempt to scan and translate the book myself since I can't find any translations online. I might end up buying the French version too in order to cross-reference translation accuracies. Wish me luck.) Caleb Joseph unlaunched his patreon again. Hope everything is alright with him. His dog died earlier this year and he's been struggling with finding work from the last I heard. Watched illumination's migration movie. It was really good! Fun colors and character design, simple story. I think I liked it better than orion and the dark. I liked all the characters, even uncle dan. Kinda weird how all the ducks had one syllable names. Totally clocked akwafina as the pigeon. Story is nothing remarkable, but done well. The music was astounding, then I learned it was by john powell, which tracks.

December 25, It's hell week at work! I actually got christmas day off, which is a first. Still hectic and not as organized as it could be. My back has been weirdly hurting a lot recently, but like, not in my neck or hips. It's smack dab in the middle of my ribs. Ive been trying to watch more anime. It's a new year's resolution for me. I finished frieren, and now am looking into neon genesis and hunter x hunter. Im liking the slower pacing of evangelion so far. Hunter x hunter is a little too cliche for me right now, but it's also an older anime so I know it's tropes and mannerisms weren't cliche at the time it was released. Still, I'm glad it's not dripping with irony poisoning. It's sincerity in it's tropes helps save it.

Nani had a medical emergency on the 16th, where it looked like her back legs suddenly gave out. I rushed her to an emergency vet almost half an hour from home, paid 1400 dollars for them to do every test they could, and came to the conclusion that she has early onset arthritis in her hips and knees. She's been on bed rest for the past week, being forced to stay in my room so she wont run around or jump off of things. I have to medicate her with gabapentin and prednisone. She's gotten a lot better in just one week, but may have a permanent limp now, and cant jump like she used to (she doesnt know that yet). I just hope she's not in pain.

Still been really obsessed with fma. I ordered two books to manually translate. One is in the og Japanese, the other is in French. They should both arrive in January.

December 31, Last day of the year. I get new year's eve and new year's day off this year. Kinda surreal. Nani is doing better, but I need to start looking into pain meds because she might have a permanent limp now. God! there's still so much I want to do! I can't believe 2025 starts tomorrow! Work STILL has been busy, even though christmas is over. My book from japan arrived! It was delivered on friday, but I was at work, so I had to drive out to the post office and manually pick it up. new experience for me, but not a very fun one. Gonna try and do a stream tonight and get next week's page done. I couldn't do one this week because of work. Still waiting on the french one to arrive. I don't have tracking information for that one, sadly, so who knows when it will get here. I don't like having my weekend days split up. It disorients me. Been watching a lot of netflix. I hope to do that more next year as I explore more anime (at least until I run out of choices on netflix and have to watch it illegally somewhere else)

.

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.

Aaaand that’s pretty much all my biggest thoughts I had throughout the year. I definitely wrote more this year than last (and cut out a lot of personal stuff too). It’s always interesting to see what I focused on, or what concerned me the most over the course of the year through this look back. If you made it this far, thanks for reading! I just remembered myself that I wanted to make a post on this very sketchy site called fanon.co. Basically, it’s a new website to host your fandom webcomics, but I am concerned about AI scraping, the lack of transparency on where the owners of this site are hosted, the fact that you can’t read any of the comics there without making an account, the fact that you cannot DELETE your account after it was made, and I am very curious as to how this website makes money because it doesn’t look obvious to me, which makes me think they are using our fan creations for ulterior purposes. Maybe I’ll work on that later this week.

[skzhua]

listen carefully ('your eyes' series)

♡ "Do you trust me?"

pairing: bang chan x reader.

genre: fluff, a glimpse of angst, idiots-to-lovers.

word count: 8,659

warnings: swearing, drinking, slight angst, chan and reader are so oblivious (mostly reader).

summary: your first mistake was to major in music in college. your second mistake was to change classes and end up in bang chan's. your third was to accept his help to pass the class. your last mistake was to push him away.

a/n: not gonna lie, this one took me forever and i don't like it much, though i think it's still very cute. 2 scenarios done out of 8!

SERIES MASTERLIST

You looked back and forth from your schedule to the classroom in front of you. When you applied for a music major, you did not expect that this would involve sound testing classes. You wanted to sing and write lyrics, not do any of this producing shit. Plus, the course was scheduled from 8am to 10:30am. There was no way you would be doing whatever this is every single Monday morning for an entire semester.

With an elongated groan, you walked in the classroom and found a place in the back. You weren't even going to listen, so you plugged your earphones in and put down your head on your desk. You slept throughout the whole 30 minutes of course introduction and woke up when another student poked your sides. You immediately walked up to the teacher and asked if there was a possibility for you to switch classes. To your luck, one spot was still available in her afternoon course and you just so happened to have the rest of the day off.

In the meantime, you took it upon yourself to explore the area alone. You stumbled across a small coffee shop, so you decided you deserved to be caffeinated for your first day. After ordering a chai latte, you went on with your self tour of the campus. Taking a turn in a hallway, you collided against another student, falling on the ground in the process.

"Shit, I'm so sorry." you heard as you rubbed your sides.

Looking up, a hand was already extended to you to help you up. "Yeah, sorry too." you grunted, still in pain.

The man helped you gather your things on the ground and gasped at the sight of your lyrics book, that had opened during the fall. "Are those poems?"

"Sort of." you answered shyly.

“Can I take a look?”

You acquiesced, a bit reluctant. He scanned through the pages and nodded as he read. Pausing for some parts, he was very expressive from what you had written. You nervously waited for him to finish.

“It’s pretty good! It could be made into a song, you know?”

“That’s the goal.” you laughed out.

“Are you in music, too?” he gasped, excited.

“Yes, I just transferred here.”

He smiled widely. “Welcome, then.” Smiling back at him, you felt intimidated by the interaction. An attractive man speaking to you on your first day? What could be any better? “I have to go to class. I’ll see you around then.”

He left with a wink and you were a blushing mess by then. Your gaze lingered on his back as he walked further from you.

"Y/N?" Looking for the source of the voice, you spotted your dorm mate, Dahye with a girl walking next to her. "May I present you Byeol." she smiled as she introduced her friend. The latter looked unbothered as she waved briefly before going back on her phone. "So? How's the first day?"

You shrugged since you really didn't have much to say. "Fine, I suppose."

"I see you met Chan." Dahye wiggled her eyebrows. "The brightest music senior student."

"So that's his name, uh." you muttered to yourself. "I bumped into him, that's all."

"Oh, well. I'll see you tonight! We are running late."

And so were you. Checking the time, you had a brief three minutes remaining before the class started. You didn't even know where the course was given. As you rushed through the hallways, you finally found an auditorium where the same woman from the morning class was standing. Bashfully, you walked in the room and sat at the first spot you saw, excusing yourself for bothering.

This went on essentially exactly like the morning class. The teacher introduced the course plan and answered some of the questions. The topics were interesting. However, you had no clue on how you would be using the material in your future career. Throughout your life, you had always worked alongside your father for the music you made. He was a music producer himself, meaning you did not need to worry of this part of the song making process.

After the professor dismissed the students, you were slowly putting back your books in your bag when you saw a shadow stop at your desk. Smiling as his dimples showed, Chan and another man were standing right in front of you.

"It makes sense you're a music major." he chuckled. "This is my friend, Jisung."

You bowed slightly to the man who copied your move before stepping away a bit. What was it with people and introductions today?

"I'm surprised to see you here, I thought you were in your last year of college." you said, getting up from your seat.

"Ah." he laughed shyly. "It's a complementary class, I've actually done it already, but the teacher asked me to help out her other students, like this guy over here." he nodded towards Jisung. "I won't be here every class, though. I'm part of the music club so I have to deal with that as well. And I work part-time at the library."

The man was truly an exemplary student, being so dedicated to school. It both impressed and scared you. He kept on explaining what he does for the campus and mentioned a few people. He was very social and comfortable to converse with, it made you feel at ease. He also suggested to give you a tour of the place himself. You felt uneasy from being shown such kindness, but you gladly accepted his offer. Anyway, you'd had to make some friends at some point and befriending this social guy might be of a good help. Eventually, Jisung left the two of you to go home. Chan stayed with you as you tried to find your way back to your dorm.

"Do you need help with that too?" he joked, but you were sincerely lost.

"Please?" you pouted, making him chuckle.

"Alright, what's your dorm address?"

As you searched for it on your phone, a girl came up to Chan from behind. She back hugged him as she started to talk with him in a very casual manner. Chan ruffled her hair as he hugged her back, asking her about her day. Having found your dorm number, you stood still to wait until he was done with his small talk. He soon realized you were still there, so he introduced you to the girl.

"Sora, this is Y/N. She's in my sound art practices class. Y/N, this is my best friend, Sora."

