#anyway I made the moodboard before I wrote most of the fic what's up with that

[qveerthe0ry]

What Means to You, What Means to Me

Summary: Max Phillips changes everything. Written for @perotovar 's offering of Frith Word Count: 8,046 Pairing: Max Phillips Loki (The Trickster God of mischief and chaos) x afab! NB! Bisexual! Reader Rating: 18+ mdni Warnings: smut, talks about gender non-conformity, talks about gender dysphoria as it relates to sex, GENERAL GENDER FUCKERY Beta: My sweet angel @for-a-longlongtime of course A/N: Under the cut

Author's Note: First of all, I just want to thank Erin for putting together this writing challenge and sharing SO much about Norse Paganism. The effort you put into this, from the moodboards to educational resources is incredible. And the fact that you've shared something so close to you with all of us made this writing challenge feel like getting a warm hug <3

Second, see the author's note I wrote at the end (as to not spoil the story) if you want to know the ways Loki ingrained himself in this fic.

_

You’ve heard of this queer club before, but you’ve never been inside. You’d thought the descriptors were exaggerations, but you find out quickly that you were wrong. 

Security is tight at the door, and they ask you questions as they scan your ID that sound like small talk but are a bit more probing once you think about it. Your pockets are patted down and you walk through a metal detector before you even breach the front door. 

You’re wondering if it’s even worth all this. You’re by yourself, no one’s meeting you here, and you don’t plan on going home with anyone. 

Really, you’re just bored, in a fairly new city with no one familiar but your new co-workers to converse with; those are the last people you want to be around on a Friday night after a long work week. 

So you’re here. Are there a dozen other queer bars you could have gone to on this rainbow-lined street? Yes. But none of them really feel right. So you’re here, finally in clothes that you feel comfortable in, around people who aren’t going to make you feel uncomfortable in them. 

And its reputation precedes itself. 

Gaudy. Over-the-top. 

There’s three floors, the top two cut out to overlook the dance floor in the middle of the ground level. There’s chandeliers everywhere, far too ornate for a fucking nightclub. Candelabras litter every tabletop with flaming wax that you’re sure is a fire hazard in an establishment like this. There’s fuzzy, cozy-looking lounges and really hot people walking around serving complimentary waters on gold trays and maybe it was a mistake, coming here. 

But you’ve already been through the TSA of nightclubs, and so you might as well grab a drink while you’re here and make the uber ride home worth it. 

At least the drinks seem to be cheap. You take too long staring at the specialty cocktail names when a bartender asks how you’re doing, and end up ordering your favorite drink anyways. At least they seem nice, unlike some of the bars you’ve been to at the not-mandatory-but-suggestively-obligatory happy hours after work. 

You sit at the bar, a little intimidated by the fancy decor and skilled dancers that overwhelm the club. 

The music is unsuspecting, something soft and melodic that you only realize is live music when your eyes settle on her. 

Her fiery red hair cascades down her shoulders, igniting all the skin exposed by her backless dress. She’s sitting at the piano in the middle of the dancefloor, obscured by couples and others dancing around her. 

She’s everything. The most gorgeous woman you’ve ever laid your eyes on. Her nose is strong and her jawline juts and contrasts with those soft brown eyes. You’re yearning before you can even realize it, a kind of consumption that leaves you breathing heavier than normal as you sip your drink probably way too quickly. 

You focus on her long, nimble fingers, painted red at the nails and fluttering so skillfully over the ivory keys that it makes your cheeks feel hot. 

The ringing of the keys doesn't register over the thumping of your heart and the blood rushing in your ears, which feel like molten lava. Perhaps that’s why you don’t notice she’d finished her set until she’s a foot away from you, placing an order you’d only know if you were able to read lips.

Christ, her lips. Plump and painted in the same shade of red as her hair and nails, they purse as she sips from a champagne flute. She’s so dainty, and poised, everything you’ve never had the desire to be. 

And she’s staring right at you. 

“See something you like?” 

Your breath gets stuck in your lungs and your heart flutters in a medically dangerous way. 

“You’re incredible.”

The words roll off your tongue without any go-ahead from your brain. 

She laughs anyway, with her head thrown back, and the sight of her throat elongated makes your own go bone-dry. 

“If I had a nickel,” she jokes with a wink. 

Your half-melted brain scrabbles for something to say so you can be graced with her presence for even one more second. 

“How long have you been playing?” 

She quirks her perfectly shaped eyebrow at you, and she smirks, and something about the way she can see through you like cellophane turns you on and it makes you feel wicked. 

“You don’t really care, do you?” 

From your peripheral, you see her long, toned arm inching closer to yours on the bar. Her fingers touch yours, feather-light, and you shiver before you freeze in place. 

“I— No, I do.”

You can barely hear her low chuckle over the house music that’s started to play in her absence, but you do, and it sounds like heaven and hell all at once. 

Slowly, torturously, she leans closer to you, and her bubbly breath ghosts across your cheek, your jaw, and then gusts in your ear. 

“Don’t lie to me, handsome.” 

Her tone is teasing, sing-songy in a way that might be annoying if you weren’t so aroused. 

Your fingers clench around the glass you’re holding, and her own do the same over yours. 

“What do you want me to say?” 

You don’t know if you’re more scared, horny, or irritated. They’re all three tied for gold, at this point, with tipsy coming in second and way too warm bringing up the rear. 

And the pure audacity this woman has is impressive, as she places her lips so so lightly under your earlobe. You hope to god her lipstick stains. 

“Ask me if I wanna get out of here.”

Your lungs inflate too quickly, and your eyes close, and you lean into the touch of her lips. 

“Where would we go?” 

It’s a stupid question. Why in your right mind do you give a flying fuck? She could drag you to the DMV and you’d happily follow like a pup. 

She stands from the barstool, tall, taller than you realized, and the proximity puts her between your spread legs. 

Your thighs flex involuntarily, and your fingers twitch and ache to touch her. 

“I know a place. If you want?” 

Her eyebrow is quirked at you again as she leans back. You can’t find your words, so you stand in answer, and now you’re too close. Every delicious curve of her body is pressed against your front and you unhand your drink to dig your nails into the top of the bar. 

“Please.” 

Her grin is so mischievous that it startles you, those sharp canines on full display. You think about how they’ll feel against your skin as she nods her head and prompts you to follow her. 

You might as well be wearing a leash, the way you trail her so closely. You twist your fingers as the nerves start to pick back up, and all of a sudden you’re in front of some elevator doors with a very huge and intimidating bouncer guarding the buttons and staring you down. 

“Before we head up, just so you know, I’m working with a… different set of equipment than you might expect.”

You nearly ask her to repeat herself, a bit too overwhelmed with the eyes on you and the situation you’re about to get yourself into. But your brain plays a game of catch-up, and somehow this little fact makes you feel more comfortable. 

“That’s cool— me too. I mean, maybe? I don’t know what— uh, what you’d expect me to have, but… yeah.”

Your voice trails off as the big burly bouncer chuckles at you, and your face could probably melt off of your skull with how hot it feels, but then she grabs your hand and squeezes to tug you into the elevator with her. 

The club sounds are nearly all drowned out now, and you’re certain she can hear your heartbeat in the silence as she crowds you against the back wall. 

“My name’s Max,” she says, speaking all breathy and low against the skin of your neck. 

You shiver, barely eke out your own name as her body presses against yours. 

It’s heavenly, the way she feels against you, but the way she teases your earlobe between her dark cherry lips feels hellish. You still haven’t touched her, even though your hands are burning to feel the silk of her dress over her waist. You’re intimidated and horny and mentally working yourself up to do anything on your own without her giving you direct orders.

There’s a ding, and all momentum is lost when she turns away from you to enter the snow globe of a penthouse beyond the open elevator doors. You follow eagerly.

“This is your place?” 

Your voice is awe-filled as you look around. The walls are just windows, and the city lights and the last few minutes of sunset brighten all the dark wood and leather around you. 

“Yeah, so’s the club.”

Her tone is nonchalant, and you gape at her as she steps out of her strappy, expensive-looking high heels. Maybe you shouldn’t be so surprised. She has all the confidence of someone who owns the world, and her cockiness is reflected in the ostentatious nature of the club and her penthouse. 

But you’re still shocked. Maybe you’re shocked because she’s chosen you, out of every other patron, to come up here with her. 

“It’s nice— the club. And here, too.” 

She chuckles and shrugs but she thanks you as her bare feet bring her close to you once more. You feel your hackles raise as she approaches, along with your heart rate, but she walks right past you. 

“Follow me.”

As if you’d dream of doing anything else. 

Her bedroom is all windows, too. The bed is huge, much bigger than a normal king, and the space itself is fairly empty of any personal touches. It suits her mystique. You feel like you have a million unanswered questions, but none of them matter when she shoves you down onto the mattress and straddles your thighs. 

Your mouth drops open, but she steals the words from your breath when she grabs your hands and places them on her hips.

Finally. 

Fuck, she feels incredible under this silky dress as you squeeze her waist and arch your hips up into her. 

You tell her as much, and get another one of those cocky chuckles that goes straight to your center. 

“Do your worst, handsome.” 

And maybe you’ve never been the best at getting into someone’s bed, but you’re certain you’re the best once you’re between the sheets. 

It’s no exception, with her. You’re so eager to please. You worship every last inch of her body once it’s revealed to you. You take note of all the places you kiss and lick that make her breath hitch, you tease her until her cock weeps, and you take her so far down your throat that tears sting your eyes. 

Her nails dig into your scalp, and you feel like the cocky one when she begs you to pull off, when she tells you that you’ve damn near sucked her soul out through her dick. 

Your clit is throbbing and you’ve soaked through your underwear by the time she hastily pulls them off of you. She kisses you breathless and bites your lip with her sharp teeth as you roll the condom down her length. The way she whimpers when you finally straddle her sends you reeling. Your hand finds her tit, and your palm rolls against her taut nipple as you finally get her cock to slide through your slick folds. She arches into your touch and she begs and there’s no force powerful enough to keep you from giving in to her pleas.

Her face twists up so fucking beautifully as you impale yourself on her. Inch by inch, so slowly, teasing her like she’d teased you earlier in the night. You feel satisfied and hungry at the same time when you’re flush with her thighs. Her hips buck when you pinch her nipple, and she hits the perfect spot, and neither of you have any resolve leftover. 

It’s a give and take that lasts too long and is over far too quick. You ride her, and she thrusts up into you, back and forth until you both crumble at the same time, blinding and intense and loud. 

You might black out. 

One moment you’re stroking her skin with your fingertips and thanking her over and over, and the next you’re sitting up against her headboard with a glass of water in one hand and her fiery hair in the other. 

She’s sighing in your lap, nuzzling into the heat of your thighs with her aquiline nose. 

“You’re incredible,” you say for probably the millionth time that night. 

She chuckles again, just like she did when you first told her, but her pretty brown eyes shine when she looks up at you. 

“You’re not so bad yourself, handsome.”

Your face gets all hot again, and you feel shy, eyes darting around the room to focus on anything but the gorgeous woman resting on you. 

“Does it bother you when I call you that?” 

You huff. 

“Not at all.”

“Are you trans?” 

You huff again. 

“No. I— I don’t know. I’m just… me. In-between. I don’t really feel like I fit any one description.”

She hums and presses a kiss to your mound through your underwear.

“I understand.” 

“I’ve always been like this, you know? Before I knew what it was. I just didn’t feel comfortable in my own skin. Not in an insecure way. Just that it didn’t feel right.” 

“Do you want a dick?”

Her bluntness makes you laugh. 

“Sometimes I do.”

She nods, and the way her silky hair feels against your bare thighs makes you shiver. 

“It’s actually kind of awesome, I’m not gonna lie.”

She laughs with you. 

“Don’t rub it in.”

“I’ll rub it in if you give me another five minutes.”

She does.

You fall asleep in her arms, exhausted and sated and happy.

She’s gone in the morning. All the shades are drawn, those same hazardous candles from the club lighting the apartment dimly. Your clothes are dry cleaned and hanging in a bag you’re certain costs more than your entire outfit. There’s a note next to your half-empty glass of water on the nightstand.

See you around. 

Except you don’t. 

You wait eight whole days to go back to the club. You wear something nicer, go through the tight security, and saunter up to the bar with much more confidence than your first visit. You wait for her. You drink one too many and hope to find her walking around or playing the piano. 

A few people come up to you and ask you to dance, and you refuse each one with the bitter taste of irony on your tongue, and then you go home alone after last call with a headache and queasy stomach. 

Maybe she’s just out of town, you tell yourself. She owns an entire nightclub, she’s clearly a very important woman, probably quite busy, too. 

You go back the next weekend, and the next, and you don’t see her once. 

So after a month, you go again and this time you accept the offers to share a dance, grind against people with a weird confidence you know comes from the woman you hope to see tonight. You share meaningless kisses and buy a few people drinks but refuse an offer or two to ‘get out of here.’

You start to lose hope when the dim lights flicker brighter and last call is announced. But as you bid goodbyes to a group you were hanging with, that very large and scary bodyguard from the elevators is walking towards you, and this time his presence is more exciting and less intimidating. 

“Max would like you to come upstairs.”

And while it’s kind of annoying, and seems pretentious— why didn’t she come down here and tell you herself?— you follow. Eagerly. Once again. 

He lets you take the elevator up by yourself, and this time the anxiety is more anticipation than it is fear. 

Though, when the doors open, you’re face to face with a guy.

He’s got a familiar cocky smirk on his face, messy gelled hair, and he’s leaning up against a wall with his arms crossed. 

Panic, is what your body tells you to do, leave, run. But you’re frozen under his thick gaze. 

The elevator doors start to shut, and you take a step back when he moves to hold them open, but he chuckles. 

A cocky little chuckle. 

“Who are you?” 

“I’m Max.”

“No you’re not.”

“C’mon, handsome. It’s me.”

You shiver when he calls you that, but not in the same way you did when she said it. 

“Is this some kind of joke? Listen, she didn’t tell me she was exclusive with anyone—”

He cuts you off by saying your name in a pleading tone. 

“Come in, please, just give me a minute to prove it to you.”

Panic. Run. Leave.

You ignore every instinct to finally step out of the elevator. 

“You told me, last time, that sometimes you wished you had a dick. Right?”

You nod before you can think better of it. 

Who is this guy?

You’re no stranger to genderfluidity, the way a haircut or makeup or different clothes can drastically change someone’s look— but this isn’t that. This can’t be that. While they have similar features, her sharp noise was still softer, her eyes were less crinkled at the edges, her brow bone was much less prominent. If this is smoke and mirrors, she’s one hell of a magician. 

“Do you wish you had one right now?”

“I mean, yeah, I guess. Are you guys twins or something? What’s going on?” 

He chuckles again, and you have to say, it’s much less arousing coming from him than it was from your Max. He reaches out to touch your arm, and you want to shove him away, but you can’t.

Your body feels frozen, again, but not from fear. There’s a strange sensation that courses through you, some unexplainable energy that makes your bones feel like they’re vibrating, makes your blood feel thick and heavy in your veins. 

It scares you, but the newly soft look on this Max’s face is just comforting enough to keep you from a full-fledged panic attack. 

That, and the fact that it’s over just as quick as it started. Your body loosens back up as Max’s hand on your arm rubs reassuring circles. 

But then you feel weird. A strange turning low in your gut, kind of like arousal, but not quite. And your pants feel tighter, more constricting than they did earlier. 

You look down. 

There’s a bulge in your pants, like there would be if you were packing. But you’re not. You’re certain you made the decision to leave it at home when you left earlier in the night. 

You look back up at him. He’s smirking. 

“You can touch it.”

You do, despite your brain screaming how weird it would be to touch your crotch in front of a man you’ve never met before. 

You have a dick. 

You feel it now, and while the feeling of it in your hand isn’t foreign to you, the fact that it’s sensitive and fucking actually attached to your body is. 

You pull your hand away like it’s been scalded. 

“What the fuck?! How did you—“

You stare at him open-mouthed and terrified and maybe a little bit turned on.

“Does it matter? I gave you what you’ve always wanted.” 

He looks from your face to your… dick, and back again, smirking, admiring, like he’s just finished an art project.

“Will it… Will it go back?”

“Do you want it to?”

“I— I don’t know.”

Max chuckles that damn chuckle, all full of himself. But this time, it’s her. You know it is, now. As crazy as it sounds, it’s the only thing that makes sense. This is your Max. 

“Why don’t you take it for a test drive? If you don’t like it, I’ll change you back.”

You gape at him. It’s all clicking. This is your Max, and they’ve listened to you and done something so fucking weird but so fucking sweet. You don’t know how, and you honestly are starting to care less and less the longer Max keeps staring at you like he’s proud. Of you or himself, you’re not so sure, but it’s working. 

“It’s— it’s you, isn’t it?” 

“I told you so.”

“Fuck,” you sigh, “where have you been? I came back. Every weekend.” 

Max hums. 

“I was a little caught up. Got into a bit of trouble, as I do. But I’m back, and I wanted to see you. I’m glad you came.”

“Are you— I mean… you look a lot different?” 

He shrugs. 

“Do you still think I’m hot? I can change back—”

“No! No, sorry, I don’t mean to be rude. I was just confused. You’re still—”

“Incredible?” 

You huff a laugh, and finally relax for the first time since you got into that elevator. 

“Yeah. Incredible.”

His cocky demeanor falls to the wayside to make room for something more sincere. He takes a few steps until you’re face to face with him, and places a suspiciously cold hand on the back of your heated neck. 

“I missed you,” he mumbles. 

“I— I missed you too. That night… I’ve thought about it so much.”

“Mmm, yeah? Me too.”

You kiss the stupid smirk off of his face. 

He tastes the same as you remember before, like champagne and sweet mint and her. His teeth are just as sharp, scraping your tongue as it explores every bit of his mouth. 

His free hand grabs your hip and pulls you even closer to him and fuck, that feels better than it has any right to. Your cock stirs in your pants and you buck your hips again, fiending for this new type of friction. 

“Come to bed with me?” 

All you can do is nod and follow. 

The bedroom looks just the same as it did last time, but the lack of sunlight makes everything feel quieter tonight— slower, more serene. 

He turns down the covers slowly, and you stand at the foot of the bed, extremely uncertain about what happens next, even though your dick throbs with anticipation. 

“You still into this?” 

Max’s voice startles you out of your own head. 

“Yeah, sorry. Nerves.”

He hums and steps closer to you. 

“Nothing to be nervous about, handsome.”

You nod and let your eyes trace up and down his body, noting his broad shoulders in that crisp white dress shirt and his thick thighs under the satiny sheen of his slacks. He’s still just as gorgeous in this masculine form, and it’s as irritating as it is enticing.

“Do you wanna fuck me?” 

“Shit.” 

His words go straight to your cock, and you’re unashamed to palm it in your hand and press and curse at the completely new sensation. 

“I’m assuming that’s a yes,” he chuckles. “Do you want my ass or my pussy?” 

Your hand on yourself stills. 

“You— you have a pussy?”

“I can.”

And it shouldn’t surprise you, after everything else that’s happened in the last ten minutes, but it still does. Your breath stutters in your chest and your dick fills out even more against your hand and you distantly wonder how big Max made it, if it’s exactly what he wants. 

“Can I— Will you show me your pussy?” 

He leers at you when you ask, and it only turns you on even more. 

“I was hoping you’d go for that.”

He starts unbuttoning his shirt, but this whole mad situation has you feeling much more comfortable, in a fuck it kind of way. You step into his space and work the buttons free, and follow with your mouth. His skin is cold under the heat of your lips, and by the time his shirt hangs free from his shoulders you’ve made it your personal mission to warm up every inch of him. 

It’s easy to work his belt open, undo his fly and watch it open to a thick thatch of pubic hair. You pause to press your lips to his again, to reach around to cup his pert asscheeks as his slacks fall to the floor. 

You can’t stop grinding against him, even as you press him back and down onto the bed. You just follow, fully clothed, hesitant to deny yourself this new heady feeling of pressure to your cock. 

It’s only when he suckles your top lip and reaches down to palm you that you realize you’re teetering on the edge of embarrassing yourself. 

Your hips jolt away from him and it hurts a bit when you rip your lip out between his teeth, but all the better to take your mind off the intense, heavy arousal in your gut. 

“Okay?” 

He asks it with a smirk, like he already knows the answer, so you don’t give him one. You just stare down past your heaving chest to see the damp spot on your pants and start to unfasten them to relieve some of the pressure. 

“You’re gonna want to chill out. Refractory periods are annoying with those things,” he warns. 

You huff. 

“That’s kind of you,” you joke. 

It’s better, just in the thin fabric of your underwear, less resistant. You want to take them off too, but you’re afraid that the euphoria from seeing yourself with a dick will really conflate the issue at hand. 

So you shuffle down the bed a bit, and press your lips to Max’s flat chest, to his nipples that are half the size they were last time. They pebble quickly under your attention, and you bite down on one when you accidentally drag your cock along the mattress. 

He groans and arches into you, goads you on with a hand on the back of your neck. 

“Are you as good at eating pussy as you are at sucking dick?” 

It’s almost comical, the way he applies pressure to urge you further down his body. 

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

You nip at his sparse happy trail as he pushes you down with his large hand on your shoulder and delight in the way his muscles twitch under your mouth. 

“Some time this century, yeah.”

You hum, nose at the wiry curls on his mound and grab the wrist of his hand that’s still pressing on you. 

“You’re not very gentlemanly,” you tease.

He laughs as he stares down at you with his dark eyes. His hand moves to cup your jaw and you let it, let him trace your bottom lip with his thumb. 

“Is that what you want? A gentleman?”

You suck his thumb into your mouth as you shake your head, grinning around his knuckle. You bite down a little harder than you mean to and he hisses. He yanks his hand from your mouth to grab the back of your head and tug until your face is buried between his thighs. 

You relent, breathing in the scent of him, bypassing any preamble to shove your tongue inside of him. The way his hips buck into your face makes you smirk into his folds and dig your nails into the skin of his thighs. 

He still makes the most beautiful noises, when you get down to it. Desperate, hungry, eager. For as cocky as he is, he sure writhes against you like a shameless whore as he whispers curses into the dark room. 

You savor the taste of him, the warmth and tightness of him around your fingers, the scratchy feeling of his bush tickling your nose. The way his strong thighs tense and relax under your grasp makes you want to feel them do the same around your waist. 

You look up when he starts clenching around your fingers like a vice, and the thought of that feeling around your new dick makes you whimper into his pussy. You focus even more on the way you suckle and flick his clit, to try and set the arousal aside so you don’t come before you can even slip into him. 

He’s got his head thrown back, his eyes squeezed tightly shut, his back arched off the bed when he finally shudders and comes. You work him through it, lapping at his dripping hole, letting him grind against your tongue until he’s squirming away from your touch. 

You’re dragging this out. Stalling. You press little biting kisses to his thighs and his mound as he’s coming down. Maybe if you just worked him through one more, you’ll be calm enough to—

“C’mere already.”

You roll your eyes at him as he tugs on you, but you go willingly to hover over him and let him lick his taste from your mouth. His hums are lower and more subdued in the aftermath and they rumble deep in your chest as you try your hardest not to grind into him. 

It doesn’t matter. 

His free hand wraps around your cock and the feeling turns you on so much that you almost feel nauseous. You can feel all five of his fingers there, even with how big his hands are. He’s around you, and the familiar sensation on the inside mixed with the foreign sensation against your skin is a bit confusing but so hot. He squeezes and you jolt, bite down hard on his lip, but it only makes him chuckle. 

“That good, huh?” 

You groan into the crook of his neck in answer, completely at a loss for words. 

“I’d like to say the novelty wears off, but I haven’t found that it does.”

