#anything other than like. pretty standard schools

[quarterlifekitty]

Weaknesses part 5: complexes

Note: this is jokes!! Please don’t take my cartoon pathologizing too seriously!

cw: some daddy kink level stuff

Gaz has a soft spot for girls who suffer from oldest sister syndrome. Girls that are a little world weary and too grown up at too young an age from caring for others while not having people to rely on. He just loves how pleasantly surprised you are literally every time he does something helpful that you didn’t ask him to do. Doing the dishes. Spackling that hole from the picture you took down. Refilling the air in the tires. Bleaching the bathtub. Very small things— but you’re so used to being the only one who can stay on top of things. Literally the high he gets from telling you to sit down and relax is unparalleled.

Soap is, quite frankly, into girls who grew up thinking they were ugly. It’s a terribly selfish, but he likes telling you all of the dirty things he thinks of doing to you, how he feels like someone’s knocked him upside the head when you enter a room in a new outfit, how he has to take a cold shower every time you’re going out to some event and he gets to see you dressed up. Honestly, he has to take the cold showers pretty regularly. Seeing how you’re flustered, and you don’t 100% believe the things he says— so he has to put in the time to make you believe him. You’re the kind of girl boys would dare each other to ask out in middle school, and now Soap has the absolute pleasure of convincing you that sometimes you make him so turned on that he thinks he’s about to throw up.

Ghost likes outcast girls. He likes how you eye him with a little bit of suspicion when he chooses to hang around you. He sort of gets this idea in his head that he’s the only one that can handle your eccentricities— handle you. That other people are afraid to approach you but he’s not afraid of anything. That his interest in you is because honestly, he has a much more refined palate than any of the shitheads you’re surrounded by. And you know what? He likes the idea of you as a couple being the scary, freak ass couple. Two lone wolves becoming mates.

Price likes former gifted students. He loves that you’re talented and quick, yes, but he also can’t help but get excited by all of that pressure that’s on you— that you put on yourself. He gets to be the one that relieves it. He’s the one that gets to lavish you in praise, and he’s also the one who gets to pin you down and force you to take it easy for a little while. He loves gently handling any mistakes or missteps, rationally perceived or otherwise. Because he can tell no one’s ever bothered to treat you so gently, have they, sweetheart? They’ve just been content to push you to your limits and have you run yourself ragged because you’re special. You are, he won’t deny it— but you’re also a little thing that hasn’t seen enough nurturing, in his eyes.

König loves so called “high maintenance” girls. Girls with high standards who know what they want, who have gone through some partners that couldn’t take the heat. He gets a very unique sense of control out of it— knowing all of your rules, rituals, likes, dislikes. Like Ghost, he likes thinking of himself as the only person who knows how to handle you— that everyone before him has just been unworthy of you. That he is strong where others have been weak. And you know what? It’s not rotten work. Not to him. Not if it’s you. He’s just built different.

Nikolai… I’m just going to say it. He likes girls with daddy issues. He kinda throws his whole self into relationships at times, and he likes it when he can be your everything. Your love, your friend, your hero, your source of approval from an older man. And he loves a brat. Because he knows you only act that way because someone didn’t pay attention to his special girl in the past. You’re testing him— daring him, unsheathing your claws to see if he’ll flinch and he never will. He’ll endure it all and chip at your defenses until you’re the soft, satisfied, sweet girl he knows you really want to be. Lavishing you with praise and attention, bragging about you to anyone who will listen. He wants you to have a complete breakdown because you’ve been holding it all in and putting up walls for so long that you don’t even know how to cope with being in the arms of someone who will always catch you when you fall.

[liorlen]

working on smth where I put gale in silly outfits based on wizard subclasses/schools of magic, since I already did necromancer.

[zillychu]

I’ve gotten a WAVE of asks about this AU, so I decided to flesh it out some more and answer some of those questions!

I’ll probably polish this extended summary up at some point and submit it to AO3. But for now, here’s a rundown of my thoughts–please feel free to send more questions! I’ll update this post if I get any more. But if you’re someone who wanted to write fic for it, don’t worry, you don’t need to take my headcanons as gospel. It’s a pretty basic AU honestly lol

Summary:

The portal accident results in a violent explosion that wipes out the whole block, and condemns all of Amity Park. Danny haunts the city for 100 years, before Sam and Tucker find him. 

Setup:

In the 1920’s, 19-year-old Danny went into the incomplete portal on his own, hoping to help out his parents. Ripping the portal open through unnatural means created a huge burst of energy that resulted in a massive explosion. A good portion of the Amity Park population died, many were injured, and the ones on the fringes relocated–Amity was quickly deemed too dangerous due to the excess ectoplasm in the area that attracted ghosts. 

While the disaster was in Amity, the fallout was seen around the globe. Before, natural portals were rare, short-lived, and rarely allowed ghosts to fully slip into our realm (the most severe cases being on par with poltergeists that most people didn’t believe in). Now, natural portals pop open frequently around the world, large enough to allow the entirety of a ghost into the physical plane. They’re more common the closer you get to Amity, but they happen enough elsewhere that this change was something of a small apocalypse before people settled back down and found out how to combat at least some of their new, permanent neighbors. 

Danny is unaware that he’s only half-dead, believing he’s a full ghost. He ends up sticking around Amity, unintentionally making it his haunt. His grief and guilt over causing the death of his loved ones (and many others) makes him isolate and avoid human contact. Though he has, at times, scared nosy people away from the city in a mix of territorial instinct–and to get them to leave before a less friendly ghost finds them. 

Ghosts are much more of an uncontested danger in this AU. Lesser ghosts are practically mindless, and while stronger ghosts are capable of reason, their interests are limited. They’re highly territorial, possessive, and often destructive. Most worrisome is that they also like to snack on the life force of anything alive. No one is sure what dictates a ghost’s propensity to attack or hunt the living for their life force since ghosts don’t exactly experience hunger. At least, not the way we do. If a human is rescued before their life force is fully drained, they can make a full recovery–though humanity has still not yet found what this “life force" is. 

And since the Fentons’ research died along with them, there aren’t many tools available to the public to protect them from ghosts. Most homes have standard ghost shields and some weapons are available on the market, but certified ghost hunters are required to take care of anything more powerful than your average spook. 

Sam and Tucker met in high school, and are now rooming together for college very close to the Amity border. Rent is surprisingly cheap when you’re a stone’s throw away from a condemned area crawling with ghosts. Sam is the one who drags Tucker along with her fascination over finding out more about the city, and its largely mysterious demise. Sam is aware of the danger, but feels ghosts have a place in this world just like everything else, and does exercise caution–like one would while foraging in the woods with a known tiger population. 

What she and Tucker weren’t expecting was to run into a ghost that felt almost human. One that hasn't hurt them, not for lack of trying–while being powerful enough to walk past ghost shields without so much as a flinch. The long white hair is familiar in the whispers of the ectobiologist community, but there’s no way it could be the rumored ghost king Phantom, right?

About Danny:

He has very long hair, claws, and black sclera. His hazmat suit is more torn and ragged, with exposed hands and feet that fade into a burnt black.

His hair tends to float a lot on its own. It can start morphing into fire under duress. 

He does still technically have gloves and boots, they've just charred and melted into his skin towards the ends. He can't take them off in his ghost form. His hands and feet have a leathery texture that's tougher than the rest of his skin.

The white of his hazmat suit is both supposed to look like flames, and also a battered look representing his more violent, explosive death.

Overall, he appears rather listless and sad, with an unnerving air of danger around him–even for a ghost. 

Danny’s “ghost sense�� comes out as white smoke.

He does breathe black smoke at times, usually when agitated. 

He's already fought and defeated Pariah Dark by the time Sam and Tucker find him, technically making him the Ghost King. This is heavily speculated by ghost experts, despite there being no real proof beyond a massive battle that scarred Illinois. He has not donned the Ring or the Crown, and captured sentient ghosts are hesitant to answer questions surrounding him. Danny basically has the throne but doesn’t do anything with it, and finds it meaningless enough to routinely forget he has the title. He only fought Pariah because he knew otherwise, humanity would have perished. A lot of ghosts are scared of him because he's so hard to figure out, and he's strong. 

Danny is usually very quiet and speaks softly, because his lungs were damaged in the blaze that half-killed him. He's technically healed since becoming a ghost, so it's more of a compulsion due to the traumatic memory. That, and he’s just… very forlorn and distant, shy around humans who don’t seem to understand how dangerous it is to keep hanging around him.

His memories pre-accident are extremely fuzzy. He knows the very basics of who he was, but specifics have been muffled due to trauma and isolation. He routinely forgets human habits, etiquette, etc. and tends to act more like a full ghost with some odd quirks. 

He does try to scare Sam and Tucker off numerous times. Unfortunately for him, they realized they shouldn't have been able to escape a ghost that strong–but they did, because he let them. 

Sam and Tucker think he's mute at first! He doesn't speak a word to them until several encounters later, when he fumbles his whole scary act and saves them from another ghost. 

He’s still half-ghost, though he doesn’t figure this out until Sam and Tucker come along trying to unravel the mysteries behind the Amity catastrophe. Physically and emotionally, he’s been stuck for 100 years–so his human form is still 19. It’s unclear at this point if he can age normally like a human as long as he stays in human form, or if he’s immortal. 

Danny's family did not turn into ghosts, though he sometimes worries he'll find them in the afterlife as shells of their former selves. He doesn't know if it's better or worse that he's not sure he'd recognize them. 

(Danny also still has some living family. Take a guess.)

Yes, he knows how to Wail. Understandably, he very rarely uses it. You do not want to witness this.

Danny :) is not immune :) from the allure of eating a human's life force :)))

[qqueenofhades]

So I keep seeing people play the "Harris is a Cop, so I'm not voting for her because ACAB" card, and not even pointing out that she was a DA/Prosecutor rather than an actual cop seems to change their minds - as far as they're concerned, working with cops in any capacity makes you a cop. Do you happen to have anything that'd make for a good counterpoint to this argument (or, at the very least, something to make those of us who still plan on voting for her despite our dim views on Law Enforcement not feel so bad about it)?

....Not feel so bad about it?

First of all: these are laughably, incredibly unbelievably unserious people, and frankly, my first advice would be NOT to bother trying to engage with them at all, because there is nothing whatsoever they will ever accept in the way of logical proof to change their minds. First it was "you can't ask me to vote for Biden specifically because of [insert issue here.]" This changed a lot, from Roe getting overturned by the corrupt SCOTUS, to the train strike (hey anyone remember that?) to student loan forgiveness and then had settled firmly on Gaza. So now, lo and behold, they're given exactly what they asked for: a new younger candidate who is not Biden and explicitly more progressive on the Gaza issue (Harris was the first member of the administration to openly call for a ceasefire). So they turn their noses up, rush to their favorite 2020 disinformation founts that were first spouted when they were trying to sabotage her in favor of Bernie (who endorsed Biden pretty strongly before he dropped out), flirt with Jill "Actual Agent of Putin" Stein, and other equally expected and equally bullshit maneuvers. Lololololololol online leftists. Never change, or something.

That said: because their minds are so set that they will never vote for any Democrat ever, you can't really give them any logical information to separate them from this conclusion. I don't have the links on hand, but etc Google and Wikipedia are free: Harris's tenure as district attorney and California AG was progressive even by modern standards, and it was happening in the early 2000s: she refused to prosecute for low-level weed offenses, pushed for harder sentences for assault weapons, performed gay marriages LONG before it was legal even in San Freaking Francisco, refused to seek the death penalty, worked with restorative justice programs, etc. This was after she was a first-generation American child of brown immigrants who took advantage of equal-opportunity education programs to go to law school, and her parents were already high-achieving academics (one a cancer researcher from India and one an economics professor from Jamaica). Sure sure, she definitely seems exactly like Derek Chauvin to me. Critical thinking is great! #VoteJillStein! A literal puppet of Putin and unabashed Assad fangirl is definitely the pro-peace morally correct option here!*

In other words, the morons do not give a single shit about factual reflections of Kamala's record. They do not care about whether her time as a district attorney was progressive (it was) and whether she was actually a cop (she wasn't). They're so wedded at the hip to their braindead disinformation propaganda that now we're going to see the excuses change at lightspeed from why they can't vote for Biden specifically to why they can't vote for Harris specifically. None of it will be remotely tethered to reality and all of it will be in extreme and obvious bad faith. As I said, there are plenty of persuadable voters elsewhere who HAVE been energized by her elevation to candidacy. If you are indeed interested in winning voters to her side (as opposed to having to find reasons to justify yourself to the All Voting Is Evil crowd who will never listen to or believe you anyway), I suspect your time would be better spent elsewhere, and outside the echo-chamber leftist social media space in general.

Aside from that, I have gotten a few hand-wringy asks about Kamala and the election overall, and I gotta say, I am not going to waste my time and effort replying to them. We have about 100 days to win this election or become a fascist dictatorship. We are already in uncharted territory, but the replacement of Biden with Harris went UNIMAGINABLY smoothly, far, far more than anyone (including me) ever expected. It reminds me of the presto-chango that the French center, left, and center-left parties pulled off to replace candidates, IN FIVE DAYS, to better position themselves to defeat the fascists. Compared to that, three and a half months is a cakewalk, but we still absolutely do not, DO NOT, have time to sit around worrying and hand-wringing about this or that hypothetical Bad Thing. It deeply unsurprises me to hear that US Online Leftists are still throwing snits and pitching their toys out of the pram rather than getting on board, but the rest of us don't have any time to waste and need to apply our energy to where it will be best put to use. So yes.

*extreme, extreme sarcasm alert

[the-90s-music-colosseum]

Quarterfinals, Match 2

expand to see all propaganda received! (wall of text warning oh my god this is a severe cautionary message)

Lauryn Hill:

"she paved the way and was hot as fuck the whole time"

"Girl c'mon. Look at her. You're gonna try and tell me that isn't the most beautiful and attractive person alive? Okay. You're lying but okay."

"if u freaks don't give ms. lauryn hill the respect she deserves..."

"actually one of the prettiest women ever I'm such a lesbian for her. like irl I'm already a lesbian but she is helping"

Damon Albarn:

"Don’t think Damon should be here? Why don’t you get your head checked by a jumbo jet? Maybe you’ll feel heavy metal and calm down."

"If Damon is in the “some guy” category, he’s the heavenly and heartbreaking version. Damon is the sort of significant stranger I’d see on the train out of Colchester but could never speak to, just a face seen in passing yet too radiant to be real. I’d fall in love for an hour and carry the ache for a month."

"Damon sets the standard for me. I think he’s the most fascinating man alive. What I find attractive in Damon is not just his gorgeous bone structure and boyish charm, but how wholly he’s committed himself to music. Damon is an artist who walked the walk: in one of his roughest years with some of his rawest songwriting, he said he was no longer excited by anything except the creative process. He was disillusioned with the celebrity of it all, with his relationships suffering for it, and only wanted to make art: nothing more, nothing less. He would go on to compose film scores, write operas and stage musicals, produce other artists’ records, form collectives to fulfill his passion for world music, and create some of the most globally successful music of his career in a completely innovative format that placed him as the phantom behind the characters. Whenever one band takes a break, he makes a solo record or puts together a supergroup to stay busy. He’s uniquely collaborative and still writes personal letters inviting artists to record with him, and yet can function as a one-man show, acting as a multi-instrumentalist, a singer-songwriter and a producer. He’s been a constant voice of bringing British music to the world *and* bringing world music into Britain. Sure, he’s won Brit Awards and a Grammy among others, but he also has a Guinness World Record and was named an Officer of the British Empire for his services to music; his long work with Africa Express earned him respect even from peers who’d previously dismissed him, and his commitment to support his Malian collaborators in the face of violence earned him the title of Local King in Mali. There is so much talent in the world, but there is truly no one else with a career that looks like Damon Albarn’s. Damon is far more than just a prettyboy to look nice on a magazine cover, but looks are the ultimate point of this tournament, so make no mistake: he was terribly, terribly pretty. You watch him performing in the 90s, you sift through photoshoots and interviews and documentaries, and it feels *cruel* how beautiful he was. If his talent was god-given, so was his face. To put a bow on this thesis: I don’t know if Gorillaz and Damon’s musical universe would be the experimental, globe-trotting, boundary-pushing community affair it is if Blur hadn’t become such a central figure in Britpop and if Damon had not been made such a media spectacle, and I don’t know if Damon would have been that spectacle if he wasn’t so ungodly pretty. The domino effect is that Damon’s cherubic face launched a thousand multimedia art school projects for decades to come."

"I wish I was basically any bloke in the 90s so I could tongue Damon Albarn down. Damon will see a man and ask “is anyone gonna kiss that?” and not wait for a response."