"Hi! Happy to meet you!" she smiled at you warmly. She was the first person aside from Dahye and Chan to be more civil with introductions.

"Likewise." you smiled back before turning your attention back on Chan. "I can go find my dorm alone if you two want to hang out."

"No, no. I'll show you, don't worry." he said and gave a sad look to Sora. "Do you mind going without me for today? I'll join you later."

"Yeah, sure." she answered, but hesitation could still be heard in her tone. "Do you want Minho and I to order for you?"

"It's fine, thanks. Later?" he said, kissing the top of her head and she nodded before leaving.

"Maybe you should go? She looks disappointed." you pointed out while starting to head towards your dorm.

"She's fine. Her and Minho can be awkward when left alone together, that's all." he shrugged.

You didn't insist any more and walked next to him and he asked you a few questions about yourself. His presence was warm and you were almost disappointed when you had finally reached your dorm.

"Thank you for walking me home."

"No worries." Chan chuckled. "Again, welcome to the school. I'll see you next week, then?"

"Yeah, next week."

He watched you go inside before leaving. It was no surprise that you were alone since Dahye would always come late. For the time being, you pulled out your books and planned out your schedule. You added your new workplace you'd be starting to work at to your weekends. The small convenience store on the other side of the street was a perfect job while still being in your studies. It paid surprisingly good and the shifts were very flexible.

Dahye almost broke the door when she came inside, her heavy school bag dragged behind her. It was close to 10pm and you wondered what she was doing out so late.

"If Byeol makes me watch the three To All The Boys I've Loved Before again, I'm killing myself." she grunted before sitting on her bed.

"She doesn't seem like the kind to be into romcoms."

She gave you a look as she huffed. "It's her entire life, I swear. Like, I get the hype, but to this extent? No thanks."

You shrugged your shoulders as you went back to your agenda. In all honesty, you were the romantic kind as well. The only difference was that you had very high standards in relationships, resulting to you still being single. You had never dated someone in long term because you would sense it if the connection was off.

"I got some ramens at the store on my way here. Want to share?" Dahye prompted, holding two bowls of instant noodles.

So far, you had two friends in your list: Dahye and Jeongin. The boy worked at the convenience store with you and was still in his first year, but it was his second term. The thing you absolutely adored about Jeongin was how aware he was of all the drama happening. And by everything, I mean everything.

"That girl went out with Minho." he pointed to the girl Dahye introduced you as Byeol who was behind you in the cafeteria. "It's so weird seeing them eat together."

"Maybe they fixed things between them." you shrugged your shoulders.

"I doubt it. Look at how Minho looks at her."

You glanced briefly at the group and saw that, indeed, Minho had daggers in his eyes. "You're very invested in this." you laughed.

"Oh shit." Jeongin muttered, suddenly trying to hide behind you.

"What is it?"

He pointed somewhere and you met eyes with a girl walking alongside Chan and Sora. She was visibly uncomfortable and sticking closely to Sora. The latter was as clingy to Chan.

"Who's this?" you asked.

"Youngmi. She lives in the same building as me and she is the embodiment of ethereal, if you want my opinion."

You exploded in laughter as you started to tease the young man who couldn't help but pout as his face turned red. "Looks like Innie has a little crush."

"Say it any louder please." he joked. "I don't know, I saw her a few times and she gets all flustered when she sees someone she doesn't know. It's cute."

Eyes still on the trio, Chan caught you staring and sent you a wave as he smiled. He tugged Sora's side, arguing for a bit, before he dragged the two girls with him. Soon enough, they were standing in front of you and Jeongin. By then, Jeongin had frozen completely as Youngmi said a small "hey" to him. Freshmen love...

"Do you mind if we join?" Chan said, already in the motion of sitting down.

"Go ahead." you gestured the seats.

While he positioned himself on the chair happily, Sora seemed unsure in following her friend's actions. Nonetheless, she sat down and started to eat in silence as Jeongin and Chan exchanged in a calm conversation. You noticed she glanced at you a couple of times, but you ignored her. She also seemed to drift her eyes towards Minho's table, almost as if she was looking for help. The girl had always been nice to you. Although you wouldn't consider her as a friend, she had grown distant to you for the past weeks and you had a good idea as to why. You weren't blind, you saw how infatuated she was with Chan and you were not planning on ruining what was going on between them. However, consciously or not, she was visibly starting to see you as a threat.

"I talked with Mrs. Ko." Chan suddenly addressed to you.

"About?" you said while taking a spoonful of your soup.

"About you."

You choked on your food, coughing loudly in the process as your throat started to burn. Jeongin patted your back in a soothing way as an attempt to relieve your pain. Sora, on the other hand, was quick to pull out a napkin to clean the small mess you had made.

"What do you mean, me? What did I do?" you asked once you had recovered from choking.

Chan laughed nervously. "She asked me if I'd be interested in tutoring you."

At this, you exploded in laughter, Sora too. You weren't sure on why she was doing so, but you were laughing because you didn't think a tutor was necessary, even less it being Chan.

"What's funny?" he turned to the youngest pair at the table.

Jeongin shrugged. "I mean, do you even have time to tutor? You barely have any time for the guys and I."

"It would be during the class period." You groaned at his words, throwing your head back in frustration. "She said you're going to fail if you keep going like this."

"Come on, Chan. We're barely halfway through the term. I can manage myself."

"Not sure about that. You have halfway left that you can use to actually get better instead of barely passing."

You looked at Sora in search of any help, but she shrugged her shoulders and went back to her conversation with Youngmi.

"I'll think about it..."

"Think about it?" Dahye yelled out making you block your ears for how loud she was being. "Why would you think about it? You've got the hot senior offering personal tutoring sessions and you say no? Are you dumb or are you dumb?"

You sighed loudly and let yourself fall on your bed. "I don't need tutoring, alright?"

"Sure, you don't." she rolled her eyes and went to grab her bag.

"You're going somewhere?" you lifted your head up.

"Yeah, to the coffee shop. Do you want to tag along?"

"I would but I have a shift starting soon."

She waved you goodbye and you were left alone in the room. Taking this as a good time to revise your notes for your upcoming exam while waiting for your shift to start, you pulled out your lecture book and flipped through the pages. Your eyes were reading, but your brain couldn't seem to actually understand what was written. You tried with the next chapter, but the results were the same. Time was passing quickly so you brought the book with you to the convenience store.

When you walked in, Jeongin was already there on his phone, yawning out of boredom. The store was empty so you assumed it was a slow evening. You punched in and joined the boy at the counter. You dropped the manuel in front of you and Jeongin's expression went surprised as he saw the thickness of your book.

"What the hell do you study in this?"

"Sound stuff." you breathed out as you opened it, going back to the chapter you were previously analyzing.

"Isn't it the class that Chan said he could help you with?"

"Precisely." you hummed, not taking your eyes off the page.

He stopped questioning and went back to his game. The shift continued like this, in silence, with a couple of customers coming in once in a while. Still, there was barely anyone so the both of you eventually grew bored of studying and playing. Jeongin brought two stools from the back of the store so you could sit instead of standing up for the remaining two hours you had left.

"Do you have an exam soon?" he asked.

"Just a small quiz that is not worth much. I'd say I'm more worried about the final exam. I don't mind not getting A marks, but from what I read, I don't understand shit. Maybe Chan was right after all..." you admitted shamelessly.

He laughed at your words. "I knew you would say that sooner or later." You gave him a look, which only made him laugh more. "It's okay asking for help. And I swear Chan is a good teacher, he helped me with statistics once."

"I'll see. I might not ask him, though, Have you seen Sora the other day? I could swear she wanted to decapitate me just because Chan said one word to me."

"That's Sora for you. She's just protective of him. I don't talk to her much other than about Youngmi so I can't say how she is really." he shrugged and went to the slushie machine to make himself one.

"Ah, right. Your little crush on Youngmi." you chuckled. "How is that going for you?"

"You'd be surprised. I actually talked with her. She was having a hard time so I comforted her." he said proudly before slurping on his drink.

"I am impressed." you clapped your hands silently. "I bet she needs someone like you around."

The conversation was interrupted when Chan walked in the store, accompanied by Minho. They were seemingly disagreeing on something as Minho was rambling on with incoherent words. He stopped when he noticed that Chan was no longer listening, but was staring right at you instead.

"Hey." he coughed, once he realized he had been looking for a little too long. "I didn't know you work here."

"Yeah, been here since the beginning of school pretty much."

He made an 'o' shape with his mouth as he nodded before walking through the aisles. Minho walked behind him and started his rant again.

"This is a good time to ask him about the tutoring." Jeongin shot at you.

Your eyes widened to him. "Are you crazy? I said I'm not asking him."

"Why? Because you're scared of Sora?" he joked, but your face remained serious. "Oh shit, you are."

"I don't want her to think I'm stealing her man, that's all."

