#at you a general idea of what the setting is like

[dragonoftheshadows]

I too, am angry. Yes, communication is easier... but it's communication of EVERYTHING. Lies, truths, doesn't matter - its everywhere and everyone is seeing it. To use the internet is to be bombarded by these things.

What the internet has done that hasn't eradicated fascism is ruined many people's ability to check the truth of things. How often do you see something on the internet and stop to check if it's real before liking/reblogging/commenting? I certainly don't always do so, even if I try to be careful.

People have the power to anonymously say things they might never hope to say out loud, and people can be carried away by the ability to anonymously support these things. I'm not saying anonymity is bad, per se, but this is definitely a factor.

Then you can have people - let's use Donald Trump for example - who can peddle a lie and have literally millions of people believe it before it is disproved. Take the dogs and cats one, right- he was claiming, if you don't know, that Haitian refugees were eating people's pets. That lie was first picked up by the MAGA people, sure, but carried by loads of people who weren't in that group. Even once it was disproved, there are still people who think that's true.

Common sense could tell you that, from a man with Trump's views, this would be a lie, but even just 5 minutes of googling at the time told you the truth, too. Think about where you get most of your news info from, where do you get most of your political knowledge?

Even if people sound politically knowledgeable or are usually honest/correct/reasonable, they are still fallable, ghey could make a mistake or they could have a very specific set of views on one topic and so on. I include myself in this, by the way. I make mistakes, I forget to go to a reputable source, I don't remember to check my facts. Go look up everything I say in this post and let me know if I got it wrong.

And, for news sites... is it a reputable one? Are they usually correct with info? Are they biased left or right? Who funds them? (In other words, regarding this last one, do they have an agenda that could affect what news they produce?) It's a bit of work, but this the world, this is people's lives we are affecting.

Now, back to Trump and his lie about the Haitian people. That's clearly a racist attack on these people and their culture, specifically what foods they might or might not eat. By the way, from a quick internet search, it's nothing that should make people from the US (Listen, I forgot the word for this general culture) uncomfortable, by which I mean nothing they themselves wouldn't eat.

Trump didn't even care whether they ate those animals AT ALL, which is how you know this was a racist attack on their culture and not an honest mistake - it wouldn't have been a mistake anyway coming from him, but I'm trying to be politically neutral here. That took me not even 30 seconds of common sense and a quick squizz at the internet to figure out.

Wake up people. This is what is destroying the world.

TLDR: many people no longer properly understand how to find a reputable source and think critically about whether things are true, in part thanks to the internet. This makes it impossible to eradicate things such as fascism. It makes it easier for people with extreme views to gain support and get into power, even if some (or many) of those supporters don't fully understand or believe in those peoples ideas.

I'm very angry that fascism is possible in a world after the invention of the internet. communication has never been easier and hating fascists is supposed to be a commonly accepted and widespread belief. this is extremely frustrating

[obsessedwithceleste]

You Can Say You Love Me Now

Theodore Nott x reader

Summary: A little fake dating trope, just in time for Valentine's day

word count: 3k

©️ obsessedwithceleste. all works posted here belong to me and should not be reposted or copied in any way or form.

It was the perfect plan really. Or it had seemed like it at the time. When fueled by frustration, love, and desperation, what could go wrong? Theo had loved you for as long as he could remember and he wasn’t afraid to admit that. To himself at least. But to you, well, that was a bit more challenging.

Coming from a pure blood family, a sacred 28 family no less, Theodore’s fate had been sealed long before he was even born. Destined to marry another rich, pure blood heiress, have children, and secure the Nott legacy another generation. All ridiculous nonsense if you asked Theodore. What was the point of tradition anyway? Pretty much everyone who cared was already dead, so what did it matter?

Unfortunately for Theo, his father was not dead and had been trying to find a suitable match for what felt like years at this point. Names of witches that Theo couldn’t even match a face to had been floated by, but Theo had spoiled each and every potential match and his father had been growing increasingly more agitated by the day.

That’s when it had struck him. Kill two birds with one stone. Get his father off his back and gain the perfect opportunity to win over the witch of his dreams. Was it a bit short sighted? Sure. But he wasn’t left with many options at this point and this was as good a plan as any.

“Please principessa, you know what my father’s like. And it would only be a few months.” Theo begged, following close behind you as you make your way through the labyrinth that is the Hogwarts library.

“I am not going to pretend to date you for a few months Theodore. Or at all. That’s actually insane. Besides, no one would believe it anyway. We’ve known each other for how long? No one is going to buy the idea of us just now deciding to go out. Especially not your father. Do you know how long my mother has been trying to set us up?” you sigh, plucking another book off the shelf.

You had known Theodore practically your whole life. The two of you had been best friends since before you could walk. Your earliest memories involved waddling around the gardens of his family’s manor as your mothers watched on in thrilled bliss. There was simply no way the two of you would be fooling anyone.

“Well that’s just it isn’t it? Father has been hounding me to court you for ages, he’ll be too relieved to care,” Theo replies, an air of desperation creeping into his voice.

"Yeah, And what do you suppose we'd tell them hmm?" You ask.

"Don't know. We wanted it to happen naturally or some other sappy story. They'll eat it up."

You give your friend a pointed look. This was not the first time he had presented you with a half-baked plan that was certain to go wrong at some point.

“You’re being so ridiculous right now Theodore, this easily makes it on the list of your top ten stupidest ideas.”

“You keep a list?”

“It’s alphabetized.”

Theo has the nerve to look offended.

“Please principessa? I know your family has been on you too. This will buy us both a little time at least,” Theo protests. "Just think, we tell them over winter break, string it along awhile, and then after we've gone our seperate ways we're just too broken hearted to even consider any other possibilities for the future."

In all fairness, the boy was right. Your family had been bothering you for months now, asking if you’d found a special someone. You'd known when Theodore's father began ramping up the pressure for him to find a match that your family wouldn't be far behind, but it was honestly starting to get to be a bit ridiculous. And exhausting.

"It's not even completely incomprehensible. We've been mistaken as a couple before." Theo continues to press.

You glare at your friend, eyes rolling at the mere memory.

six months prior

It had been another one of your mother's usual, stuffy garden parties. The sun had been beating down on you all morning and all you really wanted to do was throw your blasted shoes across the lawn. Who thought it was a sensible idea to be out on the garden's cobblestone paths in scorching heat for hours at a time? This was not your idea of a good time.