You feel like you’re on fire, honestly, like you’re trapped in a burning building with no way out. It’s hard to speak or breathe or think with his hand wrapped around you over your underwear. You can’t even begin to imagine how good his skin is going to feel against yours. 

“C’mon, handsome, lie back for me.”

You do, with his help, reclined back against his decorative pillows. Your breathing is ragged as he takes his time getting your shirt off and pressing surprisingly sweet kisses to everything revealed to him. 

You ground yourself by petting his hair, coarse and a little sticky from hair gel but thick enough to be extremely satisfying to card through. For a moment you’re able to focus on the feeling of it slipping between your fingers instead of the throbbing of your prick. 

But then his thick fingers find the elastic waistband and creep underneath. It shocks you out of your false sense of security. When your panicked eyes meet his, they’re so warm and soft you think you could maybe cry a little about it. But he speaks up instead. 

“Are you still okay with everything going on?”

And you are, even though you’re hanging by a thread and preemptively embarrassed by what’s about to go down; you want it so bad. 

So you nod. 

“Words, handsome.”

You huff. 

“Yes, Max. Please.”

He hums and smiles. 

“Good boy.”

You’re engulfed by embarrassment when your cock jumps dramatically at his words, right beneath his hovering face. You feel even hotter when he huffs out a laugh.

But then he’s pulling your underwear, and it’s there, in plain sight, a gorgeous cock. It’s perfect, it’s how you’ve always imagined yours would look if you had one. Like Max knew, somehow, was inside your brain and could see the same fantasies that you could. 

It jerks again in the cool air. You can feel the blood rushing there, a powerful gush that makes it twitch when you think about how it’s your dick, on your body. He hasn’t even touched you yet and you can feel pre-cum dripping down your shaft. 

“Can I taste?” He asks. 

You nod, then remember your words. 

“Please.”

You can’t produce more than a whisper as you watch him lean forward, like slow motion, with his tongue hanging out dramatically and his eyes locked on yours. 

The first touch of his tongue against your skin has your hips flying off the mattress at a speed that you’re sure defies laws of physics. 

He just looks so fucking gorgeous with your prick eclipsing the middle of his face. Your prick looks so gorgeous. God, you’re starting to understand where cis men get their audacity from. 

You tighten your grip on his hair for no other reason than you need something to hang onto or you might just float off into space. He teases you with more kitten licks, up one side, then the other, and you watch in awe. You can’t take your eyes off it, even though it may delay the inevitable if you could. 

He kisses the head of it, and his tongue does something wicked right underneath it that makes you tug his head back by his gelled locks. 

“Too much?” He asks, even as he winces at your tugging. 

“You’re teasing, and all that’s going to lead to is disappointment on your end.”

God, why do you sound like you’ve just run a marathon?

“I’ll never be disappointed by making you come, handsome.”

He’s so fucking annoying. You want to fuck his face just to shut him up, but you know that would only last about ten and a half seconds. 

You curse and close your eyes and dig your head back into the pillows. He must take it as a signal to continue, because bright, staticky stars burst behind your eyelids when he takes you into his mouth for the first time. 

Fuck. You’re inside him. It feels hot and wet, kind of squishy, but so tight when he sucks and sinks his mouth down even farther. 

You yell. The dramatic noise is ripped from your vocal chords without your consent, and your eyes fly open to look down at him. Those plush fucking lips look so goddamn good wrapped around you, all wet and red and swollen. You squeeze his hair in your hand. You’re so torn between wanting to chase the warmth of his mouth and wanting to arch away from it. 

Then you feel it, that familiar twisting deep and low in your gut, only it’s ten times as intense as it usually is. You start to panic. 

“Max! Max, please, I’m—!”

He pulls off quickly, and squeezes the base of your jerking dick. It kind of hurts, and you hiss and watch in horror and wait for something to come out. But it doesn’t. It’s so weird, the way he’s manually shut down your orgasm with one touch. Completely different than the way you would have had to hold back without this new dick. 

“That’s—”

“Incredible, right?” 

You huff in the midst of catching your breath. You still feel like a hair trigger, but without someone’s finger hovering over it now. 

“Oh my god,” you sigh. 

He laughs and lets go of you. You watch him wipe the corners of his pretty mouth and distantly think that you can’t wait until you get used to this, so you can make him gag and watch his drool and your cum seep from it. 

Your dick jerks at the thought, and it’s strange to have the evidence of your arousal be so obvious. It’s like a damn car alarm. 

“Wanna fuck me now?” 

You laugh, delirious. 

“My new nickname’s gonna be One Pump Chump.”

He slithers up the bed to lie beside you. 

“It’s totally understandable. Normal, even.”

You raise your eyebrow at him. 

“How big is the sample size?”

He shrugs and smirks but his eyes focus on the bedsheets between you. 

“I know I seem like a douchebag, but I really just wanna help.”

You pout at him, but fix your face before he looks back up at you. You run your hand through his hair, gently this time, and something about this whole situation is making your heart feel all gooey. 

“You only seem like a little bit of a douchebag.”

He grumbles at you but smiles. 

“Besides, there’s like, a billion things you’re gonna want to try with that thing. You’ll get practice.” 

That thing suddenly doesn’t feel as pressing anymore. You’re still hard as rock, but it finally feels like it would take a little more than a gentle breeze to make you spill. 

“Let me fuck you, then.”

“Yeah?”

You nod and smile; and some of that eagerness comes back to light up his devious eyes. He reaches for the condoms in the bedside table and you admire all of the taut muscles under his tan skin. 

“You want help with this?” 

You roll your eyes, but it’s kinda sweet. You’ve never actually put one on at this angle before. So you get between his thighs when he lies back and let him roll it on you. 

“You can definitely get someone pregnant with this too, so… be warned. Don’t sue me about it, it won’t go over well in court.”

Your dick bobs in his grasp as you laugh. It feels so weird and fascinating.  

“Noted, thank you for the disclaimer. And sorry about the lawsuit?” 

He squeezes your prick around the condom and smiles up at you. 

“No worries, that was decades ago.”

You laugh until the words catch up with you. But you don’t have time to question it much, because he’s lying back and spreading his thighs for you, getting a pillow under his hips so his glistening pussy is tilted perfectly. Your mouth waters at the sight of him so aroused and ready for you, and at the thought of how much more wet and tight and hot it’s going to feel compared to his mouth. 

You sigh and play with his little clit, still wet from your saliva. He keens and seeks out more friction and you have to fuck him. His pussy is even more enticing now, knowing you can slide your prick inside. 

You shuffle closer and try to remind yourself to take your time. You purposefully glide your hands up his thighs, feeling the way the hair gets more sparse and fine the further up you go. You’re delighted by the little goosebumps that form under your fingertips and the way he sounds so relaxed when he sighs. 

Shuffling even further now, you settle those thick thighs over your own and let your knees cage his slim hips. When you look up, he’s watching you through hooded eyes with his bottom lip between his teeth.

“You really are gorgeous,” you tell him, softly, afraid to disturb what’s becoming a very peaceful calm before the storm. 

His breath hitches a little and you see it as it ripples his chest. 

“You really are handsome,” he winks back. 

Your hand wanders up higher, across his ribs, and your thumb presses against his stiff nipple and rolls it. You feel the small noise he makes under your palm and smile. 

Your other hand grabs the base of your cock, sure to keep the base of the condom from slipping down. The subtle move kind of makes you feel like a pro, and you’d snicker about it if the euphoria that flooded through your body didn’t overwhelm you. 

It’s kind of like an out of body experience. But you’re also painfully aware of your body and this new appendage and the way the feeling of it is wreaking havoc on your entire being. 

You slide your cock through his wet folds and even just this feels incredible, the way every bit of him feels rubbing against your sensitive cockhead. You can’t drag it out any longer, you know. 

“Are you ready?” You ask him hesitantly. 

“Are you ready?” 

You snort and roll your eyes and pinch his nipple. His back arches and the movement makes your dick slip down, press just barely against his opening. You suck in a breath and it takes every ounce of willpower not to shove yourself inside to chase that wet heat. 

“Okay, okay, I’m ready. Just fuck me already. Gonna feel so good.”

For him or for you, you’re not sure which he means, but it doesn’t matter. 

You try to take your time. You really do. But as soon as the head of your prick slips in it’s like you have no self control. 

You chase the warmth, plunge all the way into him, and stay. 

Oh my god. 

“Oh my god.”

Max chuckles at you and you can feel it. You’re so fucking wrapped up in him. Every little move, shift, clench, it surrounds you and overwhelms you. 

“You feel so fucking good, Max.”

You’re sure you look absolutely wild. Your jaw is permanently dropped, eyes wide as you try with all of your might to hang on. 

“Ditto,” he breathes. 

His eyes look dark and intense, when your eyes can finally focus in. 

“Do you— did you make it exactly how you like?” 

It’s so stupid to be asking questions right now but it’s the only thing you have to keep you somewhat composed. 

“Yeah,” he admits, a little breathless. 

“You get off on that?”

You know he does before he answers, can feel him clench and contract around you. You muster up the dexterity to find his clit with your thumb and press. 

“I do! I do, fuck.”

You finally start to inch out of him, slowly, afraid that too much friction will send you over the edge. 

“Are you using me like a toy?” 

He whimpers, and the sound alone makes you snap your hips back into him. 

“No, no, that’s not it.”

Your brows rise up in question, and you pull out again as you wait for him to explain. 

“It’s— I dunno. I like that you… hah, shit, like that, don’t stop.”

You feel smug that you’ve derailed his thoughts by starting to fuck him with a slow rhythm, if only because he’s derailed yours a million times in the two nights you’ve shared. 

You circle his clit and groan at the way his pussy squeezes you. It’s hard to even pull out of him, it’s like he’s sucking you right back in. 

“You were saying?”

And it doesn’t sound smooth coming from your mouth, your breathing labored and your voice strained. 

“I like that you’ll think of me when you fuck. I like knowing I made you like this for me even if others get to enjoy it. I like knowing— shit— I like knowing I’m the one that makes you feel good.”

You balk at his confession. Such a beautiful explanation for something so possessive. From anyone else it would sound so objectifying. But with this strange relationship the two of you have, it makes your entire body burn. 

You collapse on top of him once the words really sink in. You hide your face in his sweaty neck and begin to rut into him with the knowledge that you’ll probably crumble far too quickly, but you don’t quite care. 

“You do, you make me feel so good,” you tell him. 

He whines and works his hips against yours to meet your frantic thrusts. You grab his hair again and bite faint marks into his neck that make him writhe and squirm against you. 

“You do too— harder, please, fuck me harder.”

Man, your hips are starting to ache, just like with your strap, but this time the sensation of feeling him wrapped around your very real cock keeps the discomfort at bay and it’s just pure bliss. 

So you double down, raise back up to put more of your back into it. Your sweaty hands slip against his skin as you try to grab his hips for leverage. 

“You gotta touch yourself for me,” you pant. 

The way he scrambles to comply just turns you on even more, gives you one more tick in the ‘power tripping’ column. He looks so fucking beautiful under you, back all arched in pleasure, his face scrunched up in concentration. His bicep is bulging as he slides three fingers back and forth across his clit, so frantic but so practiced. 

You fuck him and try to think about anything other than how good he feels. You’re plunging into the world’s softest, warmest hole and he’s moaning for you, you’re making him feel just as good as you do, and you’re going to lose it. 

“Gonna come, Max. I can’t—”

“Do it, come for me. Wanna be the first.”

Your hips stutter as the wave finally, finally crashes over you. You try so hard to fuck through it, try to make him come again, but as the first shock of your orgasm spikes up your spine, you can’t think to do anything but try to bury yourself as far as you can into his tight cunt. 

You know he’s saying something encouraging by the tone of his voice, but his words go in one ear and out the other as you grind into him and rest your sweaty forehead in the middle of his chest. It feels so good you could cry. 

Your fingertips dig into the flesh of his hips as you ride it out, and your chest starts to burn and your throat starts to ache and your eyes start to burn.

You are crying. 

“Shit.”

It comes out as a broken sob, muffled into his chest, and he starts at the sound. 

“Hey, it’s okay. Just breathe.”

You shake your head against him. 

“I’m fine.”

“I know, just breathe though.”

The breaths you suck in are all shuddery and stilted, and there’s snot, and it’s so embarrassing but comforting all at once. 

He urges you to slip out, and he even holds the condom for you, pulls it off, and ties it while you try to reel yourself in.

You don’t, not right away at least, because once you get over the crazy rush of endorphins and serotonin and dopamine or whatever that’s flooded your body, you start feeling extremely self conscious about the whole sobbing during sex thing, and the fact that he didn’t get off, and—

“Come snuggle?” 

You’re not sure when he got up, but he’s holding up a robe for you in one hand, and cradling your head in the other, and ushering you out into the living room. His fireplace is on now, and there’s a tall, snobby glass bottle of water on his end table. 

You’re tired, now. Like, bone-deep exhaustion. You slump into him where he’s sprawled out on his leather couch and close your watery eyes. 

“I’m sorry.”

He shushes you gently, pets your head that’s on his chest that definitely has your dried snot on it still. 

“Don’t be sorry. As long as you feel good, I feel good.”

You nod, and taking a deep breath comes easier to you this time. You brave a look up at him, and his eyes are warmer than ever as they reflect the orange-yellow flames.

“Thank you.”

He smirks then, and you feel the tension in the room shift. 

“So how was it?”

You grin and hide it in his pecs. You’re hyper aware of your spent dick lying soft and sticky on your thigh. You’re so much more tired than you ever usually are after an orgasm. It was all so different, every little bit of it. And there’s this calmness you feel now, after all the commotion, and it hits you all at once that it all feels right. 

There’s no cleaning your strap, putting away your toys, no sliding on your underwear to hide the thing that just gave you pleasure. There’s no awkward dissonance. It’s just… normal. Normal in a way it’s never been before. Effortless bliss, like a sensory deprivation tank. Nothing. 

“It was everything.”

-

Author's Note: I wanted to share a bit about what really resonated with me as I learned more about Loki. The one thing that stuck with me throughout this writing challenge is that Loki is not a bad guy. I will be honest, the only thing I knew about Loki before this was from the MCU, which to me seems like an oversimplification of the norse god from everything I've learned about him. Erin provided me with this very thorough video that analyzes Loki and his myths. To me, he seems like someone who liked to 'stir the shit' for the sake of curiosity. I didn't find much ill will at all in these tellings of his trickery, just a guy who wanted to fuck around and find out about things, someone who did more than just wonder what would happen.

Second, Erin said he's Like a fun older brother. Very playful and mischievous. Very straight-forward. Protector of outcasts; lgbtq+ folks, disabled people, neurodivergent people, etc. This was another driving force behind this fic. It wasn't a coincidence that Max met reader their first night at the club, they founded the club for the sole purpose of creating a safe space for queer people and takes an active role in making sure their patrons feel like they belong.

Lastly, Erin said their pick for me would be Max / Loki because of the gender fuckery, which excited me as much as it made me feel honored. When watching the aforementioned video, I learned about Loki turning himself and Thor into a bridesmaid and a bride, respectively. Loki himself was unrecognizable and was the exact image of a woman. However, Thor pretty much just looked like himself in a dress (this is paraphrasing.) I loved the idea that Loki's shapeshifting could not only be directed toward other people, but could vary in vagueness. These undefined rules for Loki’s gender felt like how I personally view gender in general, as well as how I relate it to my own identity, and I really took that idea and ran with it.

Anyway, thank you again @perotovar for this writing challenge and the piece of yourself you shared with all of us. I love you so much! <3

[yoonia]

🖋️ I just finished Blooming Wallflowers and felt so sad that it ended so soon! Can we have a snippet of what happens after? are they going to continue seeing each other? will OC's daughter get to be closer to Mista Joonie? 🥺🥺 I want to see them hang out again in a less stressful time (because poor OC always stressing!). it would be cute to have Joon helping her out with the girls again. he can finally have a taste of OC's homecooked meal and she gets to make him dinner for once. that'll be sweet. I just love the concept of home date night 🥺

💌 for my love letter, I just want to say happy belated birthday 🥳 I've been following you for a long time. even if I'm no longer around much on Tumblr, I still come back from time to time and wonder what you'll be sharing this time. It's always exciting to find out that you post something new. your stories always feel so comforting, even when they are the most heart-wrenching angst ever! Your blog and your presence have always felt so positive too. just like how you are creating this lovely event 🥺 I think that's the reason why I still stick around no matter how much negativity has grown on Tumblr, because I know there's at least one writer here who still spreads positivity and exudes a comforting aura just by being here (and that's you!)

I love how you touch on real life issues and how you present them in your stories. even in the short ones, we get to feel the character growing through your fic and it feels really fulfilling to experience it 💜

For Blooming Wallflowers, I loved how you wrote the characters. even the daughters. often fanfics aren't so accurate when it comes to writing children (how they speak, behave, etc) yet you always make these characters feel so real, and I love that 💜🥺

Thank you for sharing your talent with us. I hope you have a wonderful birthday 🎂

Thank you so much for reading Blooming Wallflowers! I'm glad you enjoyed the story and are loving the characters. Your idea made me think of cute moments between Joon, OC, and the girls, but as always, my mind think otherwise the moment I began writing the ficlet haha. Anyway, enjoy your moodboard and this "little" snippet, love!

— title: Dinner with Mista Joonie | pairings: Namjoon x female reader| genre: firefighter!Namjoon, single mom!reader, mature, friends with benefits!au | word count: 1,150 words — summary | Namjoon comes to join you and the girls for dinner.  — ratings & warnings | +18 / M for mature; allusion of a one-night stand, memories of hooking up, sexual tension, implied smut scene: public sex, kitchen sex, morning after sex, food play, implied oral sex. 

— original: Blooming Wallflowers by @yoonia — fic drop date: Oct 28th, 2024 — song companion: sleepless

“You should’ve let me help.” 

His deep voice draws a smile to your face, yet you make no move to turn around. Not even when you can feel him approaching you from behind. 

“You’re doing enough to help already,” you answer him as you rinse the last of the dinner plates under the running water. A large hand takes the plates out of your hand right as you are about to slip them into the dishwasher, taking over your work. 

“I don’t see how I’m helping,” Namjoon says as he continues setting the dishwasher to do its work so you can get to rest. 

You wipe your hands dry using the kitchen towel before handing it to him. “For one, you took my distractions away from me,” you answer with a whisper, nodding towards the living room where your girls are busy flipping between their assortments of storybooks. “What did you tell them so you could escape?” 

Namjoon grins. “Hana asked me to read them a story before leaving. I told them to pick a book each that I could read for them.” 

Shaking your head, you let out a soft chuckle. “You shouldn’t fall for their puppy eyes. You were only invited to join dinner, not to babysit the girls.” 

“It’s well deserved. They’ve been so proud about helping their Mom prepare the delightful dinner tonight,” Namjoon says, shrugging. He moves to rest his hips against the kitchen counter and crosses his arms over his chest, drawing your eyes towards his toned muscles, his t-shirt straining over them, and a flutter rising in your chest. “Thank you for inviting me, by the way.” 

The damn flutter goes wild when he says this with a smile. A dimple appears. Your skin grows warm. “It was a pleasure. I’m just honouring a promise I made to you.” 

It truly was. Ever since the night at the supermarket, you have wanted to cook for him. Imagining him eating TV dinner after working to save people’s lives—or pets, maybe?—makes you feel bad.

But seeing him tonight at dinner was a whole other matter.

You had expected it to be awkward. A single man sitting with a single mother and her two kids shouldn’t have seemed so normal. And yet, he blended in so nicely at the table. He even didn’t blink an eye every time any of the girls left vying for his attention. From bragging about their roles in helping you set up dinner, to showing off their artwork from today’s class. Even Suzy came out of her shell and chatted with Namjoon, asking him about his job and if firefighters really do get called to take kittens down from trees. 

“Well, I’m honouring the meal I received tonight. Step one is pleasing the princesses over there with good storytelling.” 

Shaking your head, you turn back to the kitchen sink to wipe down the mess. “I swear you’re too good at this.” 

Namjoon comes to you with a deep chuckle, surprising you when he wraps his arms around you from behind. 

“What are you doing?” you hiss at him while looking over his shoulder, afraid that your girls would catch their special guest hugging their mother. 

“They’re still busy, don’t worry,” he whispers to your ear, deep voice vibrating from his throat, and those harmless flutters travel down south, settling right between your legs. 

“Since you said that I’ve done good—” he whispers, his lips brushing at your skin. “Does that mean you’ll finally agree to go on a date with me? I told you, I’m okay if we’re out on a weekday. I’m not always on night shift, and might be working on the weekend anyway.” 

You swallow down your words and the tightness in your chest. You promised yourself that the night you spent with him on your bed would be the only time. With so many things going on in your life, this would be the wrong time for you to start anything. Not even with the first hot guy who managed to catch your eye. 

But Namjoon has been insistent. Exchanging numbers had given him the chance to text and call regularly, from catching up with your day, to flirting, and often ends with him asking for a date, or a quick hook-up, a quick repeat of your first night. Yet you have been resilient so far in refusing him.

Some part of you have been expecting that he would eventually give up and move on. Another part of you has always known that you will regret everything if you ever let it happen. While the rest keeps reminding you that he doesn’t deserve to be pulled into your mess, even if you really, really like him. 

Feigning your disinterest seems to be futile. But then again, immediately continuing your hookup the next morning after you first brought him to your bed during the morning after breakfast might have sent a different message. Because having him finally have a taste of you on the kitchen counter that morning, with him lathering maple syrup on your bare breasts to lick off of your skin instead of pouring them on his pancake, was not the right way to show each other that there was no passion between you once the alcohol wore off. 

But, maybe, just maybe, you have always known what that would do to a man who is so persistent in his chase like Namjoon does. 

“Will this Wednesday be good?” you find yourself asking once the fight leaves your body. “I’ll be off work early and it’s my Mom’s day to bring the girls to her shop.” 

It’s too easy to give in, after all. And you are surprised to find how quickly the weight is lifted from your shoulders once you stop denying your feelings. 

You can feel his smile on your skin as he presses a kiss on the side of your neck. A promise. It draws a shudder through your body when you are reminded of what those lips on your skin did to you last time. “That’s my day off. So it’s perfect.” 

You open your mouth, ready to turn to face him, when Hana’s voice calls out, 

“Mista Joonie!” she yells from the living room, and both of you are quick to separate, right as your little girl comes barrelling into the kitchen with her books. “I found my book!” 

Chuckling softly, Namjoon steals a quick peck on your cheek before stepping away. “Duty calls,” he says with a wink, and off he goes to follow Hana back to the living room. 

You watch their receding back as they leave you in the kitchen, smiling to yourself as you watch Namjoon listening with rapt attention as your youngest blabber on about her favourite book and how her sister had chosen something just as good for them to read together.  

Thank you for your sweet words. your message really means the world to me. And thank you for following me and staying with me for so long. I wouldn't still be here if not for readers like yourself who has been here with me.

Here's my little gift for you 💜

𝖙𝖜𝖎𝖑𝖎𝖌𝖍𝖙 𝖋𝖆𝖑𝖑 𝖘𝖊𝖗𝖊𝖓𝖆𝖉𝖊: dia’s birthday bash 2024 ⇝ closed!