"So you're stealing Chan?"

You huffed. "No, of course not."

"He's not her man, anyway. Plus, he's the one who offered. Just tell him."

"No."

"Yes."

"Jeongin..."

"Tell him."

"Tell who what?"

You jumped at the sudden voice, almost letting out a yell until you noticed the two older men putting their purchases on the counter. Chan's look switched between Jeongin and you, waiting for you to answer.

"Yeah, Y/N. Tell who what?" Jeongin snickered as he leaned back, arms crossed and a proud look on his face.

You sent him a glare, but answered nonetheless. "Ask you about this tutoring thing..." you mumbled barely loud enough to be heard.

From Chan's grin, though, he had clearly heard you perfectly. "So you made up your mind?"

"It's not like I have a choice, really. I've been over the same five pages for hours and still don't understand shit."

While you continued your chat with him, Jeongin scanned their articles and made Minho pay as they were in a discussion of their own. Chan talked about how the tutoring would work, how you didn't have to pay for anything since the teacher was already doing so, how he wasn't going to give you homework other than some tests here and there to make sure you were following along.

"I won't remember all of this tomorrow." you laughed.

Chan immediately reached for his phone and put it in front if you. "Give me your number."

You raised an eyebrow, suspicious. "You're very straightforward."

"No, dummy." he chuckled. "So I can send you the information and plan out a lesson."

"Ah." you cough embarrassingly. "Right."

They left the store after you typed in your phone number in his phone. Unconsciously, Chan was still staring at your contact information, a silly smile that reached his ears on his face.

"Dude." Minho nudged his arm. "It won't disappear on its own." he mocked his friend.

Chan grumbled some curses to him and put back his phone in his pocket. They went back to his place for their usual hangout of the week and Changbin, his roommate, had already prepared a game while waiting for them to come back. At the coffee table, Minho sat next to Sora and Chan went to the dining room to pull out their groceries. Changbin's friend, Chunhwa, had been invited and helped the man to bring the food to everyone.

"Where is Jisung?" Minho asked, taking a sip of the soup Chunhwa had placed in front of him.

"He's probably comforting Hwayoung again." Changbin shrugged as he took the spot next to Chunhwa.

"If he keeps doing this, he'll end up in a deep depression." Sora commented and everyone around agreed.

"You're one to say that." Minho joked as the girl hit him, but Chan didn't get it.

Was she helping out her crush to get over someone too? If so, why didn't she tell him about it? Yes, Chan was that oblivious. Being too busy mothering his younger friends and with school, the least of his worries was romance. He did think of it from time to time, but he's always seen it as something for later.

"Alright, I'm blue this time!" Changbin announced as he picked up a pawn in the said-colour.

"I wanted blue." Chunhwa pouted and the man was quick to give it up for her.

"I'll be green, then." he sighed.

Sora and Chan exchanged knowing looks as the girl picked their usual colours, red and white. They started their game while eating and sharing laughs. Unlike others, the group preferred spending quality time instead of drinking until they blacked out. They would party, of course, but not as often as other college students. As the board game went on, Chan clapped his hands together and turned to talk with Sora.

"I talked with Y/N."

"And?" she said with a frown, moving her pawn on the board.

"She accepted my offer. I told you she would." he grinned.

Her reaction wasn't much what he had expected from his friend. Instead of joy, she looked sad, hurt almost.

"That's great." she forced a smile.

"Yeah, I'll text her the details later. It'll probably be once or twice a week. Depends on her level, honestly."

"Right." she nodded slowly her head. "Sorry, I have a headache. Minho, do you mind helping me get some medecine?"

Minho stood up immediately, reaching a hand to help her get up. "No, of course."

Chan frowned. "Are you alright? I can help if you want and-"

"No." she interrupted. "I'm okay, really. Thanks." she gave him that same sad smile before Minho led her out of the room.

Silence remained while it was Chunhwa's turn to play. She and Changbin were giving each other looks, something Chan couldn't exactly make out. Seeing that they were in their own world and that they had to wait for Sora to be back to continue on with their game, Chan took his phone out as he grew bored. The moment he opened it, your contact information was displayed on his screen, once again. For some reason, he instinctively clicked to open the message app.

Chan: Hey, it's Chan! I hope you gave me the right number, haha.

Y/N: Hey! Yeah it's me, haha. I didn't expect you to reach out so soon.

Chan: Me neither, to be honest. I thought about our arrangement and it can be twice a week if you'd like that instead of just during class period.

Y/N: Hmm, I'll have to check my schedule but yeah, it should be fine.

Chan: Great! I won't bother you for much longer now.

Y/N: You're not bothering, I swear. :)

Chan: Good. :) I'll let you know when we can start.

Y/N: All good. Good night!

Chan: Night. :)

"I'll go home, if you don't mind." Sora announced as she entered the room, Minho following behind.

"This early?" Chan said, putting his phone away.

"Sorry, I don't feel so well." she smiled, guilt seen on her face.

Chan stood up and joined her at the front door. "Let me walk you to your dorm, at least."

She shook her head. "Minho's coming with me already. Thank you."

"Alright." he said unsurely, hugging her tight. "Let me know if you need anything."

"Always. Good night Chan. Bye, guys!" she waved at the remaining pair before her and Minho took off.

Chan was still frowning at her weird behaviour, but he shrugged it off. Maybe she had a bad day. The weirdest part was how she stuck to Minho since they never were this close with each other. It might have changed without his knowledge. He went to help Changbin out with cleaning up and wash the dishes, Chunhwa tagging along.

"Do you mind if she stays the night?" Changbin asked.

"No, it's alright." Chan replied as he gathered his things to head to bed.

Locking himself in his room, he let out a long sigh before snuggling himself under his covers. Opening his phone, he saw your name lit up. He smiled immediately.

Y/N: Can't sleep. I thought this meme would make you smile when you wake up.

As the lessons kept going, you grew fond of Chan. He was nothing but respectful to you and was treating you like a princess, almost. He would always bring snacks, take breaks after some time to make sure you are not too tired, and he was insanely funny. He had started to be more attentive to your needs recently, and you could not help but hope he might like you as much as you liked him. But this was not possible, right?

You scrunched your nose as you listened to Chan explaining the material for a third time. You were amazed at how patient he had been with you. Your eighth lesson together and, yet, you still had no clue about anything in this course. Frankly speaking, you wanted to drop out, but Chan had insisted you continue with some speech about determination and shit. The coffee shop his friend, Seungmin, worked at was a cozy spot for your sessions. However, you had learnt Dahye's crush was the barista and she would almost always be there, trying to get his attention. It was close to sad to watch.

"I'm sorry, I really don't get it." you grunted, rubbing your face with your hands.

"Hey, it's fine. I know it can be hard to comprehend properly." he tried to reassure you while patting your back.

"You don't get it. If I want to make my own music, I should be able to understand, right? I suck." you grunted dramatically.

"Woah, there. How about I show you some concrete examples instead? I think it'd be easier for you." he suggested but you were still confused.

"Examples? We have the teacher's already."

"Yeah, uh, I could make you listen some of my tracks." he laughed out shyly.

"Your own tracks?" you exclaimed in surprised, eyes wide open. "Well, thinking about it, it makes sense you make your own music. Still, I didn't know."

"Yeah, I don't go around telling people." he added, blushing again. "I could show you right now, actually. Do you have something planned after this?"

You opened your agenda and scanned through your schedule. Your empty schedule. "No, the rest of my day is clear."

"Can I invite you over? My music stuff is in my room."

While the idea seemed appealing, you weren't convinced it was safe. Chan was a handsome man, and although you had grown closer with him, he could still be a fuckboy for all you know. The main reason, though, was that Sora would probably hear about it and you didn't want to hurt the girl by going over to her friend's apartment. Still, it was in the context of a class you were very much failing. At this point, you would take anything if it meant it would make you pass.

"Okay."

His own dorm wasn't far from yours. The walk to there was quick and you were standing in his kitchen before you knew it. It was neat for a boys apartment. Some exercise machines were installed, unsurprisingly since him and Changbin were visibly working out. There were a few takeout bags on the table as they would rarely cook themselves, but otherwise, it was one of the cleanest places you had seen.

"Do you want something to drink?" he asked, opening his refrigerator to serve himself a glass of water.

"Not for now, thanks." you smiled.

Chan led you to his room that was as clean as the rest of the dorm. He had made himself a work space for his music. On his desk, there were two monitors standing with a mixing console. He had placed a piano keyboard in the corner and a few different headphones were laying around the table. Right next to the desk was a microphone along with its isolation shield. He had a very good setup, you were almost jealous of it.

"This is amazing." you breathed out. "This stuff is brand new!"

"I saved a lot for it." he said, sitting down on his chair. He pulled his other one towards you. "Sit down, I wanna show you something."