"Principessa," Theodore greeted, arm wrapping comfortably around your waist.

"Don't even start, Theodore," you grumbled, leaning into the boy. "I'm tired, I'm hungry, and if my mother tries to make me join one more conversation about the Ministry or some such I'll set the whole garden on fire."

Theodore just laughed, pulled you closer.

"C'mon love. We can sneak off to the lake I reckon. Berkshire just arrived so the mums will all be too busy throwing him at the Greengrass sisters to notice."

Had you felt a bit bad leaving Enzo to the wolves? Sure. But still, you had let Theodore lead you down the path to the lake, collapsing onto the lawn sofa that was perched almost picturesquely on the patio overlooking the glassy water.

You had closed your eyes, feeling yourself relax into Theodore as his fingers combed methodically through your hair. You didn't know how long the both of you had been sitting there simply basking in each other's company when an excited gasp jolted you from your peaceful bliss.

"Oh! Oh my!" the shrill voice of one of your mother's airheaded socialites tittered. "I wasn't aware the both of you were courting! Oh your parents must be so pleased- what with your families being so close and all-"

"We're not courting." You interjected, holding your hand up to stop the women mid sentence.

She had stuttered awkwardly after that before finally shuffling off. Had you been a bit harsh? Perhaps. But you simply hadn't been in any sort of mood to deal with the notion of dating your best friend.

Theodore hadn't said a word, but you could feel him recoil ever so slightly. Not enough for anyone to notice if it hadn't been you. And things were a bit, strained, for the following days. If you could even call it that. And then things went back to normal as if nothing had happened.

You would have forgotten the whole thing, brushed it under the rug as something to laugh about in a few years, if it hadn't left a nagging feeling in the back of your mind.

You had never even allowed yourself to think that you could ever end up with your friend. Sure, years ago your mothers had shared the fantasy of the both of you ending up together one day. You were sure your mother was still convinced it might happen. But no. He would be auctioned off to the family of some wealthy heiress and you would be matched with some boy your parents deemed suitable. It was just how things worked.

Your feared your father was wearing going to wear through the carpet at any moment with the way he was pacing back and forth in front of the fireplace. Your mother sat twiddling her fingers on the sofa across from you, watching your father in exasperation.

Theodore was quite pleased with himself. To be completely honest he really didn't think he'd get this far. But sitting smugly on the sofa of his father's office, arm wrapped securely around you as he faced not only his own father, but your parents as well, he felt on top of the world.

"Well? Is it true? Are you?" your mother asks, finally breaking the silence as she had apparently given up on your father being the first to speak.

Your father had stormed off to Mr. Nott's office before you could even let out a breath, and by the time you and Theodore had finally slunk into the room, your mother was already doing a piss poor job of hiding her excitement.

It had always been a dream of hers for the both of you to end up together one day. It was hardly a kept secret. Maybe Theodore had been right and their blind excitement would stop them from asking too many questions because this was truly horrific.

"Of course it's true! It better be! The way I found him all over y/n," your father interrupts.

Mr. Nott just gazes on, eyes seemingly boring into your soul as Theodore meets his father's stare with cool, nonchalance. The smug bastard.

"Oh it's all we ever hoped for!" Your mother gushes, eyes falling onto the portrait hanging on the wall of the late Mrs. Nott.

"Well. That settles it then. They'll begin courting. Or whatever it is they call it these days," Mr. Nott says finally. "But there will be no more of this, nonsense. Not under my roof."

a few minutes earlier

"After further reassessment, this is the stupidest idea you've ever had," you hiss. Glaring at the brunette boy in front of you.

You were currently perched on one of the many desks lining the library walls of Nott Manor. Theodore was pressed up against the side, warm hands on your thighs holding you securely in place and sending shivers down your spine.

"Hush amore. How else will they be convinced we've been hiding a relationship, hmm?" He asks, slowly guiding one of your arms up to wrap around his neck.

"Oh I don't know. Suppose we just tell them? Ever think of that?"

"Yeah, and how would that go? Hey mum, I've been secretly seeing the son of your dead best friend who you've been trying to set me up with for ages. This is definitely not a distraction. Please believe us." Theo scoffs.

"I'm being serious," you respond, giving the boy a light whack on the shoulder. "When I agreed to the whole 'pretend to go out' bit, this is not what I had in mind."

"We've kissed before," Theo drawls, all nonchalance.

"You know that's not the same Theodore."

Before Theodore is able to respond, likely with another of his dry quips that you had grown to adore (not that you'd ever admit it), the door of the library swings open, footsteps echoing on the marble floors.

You don't even get the chance to fully take in the reality of the situation before Theodore's lips are on yours. It's slow and soft and warm as you feel his thumb softly brushing circles on your inner thigh. A soft gasp escapes you as you melt into the boy.

"What is the meaning of this?" Your father's cutting voice calls out, breaking you from your trance.

You jolt away from Theo, eyes snapping up to meet your father's, face flushed with embarrassment. Theo on the other hand looked quite self-satisfied. Oh you were going to kill him later.

"Both of you. Into the office. Now." Your father snaps out, looking like he was wishing he could obliviate himself in that moment.

"How long are we going to keep this going?" you ask, eyes not quite meeting Theo's as you lean your head against him. It was another warm night in which you and Theodore had managed to sneak up to the astronomy tower.

Your visits to the astronomy tower had started back in fourth year. It seemed like forever ago. And now you looked forward to nothing as much as nights spent with Theodore gazing up at the sky. The nights were different now though, you supposed.

It had been what? Five months now? You were almost certain it was five months, but those months seemed to have flown by in bliss. You hadn't realized how easy it would be. You and Theodore seemed to have been carefully tip toeing the line between friendship and more for years. You simply hadn't put the pieces together. It had been a bit clunky at first sure. Awkward maybe. But this was perfect. Standing in Theodore's arms as the stars above you seemed to go on forever. Perfect.

three-ish months prior

"Shut up. Shut. Up. You're joking," Daphne squeals, eyes locking onto your fingers which are tightly interlocked with Theo's as you enter your dorm room.

Something you seemed to have overlooked when agreeing to Theodore's dating scheme, was the fact that an integral part of the plan involved selling the lie to your closest friends.

It was much more difficult than you had anticipated.

You had spent the first initial month spending all your free time with Theodore, never really leaving his side. Apparently this didn't seem out of the ordinary. The flowers sent to your dorm didn't elicit a single reaction from your roommate, nor did Theodore's constant pet names. No, what really did it apparently, was the hand holding. Scandalous.