[jovenshires]

💛Smoshblr December Asks Final Day💙

We‘ve done it! We’ve finally reached the end of this lil ask game and also the end of 2023! 🥳 Thank you so much for joining in on this, I truly appreciate it so much 🫶! I wish you a wonderful start into the new year and that all your hopes and dreams for 2024 will come true! ✨💞

But, since the year isn’t quite over yet, I thought this might be a nice time to reminisce a little bit. Therefore, the final question of the Smoshblr December Asks Game:

What are your favourite smosh-related memories of 2023? ��

(no specific amount required for this one; and you can ofc also include older smosh memories, if you want to 🤗)

oh my god........ im emotional fr. this was so, so, SO much fun and stella, i will speak for EVERYONE you sent these asks to when i say that we are all so grateful to YOU for organizing it. you brought the community together in such an amazing way, asking us thought-provoking and interesting questions, a lot of which i never would have thought to ask. and yet i got to learn all my mutuals' answers anyway!!! it made me feel like i really got to know everyone, even the people im too scared to start a convo with bc i am a Coward. i love you, we all adore you, thank you SO much, and i cant wait to see where smoshblr goes in the new year now that we are all closer than ever <3<3<3<3<3

okay so...... okay okay okay okay HERE we go. im gonna put it under the cut bc this got SO long but if you want a tl;dr summary, please by all means go check out this video i made at the beginning of the month bc. it sums it up tbh.

making all of my amazing friends: i am literally. an emotional wreck just thinking ab this. anyway. i've already been sappy enough this year (from my christmas presents to my many many personal posts and asks that are just. me talking about how much i love these people), but i would still be remiss if i didn't mention my beautiful, wonderful friends. im not gonna tag them all here - it'd be too many and you all know who you are <3<3<3 - but to everyone i've dmed for hours on end, or talked to in replies, or mutuals i've never even spoken to at all, or anons who come into my askbox and just have the most wonderful interactions with me, i am so, so eternally grateful. i made new friends; i reconnected with one of my best friends in the WHOLE world; i met some people who i never would have spoken to otherwise and found such an incredible community. i love you all so so SO much (yes ALL of you even if you think im not talking ab you if you're reading this i AM), and i am so excited to see what happens with all of us next. love you all. mwah. <3

domo day/my birthday: oh my god. OHHHH my god. literally the fic that brought me back to this fandom. i am not crying its fine im FINE. domo - aka dancing on my own - was a passion project from the very start. i thought, 'well, no one will wanna read this niche lil fic that im writing just to deal with My very personal trauma about an rpf ship that no one cares about.' (mind you i started it before i even posted right side, so, like, i literally thought it was just me standing on a deserted island.) and then five or six months later... there we were. i posted it on my birthday (bc i Live for drama !) and god. the amount of love and support i got that day was... everything to me. when i said this was a passion project, i mean that it was truly one of the first things i sat down and wrote For Myself, without giving a fuck what anyone else would think. it was something i poured my heart and soul into because i needed to read it. and when other people started to reach out - telling me how much they related, how much they got from it, how much it meant to them. then there was the analyses of it from everyone,,,, not to mention the birthday love. my birthday is a HUGE thing for me, and, as i told you at the time, you were the very first person to wish me a happy birthday stella (with that incredible moodboard that i think of frequently........ the rat.........). and then kit went and published bad idea and gifted it to ME which was such an incredible and treasured gesture and... truly some of my irls forgot to wish me a happy birthday so. im just so honored and i love you all so much. thank you for loving me and my dearest darling daughter domo <333333

shaynse day: this literally isn't even about me, it's honestly about nat, but this changed my brain chemistry and i think everybody's tbh. it was the way that the MOMENT the love is blind video dropped, we all gathered around my blog to hold hands, sing kumbaya, and all hail the shaynse anon (aka now shaynse founder nat). they had their third eye OPEN. and everyone had to come check on them to make sure they were okay. that meant so much to me. not only did it mean that enough people were reading my blog that an anon had their own niche subset of a fan base, but it was truly like. one of the best displays of fandom togetherness i've ever seen. we were all so united that day. god bless november 19th, aka shaynse day, my FAVORITE national holiday.

gedits: i really Dont think i have to explain this one. this is one of my favorite bits (but also its not really a bit and i genuinely wanna fuck that old man). making thirst traps for garrett? oh my god. stroke of actual genius. once again another day we all came together, held hands, and decided we were ALL gonna be garrett fuckers. long live gedits. they will never stop and im NOT sorry about it.

the bsf fan art: i have literally never had fan art made for my fic before...... i screamed and cried and threw up when someone made fan art for the bed-sharing fic. furry-jackson is my hero and this fan art lives in my mind RENT FUCKING FREE. it truly imprinted itself on my brain and i think about it all the time. thanks so much to them for loving i could be the reason as much as i do <3333

the top ten dynamics poll: !!!!! my baby!!!! i truly thank you all so much for indulging me by voting in that silly lil poll. it was so SO interesting to see the way the dynamics stacked up. not to mention, it also got me into gif-making again!! that was the first time i'd made gifs in ages, especially gifs i was proud of. but i love that silly lil gif series so much, one of my favorite projects of the year, so thank you all <3

smoshblr december asks: i mean. i said it all up top, but it's worth mentioning again. this was so, so, SO much fun, and it must have been such hard work for you, and i am honored that you did all this work for US of all people when you are so busy and talented and working so hard just in like. YOUR LIFE. honestly, this whole section could just be called 'stella,' bc i am so, so grateful for you especially coming into my life this year. whether we're working together on fic or just chatting about our lives or shouting back and forth about why EVERY taylor swift song is in fact a spommy song, i am just so lucky to have you and i love you so, so much. you always tolerate my shenanigans and i am SO incredibly lucky to have you as a friend. anyway. yeah i love you and smoshblr december asks so there.

[hiccanna-tidbits]

AKGHBKUEFYDGJ when I tell you I just BARELY got all my submissions from last year's Hiccanna month in in time for this year's Hiccanna month--

Truly I have levels of procrastination inside me that most college students can only dream of.

So anyways, here's a moodboard for a fic I wrote a full-ass year ago. A moodboard that I made...last week XD Better late than never, I guess?

The fic is We're at the movie scene where everyone drowns, and it's also posted both on my AO3 Infrared_Ultraviolet and my ff.net Infrared-Ultraviolet! Go check it out :3 Hopefully I'll have the time and energy to write more full-length one-shots for Hiccanna month this year, but we will have to see! I'm a working woman now earning the big bank so I can continue to pay my internet bills and maintain the fandom lifestyle XD

Anna gets to have terrible insomnia because she is my beloved projection blorbo and she gets to deal will all of my issues for me <3 But hey, it's not like it doesn't have canon basis! We see that she does in fact have trouble getting up in the morning (enough to make it a running gag!) and is pretty bleary and out-of-it when she does, which could easily be the result of not running on much sleep and (unwillingly) staying up late. We can also see pretty consistently that she's not what would be considered a "morning person" (although I have my doubts such a thing even exists in real life). Anna's pretty heavily ADHD-coded, which often has insomnia as a side effect because your brain will not turn off ever, least of all when you need to sleep. Things like time blindness when you get super into doing something right before bed or existing anxiety and/or paranoia that's exacerbated by the ADHD really do not help, either.

Anyways, I'm here to tell you that the fear of forgetting your sleep meds when you're going on a short trip/crashing at a friend's house is very, very real. Especially since you often don't realize it until everyone else is already dozing off and no one wants to take you to the pharmacy to buy more XD At that point, your options are a) start taking shots in hopes the alcohol drowsiness will put you to sleep or b) lie awake and get bored and angry and hate your life and also have no one else to talk to because everyone else went to sleep in under 5 minutes. Yes, it really is that bad.

The one upside is that there IS the possibility you will get to watch your crush sleep in a non-creepy way (like you didn't seek them out like a stalker--you just can't go the fuck to sleep and they happen to be 5 feet away!) and fawn over how cute they look doing it XD Which is the only thing that gets Anna through the night, I'm pretty sure!

Although being alone with the stars and the creature noises doesn't sound half bad, if you HAVE to stay awake XD Better than staring at the wall of your room, anyways! Still praying for Anna to get that Starbucks the next morning, tho ^^;

Man, I really wish my college campus had had a duck pond with amusing but occasionally aggressive geese. We had some pretty insane squirrels, but staring down a squirrel is just not the same as being chased by a hissing goose. This is something that I think should happen to everyone at some point, to keep humanity humble. Also being followed around by hungry honking geese while you try to evade them and go to class sounds like the exact kind of college shenanigans I needed in my life! Instead of the depression-laden mess it actually was ajnsdlkuhkuedgh

I love the idea of Anna kinda inadvertently memorizing Hiccup's freckle patterns and finding little designs in them, like constellations <3 She pays WAY too close attention to him, and it shows XD I remember back in college I was gone af for this one guy, and I noticed he had this freckle pattern on his cheek that kind of looked like a baseball diamond. And I adored the fuck out of it ;____; If anyone replaced him with a clone who didn't have that little baseball diamond, I would catch on SO DAMN FAST. I imagine Anna would do the same thing with Hiccup XD Ain't nobody swaps Hiccup for a doppelganger without Anna being ON THE FUCK TOP OF IT.

Pretty pleased with how this one came out! I kind of wanted to do a juxtaposition of dark pics with well-lit pics, and I think the end result turned out pretty decent! Also ended up with a green, orange/brown, purple, and black color scheme, which all go together surprisingly well :O

Any modern AU Anna would also definitely own that exact greenish-blue sweater. Just sayin!

As always, pic credits available upon request!

[allsassnoclass]

i blame it on the weather (can you make it better)

Pairing: Michael Clifford/Calum Hood

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

Key Tag(s): College AU, Cold, Angst with a Happy Ending

Word Count: 6,177

Read on AO3

A/N: this was tailor-made for @michaelownsmyheart​. I hope you like it darling <3 also big shout out to @clumsyclifford​ for looking this over and giving me Good Advice

—

Michael doesn’t remember the dorm being this cold when he left in December.  He doesn’t know how the space between him and Calum got that cold, either.

—

The drive back to campus feels shorter than normal, songs on the radio flying by with other cars on the highway the further Michael gets from his family and the closer he gets to the loneliness of an empty dorm.  Normally he wouldn’t mind having the place to himself, especially because that means he can blast music as loud as he wants and no one else is going to take the shower with the good water pressure, but there’s something foreboding about it now.

His phone is still empty of messages from the one person he’s been waiting to hear from.  Two weeks alone in the dorms wouldn’t be so bad if he had Calum on the other end of the line to keep him company.

He pulls into his parking spot right as snow begins to fall, a little earlier than predicted.  He sends a quick text to his parents to let them know he made it safe, then grabs his bags and makes the trek to his dorm.  It’s an older building elegantly nestled between the newer residence halls with better air conditioning or elevators that don’t break down every month, but there’s more character to it.  The other dorms are boxy and made of dark brick, but this one is lighter with turrets at the top and heavy wooden doors.  It looks more like a fantasy castle than a dorm building, and Michael’s mum had fallen in love with it immediately on their campus tour a few years ago.  Now that Michael is living here it’s lost some of its luster, but it’s also the only building to have single rooms, and while having Luke as a roommate turned out alright in the end last year, he likes being able to have the room to himself all of the time.

Michael fumbles for his key card to swipe himself in, biting off one of his gloves so he can get it out of his wallet.  Thick flakes land on his coat and hands, the kind that would probably be good for making snowmen if he still did stuff like that but that will be hell to drive in later.  Hopefully the roads will be clear enough by tomorrow, and he probably has some ramen that he never made from last semester that he can heat up for dinner tonight.

Inside doesn’t feel much warmer than outside, but there’s no snow or wind.  Michael stomps his feet in an attempt to get all of the snow off his boots, but freezes as soon as he glances up.

Nestled amongst the armchairs, big windows, fireplace, piano, and little side tables that make up the front lounge, Calum Hood stares back at him like a deer in headlights.  He’s got a notebook and pencil in his hand and a textbook open in front of him, blanket wrapped around his shoulders in a way that Michael wishes he were.  He looks exactly the same as he did when Michael last saw him a few weeks ago, except he’s fully clothed this time.  He looks good.  He looks cozy.

He looks like Michael is the last person he wants to see.

Michael clears his throat.

“I didn’t know you were back on campus,” he says.

“I’m taking a j-term and thought it’d be easier to focus here,” Calum replies, lifting the notebook halfheartedly.  “It’s a prereq for my chem class this semester.  It turns out that switching majors put me a bit behind this time.”

Michael nods.  Calum started as a music education major, then switched to an elementary education major before realizing he didn’t want to deal with little kids.  Now he’s studying to be a high school science teacher, which means he has a few freshman science classes he needs to squeeze into his schedule.  He hadn’t said anything about a j-term to Michael when he registered, but they also haven’t exactly been communicating much since before finals.

“I didn’t expect anyone back yet,” Calum says eventually.

“I got permission to come back early so I can take a few more shifts.  Gotta pay for college somehow, you know…”

Michael trails off, unbalanced and uncomfortable.  It feels wrong to be reacting like this around Calum, just like it felt wrong to not hear from him during finals or break, but after a few more moments of uncomfortable silence and chewing his lip he hefts his bag higher on his shoulder and makes an excuse about wanting to get his room back to rights.  He feels Calum’s eyes on him as he leaves, the weight of his gaze lingering even after Michael has entered the stairwell, dug out his key, and entered his room.  When he takes off his jacket he immediately reaches for a blanket, wrapping himself up and trying to suppress the shivers threatening to erupt throughout his body.

He doesn’t remember the dorm being this cold when he left in December.  He doesn’t know how the space between him and Calum got that cold, either.

-/-

Once he has a bowl of instant ramen in front of him and his stuff more or less put away, Michael calls Luke.

“Good morning,” Luke answers, a leftover joke gone stale from when they were roommates with opposite sleep schedules.  It almost makes him wish for a simpler time when Luke was forcing him to go places like Welcome Week events and they were literally running into people like Calum and Luke was forcing them all to be friends even though Michael’s smoothie got spilled and Calum dropped his nachos.  Michael would take being newly flustered over a hot guy who got a strawberry drink all over his favorite sweatshirt rather than having Calum not fucking talk to him.

“Did you know that Calum’s doing a j-term?”

Luke sighs on the other end of the line.

“I’m doing fine, Michael, thank you for asking.  How are you?”

“I’m bad.  Calum is here and no one warned me.”

“If it makes you feel better, I didn’t tell him that you would be back early, either.”

“That much was obvious.”  Michael stirs his noodles, suddenly feeling like he doesn’t have the right appetite for this.  “He looked like me showing up was the worst thing in the world.”

“Don’t exaggerate.”

“I’m not,” he says.  “You should’ve seen him.  He hates me now, and I still don’t know what I did wrong.”

“He doesn’t hate you,” Luke says.  “He misses you, too.”

“If he misses me so much, he should respond to my texts.”

Luke hums on the other end of the line.

“You’re both in the same place now.  Maybe you can corner him in person.”

“I wouldn’t have to do that if someone would just tell me what happened.”

“What happened is that you two slept together and then Calum ghosted you,” Luke sighs.  “If you want his reasoning, you have to ask him.  I will not be a messenger pigeon for you two.”

“I feel like that metaphor works best only if he’s been asking about me, too,” Michael says.  Luke doesn’t respond right away, a drawn out pause that makes Michael look up from his noodles.  He wishes they were video chatting so he could see what sort of expression Luke is wearing. “Luke, has he asked about me?”

“I’m not doing this with you right now,” Luke says.

“You fucker, he has talked about me!  Do you know why he ghosted me?”

“Stop using me as a go-between!  If you want to know why Calum hasn’t replied to your messages, ask him yourself.  You both need to get your heads out of your asses and communicate.  I can’t believe I’m the one who has to say that.”

Silence descends and Michael pulls his phone away from his ear to see that Luke hung up on him.  Michael huffs.  A second later his phone lights up with an incoming call, a very unattractive picture of Luke staring at him from his screen.  He considers letting it ring out and go to voicemail, but in the end he decides to take the high ground and answer.

“What,” he says flatly.

“Sorry I hung up on you,” Luke says.  “I don’t like being caught between you both.”

“Yeah,” he sighs.  “I don’t like it, either.”

“Will you try to talk to him?  He’ll let you if it’s in person.”

“I guess.”

Luke hums.  They stay on the phone a little longer, small talk filling the silence so Michael doesn’t have to be alone while he eats, but he knows he’s being a bad conversation partner, too distracted by what Calum may or may not have been saying about him to Luke.  When they finally hang up Michael flops back on his bed and groans, wondering if he should just move to Antarctica and change his name rather than put himself through this.

-/-

He manages to go the rest of the night without any indication that Calum is there.  They miss each other in the bathroom, but every sound in the hallway has the hair on his arms standing on end, wondering if it could be Calum or just the settling of the near-empty building.  He sleeps fitfully, tossing and turning on the sub-par dorm mattress, cuddling deeper into his blanket in an attempt to find some much-needed warmth.

The last night he spent with Calum, and the first night they’d spent together in that way, Michael fell asleep warm.  It was almost too hot, sticky under the covers and burning wherever their skin touched, but he loved it.  He’d take the heat over the cold any day, and he hasn’t felt warm since he woke up alone, bed feeling too big without the other boy in it to act as his personal space heater.

That morning the sheets had still smelled like him, but they were cold.  He’d left long before Michael woke up.  Michael’s first morning back feels like a mirror of that day.  Right before he fully wakes up he catches himself reaching for Calum and coming up empty.  When he realizes what he had been doing, he forces himself to get up rather than stay in bed and wallow only because he can’t afford to be late to work on his first day back and he doesn’t trust the roads to be cleared yet.  The college is situated on the outskirts of town, an odd placement that puts a woodsy area to one side and only a few smaller shops next to it.  Michael hadn’t managed to land a job in one of those places, but the family-owned restaurant he works at pays enough to be worth the gas it takes to get there.  He throws on a hoodie and slippers and shuffles to the bathroom to brush his teeth.

Calum is already at one of the sinks when he enters.  Michael doesn’t let his eyes stray from his face, refusing to take in the tan shoulders and torso or the drops of water glistening against him, leading down to the towel wrapped around his hips.  He has a toothbrush in his mouth, foam gathering at the corners of his lips, lips that Michael has--

No.  He can’t think about this now.

“Morning,” he says, clearing his throat to get it to work properly.

“Morning,” Calum replies around his toothbrush, consonants muffled.  He spits into the sink and Michael makes himself focus on his own morning routine, meticulously putting toothpaste on his own brush and hoping it’s not obvious that even glancing at Calum is dangerous for him right now.

Neither of them try to say anything more, and Michael wonders if the silence is hanging as heavily in the air for Calum as it is for him.  Before break, silences between them were the only types of silences Michael could stand.  He’s fidgety by nature and gets uncomfortable without background noise, but Calum always managed to temper that a bit.  Being around him settles something inside, something that right now makes Michael want to scream.

He’s about to try to break the silence when Calum picks up his bathroom caddy and leaves without so much as a glance his way.  Michael tries not to let it bother him, but he misses the weight of his gaze.  Calum used to look at him fondly, filled with enough affection that Michael could feel it in his heart.  He doesn’t understand why that would have to change now.

By the time Michael goes to start his car for work, Calum has set himself up in the lounge again, laptop open in front of him.  He’s turned on the fireplace, something that Michael thinks they're not technically supposed to do but that he’s certainly not going to call him on, and he doesn’t look up when Michael comes down the stairs.  Michael lingers by the doorway longer than he should.

They’ve spent a lot of time in this room, whether doing homework on the couch, trying to play duets on the piano in the corner, or hogging the chess set by the window, figuring out how to play and passing the time.

The chess board is set up for a fresh game.  In a naive fit of hope Michael walks over to it and moves one of the pawns forward.  Calum doesn’t glance up from his computer, but he’s still in a way that means he knows what Michael is doing.

On his way out he thinks he hears someone say drive safe, but the howling of the wind is already filling his ears and he can’t be sure.

-/-

Michael gets sent home early because of the snow.  He fights it all the way there, pulling in late because he had to move so slow, and halfway through his shift the manager calls it, deciding to close up for the day.  Right after he clocks out Michael gets a notification on his phone for a severe blizzard alert, and he steels himself to face it before leaving behind the warmth of the restaurant.  Outside the world is covered in a thick sheet of white, plows not able to keep up with the large flakes still falling from the sky, and Michael wills his car to survive the drive, windshield wipers going furiously in an attempt to keep him seeing as much as he can.  The drive takes three times longer than usual, and when he finally spots his dorm through the snow it comes with a sigh of relief.

Calum is still in the lounge when he comes inside and stomps his feet to get some feeling back into them.  With the snow came a biting wind, and even after barely being outside he feels frozen.

“I was getting worried,” Calum says, startling him.  “It looks like it’s bad out there.”

“It is,” Michael says, taking off his hat and shaking snow off of it.  He squints at Calum, in a different position and bundled in a blanket now, the big blue one that Mali got him as a grad present.  Michael once again has to push away the urge to cuddle up to him.

“It’s fucking cold,” he says instead, because it’s true and if he doesn’t make small talk he’s going to blurt something embarrassing like I’ve been thinking about you all the time or why did you leave me or I love you I love you I love you I’m sorry please can we be friends again?

“Going to be a cold night for us, then,” Calum says.  “The heating’s been shit this break.  I don’t think they keep it up as high when there’s only one student here.”

“I’ve had a few cold nights,” Michael snorts before he thinks about it.  “I mean--I’ll use some extra blankets.”

Calum nods once.  He opens his mouth like he’s about to say something, then snaps it shut again, looking down at his computer.  It feels like a dismissal, like Michael isn’t worth his time anymore, and it stings.

He should go upstairs, anyway.  He needs to find some blankets of his own.  He glances over the piano and the fireplace, eyes landing on the chess game by the window.

Someone has moved a pawn on the other side.  He glances at Calum, then moves a knight, continuing the game.  He wants to ask Calum to sit down and play a proper round with him, but one glance at Calum’s posture has him biting his tongue.  He’s closed off, blanket wrapped around him securely and face tense, and Michael can’t bring himself to bother him, not when interacting with Michael seems to be the last thing he wants to do.

Michael looks back at the chess set, three pieces out of place, and heads to his room.

-/-

The night comes simultaneously fast and slow in the way that all boring winter nights do.  Michael sits in his room scrolling through social media while the sun sets around him, and when he does eventually get up it’s only so he can make more ramen to eat.  He had lunch at the restaurant and never did get to the grocery store, but he has a few snacks to munch on and if things get really bad he can always see if Calum has anything he’s willing to share.

Calum initiated conversation earlier, so things can’t be too bad between them, right?  It’s still terribly stiff and uncomfortable, but at least he’s not getting the silent treatment anymore.  At least Calum looked at him for a little bit.

He plays video games until he’s too bored to continue, then showers and crawls into bed.  It’s still cold, just like Calum said it would be, but they haven’t lost power yet.  Michael piles on the blankets and pillows, but his sheets are frigid, not yet warmed by his body heat and making him shiver.  After a few minutes of tossing and turning he considers boiling water just to have a warm mug to hold in his hands.

Maybe it’ll be better in the lounge with the fireplace on.  No one’s here to get mad at him for falling asleep on the couch, but then he’d have to haul all of his blankets down there, something that he doesn’t think he has the energy for right now.

He wishes Calum were here.  It feels like all he’s done since getting back to campus is think about Calum, his presence in the building affecting him more than it would have if he was fully alone, but in a pragmatic sense he also really wants a warm body next to him right now.  Two people under the covers are warmer than one, and he’s already put on socks and a hoodie.  Wrapping himself in Calum would keep him warm on a physical level, and maybe it’ll settle him enough that he’ll actually be able to sleep without having weird dreams or waking up every few hours.

He hasn’t even gotten close enough to touch him since getting here.  Before break, he and Calum were always handsy with each other, personal space a myth with the two of them.  It feels wrong to have seen him and not immediately gone in for a hug.