You did as told and he started to look into his files, scrolling through them attentively. He spotted one and clicked on it. He waited a moment before playing it to give you time to put his headphones on. Once he started it, the track's intro started out beautifully. It had a soft melody, but it slowly turned into a more upbeat sound. The beat build up, until it dropped and you would lie if you said you didn't feel goosebumps at that moment. When it ended, you took the headphones off and stared at him in shock.

"You've got some freaking talent. I'm speechless, really."

"Thank you." he mumbled and blushed. "I'll play it again and I want you to pay attention to the different notes and sounds. Cover one ear only, I'll explain as it plays. Listen carefully."

Replaying it, he pointed out sounds and paused to explain. He did this for the next 40 minutes or so and, surprisingly enough, you had finally understood the material. It shocked you how easily you got it only from a few tracks made by Chan himself. His talent was undeniable and, if anything, it only made him more attractive to you.

"What is this one?" you said as you moved the cursor to a specific file.

"No not this-" Too late, you had already started to play it on his speakers. "... one." he finished his sentence in a whisper.

The ballad was powerful, and his lyrics were more relatable than you'd like them to be. So far, he had put only instrumental tracks. Needless to say you were dumbfounded by his voice. You were deep into the song, until Chan took the mouse from you and paused it.

"Hey!" you pouted.

"It's a pretty personal one." he justified, avoiding your eyes.

"Yeah, the lyrics are rough. I think it's beautiful. Sorry that I listened to it when you didn't want me to." you apologized sincerely.

"You think it's beautiful? I think it's a bit much."

"Not at all!" you argued. "I love it, really."

"Thank you."

An awkward silence filled the room, small tension building up. To wash it away, Chan clicked on a new file. It was a ballad, but it was much softer this time. He stood up from his chair and extended a hand to you. You looked at it suspisciously.

"What?"

"May I have this dance?" he said in a funny tone.

"Cringe." you huffed.

"Come on, you deserve a little break."

"And I dance like shit." you deadpanned at him.

"Do you trust me?"

You found it ridiculous, and cheesy. Without protesting, you still took his hand and he held you by the waist, swaying from side to side. You were uneasy at first, but grew more comfortable as he continued to guide your moves along the music. At some point, you hadn't realized how close your bodies were getting until you could feel his fast heartbeat with your head against his chest. You looked up at him and he already had his eyes on you. While this felt wrong, it was a feeling of safety. Before you could speak, the music changed to another one of his tracks, a more funny beat this time. You detached yourself from him and tried to find something to say quickly to ignore the moment you just shared.

"You make a lot of different genres." was all you could find to say.

It seemed to work as Chan started to tell you about his experimenting to find what style he liked better and which one fitted him the best. Eventually, the conversation drifted to a casual talk, learning more about each other. After listening to more of his songs, he had offered you to stay for dinner, but you refused. He had already made you go through a rollercoaster of emotions, you didn't know what was going to happen if you stayed any longer.

"You have everything?" he asked as he led you to his front door.

"Yeah, I think so. Thank you for today, it feels great to finally understand this stupid class."

He laughed before bring you into a hug. "Good. Tell me how the exam goes?"

"Of course."

When you were about to turn the doorknob, the door opened on its own. There she was, Sora, standing in the entrance with her eyes locked on you. You immediately felt like you got caught in the middle of a crime, although you had done nothing.

"Y/N." she said in a warm tone, making you feel bad how sweet she was still to you even though you knew how it must hurt her to see you with Chan.

"Hi, Sora. I was just leaving." You turned to Chan to give him one last smile. "See you, Chan!"

You didn't let him answer and left the place immediately. You were grateful for his help with the class. But now, you were stuck with guilt, longing, and a crush on a man who was already taken by a wonderful girl. You were fucked.

Ding.

"Anyway, so I came home and-"

Ding.

"For fuck's sake, Y/N. Just answer him." Jeongin whined.

"No." you said firmly. "So, as I was saying, I had just gotten home and-"

Ding.

You shut your eyes at the annoying notification sound. You had stopped your lessons with him unexpectedly when you realized you could be ruining a lifelong friendship. Plus, it would surprise you if he reciprocated even a tiny bit of your feelings. You told him you didn't need his help anymore and that you would rather focus on your other classes for now. He was understanding, of course, but you had stopped replying to his daily memes. He asked you if something was wrong, but you didn't answer. You had skipped the next sound art class to avoid him and had not left your room much since.

"Answer him." Jeongin whined again, louder this time.

"No!"

"He's my friend too, you know? I can just tell him how you're scared of your feelings." he threatened.

"You wouldn't."

"Watch me." he challenged you.

Ding.

You groaned and checked your phone and saw that, this time, it was a reminder that your shift was ending earlier for you to go do your exam. "I need to go. Cover for me?"

"Yeah, yeah." Jeongin rolled his eyes.

"And you better not talk to Chan."

"No promise." he grinned and you sent him a glare before taking off to head to class.

You bumped into a depressed looking Jisung when you walked in. He greeted you poorly, eyebags under his eyes and lazy movement. You would have asked if he was okay if it wasn't your final exam. Having studied like never before (and thanks to Chan's help, but we do not mention him at the moment), you felt quite ready, though your stress level was at its peak.

The questionnaire was filled with practice exercices and multiple choices. The teacher played sounds through the speakers for you to identify and describe them. You were baffled at how good you were doing, so good that you were among the first people to finish. Jisung was done not so long after you, so you walked out together, telling each other how you did on the exam.

"By the way, I wanted to make sure you are doing okay. You don't look so good to me, no offense."

He looked at his feet. "Yeah, I'm alright. Just..." He hesitated a little since you weren't close to him much, but at this point he didn't care. "Hwayoung and I fought and there is Chan's party tonight. I know she's going but I'm not sure if I want to face her yet."

"You should go."

His face lit up at your words. "You think so?"

"Yeah, I do. You two are practically inseparable from what I see. I think it'll be a shame to not try to fix things up."

"You have a point..." he said and thought for a second. "Alright, I'll go. Are you coming, too?"

While his situation was very different from yours, it did have some similarities. You had briefly seen a message from Chan, inviting you to his party, but you didn't want to face him. Dahye had begged you to come, saying she would want at least a friend around since Byeol would most likely not be going. So when you thought about it for a moment, it might be a good moment for you to talk things out with Chan.

"I guess I can stop by."

When you arrived home, Dahye was nowhere to be seen. You noticed a note on your desk and she wrote that she went to Seungmin's to get prepared. Looks like you were going to get ready alone. Rummaging through your clothes, you picked out a nice short-sleeved shirt with a skirt to match with it. You didn't put on much makeup, nor did you do anything extravagant with your hair.

Jeongin: Dude, Jisung told me you are coming tonight?

Y/N: Yes, sir.

Jeongin: Youngmi is going and I was planning to confess. I need your emotional support.

Y/N: If you'll be my emotional support to talk with Chan, then yes I'll help you.

Jeongin: Deal! But for real, Jisung convinces you to come in two seconds and not me? Offended...

You could only laugh at the texts. You grabbed your belongings and walked out of your dorm, heading to Chan's. After a small ten-minute walk, you were standing in front of his door, nervous. You had not even thought of letting him know you were coming, you just showed up. Anyhow, you knocked on the door and waited for someone to let you in. Some time after, Changbin happily welcomed you in, showing you where the snacks, the drinks and the bathroom were. After thanking him for his kindness, you parted ways with him to join Jeongin. To your surprise, he was already talking with Youngmi and they seemed to be doing just fine. Jisung was there too, but he kept looking at his phone every once in a while, seemingly waiting for a text.

"Am I late?" you asked and Jisung shook his head.

"We pretty much all came in advance. Minho, Hyunjin, Byeol, Hyunjoo and Felix are missing." he shrugged and took a sip of his drink.

The room was already filled with some people from your classes, and others you had never seen before. You scanned the room as you tried to spot Chan, but your eyes stopped on Sora instead. She was setting the food on the table alone, so you decided to go see her, trying to make your way through the crowd. Once you reached her, you realized she wasn't alone. Chan was giggling with her about something as he was setting bowls of chips on the table. It took them a few seconds to notice you and greet you sweetly.

"HI! Y/N, um, wow. You made it! I mean, I didn't expect you to be here. I should, uh-" Chan rambled on cutely.

He was interrupted when Sora kicked his rib with her elbow before smiling at you. "Good to see you."

"You too. I hope I'm not interrupting."

"Of course not!" they both hurried to deny.

"I should go greet the others. Talk to you later?" Chan set his eyes on you, and left.

You were now alone with Sora as she went on with preparing the snacks. You offered to help, but she didn't let you. You weren't sure what to say exactly which caused a small silence to grow. Luckily, she was more talkative than you were.

"I really didn't expect you here. Chan had kind of given up after you ignored him."