"I have a pillow with his face on it. I sleep with it every night 😊"

"“I’m more homosexual than Brett Anderson, always have been. As far as bisexuality goes, I’ve had a taste of that particular fruit, or have been tasted you might say…” is just the rawest most Shakespearean statement ever"

"he is the ultimate Pretty Boy ™. his glorious golden locks, his electric blue eyes. he is if Princess Diana was a Britpop Dude. he is the Regina George of Britpop. he is if Aphrodite took male form. Zeus would come down to earth to fuck him if he knew. he is a caffeinated orange cat let loose. he is deranged. he is unhinged. you never know what will come out of his mouth. he had sexual tension with every single man who knew him. he pulled justine fucking frischmann. his aura knows no bounds. he is a siren. he is a weird guy. but being so gorgeous stunning ethereal didn't stop him from also being one of the most prolific songwriters of his generation"

"THE MAIN BLUR"

"literally where do i even begin. i could write entire essays on this man. a good place to start would be the beetlebum music video, i suppose. i'll never forget the first time i watched that music video. something in me changed, my brain chemistry was altered, my life was never the same, i view the world a lot differently now. and a lot of the viewing i'm doing is of pictures of damon albarn's face because of boy do i have a lot of those saved. every time i try to look for a photo of something on my phone i can't find it because there's so much damon. okay that's maybe an exaggeration but this man has the most unfathomable beauty ever. his eyes? HIS EYES. god dammit i love his eyes i want to stare at them until the end of time like nothing else exists. i'm so normal about this man (lying) and while i'm usually very shameless about my interests i'm actually incredibly glad this propaganda is anonymous because otherwise. yeah. but the world deserves to see damon albarn's beauty and also hear his fantastic voice because what the fuck. his voice is literally the most gorgeous sound ever produced like bro sounds like that and expects me not to fall in love? i want this man to sing his silly songs and talk absolute nonsense to me until the sun eventually blows out and the world ends. cmon damon girlies let's demolish this tournament i know there are a lot of you."

"He’s beautiful. He’s a little rat. He’s a sweetheart. He’s a dickhead. He’s a musical genius. He’s a dumb bitch. He’s a jock. He’s a weirdo. He’s real. He’s an illusion. He’s everything. He’s just Damon."

"DAMON DAMON DAMON where do I begin oh jeez I've hyperfixated on this man for a solid 4 years and still going strong. Damon makes me wish that British people are real. That says A LOT. This man created a whole ass ANIMATED BAND WITH A SHIT TON OF LORE as a SIDE HUSTLE??? Not to mention, what other man has collaborated with Stevie Nicks, MF DOOM, Del the Funky Homosapien, Snoop Dogg, AND Beck?! People, we're literally in the presence of a god. And he's STILL GOING. Anyways, TL;DR, damon is so so so neat and cool and he should definitely win this competition. Thank you."

"Okay 90s Damon is The Perfect Boy yes yes, but the people who parrot the Daily Mail and say "he's ugly now" will never understand. I would still suck every drop from him on his deathbed."

"Vote for whoever you want to. But Damon is so pretty."

"i did not spend hours admiring this beautiful man's face on pinterest just to see him lose."

"Damon Albarn just brings me joy. When I'm watching him perform, following along as the camera lingers on and adores his pretty face, I get butterflies like I'm 15 again. It's nice to still feel that totally unguarded giddiness sometimes."

"God let the intrusive thoughts win making Damon. What if he's a beautiful blond twink with eyes like saucers and dick to his knees, he reads Herman Hesse and plays footie and is insufferable about both, he'll be the most prolific musician of his generation and write operas and seminal albums in 5 different genres and also he's gonna be the dumbest bitch alive? He'll also be kinda bi, but only kinda. And send."

"when i found out about his existence, my life was changed forever. i wish i could use him like the hannah montana boot milk pillow and chuck him at the wall so he makes a loud thud"

"Think of the drama and anon fights it'll cause if Damon wins it all! And think of how quiet it'll get after Damon's out. You'll miss him when he's gone, like memories of a noisy house years after it's grown silent. Choose Damon, and keep the messy train chugging."

"Even the Gallagher brothers have the hots for him."

"Kiss kiss I love him also you can't vote for any of the Seattle men they're literally copy and paste it's not fair. We need Brit representation"

"I want to take care of him, I want to provide for him. I need to gauge his baby blue puppy dog orbs out to I can clean them with wood varnish, paint shades of Pantone 320 C in his eyes, spray eau de parfume by dior in them and sew it back into his eyes like that scene in Toy Story 2."

"Seeing as simply filling the page with ‘Damon’ written 10000000 times isn’t going to cut it 😅 may I admit/submit: I DO have him tattooed on my being (no descriptive, is this anon?); he’s inspired somewhat unhinged late night/early morning fandom conversations in which I’ve served as ‘parish’ priest hearing confessions from all manner of folk about what they’d like to do to him/receive from him; sadly I lost an essay where I detailed why the letters that make up his name suit him so well, and described him as the hot caramel sauce to Graham’s cool vanilla ice cream. He’s a faerie princess with a nose that makes people weep and a voice that feels like the warmest home and he gives amazing hugs. He loves trains and chickens and his tuxedo cat. He’s annoying and sweet and somewhat unhinged and his music saves people and all this is on top of that fantastic dick. He’s a dream yet very real and we’re fucking blessed to be on earth at the same time as him, amen"

"Damon Albarn was a beautiful, beautiful boy. The world saw that, regardless of if every individual reading this has the same taste in men; it felt like a truth of the universe at the time. They don't make celebrities that angelic in face and erratic in personality anymore."

"I need to touch his eyebrows, nose and prostate just one time JUST ONE TIME COME ON"

[sttm99]

Bakugo falling for a 'popular' girl.

Sometimes Bakugo felt stupid for falling for you. Not that there was anything wrong with you, or that you weren't up to standard. Quite the opposite. Quite frankly, you were out of his league.

You were one of those crazy pretty Management Course girls that had boys and even girls falling at your feet. You were so used to being hit on and flirted with, it was like you were desensitised to it.

He'd held open the cafeteria doors for you one afternoon, much to the amazement of his friends. They gawked as he stood near the door, holding it open for you and one of your friends, and instead of receiving some blushy words of appreciation, you just muttered a dismissive thanks and walked through without sparing him a glance.

He stood there for the next few minutes, fists clenched by his side, head turned down with wide eyes and red cheeks, whilst Kirishima, Kaminari and Sero guffawed.

Then he looked back up in your direction, and watched as some random boy literally ran over to pull out your seat for you, and another had even gone to get your food tray so you wouldn't have to.

He paused.

Was that what he was competing with?

How would you ever notice him if every other boy in school practically worshipped the ground you walked on?

He began brainstorming, with the help of Kaminari, because he was considered to be the more romantic one of his friends.

"You just keep proving why I was right to call you Dunce Face!" Bakugo yelled at his blonde friend, cursing at and dismissing every single idea he'd been given.

"I think Kami's actually got some good stuff, Bakugo. You're just picky." Sero defended.

But of course Bakugo was picky. This was you! He'd watched you, studied you, despite how creepy that sounded. He knew the things you'd scoff at and scorn, and he knew the things you wouldn't even bat an eyelash at.

"You're all idiots!" He yelled at them and stalked over to his room, slamming his door shut behind him and pacing the space.

It was later that evening, that Kirishima had pulled him aside and told him to just be forward with you.

"Just go talk to her. Like, actually talk. Not opening the door, or pulling out her chair and expecting her to fall at your feet. It doesn't work that way."

Bakugo contemplated it, turned the idea over and over in his head. He nodded at Kirishima's words, deciding that would be what he would do.

He wasn't some blushy boy that couldn't get any words out once in your presence, and he wasn't some entitled brat that thought he deserved your favour for doing the bare minimum.

He was better than all those idiots. And he'd show that.

The next day at school, he caught you on your way to lunch, stopping you and asking for your time.

"Sorry," you began, your pretty, fake smile making its way to your lips as you looked at him. "But I'm really in a hurry right now. Maybe later?" You said softly.

He knew that wasn't true. It was a tactic you used, the same sequence of words you gave all the boys so as to avoid stupid confessions like his.

But he was better than them.... he'd show you.

"Please," he said, resisting the urge to bite at his lips at how uncharacteristic of him this was. "I just- I want to ask you something."

You sighed softly, looking at the girls by your side and urging them to walk forward. They did, but not before offering Bakugo sympathetic smiles, as though they knew you'd reject him, as though they knew he'd come out of the conversation with a broken heart.

"What is it?" You said to him, one hand on your hip and your weight on one leg. "I really don't want to miss lun-"

"One date." He blurted out quickly, wanting to go through with it before any nerves caught up with him. He wasn't used to this; asking girls out, flirting, courting. He'd never participated in the stupid, juvenile acts of romance with his peers, when everyone was just realising that the opposite sex wasn't all that disgusting.

He didn't know how to do this, but he wanted you, badly.

"A date, huh?" You said with a slight smirk, pushing away the strands of hair that had fallen over your forehead.

You could admit the blonde haired boy standing before you was attractive, very much so; with wide shoulders and bulky arms, and a sharp jaw and intense red eyes.

That, and he was Katsuki Bakugo. A student notorious for his refusal to indulge in romance with his peers, considering himself above it, and finding the whole ordeal to be a distraction from his goals. That driven, obtuse boy was standing here asking you for a date.

It swelled your ego just a bit.

He nodded. "One date. I-"

"You do realise that you asking me for a date doesn't exactly make you stand out from all the other boys." You cut him off with bored eyes.

He almost gapes at you.

"They all do this, ask me out cause they think they're better, or different from the ones that hold the door and pull out my chair. I reject them. All of them. Why shouldn't I reject you, Bakugo?" You ask.

He steels his resolve, taking a step to you, almost dwarfing you in his height and mass. He's big, and he knows it.

"You know my name. Do you know the names of those shitty idiots that drool over you?" He raised a brow.

You scoffed. "Even if-"

"You should know that I'm never one to play games. I don't believe in wasting my time. I want to spend it with you..., because I like you. Even if I don't know you all that much, Yn. One date. Let me prove it. That I'm worth it."

You stayed silent for a moment, a little smile tilting your lips upwards. "A restaurant date... cause you're making me late for lunch. So the good stuff will be gone."

He chuckled softly, the sound rich and throaty. "I'll give you anything you want, Yn."

You smiled at that. "Really?" You teased.

He took another step to you. You could smell his cologne now, could see some of the little blemishes on his pale skin.

"I'll give you everything. Whatever you desire."

You nodded smugly. "I like that. Good."

"So...?"

"When's the day?" You smiled up at him coyly.

"Saturday. I'll pick you up at 8?"

You nodded. "Alright then. See you Saturday, Bakugo." You offered him a small wave as you walked past him, making your way into the cafeteria.

[queenk00k]

cupid's lead arrows // rafe cameron

Requested by anon

Request: Hi girl I love your writing 🫶🏻 Can you write about Rafe, who has been Reader’s best friend forever, but secretly has a crush on her? One day, Reader confesses that she’s dating someone, and Rafe does everything he can to break them up.

Summary: You finally get a boyfriend but something, or someone, seems intent on keeping you apart.

Word count: 1.8k

Includes: This is literally all angst sorry

Note: My first Outer Banks fic in over 4 years lol please be kind! I got a little carried away...this lends itself to a part 2, if anyone likes it.

It’s not always a walk in the park when you’re Rafe Cameron’s best friend.

You’ve been inseparable since the first day of high school when you got paired together for a semester long project. Study sessions in the library (well, you would study, and Rafe would flirt with the cute library monitor) turned into after school hangouts at Tannyhill, which turned into hosting parties and heading to college together.

Did you ever have a crush on your best friend? Well fuck, have you seen him?

Not only is he gorgeous but you got to experience a whole different side of Rafe that not everyone got to see, the sweet side – loyal, caring, and pretty soft behind the scenes.

You spent years pining after Rafe, silently and stoically of course, never wanting to ruin your friendship by letting him know how you felt. You figured it was for the best and besides, you had lived through enough of Rafe’s girlfriends to know you weren’t ever going to be his type.

You’ve seen each other’s highest highs and lowest lows which, unfortunately for you both, Rafe seemed to have more than his fair share of. Much to the disappointment of your parents and the shock of your friends, you stuck by Rafe’s side through his drug addiction and his drinking problems and were there to pick up the pieces after his father died. Rafe, in turn, had your back when you had blow up fights with your mother and comforted you when you had problems with your friends.

Now, two years out of college and with Rafe mostly sober, you didn’t think there was anything you two couldn’t handle, nothing you couldn’t face together, nothing that could ever come between you.

Until you started dating Parker.

Rafe seemed happy for you when you first told him, hugging you and telling you he was proud of you for “finally getting some.” He was nice to Parker (by Rafe’s standards, which really meant not going out of his way to intimidate the guy) when you brought him to the beach and introduced them.

But as the weeks went by, you noticed a subtle shift in Rafe’s behaviour. You kept telling yourself you were being paranoid, that there’s no way Rafe could have an issue with Parker. He told you he was happy for you, right? And unlike the last potential boyfriends, Rafe didn’t try to scare him off.

But something was off.

You noticed Rafe was falling back into old habits that scared you. He was drinking more, often double parked at parties, and either loud and belligerent or sulking on his own in a corner.

And then then the incidents began. At first you just thought it was shit luck, but then it just started to feel like the universe was conspiring against you and Parker.

Turns out Rafe was conspiring against you and Parker.

It started when Parker seemingly ghosted you on one of your Friday night dates, leaving you alone and upset at the wharf before Rafe picked you up. Parker swore he had car issues, both his front tires punctured, and you figured that was a reasonable excuse.

Then the night of the annual bonfire, a harmless game of ‘never have I ever’ turned sour when Rafe and Topper kept coming up with the most oddly specific scenarios. Each of them left Parker putting down his fingers, looking sheepishly over at you as your cheeks turned red from embarrassment before you got up and left the circle, Rafe raising a beer bottle to his lips as he watched you intently. He followed after you that night and you melted into his arms, naïvely assuming your best friend was comforting you without an ulterior motive.

And now the worst of all – Topper had cornered you as you were leaving the driving range to ask if you knew Parker was spending time with his ex, and you finally snapped.

“Where did you hear this, Topper? Who told you?”

And because Topper was, above all, really just spineless, you got the answer out of him straight away.

Rafe. At the scene of the crime, three times in a row. What a fucking coincidence.

So, you decided you’d had enough of this bullshit, of Rafe playing games with your relationship, and you drove over to his house, marched up to his front door and banged on it with your fist until he finally opened up.

“Y/N!” he said, looking genuinely excited to see you. “What are you doing here?”

You took a deep breath, willing yourself not to lose your shit just yet, not to get angry until you actually knew the truth.

“Do you like Parker? Do you want me to be with him?”

Rafe blinked at you, his blue eyes narrowing in confusion.

“What? I don’t-”

“Tell me the truth,” you cut in. “I want to hear you say it.”

Rafe stepped over the threshold and gently closed the door behind him, clearing his throat before he answered.

“No. I don’t, and I want you to break up with him,” he said, folding his arms.

You huffed out a humourless laugh.

“Right, well, that’s not going to happen. Thanks a lot,” you say, willing yourself not to cry as you turn around and walk away from your best friend.

“Y/N, please come back. I have my reasons!” Rafe raises his voice as he calls out to you.

“Why do you care so much? Is this some fake chivalrous ‘if I can’t have you, no one can’ bullshit? Just leave me alone, Rafe.” You say as you clamber down the front steps and start walking to your car.

“Because I love you, alright?!” Rafe shouts after you.

You stop, the righteous anger you were feeling only moments before threatening to dissipate into the humid night air. You close your eyes, inhaling deeply before turning around to face your best friend.

Rafe’s breathing heavily, running his hand over his head as if to erase what he just said.

“Fuck,” he hisses, his ring glinting in the moonlight as he chews on his thumb, looking pleadingly at you, willing you to say something, anything. The silence between you feels heavy as your mind races. He’s said it before of course, but it’s usually in jest, or after you help him with something. This feels different, and you know better than to assume it’s not.

“Rafe,” you say, fighting to keep your voice steady. “What are you doing?” You watch him warily as he takes a hesitant step towards you.

“I love you. I’m serious. More than best friends, more than anything we’ve been in the past. I love you and I…I can’t stand to see you with someone else. I can’t let it happen.”

“You have no right-”

“He’s not a good guy, y/n!” Rafe raises his voice again, making you flinch slightly. You scoff at his words, throwing him an incredulous glare.

“Like you can talk, Rafe. I know you – more than anyone else. You’re not exactly in a position to be telling me who’s good for me or not,” you snap.

Rafe huffs, throwing his hands up in mock surrender. “Yeah, you got me. I’m not perfect, fine, but I know you and I know you shouldn’t be with Parker. That’s why I-” Rafe stops abruptly, his mouth twisting.

You step closer to him, closing the gap between you. “That’s why you what, Rafe?” Your heart pounds and you’re sure you’re about to have your suspicions confirmed. When Rafe stands there, dumbstruck and silent, you answer for him.

“You’re the one who started that rumour about Parker and his ex, aren’t you?”

Rafe’s silence tells you everything you need to know. You shake your head, not quite believing that your best friend would try and sabotage your relationship like this.

“And the bonfire? That was on purpose, wasn’t it? You got some dirt on Parker and wanted me to know about it.”

Rafe winced. “Well, Topper helped with that one. But seriously, this is all for your own good. I’m trying to protect you!”