He flops onto his stomach, trying to get comfortable without disturbing the blankets too much, but sleep isn’t coming easy.  When a knock comes on his door, he’s immediately awake and alert.  He wonders if it was a piece of a dream instead, given that there’s only one other person in the building and late night visits did not seem to be an option on the table, but after a few moments someone knocks again.

The light of the hallway is bright after the dark of his room, making him squint at the silhouette of Calum standing before him, wrapped in a blanket like he always seems to be right now.  His hair is messy, no doubt from his own fitful attempt to sleep, and Michael wants to run his fingers through it and put it back to rights.

“Hi,” Michael says.

“I called maintenance about the heat,” Calum says.  “They said they’re having a bit of issue with it and will send someone out, but with the road conditions it could be a little while.  I think they forgot that there were people here.”

“Oh,” Michael says.  “Okay.”

He stares at Calum again, cataloguing how tightly he’s wrapped up and the way he’s chewing on his lips.  Michael waits for him to say what he really came here to.

“It’s really fucking cold, Michael,” Calum blurts finally, a little desperate.

“I know,” Michael says, not sure how to tell Calum that he’d set the world on fire for him if it would help.

“It’d be warmer if we were together.  Like, scientifically speaking.  If we cuddled, it would warm us up a bit.”

“Well, you are the scientist in this duo.  You would know.”  Calum finally meets his eyes, looking up through his eyelashes a little in a way that’s completely unfair.  He’s already got Michael wrapped around his finger, heart skipping a beat at the simple occasion of having his attention again.

He has it so bad that it’s pathetic.

“Is that all?” Michael asks, trying to scrape together some of his dignity.  Calum has been ghosting him for weeks, and a conversation about the bad heating isn’t exactly what Michael wanted from a real conversation with him.  He’s too tired for small talk and much too cold to be standing here when he could be under the covers.

“You’re shivering,” Calum says.  Michael hadn’t noticed the small tremors, but now that Calum pointed them out he can’t ignore them.

“Come on, Mikey,” Calum says, stepping closer.  Michael wants to lean into him and the warmth he promises.  “I promise it’ll be warmer if we cuddle.”

“Do you want to come in?” he asks.  Calum nods, so he steps aside.

Having Calum in his room again when the last time included one of the best and most overwhelming experiences of Michael’s life is weird, to say the least.  It’s like Michael can see two versions of him: the current Calum, wrapped in a blanket and closed off in every conceivable way, and the Calum from that night, laughing at all of Michael’s jokes and spouting off facts about gravity to explain how they kept getting closer and closer.

“See, everything with mass exerts gravity on everything else, except typically it’s not enough to be noticeable compared to the gravity of the Earth.  Your gravitational field must be really strong today.”

“Are you calling me fat?”

“No, Michael, you idiot.  Stop misinterpreting what I’m saying!”

Calum surveys the room, the safety light reflecting off the snow outside just enough to give him silhouettes to work with.  Michael wonders what he’s remembering.

“How do you want to do this?” Michael asks when the silence has stretched on for too long.  Calum shrugs, so Michael climbs up onto his bed, sliding under the covers and leaving a corner flipped up in invitation.  Calum hesitates, and for a moment Michael thinks he’s going to turn tail and run, but he throws his blanket on top of the covers and joins.  The bed is too small to avoid some awkward elbows and involuntary brushes of clothing, barely big enough for one person, let alone two.  Michael holds his breath while Calum gets somewhat settled, pressed against the wall to give him as much room as possible.

“It’ll be warmer if we’re touching,” Calum whispers, words hitting Michael like a shout with the close proximity and otherwise silence of the room.  If the lights were on, Michael would probably be able to count his eyelashes, but now his face is a combination of different shadows.

“How do you…” Michael trails off.  Calum reaches out first, a cold hand wrapping around his own and pulling him closer.  They end up with Calum on his back and Michael’s head on his shoulder, legs tangled together.  Michael’s sure that Calum can hear how loud his heart is beating, but he can feel Calum’s own beating in a similar pattern so he can’t be too upset about it.  He can hear every inhale and rustle of clothing, can feel the soft cotton of Calum’s shirt against his cheek and smell the faint remains of his soap.

He’s warm.  It’s not the burning heat from their last night together, but it’s almost worse with the gradual way that Michael can feel himself unthaw in his presence, slow enough that he could forget it’s happening only to wake up as an irreparable puddle.

“Okay?” Michael asks, sending flashbacks to the last few times he had asked that question and Calum’s answers: always positive, whether a verbal yes or a nod or a fierce kiss and wandering hands.

“Yeah,” Calum says.  Michael swallows.

Calum starts tracing a design on his back with his finger, barely-felt with Michael still bundled up.  Michael wills himself to stay in the moment rather than slipping into the past or wishing for a different future.

It’s not bad like this.  He gets Calum close at least, receiving that little piece of contact from him that he’s been craving.  If this is the last time they’re like this, he wants to enjoy it if he can.

He shifts, Calum freezing under him for a moment until they both exhale and relax a little more.

Michael closes his eyes and wills himself to sleep.

“Michael?” Calum whispers after a few minutes.  For a moment he considers not answering, sure that anything Calum might think to say in the dark of the night will be something he doesn’t want to hear, but all he’s been asking for the past few weeks is his attention, and it seems vindictive to reject it now.

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry.”

Michael should ask for clarification on what, exactly, Calum is apologizing about.  He’s opened the door to this conversation, and Michael should take the opportunity to finally walk through and get their wires straightened out, but he can’t bring himself to do any of that, not like this.  Not when Michael is breathing him in and stealing his warmth and there’s absolutely nothing between them to act as a buffer.

In the dark cuddled up together, Michael can keep pretending that Calum isn’t about to crush him.  As long as he doesn’t ask for clarification, it’s like Schrodinger’s heartbreak: Michael can be both loved and lonely at the same time.

“Can we talk about it tomorrow?” he asks.  “We need to talk about it, but I’m tired.  And cold.  Not tonight.”

“Okay,” Calum says.  Michael waits to see if there’s anything else, but Calum just resumes tracing his secret design on Michael’s back.

Michael closes his eyes and hopes they don’t freeze to death in the night, twin skeletons found tangled together by some unsuspecting third party when the thaw comes.  He’s not sure when he falls asleep and begins to dream, but in his mind Calum presses a kiss to his hair and Michael tries not to let such a simple action break him.

-/-

When he wakes up the bed is cold and empty again.  It shouldn’t be surprising, certainly not after last time.  There was less expectation to stay here, but everything is ugly in the cold light, shattering the fragile balance of the night before.  Michael feels a pit in his stomach, but also a hot flare of anger.

Calum is the one who came begging for his company yesterday after completely ignoring him for weeks.  Calum is the one who left without a trace after Michael showed him he loves him the best way he knows how.  Calum is the one who keeps running away from this, but Michael is the one who keeps getting hurt and that’s not fair.

It’s a little warmer in the building now, the heaters likely getting sorted while they were sleeping, but Michael still grabs a blanket.  No one answers Calum’s door and the bathroom seems to be empty.  He heads downstairs to see if he has set himself up in the lounge again and knows he’s on the right track when he starts to hear piano music drifting softly towards him the more he descends the stairs.

Calum is one of the only people who ever uses the grand piano in the lounge.  It’s slightly out of tune, just enough for Michael himself to notice but for Calum to complain about a lot.  Michael has spent a lot of later nights in the lounge listening to him play, whether he was practicing back when he used to be a music major and take lessons or just playing for fun.  Calum curses a lot when he practices, but Michael has also caught him with his eyes closed and a content smile on his face, letting the music take him away.  Watching him like that, Michael sometimes wonders why Calum switched from music to science, but the rarity of the moments makes them all the more special.

He’s playing a piece that he’s been working on for a while.  Michael tries not to disturb him, walking slowly towards the chess set where another piece has been moved in a continuation of the game.  Calum must have pulled the curtains by the windows up, deep drifts of snow piled against them and sunlight reflecting off the white to set the entire room aglow.  In this setting and with this soundtrack, the morning feels less frosty.

The last note hangs suspended in the air and Michael holds his breath until it dissipates.  Calum sighs, breaking his posture to slump down, and turns to face Michael.

“You’ve gotten better at that one,” Michael says.

“Easier to practice when I don’t have to go to the music hall and no one’s here to use the piano.”

Michael studies him, taking in his rumpled appearance.  He doesn’t look like he’s been up that long, still in the same pants he went to bed in and already folding the sleeves of his hoodie over his hands to keep them warm.

The sweatshirt he’s wearing is one of Michael’s.  His heart flip-flops.

“Did you want to talk now?” Calum asks.

“Yeah,” Michael sighs.  Calum nods once.  He scoots over on the piano bench, making room, and Michael gingerly sits next to him.  After a moment’s hesitation, he offers part of his blanket, nearly sighing in relief when Calum accepts it.

“I’m sorry for how I left, and for not replying to any of your messages,” Calum begins.  “That was a jerk move.”

“It was,” Michael says.  “You’re my best friend, Calum.  If I had known that’s how you’d react, I wouldn’t have--”  He stops, because he doesn’t want to say he regrets sleeping with Calum unless he has to.  It would be a lie.  He’d rather have Calum as a friend than nothing, but the will-we-won’t-we would’ve killed him eventually, and the night itself was amazing right up until Calum left.

“I don’t want to jeopardize that,” he says instead.  “You mean a lot to me.”

Calum presses his lips together.

“Why did you leave?” Michael asks.  “I thought we were on the same page.  I mean… you wanted it, right?  You said you did.  I thought you did.  I didn’t--”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Calum interrupts.  “I did want it.  I really wanted it.  Too much, probably.”

“What does that mean?”

Calum sighs, looking down at his lap and fidgeting with his sleeves again.  Michael wants to know why he’s so nervous.  He wants to grab his hands and hold him steady the way that Calum does for him when he’s freaking out, but that wouldn’t be welcome right now.

“Michael, I can’t do something casual with you.  You’ve said before that you’re not looking for anything serious, but I can’t be friends with benefits, not with you.  Not when I’m in love with you.  It’d tear me apart.”

“What made you think I wanted something casual?” Michael asks.  “Apparently you couldn’t tell, but that night was kind of a big deal for me.  I’m not exactly known for sleeping around.”

“Michael--”

“I’ve been crushing on you since we met, okay?” Michael says, turning to face him more fully.  “I wasn’t looking for something serious with anyone else because I’ve been hung up on you.  That night was one of the best nights of my life, and then you weren’t there in the morning.  I thought I had fucked up.  I thought I had ruined one of the most important relationships in my life.”

“You didn’t,” Calum says, grabbing his hand.  “I should have talked to you instead of running away.  That’s on me.”

“Yeah it is,” Michael sulks.  “Why didn’t you?  Why’d you just assume what I wanted instead of bothering to ask me?  That hurt, Cal.”

“I know.”  Calum grimaces, then shrugs.  “I don’t know.  I thought I knew what you wanted.  Or didn’t want, I guess.  I didn’t consider that you could like me until you kissed me, and you’ve never shown interest in an actual relationship.  I wasn’t ready for you to reject me.”

“But I wasn’t going to,” Michael says.  “You’re you.  You’re the exception.”

“I didn’t know that, though.  We didn’t exactly sit down for a conversation.  Our mouths were otherwise occupied that night, if I remember correctly.”  Michael opens his mouth to protest, then snaps it shut.

He doesn’t remember exactly what he said in the heat of it, but he remembers biting back I love you, knowing it was too early to be throwing that phrase around, no matter how true it was.  Maybe he ended up hiding the sentiment a bit more than he anticipated.

“You still should’ve talked to me,” he says.

“I know,” Calum replies, squeezing his hand.  “I’m sorry.  I’ll do better with that.”

Michael squeezes his hand back.

“So,” he says, “you like me?”

“Yeah,” Calum says.  “A lot.”

“You got that I like you, too, right?  I said that.  I’ve had it bad for you since we met.”  Calum frowns.

“You took a while to warm up to me.  I thought you were still holding a grudge because I spilled your smoothie.”

“No, you had me tongue-tied,” Michael says.  “I had to figure out how to function around you.  You’re really hot and it made me flustered.”

“Shut up,” Calum says.  He’s blushing, crimson staining his cheeks enough for Michael to see, sending a strong thrill of satisfaction through him.

“I’m serious,” he needles.  “You’re ridiculously attractive, dude.  You’re not going to hear the end of it from me now.  I’ve said it once and now there’s nothing to stop me from saying it five times a day.”

Calum laughs and tucks his face into Michael’s shoulder.  Michael feels his own happiness bubble up inside him, threatening to burst.  He brings Calum’s hand up to his lips and kisses the back of it in an attempt to release some of the pressure.

“Are we boyfriends now?” Calum asks.

“Fuck yeah,” Michael says.  “Unless you don’t want to be, but that’d be lame.”

“I want to be,” Calum says quickly.

“Good,” Michael says.  “Then we are.”

“Good.”

They sit for a while, and this silence feels comfortable again, like their old ones.  Michal could stay suspended in this moment like the final note of Calum’s piano song and feel content with it rather than uncomfortable.  That more than anything lets him know they’ll be okay.

“I’m cold,” Calum says eventually.

“We should move by the fire.”

“We should eat breakfast,” Calum counters.  Michael hums and gives Calum’s neck an exaggerated sniff, making him squirm and giggle again.

“You should shower,” he says.

“Fuck you.  That’s rude.”

“I could join you?” Michael offers.

“These showers are not big enough for two people,” Calum says.  “Nice try, though.”

He stands and kisses Michael on the forehead, tucking the blanket back around him.

“Can I kiss you properly?” Michael asks.  Calum nods and leans down again, the gentle press of his lips both familiar and thrilling, sweeter in the morning light.

“Breakfast, then I’m going to shower alone, then I think we have a chess game to finish.”

“Or we could make out all day while we have the lounge to ourselves.”  Calum considers him, tilting his head and giving a wry smile.

“We can do that if you win the chess match.”

“Deal,” Michael says.  It’s an easy bargain, because Michael is better at chess than Calum is, and with that prize on the line nothing’s going to distract him.

“Breakfast,” Calum repeats, tugging on his hands until he’s standing, too.  Michael leans forward and kisses him again, just because he can now.  Calum beams and leads him to the stairs, Michael tripping over his blanket and Calum’s laugh filling the room.

It could just be the heating kicking in more, but Michael isn’t sure he needs the blanket right now, not when Calum is here warming him from the inside out.

[javier-pena]

take

Pairing: Javi Gutierrez x f!reader

Word Count: 3k

Rating: Explicit (that means 18+/no minors!!)

Summary: Javi and you are enjoying breakfast on his yacht until things take an unexpected turn.

Warnings: mentions of food | thigh riding | dirty talk | orgasm delay/denial | public sex (I’m sure what they’re doing is actually illegal) | daddy kink | implied sugar daddy Javi Gutierrez | Javi is a Tease (capital T to show how serious his crimes are) | Javi in that orange shirt

Notes: I saw a picture of Javi and all I could think was, “I wanna feed him berries”. So that’s the reason I wrote this fic. That’s the only excuse I have. Oh and also that I want Javi to call me a bad girl but whatever, we don’t need to talk about that. Anyway, as always, I owe most of this to Dani @javierpcna​, literally everything I write should come with Dani’s name listed as co-author, her support knows no bounds, she literally drops everything when I send her a fic to proofread, and this was no different. And she also lets me use her brilliant lines from time to time, for which I can never repay her.

Notes II: I have neither seen the movie nor have I read the script, so if there are any spoilers in there (I doubt it) I didn’t put them in intentionally.

Notes III: Artwork by @honestly-shite​ | Moodboard by @frankiemorales​

***

One.

He lets you feed him one berry, but only after you tell him how good they taste, how they melt on your tongue, how they fill your mouth with a soft sweetness. He raises an eyebrow at that, and you know what he’s thinking, but he doesn’t say it. Instead, he takes the small blueberry from your outstretched fingers, leaning on the laden breakfast table to make it easier for you to reach him. The berry is so small it’s impossible for him to pull it in between his lips without the tip of your finger vanishing, too. You shudder at the sensation, shudder despite the heat, despite the hotness of his tongue brushing against your sensitive skin.

Javi hates breakfast. He hates dedicating time during his busy day, during the mornings when he feels most productive, to eating when it can be done en passant. You keep telling him it’s not healthy to eat while he’s distracted, and you’ve been trying to convince him to have breakfast with you for a few weeks now.

Why, babe? You said distraction is bad for me when I eat.

He still doesn’t eat during the mornings, only drinks his heavy, smoky, black coffee, but he keeps you company now whenever he can. He reads to you from the morning paper, he tells you about his plans for the day, or he listens to you talking about a dream you had last night or about things you would like to do with him one day. And today … today he even made time to take you out on his yacht, to anchor it in a secluded bay where there’s no noise except the lapping of the waves against the bright white hull of the ship and the cries of the seagulls circling above, hoping to snatch a crumb of the croissant on your plate. Today, he’s made time to be with you.

Two.

You try it again, another berry, another taste of sweetness, another burst of flavor and color and sugary juices. This time it becomes clear he’s chasing something else, craving something else, as he sucks on your finger, just for a brief moment, just under the pretense of getting the sticky juice off your skin, but he also isn’t shy about it, he also doesn’t try to hide what he’s doing. Your skin prickles when he releases the digit, and you pull your hand back across the table too quickly, too hastily. He notices and leans back on his expensive outdoor couch with a satisfied sigh.

You dry your finger against the hot skin of your leg, already burning up with the heat of the approaching day, even though you keep to the shadows. Only your feet rest on an empty chair in direct sunlight, while you keep the rest of your body safe under a wide canopy. Javi is doing the complete opposite. He’s lounging in direct sunlight, and you’ll never understand how he can stand it. Your skin always starts to tickle and itch from the heat, while he looks like he was made to live in a Mediterranean country and spend his days in the sun.

The bright, orange shirt he’s wearing is unbuttoned to expose half his chest. His bronze skin is covered in a sheen of sweat, and you cannot tear your eyes away from it, imagining what it would feel like to run your fingers over it, how hot it would feel under your hands, how he would sigh and relax into your touch. His chest is your favorite place in the entire world. You feel safe when you rest your hand on it, when he softly runs his fingers along your arm, tells you how beautiful you look, how he will always take care of you, no matter what, how you’ll never need to worry about anything ever again because you’re his and he’s yours. And you feel oh so secure when you’re trapped under it, when you feel its weight pressing down on you, when your sharp nails leave angry, red scratches on his soft skin as he whispers into your ear – encouraging, soothing, filthy.

Three.

You want to see it move, see the muscles flex and strain as he leans forward again to accept a third berry from you. And this time he’s not shy about it anymore. This time, he does suck your finger in between his lips, the berry forgotten, and you see his eyes widen behind his dark sunglasses. You suck in a sharp breath at the sight. He releases your finger with a wet pop and suddenly this isn’t enough. Suddenly you need more, more of him, but you lower your gaze to your plate instead to hide your shining eyes. There is a time and place for these things and the deck of his yacht in broad daylight isn’t it.

But you cannot deny what your body wants, even though your mind tells the aching between your legs to shut up. You push yourself out of your chair fast and within a few steps you’re leaning against the railing, hoping to catch a breeze to soothe your flushed face. But there is none, only unbearable heat.

When you turn around again, you feel a different kind of heat; Javi’s gaze is on you as he takes you in. You know he loves to do this, especially when you’re wearing something he bought you, like you’re doing this morning – an expensive black bikini that leaves little to the imagination, one you found on your bed one morning with a small note that made you shudder, so you decided to save it for a special occasion. And you were right to do so because he’s unable to tear his eyes away from you.

You walk back to the table as slowly as possible, determined to finish breakfast, but something pulls you toward him, like an invisible rope slung around your waist, like his gaze is enough to make you lose all sense of control. And before you know it, you’re straddling his thigh, while he pulls you into a kiss, one that lasts forever yet not long enough, one that sets you on fire more than the sun on your back yet makes you want to expose more skin so more of you will get burned.  

The second his teeth release your lip his hands fly up to rest against your hips, his grip firm but easy to get out of if you wanted to. “Is there something you wanted, baby?” he asks you, innocence written all over his face, as if he truly is completely unaware of the effect he has on you, of the things he makes you want to do when his eyes follow you around like you’re the eighth wonder of the world.

You bite your lip, bite the spot that still feels raw from where he sucked on it moments earlier, and then you start rolling your hips, start chasing the friction to relieve some of the hot, searing pressure that’s been building between your legs since he sucked your finger into his mouth. You see his eyes lower dangerously when he realizes what it is you want from him, and everything shifts, shifts as if the yacht is hit by a strong wave. You’re all too familiar with this change and you know exactly what it means, and what it entails.

One of your hands lands on the collar of his shirt out of its own free will, your fingers clawing at the material in a desperate attempt to steady yourself. The palm of your other hand presses against his warm, sun-kissed chest, your nails eager to leave marks on his skin. But instead of pressing into your touch, he leans back and watches you with mild interest.

This is all the permission you need. You grind your hips with a sense of purpose now, and when you feel the muscles of his leg tense between yours, a small whimper escapes your lips.

He smirks at you, and you know his eyes are sparkling, even though you can’t really see them. “Come on,” he urges you, pressing up into you, “make yourself feel good.”

With a desperate moan, your head falls onto his shoulder, your forehead scraping against his shirt, and you bite your lip because it’s the only thing stopping you from biting the exposed skin of his neck. You know he’d like that, he likes it when you are rough with him, but it also unleashes something in him you want to keep locked away today. You know it’s selfish and greedy, but all you want to do this morning is take, and not think about him.

He makes that resolve very difficult to keep.

“You like that, don’t you?” he asks you, a hand at the back of your neck, trying to get you to lift your head.

You don’t answer him, you can’t, but you indulge him and lift your head again. You pick up the pace, determined to show him how much you like it, how good it makes you feel, but he only smirks at you again, like he doesn’t need an answer anyway, like he knows exactly what he’s doing to you.

And suddenly, suddenly that selfish streak is gone, and you want him closer to you, all over you, inside of you. You don’t care that you have to give up the last bit of control you cling to, and give yourself over completely to him, you don’t care that it’s broad daylight and that another boat could sail into your tiny bay any second now, you don’t care about being discovered or about this being, strictly speaking, illegal. You just care about him fucking you like he does when he has you to himself, sprawled out under him, trapping you with his broad chest and toned arms, forcing you to take whatever he gives you.

But before you can tell him any of that, the hand at the back of your neck is gone and he lifts up his sunglasses and tosses them aside, so you can look right into his eyes, so you can see that you’re not the only one who’s affected by all of this. His gaze roams all over you, from your eyes shining with hazy lust to your legs squeezing around his thigh and your hips rolling with an urgency, pushing you steadily closer to finding the release you’re chasing. But this isn’t enough, you both know that; it’s enough to keep the fire going, but not enough to push you over the edge.

His free hand brushes against the exposed skin of your belly, his fingers run along the seam of your bikini top, and you push yourself forward, willing him to cup your breasts, pinch your nipples, anything, anything to relieve the ache and burning, the feverish craving you feel for his touch, his lips, his words that leave no doubt about who is in control. But he doesn’t give you any of that. Instead, his hand moves to your back to steady you, to hold you in place, and all he does is toy with the strap of your top holding everything in place at the back of your neck.

You don’t know what makes you look down to where your bodies are connected, but you do, and he follows your gaze. You both watch as a dark patch forms on the light fabric of his slacks, as it spreads more and more with each thrust of your hips.

“You’re making a mess,” Javi breathes quietly, so quietly you almost don’t catch it over the sound of the water against the yacht’s hull. His gaze is transfixed, his attention is on the evidence of your arousal as he watches with great interest. You feel heat spread from your chest along your arms and up your neck to your face, but you don’t stop.