Her words hurt you more than you'd ever admit, but she was right. "It wasn't intentional. I mean, I did purposely ignore him but I had reasons."

She shook her head to shush you. "I'm not asking you to tell me why, you must have had good reasons. I just..." she trailed off before taking a deep breath. "He told me about how you almost kissed and I'm just letting you know that Chan is not someone to play around with. I don't know why he likes you so much while barely noticing me, but I'm warning you. You don't know him like I do and I know Chan is going to prioritize who he loves first. I don't want this thing going on with you two to be hurting anyone."

Frankly, you did not know how to answer. You were lost on why she was telling you all of this. You only registered the parts where she said he liked you, that she liked him, and that she didn't want things to be hurting anyone.

"I came here to fix things with him." you said after thinking of your words. "I don't know the history between you two, and visibly you are closer than anyone here. If I hurt you in any way, I'm so sorry. I just wanted to pass my class, that's it."

"No, I-"

"It's okay, Sora. You two clearly have something going on. I know for a fact Chan doesn't like me like that and he's way better off with you."

You didn't even let her speak again, and left the party immediately. You felt your mind getting fuzzier and you couldn't think straight about this whole situation, you just wanted out. Among the pack of people, you kept on bumping into one person to another, apologizing constantly. You ended up bumping into Chan, to your luck. You didn't want to talk with him anymore, so you hurried to walk out, but he was quick to recognize you and stop you by grabbing you by the arm.

"You're leaving already?" he asked worriedly.

"I'm not in the mood for a party that much." you made an excuse up on the spot.

"Do you want me to walk you home?"

"Gosh, Chan. Stop acting like you care so much." you snapped at him, which made him let go of your arm. "Sora's waiting for you in the kitchen if you are wondering."

On that note, you left him standing alone, baffled and confused, and you head back home as tears built up in your eyes.

Dahye had invited you and Byeol for a little trip to the beach not even two days after the end of the semester. Before going back home for the summer and to avoid any possible interaction with Chan, you had gladly accepted. You were going to stay there for a couple of days only, but long enough to be enjoying the nice weather and the water.

While you were laying on the sand to enjoy the natural light, Byeol pulled out her phone to show you her messages with her boyfriend, Hyunjin. He was being a dramatic lover, telling her to not stay out in the sun for too long, to eat properly and to send him lots of pictures because he missed her. You were more than happy for her, but your heart stung. Chan had tried to reach out, obviously. This time, you had the courage to mute his contact and completely ignore him. You didn't have the strength to block him just yet. Maybe you were still hoping for something to happen with him.

"He said he'll paint the pictures of the sea that I sent him." Byeol commented, all smiley, as she put her phone away.

"That's adorable." Dahye said in a dreamy tone. "Although I would probably cringe if Seungmin pulled one like this on me."

The girls exchanged laughs and continued to chitchat about their romantic moments. Your mind wasn't fully there and you had issues concentrating properly. Eventually, the girls noticed and called your name to snap you out of your thoughts.

"Is it about Chan?" Dahye dared to ask, and Byeol gave her a look.

"Kind of? I should stop thinking about it. He's got Sora so everything is fine." you forced a smiled, but it didn't convince your friends.

"You should have talked to him. He fought with her that night." Dahye said, putting her hand on your shoulder. "And he thought of knocking at our dorm, but he chickened out."

You looked at her blankly and blinked slowly. "You didn't tell me this."

"It's not my place to do so. I'm sure he tried to tell you, but you've been quite ignorant towards him." she shrugged and from seeing your reaction, she knew she had to do something about it. "Look, just enjoy our time here for now and worry about this later, okay? Chan can wait a couple of days."

You nodded, agreeing that you were here to relax and enjoy, and not to fall into self-pity for the rest of your summer. Decisively, you repositioned yourself comfortably on your towel and did nothing but let yourself go with the sea breeze.

That night, Byeol and Dahye went to some fancy restaurant together close to the hotel you were staying at. You would have come too, but you wanted to go explore the neighbourhood instead. So after they left, you brought your camera with you to take some pictures around. It came to your mind that you could develop them and make a nice framed collage to hang in your room as a memory. With everything in your bag, you left the hotel and started your evening with walking in a park nearby. The trees were decorated with lights as well as the path. You snapped some photos, but upon seeing so many couples, you decided to change scenery.

A couple of streets away was an old-fashioned part of the town. There were many local shops opened and you took the time to stop at some of them, notably a small bakery. The woman was so sweet that she gifted you some cupcakes, not forgetting to compliment you on how beautiful she thought you were. Thanking her, you took the cupcakes from her and walked out of the store.

"She's not wrong, you know?"

You froze at the voice, sounding too much like a man you had grown to love over the past months. Uncertain if it was your mind tricking you, you turned around to come face to face with the one and only Chan. There he was in one of his many black attires and he had seemingly just stepped out of the bakery as well.

"If I didn't know you, I'd say you're stalking me." you joked once you had collected yourself.

"I would never." he huffed. "But I did ask some help from Dahye to have some time with you."

It was your turn to scoff. "You're unbelievable."

"I know, babygirl." he smirked and you would have punched in the air right then from how the butterflies he sent you made you internally squeal. "Mind if I take this stroll with you?"

"I do mind." you refused while you were actually dying to go on a romantic walk with him.

"I thought you trusted me enough." he acted offended and you let out a laugh, still not believing he was right in front of you. "Do you?"

"Do I what?"

"Trust me?"

Lacking a response, you stuttered out incoherent words. Wanting to hide from embarrassment, you shut your eyes and turned on your wheels to go on with your walk. Chan was, however, determined to not let you get away again, so he ran to catch up on you.

"So..." he started, but you were still refusing to glance at him. "I think we should talk."

"How's Sora?" you asked nonchalantly.

"Y/N, can you not bring her up for once? She told me what you two talked about at the party. Wasn't she clear enough when she said I like you?"

Stopping on your tracks, you finally dared to look at him and you regretted it immediately. His eyes reflected nothing but despair, sadness and lust.

"She was trying to-" you started but he cut you off quickly.

"Everything she said was true. Except for the part that we would hurt each other." he took your hand in his and you wanted so bad to squeeze it back, but you couldn't find the strength to do so. "The first time I read your lyrics, I knew you would become someone dear to me. You're as passionate about music as I am, you are easy to talk to, although I would debate on that with how you had ghosted me. I guess what I'm trying to say is I don't want you to push me away anymore, because I like you a lot."

"What about So-"

He laughed as to to interrupt you again. You were stubborn, for sure. "She's been involved with Minho for some time, she's got nothing to do with all of this."

He hesiated, but took a step forward to put his hand on your cheek. You had never seen him blush so hard and it was one heck of a cute sight. He brought your face closer and you leaned into his touch, foreheads now grazing against each other.

"I'm sorry." you finally spoke in a soft tone.

"Don't be sorry, just don't run away again."

"I won't."

That's all Chan wanted to hear. After containing himself since the moment he saw you in the bakery, he gave in and kissed you passionately. It had so much emotion and feelings into it. You could feel his sincerity only through his touch and it was enough for you to cry, but out of joy this time. He rubbed his thumb on your cheek to dry your tears off and pulled you closer to him. The scene could not have been more perfect. You were kissing your goddamn crush in the middle of a cute lively neighbourhood in the evening with the smell of cupcakes surrounding you. You eventually detached from each other, but still remained close.

"I assume this means you like me too?" Chan chuckled.

"Very much so, yes." you smiled.

"Can I take you out on a date?" he asked shyly and you sent him a smirk.

"This stroll you wanted earlier can be it."

He smiled like a child at your words and laid a kiss on the top of your head. "Sounds good to me."

taglist : @lenilla15 | @muddy-waters | @nanaspalette | @nattisbored | @popcatx0 | @vanblack95 | @aestheticsluut | @thanxxskz | @minhoino | @fairywriter-oracle

Copyright © 2023 skzhua. All rights reserved.

[misslovasstuff]

Dazai x reader

Prove it

“Her? Mhm, well….”- Dazai itches his head, shifting his gaze to the floor. - She is nice. Yeah, nice.”

Atsushi and Kunikida raise their eyebrows as the bandaged brunette seemed to avoid a simple question:

Do you like Y/n?

“I mean, we don’t doubt her niceness, what we’re asking is if you fancy her by any chance?”- Oh, Kunikida was enjoying too much what seemed to have turned into a silly interrogation. He fixes his glasses with a smirk, leaning over Dazai’s shoulder:

“She’s totally your type, isn’t she?”

Dazai sighs, shaking his head with a vague smile.

“Just because Kunikida-kun doesn’t have an interesting love life it doesn’t mean you have to start investigating mine.”- he claims with a silly voice, once again provoking his colleagues’ nerves as Atsushi could have sworn he heard Kunikida’s glasses break as he grabs Dazai by the collar of his shirt, whispering all sort of funny insults, to which Dazai is completely immune by now.