You hold your hand up. “Stop. Just stop. How could you do this? Why would you try and break us up like this, just because you’re jealous? Why can’t you just let me be happy? Not to mention, you’ve been hurting me, Rafe! You’re not just hurting Parker; you’re destroying me in the process.”

You’re crying now, feeling betrayed. You had barely noticed but it had started to rain, the droplets mixing with your tears to run mascara down your cheeks. Rafe has the audacity to look concerned and regretful, to move as if to hug you and you shake his arm off before jabbing your index finger into his chest.

“You don’t get to decide what’s best for me, Rafe. You had your chance! For years! Just because you’ve finally fucking woken up doesn’t mean you get to ruin my happiness. And now this bullshit about Parker’s family? That’s low, even for you,” you spit, the brief warmth you felt when Rafe told you he loved you now completely cold.

Rafe shook his head. “No, no, you don’t get it! That’s all true! They’re shady fucking people and God, that’s coming from a Cameron. You can’t get caught up in their mess,” he pleads.

“You must be out of your goddamn mind if you think I’m going to believe you now! Why should I?” you yell before spinning on your heel and stalking down the driveway to your car, being careful to not slip on the pavement.

“Y/N, wait!” Rafe calls and he catches up to you in two long strides, grabbing your wrist with his large hand. His white button-down shirt was almost transparent now and the rain was running in rivers off his nose as he looked down at you.

“Please,” he begs. “Come inside. Let me explain. I love you, y/n, please,” Rafe looks desperate, and you almost pity him before you snap back to reality and remember why you’re so angry.

“I’m going to my boyfriend’s house,” you snarl, tugging your wrist out of his grip. “And if you follow me Rafe, I swear to God, I will never speak to you again.”

With that, you yank open your car door and put the keys in the ignition with shaking hands.

“FUCK!”

As you pull away, you can hear Rafe yelling your name.

You don’t even look in the rearview mirror as you turn out of his street, tires squealing.

[johnbrand]

Building a Roster

With @dansformations

Danny was more nervous than he had ever been before. All he had to do was knock on the door. Correction: all he had to do was knock on the door of Chad’s apartment. Correction with full explanation: all Danny had to do was knock on the door of Chad’s, the popular athlete he had a massive crush on, apartment.

It had come out of the blue really. The two had never hung out before, just shared a few classes here and there. So when Chad had invited Danny over to watch some soccer, Danny had replied with an instant “Yes!” Awkwardly tall and skinny, Danny hoped the shorter, muscular jock was asking him out in a sort of discreet way. But those hopes came crashing down once Chad opened the door.

“Danny boy, you made it!” Chad cheered, tossing an arm over Danny’s shoulder before leading him inside. Chad was shirtless, allowing the sweaty bush of hair within his armpit to soak the corner of Danny’s long-sleeve shirt. Had he not been transfixed by Chad’s bulky, hairy torso, or the party of many other just-as-attractive dudes, then Danny might have questioned how Chad knew he was at the door.

“Just in time, the match is about to begin,” Chad chuckled. Danny, enchanted by the pure testosterone of the room, watched as all the jocks organized themselves in front of the television. They joked with each other as the game began, boasting about their most recent sorority conquests and directing butt blasts at each other. Danny’s lust was slowly weakening, the apartment's evident stench of heterosexuality creeping in.

“Take a seat, bro,” Chad motioned to the chair beside him at the dining table, his massive, bare feet propped up right in front of the chair.

“I don’t know-”

“I said, take a seat bro,” Chad ordered, and instantly Danny obeyed. Chad redirected his attention to the game, but for some reason Danny could not focus on anything besides the feet in front of him. They were vile, funky, dirty, and obviously uncared for. Danny had never found feet attractive before, but he could not help himself from leaning in closer. He could see every spot of dead skin, every droplet of sweat. He could only wonder what the gigantic soles smelled like...tasted like…

“Yeah, that’s it…” Chad grinned, not looking away from the television as the homo’s tongue began to run along his feet. All the other guys in the room were too absorbed in the match to know what was happening behind them. “Just keep licking, it won’t be much longer now until we have a full roster.”

Danny’s mind had simply turned off, his only concern to clean the godly soles in front of him. When Chad had transferred to the university to become captain of the soccer team, he had not known the board had already discarded the team due to declining interest. “You know how American schools are,” Coach grumbled when Chad had confronted him about it. “Besides, we barely have enough men to make a qualifying roster.”

That sent Chad on a mission. He wanted to play soccer, be the captain of a team. If that meant putting together a crew for his university, then so be it. He had had no problem creating jocks in the past, but only one or two at a time with the nerds who had truly pissed him off. Over these past few weeks, he had already transformed 15 college losers into grade-A stallions, 16 if you counted the current fag at his feet.

Speaking of which, Chad decided to check in on Danny’s progress. Since the licking had begun, Danny had already packed on a considerable amount of muscular weight. His jaw was looking sharper, his overall frame hairier, and somehow (over the stench of all the other men in the room) Chad was able to detect a new degree of masculine body odor. Flexing his toes a bit, Chad registered the amount of life force that had been drained from his newest jock. He sucked his boys pretty dry. Chad wanted each of his jocks to be malleable to his and Coach’s standards and morals, but also not too far gone that they could not handle simple day-to-day tasks.

By the look of it, Danny was about done. When Chad eventually pulled his feet away, he heard Danny’s own now-monstrous stompers bouncing excitedly on the floor. Perhaps Danny could be his future sweeper.

“Danny boy, look at me,” Chad commanded, guiding the vacant pair of eyes towards his own. “You don’t like my feet, in fact you don’t like men. Bros only go for hoes, remember?”

Chad could practically watch the cogs rotate and realign in Danny’s washed-out brain.

“Good boy, now go watch soccer with the other bros and study up. Soccer is your favorite thing in the world now, and if you want to play, we need to focus all our energy on it.”

“All…our energy…” Danny mumbled, his voice much lower and slower than before. Like a zombie, the newest jock trod over to join the rest of the men. At first, the others did not know what to make of their newest companion, but after Danny let out a juicy fart, they applauded and welcomed him into the circle. It would take a few days for Chad’s feet to get dirty enough for the next recruitment, but he knew he was close to fulfilling his dreams.

[normal-enderman]

Troy is SO fucking interesting because he's like. A societally worthless person (by capitalist standards). Held back in school, grades are probably atrocious, has absolutely no useful skills, barely functioning social skills. And yet, because he's so privileged, the useless skill he does have is enough to carry him through life. If his father is anything like we're imagining, he probably talks to Troy all the time about people who don't work hard enough, people who don't contribute to society, and Troy probably adopts the same contempt for those sorts of people as other members of his social class do without thinking about it. But in all ways except the luck of his circumstances, Troy is one of those people! Furthermore, I believe that's why Troy's father doesn't like him that much - Troy may not have the self-awareness to realise he's functionally no different from the "lowlifes" and "moochers" of society, but his father does. His father is probably disgusted that Troy grew into someone so stupid, so worthless, so completely unsuited for the workforce.

On a second watch of the first episode, it's clear Troy is definitely struggling with some sort of handicap, even if he doesn't realise it, though whether it's a case of nurture or nature is up for exploration. He might be socially inept because he never had to learn to make friends, his father was always there to make sure people were kissing up to him. He might be terrible at schoolwork because he has no interest in it, and why would he try when he can pretty much do whatever he wants with no consequences? On the other hand, he might be autistic, he might have ADHD, he might be dyslexic. Or he might just be stupid! That's ok too! Regardless of the explantion, whether his upbringing damaged his development or if there was always something different about him, it's clear something is holding him back - and I'm excited for the point when he realises that he doesn't fit into the society of Wonder any better than the hybrids of Reclaim do.

[livwritesstuff]

Tommy POV, wc: 2890, full version on ao3

Tommy Hagan is not jealous of Eddie Munson.

He’s not.

There’s nothing to be jealous of, in his opinion, and Tommy probably wouldn’t be thinking about him at all if Eddie wasn’t the most publicly well known member of his graduating class – well, he hadn’t actually been in his graduating class, Tommy supposes.

They had been seniors at the same time, though.

If Tommy happened to be jealous of anything – and that’s a big if – it would probably have something to do with the famous thing. Everyone has a small part of them that wants to be famous at least in some capacity, he’s pretty sure, even if Eddie isn’t really, truly famous – not like the red carpet celebrities. He’s a writer. Even the most well known writers never get all that much attention, but Munson has his own Wikipedia page, and that’s more than anybody else from Hawkins, Indiana can say. Hawkins itself barely even has a Wikipedia page, and it’s only because of all the atrocities that happened in town in the mid-eighties.

Tommy hadn’t been around for the end of it all – the earthquake-slash-serial killer situation that never made any sense to him. He remembers his mom calling him at his college dorm when the deaths first started. He remembers her asking, “You went to school with that Munson boy, right? Do you think he could do something like this?”

And Tommy had been twenty and a total moron, so he’d said some dumb shit like, “Yeah, he’s into freaky stuff like that. Somebody should’ve put him on a list ages ago,” even though four years of experience told him that Eddie was all bark, no bite. Tommy hadn’t been surprised at all by the statements that later came out clearing Eddie's name, and by then his parents had already high-tailed it out of Hawkins so it all sort of became irrelevant to him.

Tommy never even returned to Hawkins one single time after he left for college (barring his high school reunion, obviously), and twenty years after graduation, he doesn’t really think about those years all that much.

He doesn’t love the person he’d been in high school. He was whiny and immature and had his priorities all messed up. Most of the memories he has of his teenage years, he looks back at and cringes, feels a whole lot of shame and embarrassment, but also some pride at how much he’s grown over the last twenty years. He also knows he’d been kind of a dick in high school, but that he’s less ashamed of. It’s normal, he knows, for kids to be mean, that it’s a standard response to being untreated kindly in other ways. Like, his dad had been an asshole to him as a kid, always on him about his grades and his smart mouth and how he’d no longer been a standout on any of his sports teams after starting high school, and Tommy had coped with that by poking kids beneath him at school. 

It’s just the pecking order of high school. It’s normal.

Even now, when Tommy’s son had dealt with some pricks in the year above him shoving him around, he had come home from school and tormented his little sister for a while – it’s normal, no matter how much his wife had tried to convince him it was something that needed addressing. It’s just kids being kids. They grow out of it eventually, just like Tommy had.

Occasionally he wonders where the kids he’d spent all those years with in the Hawkins public school system had ended up, but these days the internet makes that pretty damn easy to figure out.

He’s learned Tina got married and had kids real young. She still lives in Indiana. Carol, who he’d split up with before heading off to college, lives in Alabama now and she’s got kids and a husband too. Jonathan Byers is a photographer in California – Tommy isn’t into all that art-y crap, so he has no clue if he’s any good, but he definitely recognizes some of the organizations he’s worked for and if that’s any indication, Tommy would wager he’s not too shabby. No wife, though, he noted, so he’d either been right about Byer’s being a queer, or women just found him repulsive (admittedly, Tommy leans more towards the former – he’s a photographer). Tammy Thompson still lives in Tennessee, though it doesn’t seem like she does music anymore (husband, kids, blah blah blah). 

If he’s honest, the only person Tommy is actually interested in tracking down is Steve Harrington, and he’s the one person Tommy can’t find a single trace of online. No MySpace, no Facebook, no weird blog thing, nothing.

Vaguely, he wonders if Steve might be dead. A truly massive proportion of Hawkins had died over just a few short years in the mid-eighties. Maybe Harrington was one of them.

Tommy doubts it. 

He would have known. 

Steve’s parents would have made sure everyone knew if their son had died. Funnily enough, Steve’s mom is actually on Facebook, and pretty actively too, but there’s no sign of Steve anywhere on her page. 

He hadn’t even shown up for their high school reunion in the winter of ‘04, which is odd because Tommy had been certain he would.

He doesn’t obsess over it – he really doesn’t. It’s just a thought that pops into his mind every now and then – where the hell is Steve Harrington?

In the late spring of 2007, he gets his answer.

“Tom,” his wife says, “That guy from your high school is on the cover of this magazine.”

He knows without asking for clarity that it’s Munson – no other person makes sense – and when he eventually gets his hands on the magazine, he finds that he’s correct.

Eddie Munson is on the cover of a magazine because, apparently, he published another book. 

Truthfully, Tommy already knew that. 

It’s his fourth book (which, for the record, Tommy hadn’t known until he knew it because it’s not like he’s keeping tabs on this guy or whatever), and it’s been getting a whole bunch of mainstream attention after a controversial landing on the top of all those book charts Tommy doesn’t follow despite featuring a gay love store amidst all his normal fantasy crap. It sparked a whole debate about banning books and everything (dumb, Tommy knows, because if he learned anything in business school it’s that if you really don’t want something to exist, the best thing you can do is not funnel money and attention into it). 

Tommy does, in fact, watch the news so he’d already caught wind of all this – it’s part of the reason he can’t shake the guy – and it’s why Eddie Munson is on the cover of this magazine (because, seriously, nobody gives a shit about writers until it hits the news).

He allows himself a moment to look at the cover, to look at Eddie, who apparently goes by Ed now. Tommy is loath to admit it, but he looks good. His hair is normal and he’s grown into his frame, not all long and lanky and gangly limbs like Tommy remembers from school. He looks well-fed, confident, happy.

He looks good.

Tommy thumbs through the first few pages of the magazine until he reaches Eddie’s interview, and, again, he allows himself to look over the photo of him that takes up nearly three-quarters of the first page even if he has no intention of actually reading the article itself because, again, Eddie looks good (and maybe there’s something about the scruff of facial hair along his jaw that Tommy's eye gets stuck on). Tommy’s allowed to say that men look good when it’s true – it’s 2007, as his wife likes to remind him whenever it’s convenient for her, and if she’s allowed to say that Angelina Jolie looked good in that CIA movie, then Tommy is allowed to say that Eddie Munson looks good here.

When Tommy flips to the next page, he’s met with a photo that stops him in his tracks, has his feet frozen to the floor because –

Jesus Christ, that’s Steve Harrington.

Fuck, okay, so he’s reading this fucking article.

It takes Tommy a long time to get through it, honestly. Eddie comes out in the article, which might be a big deal, might not (and he doesn't care to be enlightened, thanks). He keeps getting distracted by the pictures scattered throughout it.

The pictures of Steve, mostly.

Because, well, if Eddie Munson looks good, Steve…

Steve looks alive.

Tommy didn’t realize it until this exact moment, but Steve had existed in his head for the last two decades as the eighteen-year-old he’d been the last time they were in the same room together. It hadn’t exactly occurred to him that Steve’s been aging this whole time too, just like Tommy has.

It’s undeniable that Steve is older. 

His hair is starting to go gray at his temples (it’s the only thing that’s changed about his hair since he’s still styling it the same as he did in high school – because why mess with a good thing, Tommy supposes) and he’s got just the hint of crow's feet around his eyes when he smiles. He’s smiling in all the photos – every damn one – and it has Tommy struck by how unbelievably happy Steve seems. It’s an effect that somehow both takes years off the age Tommy knows he is and shines a light on just how good those years must have been for him. 

There’s no solo shots of him like there are for Munson – though according to the article, it's actually Harrington now – and only half the photos are in color. The rest of them – the more candid ones – are smaller and left in black-and-white. 

The one that caught Tommy’s eye first – because it was meant to, he’s pretty sure; it takes up half the page – is right in that sweet spot between staged and candid where Steve and Eddie both know that they’re being photographed even though neither of them are actually posing. Eddie is grinning at Steve in a wicked way that still feels familiar to Tommy even two decades since he’d last seen it on him (probably swaggering around the cafeteria like a total jackass – not that Tommy would know anything about that). Steve is grinning right back at him with a smile Tommy doesn’t think he’s ever seen before.

Or maybe he has, but not on this version of his face, not since Steve was as young as his oldest daughter.

Just as the author of the article said, the photos don’t show the faces of Steve’s children, either leaving them artfully out-of-focus or choosing shots where they’re turned away from the camera, but they’re still present, and it makes the whole spread almost feel like a photo album in a way, like it should be private but instead was published for the whole world to see.

Steve has three of them – kids, Tommy means. He didn’t know that Steve was a family kind of guy. It makes sense though, when he thinks about it. Steve’s parents were kind of a nightmare — present in the worst ways, and absent in the worst ways too (though it hadn’t seemed that way when Tommy was a teenager looking for a failsafe party house). He'd always felt kind of bad for the guy. Like, Tommy's dad had been a total piece of work, but they'd at least been around, and he'd stuck around long enough for them to sort out their issues at least most of the way, and these days he's a pretty kickass grandpa to Tommy's children.

Tommy wonders about Steve's parents now, wonders if they maybe came around like his own parents had, but then he remembers Mrs. Harrington's Facebook page and how there's not a damn trace of her son on there, never mind three grandchildren.

Tommy isn't sure he wants to touch that.

Steve is probably a really good dad, Tommy decides. He’d been kind of that way when they were friends — Steve used to say he wasn’t all that bright, but he always had a freaky sixth sense for reading people, for caring about them in exactly the way they needed.