“Look at you, princess,” he goes on, his left hand gripping your side tighter to slow you down until you drag yourself along his leg painfully slowly. “Look at how you’re getting daddy’s trousers all wet, they’re probably ruined now.” He pauses at your sharp intake of breath. There’s a dark glint in his eyes when he speaks next. “You’re a bad girl.”

You’re pretty sure the sound you make isn’t human. He lets go of your side and rests his hand on your thigh, letting you set the pace again.

“Please,” you whine, and you don’t quite know why you say it, what you want him to do, you just know he needs to do something, or you’ll go crazy. “Please, Javi,” you repeat. “Please, just … touch me,” you finish, and it’s stupid, he is touching you, just not in the way you mean, but you cannot come up with anything else to say.

“You’re always so greedy,” he observes, not making any move to fulfil your request. “I’m already giving you what you want and still you want more. Don’t you want to be daddy’s good girl?”

You don’t know the answer to that question. You wouldn’t know your own name if he asked you right now. Not because of the things he’s saying but because he raises his leg ever so slightly to push up against your clit and every coherent thought you might have had is drowned out by incoherent sounds leaving your mouth. You press down against him, grinding down with so much force he’s bound to lower his leg. Only … he doesn’t.

“Sorry, I didn’t get that,” he says, a picture of calmness and poise. “Can you repeat that for me?”

You absolutely cannot because you can’t remember what you said in the first place, but you give it another try. “Javi, please, give me something,” you swallow, “anything. Touch me, please.”

“No,” he says, but his voice sounds strained now, like uttering that two-letter word takes a lot of effort. “I want to hear you beg.”

“Please,” you say again, knowing it won’t be enough. “Please, I can’t …”

“Why not?” he wants to know.

“It’s not enough, I ...,” you swallow again, your throat completely dry, “why are you doing this to me?”

“Oh, baby, you’re not even trying to get yourself off,” Javi chuckles. “I know you can do better than that.”

“I am trying,” you tell him, but it’s nothing more than a desperate whine.

“Isn’t this what you wanted?” he asks you.

And he’s right, it is, it was ten minutes ago when you thought all you had to do was look pretty and he’d fuck you, but now that he’s seen right through you, now that he has decided he doesn’t want to give you anything more than he has to, it isn’t anymore. You want so much more than this, and you know there’s just one way to get it.

With a small movement you change your position slightly until you roll your hips against where he’s straining against the fabric of his slacks, and a low hiss is your reward, followed by a sharp slap to your ass that makes your hips stutter, and you lose your steady rhythm. Both his hands are on your hips again and he pushes you down hard against the firm muscles of his thigh.

“Oh no, you don’t,” he tells you. “I’m gonna give you what you came here for, nothing more, nothing less.”

“Javi,” you groan.

His hands move your hips, his arms straining with the effort of keeping you in place, and you let him, even though all you can think about is his hard cock only inches away from you. You think about him pushing into you, about the filthy, wet sounds it would make, about how he’s the only one who can reach so deep inside of you he makes you see stars with every thrust.

“All right,” Javi says. His tongue darts out to wet his lips. “You can have it.”

You’re sure you misheard. You’re sure he didn’t just say that. After all he’s put you through, he won’t give in that easily. But you clench around nothing nevertheless, clench around thin air at the thought of him inside of you.

“Later,” he adds, and your heart almost stops. “I’m gonna fill your pretty mouth, but only if you’re good for me.”

You want to, you’re trying to, but you cannot do this anymore. If he’s not going to touch you, if he won’t fuck you, you have to do it yourself.

One of your hands leaves his strong shoulders and you frantically push the fabric of your swimsuit aside, pressing a finger against your aching clit. You moan in relief, but it only lasts a moment, because his left hand closes tightly around your wrist without any warning, and he twists your arm until he has it in a firm grip pressed against your back. The ring he wears on his little finger digs painfully into your soft skin.

“You were doing so well,” he says with a disappointed sigh.

“It’s not –,” you start, but you’re not allowed to finish the sentence.

“No, it is enough,” he tells you firmly, his eyes boring into yours.

But he does reach up, he does pull the string of your top until it comes loose and your tits spill out. He lets go of your arm but before you can decide what to do with your newfound freedom, his fingers close around your throat at the same time as his mouth closes around one of your nipples.

That’s all it takes.

You arch your back with a scream and come right there on his thigh in broad daylight, while he holds you in place with hands and mouth. It goes on forever, or at least it feels like that, and he’s unrelenting, first sucking one nipple into his mouth, then biting down hard on the other. When it becomes clear he’s not planning on stopping, you grab a fistful of his soft curls and pull him away from your chest with a sharp tug.

“Had enough?” he asks, his lips shiny and slightly swollen.

You nod slowly because you don’t trust your voice right now.

“Well, I haven’t,” he growls. “And I will tell you when you’ve had enough.”

taglist: @badbatches​, @darksber​, @doin-stuff​, @filthybookworm​, @for-my-satisfaction​, @frannyzooey​, @javigutierrez​, @karkii​, @pann-malii​, @raspberrymama​, @silksaddle​, @skeletonstwins​, @skyshipper​, @sunnydunnydays​

[lululawrence]

Thou, Sun, Art Half As Happy by lululawrence

Nick Grimshaw/Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson   |   7k   |   For the prompt rise

Hello, I’m sorry if this isn’t a post that is allowed on this channel, but I was hoping for the best since it is regarding a photography project I’m working on at the moment. I’m working on a set of sunrise kiss photos and therefore am needing a willing kissing partner. I’d hoped to be able to provide one for myself, but it hasn’t panned out, so here I am! I was hoping to find someone here, since I know most of you (at least peripherally) and can generally vouch for you not being creeps. Plus this way I know you will understand needing to continue to tweak the camera settings and reshoots etc that others might not.

Anyway, I’m looking for someone who identifies as male or male-ish (sorry, ladies) who is between the ages of 18 and 40. I’m a 29 year old male-ish myself, for those who would like to know before replying.

If you’re interested and are free the early morning of August 7th and would like to kiss in the sunrise with me for the sake of some (hopefully) interesting and fun photos, let me know via DM and I’ll give you the location.

OR the one where Louis needs a kissing partner, two show up, and it all might turn out for the best that way.

I would just like to make it clear that this is NOT the author, @lululawrence, asking for help on a photography project and needing a kissing buddy. This is all fiction, entirely made up, and in no way real. I have NOTHING to do with what happens in the fic outside of the fact I wrote it. Thank you!

Written as a part of @wordplayfics, credit to @louandhazaf for the use of their photo in the moodboard

Buy me a coffee?

[tundrainafrica]

Which would you say are your favorite fanfics ever? (Levihan ofc)

Okay, I don’t think I’m the best judge of what’s quality or not quality cause I ain’t no writing authority so I cannot vouch for whether you will like these fics or not. But I am a firm believer that good writing makes readers feel things and leaves a lasting impression. 

So lemme rephrase the question… What fics left a lasting impression?

So brace yourself for one hell of a ride while I talk about fanworks that just fucked me up in the following ways: 

Caused me to irrationally hate one random character

Made me forget something isn’t canon

Made me completely rearrange my day because I completely f-ed myself up.

Made me feel guilty for fucking up the view count because I keep going back there.

Makes me remember the fic as an aesthetic, not as actual words. Like literally I will imagine the setting almost perfectly in my head and like when I try to remember what happened, I don’t really remember the writing style or anything, but I could probably create a sim house about how exactly I imagined the house to look like or the yard to look like.

Changed the way I approach fic reading.

I don’t wanna spoil these fics because I’m assuming people are gonna read it so as much as I wanna make a long ass detailed review about why I love each of them, I won’t. I’ll probably just mention what the hell I was doing when I read the fic and how I completely fucked myself over. 

I probably will miss some since I’m just listing these out from the top of my head. So here goes…And I’m only posting completed fics because I’m just that way. 

Second chance by @fanmoose12

This is my comfort fic. The first time I read this fic, it was like 4am or 5am in the morning and I remember after reading it once, I read it like 5 more times that day. 

This is literally the fic I just randomly open on my computer at work on some incognito tab when I’m just tired from all the shit they make us do at work and this is the random fic that I just open up when I feel like reading. And this is one of the fics I plan on showing my children one day when I explain to them what love is. 

This isn’t depressing so I guess it doesn’t fall in the ‘fucked me over’ category but definitely one of the fics I read too many times to count that I remember it scene by scene like some simp. 

Partners by fanmoose12

Woops, one exception for WIPs. I just had to post this here because it definitely left a lasting impression. 

This was the first AU I have ever read and been invested in and I have been reading fanfiction since before I could remember and I have always stuck to canonverse fics until I got into Levihan. 

This fic got me into the AU genre and I have never read AUs in my life before this so I think that says a lot about how much this fic means to me. 

Somewhere Only We Know by @someonestolemyshoes

It’s not completely posted in ao3 yet. But since I beta-ed the fic, I finished it long before SSMS posted it but this fic. It started slow so it took me a week of on and off work to get through  but I got through the second part of the fic, the last 30,000 words  incredibly fast. I vividly remembered reading those last final scenes over breakfast completely in shock while my whole family was there. I literally had to leave the room and take my dog out for a second walk . 

I remember the aesthetic of the overall story vividly enough to actually make a moodboard of it and spend a good 1 hour going through country side pics after finishing it. . 

Yellow by @ariadneamare​

God, this fic. I read this over a day of work. Like breakfast, first few thousand words, Lunch next few thousand words. And I finished the rest before bed and oh god, this is the type of fic that builds a great aesthetic, some lightness and just to fuck you over in the end. 

I like to compare it to a longer and AU version of Pristine in terms of how it strings emotions along. I know they’re two completely different fics but the energy of the fic, the stream of emotions on how it strings you along is fairly similar. 

This is literally one of those fics where I’m just having a good day, and my mind goes ‘remember that one fic’ and I just wrinkle my nose like ‘yeah THAT FIC’ 

Pristine by @mannatea​

I’m sure everyone has read this, it’s practically a classic and I cannot count the number of people who told me it was depressing and I do not know why I did not believe them. I read this while waiting in line for milk tea. I lost my place in line around the time I finished that last part and just gave up on buying milk tea.

It has this build up, this incredibly fluffy build up which won’t make you think it will end the way it did. 

Well. you know a fic is good when you know it’s gonna end a certain way but you allow yourself to get strung along anyway. 

A Simple Choice by just-quintessentially-me

This is one of those fics for me that double as an aesthetic piece and a plot piece. I remember INCREDIBLY WELL, the road I was imagining that they were walking through and it satisfied my hurt comfort feels as well. Definitely one of my favorite 115-126 fics and one of the first ones I read in the fandom for sure. 

So those are the english fics, I have to Japanese fics that fall in that category. 

(For anyone who knows Japanese I guess but I personally think they’re worth a google translate.)

熱に浮く(Feverish Dream)

Classic canon compliant. Hange takes care of Levi when he’s sick fic but there are misunderstandings here, they contemplate their relationship and they are incredibly emotionally constipated here. Definitely one of the classics imo and it feeds my need for hurt/comfort.

前世なんてクソだと言う女と 全て忘れた男 

(A girl who thinks past lives are not real and a boy who forgot everything)

Hange is a teacher, Levi is a janitor. Hange remembers stuff and Levi doesn’t and just really cute stuff. 

I’m pretty sure you guys are tired of me rambling about how much this fic means to me but really, I wrote a Tale of Two Slaves (Which is just brushing 100k words already) because this was just so beautiful it got me into the reincarnation genre.

私の中の少女、あなたの中の少年

(The girl inside me and the boy inside you) 

Levi and Hange are exes/childhood friends and they meet again in a matchmaking party. This is just the greatest balance between emotional constipation and love. The premise was just perfect for the type of build up 

Closest thing I’m gonna drop to smut here. Will leave my smut recs for another post but I’m low key really still thinking whether or not I should expose myself by dropping my favorite Levihan smut pieces hahaha.

Filo Socmed AUs

A lot of these probably aren’t google translatable since Tagalog google translate sucks but if anyone is interested, most Filo Socmed AUs have a fair amount of English so it’s coherent. I guess? I completely forget though how much is in English and how much is in Tagalog but these are the Filo Socmed AUs I REALLY remember and really go back to. 

Vividly Remembered 

This one got me blowing my days worth of salary on some meal in a restaurant because I didn’t wanna go back home to my house yet so I remember just crying over a meal while finishing up this fanfiction instead of going home. 

Basically a fic where Levi and Hange were together already and were about to get married already but shit happened. I irrationally hate Nanaba because of this Socmed AU. Like everytime I see Nanaba, i think of this Socmed AU and I just hate her again. 

Photographs 

Levi and Hange are part of the photography club and shit happens. I remember being behind on work because I decided to take a three hour lunch break to finish this AU. This satisfied my sick Levi craving in so many ways (especially after reading Yellow)

Wherein Levi doesn’t have social media accounts and Hange is the class beadle

This last one just has the overall aesthetic of my own university so it really stuck tbh. And the premise of the build up is just incredibly cute. 

These are the ones I can remember from the top of my head so I’m sure these are among my favorites. I’ll definitely update this as I read more.

[spideyspeaches]

The Prince and the Archer ↬ t.h

EDIT: LOOK AT THIS AMAZING MOODBOARD @mischiefmanaged011​ MADE!!!!!!

A/N: So @blissfulparker and I wrote a fic on this prompt I sent to her. She already posted hers AND GO READ IT IT’S AMAZING OKAY?! ANYWAYS-

WC: 2.3k (EXACT HOLY SHIT)

Pairing: Prince!Tom Holland x Archer!Reader

Masterlist || Taglist

Thomas had been nineteen years old when he first saw You.

He had been coming back from the stable with his mentor after a session of horse riding, exhaustion evident in the young Prince’s face. It had been a tough ride, his horse- Jakie- had not been very compliant that day, and Harry had been poking fun at him all day. He loved his brother, but he could be annoying sometimes (most of the time.)

Walking towards the castle, his eyes fell around the sports fields, his vision zeroing onto the Archery range. He had always found the sport interesting. How a single shot from an arrow and a bow could do so much as slice a fruit or pierce an organ, he would never understand. It never ceased to amaze him though.

“You look a little lost there mate.” Harry smirked, eyes following his brother's. He startled when Harry laughed, punching his biceps playfully. 

He didn’t understand what Harry was talking about, until he saw You standing in the field, hands stretched out and legs apart, a perfect stance for a fight. A bow was held tight in your hands, stretching the arrow. He hadn’t even noticed that he had been staring at you, your hair flowing with the wind, a serious expression with your lips pursed as if you were ready for combat, the half of your face glowing with the sun.

The snap of Harry ’s fingers got him back, a blush raising his cheeks at being caught.

"She's pretty isn't she? She's the cook's daughter." He said. 

“Mr. (L/N)?” He asked absentmindedly.

Tom saw as the arrow went sailing in a perfect trajectory, hitting the centre of the eye. He watched in a sort of trance as arrows after arrows hit the various targets, your hands not wavering once even.

 “Uh- you, you go ahead. Tell mother I’ll be back in a minute.” He stuttered. 

“Okay. Her name’s Y/N, by the way.” Harry  retreated, patting his back and giving him a smile that he knew all too well. 

He gestured at his mentor to make his way back to the Castle, walking towards the field where you were practicing. 

You noticed him coming towards him, immediately bowing your head as he approached you. 

"It's alright darling, you don't need to do that." He smiled at You as you nodded feverently. He smiled at you, cooing at the way you shied and hid your face from him. 

“You’re Y/N right?” He asked slowly as you fiddled with your bow, nodding but not looking up for a long time.

“That's me, your majesty, to what do I owe you the pleasure of you visiting the archery range?” You finally said, looking up and stopped fiddling. 

Your heart sped up when you looked at the young prince, hair slicked back in a short mullet, horse riding clothes donned on. 

You had seen him quite a few times while practicing, and even admired him from afar like any other girl your age, but never had the guts to speak. You didn’t know how you would talk to the royalty without the intrusive thoughts of what he would possibly think of a poor girl talking to him. You felt giddy now that he was actually here, talking to you. 

"Oh no no! The pleasure's all mine sweetheart. I, uh, you're good at it."He said, clearing his throat when you raised an eyebrow, “Could you show me? Uhm, how to work a bow and an arrow? I’m actually really bad at it.” He chuckled as you smiled, eyes lighting up when he mentioned the sport.

“Only if you teach me how to ride a horse.” You said back. You couldn't hold back the grin that appeared on your face, neither did he, when you agreed. 

You couldn’t help but do an internal victory dance when he smiled, his soft brown eyes shining in the sunny day sending your mind into a frenzy.

"I could do that. So do we meet here tomorrow? Same time?" He asked, too giddy to notice anything around him. His heart was beating like crazy, feeling a pang of excitement in his tummy as you nodded shyly. 

"Uh yes. That would be great, Mister Holland." You nodded, packing your bow and arrows. Shuffling your feet, you stared at him before he moved out of your way, chuckling when you saw his cheeks flame in a blush. 

"Just Tom is fine!" He said, waving at you with a goofy expression on his young face. He chuckled, shaking his head as he felt an unearthed excitement at the thought of seeing you again.

The feeling felt foreign to the young prince. He had been offered services with other princess' before, danced with them in balls and even had fancy dinners with them, but the thought of spending time with you in the fields felt different, yet the excitement felt the same.

Skipping over to the main halls with a smile on his face that rivaled the brightness of the sun, Tom sighed. His heart was still fluttering from your previous encounter, stomach churning with an unknown feeling. 

It was a few days later, during dinner, that the others started noticing his absences and random visits to the royal grounds with his horse (or how he suddenly was interested in learning archery of all sports).

"What's got you so excited?" His mum smiled, snapping him from his stupor as he looked up from his plate. The steak from his fork nearly fell, the laughter of his brothers making him blush. 

"Is it the girl?" Harry smirked, eating his dinner innocently as he could.

"What girl?" Sam piped in. Everyone's eyes were on him now. Shuffling in his seat, he smiled, remembering your smile when he offered to learn archery from you in exchange of teaching you to horse ride.

"The girl in the archery fields. She's really beautiful. And her aim is impeccable. She's perfect, mum! I've never met a lady like her before." Tom said, looking at his mom with large eyes, anticipation making him sweat. He saw his mother nod, giving him a small smile. 

"An archer you say? Is she by any chance, our cook's daughter?" She asked, resting her fork on her plate. 

"I- I don't know, maybe? How does it matter though?" 

"Tom, you know the rules. There are so many other princesses waiting for you in a like, you can't go for a normal low-life girl." She said, eyes betraying the sadness missing in her stern expression. 

"Just because she's not as wealthy as us doesn't make her a bad person mum!" 

"Tom honey, it's not about that, you have to understand we have certain rules and regulations to follow. For all you know she's a gold digger!" 

Tom was used to the burden of being royalty, and he often felt guilty for feeling burdened with having all the wealth of London, when there were so many poor kids in the streets begging for food and a shelter. 

Sometimes he felt like he would break under all the pressure and rules. 

"How can you say that? You don't even know her! You know what? I don't care. I- You have to understand mum. She's different! She's not like those other snobby princesses who only want to marry me for my name! She's so much more better than those fucking pompous brats okay?-"

"Mind your language Thomas!" 

"You can't stop me!" He said, pushing away his chair angrily before storming away, walking towards the ballroom and ignoring the servants running behind him with apologies. 

Stomping his way to the ballroom, he opened the huge doors, slamming them as fast as he could with his strength. Locking them from the inside, he switched on the lights, sliding down the doors. 

Holding his head, his shoulders shook with silent sobs, tears falling free as he felt himself break. He felt weak, for having such variations of emotions over some girl he saw not long ago. 

Sniffing, he stood up, fixing himself as much as he could in his state, before looking at the small door behind one of the curtains. It was only noticeable if you were looking for it. He smiled, walking towards it. Touching the small latch, he opened the door, sneaking into a garden, the garden only he and his father knew about. 

Pushing aside the shrubbery growing around it, he finally found the rusted gates, slowly removing the rusty chains with his hands.

He smiled fondly, remembering the day his dad had brought him here. He had been sad that day for whatever reasons he didn't remember, sitting on the small swing set as his father pushed him higher and higher until his tummy hurt because of giggling so much. 

Sitting on the swing that was slightly too small for him, he idly pushed his feet back and forth, lost in his thoughts. 

"It's beautiful here isn't it? I didn't think anyone would know about this place, much less the Prince of England." 

His eyes widened, jaw dropping when he heard your voice.

"How do you know about this place?" He asked. 

"My grandfather built this place before you and I were even born. My father told me about this. Now, answer my question." You shrugged, picking the leaves of the bush you were leaning against. 

"That's nice. My father used to bring me here when I was a child. He doesn't do that anymore. I just, I wish he would spend more time with me." He said, biting his lips. 

“You come here often then?” You asked.

“Yes, whenever I feel like being left alone. I come here.” He bit his lip, nervous of the sudden silence.

"I'm sorry." You said, cutting off his wandering thoughts.

"What are you sorry for?" 

"Good childhood memories are sometimes more painful than the bad ones. At least you can deflect the bad ones, but the good ones are just a reminder of what you had and what you can't now." You said. 

"That's not entirely true, good memories can still be made you know? With the person you love." He said, getting up from the swing set. 

Walking towards You, he held his hand up, pushing a strand of your hair from your face as you ducked, shying away from his touch. 

Your breath hitched, your hands clenched behind you as he came closer. You were standing head to head now. You could feel his breath on You, your lips nearly touching. 

In the moment of courage, you leapt forward, capturing his lips in yours. 

You loved fairy tales, small stories that described kisses as magical that made sparks fly. You always thought they were exaggerations, but at this moment, when you were kissing the most beautiful boy, the Prince of England and the boy you had been crushing on since forever, you felt like you were a part of those fantasies. 

The kiss was indeed magical, albeit a little wet. You giggled when you broke apart, short of breath as you laid your hands on his chest, feeling the expensive fabric under your palm. 

"What will the others think?" You whispered. Your hair flew in whisps, the air around you whispering it's reassurance as you stood in front of him. 

"Let them think what they want to, darling. I've been the prey before, I'm ready to do it again." He smirked, pulling you by your waist for another kiss. 

"You're cheesy." You chuckled. 

"Yes, I'm melted cheese for you." 

"That was a terrible joke Holland." 

***

"Okay so you need to hold your stance, stiff but not too stiff. You will feel pressure in your shoulders the first day-" 

"- darling can't we just make out please?" 

You sighed, pinching the bridge of your nose as if his yapping was giving you a headache. 

You had gotten comfortable around him since your first encounter, and you felt special, seeing the goofy and happy side of the Prince. Didn't mean he didn't manage to make your heart stutter with his devilishly handsome grin (that made you want to pinch his cheeks and suck his dick).

"Thomas no." 

"Thomas yes! I don't know how you manage to do this, this bow is so heavy!" He whined, keeping down the bow and folding his hands on his chest. He looked adorable with his pout.

Smiling, you shook your head, heaving a sigh, "the bow isn't heavy, Tom. Here, how about this, I'll hold your elbow while you aim alright?" You offer.

"That would be great, princess." You blushed at the nickname, not quite used to being called that. 

"Alright drama queen, don't need to butter me." You muttered, moving closer so your chest touched his back, one hand on his elbow and the other on the string of the bow. 

He could feel your breath on his neck, shuddering as you leaned in, your hair tickling him, your rough but nimble hands featherlight on his skin.

"Now aim." You said, moving your hair from your face. 