Your friends never failed to miss an opportunity to humble you.

"Took them long enough. Don't know why you're so shocked Daph," Mattheo replies dryly from his spot on the floor, papers scattered around him. He doesn’t even bother to look up.

"Well duh. We all knew they'd end up together eventually. Just didn't think they'd figure it out while we were still in school." Daph responds matter of factly. “Ugh. I owe Pansy 25 galleons now.” She groans, a frown appearing on her face.

"We can hear you, you know," Theo drawls, raising an eyebrow.

"Well it isn't as if the two of you have been subtle about it. Always holed up together in the library for hours at a time doing gods knows what."

"We study together," you reply, feeling the need to defend yourself.

"You’ve also attend every single ball together since, ever," Mattheo adds.

"Better that then go with whatever tossers our parents dig up."

"I've found the both of you asleep in Theodore's bed on more than one occasion."

"As friends."

"Right. You'd sleep together as friends, but drew the line at hand holding." Daphne says dryly. "You're both hopeless."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Y/n, I damn near saw you hex Theo's hand off in fifth year when he tried to hold your hand, and even that wasn't solid proof that you two weren't already going out." Daphne snorts. "Hopeless."

"C'mon Daph, let's leave the love birds to it then," Mattheo says, gathering his papers. "Make good choices. Don't do anything I'd do," he calls as the two of them make a quick exit.

As soon as the door slams shut, you turn to look at Theo as if to ask 'what on Earth was that about?'

“They make fair points,” he says with a shrug, pulling you onto the bed with him.

"We weren't being obvious about anything Theodore. There was nothing there to begin with." You reply, allowing him to pull you onto his chest.

You knew there hadn't been anything there before, or at least you thought there wasn't, because this was all very new. Sure before you might've fallen asleep in the same bed after staying up until 3 am studying for your charms exam, but you'd certainly never seen Theodore look at you like this before. And you'd certainly never felt his hand creep under your shirt to rub soft circles across your rib cage. You'd definitely never felt your heart try to beat out of your chest like this. Or maybe you had.

"Is it really so absurd to think we've always been so close?" Theo asks, eyes very clearly focused on your lips. Not that you noticed of course.

"Maybe not," you reply, letting your head fall to rest on the boy's chest.

This was nice you thought to yourself as Theo's lips pressed a soft kiss to the top of your head.

"How long do you want to keep going?" Theo asks after a moment.

"Don't know," you reply, feeling his eyes on you as you continue gazing out at the sky in front of you.

"Another month?" Theo asks carefully, pulling you ever closer.

You can feel your heart begin to race at the idea of it all ending so soon. You shake your head.

"You want to end it sooner?" Theo asks, voice wavering ever so slightly.

You shake your head again. You hear Theodore's sharp breath as he realizes your implication and you feel yourself growing increasingly more nervous as the silence stretches on.

You'd really, truly never allowed yourself to consider the idea of ending up with Theo. You knew that simply wasn't how the world worked. And frankly the idea of rejection couldn't even be a possibility. You couldn't allow yourself to lose your best friend. Or maybe you could. This was all his idea to begin with after all.

"What if we just kept going?" You ask finally, feeling the weight of the world lift off your shoulders.

Theo's arms tear away from you as he turns you to face him, hand holding your chin firmly in place, forcing your eyes to meet.

"Don't play with me like this, principessa," he says, voice all seriousness as his eyes scan your face, searching for anything that might suggest you're joking with him.

"I'm not."

And just like that, Theo's lips are on yours once more. They seemed to find themselves there a lot lately, melting your mind to absolute mush as he pulled you closer. You could feel your back, now pressed up against one of the marble pillars of the tower as Theo's lips moved slowly from your lips to your jawline, and carefully down the side of your neck.

"You can say you love me now," He whispers into your ear, his warm breath giving you chills as his hands continue to wander.

"I love you," you gasp out.

"Sorry, who?" he pushes, leaving little pecks across your jawline once more.

"Theo. I love you, Theodore," You say finally, just as Theo presses another kiss to your lips.

"And I love you, amore."

Did I start this well over a year ago? Yes I did, thank you for asking. Did I change the title three different times? Absolutely I did. Am I posting this before editing? Also yes. Cope.

[thebramblewood]

For one night only, Glimmerbrook University and the Council of Sages proudly present Mr. Mysterio's Floating Circus!

Previous / Next

I must direct a massive thank you to @surely-sims and @doctorsimcraft for not only their incredible Simblreen set but also the stunning build and Sims that accompanied it, without which I could never have mustered up such a beautiful backdrop. I added the carousel, but the rest is theirs. Eternally grateful for your generosity and talent!

Morgyn: Have you had enough time to consider it yet?

Caleb: Consider what?

Morgyn: [rolls eyes] You know what.

Caleb: I’m still not sure it’s a good idea. People already gossip. Living outside the Realm — with your vampire lover, no less — will only open you up to more scrutiny.

Morgyn: I’m not a monk, Caleb. I can live wherever I want with whoever I want, and it has no bearing on my role as a Sage.

Caleb: [tilts head uncomfortably] They seem to think it does.

Morgyn: They may be traditionalists, but deep down they know a little modernization is good for the Realm. Besides, there’s hardly another spellcaster waiting in the wings to take my job. They can’t fire me.

Caleb: That won’t stop the general public from clamoring for it anyway.

Morgyn: A small minority maybe. Spellcasters have never been a monolith, and the younger generation is more open-minded than ever. Cross-occult discrimination is at an all time low. Gemma just turned in a paper on it.

Caleb: [grunting with effort] Lilith wouldn’t like it.

Morgyn: Ah, now we get to the crux of your argument. Respectfully, Caleb, I know she’s family, but she’s also selfish and manipulative. Your philosophies are no longer compatible, if they ever were. Would it kill you to admit you’ve grown apart?

Caleb: Yes, she can be cruel, but it’s only because-

Morgyn: She’s jealous, of course. She wants you all to herself. But you’d think after a century you’ve earned the right to your own life. It would benefit you both.

Caleb: What if it’s just too soon?

Morgyn: [chuckles] You may be an old man, and I’m no spring chicken myself, but five years is plenty long enough. I want to wake up next to you for the rest of my life.