“Kunikida-san, perhaps Dazai-san is not comfortable talking about his relationship with Y/n. Perhaps it is better to leave him be haha.”- Atsushi claims with a weak smile, trying to calm the chaotic situation.

Dazai sighs, rubbing his temple then explains:

“Look, to extinguish your curiosity, there is absolutely nothing going on between me and her. Are you blind to fail to see that she has no interest whatsoever in me? Plus, I’ve heard from Yosano she’s seeing someone already so…”

Kunikida widens his eyes to a rare sight; Dazai sighing and looking out the window as if the most beautiful tragedy had happened to him. The kind of misfortune that makes people write poems, listen to music and take long walks by themselves. The tragedy of loving someone you can’t ever have that makes you fragile but yet unbreakable, strong but weak in the heart and it gives you a slap back to a reality that you don’t want to accept. It hadn’t occurred to Dazai before, thus he wonders what this feeling is about and if he can do anything about it.

“Have you ever been rejected by a woman before?”- Atsushi asks, after which he hits himself mentally for asking such a question.

“No. - Dazai answers frankly, to which Kunikida scoffs.

“Well, at least Y/n will ground you a bit.”- he claims, putting his hands in his pockets. - How does it feel to love someone you can’t have?”

“Terrible.”- Dazai says, seemingly not sad, nor happy, he had a rather empty expression on his face, not letting out much emotion to understand what was really going on inside his head. - I see her, and I am struck by her beauty. God, when her eyes meet mine, each and every motioning becomes more intense for my heart. When she greets me and smiles at me so genuinely and gently like she knows how much that smile affects me, making even the sun jealous of her radiance and cheerfulness. Don’t let me get into how talented she is, and her cooking skills, oh and also did you know that she reads poetry? She gave me her favourite book and underlined all verses she found beautiful and meaningful. On page 63, poem two, she had underlined two verses which were:

“I may not know your heart, but it knows me quite well. Am I resident or a foreigner to it?”

And she had written a smiley face on the corner of it, with a little note that said: “Mhm, Dazai?”

Not only that, but she is such a great-

Dazai kept blabbering about how fascinated he was by you while both Kunikida and Atsushi listened and came to a very unbelievable conclusion.

Dazai is so oblivious when he truly falls in love. Either that, or he’s trying to avoid that but still digs the idea of being in love and being loved so beautifully.

“I’m afraid to tell you this buddy but, - Kunikida touches Dazai’s shoulder. - You’re an idiot.”

Atsushi scoffs as he turns around to contain his laughter. Dazai’s face freezes with a smile like 😀

“Homegirl knows you like her, she literally wrote it down, what’s wrong with you?”- Kunikida snaps at Dazai, who now seems to be confused.

Little did they know that you were listening to all this go down, hardly containing your laughter.

The truth is, you and Dazai had been together for a while and no one is the agency knows. You told Yosano you were seeing someone, but funnily enough, even though they’re detectives, they don’t have a clue about your relationship, and you’re thinking is because your lover messes with their heads.

“Kunikida-kun, stop tormenting me! I’m telling you, she doesn’t like me. End of discussion.”- Dazai claims, getting up from his seat and stretching a bit.

“Where do you think you’re going?”- Kunikida asks as he watches Dazai’s tender figure walk away.

“To think about this unbearable pain of my weak heart, since my friends and colleagues don’t care.”

Atsushi holds back Kunikida from going after Dazai:

“He’ll never admit it that he likes her.”- Atsushi claims which gives Kunikida a rather sinister idea.

“Oh he will, I have a plan.”

There is a sudden change of atmosphere which leaves Atsushi a bit scared.

“Kunikida-san, w-what exactly are you planning to do?”- he asks, noticing a smirk from his mentor.

A little bit later/ Coffee shop

You are taking a sip of your hot coffee as rain hits the window by your seat. Although it is raining, you were feeling rather warm, and even though you were by yourself, you were fully enjoying your own company until the door of the cafe opens.

“I’ll take a black coffee, please.”- a unfamiliar voice says, which gets your attention. You turn your head and notice a tall man, build figure and blonde hair. He turns and faces you while waiting for his coffee.

“You don’t mind if I sit next to you while I wait for my coffee, yes?”- he asks with a beautiful smile, blue eyes shining right through.

“Mhm, sure it’s okay.”- you reply, mirroring a smile and scanning the man upfront.

The probability of a very handsome person, coming to this coffee shop while I’m the only one here and all the seats are empty, asking to sit next to me, and furthermore-

“So, what is such a beautiful lady doing here all by herself?”- he asks, looking at your hands holding the coffee cup, then looking directly at your eyes which made you gulp hardly.

“Drinking coffee.”- you reply rather coldly, not warning to give this guy the wrong impression.

“By yourself? Have you no one to accompany you? Maybe a boyfriend of yours?”- he continues to bring up weird questions. What was even weirder, was the fact that he was reaching for your hand, now holding it.

“Since you’re not answering, I’m assuming you do not have a man in your life. Such a catastrophe indeed. - he brings your hand close to his lips, caressing it. - I can offer myself as a candidate.”

“She’s not running any elections. - a sudden voice from behind makes your heart drop. - if that were the case, I would have known.”

You glance over your shoulder and see Dazai. He reached for your hand, shooing away the other guy’s who immediately flinches to the touch.

“Is it a habit of yours to approach lonely women in coffee shops? That’s kinda desperate and disrespectful.”- he continues, glaring at the guy who had widened his eyes.

“I’m just waiting for my coffee.”

“Wait for your coffee somewhere else. - Dazai claims with a cold tone of voice, making you shiver in what you would describe fear, but with a hint of pleasure.

He was so hot right now, for real.

“She didn’t tell me she had a boyfriend.”- the guy claims as he gets up from his seat.

“She doesn’t need to inform you about anything, really. Plus, I’m never too far away. - Dazai winks at you, getting your cheeks all heated up.

Now, - Dazai smiles, - get out of my sight.”

The guy gets out of the coffee shop, forgetting about his order which was now being served in your table.

“I’ll take that, thank you.”- Dazai claims, sitting down in front of you, not noticing the looks you were giving him.

That is, until he takes a sip and his eyes meet yours.

“Mhm? - he hums. - what’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong is the fantasy im having to have you right here, right now.”

“Woah woah, belladonna~, - Dazai almost spits his coffee. - What has gotten into you? I mean, I’m not complaining but-

“Dazai, do me right now, I swear I’m barely hanging on.” - you explain as Dazai notices your flushed cheeks and heavy breathing.

Damn, what happened? - he wonders.

He smirks and leans in, whispering: “But the coffee will go cold, love. Are you sure?”

“Don’t start teasing me. - you claim. - or would you rather have me do you at the agency while everyone watches so they can finally know that you are mine?”

“That’s … interesting. You’re so hasty, belladonna. Did I do something to turn you on this much?”- Dazai asks, biting his lip as he looks at you up and down with those gorgeous eyes of his that consumed your entire soul with one single glance.

“The moment right now, you being possessive and all, gosh. That was so hot of you.”- you lean in, exposing a bit of your chest to your boyfriend, on purpose obviously, to which Dazai responds by raising his eyebrows and staring at it for a bit.

“Oh really? You know what else I can heat up?”

“No I don’t know, enlighten me.”- you two lean even closer to one another, as Dazai is ready to whisper in your ear:

“That little -

“ALRIGHT THAT IS ENOUGH, point proven Atsushi let’s go!”- you hear Kunikida shouting from behind. They were not only seeing all this go down, but also orchestrated the whole thing.

“So you guys are together, awwww.”- Atsushi says, giving a weirdly firm handshake to you and Dazai. - Congrats, omg. Dazai-san that was so manly of you, Kunikida-san didn’t predict you’d actually go wild like that-

“Kunikida planned this?”- you ask, giving a disappointing nod.

“A perfect executed plan, and Dazai fell right into it. Now, you’ll stop lying and admit that you love this woman.” - Kunikida claims with a smirk, thinking that his partner would still pretend to be in denial.

“I love Y/n.”- he claims, still sipping his tea and acting unaffected by this whole scene, although in truth he was a bit conflicted on how to feel about it.

Upon his declaration of love, you melt, of course.

You caress his hand, to which Dazai smiles, starting to gesture you weirdly.

He means to get out of here. Now you had heated him up.

You nod, looking at Atsushi and Kunikida who are still looking at you both.

“Oookaaayy, - you get up, Dazai following you. - Since you put us into so much trouble, I guess you can pay for our coffee, no?”

As you walk towards the exit, holding hands, Kunikida’s shoutings accompany you:

“If anything I helped you! You owe me one, Dazai!”

You close the door behind you, giving a small sigh.