He stuttered a response, holding himself straighter. You pushed his elbow up, right as he unleashed it, the arrow hitting the bullseye with a thud. 

"We did it! Oh god Y/N did you see that? We did it ! It hit the centre!" He laughed, turning around, the bow laying on the ground as he lifted you up.

You shrieked as he spun you in circles, laughter bubbling in your chest as you rested your head against his. 

"We did, your majesty." You smiled, leaning in to kiss him. 

You weren't afraid of being caught, you were way past that point. And you felt that you could live like that, if it meant living with the loveliest Prince of England.

[acemapleeh]

End of the year review

Tagged by: @draw-a-circle-thats-the-foxhole

What fandoms did you create for?

After coming off a three year long depression, I finally began creating again this year. So really, I only created for Hetalia in the last quarter of this year. I can't even remember if I did anything else the first half of this year. It's kind of a blur if I'm being honest.

How many works did you make this year? Fics (posted on ao3 or Tumblr or wherever), edits, gifsets, mood boards, playlists, fanart, vids, meta?

Posted four fics this year, which, is the most I've done in actual years. Hell, even moodboards I hadn't posted since 2019 maybe??? I even made character playlists on spotify this year. Hetalia really just grabbed me by the collar and shook me hard.

Here's Arthur's playlist because I think it came out the best.

What are you most proud of?

Okay, really, anything I made that was Arthur Kirkland related came out way better than I thought they would. This includes fics, aesthetic board and the playlist. I just really vibed with him for some reason. I never wrote him much before and I came back into the Fandom ready to focus on Alfred and Matthew. Am I just more of a crabby old man than I was five years ago? Maybe.

How I Go to the Woods really just let me write my love of the fae and folklore and I really want to write more like it.

any stats you wanna tell us about?

I'm genuinely shocked all the fics I posted have over a hundred views each on ao3.

What inspired you this year? Any specific works or creators?

What always brings me back to this Fandom are people who really like to dig deep into these characters. The immortality, connection to the earth, culture and history all just speak to me. You can see a person's love of history and culture and creativity when done well.

Shout out to @draw-a-circle-thats-the-foxhole @oumaheroes @stirringwinds @rein-ette @rebelsandtherest @peonycats @ego-meliorem-esse @ashafox @cutie-cutter

Y'all make such wonderful things and helped me regain sparks of creativity again. Always on the lookout for content from you guys. Thank you for all that you share. ❤

What’s a piece you didn’t expect to make? Why?

Me going back to finish writing the first chapter of this Canada and his family fic honestly shocked me. I just woke up one morning and as I was doing dishes, it struck me like a train that I needed to go back and finish writing. I had started it back in 2016 and it had been sitting in my drive ever since.

What are you excited to work on next year?

Finishing the multi-chapter works I have

Getting more headcanons about FACE family and ANZAC written out

Francis and Arthur need some spotlight

I really want to write Jack and Charlie more in depth. Some Arthur raising his children throughout the Victorian era.

Really the Victorian era is my jam and I can't wait

Sooooo excited to write for my Celtic children

Jacobite Rebellion 👀

Looking forward to History Week and Whumptober

Actually writing romance for pairs I like

Anyway anyone who wants to partake is more than welcome. Here's to an uneventful year where we can just be creative and indulge in escapism ✌

[fangirlovestuff]

littera scripta manet - steve rogers x reader

a/n - hey lovely people!! first of all, this is based on a moodboard by the amazing @cloudystevie​, which inspired this whole fic, thank you!! the picture above is how i imagined steve in this one, but you can imagine him however you want:) also, there’s a list of meanings of the flowers i mention at the end because i’m a sucker for the language of flowers (the flowers are in bold in the fic). i love the dark academia aesthetic and i hope i did it justice:) enjoy!!<3

title means ‘the written letter remains’

summary: unlike you, steve doesn’t have a problem admitting to himself he has feelings for his best friend. that’s what makes it so painful when it seems like you don’t.

word count: 7k (oops?)

warnings / tags: friends to lovers, Pining™ , angst with a happy ending, as slow burn as a one shot can be, an obnoxious amount of clichés but i’m not sorry, no plot just vibes (i mean there’s like,,, some plot i guess), the songs/quotes i used in this aren’t mine!!!

~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~

You watched as the morning mist slowly faded, the sun showing it away. You watched as the curtains fluttered against the touch of a delicate wind. You watched as the sparks of dawn came to life under the sky's watchful eye. You watched the tree beneath your window in the glory of its blossom.

You turned your body in the other direction, the one facing not the east window but the bed. And there, beside you, you watched as he stirred hazily, his body still clad in yesterday's clothes, huffing out a quiet breath before his eyelashes fluttered open to reveal the pair of familiar blue eyes.

You watched, and his eyes told you the most amazing story – his look was disoriented, then bewildered, and then, well, the most gorgeous smile stretched onto his features, and it told the rest – love, and hope, and home.

That story is the one I will tell you today.

~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~

The first day of school was always a straining one. All the way from elementary school to high school, it was a constant in your life.

There was, however, one more constant. Your best friend.

Steve Rogers was truly the most wonderful of boys.

You two met when you were very young, your mothers getting along well, so you had no choice but to do so as well. And you did get along, splendidly. You became fast friends, not stopping even when his other friends were telling him about 'girl germs' or when your other friends were constantly asking if you wanted him to be your boyfriend, or if he was. What you and Steve had transcended it, in a way.

You grew together, and you watched as Steve Rogers became the most wonderful of men. He was your best friend, and you loved him with your whole heart. Platonically, of course.

You smiled at him fondly as the both of you stepped into your new college, in through the big iron gates. As far as you looked there was grass, trees, flowers. The big cobblestone building stood tall in the distance, and if you listened carefully, you could hear the chatter of students above the sound of the wind that was gently ruffling your uniform skirt.  

"Excited?" Steve asked, smiling back at you.

"Nervous," you let out a quiet laugh.

"You shouldn't be," he answered, "look at this place!" he gestured around, "you fit right in here with all the-" he cut himself off, closing his mouth before continuing, "you fit right in!"

"Yeah, maybe. This place is just… dreamy," you smiled. "But that doesn't stop me from being nervous."

"Well, you have no reason to be," he took your hand in his and squeezed it reassuringly.

You hoped he was right. You never liked being far away from home, but this school was truly the school of your dreams, and well, with Steve by your side… you could never be that far away from home.

~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~

Adjusting was… an experience, certainly. This school was like nothing you've known before, the uniform seemed a bit excessive, the school halls were so incredibly long, and the grounds so vast you could barely see the outside. And yet, it felt like something about this place was magical. Like it accepted you right in, it wanted you to be there. The library was huge, and you've already spent countless hours digging away for course related materials and, well, less course related materials. The vast grounds meant you could walk out every day in a different direction, if you wanted to, and find a new hidden treasure.

You shared your thoughts with Steve when you discovered one of these treasures together. It was fairly early evening, you two had just gotten out of class and were walking off the long day you've had, and you suddenly came across some high rose bushes. Steve tried to see what was on the other side of them, but it was too tall even for him, so you circled around and found a small, rusty gate. You went through it to discover a small fountain, with a marble statue of a mermaid in the center.

You gasped in delight, unable to contain yourself from running to kneel on the grass next to it, looking into the water curiously. Dipping your hand in tentatively, you shivered at the touch of the chilly water, and immediately took out your hand, massaging it in your other one to warm it up.

Steve laughed as he finally caught up with you, not running but walking calmly. He dipped his hand in the water as well, before raising his brow mischievously. Before you could ask him what's going on, he took his hand out of the water and sprayed the cold droplets of water right on your face.

"Steven Grant Rogers!" you said, shocked, "You did not just do that," you glared at him.

"You know what, you're right," he began shuffling away, "I didn't," he stood up with a cheeky smile as you continued to glare at him, "It was a happy accident."

"Oh I'll show you happy accident!" you couldn't contain your laughter anymore as you dipped your hand in the water again, getting up to chase him around the little garden. He managed to evade you for a bit, and then you finally caught up to him, placing your cold hand right on the back of his neck. He turned around, making him lose his balance and fall down onto the grass, which in turn made you topple over him, stopping your fall with your hands just when you were about to fall onto his chest.

"Alright, I surrender!" he lifted his hands up.

"Good," you smirked.

There was a moment where you just stared into each other's eyes, each sparkling with a smile. It was broken when Steve asked, "Well, can I, uh, get up now?"

You noticed you ended up straddling his hips, which you then fumbled to undo, standing back up hastily. You dusted your skirt a little awkwardly, avoiding Steve's eyes as he got up too. You didn't even know why you were feeling so awkward. You've had plenty of play fights with Steve, there was no reason for this one to be different.

But Steve just extended his arm to you, like he did on the first day you were here. You took it, and just like that, you were fine again.

"Do you know, Stevie, I think there's something magical about this school," you told him as you were walking.

"Really? Why do you think that?"

"Well, the library's huge a-"

Steve burst into laughter, and once it died down a little, he said, "I'm sorry, it's just so… like you to say a big room full of books is magical. It's true, don't get me wrong," he said before you could get annoyed, "but I feel like no one but you would have vocalized that truth."

"Well then, lucky I'm here," you smiled.

"Yeah," he said softly, "very lucky."

~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~

About a month later it turned out the school holds a ball twice a year, at the start of winter and at the end of spring, right before the school year ends. At first you were a little shocked, but you quickly warmed up to the idea, given that it was very much on brand with everything else in the school.

You did obviously make more friends than just Steve, so you and your friends went to get dresses together. Roaming between the big expansive stores was fun, but after a while you all realized it wasn't very affordable, and not really your style. You wandered into a small, secluded second hand shop, where you found the perfect dress – fancy but not overly glamorous, a color that suited you beautifully, and not too bad of a price. It made you feel like a princess, the long skirts shuffling gently behind you as you stepped out of the fitting room to show it to your friends, who were just in love with it as you were and told you to buy it right away.

That night you went home with a dress in your hand and a smile in your heart.

~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~

As the school year progressed, you started picking up and drying different flowers you found on the grounds, keeping them between pages of your notebooks. A bit of a messy hobby at times, but it made you happy.

You were just writing a letter to your family, trying to figure out if and which flower you should attach to it, when you heard a knock on your dorm door.

"Just a second!" you called out before shutting the ink box, putting down the dip pen before getting up and opening your door. There, you found a flustered Steve, smiling at you with a few honeysuckle flowers in his hand.

"I, uh, brought these for you," he said timidly, "I know you collect flowers and I don't think you have some of these yet."

"I don't!" you smiled and took them from Steve's hand, "thank you!"

You ushered him in before putting the honeysuckles on your desk. "What's up?"

"Nothing much," he shrugged. He saw the letter and pen on your desk. "Oh, am I interrupting you? I'm sorry, I could come back later if y-"

"It's alright Stevie," you chuckled, "I was just writing home. Anything you'd want me to tell my family for you?"

"Ummm… hi?" he smiled bashfully and you both laughed.

"Well, that's just too long! I don't have any more place on the page for such eloquent greetings!" you teased.

"Alright, then no, I don't have anything to say to them. I wrote my family a few days ago already, so if you wanted to say anything to them, you'll just have to wait till next time."

"Anyways," you smiled, "did you need anything?"

"Not really," he shook his head, "I just, well, I don't really have a person to go with to, you know, the ball thing, so i-"

"So you want me to set you up?" you giggled. "Is it Ella? Or is it Kathrine?"

"No, let me finish," he half heartedly grumbled. "I was thinking, I wanted to ask you to come with me," he smiled timidly, averting his gaze. After you didn't say anything, he continued, "I mean, I didn't think you had anyone to go with either, and since we've been friends since forever, I thought-"

"No, yeah, that's a great idea!" you spoke up quickly, "Sorry, I just spaced for a moment, I think that'd be great, since no one really asked me and stuff," you shrugged and smiled.

"Great!" he smiled.

"Great," you nodded. You both chuckled, not really knowing what to say.

"I should leave you to get back to your letter," Steve said after a moment. "I'll, um, see you around."

You told him goodbye before shutting the door behind him and sitting back down at your desk. But you found you didn't have it in you to pick up your pen. No, your train of thought was lost, and was now racing a hundred miles per hour, because –

Because why would he ask you. Because he could've asked any other girl and they would've probably said yes, yet the thought of him going with another girl made your stomach drop in a peculiar way. The obvious answer was that it was just about his comfort zone, which you knew Steve was prone to staying in.

Yeah, that's it. It's just comfortable. Familiar.

~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~

The night before the ball, you found yourself tossing and turning, unable to fall asleep. At around 2 am, you officially gave up and traded in your pajamas for some more presentable clothes in case someone is also awake, and made your way to the library.

Over the few months you've been here, the library has become somewhat of an escape for you. Sure, it was where you did a large amount of your schoolwork, but it was also the place that allowed you to 'travel' to several magnificent worlds.

You made your way as quietly as you could, picking up one of your favorite classics. It was an old, worn in version of Dumas' "The Count of Monte Cristo", a book which you vaguely remembered reading in your childhood and, when you stumbled upon it here, fell in love with all over again.

The place was dark, and you wanted to keep it like that, giving you less of a chance to be disturbed by others. You sat down and lit a candle, getting immersed in your book. So immersed, you didn't notice the sound of footsteps coming up behind you.

"I figured I'd find you here," Steve smiled, sitting down on the wooden chair next to yours.

"How come?" you smiled back and closed the book, not before putting a bookmark in it.

"I went up to your room to see if you were still awake because I wanted to show you something. When you didn't answer my knock, I guessed you were either in extremely deep sleep or you were here. And would you look at that, I was right," he smirked.

You chuckled. "What did you want to show me?"

"Come on," he stood up and extended his hand to you, "I can show you right now."

You smiled and followed him as he led you outside, into the chilly night. You shivered slightly as the cold air hit your face. "Steve," you complained, "I wasn't really planning on going outside. I don't have my jacket."

"Oh, right," he said, stopping in his tracks, "sorry. But you could just take mine," he said, while already shrugging it off.

"No, Steve, then you'll get-"

"Come on!" he smiled, wrapping the jacket around your shoulders, "let's go!"

You giggled at his excitement, adjusting his jacket a little before following him further away. He took you somewhere you had shockingly never been before, a small, secluded field of hydrangeas, peaceful in the moonlight. You looked around in awe.

"I knew you'd like it," he smiled. "And look," he gestured upwards, "it's far enough from the building so we can really see the stars."

You looked up and your breath caught in your throat at the sight. He was right. The stars never seemed so many or so bright to you than in the moment.

"See right there? That's Ursa Major, and that-"

You looked to him, and his words faded away in your mind, becoming a low stream of sounds. Everything seemed to become softer, distant, while he flooded your mind.

In that instant, it looked like Steve had the moon in him. Soft, and bright, and beautiful. His pale skin glistened under the moonlight, but when his eyes turned to meet yours, you thought you may have been wrong.

Because in them, you found the stars.

~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~

And there it was, the big night, the night of the ball. You were nearly ready to put on your dress when you heard a knock at your door. You opened it to find Steve there, smiling.

"I just came to check in on you," he said, handing you a few hibiscus flowers. You smiled, taking them from him, your fingers brushing against his.

"Well, I'm doing quite well," you said, and wordlessly invited him in. He followed you inside and shut the door behind him.

"You look great," he said.

"I'm not even wearing my dress yet," you giggled. Squinting, you tried to figure out what about him seemed off to you. Then, when you realized it, you stepped up to him and brought up your hand to fix his shirt collar, which was partly stuffed under his tie. You then rested your hand next to his collarbone, above his heart.

"You look great too," you said softly, smiling a small smile up at him.

"Thanks," he breathed.

"Alright, I better get ready," you chuckled, stepping away from him. "I'll see you there."

~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~

Steve didn't think of himself as a very sophisticated guy. Sure, he was smart enough, but he was no match to you, for example. He wasn't that big on words or analogies.

And yet, when he saw you step down the stairs into the ballroom, his first thought was that you looked like the sun, ethereal and radiant in your beauty, almost blindingly so; your hair was styled in a simple manner, your face stretched in a soft smile as your wonderous eyes roamed around the room. Your dress created an angelic sort of look, and as you gently walked down each step, your hand delicately gliding on the banister, he nearly couldn't believe you were real, that you were making your way to him.

The moment your eyes met his, your smile became bigger, your steps quickened, much like his heartbeat. When you arrived, he extended his arm to you, like he has a habit of doing, and greeted you a soft hello over the sounds of the dainty music.

The night went great, it really did. You two danced together, ate some of the fancy food, laughed. It was… magical. There was one point, when you were swaying together to a slow song, when he thought –

Well, it didn't matter what he thought, didn't it? Because at the end of the night, you didn't wait on him. No, you sneaked out with some guy in the year above you.

Steve wanted to be angry. He couldn't, not at you anyways.

Ever since a year ago, when you found out you were going to the same college, he knew. The relief that washed over him when he heard the news, the gratitude of being able to be by your side – he didn’t understand how he didn't see it sooner.

He assumed, sooner or later, you'd see in him what he sees in you. The sun. Happiness; bright, celestial, divine.

But maybe you can't see what's simply not there.

Steve went to his dorm. He went to sleep, but his nightmares awakened him again and again. Nightmares of losing you. So, without any other choice, at around 5 am he decided to give up and get up, maybe take a shower.

At the moment, it felt like real life wasn't any better than his nightmares. He hoped at some point, that would change.

~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~

"Damien!" you laughed breathlessly as he pulled you through the endless corridors.  

"What?" he chuckled, stopping and turning back towards you, pulling you a little closer to him by your joint hands. You panted a little in an attempt to catch your breath before you spoke.

"Where are we going?"

"Oh, wherever you want to! Just away from that stuffy ballroom," he grinned.

"It wasn't stuffy, I thought it was very pretty!" you defended it with a smile.

"Not as pretty as you," he softly said, bringing his hand to cup your cheek. He's been complimenting you like that since you two met an hour ago at the ball, and well, you were a simple girl; you really wanted him to kiss you right now.

He took a step closer and his hand traveled to your chin, holding it and gently tilting your face up. Just as his lips touched yours, your eyes fluttered shut, allowing yourself to succumb to his embrace, your lips moving against his. You broke apart for air, and you opened your eyes when you remembered.

"Damien," you said, "I just remembered, I was with my friend at the ball and I didn't tell him I was going… can we go back for a second?"

He examined your face for a second before smiling and saying, "Sure. Just for a bit though," he winked.

You made your way back in silence, the sound of your footsteps muffled by the carpets below you. Looking at him from the corner of your eye, you found him looking ahead with a smile. Bashfully, you smiled too, slightly biting your lower lip. Soon enough, you arrived.

Staying close to the ballroom doors, Damien asked you, "Can you see him?"

"I don't think so," you said with a frown, scanning the dancing crowd with your eyes. Steve was tall, usually you were able to easily pick out his frame from any crowd, but you couldn't see him anywhere nearby.

"Well," you said after a couple more moments passed, "he probably realized it and went already," you shrugged.

"In that case," Damien gestured at the exit, "After you, madam."

You giggled and bowed a small bow before exiting, Damien on your heels. You spent the night walking the grounds, talking to each other over the sound of the wind. When it was getting late, he escorted you to your room and gave you a good night's kiss, a perfect gentleman, just like you read about in books.

That night you slept peacefully, no dreams, good or bad, plaguing your consciousness. The next morning you woke up refreshed, ready to take on the day.

~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~

You and Steve were still friends, but something changed. You didn't really see it, too occupied with school and Damien to notice, but there was a shift, a distance that wasn't there before. You still talked, you still hung out from time to time, it just… wasn't the same.

One day, when you were in the library together, one cold February night, Steve asked you a peculiar question.

"What do you think is the best way to tell someone you love them?"

"Why, any Valentine's day plans?" you joked.

"Nothing in particular," he shrugged.

"Well, I think the best way to tell someone you love them is with words. Just… say it, or write it, you know?"

"Yeah, I guess that's nice," he smiled, returning to his book.

"So, who's the lucky lady, huh?" you nudged him with your elbow, "is it Kathrine? Because I'm telling you, I really think if you'd ask h-"

"It's not Kathrine, because it's no one," he cut you off with a chuckle. "It was just a general question."

You never bugged him about it again, quite honestly you forgot about the whole ordeal.

~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~

The months of the winter passed, and lo and behold, the spring settled over you. The winds were less harsh, the flowers were blooming again, the sun was shining brightly. With only a few scattered days of still wintery weather, you mostly studied outside on the grass, maybe under a tree. You were making the best of it, inviting your friends of Damien to study with you too. You felt like bursting into song.

One day, when you and Damien were sitting on the grass, studying together, he picked a rhododendron, sticking it behind your ear. The large flower didn't hold on for long, and fell down after a couple of seconds. You laughed, and he chuckled. Picking it up, you tried to put it on once more, but it just wouldn't stay. Then, you took it again and this time, stuck it behind his ear. Somehow, it managed to stay on.

You laughed, "You look very pretty."

"I do?" he asked, fluttering his lashes playfully, "why thank you darling."

After a while, he took it off and pressed in between the pages of his notebook. "Like you always do," he smiled, showing off the closed notebook before putting it back into his bag.

"Be careful," you giggled, "if it falls out the entire bag will be full of petals, and even when you’d think you got them all out, you'd find a couple more a few days later."

"Are you speaking from experience?" he asked cheekily.

"Why of course not! I was born a professional," you stuck your nose up indignantly, making him laugh.

"Of course you were, how could I forget," he offered you his hand and helped you up.

As you walked together back to the school building, you had a feeling you forgot something, or like something was missing. You looked back at the place you were sitting in seconds ago, but there was nothing there.

"Everything alright?" Damien asked.

"Yeah, everything's great," you answered, squeezing his hand that was clutched in yours.

~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~

When the second ball was approaching, Damien had started to send you love letters. Every time you had gotten one, you felt your heart pick up its pace, a smile stretching on your face. Some of them were poems, some quotes, some just sentences, you didn't know which he wrote and which he read and thought of you. You took to the habit of saving them all in a small box in your room, going through them every couple of days.

I see you everywhere, in the stars, in the river, to me you're everything that exists, the reality of everything ~Virginia Woolf  

Every one of them was simply signed with three x's, signifying kisses. You smiled as you put the most recent one into your pocket, intent on putting it with the rest later.

Some days, you'd get small notes, and some days would be a rather large page. You loved both.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of being and ideal grace. I love thee to the level of every day's Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. I love thee freely, as men strive for right. I love thee purely, as they turn from praise. I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.

~Elizabeth Barrett Browning 

You resonated with the words, you've always loved poems. Weirdly, you've never talked to Damien about your love of them, but you guessed he just… knew. That's what made him so special.  

If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk in my garden forever. ~Alfred Lord Tennyson

That one made you stop in your tracks for a moment. It made you think of Steve. He didn't really bring you flowers anymore. Well, maybe he just didn't find any new ones.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom.      If this be error and upon me proved,      I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

~Shakespeare

You smiled brightly as you read the note. You were getting new ones every other day. Amongst the chaos of exams, it was nice, knowing that's the way he had to keep in touch with you. You were just done reading it when your friend came up behind your back, reading over your shoulder.

"Oh, did Damien bring you this?" she smiled. "You guys are so cute together."

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you The love of all man’s days both past and forever: Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life. The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours – And the songs of every poet past and forever.

~ Rabindranath Tagore

That last one you found in the library copy of "The Count of Monte Cristo". You gravitated towards it every time you were anxious, or couldn't sleep, or both. It was a comfort. Finding the note there nearly made you cry; the long day you've had mixed with the love you felt bringing tears to your eyes. You blinked them away with a smile, stuffing the note in your pocket before starting to read the book.

~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~

Steve saw you open the book and get the note. He smiled to himself.