Caleb: [quietly] But it won’t last forever. You’re keeping old age at bay for now, but one day you’ll have to relent, and then-

Morgyn: That’s a problem for the very distant future. [whispers] Just promise you’ll keep thinking about it.

Caleb: I’ve thought about it.

Morgyn: And?

Caleb: Let’s do it.

Morgyn: Great! There’s an adorable little cottage for sale on the outskirts of Glimmerbrook. We can swing by and see it before you head back-

Caleb: [laughs] You were never going to let me say no, were you?

[clairedaring]

brb. currently screaming at the DETAILS of gelboys ep 1

(SOURCE © @virtualtadpole)

text version under the cut for readers' accessibility

I'll leave the raving about Boss and his team's meticulous craftsmanship to u/ThoughtsAllDay and others, but man, there's so much detail packed in here, I had to take notes. Which wasn't easy while watching on iQiyi without VIP, as each time you inadvertently scroll back past an ad insertion point it forces you to sit through another minute of unskippable ads that just ended five seconds ago. Anyway, some thoughts:

The biggest question I had from the series reveal was whether it's going to be one of those works that could generate endless discussions of "Is this a BL?" And so far it sure looks like one of those works. This first episode is the sliciest a slice-of-life teen drama could conceivably be. Or maybe it just feels that way because it's so different, due to the fact that...

The entire series being shot on iPhone (though they just say "phone" because Apple isn't paying them) gives the whole thing such an indie guerrilla film vibe, which is interesting to say the least. The unrestrained depth of field, the sound design picking up on every little jingling of the charms and chains the boys have on their bags, result in this raw, artsy feel that is almost jarring compared to conventional production values.

The open environment alone sounds like a continuity nightmare, though not having paid much attention to the people and cars in the background, I didn't noticed anything egregious.

The opening toilet shot was... a choice.

The song Fourmod's mother plays in the beginning is เด็กมีปัญหา (Dek Mi Panha) by, of course, Four-Mod. It's one of the biggest early hits from the Kamikaze teen-oriented record label. Faye Fang Kaew is another of the label's first groups. You can tell their mother is a huge fan. (By the way, the iQiyi subtitles spelling Fourmod's name after his Instagram handle is really annoying. Hope they drop it soon.)

Fourmod said "this term" when asking to take the BTS, so it's probably the start of the second semester, i.e. November. Senanikhom Station opened in December 2019, while the entire northern extension opened in December 2020. Either Fourmod was referring to starting his P.6 and M.1 years after the station and line opened respectively, or the series is set in 2023.

I laughed at how they needed a disclaimer warning not to run up the escalators and to hold the handrail - clearly mandated by BTS the series sponsor. If you're wondering about the sponsorship, by the way, it probably just involved them making special arrangements for location access and not any cash - this was the case for the 2009 movie Bangkok Traffic (Love) Story, which revolved almost entirely around the BTS. Here, the lack of crowds during the morning rush hour points to most of the people probably being hired extras.

The BTS got plenty of indirect advertising in exchange, of course. Fourmod buying the monthly pass seemed almost forced at first, but was soon leveraged to explain why he didn't know how to tap out of the system, since he'd presumably only used single tickets before. (Like Thoughts said, the attention to detail is incredible, with things like these that you have to zoom in to even notice.)

The depictions of locations are so super specific to reality, almost as if this were a documentary. The school is fictional, of course, but it's slotted into the exact location of Watpathumwanaram School in real life, and everything around it, including the path of the students' commute, is real. Don't know why they'd take a tuk-tuk instead of walking 400 metres to Siam Square, though, as the traffic is totally impossible.

I have no idea how much creative liberty they're taking with the school's flexibility with body accessories, electronics, and transgender students. I'm sure the creators based it on what's possible at some actual schools nowadays, but I can't tell how realistic it is for the setting at all. Very much appreciate the variability in the lengths of the students' shorts as a reflection of their personality, though, as it's rarely seen on screen anymore.

I raised an eyebrow at Fourmod asking for extra MSG in his fruit dip. (The subtitles mistranslate it as "chili salt".) Didn't even know it was a thing - usually it's just sugar, salt, and chilli - but apparently recipes that also add MSG aren't uncommon.

I'm about curious about the passage of time. Their painted nails almost growing out suggests probably two months passing during each of the time jumps, but that would be almost the entire school term already.

It's funny to imagine how they got Yuedpao as a main sponsor. Their shop is actually opposite Kantima Salon, one wonders whether it's a coincidence or they found the location first, then got the sponsorship later.

The Kluay Kluay banana dessert shop was clearly included to keep older viewers connected - it's probably the only Siam Square location in the entire episode that's recognizable to someone who knew the place from the 2000s. Heck, the neighbourhood has changed so much recently, few of the scene locations would have looked like shown even five years ago.

Which brings me to my final point and main impression from the episode: Everything in it feels so deliberate in its depiction of today's youth culture. Which is of course what the creators set out to do. But the thing is, I (and probably most Millennial and older viewers) can't quite tell how accurate it is. I trust that the team did their research well, and on the whole it feels real enough, but the script's particular references, slang and vernacular might as well be a foreign language. It feels rather eerily uncanny how changed some things have become in the space of a generation, and yet how familiar some things remain.

[contemplatingoutlander]

Many of the so-called "Christians" who support Trump's reign of greed and scapegoating follow the "prosperity gospel." This article by Tara Isabella Burton explains how aspects of three different movements combined to create what is known today as the "prosperity gospel." The three include:

The 19th century New Thought movement, which claimed that if one set one's mind to something, they could manifest it in real life. This aligned with "the quintessentially American idea that the individual was responsible for his or her own happiness, health, and situation in life."

The Calvinist idea of believing that prosperity was a sign from God that one was predestined to be saved, and hard work was a sign of one's virtue, which led to "the valorization of the 'Protestant work ethic.'" According to Burton, this "specifically Protestant approach to labor [was] integral to the development of capitalism and industrialization."

The rise of decentralized "charismatic Pentecostal churches," in the U.S. According to Burton, these Pentecostals held "the idea that God would manifest Himself to the faithful in concrete, miraculous ways in the 'here and now'" through “'spiritual gifts' (or 'charisms,' from which the term 'charismatic' is drawn)." This in turn, combined with the "decentralized" structure of the congregations, led to the peculiar, almost fan-like devotion of congregants to their charismatic Pentecostal leaders, who often engaged in showy displays of their "spiritual gifts."