There's one photo where Steve is managing to holding his youngest daughter — a tiny little baby still — and her bottle in one arm (that's a level-three dad hold, Tommy knows). The bottle is angled in a way that obscures her face, and Steve's other hand is being tugged on by another daughter, this one with a mop of curly brown hair remarkably similar to Eddie's when it was still long.

That's another thing Tommy won't let himself think about, (because he knows if did he'd start wondering if any of those kids were half-Steve).

Anyways, Tommy doesn't need glance to see that Steve wears fatherhood like a favorite sweater.

There’s something about this, about seeing these pictures, about the way Tommy is getting an answer to that question he’s had for years about where his childhood best friend has been all these years, that is making him feel like his ribcage is being split open, bones splintering and shattering as everything vulnerable inside his chest in suddenly out for display.

He probably should feel uncomfortable, right? Like, a guy he’d been seriously close to growing up — sleepovers and gym locker rooms and all that shit — had turned out to be gay. If his own son came home from school saying that his best friend came out or whatever as gay…well, again, it’s 2007, and Tommy doesn’t think his wife would allow him to denounce the friendship entirely, but there certainly wouldn’t be any sleepovers anymore. He thinks that’s pretty reasonable.  

What was the likelihood that Steve had been, like, into Tommy?

And that should be an uncomfortable notion too, and in a sense, it kind of is, but not necessarily in the way he would expect. 

He just doesn’t understand why all this feels so much like a loss because he knows that he hasn’t really lost anything – not since he got his hands on the magazine, anyways. Steve Harrington hasn’t played any sort of role in Tommy’s life since their final falling out in 1984, and as far as he’s aware, having a falling out with a close friend is pretty much a guaranteed part of growing up. His wife even experienced something similar when her own grade school best friend suddenly stopped answering calls and stopped reaching out after they’d started college – and his wife is basically the nicest person Tommy has ever known, so…it happens to even the best.

It’s just…Steve had always continued to exist in Tommy’s life in a way, even if he wasn't physically present, and maybe Tommy had figured it could be the same for Steve too, that maybe he sometimes wonders where Tommy is, wonders what he’s up to.

This article and these photos makes it pretty fucking clear that Tommy doesn’t even exist in the same galaxy as the life Steve is living.

And that’s not to mention the Eddie fucking Munson of it all.

Tommy had been kind of ignoring the Eddie of it all until he couldn’t ignore it anymore, because he doesn't care about Eddie Munson.

He'd never cared, but he'd spent years seeing the guy's face and his name everywhere, and now it feels like a sick joke, like he's the piece of Steve left in Tommy's life.

If the article is accurate (and he has no reason to believe it isn’t), Steve and Eddie have been together for longer than Tommy has even known his wife. Steve has been with Eddie for longer than Steve was ever friends with Tommy – not by a lot, but still more. That’s a long fucking time, and it’s clear as day on both of their faces that they’re just as in love with each other fourteen years in as they were on day one.

It’s not just Steve, and it’s not just Eddie, and it’s not one more than the other. It’s both of them.

There’s one photo in particular – a small black-and-white one that keeps pulling Tommy’s attention.

It’s another candid shot, taken from a bit of a distance. In it, Steve has Eddie boxed in against the counter in what has to be their kitchen. Eddie is leaning back against the edge of the granite countertop and looking at Steve with something sappy and fond on his face, and Steve’s hands are this close to grabbing Eddie’s waist as he looks at him the exact same way.

It’s shit out of a fairy tale or something, and sure, maybe someone could argue that they’re laying it on thick just for the sake of the magazine or whatever, but Tommy knows Steve Harrington and that look on his face is more real than Tommy had ever seen in all the years he'd known him.

So maybe Tommy has a reason or two (or three or four) to be jealous of Eddie Munson.

[erika-xero]

Thoughts on ai and Art

What has Ai really changed for me is the perception of my own art. Years back, I was extremely concerned of my work being imperfect: everything had to look "right", the anatomy had to be flawless, the lines - clean and refined. The pipe-line had to be flawless too: minimal amount of layers, one - for lines, one - for colors, and a few for lighting/shading.

Meanwhile I was yearning for chaos and the standard pipe-line felt too strict, too limiting. I finished the drawing and cried over the imperfections, but I could not let myself create a new layer and just paint it all over as I wanted to - that would "mess up my perfect psd". This was even harder because I started as a traditional artist and traditional art is basically the same as drawing on one layer or stacking the layers on top of each other whenever you wish to change anything. I was so obsessed with the anatomy/perspective looking right that my works started looking boring and stiff. If I was not sure that I would be able to draw a certain body part at a certain angle ANATOMICALLY PERFECT - I just refused to draw it at all. Drawing back then was HARD. I forced too much limitations upon myself, I was so scared of making any mistakes and thus did everything I could to avoid the risk to fail. It felts like an entire world would see me failing and everyone - literally everyone - will disapprove. And don't get me wrong - the art community in my country has always been astonishingly toxic. We had, like, a group of 20 THOUSANDS individuals hunting down children online and bullying them into oblivion for drawing anime and furry characters in their school textbooks. And pretty much everyone except a small group of people (which I was a part of) thought that it's absolutely fine and this is how the things should be. Even the industry professionals were absolutely sure that young artists have to suffer and be ashamed of everything they do unless it is absolutely flawless at an any aspect. I was ashamed of everything I did back then. I was ashamed of drawing and posting sketches because I felt like they are not good enough to be shown to anyone. And then the Ai-boom started. And I had mixed feelings because I was not THAT scared, but I was somewhat disappointed of people? General public praised the generated slop ignoring the mistakes far worse than what real artists got bullied for for DECADES. The synthetic artworks are shiny. They are overrendered. They are liveless, boring, they lack fundamentals and yet somehow people viewed them as some kind of a miracle. I decided to learn how does those little machines generated their slop out of morbid curiosity, just to make sure that I got it right and it is spitting out cadavers created from mutilated, dismembered works of real artists. Used by people who did not care enough to pick up a bloody pencils. And I thought: why would I care enough to look at something that no one bothered to create? And then I started seeing everything I do completely different. I suddenly stopped caring of being perfect. Every piece I have ever done, every work I was crying over for it being ugly, every messy sketch and unfinished doodle suddenly started to matter a lot. Not that I stopped caring of doing my best, no. I stopped wishing to disown my own mistakes. They are my own. I cared enough to try and fail and to try again, and fail so badly that I wanted to cry, scream and throw up. And I repeated the cycle for long enough that I started to enjoy my silly doodles and started loving every tiny imperfection because this is what made my art so human. I still suck at drawing hands and feet. My line-art is messy and I started doing it right on top of my colored sketch. My pipe-line is in chaos and my PSDs look like a total mess of three hundreds of layers. I draw sketches with huge-ass round brush only adding the details that really matters. My works are better than they could ever be because they feel alive and chaotic as we human had always been. This is a love letter to my art and write it while flipping off my middle finger to the cadavers generated by the machine. I will not be stopped by glorified autocomplete and I refuse to be outdone by people who confuse googling an image with the act of creation.

My worst drawing is better than any of the generative imagery out there, because I cared drawing it.

[wafflefries13]

The Consequence of Late Night Calls

Summary: You've been friends with Katsuki for years, and you've always thought it's been just that - friends. But when you get a late-night call, it might just change things.

AN: Last repost! The original post got eaten by Tumblr. I'm still really proud of this one. I wrote it back when I was first starting to publish fanfic and I like how it turned out.

Warnings: College au, drinking, language

The call shocked you out of a deep but impromptu sleep. You jerked up from the noise, a page of lecture notes sticking to your check. It fluttered back to the desk covered in its own mess of loose leaf documents, used textbooks that cost more than a weekend trip to Disney World, and a laptop missing three of its letter keys. 

You dragged your tongue against your teeth, trying to get rid of the cotton feel coating the inside of your mouth. Rubbing stars into your tired eyes, you wondered when exactly you had fallen asleep. Was it somewhere near memorizing the latin terminology for court rhetoric or around reading the case file and trial records you were going to be tested over on Monday? Deciding wondering was basically pointless, considering you had pretty  much forgotten all of it anyway, you pawed blindly around for your phone. 

“Hello?” You answered, eyes still closed, although it probably came out and more of a mumbled groan than anything else.  

“(Y/NNNNNNNNN)!” 

You pulled the phone away from your ear, wincing at the sudden loud noise. Blinking bleerally, you looked down at your phone. You had taken the caller ID picture a year ago, at a sorority Halloween party you barely remembered aside from the copious amounts of alcohol consumed followed by an ill-advised scavenger hunt that ended with a call to the police and the dean’s car somehow ending up in the agriculture department’s greenhouse crowded with Jack-O-lanterns. It was a profile shot of Bakugou Katsuki, his mouth opened in a mid-yell scowl, as was his standard expression, and eyebrows furrowed in annoyance. One hand extended to try and block the camera, the other clutching a brown bottle. He was wearing a fantasy barbarian king costume, chest bare to show off the taut muscles he worked so hard for all of high school to get. When he’d shown up in it, or, rather, when Kirishima had dragged him along in his own dragonborn costume, you couldn’t believe he still had it. You remembered sitting in your basement in 9th grade, pricking your fingers with a sewing needle as you and the rest of your newly formed D&D group, Bakugou and Kirishima included, spent way too much time and effort into creating your costumes. 

Rubbing at the bridge of your nose in a vain attempt to chase away the headache you could already feel forming, you brought the phone back to your ear. You could hear the low thump of bass heavy music in the background. 

“Hi, Suki,” You said, trying not to sound condescending, but it came out like that anyway. 

“Hey!” He said sharply. The rest of his reply was slurred smooth. “I told you not to call me that.” 

You smirked. “It’s cute.” 

“It’s embarrassing! ‘M not cute.” 

“No, you’re calling me at-” You pulled the phone away again to check the time. “Katsuki, it’s like two in the morning, what the hell?” 

You heard someone shout something on the other side of the line that Katsuki mumbled a reply to. To you he said, “Was thinking about you.” 

You felt yourself blush despite yourself. “You were thinking about me?” 

There was a clunk and a bump. You could imagine him falling against a wall and sliding down to sit until the room stopped spinning. “Yeah. I don’t like it.” 

You ignored the jab in your heart. “Well, thanks.” 

“It keeps happening. I’ll just be, like, doing stuff, and then I just think, ‘What would (Y/N) think of that?’ ‘I wonder what (Y/N)’s doing right now.’ ‘(Y/N) would know what to do now. She’s so smart. And her hands look so soft. And her eyes are so pretty.’” He was quiet for a second. “It’s annoying. I can’t stop thinking about you. And it’s worse when you’re here.” There was a shuffling as you heard him try to stand up then give up again. “Why aren’t you here? I want you here.” 

You were wide awake now. You clenched and unclenched your hand, trying to process the information your obviously drunk friend had just confessed. Your stomach churned in a mix of anticipation, anxiety, and straight up butterflies. 

What the hell did all of that mean? Well, of course you knew what it meant, or you knew what it meant when spoken by a sober person of sound mind and body. But there was no way, you tried to rationalize, that The Bakugou Katsuki, the guy you’d known since freshman year of high school when he’d punched a guy who had flipped up your uniform skirt on the first day, the guy who had surprised just about everyone in home economics when he busted out a three tiered cake like it was no one’s business, the guy whos ego was big enough to have its own gravitational pull, was confessing his feelings to you in a drunk rant at two in the morning. 

“Katsuki,” You said in a soft voice. “I-” 

There was a retching sound from the other end of the line. Katsuki coughed, tried to say something, then threw up again. “Aw, fuck.” 

That headache was back with avengence now. You sighed, looking for your keys. “Katsuki, where are you?” 

“Uhh, on campus? At the Kappa Alpha Betta Whatever house. There’s a party. Why aren’t you here?” 

“You know I hate all the Greek life bs. Stay where you are, okay? I’m coming to get you. You’re completely wasted.” 

“‘M not. I can handle what I drink.” There was another pause before he wretched again. 

“Did you just throw up again?” 

“...No.” 

“Cool. I’ll be there in ten.” 

You didn’t wait for him to respond before hanging it. You didn’t think your heart could take it if he kept going on like he had been. Grabbing your keys and heading out of your crowded studio apartment, you hopped in your car to go save your drunk friend from making any other ill advised decisions that night. 

You realized that you were probably over thinking the whole phone call as you drove through deserted streets. You couldn’t help it, it was a bad habit you had formed as a kid that now  made you obsess over court documents and testimonies in class. But now, instead of helping, it was picking you apart. What did Katsuki’s tone imply when he was talking to you just now? Could you trust the tone of an inebriated person? What did he mean when he said he thought about you a lot? You’d known each other for years now, being involved in almost all the same activities. Wouldn’t it be natural to think about someone you spent so much time with? But you’d known Kirishima for just as long, not to mention the rest of the self-named “Baku-Squad.” You’d never gotten a late night drunk call from any of them. Heck, Katsuki had known Izuku way longer than he had known you, and you were pretty dang sure Katsuki had never called him going on and on about how he always thought about him. 

Stopping at a red light, you pressed your forehead into the soft faux-leather of your steering wheel, willing your thoughts to calm down and just come to a rational conclusion already. Expect, you know, a rational conclusion that wasn’t that the guy you had carried a torch for for almost as long as you had known him might actually have feelings for you back. 

You turned on to the street lined with sororities and fraternities across from the main campus. You had to slam on your breaks almost immediately to avoid running over a tipsy, giggling co-ed who was stumbling out into the road. She didn’t even look up at you. 

You didn’t know exactly which house Katsuki was stranded at, considering you could see at least three different parties all going on at first glance. His “Kappa Alpha Betta Whatever” wasn’t very helpful, either, considering all the Greek letters adorning the houses blended together in your mind at some point. And you really didn’t want to tramp through a bunch of different houses tonight. 

Thankfully, you were saved the trouble when you saw Kirishima’s 1969 Chevrolet Chevelle park half off the curb in front of one of the houses. You’d know that car anywhere. Kirishima had dragged your group to various scrap yards and auto-repair stores all summer after he got his license, the first of you all to do so, in an effort to fix up the worn down Chevelle that he’d bought for a hundred bucks and a turkey sandwich. 

You parked on the other side of the street then jogged across to the house that was practically vibrating with heavy music and Greek life energy. Stepping over a semi-conscious frat boy laying in the doorway, you scanned around the house for any sign of Katsuki’s pomeranian-puff-ball hair. 

You spotted Denki lounging on a couch, a lampshade on his head and a tangle of phone chargers clutched in his fist. His hand sparked every now and then as he used his quirk to recharge the collection of phones. 

You lifted up the edge of the lampshade. “Hey there, Pikachu.” 

“Heeeeeey~” He said, giving you a thumbs up. You could already tell he was too far gone, although you didn’t know if it was from drinking or the over use of his quirk. 

“(Y/N)!” You heard a voice call behind you. A body fell heavily against your back. Sero wrapped his arms around you in a backwards hug. “Where you been? We missed you!” 

“Studying. I’m boring, remember? I’m looking for Katsuki, you seen him around?” 

Sero snickered. “Bakugou, huh? He’s been looking for you for a long time, right, Denki?” 

“Heeeeeey~” 

You swallowed hard. “And what’s that supposed to mean?” 

Sero snickered again, flopping on the couch next to Denki. “Can’t tell. Part of the bro code. And he said he’d kill me.” 

“That does sound like Katsuki.” 

Sero covered his eyes with his arm, head leaning back. With a wide smile, he waved his hand in the vague direction to the back door. “I think he’s out by the pool or something.” 

You waved bye. “Thanks, I’ll go check it out. You guys take care of yourselves, okay?” 

“Look at ‘em go,” Sero said to Denki as you left. “You think they’ll have a spring wedding?” 

“Heeeeeey~” 

*~~~~* 

You managed to weave your way through the crowd of bodies clogging the house to finally spill out into the back yard. You had no idea how people were able to stay this energized this late into the night with this many other people around. You remembered once being stuck at another party, early on in your college days. When it became super clear you didn’t want to be there, overwhelmed by the noise, the crush of bodies, and the suffocation of social enterprise, Katsuki had dragged Kirishima over to you, planting him in front of you as your ‘extrovert shield.’  He’d stayed with you behind the boisterous redhead for the rest of the night. 

You wondered if Katsuki remembered doing that, if he remembered any of the small nice gestures he did for you over the years. And now, with his call, with what Sero said, with your over analyzing brain, you were dissecting every interaction you could remember. Was the time he opened a door for you a signal? Was the reason he would ask to study with you for chemistry, when he was way better in practically every subject than you, just so he could be close to you? Were the times he had given you his jacket when you were cold meant to be a more intimate moment? 

God, you were going to go crazy. 

Walking around the pool, you finally spotted the hot-headed blond. He was sitting slouched over on the end of one of the reclining pool chairs, forearms braced on his knees.  You almost called out to him, stopping cold when you saw the girl behind him. She had draped herself over his back, chin rested in the crook of his neck, one had massaging his shoulder, the other conspicuously sneaking under the hem of his shirt to rub circles on his abs. 

You clenched and unclenched your hands, worry gnawing at you as a headache at the back of your skull. Had something changed between the time he had called you and now? Had there been nothing there to change at all? Had you been misreading this situation the whole time? 