“You’re so troublesome you know that?”- you poke his nose, so which he responds by pulling you closer by your waist.

“I put you into so much trouble, huh? You’re the one making me go crazy over and over again.”- Dazai answers as you pull him by the belt of his pants.

Remind me, where were we?”- you ask and he smirks grabbing your hand, leading him to somewhere.

“I’ll remind you shortly.”

[katherinebotten]

Sphere and Sundry. Anko linen. Maroske Peech Demi-belt. I love the sky. In adelaide airport there’s an ad for an industry superfund with a black woman in an ugly green 3/4 sleeve shirt in front of an ugly green old weatherboard house, it is how poor people used to be represented and now the same image is meant to convey the dream of the bourgeoisie. Mother of Pearl guasha. Stefanie.freedom is fat in a gstring on Instagram her success comes from Prostitution. I don’t want success from prostitution (so I don’t want success). In the meeting all the women (girls) and the men (boys) are idiots (except me). At my wedding we do ceremonial cacao and I get so fucking high. I relapse at five years clean on meth so I can write better. It is important to write at the most elite level if I am ever to have magicians around again (my ex boyfriend). I edited the text >forty times for it to be so strong. You can never know if what you make is fine art, it is up to someone else (my ex boyfriend). We chased the ice cream truck to mitcham reserve. I don’t know one woman who has anything irrespective of how she looks or how much (or little) she prostitutes herself. There are less swimming pools around me than before. Beauty is a natural gift and should be celebrated. Squandering beauty can feel momentarily powerful. The form tells you something about its essence (TCM “law of signatures”). I choose iconoclasm (because I have to). Fuckable at any size(?). A family feeling in west Footscray near the oval by the primary school the houses are being slowly renovated like in coburg north. I love painting(?). After 9/11 the physical paper passports of the hijackers remained intact!!!!!?????? Tao Lin edits his poems over and over and over. If it takes so much work is it talent? A tradie holds the train door open for women first on the Upfield line. A man at the Northcote meeting collects the mugs and cleans the cups every week. A man at the Northcote meeting announces NA literature in an embodied, connected, serious way, he reads a good paragraph outloud. Pink pamphlet, green pamphlet, Living The Program IP #9. At work Nate is excellent. If BLEEP doesn’t see me on Saturday it means he doesn’t want to fuck. X doesn’t want to fuck Y designating Y as unvaluable (Y1). Y1 is under the threat of disconnection from the animation of life. Disconnected from the animation of life Y1 experiences death and not in the Prima Materia way (*to be confirmed). Radiohead.

[bybdolan]

quick ttpd thoughts

ok so. i did listen to a leak so I had time to sit with the OG album for a while. I have not yet listened to all the Anthology tracks, but this not-doing of something is part of my album reaction. Bear with me.

First of all: I am insanely impressed with Taylor for being this raw and messy on record. More distinguished haters have said that this album once again feels like self-mythologizing, but I personally do not agree. User dancefloors had an excellent take on this: the album is emotional and messy to a degree where you feel like you should not be listening to it. At least that's how I felt.

However, that also has a downside. I find many of the lyrics, especially on the standard edition, to be unpolished or downright cringe. This rambl-y first draft type of writing might work for other artists, but I never feel like it works for Taylor. The second line of Fortnight is so awful that I was CONVINCED the leak I heard was AI, and people have talked at length about the tattooed Golden Retriever. Girl. Almost every song had an insane clunker or two hidden in it. This is not helped by what I personally (!) perceive to be a bit of a rehashing of imagery and themes that have been prominent in songwriting trends for the past few years. Killing the woman you are jealous of, Cassandra, religious imagery .... Don't get me wrong, I think the call for "originality" at al costs can be detrimental to art, but frequently with this album i felt as if lines were haparzadly chosen to fit a certain "aesthetic" that didn't mesh well with the rest of the song. Like. Nothing about "my husband's cheating. I wanna kill him." communicates any deeper emotion. (Compared to e.g. Samia's "I hope you marry the girl from your hometown and I'll fucking kill her and I'll fucking freak out.")

The introductory poem is one of the worst things i have ever read.

The thing is. I don't always do well with new releases, they are overwhelming, etc., but I listened to the first four tracks and was like "how can anybody think this is good". Which IS a hater take, and there is much I do enjoy about the album, and I am happy others like it.But with the already present repetition PLUS 15 Tracks .... it is a bit too much. I could go on and on about the repetition of words and themes that feels a bit trite (smalltown stuff, "starry-eyed", "precocious"), but I don't wanna. I wish there had been more editing, and I think I have talked at length before about how I do not like this new era of just putting out everything.

Alas. I did not click with this album and there are very few tracks i want to go back to. So Long, London is a favorite because of the concise lyrics and beautiful production, I can bop to Down Bad, but daddy I love him is fun imagery-wise, Clara/Sam/Sophia/Marcus is sad and also. A Lot., So High School, and I dig "You're not Dylan Thomas, I'm not Patti Smith, this ain't the Chelsea Hotel, we're modern idiots". The 2am tracks need more attention, but I already like Looking Into Windows (?) much more than a lot of other tracks - generally, I enjoy the more genuinely sad Joe tracks about the slow demise of a relationship much more than the fast paced high strung ones.

anything else .... well. I don't know.

[rainisawriter]

I saw your requests are open and I have a request for murayama🐥 If Murayama's girlfriend prefers her love language to him by writing poetry for him and giving small gifts (like a simple drawing,painted stone,necklace and etc.) A girlfriend who is a little afraid of contact in a relationship What would he be like in this relationship? What would he think of this love language Headcanon or oneshot is not important to me, can you write something about it＼ʕ •ᴥ•ʔ／

Genre: Fluff, slice of life

Word Count: 2,461

A/N: Let me just say that this is the best banner I’ve made in a while lol I really like it. Also, I realized halfway through this request that you wanted them to be dating already but I was in too deep to fix it T_T)/ I hope you don’t mind and I hope you still enjoy this~

━━━━━━༻☔༺━━━━━

The first time you met Murayama Yoshiki, you knew that he would become an important person in your life. Maybe you didn’t realize that he would become the love of your life, but you knew he would be important. There was just something about him that drew you in, like a fish unable to escape a whirlpool. Though, part of you wasn’t so sure you wanted to escape.

In the beginning, you weren’t sure how to get his attention but you knew you wanted it. You couldn’t just come out and say that you thought he was cute, so you did what you do best – you wrote him a poem and made him a bracelet to go along with it. Neither were anything fancy, but they had come from your heart and you hoped he would be able to sense that.

You couldn’t just waltz up to him and give it to him, though. He was the leader of Oya Koukou, always surrounded by guys who would lay their lives down for him. You didn’t feel quite so comfortable stepping into Oya, either, so you took a less direct route.

“Can you please give this to Murayama-san?” you smiled brightly, holding out the small box containing the two items, along with some cookies you had bought from the store. It was secured with a blue ribbon so the contents wouldn’t spill out.

Furuya and Seki exchanged a look, clearly unsure of how to feel about this situation. No one had ever been brave enough to come up to them unless they were looking for a fight and you were looking at them without fear. Rather, you were looking at them with kindness which caught them off guard. Oya students were never looked upon with kindness.

“Um…” Furuya cleared his throat, glancing at his friend before slowly taking the box from your hand. “Sure…”

“Thank you very much!” You smiled brightly, bowing to them before turning and rushing away.

The two men watched you blankly until you turned the corner.

“What if it’s a bomb?” questioned Seki, taking a step back.

Furuya scoffed, smacking him atop his bald head. “Don’t be an idiot.”

When Furuya finally presented the box to Murayama, the younger male wasn’t entirely sure how to feel. He assumed it was just a challenge letter or another glitter bomb. The latter made him pause in opening it, dark eyes shifting to the couch he sat upon. He was still finding glitter stuck to the fabric after the last one he had received and that was over two months ago.

With a scowl, he decided to head outside in order to open it, not wanting to have to clean up the mess again if it really was a glitter bomb. Not that he had actually put in any work the last time – it was mostly Furuya and the lower ranking among the part-timers.

Safely outside, he tugged the ribbon, letting it fall to the ground. When he lifted the lid, he could only blink at the contents, clearly confused. He reached for the neatly folded paper first, convinced that it just had to be a challenge letter, but it wasn’t. 

He certainly wasn’t the brightest kid at Oya, so the poem left him scratching his head, though he’d be lying if he said it didn’t elicit a warm reaction from within him. The bracelet was made of brown rope with a baseball charm in the center, surrounded by two blue beads on either side of it. 

The bag of cookies was snatched from the box by a grinning Seki but they were quickly taken back by the younger male, a scowl on his lips. His dark eyes fell on Furuya. “Oi, where did you get this?”

The tall man shrugged a shoulder. “Someone asked me to give it to you.”