[See more under the cut.]

According to Burton:

These three strands collided throughout the twentieth century, as the prosperity gospel came into being. It started — like the “work ethic” Max Weber described — as a way to justify why, during the Gilded Age, some people were rich and others poor. (One early prosperity gospel proponent, Baptist preacher Russell H. Conwell, told his mostly-destitute congregation in 1915: “I say you ought to be rich; you have no right to be poor.”) Instead of blaming structural inequality, Conwell and those like him blamed the perceived failures of the individual. [emphasis added]

Burton claims that it is therefore not surprising that today "two of [the prosperity gospel's] major proponents — Paula White and Wayne T. Jackson — were among the six faith leaders invited to pray with Donald Trump at his inauguration."*

Burton points out that although "a 2006 'Times' poll found that 17 percent of American Christians identify explicitly with the movement," that same poll also found that:

31 percent espouse the idea that "if you give your money to God God will bless you with more money.” [Furthermore, a] full 61 percent agree with the more general idea that “God wants people to be prosperous.” [emphasis added]

Still, Burton wonders if it isn't the underlying cultural influences that created the prosperity gospel that contributed to Trump's election:

It’s difficult to say that the prosperity gospel itself led to Donald Trump’s inauguration. Again, only 17 percent of American Christians identify with it explicitly. It’s far more true, however, to say that the same cultural forces that led to the prosperity gospel’s proliferation in America — individualism, an affinity for ostentatious and charismatic leaders, the Protestant work ethic, and a cultural obsession with the power of “positive thinking” — shape how we, as a nation, approach politics. What is our collective approach to health care, after all, if not rooted in a visceral sense that the unlucky are responsible for their own misfortune? What is our willingness to vote a man like Trump into office but a collective cultural reward for those who brand themselves as successful? [emphasis added]

_____________ *It is a noteworthy that when Trump issued an executive order creating a White House Faith Office, it was Paula White, whom Trump named to lead it.

[abbysimsfun]

Sims In Bloom: Generation 2 Pt. 138 (Ash In Captivity)

Ash Landgraab woke inside a small wooden shack. He was still wearing his winter clothes, but a warm sunshine was setting outside the small windows. His head hurt, but he thought he made out palm trees below clear blue sky. Did he smell the ocean?

He remembered being taken by a man in a hood and sunglasses, but the man stuck him with something sharp...and then he woke up here. Outside, he heard the voice of the man who grabbed him, his words muffled as he spoke to someone on the phone.

"How much longer are we supposed to wait? If we can't get back, who knows what we'll even make it back to? The longer we're here-"

The man grumbled, sticking the phone in his pocket as the door to the shack swung open. Ash kept his face forward to mask his fear, making note of the items in the room. An old fridge that smelled like rotting food, a few books, a camper's portable bed, and an old Grimophone.

Catching the boy's eyes glance toward the music player, the man sneered. Did he know what it could do? "It's broken. Don't even think about trying to play music. If you make so much as a sound-"

"You'll do what? Kidnap me?"

"Worse." The man sneered with a shake of his head. "You Landgraabs are all the same. Smart mouths, no sense. What moron convinced your family to let security take vacation during the Easter break? We'd never have gotten close to you, otherwise."

Ash frowned. "I...my Nan said it was a nice idea! How do you know Conrad, anyway? What other Landgraabs do you know?"

Ash's captor laughed. "So many questions! I don't have time for any of them. I need to go get someone; you stay here. If you try to leave, the whole place will blow. And if it doesn't, there will be two men with big guns guarding the door. Their orders are to shoot if you try to escape."

"You said on the phone you don't even know what we're waiting for. Who were you talking to?"

"It's rude to listen to people's phone calls."

"It's rude to talk about people behind their backs!"

The man clenched his fist with a glower. "If you weren't worth more alive then dead..."

He stopped himself, pulling out his phone again. The door slammed shut behind him, and he made a show of loudly turning a skeleton key to lock it behind him. "No bull, kid. Remember, men with guns will be here any second now."

(There is Landgraab in Ash, guys. It's not advisable to talk to your kidnapper like this at nine years old, but just because Ash doesn't talk to everyone this way doesn't mean he doesn't have that instinct when faced with someone rude! He's been raised - by the Landgraabs - believing he's special and his kidnapper all but confirms it.)

Ash slid under the covers in the small bed, waiting until he heard the man swim to an outrigger canoe in crystalline water, parked next to tall black rocks. He could definitely smell the ocean, but it didn't smell anything like the sea in Brindleton Bay.

When the man and his canoe disappeared behind the rocks under the rapidly setting sun, Ash moved quickly. He was familiar with Grimophones because they still had Bella Goth's from the time his parents' learned to make ambrosia. He knew Lavender loved dancing to music playing from the old machine, but he also knew it could be used to summon someone who didn't need unlocked doors to move around.

He'd never used it to call the Grim Reaper before, but he moved close, speaking quietly into the black and gold painted horn. "Excuse me, Mr. Grim Reaper, sir. I could really use your help if you're free right now."

He waited a few long, agonizing moments before the Grim Reaper appeared in the corner. "Ash Landgraab? I was just spending time with dear Bella! What are you doing in Sulani?"

"I...I'm not sure. Someone took me and I woke up here."

"Took you?" Grim peeled back in shock. "Are you hurt?"

"My head hurts and I'm hungry, but I'm okay I think...You're like a courier, right? Can you get a message to my parents to tell them where I am? The man said he had to go get someone and that more men were coming soon, and he said they'd have guns. I'm scared!"

Grim's hollow black face still emanated sympathy for the boy. "Will your parents have time to reach you? It's a long flight to Sulani..."

"My grandparents have a really fast jet," he offered nervously.

Grim nodded. "I'll do everything I can to get them here as fast as possible. When the men come, just try to stay calm."

Ash nodded in agreement as Grim disappeared in another puff of black smoke. His stomach grumbled, but he didn't want to eat whatever might be turning inside the fridge.

Grim reappeared moments later, but he hadn't landed in Brindleton Bay or San Myshuno. He stood before Felix, Lilith, Rafa, and Melissa outside the abandoned ship. Lilith grinned excitedly. "Oh wow! That's not just cosplay; you're the Grim Reaper!"

Felix cleared his throat. He'd avoided Grim for over a century, having taken somewhat personal their last unfortunate meeting on the day of Felix' death. "Hello, Grim. You're not here to reap someone's soul tonight, are you? We're quite enjoying our vacation."