Katsuki looked up, his permanently affixed scowl even deeper. The second his jewel-red eyes met yours, you felt your heart skip a beat. He jumped to his feet so fast the girl behind him fell back against the chair. He tried marching over to you, which was made only slightly less intimidating by the drunk sway to his step. 

You didn’t remember him being so tall. You’d just seen him this afternoon. There was a flushed blush across his face, adding a surprising softness. Were his arms always that strong looking? Were his eyes that piercing? Was his jaw that strong? 

“You came,” He said, voice rough as whiskey soaking into gravel. 

You spread your hands. “Well, you said my name three times, so, here I am!” You laughed nervously, trying to ignore how his gaze pinned you down. 

He took another step towards you, hand reading up. “(Y/N), I-” 

His cheeks turned from pink to green. Lurching to the side, he vomited into the pool. You tried to help him back up, hunched over and trying to catch his breath. The crowd of people around you groaned in disgust before rolling in to sarcastic applause. Katsuki flipped them off. 

“Alright, Suki,” You said, rubbing his back. “Let’s get you back home.” 

He grumbled, leaning his full weight against you. You almost stumbled and fell with the sudden shift of balance. Katsuki slid his arm around your waist, hand firmly grasping your hip, as if he was the one trying to prevent you from a drunken stumble. His fingers felt like fire through your clothes. 

You decided to go around the house instead of trying to push your way through it. Soon you were making your way across the street. It took some maneuvering to unlock and open the passenger door. You practically dropped Katsuki in where his head fell back with a groan. You grabbed his seat belt and stretched across him to fasten it. It wasn’t until he started petting your hair that your realized your position of half-way laying across his lap. You jerked back, some of your hair getting caught in his fingers. He made a disappointed sound at the loss of it. 

You slid back into the driver's seat, trembling hands gripping the steering wheel tightly. You had to take a few steadying breaths before you were ready to start the car. Pulling out of the neighborhood, you glanced over at Katsuki. His eye brows were furrowed, eyes closed, mouth pulled in a small frown. 

God, he looked adorable. 

You hit the break harder than you meant to at the light. Adorable? Where the hell did that thought come from? He’d probably be furious if he knew you ever thought that. 

But…

You risked another look at him. When he let his face relax like this, you could see the slight chub that still clung to his cheeks. Another thing he would hate to know that you thought was how much you loved the softness that it leant him. It was cute. 

Almost without your realizing it, you lifted your hand. You were overcome with the sudden urge to poke his cheek. A car horn blared behind you when your finger was less than an inch from his face. You let out an undignified squeak, hands slamming back to the wheel. Katsuki grumbled and turned in the seat, head resting against the window. You could feel the blush burning up your face. 

A few minutes later, you pulled back to the apartment complex. You both lived in the same building, Katsuki directly below your own unit. And now you were overthinking his reason for not living on campus. 

When you opened the passenger door, Katsuki almost fell out. You jerked forward to catch him then dragged him out. He half woke up, as feeble on his legs as a newborn horse. 

You lugged him through the lobby. He was muttering under his breath, but most of the words you could make out were curses. Not unusual for him. You pressed the button for the elevator repeatedly. It just blinked back at you. You sighed in frustration. They had been doing maintenance on your building all week, but now might have been the absolute worst time to do the elevator. 

You shook Katsuki’s shoulder a little bit. His head jostled like a bobble-head. “Suki, I’m gonna need your help here for a minute.” 

His head lolled forward, forehead coming down to press to yours. In a quiet voice, he whispered, “I’d do anything for you.” 

You shoved him upright, face burning. “Then walk up the damn stairs yourself!” 

Despite that, you still ended up half-carrying him up four flights of stairs. You were uncomfortably sweaty when you reached the door to Katsuki’s apartment. The two of you had traded copies of your apartment keys when you had moved in. “In case something happens to your dumb ass and I need to come save you,” He had said. He would frequently stop by, usually when you were hours deep into an all-nighter. He’d bring his laptop and work on whatever 12 page essay way due on your bed while you poured over case reports. You’d sit in silence, just together, sharing the same space, content with nothing more than knowing the other was nearby. Or he’d bring you real food to make sure you weren’t just eating ramen all the time. In turn, you’d pull him out for game night with the squad, make sure he’d actually call his mother once in a while, and lend an ear to his semi-nightly rants on whoever he decided to hate that night. 

You fumbled with the keys, jamming the key in the lock then pushing it open with your shoulder that wasn’t currently occupied by a half-asleep, full-drunk boy who had at least 50 pounds and ten inches on you. 

There was always an expectation with the rooms of single college boys. Greasy pizza boxes, empty bottles of booze displayed like expensive decor, at least one poster of a half-naked girl somewhere, probably a basket of clothes that should have been washed weeks ago. And while you knew plenty of guys who fit that description, Katsuki defied expectation. His apartment was always immaculate. His shoes were lined neatly by the door, a calendar above his desk  color-coded with assignment due dates, bed made. Katsuki may give off the persona of a punk, but you knew he was a straight-laced nerd through and through.  

With the last of your strength, you lugged him across the room, dropping him on his bed. With a groan, you stretched your arms up until you heard a satisfying pop in your back. Hands on your hips, you watched as Katsuki moaned, burying his face in his pillow and pulling his feet up from the floor. You sat on the end of the bed, tugging his feet to you to unlace his shoes. You let them fall haphazardly to the floor, too tired to care about his level of neatness.  

You grabbed a bucket from his hall closet, putting it next to the head of his bed for when he inevitably woke up vomiting in the morning. Checking his bathroom, you put a couple of painkillers and a glass of water on the nightstand with a post-it note saying “Drink Me.” 

Brushing your hands off, you looked around and checked your work. Satisfied that he wouldn’t kill himself between now and when you would inevitably check on him in the morning, you decided it was finally time to head back upstairs and get some well deserved sleep. 

But… 

You turned back at the door. Katsuki was splayed like a starfish, gently snoring with his mouth wide open. You also noticed his blushing red fluffy cheeks. 

You tapped the door knob a few times before sighing in surrender to temptation and turnin back. You knelt down next to the bed. For a moment, you just watched him sleep. He looked so peaceful now. You reached out. Your index finger sunk into his cheek like it was a marshmallow. You couldn’t believe you had never done this before. God, he really was adorable. 

Your thoughts were abruptly cut off as Katsuki’s hand shot up and grabbed your wrist with an iron grip. With a shriek, you tried to scramble backwards. Katsuki lazily opened his eyes, not at all bothered by your struggles. With seemingly no effort on his part, he tugged you forward. Off balance, you fell into his chest. Katsuki wrapped his arms around you in a bear hug, slinging a leg over yours, trapping you on the bed. 

“Katsuki!” You hissed. You squirmed in his hold, not getting any extra room. He just hummed, nuzzling into the crook of your neck. You were pretty sure your face was hot enough to start a fire. “Katsuki, let me go!” 

“No,” He mumbled. His voice rumbled against your skin sending shivers through your whole body. 

“Katsuki!” 

“You can’t leave. If you leave, you won’t come back.” 

You stopped struggling. “What are you talking about?” 

He squeezed you tighter. “I’m loud. I get angry real easy. I fight a lot. And you…” He trailed off, his breath catching and rattling in his chest. “You’re so much better than me. You’re nice and smart and talented and pretty and caring and… and…” You could feel the hot tears landing on your skin. He was starting to shake. His grip had loosened enough for you to get out, but instead you brought your arms up and pulled him in closer. “If I let you go, you’ll see how much better you are than me. And you’ll leave. You’ll leave me because you’re better and you deserve so much better. But I’m a selfish bastard and I just want you for myself because I love you so damn much.” 

Your heart dropped into your stomach. You wiggled your hand up, threading your hand into his hair and tilting his head to look up at you. 

“I love you too,” You said softly. “And I’m not going anywhere.” 

Katsuki crushed you to his chest, letting out another loud sob. You could feel hot tears pressing against your eyes. You had no idea Katsuki felt this way about anything; about you, about himself, about your relationship. 

But one thing you knew for sure: You loved Bakugou Katsuki. 

~~~

The first thing Katsuki noticed when he woke up was the head ache. His head felt like he had a railroad spike jammed through his temples. God, what did he do last night? There was the party at Kappa Alpha Betta Whatever house. It’d been fine for a while, hanging out with the guys, playing beer pong, winning some extra cash from freshman in poker (where did he put that money anyway?). And then…

And then someone had said your name. He’d heard it across the room, an amazing feat in and of itself, but his ears were trained for any news of you. He’d jerked up right when he heard it, missing his shot at the beer pong table. He gladly took his drink and went prowling through the house. Who had said your name? Were you here? Were you coming?  

It might have been selfish, he knew how much you hated loud crowds, but damn it, he wanted you here. He remembered the last Greek life party you had been at. He’d lost you at some point between getting into an argument with that damn Deku and pulling Denki down from a keg stand. He’d finally found you huddled into some back corner, looking like a rabbit about to dart from a hungry fox (he wouldn’t mind being that fox, honestly, he could eat you right up.) You’d lost the color in your face, hands shaking as you clutched your red Solo cup almost hard enough for your nails to pierce the plastic. 

He snatched Kirishima by his collar as he carved a path through the room. He planted the extroverted red-head in front of you, creating an extrovert shield between himself and the love of his life you. He’d spent the rest of the night talking to you. Nothing special, he couldn’t even really remember what about. But he did remember the relaxed slope of your shoulders, the spark in your eyes, the smile that played on your lips at whatever lame joke he had just made. 

Back in the present (or last night, whatever), he was still stalking through the halls looking for whoever had mentioned you. He heard it again, the tail end of your name, coming from the living room. 

“-(/N) never had it so good.” There he was, lounging along the bottom stairs with a smug look on his face as he regaled the small crowd he had attracted. Katsuki recognized him as one of those legacy kids, the one who showed up to the first day of orientation in a sleek black Bugatti and took up three parking spaces, talked in almost every one of his classes when he even bothered to show up, and was, without a doubt at every party on or off campus. 

And now he was telling a story about you. What were you ever doing with an asshole like him? 

“You would never guess it from how she dresses, you know,” The guy continued, lazily waving his half-empty beer bottle. “But she is stacked.” 

Katsuki tensed up, his heart jumping into his throat. He pushed aside the crowd until he stood right in front of the bragger on the stairs. “What did you just say?” He asked through clenched teeth. “You're talking about (Y/N) (L/N), right?” 

He lazily swept his gaze up, grinning wide when he saw Katsuki. “Yeah, (Y/N)? You know, she comes across as a frigid bitch, but let me tell you, she’s an incredible lay.” Katsuki’s vision went red. The crowd started to subtly shuffle away, feeling the cold change in atmosphere. “Not much besides that, honestly. Thank god her tits and ass are amazing, cause her face sure wasn’t doing it for me. Super boring, too, heard she’s failing her classes. Oh, well. Hey, I could use a side-piece when I’m running my own firm, you know?” 

The asshole never saw it coming. In the span of a heart beat, Katsuki had grabbed his designer jacket and hoisted him off the stairs, pinning him to the wall so his feet kicked to try and reach the ground. 

“You listen to me, asshole,” Katsuki hissed. “You never talk about (Y/N) again. You never look at her, you never talk to your shit-stain friends about her, you sure as fuck never tell another lie about her, or so help me, you’ll get to find out what color your liver is.” 

Katsuki was half-way sure the jerk had pissed his pants. He dropped him in a heap, landing in the puddle of spilled beer on the floor. He brushed his hand off on his jeans, eager to get whatever germs the gossip had off him.  

He was almost out of ear shot when he heard the rich kid spit and say, “Fine. She’s probably crawling with it if you’re dicking her down.” 

The kid’s head made a dent in the wall as he richoched back from the impact of Katsuki’s punch. He would easily have a black eye and a broken nose, the chipped tooth would just be a  bonus. 

Katsuki’s head was fuzzy with rage, stalked through the house, bee-lining it to the nearest source of inebriation. How dare he? How fucking dare that absolute ass-wipe ever even think of saying such horrible things about you? He wasn’t even worth knowing your name, much less saying it. Not to mention the fact he must be blind to think you were anything less than stunning. Ever since he had known you, you had been nothing but kind and smart and caring and funny and…

“Baku-bro, you doing okay?” 

Katsuki didn’t realize how tight he was holding his fists until he relaxed. His nails had made half-moon indents in his palms, his knuckles brushed red from the punch. 

Kirishima had his mouth pulled down in that stupid puppy dog pout. “I’m fine,” Katsuki brushed him off. He grabbed a beer out of an iced cooler, twisting off the cap in a single motion and chugging half the bottle. 

“Well, that’s good, cause I don’t think Tim Flood is making it out of here without a few stitches.” 

“Good.” Katsuki finished the beer and chucked it into a recycle bin. He grabbed another and stalked out of the room. Everything felt too hot, too tight. His head was pounding. If you were here, you’d get a bag of ice and press it against his forehead. You’d probably call him an idiot for getting into another fight, that he needed to learn how to manage his temper better. He’d call you a dumbass but let you lead him away somewhere dark and quiet, away from all the other more insufferable dumbasses. You’d find some pain killers, get him some water, because that’s just the kind of caring person you were. Maybe you’d bring him upstairs, lead him to an unoccupied bedroom. The two of you would sit together on the bed, maybe just a little too close. You’d hand him the water, his hand would brush against yours. You’d look down, shy, blushing cutely. He’d lean forward, thread his hand through your incredibly soft hair, angle your face up to him. Your plush lips would part slightly and he’d lean forward and - 

“Are you sure you’re good?” Kirishima asked, abruptly cutting off Katsuki’s impromptu fantasy. “Cause you don’t look so good.” Katsuki bit his tongue. “Is it because of what that guy said about (Y/N)?” Katsuki whipped around, glaring daggers. Kirishima smiled and put his hands up in mock surrender. “Hey, bro, it’s okay! No one believed him, anyway.” 

Katsuki scoffed, taking a swig of the beer. “(Y/N)’s too good for him anyway.” 

“I bet you think (Y/N)’s too good for everyone here, right?” 

“The hell is that supposed to mean?” 

“It means you need to hurry up and tell (Y/N) you like her!” Sero shouted, jumping in out of nowhere. 

Katsuki dropped his bottle, Kirishima catching it just in time, and grabbed Sero by the front of his shirt and lifted him up. Sero just grinned his stupid, wide grin. 

“Come on, Katsuki,” Denki said, slinging an arm around Katsuki’s shoulders. “We all know you’ve had a thing for (Y/N) since high school. Why don’t you just put us all out of our misery and tell her already?!” 

Katsuki felt his face heat up. “I don’t- I haven’t - Fuck you!”  Katsuki couldn’t remember why he was friends with these three idiots as they all burst out into laughter.

 He snatched his bottle back and pushed through the crowd. He needed some air. He heard Sero yell after him, “You have to tell her eventually!” 

And… That was mostly it. Katsuki’s memories of last night sort of started to trail off after that. He knew that he drank, he drank a lot. At some point he ended up by the pool. And maybe he’d called someone? Oh, hell, he hoped he hadn’t called someone. 

His eyes snapped open at the soft groan. There you were, just inches away from his face, fast asleep and tucked in his arms. You were pressed close, breasts pushing against his chest, legs tangled with his, one hand clutching his shirt. Your lips were parted ever so slightly, breathing heavy and even. 

And you were so fucking close. 

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. His arms tightened around you and he tensed. How the hell did this happen? Did you actually come to the party last night? When, and why? What had called you down there-? 

Oh. Oh, the call! He had called you last night? Some time in his drunken haze he must have figured out to bypass the timed lock he had put on it specifically to avoid calling people with a too-honest tongue. But had you…?  Nervously, he looked down. He sighed in relief. You were both still dressed. At least that was one mistake he knew he hadn’t made. 

Alright, that was one problem. Now, on to the next one: How was he going to get out of here without waking you up? Craning his head around, he checked out the room. Wait, this was his room. He was in his apartment! A picture of last night started to form in his mind. He’d called you, blabbering God knows what, and then you’d been a good person (why were you such a good person?) and had come to get him, to make sure he was okay. And then what? He’d somehow seduced you into his bed? No, it was more likely you had stayed to make sure he didn’t choke on his own vomit, maybe sat on the bed because it was the middle of the night and you were exhausted, and then… This. 

Okay, okay, no, this was fine, he could fix this. He could slip out, let you keep sleeping. He’d make some breakfast in the kitchen and then you’d wake up, wander in rubbing the sleep from your eyes in that cute way you did when you pulled an all-nighter studying. He’d chastise you for lugging his drunk ass up here, for being out so late at night. You’d wave him off, compliment his cooking, tell him to take better care of himself, and then smile up at him with that blindingly beautiful smile and sparkling eyes. 

“Morning.” Katsuki yelped at your greeting. He stared, wide-eyed, down at you, as you look back up at him lazily with those sparkling eyes. “It’s kinda hard to breathe here.” He realized then just how tight he was holding you. He jerked backward, his shout of surprise cut off as he fell off the bed. He rubbed his sore hip, looking up when he heard your giggle. You were leaning over the bed, smiling shyly when he caught you staring. 

He gulped hard, feeling his face burning up. “Hi.” 

You tucked a loose threat of hair behind your ear. “Hi.” 

He should say something. He needed to say something. God, why wasn’t he saying something? 

“I-“ Katsuki stopped with an incomplete thought in his mouth. He suddenly felt uncomfortably hot, his stomach clenching and throat going dry. Your face dropped as you lunged forward, dragging a bucket in front of him (where did that even come from?). He surged forward, clenching the sides of the bucket in a white knuckled grip, and threw up. 

You slid off the bed and knelt next to him. You rubbed small circles in his back, whispering small comforts as he coughed up bile and alcohol and who knows what else. You reached over behind him and grabbed a glass of water from his nightstand. 

“Here,” You said. “Rinse and spit. Don’t swallow or gargle, it’ll just mess with your gag reflex.” Rubbing the spike of pain growing in his forehead, he did what you said. When he caught his breath, he accepted the pain killers you had and dry swallowed them. You really had prepared for everything, huh? 

Katsuki shoved the bucket away with his foot, leaning back against the bed. “Fuck…” 

You hummed in response and scooted to sit next to him. “So,” You said. 

“So,” He said back. 

“I don’t suppose you remember much from last night?” 

He clenched his jaw, mouth going dryer than it already was, if that was possible. He tried to laugh, but it sounded forced and strained, even to him. “Hey, we’re both still wearing pants, right?” You didn’t laugh back. 

“So that’s a no then?” The seriousness with which you said that made him pause. 

“I, uh, think I called you?” 

“MmHmm. You didn’t sound too great, so I came to pull you out.” 

“Huh. Thanks for that.” 

“Yup.” You paused for a second. “Do you remember… anything else you said?” 

Fuck. 

“Uhh, I owe you breakfast?” 

You looked away. “Is there anything you maybe told Sero that you wouldn’t want him to tell me?” 

Double fuck. 

“If this is about Halloween last year, Mina was the one who brought the Ouija board.” He smirked at you, waiting for you to laugh with him. Instead you didn’t even look up, staring a hole in the carpet with the intensity of your gaze. 

You let out a sigh through your nose, pushing off your knees to stand. “I’m gonna head out,” You said, rubbing the back of your head and still not looking at him. 

Katsuki jumped up, immediately regretting as his head began swimming. “(Y/N), wait-“ He cut himself off with another surge of nausea and lurched towards the bucket. 

“Katsuki,” You said, sounding frustrated. “Look, I…” You sighed, running a hand through your hair and turning back to him. “We’ve known each other for a long time now, right? And for all the time I’ve known you, you’ve been stubborn and pig-headed and aggressive and just, you know, you. But still, in all that time, despite everything, I still…” You pressed your lips, looking for the right words. “I’m happy when I’m around you, Katsuki. I feel at ease, I feel protected, I feel like I can be better at anything. And I’ve thought about this a lot, so much that it makes my head spin and my heart hurt, but through all the trouble I still think it’s worth it. Because at the end of the day it means I still get to be with you and sometimes I just feel like that’s enough, but now I…” Your lip was trembling, tears gathering at the corners of your eyes. Katsuki wanted nothing more than to take a big step forward and wrap you in the biggest, tightest hug of your life. Finally, you sighed in defeat. “But if you can’t say it, if the One and Only Katsuki Bakugou can’t say it, then how the hell can I?” 

Your voice broke on the last word. Katsuki was so stunned and suddenly pinned with guilt that he couldn’t move when you spun on your heels and rushed out of his apartment. 

Oh, fuck. 