“Who?”

“I didn’t get their name…”

Murayama exhaled in annoyance, his eyes returning to the poem. He wasn’t sure why, but every time his gaze slid across the words, it awoke a fluttering feeling in his chest. Though the full meaning was lost on him, he could understand a part of it. Whoever had written this clearly felt strongly about him, he could feel it in every stroke of the pen.

“Find them,” muttered Murayama, making the two older men exchange a look of surprise.

━━━━━━༻☔༺━━━━━━

“There, it’s done!” you grinned brightly, setting the paint brush down onto the table. Your hands and apron were covered in various colored paints but you didn’t mind – it was part of the creative process, after all! Sitting before you was the completed canvas, the colors vibrant and warm.

“Woah, that looks amazing,” commented your best friend. “Who is he?”

“Murayama Yoshiki.” The name felt nice on your tongue and you smiled warmly, admiring his silhouette in front of the school he adored so much. “Do you think he’ll like it?”

“He better,” she scoffed, folding her arms over her chest. “Any guy would be lucky to receive this as a gift.”

“Thank you,” you nodded proudly. “I think it’s my best work!”

“When are you going to -”

The doors of the art room were thrown open, causing both of you to whip around in surprise. Your friend looked terrified, her body tensing up as she slowly backed away.

You slowly stood up from the stool, blinking at Furuya and Seki. “What are you two doing here? How did you even find me?”

Your friend looked at you in shock, leaning toward you and hissing, “You know these two?!”

“Not personally, no,” you replied nonchalantly, shifting to the side so they wouldn’t see the painting.

Furuya stepped farther into the room, glancing around and wrinkling his nose. When was the last time he had been inside a classroom that wasn’t destroyed? Elementary school, perhaps? It felt strange to him.

“Murayama sent us to get you.”

Your eyes widened, heart skipping a beat. “W-What for?”

Your friend’s voice shook as she stepped toward you, fingers curling around your arm. “Y-You can’t just… just walk in here and kidnap people!”

“Hah?” His eyes narrowed at her, his tone enough to make her flinch.

“It’s okay,” you told her softly, offering her a reassuring smile and a pat on the hand. “They won’t hurt me.” ‘I hope,’ you found yourself thinking.

“Are you sure…?”

“Yes.”

“Come on, we don’t have all day,” scowled Furuya, though his voice lacked its usual bite. “We’ve been looking for you for hours and we’re hungry.”

“Sorry for the trouble,” you apologized. “Just one moment, okay?”

He watched you closely as you gathered your things and he didn’t miss how you hid the canvas from him, carefully wrapping it up with brown paper. You felt nervous as you followed the two large men from the school, hyper aware of the strange and terrified looks of your classmates. 

The worst your school ever saw was someone kicking the vending machine because their snack got stuck, so seeing these two obvious delinquents had everyone on edge, especially since you were following them. You kept your head high, though, smiling brightly to let everyone know you were okay. You hoped they wouldn’t sense your nervousness.

Arriving at Oya put you even more on edge because everyone was watching you, sizing you up to see if you were a fit challenge for them. You had no doubt in your mind that if Furuya and Seki hadn’t been with you, they wouldn’t have hesitated to attack you. As someone who couldn’t fight to save your life, you found yourself walking closer to Furuya for comfort.

The boys led you into the gym where Murayama was waiting, lying across the couch and tossing a ball into the air before catching it. Several groups of guys were scattered throughout the gym, all of whom looked at you with suspicion and confusion as you were led to the stage.

“We’re back!” announced Seki with a grin.

Murayama caught the ball, moving his head to the side. His eyes locked with yours and you felt your breath catch in your throat. You had seen him so many times before this, but it was always from a distance and never up close. Had he always been this pretty?

He slowly sat up, his feet pressing against the floor as he watched you. He lifted his hand, motioning for you to come closer but you were rooted to the spot, unable to tear your gaze away from those dark pools.

Furuya gave your shoulder a gentle shove, knocking you from your daze.

You clutched the painting to your chest as you slowly stepped closer, gaze on the ground in front of you.

“Oi,” called Murayama, his tone softer than you had expected. “Why did you give me these?”

Glancing up, you saw him holding the poem you had written. The bracelet was secured around his wrist, bringing a bright grin to your lips. “You’re wearing it!”

He tilted his head to the side. “That’s usually what people do with bracelets, yeah?”

“Yes, I just… I thought you might have thrown it away,” you admitted sheepishly, rubbing the back of your neck. “I’m really happy you kept it.”

Why was his heart picking up speed? He wasn’t sure, but it made him feel vulnerable and he didn’t like feeling that way. His eyes flickered to the brown package held protectively against your chest. “What’s that?”

You felt warmth flood your cheeks, grip tightening around the painting. Yes, you were quite proud of what you had created but… were you read to show it to him? Giving him the poem was easy because you weren’t there to see his reaction. If you showed him the painting now, you wouldn’t be able to avoid it if he didn’t like it. 

“It’s, um… it’s nothing! Just a school project,” you lied, laughing nervously.

Furuya scoffed, folding his arms over his chest. “It’s a painting.”

“You saw it?!” Your wide eyes snapped to him and he smirked.

Murayama’s eyes narrowed at the two of you, feeling jealous that Furuya knew what it was when you refused to show it to him. Clicking his tongue, he stood up and jumped down from the stage, closing the distance in just a few strides. He reached toward you without thinking and you winced, taking a step back.

His brow furrowed, hand falling back to his side. “Are you afraid of me?”

“No!” You replied quickly, shaking your head. “Sorry, I’m just not very good with being touched.”

“Oh.”

You nodded, biting your lower lip in thought. After a moment of silence, you slowly held out the painting. “I made this for you, Murayama-san. I hope you like it.”

His heart skipped a beat at how cute you are and he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t happy to be receiving a gift from you. He took the package, careful not to touch your fingers as he did so. He tugged away the brown paper, dark eyes scanning the canvas.

You watched his expression carefully, but he remained stoic, causing you to bite your lip again. “You probably don’t like paintings, huh? I didn’t really think about it, I’m sorry.”

Though his face remained blank, there was a war zone going on inside of him. He was absolutely touched by the painting you had done of him. He was touched by the bracelet and the poem. He couldn’t remember a time he had felt happier, though he knew taking over Oya was a close second.

“I love it,” he breathed out, eyes shimmering with sincerity as he stepped closer to you.

A bright smile came to your lips and he was sure it had just brightened the room. “I’m so glad!”

“Why are you giving me these things?” Murayama was dumb, but he wasn’t that dumb. He had a good idea of the answer, but he wanted to hear you say it. He wanted to be sure.

“Ah, well…” you rubbed the back of your head, cheeks warming. “I really like you, Murayama-san.”

“Yoshiki. Call me Yoshiki.”

You felt like you were going to burst with happiness. “Yoshiki-san, then.”

He adored the way his name sounded coming from you and he wanted to hear it again. His mind was racing as he tried to grasp onto the words he wanted to say. He just wanted to ask you out on a date, it couldn’t be that hard! Yet the words continued to escape him, much to his frustration.

“Yoshiki-san?”

“What?”

You hesitated for a moment. “Will you…”

His heart skipped a beat. Were you about to ask him out?

“…look at the painting tonight? In the dark, I mean.”

His heart dropped, a frown tugging at his lips. “Why?”

“Please?” You pressed your hands together, giving him a pleading look that he couldn’t being himself to say no to.

“Fine.”

“Thank you!” You glanced at your watch and clicked your tongue. “I have to go, but don’t forget, okay?”

Before he could utter a word, you turned on your heel and rushed away. Murayama’s frown deepened as he looked at the painting. What was so special about looking at it at night? It made no sense.

Then again, nothing about this situation made any sense to him.

That night, he waited for the sky to darken before he slipped away from the gym, painting in hand. He headed into an empty classroom, not turning on the light and nearly tripping over a desk lying on the floor. He clicked his tongue in annoyance, kicking it out of the way.

It was then that something caught his eye. Something was glowing a faint green in the darkness. He slowly lifted the painting, squinting at the words. Painted in the bottom corner with glow in the dark paint were the words, will you go out with me?

He scoffed in disbelief, the corners of his lips sliding upward. What a cheeky little thing you were! 

To him, you were strange. He didn’t understand poetry or painting or making bracelets. He didn’t understand why you liked him or how you had come to do so, but he admired the fact that you had approached Furuya and Seki without fear. 

You didn’t look at any of them with disgust or fear, just kindness. People were always quick to judge those at Oya, and rightfully so, but they were rarely ever given a chance. You were willing to give them one.

Murayama smiled as he leaned against the window sill, the cool night air ruffling his hair. He could definitely picture you as the queen of Oya, as his queen. 

“I hope you’re ready,” he hummed softly. “Tomorrow, I make you mine~”

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