"Speak for yourself," interjected Rafa. "You really won't give up no matter how many times I tell you I won't cooperate with you and Conrad."

"It really is in your best interests-"

Melissa stepped forward with a frown. "He said no. Can't you just leave him alone?"

"I can, most certainly. But Conrad's an officer of the law and I'm not so sure he can."

Grim shook his head, his deep, echoed voice reverberating over their own. "I'm not here to reap any souls no matter how much your bickering tempts me. I'm here for Conrad's stepson, Ash Landgraab."

"He's just a boy!" argued Felix. "You can't be serious."

"I'm not here for his soul; Ash asked for my help. He's been kidnapped, and they're keeping him on an island not far from here. His parents don't even know yet that he's missing. They'll find out soon."

Rafa shot a look at the hooded reaper before them. "You're really the Grim Reaper?"

Felix nodded, remembering his death as though it were yesterday. "Trust me, it's him."

"I don't trust you!" argued Rafa.

"Enough! Time is the only thing that matters and that boy is running out. The people who took him didn't fly him to Sulani on a commercial airline. When Ash called me through an old Grimophone in the shack where they're keeping him, I went back in time to find him."

Rafa's eyes bulged. "Seriously, what the hell is with you people?!"

"It's only a few hours difference. Just a little earlier today. But that just means it'll take his family a little longer to get here and he said there would be men with guns. You could help him before they even know he's gone."

"What men with guns?"

"I'd imagine they're connected to the same group of hitmen responsible for too many of my visits out here."

"So, you're saying a kid was taken by a time traveler and brought to hitmen in Sulani? Why would someone do that?"

"He told you why," Lilith said carefully. "The kid's a Landgraab."

Melissa's face fell. "Like the company? So they took Conrad's stepson for ransom money?"

The Grim Reaper shrugged. "I don't know anything else, other than to note he was headed to the tiki bar when I saw him on my way over here. He looked frustrated - maybe they were supposed to travel to a different time and place but something went wrong."

"What do you mean 'wrong'?"

He shrugged again. "I've been around a long time; I know plenty that can go wrong with time travel. If his kidnapper figures out what went wrong, they could be gone to who knows where, and who knows when, before his family has a chance to look for him."

Felix and Lilith stepped forward eagerly. "We're in," said Lilith. "I haven't met Ash's parents yet, but Felix owes them his life and I owe them for Felix."

Rafa grumbled, as good-hearted Melissa glanced at him cautiously. "You want to help them, don't you...Rafa, it's dangerous!"

"I have to, Mel. If I don't help Conrad's stepson and he knows I was asked, what would he owe me anymore?" ->

<- Previous Chapter | Gen 2 Start | Gen 2.1 Summary

Gen 1 Start | Gen 1 Summary

NOTE: Time travel?! Blame the new rewards event and the inherent weirdness of The Sims, but just like embracing my gameplay (mistakes and all!) and turning it into storyline, in keeping with the tradition of baking rewards events into the plot, we're going there and this is the gateway!

WCIF Shack Build? Lost Cave on the Sims 4 Gallery by ApollArtemisLuna. I thought it would be this cave-looking lot with big boulders, but when I placed it there were no boulders. If I read German I might have known this only looked like this in the screenshot because it was placed inside the Forgotten Grotto, presumably with TOOL. So I pivoted from Plan A and surveyed the lot I got. Definitely still fit the vibe of the location and -voila!- a Grimophone was included by the creator!

Ash definitely knows what a Grimophone is and what it can do since Heather and Conrad still have Bella's (it's theirs now, really), and the plot sprouted from the gallery build. I can't stress enough how much I love the Gallery and how it inspires my creativity in ways trying to build my own lots wouldn't do! Thank you builders!

[tarotbyjam24]

What are your gifts and abilities?

Likes , reblogs and feedbacks are very much appreciated 💗

Disclaimer: this is general reading . It may or may not resonate . If reading doesn't resonate let it fly and choose another pile or simply there were no messages for you through this reading 😊 Take the reading lightly as nothing's set in stone until you believe so 🕊️

Thankyou for stopping by let's dive in ☄️ Choose the pile you feel most drawn to 🧸

Pick a piles \masterlist

Pile 1 Pile 2

Pile 1

pile 1 : Hi pile 1 , let's see what's there for you through this reading:) you're good at thinking out of box ,you've open mindset ,ready to accept new things , you've broad horizons , you're also good at praying so like in the sense of sprituality you can get your wishes granted by doing prayers . I'm also getting hopohopono prayer . You're also good at fighting be it verbal or physical means you just have a good body built or you could have air signs dominancy in your charts even mercury too . You also have a great gift of instropection which makes you shine among others . I also feel your throat chakra could be very active too if not you should work with that chakra . You also have the ability to come out of the saddest situations . No matter how much hurt you have been you alsways come out through it breaking all the walls and face it all with great responsibility without being embarrassed about your life's situations. I also feel you have an amazing ability of leading things innately . People may also get hypnotize by you when they see you . People may also like to do what you say without questioning it . You have ability of creating a mind map for the things in your brain like those people who will think it all in their brain first from zero to end and then put it down on paper . This is giving solving a biggg equation in your mind and then just writing a single line answer . I feel people may get happy after they see you like you've this vibe to yourself that changes the air of the room you enter in . It's your aura that does it . You're also the one who don't likes to take advice from others and just do whatever their heart truly desires . You don't run from problems . You fight them with the swords in both hands . When life throw lemon at you ,you make lemonade Outta them . That's all pile 1 I hope you enjoyed the reading . Bless you 🍪 see y'a soon🖤

Pile 2

pile 2 : Hi pile 2 ,let's see what's there for you through this reading :) you have this magical ability in yourself through which you can see through dark and be the light for others . You're also kinda magic stick that helps others to find the magic within themselves. I feel you may also have good physique without working out or you may have a strong gut with fast mukbang metabolism. You're the person who likes to be in their world . If you're alone it won't bother you at all but you're most likely to create something when you're alone like you can get mind-blowing ideas when you're in your own world. You're for real super innovative. You're also definition of live more lives dance more dances . You also got thid motherly nature to you regardless of genders .you maybe the mama bear of your friend group . You're also the one who can protect everyone . You're people's rock pile 2 .You're also super passionate. You've this constant fire to move forward in life doesn't matter if people stay with you or not . You're constantly levelling up all 4 seasons but you also take care of yourself which sometimes people forget . You're someone who doesn't get swayed away . You've very strong supportive system build for yourself whether it's you alone or people around . You can also be your strongest support system. It doesn't always need to be people around us . Sometimes they're the one who breaks it . That's all pile 2 I hope you enjoyed the reading . Bless you 🍪 . See y'a soon🖤

I hope you liked the reading . Thank you so much for letting me read for you . Wishing you best ahead . 🎀Bless you and have a nice day🌸🐰

Loads of love , jam\gem

Exchanges : open , collabs for paps : open

[bratbarzal]

The Secret of Us (LH43) 1/3

aka the sequel to let it happen

Pairing: Luke Hughes x Fem!Reader

WC: 21k (oops)

I felt it, you held it, do you miss us? wonder if you regret the secret of us.