~~~

“Idiot,” You murmured to yourself as you fled up the apartment stairs, furiously wiping at your eyes to get rid of the oncoming tears. “Idiot, idiot, idiot.” By the time you reached your apartment and slammed the door behind you, you weren’t sure if you were talking about Katsuki or yourself. 

You felt sick. Anxiety gnawed at your mind like a starving coyote. Had you really just confessed your feelings to Katsuki? Had you really just confessed your feelings to Katsuki like that? Would he ever speak to you again? Would things just become too awkward that you’d be edged out of your friend group? They had known Katsuki much longer than they had known you, after all. God, what if he was calling Kirishima right now and telling him about the disaster of a morning, after you had taken advantage of his blitz out state and slept in the same bed with him? 

Well, no. Kirishima was probably still knocked  out from his own night of heavy imbibing. Not to mention that even he, the most kind-hearted and patient person you knew, would have to draw a line at listening to Katsuki rant while dealing with a massive hangover. 

And no, Katsuki wouldn’t do that to you. Despite his rough deminor, his abrasive personality, and his profane tongue, Katsuki was actually a sweetheart deep down. Maybe really deep down, but still. He wouldn’t be so intentionally cruel, even if you told him that you shared all of his baby pictures of him playing in his All Might onesie online. 

So then why were you still huddled on a heap on the floor, back pressed against the front door, crying? Why was this pit of loneliness blooming in your chest?  

You yelped at the sudden banging on the door. Who could be here so early in the morning? You had paid rent this month, right? You sniffed, rubbing your eyes and smoothing out your clothes. You hoped your cheeks weren’t the blotchy red they got whenever you were upset. You took a deep breath to steady your voice for whoever was outside. 

Opening the door, you looked up at a wide-eyed Katsuki, panting hard with determination set on his face. You groaned internally. 

“Katsuki,” You began,” About what I said, I’m sorr-” 

Without waiting for you to finish, Katsuki surged forward. You tried to take a step backward, almost falling, but he caught you, a strong grip on your shoulders. Without waiting for you to get your bearings, Katsuki leaned in, smashing his lips against yours. 

It wasn’t a graceful kiss, all clashing teeth and urgency rather than romance. His eyes were screwed closed. He stayed pressed against you, not moving, grip so tight on your upper arms you thought there might be a mark later. 

Just as suddenly as he had come forward, he jerked back, but kept his hold on you. You both breathed heavily, eyes locked. Your mind whirled, a hundred voices shouting at the same time. For once, you decided to ignore them and let your body do what it wanted. 

You reached up, wrapping your arms around Katsuki’s neck and pulled him back in. This kiss was controlled, soft and sweet. His hands dropped from your shoulders to wrap around your waist. He pressed in harder, adding desperation in the kiss, as if he thought you would vanish any second. When you both pulled away this time, he leaned his forehead against yours, noses bumping into each other, sharing the same breath. 

His voice was rough. “Sorry,” He said. “I had to brush my teeth first.” 

[1d1195]

Dolcezza I

You know me and my need for love at first sight.

This is where I’ll keep her: Dolcezza

Warnings: mostly fluff, mentions of stalking

~5.5k words

Definitely multi-part. This part is mostly from the MC perspective. The very end peeks into Harry's brain and the second part will likely pick up more onto his POV.

Hope you enjoy!

“You really don’t need to trouble yourself,” she promised.

Harry turned pausing by the shelf pressed against the wall. “D’you really want me t’leave?” He asked with a frown. “M’sorry. I jus’... really want t’help you, kitten,” he explained. “S’like I need to. S’almost... compulsive... but I’ll leave if y’want me to.”

“No, I’m totally fine, thank you,” she said into her phone.

“Are you sure?” Eleanor asked. “I can send Louis over.”

“No, no, that’s so unnecessary, El. Really. I’ll be fine.”

She could hear her best friend sigh heavily into the speaker. Eleanor was nearly a thousand miles away. She got a new job and while the benefits and everything about it were great, and would make Eleanor wildly successful, she was sadly away from her platonic soulmate. It was extremely hard to let her go. Worse, Louis would be joining her just as soon as he nailed down a new job out there.

But Louis was around for now, which was a great relief for Eleanor. Her best friend was a lot of things, but aware of how scary her situation wasn’t one of them. Louis knew he was essentially filling as best friend for the time being and he was expected to drop everything to get to her aid if Eleanor said so.

But that would only last so long.

Eleanor didn’t want to think about that right now.

She was carrying a box from her car toward the building. Her shoulder pressing her phone to her ear as best she could. Beside the building was a small little alley where her entry way to her new place resided. As much as it killed her to pay for it, she got a whole moving company to bring her furniture in already so at the rest was pretty standard. Her family, God love them, didn’t even think that she might need some help. If anything, she would have had to bribe them into helping her. Even if it was just for the furniture. If Eleanor was in town she would have helped with the boxes and other stray things she had heaped in her car.

Even with Eleanor’s presence closer, she felt alone. Eleanor had Louis and she would never fault her for that. Louis was everything she would want in a best-friend-in-law. But there was always this element of not fully having Eleanor—not like when they were in college and sharing a dorm room. It was different now. Not bad, but different. Her family was great but a little self-centered at times. Part of the problem, she dropped everything to help them whenever they asked but they rarely returned the favor. She did it all, so why would she need help?

Fortunately, moving allowed her to downsize quite a bit so her mid-sized SUV was able to hold almost all of her boxes in one trip from her storage unit to the new place. Maybe, this even helped her explain away her family’s lack of help.

But her brother was either busy working at the college dispatch center most of the weekend or playing beer pong at a frat party. Her sister was so wrapped up in her high school love life or maybe just being the princess her mom and dad made her out to be by never making her do anything of importance. Her parents were probably waiting on her hand and foot without even realizing. If not, they were probably creating some sort of computer-virus havoc on their home computer that for some reason her sister wouldn’t be able to fix. Or maybe they finally started fixing the kitchen up as they said they would for the last year waiting for their oldest to come home and fix all the little things they broke in the process.

If she thought about it too long, she would get annoyed. Her brother and sister were more than capable of helping and they just didn’t. It drove her nuts. So, at the end of it, she couldn’t bother her family for help. Because it barely felt like they could help themselves.

She was lucky because the alleyway wasn’t creepy. Not even at night. The whole street was a dream come true really. Part of her thought that despite the circumstance, this was actually a much-needed move. It was almost lucky that she found such an amazing place. Her own parking space right out front of the building, a coffee shop—a mere stone’s throw from said parking space—almost everything she needed was within walking distance. It was perfect.

Of course, the best and most wonderful selling point of all was by far that her new apartment was right above an Italian restaurant. It smelled like fresh pasta, garlic, and just the most comforting of scents. It reminded her of Sunday’s making meatballs with her dad and watching sports with her brother and sister.

When her coworker Mitch told her about the place, she thought it was too good to be true. But Mitch knew someone who worked at the restaurant. The owner, Antonio, was looking for a tenant after he informed Mitch’s friend that he was outgrowing the space. It was a generous size. But it was meant for a place to stay and keep watch over the restaurant—max two people and that was pushing it. The little place could not support Antonio, his wife, their first born, and another little one on the way. Four people was too big for this place.

But it was perfect for a girl who loved garlic bread and spaghetti who needed a new place and wouldn’t mind the smell of olive oil all hours of the day.

“How did you find this place?” Eleanor asked, her third-degree questioning tone was present in her voice.

“A friend of a coworker,” Eleanor already knew this.

“Mitch?” She clarified.

“Yes, Mom, Mitch,” she rolled her eyes.

“I don’t know how you can be so blasé about all this. It’s serious!” She reminded her. “I’m not even there to protect you.”

She didn’t need to be protected. She had a restraining order. The police in the area were well aware of the situation and she was almost always at home or traveling one day a week to work. If she ran errands, it was always in public spaces. She only ever worked out at a public female-only gym. Plus, she had given Louis her location. All of it was nearly a non-issue. “I don’t even know how I got a stalker,” she muttered grumpily. The whole thing was an inconvenience. If it wasn’t for Eleanor, she probably wouldn’t have even gotten the restraining order.

“You’re too nice,” Eleanor reminded her.

She sighed, tired of the story. It had been almost a year since the creepy sensation of the guy following her had started. Eleanor had approached him on more than one occasion to get rid of him. But the whole thing seemed like a bigger deal than it needed to be. The guy was basically harmless; if not just a little bit more on the creepy side. He couldn’t take the hint that she wasn’t interested and had a hard time letting go. He kept a huge distance from her—she wasn’t even sure she knew the color of his eyes from how far away he followed her. If he was around, she hardly noticed. “Well, I’m moving to a whole new place now so it should be fine now.”

“You didn’t tell anyone else about your address change?”

“Nope, just HR,” she promised. “As far as everyone knows I’m still living in that crummy apartment.”

“Well, maybe this is a blessing that you’re out of there anyway,” Eleanor sighed, relief in her voice. “How do you like this place?”

She smiled dropping the box in the middle of the room before she closed the door and descended the staircase back to her car to grab more boxes. “El, it’s literally perfect. It’s like the apartment of my dreams.”

“How come no one at the restaurant wanted it?”

“When you come visit, we can go and ask all the questions—”

As she entered the alleyway from her apartment entrance she was pushed to the ground. The rattling of glass bottles clinked, clattered, and broke on the pavement. She already felt the bruise forming on her tailbone from landing so hard on the ground. In the process she dropped her phone, and she could hear Eleanor shouting from the speaker. “Ouch,” she muttered.

“Don’t move!” She turned to the sound of the guy in the alleyway with her—he was hurrying to his feet having also toppled to the cold, hard ground. He was wearing all black. Short sleeves even though it was a chillier fall day—showing off an array of tattoos that lined his muscular arms. His black pants had fingerprints and handprints of flour on them. There was something dark colored—probably tomato sauce—dried on the half apron around his hips. He clearly worked in the restaurant. The bag of bottles he was previously carrying ripped open and was broken on the ground. “M’so sorry, Principessa,” his voice was smooth and warm. “Antonio told me y’were moving in today. Should’ve been more careful,” he frowned grabbing her wrists without a thought and hauling her to her feet to get her off the cold ground and away from any broken glass. “M’so sorry,” he repeated making sure she was steadily on her feet. He turned her hands over inspecting them so delicately. Like she was the glass that had broken at their feet. “Are y’alright, Principessa?”

The silence coming from Eleanor on her phone was nearly deafening. She blinked a few times as she gazed at the most beautiful man she had ever seen in her life. His hair was the color of melted milk chocolate and looked like it had been sculpted of the very substance into the most unfairly beautiful curls any man should have been allowed to have. His cheeks were smooth except for the stubble lining his incredibly sharp jawline. His lower lip was chapped, and she realized how close she was to face to notice such a thing. Probably from the way he was biting it with the worry that he had hurt her. But they were still very rosy—like pink wine and much like the rest of him, very, very pretty.

He picked up her phone out of the debris. Wiping it on his apron then brought it to his ear. “Hello?”

“Oh, God,” she whispered to herself, trying to process the last two minutes. Eleanor was going to lose her mind.

“Uh... m’Harry... She’s fine—I think... Are y’okay, Principessa?” His gaze turned back to her.

It felt like her heart stopped as her eyes connected with the beautiful green ones looking back at her. It was unfair someone like Harry was that pretty.

She nodded, holding her hand out for her phone. He returned it to her immediately and she cleared her throat. “I’m fine, El. Promise.”

“Principessa?!” She gasped. “Oh. My. God.”

“I’ll call you later,” she whispered feeling her face warm as Harry inspected the mess.

“M’sorry, Principessa,” he repeated for a fourth time. If he called her Principessa again though, she might fall right back on her sore tailbone. “Wasn’t expecting you t’come out the door,” he frowned. “Did y’get cut at all?” He asked, scanning her quickly from head to toe. She was dressed for moving on a cool fall day. A chunky sweatshirt, a pair of joggers, and trainers. Her hair was pulled tight to keep out of her face.

She was the furthest thing from looking like the princess that he kept calling her. “Oh...no... I’m alright,” she promised. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think—”

“Don’t apologize, kitten, s’entirely my fault.”

She shook her head rapidly trying to get some neural networks firing. “Really, I’m okay,” she smiled gently. “I should have watched—”

“M’serious, s’my fault,” he interrupted again.

“Harry, what’s the hold—” Antonio entered the alleyway but stopped his train of thought looking at the pair of them. “Oh, hi, tesorino,” he had called her that a lot since he spoke and met with her. “See you’ve met Harry,” he looked at the broken bag and the glass. “Did he hurt you?” He asked.

“No!” Harry glared at him, a frown adorning his pretty lips and a matching pinch between his brows. Harry looked adorable when he was angry. “I didn’t Principessa, did I?” He turned back to her looking apologetic again.

“No, I’m sincerely fine,” she promised shoving her phone into the pocket of her joggers. “I should have watched where I was—”

“No, no, tesorino,” Antonio shook his head. “It’s Harry’s fault. M’sure.” What kind of reality was this? Antonio reminded her of Louis or a much older brother—maybe even a young dad, but not like her dad. She imagined Louis saying the same kind of taunting thing to Eleanor or even herself. It was surreal. A cute guy bumped into her when she was starting fresh. It was like fate—a new start and a new guy. “I’ll get you a broom, Harry. Make sure she’s alright.”

“Yes sir,” he nodded firmly. Antonio disappeared back to the restaurant to get the broom.

“I’m really fine,” she promised.

Harry was smiling now, he bent down to get the big pieces of glass that shattered and carefully placed them on the broken plastic bag. “M’glad, Principessa,” he hummed quietly.

“Uh...” she smiled awkwardly and stepped to the side. “I should get out of the way...” she trailed off and started for the street to gather more of her stuff.