He didn't know if this would work, or if you'd think your boyfriend wrote them. He just wanted to make you smile.

He also wanted to make you know, make you understand what he was feeling. But you weren't exactly emotionally available right now, so Steve did the best he could; he waited.

In the meantime, he went to search for another poetry book. He was surprised you hadn't recognized his handwriting yet. He did write it a bit more neatly than he usually did, with more careful attention.

Maybe she recognized it but didn't want to say anything. Maybe that was a pitying smile, whispered a voice in his head. He shook it off.

He knew you weren't his, but he couldn't give up hope. He could wait some more.

~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~

The spring / end of the year ball was approaching in giant steps. You were done with your exams, and already had a dress, which you adamantly refused to show Damien despite his repeated pleas. Now, you were spending an afternoon outside, enjoying the fresh air picnicking with some of your friends, who were playing a card game you couldn't care to learn the rules of. You were taking photos instead, borrowing one of your friends' camera and taking some pictures of them playing, of the scenery.

"Has Damien asked you to the ball yet?" one of them asked.

"Oh, not yet," you shrugged, "I'm sure he will though. I mean, you've seen the notes he sent me," you giggled, "I don't see another option."

Just then, you saw a figure coming towards you from afar. In the other direction, you saw Damien approaching, and before you had a chance to wonder about the other person, he was there, planting a kiss on your cheek. You put the camera down on the blanket and smiled at him.

"Speaking of the devil," your friend chuckled.

"Only good things, I hope," he sat down next to you.

"Of course," you laughed and leaned away from him to snap his picture, "what else could we have said?"

"Well, that's great, because I was wondering," he took a breath, "do you want to see me do a card trick?"

"Yes, sure," you said, slightly confused but still smiling.

He held up a card. "Could you tell me what card this is?"

"A leaf ace," you said.

"Great," he flipped it around in his hands a couple of times, before pulling off a complicated hand movement you couldn't keep track of, and was now holding a small, card sized mirror. "Now, could you tell me what card this is?"

"It's… a mirror," you said, puzzled.

"Look closer," he encouraged.

"Still a mirror, Dames," you chuckled.

"No, it’s a queen of hearts!" he laughed, "my heart, more specifically," he leaned in closer and smiled. "Would you go to the ball with me?"

"Yes! Of course I will!" you laughed, wrapping your arms around his neck and pulling him into a kiss. Just then, you heard the shutter of the camera clicking, and broke apart from him, laughing.

~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~

The night of the ball finally arrived. You were in Damien's room, getting ready, when you finally had the mind to say, "Oh, Damien, I don't think I ever thanked you for the notes," you smiled at him from the other corner of the room. He was standing in front of the mirror, tying his tie, while you were sitting on the bed, already in your dress, which you finally let him see.

"Oh, from last week's lecture? No problem love," he smiled at you, your eyes meeting through the mirror.

"No," you giggled, "I meant the notes you've been leaving me."

He looked at you, puzzled. "You know, the notes with the– oh come on, don’t play dumb," you scoffed playfully.

"I'm not," he said, "I genuinely have no idea what you're talking about." He finished the knot and came to stand in front of you, offering you his hand and helping you up. You stood in front of him, squinting.

"Okay," you said after a few moments. Smiling, you noticed his collar was partly stuffed under his tie, raising your hand to fix it and –

"Oh," you frowned softly.

You knew who wrote the notes. You knew all along. I mean, how couldn't you recognize the handwriting of the person you know the best? Who knows you better than anyone else?

The person you've been neglecting the past few months. And yet, he was sending you love letters. You felt like crying, because you should've known it was him. More than that, you should've realized; you love him too.  

You love him so much it nearly hurts. The man with flowers in his hand and stars in his eyes, the one who took you to every bookstore you ever wanted to visit, who gave you his jacket when you were cold, who knew not only what your favorite book was, but also what copy of it you would take.

As good as Damien was to you, he was never the one for you. He was charming, lovable for sure.

But he wasn't your Steve.

Your Steve who was probably going to the ball alone, or maybe not even going.

"Is everything okay?" Damien asked, a concerned frown on his features.

"No, I- look, Damien," you took a deep breath. "I owe you an explanation, and I swear, I will give it to you, but I just… I can't do this anymore."

"What do you mean can't do this anymore? Do you not want to go to the ball or-"

"No," you closed your eyes forcefully before opening them, "us. I don't think we should be together anymore."

"Where is this coming from? Love, is everything o-"

"It's not okay, Damien!" tears welled up in your eyes, "It's not fair to you, I know. But I just… I have to go," you stepped away from his embrace.

"Go where? You're not making any sense, please, can you just-"

"I'm sorry, I am so, so sorry, but I have to go. I promise I'll explain everything, just… not right now," you said shakily, fumbling to collect your things before leaving the dorm, and a stunned Damien in your wake.

You weren't sure where you were going, you just knew you had to find him.

~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~

You roamed the corridors in a bit of a daze until you finally realized your legs were carrying you to the library, and shook your head, deciding to go there anyway since there was a decent chance Steve was there.

He wasn't. You knocked on his dorm room door, but he didn't answer it, so he probably wasn't there either. You went to sneak a look at the ball, but you didn't find him there too.

You were just about to give up when you looked out of one of the windows. There, you saw the small glass gazebo that was a little further away from the building. The light was on, and there was someone there. You couldn't tell if it was Steve, but you figured it wouldn't hurt to try.

You went down the stairs and outside. The night was surprisingly crisp, and the dress you were wearing had short sleeves, but you continued anyway. As you got closer, you could see the silhouette clearer; it was indeed Steve.

You stopped a few yards next to it. Now that you found him, you didn't know what to say. I'm sorry didn't feel like enough, and –

Your train of thought was cut off by Steve turning around, his eyes locking with yours through the large glass windows. You swallowed heavily.

He went outside, crossing the distance and standing in front of you. Both of you were quiet for a moment before he spoke up.

"Not going to the ball?" he asked.

"I could ask you the same thing."

"I feel like it's obvious I'm not going. Where's your boyfriend?"

"I don't know."

Silence settled between you for a couple of minutes, each one of you absorbed in your own thoughts. Eventually, you were the one to speak up this time.

"I know you wrote them, Steve."

He chuckled. "Okay. What do you want me to say?"

"That you meant them," your voice broke with emotion, not knowing how true the words were until your lips uttered them out loud.

"I did. I do. I can't say I'm sorry for that."

"You shouldn't be," you said, "I'm that one that should be sorry. I am sorry," you looked up at him, your eyes sincere. "I'm sorry I didn't realize it was you sooner. And I don't mean the notes, Steve," you stepped closer to him.

"Then what do you mean?"

You licked your lips hesitantly, bringing your face closer to his. You didn't know which one of you finally broke the distance, but suddenly his lips were on yours, and it's all you could think about. You were kissing Steve Rogers, and it was enchanting. You wrapped your hands around his neck as he wrapped his around your waist, pulling you impossibly closer. You melted into his touch as your hands tangled in the soft hair on the nape of his neck. One of his hands came up to cup your cheek gently, and suddenly you were both smiling so hard you broke apart, gasping for air. Your foreheads stayed connected, leaning on each other as you slowly opened your eyes.

"This," you whispered, "I mean this. I love you, Steve."

"I love you too," Steve laughed, "so much. I was afraid you will never say that. That I'd never get to hear you say that to me. I love you," he said again, his eyes looking into yours.

Just at that moment, it bizarrely started to rain. "Really?" you looked up at the sky, "it's spring! Hell, it's almost summer!"

"Maybe it's summer rain," Steve suggested with a smile.

"But it ruined our moment," you playfully pouted.

"We always have another one," he smiled, pulling you in for another kiss, not minding the rain that was now wetting your dress, his suit. You felt the raindrops fall on the top of your heads, but the sensation was a thin echo compared to Steve's lips on yours.

A thunder roared, and you broke apart once again.

"Maybe we should get inside," you suggested.

"Maybe we should," he grinned, "last one there is a rotten egg!"

He started running before you could even register what he said. Just like he did when you were kids.

"Wait!" you laughed, running after him, gathering your skirt in your hands, "Not fair! I have a dress!"

He stopped and ran back to you before picking you up with ease, carrying you bridal style to the entrance and putting you down right on the threshold.

"You're a rotten egg, Stevie," you giggled.

He looked down to see that indeed, your legs were technically inside while his weren't.

"Don't worry," you cupped his cheek and tilted it upwards so he'd meet your gaze, "you're my rotten egg."

You both laughed before you went inside. He offered you his arm and you wove yours through it, leaning your head on his shoulder.

Taking your time, you strolled through the corridors in comfortable silence until you reached your room. You came inside and turned on the heating, Steve right on your heels, hugging you from behind.

"I can't believe it's raining," you looked out of the window with a smile.

"I can't believe you're mine," he whispered into your neck.

You tilted your head back to kiss him softly before you involuntarily shivered. Wordlessly, Steve guided you to the bed, tucking you into the blanket. He was about to leave, but you opened your blanket and gestured for him to come cuddle you. He chuckled and climbed in next to you, wrapping his arms around you again.

"Tell me a story," you said as you laid your head on his chest.

"Once upon a time," he started, "there was a very beautiful princess. And she chose a normal boy. No one knew why she did it. They asked her, 'why not a prince?' and sh-"

"And she said she didn't like princes, but she loved the boy more than anything else," you smiled.

"Wow, more than big libraries?" he chuckled.

"Yes, even more than big libraries," you giggled. Humming contently, you snuggled even closer to him, the rise and fall of his chest lulling you into a peaceful sleep.

~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~

Which brings us to where we started this story, the next morning.

The story Steve's eyes told you that morning was better than any other story you've ever heard. It was a love story that you would tell your children, and your grandchildren.

And every time Steve heard you telling it, he sat and listened with a smile.

You once asked him why he always listens to that story, it's not like he didn't know it, he lived it.

"I did live it," he answered, "but I still live it, every single day. And it gets better with each day," he leaned down to kiss you.

Steve Rogers was the most wonderful of men, and over the years he grew to be the most wonderful of husbands, of fathers and of grandfathers.

You both grew, but there was one thing that stayed the same – his heart was yours, and your heart was his; forever.

~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~

flower meanings:

Rose – love.

Honeysuckle - pure happiness, sweet love, devoted affection.

Hydrangea - gratitude, grace, beauty, abundance. some colors also symbolize bad luck.

Hibiscus - variously symbolizes health, delicacy, beauty, respect and hospitality.

Rhododendron – beware.  

p.s. - the meanings are based on my limited searches, also there are some flowers with more than one meaning:)

~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~

i’d love it if you’d want to tell me your thoughts!! if you’ve stuck through this entire thing - thank you!!!<3

Taglist:  @horny-nd-bored​ @shannon124 @perfectlyharolds​ @wintersoldierslut​ @iceebabies​  @sleepingpapermouse @steverogerswasalwaysworthy @holtzkinnon @angelicl-y @stydia-4-ever @thatoneperson5000 @fangirlfree​ @kaitcordx25 @bequeening​ @steve-barry-damon-logan​ @itscrazycherryblossomcollection​ @hollandxmarvel​ @stargazingfangirl18 @readsreblogsfics @onetwo3000 @beritmetal @harrystylesholland @jazbot2000 @anobscurename @xxxtwilightaxelxxx @peggycarter-steverogers @evansphnx12 @starlightcrystalline @procrastinatingsapphictrash

if you wanna join / be removed from a taglist, comment/message me! much love <3

[recurring-polynya]

can i just answer them all??? is there room for that?? ill do 1, 4, 7, 9 for now. 1. sheeesh i love all of your works but i think the one that takes the cake is THIAM, followed very closely by TCBPYK 4. I love your renruki it is just so... theres something so beautiful about the way you write these two; completely in character, and how well you understand their bond, and the way you mix in their senses of humor and augh i love it 7. I literally sob every single time i read that one part with the fake proposal in ALILNAT..... its so raw and authentic and i cannot keep my heart still its just so sweet.. 9. ALL OF THEM (if i have to pick one, the fic that i have now adopted as my 'stepfanfic' since i love to draw for it so much for you, TCBPYK) but best of all is the writer ur so metal poly we love u!

(Fanfic Asks for the Asker)

My favorite fic of yours

It's really funny to see my fic labeled by their abbreviations, because I rarely think of them that way and I'm here trying to guess which ones they are. I need to give things shorter titles. 😂 this could be permanent is your fault!! I mean, a lot of people liked it, but I was just having trouble getting momentum on it (I think because it's a modern au, which is just not my usual beat), and now, here we are. I might actually finish it (she says, optimistically, as if we're not barely to the middle) Anyway, I'm really grateful for your enthusiasm for it, because it really picked me up when I was feeling really blocked up and depressed at the beginning of the summer. 💕

4. The best ship you've written for

lol, that is objectively the correct answer. 😂 I love them too much. I wish I could branch out and write some other ships or some other fandom, just for a change, but I always get bored with it immediately and would rather just write some other variation on Renruki. They're just...so...💕😍💖💪🐰🔥⚔💯

7. What made me the most emotional after reading

I wrote that bit way, way ahead of most of the rest of act iii, and the fact that I had to get to it is probably the only reason I managed to finish. I mean, I am very fond of a little in love, but all the complicated plotting and misdirections and politics was probably one of the hardest things I have ever had to write. I am very fond of that proposal. My man was trying not to be heartfelt and then he came out with "I will carry your shamisen case across the entire Seireitei. I will always let you have the spicy curry rice." Throw him directly in the garbage.

9. A fic i'm excited for you updating/posting

I am working on it! Writing can be very time-consuming, you see, because I had to take, like, nine hours to make an outfit moodboard for the thing that's going to happen in the next chunk of the story, and I'm probably going to have to draw Rukia's dress, because I only liked bits and pieces of the ones I found and need to combine them visually before I can describe it. Fortunately, this is also the fun part of writing.

[raplinesmoon]

Khwabon Ke Parindey: A Rapline Story (Teaser)

Pairing: Architect!Hoseok x Named!OC, Writer!Namjoon x Named!OC, Businessman!Yoongi x Reader/OC, Hoseok x Yoongi x Namjoon (platonic)

Genres: series, road trip!AU, sfw, slice of life AU, mostly fluff and crack/humor, some angst (it’s me writing this come on)

Warnings (for this chapter, will be updated as series goes on): cursing, strained friendships, mentions of past incidents resulting in a rift, blink and you’ll miss it mention of cheating, bumping into your ex (ugh), lots of luxury brand name drops (bc Yoongi lowkey a tsundere snob), Hoseok being a sweetheart we adore him, Namjoon being a mess (sorry bby)

Teaser word count: 442 words

Summary: Three lifelong friends reunite for their last road trip in Spain before one of them gets married. Along the journey, they encounter their fair share of ups and downs - in life and with each other (again i am so bad at summaries)

A/N: Hi everyone! I’ve been wanting to write this story forever, and let’s consider this teaser an early b-day gift for @joonscore as the very indulgent Rap Line x ZNMD fic that she did not ask for, but I wrote it anyway bc I think she’ll love it! This will be a series following the plot of one of my favorite movies ever, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, inspired by this moodboard i made. I hope you all enjoy (and please lmk if you’d like to be added to the taglist!)

Listen to: dil dhadakne do - zmnd

Banner by me!

(teaser below the cut)

“Shit! Fuck! Shit! Ow!” Namjoon curses, stubbing his toe yet again on the edge of his bed.

His room has quite literally exploded onto itself. Piles and piles of clothes decorate his bed, the floor, his nightstand. How was he supposed to pack all this stuff into his suitcase for Spain? He’d need an outfit for everything… swimming… clubbing … a nice dinner.

Namjoon gulps and chokes on air as he looks at his single lone dress shirt … it’s what he wanted to wear when he met his father for the first time. First impressions matter. And while Namjoon had been less than impressed with his dad, he’d make sure his dad would never feel the same way about him. That he’d regret ever leaving him and his mom.

Snapping out of it . . . he groans out loud. He really should have bought a bigger suitcase for this. Maybe one of those fancy multi-compartment bags that Yoongi was always going on about.

. . .

Rows of pristinely folded white shirts and rolled ties greet Yoongi as he wonders what to pack for this trip. Was it hot in Spain? Still, he should be presentable. He was a damn businessman, he should look the part.

Glancing over at his Dior satchel, he stares into the empty compartment. He was missing something.

Shit! He’d almost forgotten. The lone gift bag on his vanity taunts him, and he rolls his eyes at the ridiculous gift that Hoseok had insisted he bring with him.

Hoseok would already be on his way to the airport by now, he knows that. He’d always been their glue, the most eager one out of the three of them to have The Three Musketeers together, against the world.

. . .

The winding roads are the furthest thing from Hoseok’s mind as he makes his way to Incheon International Airport. It’s strange. He’d been the one looking forward to this trip for the longest time, but now that it’s finally here, his stomach is swelling with anxiety.

Nayeon and him had never been apart for this long in the entire span of their two-year relationship. Three whole weeks. He’d miss her, but she made sure that they both had Skype money in their accounts to call each other and video chat as many times as she wanted.

And his friends. So much had gone unspoken between them for the past four years. Ever since it happened, he felt them drifting further and further away from each other, like growing up had created a wall between them. And Hoseok wanted nothing more than to be the one who broke the wall down. He wanted his old friends back.

[daisylincs]

Today is, officially, the last day of 2020 - so it's literally just in time that I'm getting to @aosrecweek's amazing challenge. But that does go to show the nature of this crazy year a little bit, right? Time has just been INSANE, and I honestly cannot believe it's so close to over.

That said, I want to put it out there that everyone - absolutely everyone - who created something in this mad year, is a SUPERHERO. Like. We could have hidden away in dark corners, curled into little balls, and lost touch with our creativity entirely - but instead, we made some of the most fantastic content I have ever seen. And, excuse the language, but that is fucking amazing, of each and every single one of us. We're bloody INCREDIBLE, you guys. We really are.

Now, the rules of this challenge dictate that I've got to start with some of my own things, then repeat with the same number of creations by other people. So I'm going to do that, and I apologise for the sheer length (and self-plug-iness) of what is about to follow - but, bloody incredible, remember? I really mean that. 💜💜💜

My Own:

you could call me babe for the weekend - 19k of Spideychelle being oblivious, mutually pining IDIOTS while being snowed in. And, you know, fake dating. (This thing was SO MUCH FUN to write and though, yeah, it got completely out of control, as evidenced by the 19k, I still really love it.)

'tis the damn season - my first attempt at writing a multi-chap, and, yeah, it only has one chapter as of now, but I really love said chapter. Basically, it's Daisy and Mackelena being friends, and honestly just the BEST friends - I adore the style I managed to achieve in this thing. Plus, the Skimmons I have planned up next is going to be da bomb.

the closest thing - Philindaisy plus fake family. Also; amusement parks. And for a fangirl like me - well, it was pretty much a dream come true to write!

oh valley of plenty - in this fic, I basically told myself, so AoS won't give us Huntingbird in the finale? Fine. I'll just do it myself then - in the fluffiest way possible. And that's exactly what I did - making them, and their kids, be best friends in Perthshire.

maybe life should be about more - a very angsty Skimmons and Daisy-centric AU, focusing on the internalised homophobia Daisy has experienced through her life, and shaking it off (and eventually, y'know, getting together with Jemma.)

and it's dark in a cold december (but i've got you to keep me warm) - Fitzsimmons just make such a supreme pairing for hurt/comfort, what with how insanely well they understand each other and care about each other, so I'm really glad for the Fitzsimmons Secret Santa giving me the chance to write this! Basically, this follows our science duo through a stressful mission on Christmas Eve (so yes, it's a mission fic!!) and realising that the two of them can do anything together.

july second - ahhh, one of my personal favourites to write! Daisy birthday surprise fluff will always be top-notch for me, especially for all the team-as-family fluff you can add in, especially especially that this is set in Staticquake times! Also, it's from Hunter's point of view, which will forever be the most insanely fun thing to write, I do think.

i just wanna be with you - man, I'm such a big royal fan, so getting the chance to write a modern royalty AU for my OTP was nothing short of amazing!! This is Princess Daisy and her fiancée Lincoln Campbell at their official engagement interview

see the line where the skye meets the sea - shameless season 1 bby Bus Kids fluff, featuring movie nights, singalongs and... so much fluff your teeth will rot. Also I'm really freaking proud of the pun in the title okay

'cause all that you are is all that i'll ever need - Huntingbird waking up together fluff (because, fight me, Huntingbird in their sweet moments is one of the sweetest things you will ever get to read or write.) This is also my, fluffy, take on the origin of the Franny's Saloon keychain.

we love you, we love you (and we hope you love we too) - aha, my first polyship fic! Also my first try at some actually fancy HTML formatting (forever thanks to Kat for explaining.) Both of these things combined to form a fic that even I think is ridiculously fluffy and funny, and kinda amazing, at that.

and man I don't know where the time goes (but it sure goes fast like that) - Another Bus Kids movie night fic, but this one set post-season 7, and reflecting on how far they've come. A little bit more hurt/comfort-y than it's pure fluff prequel, but still super fluffy and soft. And, of course, with a happy ending.

she shares my dreams, i hope that someday, i'll share her home - snowy Fitzsimmons fluff, complete with them falling in love at the Winter Olympics, as you do.

then you walked in and my heart went boom - 16k of Dekesy for the wife, and remarkable for that, because literally a month ago from this, I hated Dekesy with my entire soul. Then I started reading Kat's fics, and, well, fell in love with them... so much so that I wrote sixteen thousand words of enemies-to-friends-to-lovers, bed sharing holiday fluff for them.

a love like that - a Fitzsimmons Cinderella AU, featuring my two favourite science babies, in true science bby style, falling in love over science and how stupid the whole courting thing is. Also, Daisy makes a brief appearance, and she's the freaking best.

ever after - ah, probably the one single fic I'm proudest of. A post-season 7 Daisy character study focusing on her emotional rollercoaster re: losing her family/things never being the same again, which just achieves... an emotional level that I have never managed to replicate again. I was full-on sobbing while writing it, and, guys, it also part-holds the Closest To Making Kat Cry prize.

blue - Daisy character study spanning snapshots of seven seasons, and before - but tied together by something blue in every moment. Researching for this, and finding all the blue moments, was very interesting, and immensely satisfying, especially since all the moments where a little bit of blue was present actually combine to chronicle Daisy's journey on the show remarkably well.

who is that girl I see - the one time I decided to write straight angst, and straight angst with no happy ending. Melinda May post-Bahrain, folks.

take my hand, take my whole life too - aww, the first thing I wrote that I really and truly loved. A Staticquake and Fitzsimmons Actors AU, featuring a proposal on set and INCREDIBLE amounts of fluff and softness.

hold out your hand, 'cause friends will be friends - the wife's favourite, and, as second fics go, pretty damn good, if I do say so myself. It's a Soulmates AU for Staticquake and Mackelena, with the focus being on DaisyMack friendship, and lots of denial, angst, and guilt about finding their soulmates. (They figure it out eventually, don't worry - it's me, of course I made them happy.)

Fitzsimmons + Fake Dating moodboard - Fake dating will always be FAB, and picturing it out in a moodboard - especially for my clueless bby best friends in love - was the best, and super satisfying.

Staticquake + Orange moodboard - One of the cooler ideas I had for Trick or Treat (which I still have not finished, heaven help me) was to make a series of moodboards for my OTP plus different colours. This orange one is just so light, and cheerful, and happy, and honestly I kinda adore it.

This Philindaisy + Family Moodboard - making moodboards can be insanely frustrating when you just can't find the photo that fits exactly right. With this one, however, I found all the pics I needed pretty insanely fast, and, better, the whole thing just worked, and really nicely so, too.