General Warnings: angst (lol), a severe lack of proofreading, mentions of injuries, a couple of angsty flashbacks with avoidant behaviour and fade to black type smut

A/N: just want to say thank you guys for liking this so much 💖 seeing all the comments and the messages and people recommending this to others and the sweet things you're all saying (even if I betrayed you lol) made me so unbelievably happy!!! I could never let these two go out like that, I enjoy writing this dynamic way too much, and I also have way too much discussing this fic with people!! shoutout to the let it happen film club lmao!!! I hope you guys enjoy this sequel, and I hope it lives up to LIH, they really are my babies!!

and I know what you're thinking, maggie how could we ever trust you again after let it happen??? you can't!! and you shouldn't!!! but I wouldn't do that to you twice.

or would I???

I wouldn't 😌

OR WOULD I?!?!?!?! 😏

You need to start getting more comfortable saying no to people.

It’s something you tell yourself all the time, that being a people pleaser is going to lead to your downfall - it’s something you’ve always known.

So why you would ever possibly agree to attend a football game with your sorority sisters after weeks of hiding away in the safety of your childhood bedroom, you have no idea. You’ve spent the last 4 weeks alone convincing yourself to grow a backbone, and you’ve only been back in town a week. 7 whole days and your resolve has crumbled to pieces.

And now you’re squeezing yourself through a crowd of sweaty, yelling men to find your seat in the cramped spaces of Michigan Stadium, after already being packed like a clown into the back of your friend Molly’s car, and your head is throbbing, already.

A football game.

You at a football game.

It’s absurd.

Dressed in team colours with a ridiculous yellow M painted on your cheek like you’re some sort of local.

It’s your own version of a living hell, and you can’t wait for it to be over.

“Are you guys always sat this low?” You yell out to Molly as the rest of your friends amble in, surrounded now on all sides with no way out.

“Aren’t the seats, great?!” She yells back, louder than you, causing you to wince a little at the shrill sound in your ear.

The seats are not great, but you wouldn’t be happy anywhere in here.

You can barely even see the field, the sidelines packed with God-knows-who, and your back hurts already, and all you want is to go back to the version of you that was first asked if she wanted to come with. A version of you that should have told Molly straight up that you’d have rather sat at home plucking at any remaining body hair with a pair of pointed tweezers than to come to a Michigan Football game.

“Oh, look!” Molly jumps, and you’re assuming she’s just going to point to her boyfriend, following her finger with a bored gaze. You’ve seen him, before. You don’t need to see him again.

Only Molly’s finger doesn’t point to her boyfriend.

It points to the sidelines - to a group of guys stood with a shorter girl with curly blonde hair.

Ellie’s down there, dressed in team colours, too. She’s stood next to Jack, who’s stood next to Quinn.

And you don’t even need to look past Quinn to know who’s gonna be stood beside him.

It’s way too late to go home, now, you fear.

Not when Molly is digging her phone out and pressing immediately on Ellie’s contact, and you can see the whole situation unfold in front of you. 

Ellie never has her phone on silent, and when it rings, it rings loud - a high-pitched, horrific tone that honestly sets off your fight or flight, and you can see the immediate reaction the boys have to it chiming in her hand. 

She answers, instantly, and you can hear Molly’s side of the conversation, guiding Ellie to where your group are up in the stands, waving like a lunatic until Ellie finds you all - and, as if your life isn’t bad enough, she then starts gesturing at you.

“Look who I managed to convince to come with!” She yells, still pointing like you’re some circus attraction, and, if you could remember what the ground felt like, too long in the stands, now, that you miss it, you would honestly want it to swallow you up.

Because obviously Ellie isn’t the only one looking.

Jack is looking.

And Quinn is looking.

And you know, once again without looking yourself, that the person beside Quinn now has his eyes on you, too.

The weight of them takes you back in a dizzying flash, and all of a sudden, you’re back in the lake house, sobbing into your hands until you were pulled into the soft embrace of your best friend.

“Hey, you’re crying, what’s wrong?” Ellie cooed as she came over, throwing her arm around your shaking frame and rubbing a hand up and down your back. “What happened?”

“It’s nothing, I’m fine,” you tried through shaky breaths, attempting and entirely unconvincing smile, like it would at all mask the flood pouring down your cheeks, “Go back to your party, I’m just being dumb.”

“I’m not gonna leave you like this,” she told you, “What's going on, is it Luke?”

The mere mention of his name brought back the onslaught of tears, your face scrunching as you tried to hold them back, but it was no use. Every single part of you ached with regret, your throat, your chest, your limbs - and all you wanted to do was curl up and cry it out. “I fucked it all up, El.”

“No,” she reassured you, “He fucked things up, he should never have spoken about you like that, it wasn’t fair. Not if the two of you are into each other, he shouldn’t be saying things like that.”

“He was right, though,” you sobbed, “I’m a mess, I just ruin everything good, I don’t even know why.”

“Aw, babe, no-,” 

“I told him I’d go out with Cole. I don’t even know why, I just wanted him to stop trying to make things work, he kept trying to tell me that he didn’t mean any of it, but I know he did.”

“Do you?” She asked, “Want to go out with Cole?”

“No, of course I don’t.” You shook your head, although you didn’t know how obvious it was, especially to everybody else, how little you wanted to be with anybody that wasn’t Luke. “I just want to go back to this morning, before I heard him say any of that stuff.”

“Why don’t you come downstairs, huh? We can find him, and the two of you can try to talk again-,”

“I can’t,” you refused, the thought of trying to communicate your feelings while you looked the way you did - eyes red raw and face all swollen - filling you with anxiety. “Can you just tell people I’m sick if they ask? I know it’s your birthday but I can’t go down there, Ellie.”