“Here,” Antonio reappeared with a broom and a new bag, passing it off to Harry. “Tesorino, are you sure you’re alright?” Antonio had an Italian accent. It made her smile and even if she was hurt, she was sure that she wouldn’t—couldn’t feel any pain because it was so comfortable being around an Italian restaurant where people worried about her.

“I’m really, truly fine,” she promised.

Harry was quick to pick up all the glass and took a few steps around the area to catch any of the broken pieces. It seemed this wasn’t the first time this had happened. It was like she was glued to her spot watching Harry take the collected glass down the alleyway to one of the dumpsters. “Do you need help moving your stuff upstairs?” Antonio asked.

“Oh no, that’s alright, I’m fine—”

“Harry, help her with her stuff,” he ordered, ignoring her brush-off. “Her car is out front.”

Harry handed the broom back to his boss and hurried to the front of the building. “Hey!” She frowned and looked at Antonio. “I don’t need help—”

“Tesorino, please. S’no big deal. Harry would be happy to help.” Harry was already coming back with what she knew was a heavy box labeled ‘kitchen’ and heading for the stairs. Truthfully, she was dreading carrying that one, so she was grateful Harry was literally doing the heavy lifting for her but didn’t want him to feel like he had to. “He helped us move our stuff out already and into our new home,” he shrugged. “Come down for some lasagna for dinner,” he said heading back toward the front.

The entire interaction had left her so completely confused. Harry was beautiful and clearly a cook of some sort in the kitchen of the restaurant. Currently, he was up in her new apartment putting her box in the kitchen. Right as she came to the door to head after him, he bumped into her again, reappearing from the door so quickly, she almost fell right back to the ground. This time, Harry caught her around the waist. “M’sorry, Principessa. I don’t know why I keep getting in y’way,” he frowned.

He released her waist just as quickly as he caught her before heading back for her car. The warmth of his arm around her body lingered as she followed him. “You don’t have to help.”

“S’no problem, kitten,” he shrugged grabbing a box labeled ‘bedroom’ that she knew had an array of random things including an assortment of old CDs, a few pictures, and everything from her nightstand—including a box of condoms. Just the knowledge of knowing he was carrying them was enough to make her face warm. She frowned, hurrying to grab a box herself. “Y’don’t have any friends t’help you?” He asked over his shoulder as he made himself at home coming to stop in front of the second door in the little hall at the top of the steps. Beside her apartment was a second office for the restaurant. Antonio assured her that he was the only person who used it and at this point in time, it was mostly storage. Either way, she didn’t mind. The place was a steal and beyond helpful for her new start. Especially with Eleanor breathing down her neck worrying about her.

“I don’t like to bother people with something I can do myself,” she explained quietly while pushing the door out of the way for Harry to enter—but he waited for her to go first. A silent direction in his eyes as he stood still with the box in his hands. After an awkward pause, she went in first.

Unfortunately, she was compelled to fill the silence with more explanation. “My best friend got a new job—so she’s unavailable. She offered her boyfriend but he’s working. My other friends... no one wants to help move. You know?” She explained. But it was hard to hide the catch in her throat while she spoke. No one wanted to help her.

It was weird to have a conversation with Harry like that. It was a little personal, nothing crazy. But apparently, it divulged enough. “S’unfair, Principessa,” his voice was so gentle. “M’sure you’d help if they asked—or even if they didn’t ask.”

How on earth could some stranger possibly know that about her without so much as speaking for more than ten full minutes? There was a jolt of sadness that washed through her. But she pushed it aside and frowned at the stranger who seemed to read right through her without so much as a second glance. “They would help if I asked,” she murmured. But it felt like sand in her mouth as she said it because she knew it was a lie.

Harry didn’t harp on it though. He glanced around the empty space. “Are y’new to the city?” He asked.

“No... not really,” she shrugged. “I used to live just a couple towns over.”

“Ah,” he nodded. “D’you have a lot more?” He asked.

She shook her head. “No, not really. You... you grabbed the heavy kitchen one. So, it should be easy from here on out.”

“Great,” he smiled. “I’ll get Niall, we’ll be done in half an hour.” Harry left her breathless for more than one reason. He hurried back down and stopped outside of the restaurant. She was practically running to catch up.

Dolcezza was written in cursive script above the big window showcasing the beautiful restaurant. Most Italian restaurants always seemed so darkly lit. This one looked so warm and cozy and on the brighter side. It reminded her of her grandparents’ house.

Harry pulled the door open. “Niall!” He shouted. Without waiting for whoever Niall was, Harry turned to her car to grab the next box.

Niall was a little less than half a foot shorter than Harry. His eyes were the color of the sky in the middle of June, and he had an adorable smile. “What’re you doing?” He asked Harry as he walked by with a box. “Hey tesorino,” he winked at her.

“Grab a box,” Harry nodded his head toward the open car and continued for her apartment once more.

What the heck!?

She stumbled to get a box herself and hurried to follow the two guys moving her stuff into her new place. But she had to give credit where credit was due. Harry was right. Thirty minutes, and everything in her car was now in the apartment. Niall headed back to the restaurant without a word, but Harry stayed behind. “D’you need help with anything, kitten?” He asked sweetly.

She couldn’t possibly imagine him helping her more than he already had. “N-no, thank you. That was...really helpful. I can take it from here.”

“Jus’ come grab me from downstairs if y’do think of something, kitten. Antonio won’t mind,” he promised. He smiled at her once more and looked around. His gaze stopped on the tall bookshelf. He walked toward it and looked at each side. He pulled a little bag of screws that were taped to the side and put it in plain view. “Make sure y’anchor that bookshelf before putting books on it. Don’t want it falling on you,” he mentioned kindly. She frowned. In her old place, her bookshelf was recessed into the wall. Having built the new shelf so the movers could take it the other day, she truly hadn’t thought about it. She only taped the little bag to the inside of the shelf so she knew what it belonged to when she created a junk drawer in the kitchen.

“Er... right,” she nodded—unconfidently.

Harry looked her over again, sizing her up, as if he knew she didn’t know how to do that and was too proud to ask. “I’ll come back up before dinner t’do it. D’you have a screw gun and such?”

“I can Google how to do it if I need to,” she assured him knowing that if he didn’t say anything, she wouldn’t do it. “I doubt I can put holes in the wall like that.”

Harry snorted. “Don’t worry, Principessa, I’ll tell Antonio. He won’t argue.”

“It’s really—”

“M’offering myself, kitten. S’nothing t’worry ‘bout. M’happy t’help. S’no trouble at all.”

It was jarring. That was the only way to describe it. It was as if Harry could read her thoughts and see on her face that she didn’t want to trouble someone on her behalf. “Antonio s’not kidding ‘bout lasagna either, Principessa. He’ll want y’down between five-thirty and six. Come down t’eat or he’ll make me come up here t’get you.”

*

“Who was that?” Eleanor asked in greeting as she answered the phone.

“Hi Eleanor, the move has been going well. I’m about to start unpacking boxes and arranging everything. How has your day been?” She answered with an eye roll.

“Shut up, tell me about the guy, principessa,” her voice was nearly hysterical. Her tone was almost mocking with the nickname Harry had bestowed upon her. It made her stomach flip to hear even Eleanor say it.

Sighing, she put her head on the counter of her new kitchen. She eyed the heavy box Harry had put there on the floor. “His name is Harry. He works at the restaurant,” she explained. “Antonio had him help me with all the boxes and stuff, his friend Niall too.”

“I don’t care about that. What does he look like?!” The pause was telling. She knew it. “Wow,” Eleanor sighed. “He is so hot, you’re speechless.”

Rolling her eyes again, she was glad Eleanor couldn’t see her cheeks burning red at the correct assumption. “He’s cute,” she managed.

“Oh puh-lease,” she gasped. “What a cute little story you’ll be able to tell your grandchildren.”

“Can you relax? I talked to him for twenty minutes and mostly about moving.”

“Mostly?!”

“Sweet Jesus,” she sighed pinching the bridge of her nose and closing her eyes trying to think of the fastest way to get rid of her friend from making her crazy. “He correctly identified that I have shitty friends who wouldn’t help me move even if I had asked. He also got his friend Niall to help with the boxes in my car. And when I came back from the storage unit with a second load, they ran out in the middle of a lunch rush to help anyway.”

“You could sell movie rights,” Eleanor sighed dreamily.

She rolled her eyes. “His boss made him help.”

“His boss made him call you principessa too?”

“He called me kitten too.”

“Oh, you’re so going to marry him.”

“I have to unpack my house now.”

“What does he smell like?”

“You are insane.”

There was a knock on her door.

“Wonder who that is,” Eleanor practically sang. She glanced at the stove clock. It wasn’t even five o’clock. Not time to head down for lasagna. After the crazy afternoon she had, she wanted to make sure she didn’t give a reason to the funny cooks and owner downstairs that were helping her a reason to waste their time with her. She truly planned to head down for lasagna as they asked. But part of her thought Harry was joking about the bookshelf.

With the phone still against her ear, she pulled the door out of the way and found Harry. He was not joking. There was a screw gun at his side. “Hi Principessa,” he grinned so brightly it made a dimple in both cheeks appear. “M’gonna anchor y’bookshelf and then take y’down t’get lasagna,” he maneuvered right by her without so much as an okay.

“You really don’t need to trouble yourself,” she promised.

Harry turned pausing by the shelf pressed against the wall. “D’you really want me t’leave?” He asked with a frown. “M’sorry. I jus’... really want t’help you, kitten,” he explained. “S’like I need to. S’almost... compulsive... but I’ll leave if y’want me to.”

“Don’t you dare let him leave,” Eleanor said to her ear, her voice was practically a sigh. She and Harry stood feet apart gazing at one another.

But it felt so bad getting help from Harry. “Well...er... if you’re really sure it’s not a bother,” she murmured.

“Not at all, Principessa,” he smiled. “Promise,” he nodded. “S’jus’ a couple minutes and then I’ll bring y’down.”

“Eleanor, I gotta go.”

“I can’t wait to give my maid of honor speech at your wedding.”

She hung up on her friend. Harry was quick. He was shifting the bookshelf away from the wall. He snagged the little package of screws taped to the side. “Can I help?” She asked tossing her phone on the couch.

“I think m’alright, principessa. Thank you,” he said kindly, like he wasn’t doing her a favor by doing this. It was quiet while he worked. At one point he did drop one of the little screws and she was quick to grab it and place it in his hand for him. “Thanks, kitten,” he hummed quietly. His expression was so concentrated as he fixed up the shelf.

It wasn’t much, honestly. She knew that. It was just a bookshelf. But it was somehow so much more. Her heart felt so out of place. Her throat felt tight with emotion bubbling to the surface. No one had ever done anything like this before. A near stranger at that. Probably because it was so much more. It was a worry about her safety which people nearly forgot—unless they were Eleanor and by extension Louis.

She turned away briefly and busied herself with pulling throw pillows from the box labeled living room. Harry hummed quietly to himself. It was soothing. For a moment she forgot about who she was and that she had moved because she had a stalker. If she was a little more vulnerable feeling, she might have cried. It wasn’t the time, but she felt like she had known Harry her whole life. But she had barely spoken more than a hundred and fifty words to him. It was feeling extremely domestic in her new place even though hardly anything was unpacked.

The whole place was one wide open room kitchen and living area. There was a little space she designated for a table for sitting at and along the front wall by the window she planned on putting her desk. There was so much she needed to do. There were three doors along the back wall of the apartment. A bathroom, a bedroom, and a little alcove where a washer and dryer resided. She was lucky the owner lived here previously as she was certain there wouldn’t be a washer and dryer otherwise and that may have deterred her from taking the place. The idea of lugging her laundry up and down the stairs to a laundromat was not something she wanted to do in her late twenties.

“Oh crap,” she frowned. Realizing her state of being at the thought of walking up and down the steps all day.

Harry paused and turned to her. “Y’okay, principessa?” He frowned as well. His eyes looked her over with worry.

“Yeah...no, I just... I have to change before I head down there,” she sighed.

Harry smiled and turned back to his task. He gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Oh, y’could go like that, I think y’look beautiful,” he said sweetly.

Her heart rate took off rapidly. She could feel her cheeks warming but she knew her hair was pulled back and little pieces had frizzed and fallen from the elastic. She knew she was sweaty and there was simply no way she looked beautiful.

She snorted awkwardly. “Uh...thank you,” she cleared her throat. “But I would feel better if I changed.”

“I’ll wait outside, then,” he promised. “Jus’ finishing this last bit,” he murmured his attention focused on securing the screws perfectly.

“I’ll be quick,” she promised.

“Take y’time, principessa. M’in no rush,” he stood after finishing the final bit. He stepped back outside the apartment. God, he was nice. It had to be the fastest time she had ever gotten ready for anything. Changing out of comfy clothes and into jeans and a blouse that she would wear to her team meetings, so it didn’t look like she was wearing pajamas to work. She slipped on a pair of the first presentable ankle boots she could find a pair of in the box of shoes that was still unpacked. After she found a clip to pull her hair back in a more presentable fashion.

“Oh, wow,” Harry smiled dreamily as she stepped into the hall and locked her door. “Didn’t know y’could get any more beautiful. In less than five minutes too. M’gonna faint when y’have more than a minute,” he smiled and headed down the stairs as if he hadn’t just stolen her heart.

She was a little surprised he went down the stairs first, but she was grateful because maybe he wouldn’t be able to tell she was shaky and gripping the railing to keep her upright after Harry’s sweet compliment. But she realized it was merely so he could open the door carefully and make sure she wouldn’t bump into someone in the alleyway. Once he decided the alleyway was cleared, he gestured for her to exit first. “Thank you,” she said sincerely.

“For what, kitten?” He smiled as he closed the door behind him.

“Being helpful and nice. I... I’m not really used to that,” she admitted.

The grin on his face was kind. He shoved his freehand in his pocket and shrugged. “Happy t’help y’principessa,” he winked and headed for Dolcezza, surely to open the door for her first.

“Why did he name it Dolcezza?” She asked following behind him.

Harry smiled and glanced over his shoulder to wink at the pretty girl. “It means sweetness. Antonio met his wife when he was studying business, called her la mia dolcezza. He always wanted t’own a restaurant but never knew what t’name it. He knew the second he met her,” he shrugged. “S’a cute story.”

“Very sweet,” she smiled as she walked by Harry to enter the warm and homey restaurant. She was correct in her assumption that he would hold the door open for her. He chuckled at her joke.

There was something about the girl he literally bumped into and proceeded to fall for instantly physically and emotionally. He wasn’t lying when he said it was compulsive to help her. The warmth he felt inspecting her hands for injury and the worry he felt when she didn’t seem sure of anchoring her bookshelf. The thought that she was just above the restaurant that he nearly lived at more than his own place was comforting. A tug on his heart he didn’t know where it came from but couldn’t help it. Harry had never felt such an emotion like this for someone he had just met. It was like he had known her his whole life and he hadn’t spent more than an hour in total speaking to her. But he wanted to spend forever talking to her now that he had a glimpse of someone so beautiful and gentle.

It took every bit of inner strength for Harry to refrain from telling her he would name every child, every restaurant, anything he could name, he would dedicate to her.

--

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Dolcezza: @matildasatellite

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If you like this, check out my masterlist for more of my writing.

[shanastoryteller]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANDMA MY ONE TRUE LOVE!!! CAN I HAVE SOME PERCY AND TONKS CONTENT TO MAKE MY SOUL CONTENT PLEASE ✨✨✨

There are several titles that fall under the auror. When the ministry was first established, it was just inferior and superior, meant in the Latin way, but that fell out of favor rather quickly for obvious reasons. There was some talk of adopting the ranks of a legion used by the Romans, but since such ranks are still in practice in magical Italy, it didn’t the smartest idea. Tonks thinks that it was probably a Zabini who suggested it. Now their ranks are just numbered, from fifth to first, and junior, standard, and senior.

Everyone starts the same – fifth ranked junior auror – and works their way up one by one. Training is a year and if they make it through that, they’re a junior agent who better make it up to the first rank by the end of their third year, otherwise they’re likely getting cut.

There’s a track to speed through the junior phase and get to the land of securely employed standard auror, but that’s for people that have combat or specialized experience, usually for people who aren’t entering auror training straight of school like she is. Or for when they’d needed to replenish their ranks during the war and those applying had been fighting anyway.

Which is why she’s looking in confusion at the thick roll of parchment that Shackbolt has shoved under her nose. She’s only a couple months into training and while she thinks she’s doing pretty good, she’d also tripped over her literal two left feet during the first week of boot camp. Sometimes she changes in her sleep and doesn’t notice for a while, okay? It’s not like she did it on purpose. She’s pretty good at dueling, her mother made sure of that, but they haven’t even gotten to that part yet. “I’m confused.”

“Fill this out and give it back to me by the end of the week,” he says, already turning away from her.

She makes her arm extra long so she can grab his elbow before he gets too far away. “But I don’t have anything that qualifies me! There’s no way Bones will approve this.”

He raises an eyebrow and looks down at her arm. “Are you sure about that, Trainee?”