This Bus Kids + Baking Cookies moodboard - there's absolutely NO faults to be found with tiny, adorable Skye, Fitz and Jemma concocting choc chip cookies - but I'm actually doing a tiny cheat here, because, cute as my moodboard here is, the accompanying fic by my love @eowima is the SWEETEST and best thing you could ever wish for!!!

This Daisy Johnson Appreciation Week Photoset - Day 3 of Daisy Johnson Appreciation Week focused on an emotion, and I picked confidence and power, because honestly, it's nothing short of amazing how confident and powerful our gorgeous girl has become.

This Daisy Johnson Appreciation Week Photoset - One of the times I wish I could gif, because this quote about struggling though never giving up just suits Daisy perfectly. The photos I found are cool, though, and I mean, it's Daisy, so that's already absolutely fabulous.

Other People's:

I managed to find twenty-six of my own things that I liked enough to put up there (because, yes, I'm that big a dork, 26 things for me being 26 is the way to go :D) Anyway, now that gives me the amazing chance to spotlight twenty-six of my favourite creations by my FANTASTIC mutuals! 😍

To start, my wife - Kat said I couldn't put everything she's ever written on here, so, ugh, I guess I'll just do my top five then. *grumbling* Everything by Kat is on here in spirit, though!!

Chasing Cars (even after the story ends) by @aleksandrachaev - the epic Dekesy roadtrip AU and incredible Daisy character study itself, which, I do believe, finishes today!! Words aren't enough to describe how freaking AMAZING this thing is, or how spectacularly well characterised. Just: if you haven't read this yet, you are missing out. You will laugh, you will groan, you will want to wrap Daisy in a very tight hug, and you will probably cry, too. This fic just has it all, really!

there goes the maddest man this town has ever seen by @aleksandrachaev - the post-season 7 Deke-crashes-the-Framework-Zoom-call fic I didn't know I needed (but spent the next two weeks rereading every single night.) It is absolutely INCREDIBLE, with all the Deke & Team feels we missed in the final outro scene, and honestly just the most fantastic writing. I cannot recommend it enough!

To Box It Up And Start Again (everything must go) by @aleksandrachaev - bloody hell, this BROKE me. Deke never really got to say goodbye in canon, but Kat gave him the chance to do it here. And, my freaking GOODNESS, she made it so incredibly bittersweet and heart-shattering. 10/10

i am a leaf on the wind by @aleksandrachaev - a little bit of a stretched-out, reflective moment in the season 7 finale. As Daisy lingers on the edge of death, she reflects on all the lives she could have had - and, man, what a study in bittersweetness!! This entire fic is utterly incredible, and something I think all Daisy fans should read.

Falling Into Place by @aleksandrachaev - here's a tiny cheat from me (sorry, babes, lmao) because technically this isn't one fic, but a series of three. Way too amazing to miss out on, though!! Set mid-season 7, this has the Chronicoms go after a young Mary Sue Poots to kill Quake before she can become a problem for them. They stop the Chronicoms, yes, but not without a TREMENDOUS dose of feels and hurt/comfort. There's also a wonderful little dose of Dekesy friendship, and then an adult adoption (!!) that honestly made my entire day to read. Actually, that's true for the entire series - I really canNOT yell about it enough!!

destroyer of worlds by @bobbimorseisbisexual - a study in incredible parallels between Jiaying's daughters. Utterly breathtakingly done, this will give you ALL the feels for this small and complex Inhuman family.

Muscle Memory by @robotgort and @bobbimorseisbisexual - a Huntingbird!! Bones!! AU!! And also a collaboration between two of the most fabulous Huntingbird authors in the fandom - honestly, what more can you ask for?! This will make you laugh, and gasp, and wince, and keep you guessing at each new plot twist (and also screaming at your screen for Hunter and Bobbi to get their acts together and TALK ABOUT IT.) In short: it's completely and utterly amazing, and I cannot, cannot recommend it enough!!

You Belong Among the Wildflowers by @libbyweasley - a freaking incredible Scis & Spies Regency AU! I only just started reading, but I was hooked all the way through, especially on the way Libby writes all four characters' complex relationships (and their attraction, and their history!) Everything about it is just completely stunning, and I for one cannot WAIT for these beautiful idiots to figure out they all belong together.

Family Snapshot by @tomatobookworm - if it's family fluff you're after, especially Staticquake family fluff, look no further! This tremendously soft and utterly amazing fic follows a day in the lives of a pregnant Daisy and her husband Lincoln, and their not-so-little family of Inhumans, both adopted and biological. There's also shopping with Grandma May, lots of feels, lots of shippiness, and just AMAZINGNESS all the way through!!

Best Day Ever by @loved-the-stars-too-fondly - Jemma and Daisy want to adopt a pet, and make a very special trip to Wisconsin to do it. Also, whether he knows who he is or not, Jemma has an important question to ask Cal - and just, AHHHH, everything about this is utterly stunning! For starters, Aubrey's writing is FANTASTIC, and the scene she sets is absolutely beautiful, and so very bittersweet. I was actually misting up a little with happy tears towards the end of this - really, I cannot recommend this enough, to any Skimmons fan.

so why don't we go somewhere only we know by @loved-the-stars-too-fondly - more Skimmons (platonic this time, though), more hurt/comfort, and, yes, again, more absolutely INCREDIBLE writing. This one is canon compliant, following a shaken Jemma struggling to sleep after Maveth, and how Daisy finds a way to help her out. Incredibly sweet, tender and BEAUTIFULLY written, this one was an instant favourite the moment I read it!

Unspoken by @anxiouslynumbme - a birthday fic for yours truly, and, honestly, one of the most STUNNING Staticquake introspectives I've read. It follows Daisy and Lincoln in a beautifully tender missing moment in season 3, with them both realising their feelings, and just... AHHHHHHHH, everything about it is utterly incredible!! I cannot, cannot recommend this gem of a fic enough

the thing about water droplets and ruffled hair by @que-mint-tea - here's another fic that proves, once and for all, how good Kat's Dekesy is, because it managed to convert T to write some Dekesy smut. And, oh my GOSH, what Dekesy smut - so goshdarn angsty, but so FANTASTICALLY characterised and written that it leaves you more than a little breathless, and gaping at your screen. The first chapter initially left us on the most HORRIFIC cliffhanger, but then T fixed it, and it's just... this thing is really a whole new level of emotional writing, raw and gripping and intensely perfect for both of these characters. My haw still drops whenever I think of this thing, and how utterly AMAZING it was, so yeah. Fic rec!!!

beautiful stranger, there you are by @justanalto - I do believe I still owe Serena a long and very gushy comment on this thing, because, MAN, does it ever deserve that!! Pipsy and fake dating, with the most HILARIOUSLY incredible writing, plot and characterisation, and honestly just a giddy "askhdfkhsfh" whenever I think back to how much I enjoyed it. Yup, it was that good.

Jumping to conclusions by @eowima - a very special one, because it marks my love Océane's first venture into writing AoS fic! It's an AU of 1x06 (the Fitzsimmons episode of s1) where Fitz does actually jump out of the plane to save Jemma. Realisations of feelings, and some of the most genuinely FANTASTIC Fitz characterisation I've read in a while, follow - and, yup, I was shouting at my screen for them just to get together already. Amazing stuff, really!!

Look into your eyes and the sky's the limit by @eowima - okay, this. This. Another gift for me, and one that I will probably treasure forEVER, because it is just?? so?? utterly?? perfect?? Just for starters, the title is a Hamilton reference - and then the theme of Hamilton references continues into the fic itself, I'm delighted to say. There's also the most BEAUTIFUL, playful Skimmons friendship, and teasing, and then of course the bet about who can make out with their crush first... Staticquake & Fitzsimmons perfection. And all rendered in Océane's delightful, best-thing-ever-to-read writing!! I'm going into a giddy keyboard smash just THINKING about this, so yeah, cannot recommend it enough.

lullabies and clear blue skies by @springmagpies and @bobbimorseisbisexual - okay, I never thought I'd catch myself shipping FitzBobbi, let alone shipping it this hard, but... wow. Maggie and Al teamed up to completely blow me away, and MELT MY WHOLE ENTIRE HEART with the sheer cuteness of this!! It features Fitz, Bobbi and adopting two daughters, and it's just the most tender, beautiful development through that little family - I love it so, so much.

We made all the wrong choices by @browneyedgenius - the winner of the AoS Angst War 2020, how could I not include this one? It is such a well-deserved win, though, whoa - I was sobbing, full-on sobbing, at least twice while reading. It follows the season 5 team through the events of the time-loop, after they failed to save the world - and, oh my gosh, it ripped my heart right out of my chest, but beautifully so. Everything about this fic just hits so hard, and it's written so well - yeah, really a most AMAZINGLY deserved win, for an utterly SHATTERINGLY incredible fic.

I threw stones at the stars (but the whole sky fell) by @nazezdha321 - this is Z showing us all how to write a backstory for a minor character, and write it so well that everyone's hearts break all over again when she dies. This one is about Victoria Hand, and it builds a stirring and profound childhood for her, also making her rise through the ranks of SHIELD and just her entire character mean so much more. Really, fic-wise, this is goals, and I take my hat off to you, Z, 1000%, for writing it.

in which the universe is put together by @besidemethewholedamntime - Rebecca's emotional writing, particularly Fitzsimmons' emotions, is incomparable, and she proves it all over again in this fic. If follows Fitz and Jemma before, after and during the bloodwork, and I just... wow, honestly. The emotion!! And the characterisation!! Absolutely stunning, and honestly all I could wish for in a we-had-time fic.

Agents of SHIELD Season 8 by @egumal - THIS. This, this, this, oh my gosh - as fix-it fics go, this has to be the most spectacular one I have ever read. What it does is find a way - a potentially canon compliant way, too - to bring back Lincoln Campbell, and reunite Staticquake. Basically: just about as season 7 finishes, the Astro Ambassadors get an unexpected visitor from another timeline, who asks them to come help out against Hive. Case in point, Daisy meets her lost love again (... but he has no idea who she is) and also has to relive the Fallen Agent drama. It all gets even more complicated when Kora restores Lincoln's memories, and Daisy meets the full team Deke has assembled around him in the 33 years (for him) that they've been apart... in short, this is one of the most thorough, well-written and downright SHOCKING plot-twist-wise fics that you will ever read, and honestly, saying "I can't recommend it enough" is an understatement. This thing is thd BEST, plain and simple!

Black Roses aren't real (but you and I are) by @ohwriteiforgot - ahhhh, a fic that will always have an incredibly special place in my heart, because it introduced me to one of my best fandom friends. The main focus is on Clintasha, it's true, but it's also a crossover with AoS in the sense that Clint was adopted by Coulson and May. Also, Daisy is his little sister, and their bond is gold. Also - there's Staticquake!! And flower shops!! And rivals to friends to lovers!! All I'm going to say is, what more can you ask for?!

A book to shield my story by @maybebrilliant - Staticquake High School AU, ahhhhhhhh!! There are only two chapters out so far, but the way this is shaping up is making my DAY - with Daisy as the new girl who meets Lincoln and his group of friends, and, though her foster parents are absolutely shit, starts to find actual happiness in a school for the first time in her life. Also - THE REFERENCES. Guys. I'm crazy for those, and in this book, so are my favourite dorks, Daisy and Lincoln - and let me tell you, it's nothing short of the best thing ever.

This AoS Finale Gif Edit by @heysteverogers - AoS really has been the most INCREDIBLE journey through the years, but what's really made it special is the company - and that's summed up perfectly in this gorgeous gifset. Also, the graphics on this are just, ahhhh, stunning - I'm in awe, and I've spent very long periods of time just looking at this thing in a state of heart-eyes.

This AoS Finale Gif Edit by @jemannesimms - combining Auld Lang Syne and the final scenes of my favourite show was a raw emotional - but utterly brilliant experience - for me. It's just so absolutely beautiful, and perfectly suited to the team, and their goodbyes!! Breathtaking editing work here, too.

This Daisy as Peter Parker and May as Tony Stark moodboard by @agentsofcomedyandchaos - ahhhh, a crossover of two of my favourite fandoms!! And what a lovely one, too - the colour scheme, quotes, and just the whole FEEL of this is absolutely genius, and I am guilty of being inspired by way too many fic ideas by it. Stunning stuff!!

And... whoa, that was long, but I really do feel that we deserve a bit of a proper pat on the back after creating such magical content in such a messed up year. So that's the note I'm going to leave you with for 2020, my friends: hell-year or no, look at the absolute beauty we were still able to create!! We really are freaking amazing, guys.

[river-bottom-nightmare]

Would you happens to know any good kon fics?

I’m not sure if ris went on anon and asked the same question twice, or if this is two different people. Either way, ask and ye shall receive.

There isn’t enough Kon content out there, in my opinion. He’s such an underappreciated character, both by DC and by the fandom. Most of the works out there that feature Kon only have him as a background character, and then most of those are centered around Tim. But I’ll try to find the ones that focus mainly on Kon. 

1. The Mystery of the Superboy Shirts by Aviatricks Tim/Kon. 4,000 words. You can’t have a Kon fic rec without including this one. There’s a very high chance that you’ve already read it, but I’m going to add it anyway because it’s one of my favourite DC fics of all time. It’s from Tim’s point of view, but it’s centered around Kon, and honestly, just one of the most hilarious things ever. Read this if you want a short, feel-good, happy fic that will make you laugh.

2. On My Chest, On My Heart by dnawhite76 Tim/Kon. 20,000 words. Now this! This is an absolutely wonderful Timkon fic that’s actually centered around Kon and is from Kon’s point of view. Amazing. It’s a Love Simon High School AU of sorts, featuring lots of superfam and Kon being a gay disaster, and an incredible coming out sequence. Kon feels a little lost, a little out of place, and not at all happy (at the beginning), but the way the author wrote his family and friends’ support and his character development was the BEST. It’s a little lengthy, but so worth it.

3. Boys of Summer by MarbleAide Tim/Kon. 5,500 words. A summer camp AU that follows Tim and Kon through the years. Again, from Tim’s point of view, but he’s so in love with Kon, it’s so cute. It’s a cute fic with a healthy dose of pining. The prose is a little simple, and the pacing’s just a bit too fast, but the overall universe this fic (along with the rest of the antics of the core four) is adorable. 

4. Close to Home by iesika Multiple pairings. 65,000 words. Ooooooh boy this is a LONG one. AU in the form of canon divergence. There’s a murder in Smallville High, and Kon and Tim attempt to solve the mystery together, while Kon goes through normal high school stuff (and some abnormal hero stuff.) It’s very very plotty, with a mystery that drives the whole thing. It’s got some pretty cool OCs, though I’m not usually a fan of that stuff, and it’s sort of kind of Timkon? It’s got an ambiguous ending, both of which I tend to shy away from. Overall, not my cup of tea but still a pretty great fic, and if you’re looking for Kon centered fics, this is the one to check out.

5. Gonna Be A Better One (A Thousand Miles To Your Door) by @traincat​ Tim/Kon. 18,500 words. I haven’t read this one in a while, but I do remember really really loving it. It’s classic take on the problems that come with being two teenagers dating while simultaneously being two teenage vigilantes. A little bit of cute core four stuff, the few instances where Steph shows up, she’s pretty well characterized. The two of them are hopelessly besotted, but also dealing with a lot of issues and they’re trying to figure out if their love is worth it. I loved this one, definitely worth a read. (Also unrelated but traincat is the spideytorch queen and spideytorch is like one of my top ships of all time so even if you’re not into marvel comics you should go read them anyway because I love them.)

6. Boys in Leather Jackets by @merelymine​ Tim/Kon. <3,000 words. I. Um. Yeah this is just PWP. I am completely unashamed. It’s cute at first, and then it’s hot as hell, and I will not apologize for reccing it. 

7. Curse of the Red-Heads by @pupeez4eva (sorry if this is the wrong link, their tumblr wasn’t linked on the fic so I did a little digging) Multiple Pairings. 5,000 words. I’m a little hesitant to rec this because it is mainly about Tim and Kon, but it’s told from Damian’s point of view and it’s got a fair bit of him as well. Regardless, Kon is actually hilarious whenever he shows up, and I loved him, so I’m reccing it anyway. Damian doesn’t understand how relationships work, and meddles in people’s love lives. It’s absolutely hilarious, if you’re up for a laugh, give it a read.

8. Three Little Words by timkons Tim/Kon. 10,000 words. Once again, centered around Tim, but features Kon being an incredible, loving husband so I’m not complaining. It’s a little angsty, and dives Tim’s emotional vulnerability. Tim and Kon fight, Tim is Emotional and Hates It, and it takes you on a ride of feels. But it ends happily, so that’s nice. (Sort of) Domestic and older Timkon, I really enjoyed this fic. 

9. Through Another Lens by animegoil Tim/Kon. 7,000 words. Mind the tags on this one, it’s a little bit triggering, and has a tad bit of non/con. This one isn’t one I really love, but it’s not bad overall. It’s a bit too wordy, and a tad anti-climatic? In a sense? But it’s from Kon’s pov and it shows his thought process pretty well. There’s a little bit of angst, followed up by Talking About Feelings and a hint of hurt/comfort. Overall, a decent read. 

10. Class Differences by wisia Tim/Kon. 13,500 words. Ooooooh man this was a good one. I was expecting silliness and fluff. Instead I got a ride of feels and some really really well written words. This fic centers around Kon dealing with the publicity that comes with being “Timothy Drake”’s boyfriend. And man is it rough. I just loved it though, absolutely incredible. I might reread it sometime and make a moodboard idk.

11. Matters of the Heart by @nyerus Tim/Kon. 13,500 words. This one is a case fic, with Kon realizing he’s in love with Tim and having to deal with that. Very plotty, but the action was done super well, so it added to the overall vibe of the fic. Kon is so in love with Tim, he’s hopeless, it’s great. Also, the author got Kon’s point of view down, like damn it’s incredible. Definitely worth a read!

12. What’s in a name? by dancingsweetheart129 Tim/Kon. 21,000 words. This one is more of a character introspection, as Kon learns to let his old name go as he grows up. I wasn’t really a fan of the writing style, it was too fast in some places and too wordy in others, and the prose got a little messy at times. But it is a really good character study, so if you’re looking for Kon centered fics, this is worth a shot.

13. We’re Not Dating by @dianaraven (once again, i’m not entirely sure this is the right url bc it wasn’t linked in the fic and I had to do some digging. sorry!) Tim/Kon. 5,500 words. Exactly what it says on the box. An old trope but a good one, fluff, pining, and people not realizing they’re in love with each other. Just a good, wholesome read.

14. Reveries by @nyerus Tim/Kon. 5,500 words. Another fic by nyerus, but this one’s short and sweet. Again, focused mainly on Tim, but it features the two of them being super in love and adorable and I love it. Read it if you want Cute Boyfriends being Cute Boyfriends (and tim getting some sleep for once in his life).

Alright, here are 14 fics to get you started. I also recommend you check out the individual authors fic recs, I really only put one of each on there (except for nyerus, they get two bc they’re great), but all of them have some really good DC fics. Once again, if you want more fics, or ones with a different ship/fandom, don’t hesitate to pop in my inbox. Happy reading!

(Also, I’m going to link my Kon-El aesthetic that I made bc it never hurts to get into the mood before you start diving into fics.)

[falsegoodnight]

hi! i recently picked up writing again and i’m almost done with my first fic (!!!!)

what advice do you have for a new writer to get their work out to other people? i feel like self promo is suuuuper awkward but i have literally no idea what to do lol

(s/o to all of my other awkward writers... join the club)

hi! first of all, CONGRATULATIONS on almost finishing your first fic!! that’s a big deal and i hope you’re proud of yourself! 

as for your question: i’m going to be honest and say it’s really hard to get your work out especially when it’s your first but there are definitely things that help! 

first off: fic posts

this may seem obvious but it’s really important! there are readers that check the newest fics on ao3 when looking for something to read but there’s also so many people that find fics to read from fic posts on tumblr and twitter that are rbed/rted onto their dash/tl. it’s one of the best ways to tell people you wrote a fic and they can read it right now!!

more under cut!

some things to keep in mind:

- moodboards/graphics catch the eye of potential readers and also often give them an idea into what the fic is about. i know it may seem intimidating to make a moodboard (especially if you’ve never done it before) but they can really be as simple or complicated as you like! some general tips are to include the main characters (if this is louis x harry, then include them both), have somewhat of a color scheme, and incorporate other significant elements (can be places, pets, objects, etc) from your story. use other moodboards as inspiration!!

- make sure to have the LINK. this may be self-explanatory but it’s truly so important. if there’s no link then anyone that sees it will have to look it up if they want to read - one more step that may just make them not bother in the first place.

- include important info such as the summary, rating, and word count!! those all help potential readers determine if a fic will be up their alley or not.

also, you can tag accounts on tumblr that will reblog your fic post and expose it to a bigger audience. for a harry/louis pairing, you can tag @/hljournal, @/hlcreators, @/hlsource, and @/yourlarrysource among others i may be forgetting. @/1dsource extends to any 1d-related pairings, and @/tracksintheam is a tag checked by a lot of people too and extends to any sort of created content. @/blouisparadise will rb your fic post if the fic is bottom Louis and/or omega Louis (any pairing). there’s plenty of other accounts that you can look into for tagging but unfortunately only the first five tags will show up when using the search function so you may have the prioritize.

there are also single accounts that will rb your your fic posts if you ask nicely!! just remember that no one is entitled to promote your stuff especially if they don’t know you. i’m pretty sure there’s some lists out there with a lot of people that will boost your fic posts but i can’t remember any off the top of my head!

and this is more so for future projects when you’ve gained a bit more of an audience (even if that audience is three people!! three people who are genuinely intrigued and interested in your writing is incredible!!!) but posting snippets and teasers is a great way to build up anticipation and excitement for fics!! i’ve seen a direct correlation with how many snippets and teasers i share and the reactions when the fic comes out.

involving people through polls, surveys, and requests is something else to consider! i did this with my peach fic most notably and it had the biggest debut of all my fics on ao3!! it can be for anything from side pairings, title ideas, plot directions, or name for pets!! i know i’d definitely feel more like reading a fic if i helped play a role in it somehow!!

(some other little things i do are add a count down to my display name on tumblr from three days to “today!” and also make posts on twitter/tumblr saying i have a fic coming out in a week, etc—)

the main thing to remember is that there’s no shame in self-promo (again, when you’re polite and respectful about it) - self-rb as much as you want, post as many snippets as you can, mention it to your friends, etc.

also just want to take the time to remind you: don’t get discouraged if your fic posts don’t get as many notes as you’ve seen others (often from already-”established” writers or bigger blogs) how many people see or read your fic is never a true indicator of its worth nor is it a judgement on you or your abilities!! there’s so many factors involved with things like this (including time of day when you post, time of day when people who reblog are reblogging, the tropes or themes of your fic— some are more popular than others in this fandom, for better and worse) and what’s most important at the end of the day is the people who do read the fic and enjoy it. not how many of them there are but just the fact that there are. someone, likely many someone’s, are going to adore your writing and be grateful for the story you share!

(i also just want to say that the first fic i ever posted doesn’t have any fic post - okay, it has one random tweet with 14 likes that i posted about four months later - and i wrote and posted the entirety of it without having tumblr and only twitter in the last couple of months and it’s to this date one of my most read fics— sometimes people just find and read a fic by their own accord)

anyways i don’t know if any of this made sense or if it could be qualified as helpful but i hope it is in at least a small way. i wish you all the luck with finishing your fic and posting! again, it’s such an accomplishment to even write something in itself. (feel free to send me the fic post if you decide to post too!!)