Oh. But she hasn’t really gotten a chance to show those skills off either, and being a metamorphmagus is impressive, but not that impressive. But she does as she’s told, leaving it on his desk and trying not to think too much about it.

Bones approves it.

Being on the advanced track has it advantages – blessed job security – but it also means she just gets a jump on desk duty, really. Apparently they don’t just send newly minted aurors out to battle dark wizards to the death, for some reason.

She sighs. She’s never been very good at paperwork.

How very not good she is at is proved when during her very first week when Percy Weasley shows up at her desk, looking even more sleep deprived than he had as a runty fourteen year old, which is impressive. He’s a lot taller now. Late growth spurt, perhaps. Or maybe she just wasn’t paying that much attention. He drops a stack of paper on her desk and she recognizes her own messy scrawl. “These are filled out incorrectly. I can’t process them like this.”

Her shoulders slump. She’d tried to pull other reports and fill them out the same way, but it was all so confusing. How she’s supposed to know how to categorize these things? Why are there thirteen different codes for a house robbery, anyway? And there are so many different sections, and she wasn’t even there, she just has other people’s notes to go off of, and they take notes like she did in History of Magic.

She’s going to be here all night redoing them and they’ll probably still be wrong and Kinglsey will regret ever pushing her through the advanced track and her mother will have been right, which is really the worst of all –

“Hey,” Percy says, and she blinks several times before looking up at him so she doesn’t embarrass herself. “I can – if you’re busy, I can just,” he reaches for the papers he’s dropped on her desk.

She slaps her hand over them to stop him, but instead his hand ends up trapped beneath hers. “No! No, it’s okay, I have to learn how to do this. It’s important.”

He stares at her with a look she can’t explain. “It’s just paperwork.”

“It’s my job,” she says stubbornly, “it’s all important. I’m going to be a great auror – the best auror. And that includes my paperwork.”

He smiles at her, which is suitably distracting from her own ruined night. She doesn’t know if he’s ever smiled at her before. He’d always seemed so stoic, nothing like his brothers. “All right. If you’re sure.”

“Yes,” she says, freshly determined, finally lifting her hand off his. Everyone else has figured out how to do this. She can too. She will. “But thanks.”

“No problem,” he says, then, “My dad has a muggle coffee pot in his department lounge. If you want. The password is rubber duck.”

She does prefer coffee made the muggle way. That’s how it’s made in her house, of course, with her muggle father, and there’s something to the taste that she thinks coffee loses after it’s third hour of being charmed hot or squeezed through by magic instead of just hot water and a little patience.

How does Percy know that?

Before she can ask, he’s already turned and walking away from her, and she barely has the chance to shout, “Thanks!” before he turns the corner.

[crushedbyhyperbole]

Cherry Pie Kiss

Slice One

Pairing: Dean Winchester x fem!reader

Summary: The pie thief has struck again. You know who it is but how to prove it? The answer is on the tip of his tongue.

Words: ~900

A/N: So this is SPN fic number two. The idea of Dean being such a pie fiend that he would steal someone else's pie from the fridge and deny it afterwards, really amused me. I obviously didn't get the desire to kiss him out of my system after the first SPN fic I wrote so here's another one 😂 It's not smut but there is mild adult themes which is why I ask minors not to read or interact. Reader is as generic as I can make but I have referenced as female. I hope you enjoy, and as always, I value your feedback and comments 💖

Warnings: kissing, mild violence, bad language as standard. Dean is an asshole. Reader is a bit of an asshole too. They're probably made for each other.

*** Minors do not read or interact ***

Dean Winchester.  You hate him.  His arrogance, his smug superiority, the way he always acts like he’s untouchable… his goddamn pretty mouth.  Ugh!  Asshole!

You didn’t always hate him – you had known him for years, one hunter to another – but, since you had been forced to stay with both he and Sam in the bunker these last couple of months, he had really grated on your nerves. 

After your hunt of a large nest of vampires had gone wrong, you had become the hunted.  Your home decimated, your family too precious to put at risk by you staying with them; you had needed help.

Sam had insisted, so you agreed to stay with them until your vamp problem could be solved.  Only the nest turned out to be much bigger and far wider spread than you had first thought, and it was taking time for even the infamous Winchester brothers to put an end to.

The light in the refrigerator is stark as you stare inside.  It’s gone.  You slam the door, raging internally.  Why can you not have anything to yourself in this goddamn place?

“DEAN!”  You shout angrily at the top of your lungs, knowing he can hear you from his room down the hall, even with his music playing.

He won’t respond to you.  He never does.  Why should he?  You’re just some girl he’s got to put up with for a while.  Some girl he made a pass at that first week you were here, but you shut him down and he’s been an asshole to you ever since.

You storm up to his door and bray your fist against the wood as hard as you can.  “I know you’re in there!  Get your ass out here now!”  You shout and hammer your fist against the door until you hear him moving inside.

The door clunks as he unlocks it, and it swings open to reveal him stood in the doorway in a navy blue robe and slippers.  The light from his lamp is dim but warm, his music a moderate volume for the late hour.  He looks irritated that you’ve disturbed him, that quizzical frown and pout are a dead giveaway.  Good.

“What’s got your panties in a twist?”  He smirks at you.

“You!”  You push past him, and he doesn’t try to block you.

“What now?”

This isn’t the first time you’ve had this argument and it probably won’t be the last.  Whenever Sam isn’t around, Dean always does something to piss you off, like he’s trying to bait you.

“You ate my pie!  AGAIN!”

His expression is schooled into that self-righteous assuredness it always is when you confront him.  His hands go to his hips – which looks ridiculous because of the robe – and he shifts his weight onto his other foot.

“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”  He says with a frown, and it’s entirely plausible that you’ve made a mistake, except it’s just the two of you here and you didn’t eat the damn pie.  “I haven’t seen any damn pie.”

“Oh yeah?!”  You square up to him, looking up into his eyes, unblinking, unphased.

“Yeah!”  He doubles down, firmly meeting your stare, leaning closer as if you would be intimidated by that.

It’s a short distance you need to cover and he is unprepared.  You expect him to push you away but he flounders, arms flailing and uncoordinated when you grip the lapels of his robe and pull him towards you.

When your lips meet he puckers up and blinks in shock, but you don’t give him time to realise what’s happening.  You wrap your arms around his neck and hold him tight as you slip your tongue between his lips, plundering his mouth.

It takes a beat, but he responds by gripping your hips and holding you against him, moaning into your mouth as he opens up to you.  The heat of his response takes you by surprise, but it shouldn’t have, really.  He’d wanted this since the first few days you were here.  Wanted you.

You ravage his mouth, your hands in his hair, making it messy as you practically melt into his arms.  His tongue plays perfectly with yours, his lips soft and yielding.  Dean Winchester is an exceptional kisser.  This fact makes you hate him even more.

As you pull back, breathless, Dean grins at you.  He looks happy and care-free, like the cat that got the cream.  Your face, however, holds a scowl.

“What’s wrong, darlin’?”  His expression changes to concern.

You lick your lips and it’s just as you thought, the sweet buttery goodness of pie crust and the pleasant tartness of sour cherry.  You slap him across the face – not hard but just enough to get his attention – and stride to the door leaving him confused.

“What the hell?!”  He rounds on you, his arousal tenting his robe.

“Don’t you dare eat my pie again.”

You leave your warning hanging in the air along with his frustration.  A smirk playing on your lips at the sight you had just left behind you; Dean Winchester with kiss-swollen lips and a hard-on for you.  It isn’t the worst thing you’ve seen but you still hate him, even if there’s now something else there along side it. 

[hlficlibrary]

Remember to leave kudos and a comment on the fics you enjoyed to show your appreciation! You can find the library's other recs here.

🩷 Light, Spark and Fire (series) by green_feelings / @greenfeelings {E, 239k}

Life’s pretty ordinary for Harry. He lives with his best friend, got into university just like he’s planned, and manages to support himself just fine for an unbonded omega. If he sustains that lifestyle by getting paid to help alphas through their rut every now and then, that’s nothing to be hung up on. Until he’s hired by an alpha that turns everything upside down.

Or, Harry’s working on taking Louis’ walls down, until he builds his own up.

🩷 Say Something by @kingsofeverything {E, 105k}

At fifty years old and recently divorced, Omega Harry Styles isn't interested in dating. When his doctor suggests a heat and rut matching service, he signs up out of necessity. It’s the only use he has for an Alpha in his life.

Twenty-eight-year-old Alpha Louis Tomlinson aims to change that.

🩷 Ace of Spades (series) by @allwaswell16 {E, 90k}

Living as a sheltered omega in a farming village has not prepared Harry for life aboard the most notorious pirate ship to sail the Atlantic.

Or Louis is a pirate, Harry is his captive, and no one is who they say they are.

🩷 The Pros and Cons of Breathing by @hellolovers13 {E, 81k}

Omega Harry has always known he'd be married off someday, so when he's betrothed to Prince Louis, he's anxious about having to leave his life behind, but hopeful for a happy marriage.

The hope doesn't last long, with his husband avoiding him at all costs and Harry being left to fend for himself.

Can he find happiness even in a broken marriage?

🩷 I like the way you say my name (when you soak it in grace) by louisismycat / @liminalkittyfics {E, 73k}

“It’s like I’m fucking orbiting around you, you know? Like you’re some huge, beautiful planet, and I’m a piece of space junk lucky enough to be pulled in by you somehow, and now I can’t leave, even if I wanted to. And I really fucking don’t want to leave.”

OR Louis is transferred to a new city to temporarily cover for his counterpart while he is on maternity leave for the next six months.

His new co-workers talk endlessly about Harry, the omega who he’s covering for. And Louis finds himself jealous of whatever alpha as snatched him up.

Until he learns Harry is actually an unmated omega three months out from becoming a single parent.

🩷 Si Pudiera Volar by @softfonds {E, 69k}

When Harry’s fiancé leaves him for his cousin, he looks the other way for the sake of his happiness. He’ll do anything to forget about him, including joining a monastery. It isn’t until his cousin’s former lover, a pirate, appears that he realizes everything is not as it appears, and an honest pirate might be the only person worthy of his heart.

Or, a fic loosely based on Corazón Salvaje.

🩷 Little by Little by nonsensedarling / @absoloutenonsense {E, 65k}

Harry Styles is an omega who works at the London Planetarium, has lived in the same flat for ages, and is happy enough on his own. When he gets home from his first (horrible) attempt at dating in years, a new pregnant neighbor knocks on his door after smelling his cooking. He and Louis quickly become close, but their friendship gets complicated when Harry begins questioning who he is and what he likes.

Or Harry discovers figuring out who you are is more complicated than a potato metaphor.

🩷 and i would search the night sky to find you by devilinmybrain / @thedevilinmybrain {E, 56k}

Harry Styles is a high class, well-bred Omega attending Bosworth Academy - a prestigious boarding school looking over the small town on Kinsey. He has his whole life already planned for him, learning his place as the potential mate for an important Alpha, practicing his home making skills, and be obedient above all else.

When he attends a school trip into town though, he meets Louis Tomlinson - a blacksmith and mouthy Alpha who doesn't particularly care for the standards of high society nor for the people in it. But things are not always what they seem and a past grievance may change the lives of everyone involved forever.

🩷 Just for Tonight (I can be yours) by @sadaveniren {E, 42k}

Harry, prince of Cestrescir, has been betrothed to Ludvic, prince of Yorvik, since birth. He'd accepted a loveless marriage as his duty to his country, until an accident threw him in the path of a gentle alpha

🩷 crown me with your heart (your love is king) by @perfectdagger {G, 41k}

The universe must’ve had a field day when it decided to plan Harry’s life. There was no plausible explanation for anything that happened in his life anymore. Try as he may, he would never be able to control his life nor predict what would happen next.What were the odds that the one person he was sure he had fallen in love with but had completely let him slip out of his life, already resigned to the fact nothing could ever evolve between them due to Harry’s future with Eroda, happened to be the same person who had Harry’s future in his hand?

A The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Wedding au in which Harry is the Crown Prince of the small island of Eroda and Louis’ uncle is trying to take the throne from him, with a slight a/b/o twist and some more.

🩷 Endgame by @brightgolden {E, 38k}

Harry has been told all his life how grateful he should be for being born as a male omega, and how blessed their people were because the heir to the throne would be carried by The King.

What they neglected to tell Harry was what would happen if he failed to become pregnant.

OR

Where omega Crown Prince Harry Styles is trying and failing to get pregnant for four years, but all that is about to change when courtesan alpha Louis Tomlinson comes into the equation.

🩷 You're Not My Type (still I fall) by Imogenlee / @imogenleewriter {M, 38k}

His mum is going to kill him!

Well, not kill him. Just give him a right telling off, make him admit she'd been right, then try to confine him to his room until they found a hefty Alpha to look after him and rein him in or something.

She wouldn't manage, of course. Harry is only twenty-four and has no inclination to settle down at all, especially not at the behest of an Alpha.

But, as his mum would point out, that was the same stubborn attitude that got him here: in his car, in a thunderstorm, on the side of a forsaken lane of some little countryside town in Yorkshire. His mobile's got no signal, his GPS isn't working, and he's running low on petrol, so he can't even use the heater.

Oh, and most importantly, his car is stuck in the mud, so even if the GPS was working and he knew where to go, he wouldn’t be able to.

He's been in stickier spots; he reminds himself. Way stickier. This is just a bit of rain; it'll blow over. Then Harry will just... well, alright, he isn't entirely sure what to do when the rain stops because he'll still be stuck and lost. But, hey, there won't be any rain, which is something to cheer about.

🩷 dip you in honey by delsicle / @eeveedel {E, 28k}

Princess Harry, the pearl of England, is set to be married to the youngest prince of France in just six months. Anxious about his performance on his wedding night, he enlists the help of his loyal handmaiden Louis to help him practice everything he needs to know

Omega/Omega AU

🩷 It's Been Ages by @2tiedships2 {NR, 13k}

“We need to talk,” Niall said as he plopped down on Louis’ bed. “It’s you and Harry. You like him, he likes you, it’s a match made in heaven and you will one day be mates,”

Louis shook his head in exasperation. “If you’ve been watching, you would see that Harry is interested in, like, alpha alphas. Not me.”

“What the fuck is an alpha alpha?” Niall asked with furrowed brows.

“You know what I mean,” Louis said, giving Niall a pointed look.

“I literally have no idea what you’re talking about.”

🩷 I've Always Liked the Fireworks by QuickedWeen / @becomeawendybird {T, 12k}

When alphas and omegas reach the age of twenty-one they are required to attend a Proving Day ceremony. Omegas watch as alphas do their best to compete in events, show off their skills, and prove how good a mate they can really be. The whole thing is a bit ridiculous, but Louis Tomlinson has always dreamed of finding his mate. He's got two unsuccessful Sheffield Proving Days under his belt and decides to go for the much more competitive one in Manchester. His goal is to play his best, leave it all out on the pitch, and hope that one of the omegas watching just happens to be his mate.

🩷 Come In and Change My Life by lightswoodmagic / @lightwoodsmagic {E, 12k}

He’d had the same neighbours since he’d moved into the building, a lovely, wealthy couple in their late sixties who had always invited him around for tea on Sundays. Martha had dropped off homemade biscuits the day he’d moved in, so Harry figured he may as well repeat the sentiment. He could hear someone getting closer to the door just as a flush ran through his body; oh fuck. His heat was close, too close to be knocking on a potentially unknown alpha’s door, but it was too late. The door swung open, and Harry’s mouth dropped. He’d never been overly interested in football, couldn’t find the fascination in watching men run around after a ball for hours aside from their uniforms, but he knew who this was. Louis Tomlinson, alpha, captain of Manchester United, star in a number of Harry’s heat addled fantasies, was his new next-door neighbour.

Or, Harry and Louis become friends when Harry looks after Louis' cat during away games, until one night at a party changes everything between them. It's just a shame Louis' going to be away for the FIFA World Cup for three months.

🩷 Just Jump by @jaerie {E, 9k}

Finally, after years of suffering alone, the insurance plan at Harry's new job covered omega heat services. As a grown omega adult, it finally felt like the right time to try it out. And, since taking an entire week of heat leave would really put him behind at work, using a service to shorten it seemed like a responsible decision. At least that’s how he rationalized it. He was nervous about his decision but it was too late. The doorbell rang.

“Hi!” The alpha said again and Harry took the hand he offered and shook it firmly. “I’m Louis from Omega Services. It’s nice to meet you.”

🩷 a body wishes to be held & held by @turnyourankle {E, 9k}

Harry wants to return the favour after Louis helps him out with his heat.

🩷 How Much My Heart Depends by @lululawrence {NR, 6k}

Louis is an alpha working as a fraud analyst who keeps having Bad Days. Harry is an omega working in Quality Support who shares a cubicle wall with Louis and only wants to help. Maybe this is the perfect chance for them to finally meet face to face.

🩷 As one we are everything/We are everything we need by louloubaby92 / @louloubabys1992 {M, 5k}

Harry finally marries the love of his life. He's got the mating mark, he's got Louis' ring on his finger.

And now, he's on his honeymoon. Louis is but a door away, waiting for him.

Honestly, he doesn't understand why he's nervous.