“Okay,” she had agreed, although the worry in her eyes made you feel even worse - missing your best friend’s birthday party because you were too chicken to face your feelings?

What sort of friend does that?

“I’ll come check on you, though. And tomorrow, you’re gonna have a serious conversation with Luke, alright? You can’t keep pushing people away, it isn’t good for you.”

“I know,” you sniffled, “I promise, I’ll try tomorrow.”

But trying had been futile. Luke wanted nothing to do with you - he could barely even look your way. He didn’t come downstairs for breakfast the next day, and when he finally did, he turned straight back around. Every time you tried to talk to him, he would shut you down, and by the tenth day of trying, you’d given up, entirely - booking yourself a ticket home, packing your things up one night and leaving the morning after. 

The following weeks were spent wallowing back home with your mom - texting Ellie, waiting for him to reach out, even though you knew he wouldn’t. Watching sad movies, staying inside, spending your days alone, while your mom was at work, and trying not to miss him so much.

And coming back to Michigan had only been made easy by the fact that he would be gone - due to go back to training in Jersey, and the two of you wouldn’t cross paths.

It won’t hurt as much, you had thought, if you didn’t have to see him.

But now here Luke is, following Ellie’s gaze as she waves up to you in the stands, stood on the sidelines of the football game you’d only attended to finally get yourself out of the house - still in Michigan, stood at the end of the path you thought no longer led to him. 

This might be the first time he’s met your eye in a while, and there’s a visceral feeling that shoots straight through you - your heart falling into an alarming, irregular thump that reverberates through your entire body, and it’s a strange sensation, like the slowing of time, the blurring of everything around you but him. 

His arm is held to his front with a sling, and you try to ignore the way your stomach turns at the sight of it. It’s nothing to do with you, he doesn’t want you to care. He doesn’t even want to talk to you, and you don’t want to talk to him, either - not anymore. Not after almost 6 weeks of silence - of forcing yourself to think about anything but him, like you even could.

You offer a tight lipped smile and a wave to Ellie, and try to ignore his presence for as long as you can, try to watch the game, to focus on your friends in the stands beside you - only, he keeps looking back. Craning his neck, surveying the crowd as it fills up just to find you, and your heart starts to hammer in your chest every time you catch his eye.

What happened to him avoiding you at all costs? What happened to ignoring your attempts to talk, the knocks at his door, the pleading, persuasive looks you’d try to give him when it all got a little too much in the end. 

Why can’t he just let you slip away into nothingness, like it would be so much easier to do?

Your phone buzzes in your back pocket as you’re trying to focus on the game, the desire to flee growing by the second - cramped and claustrophobic in your seat, dying for a drink and a minute of reprieve away from the crowd, away from Luke and whatever weird telekinetic powers he has on your heart.

Luke: can we talk?

Luke: I’ll be at the closest concessions in 5

You slip your phone back into your pocket without responding, and by the time you look back down to where he had been stood, he’s gone. 

You should be relieved. 

Maybe if you ignore his message, he’ll stop looking at you.

Maybe this is where it ends, and you can finally let each other go - too far gone to fix, nothing left to say.

Only your legs are now moving, side stepping Molly and the other girls, along with the rest of the people in your row, and your mouth is apologising to those you bump into, and your feet are carrying you down the stairs to where you know he’ll be, sneakers squeaking against the sticky floor as you search for him in the small concessions queue.

He stands taller than most, waiting by the counter, facing the other way, and you take the second that his back is turned to you to reconsider.

Stuck in place, staring at broad shoulders you’d once spent tracing the freckles between while he slept, and wondering which might hurt more - walking away or hearing him out. 

He turns before you get the chance to choose, his eyes meeting yours , widening in surprise, as much as they can, considering his current predicament, and he immediately heads your way.

“Didn’t think you’d come,” Luke just about says as he precariously holds onto a plastic cup between his teeth, offering you the one in his free hand - what you assume is diet coke with ice sloshing a little over the rim and onto the already sticky floor. 

“Can hardly leave a one-armed man to navigate the concession stand on his own. Not one with your appetite, at least.” Your brows furrow when you notice the distinct lack of snacks in his hold, but you figure he prioritised using what little carrying capacity he had to get your drink. “Do you want me to hang around while you get something to eat? I can hold your drink,”

“I don’t have much of an appetite,” he says, clearer now that he can hold his cup in his hand instead of his mouth. “I’m on some pretty strong painkillers, can’t eat without feeling sick.”

“Oh,” you frown, eyeing the sling that holds his other arm. He had been fine when you left the lake house - and even last week, in Ellie’s story on instagram, he hadn’t seemed injured then. It must be a recent development, and so close to the season, for him to be out in public wearing a brace, it can’t be good. “What happened?”

“Took a pretty bad hit on the ice,” he shrugs with his other shoulder, lips turning down like he’s trying to play it off, “Been telling myself it’s karma.” The way he chuckles is distant and noncommittal, and not at all like all the ways you’re used to seeing him smile or laugh. His eyes don’t squint, his mouth barely turns up, barely pushes those tell-tale folds into his cheeks that you used to press at when he was close enough to do so. Back when being in such close proximity made your heart thump in a different way.

But maybe that’s for the best.

Maybe one of Luke Hughes’ signature crooked grins might have made you do something stupid, like touch him again. You’ve worked too hard to push away the feeling of wanting to for the past month. 

“Karma for what?” You ask instead, head tilting to survey the damage, like you’d even be able to see anything through the thick yellow hoodie he has on. It’s better than looking him in the eye, you think.

“For what I said to Cole,” he tells you, the shame that lines his words doing little to alleviate the way they so quickly jab at you, all the memories of that day and that conversation rushing back at you full-force. Memories you’ve worked really hard to suppress. “For hurting you. I probably deserved to get hurt, too.”

“I’d never want you to be hurt, Luke.” You say before you can think better of it, narrowed eyes meeting his finally, watching as they soften slightly, let your words sink in and melt like warm butter, seeping into his every pore and breaking down his hardened exterior. 

“Me neither,” he almost-whispers, “For you, I mean. I wouldn’t want you to be hurt.”

You nod, momentarily pressing your lips together, your focus dropping to a patch of lint on his hoody, clenching your free hand into a fist behind your back to save yourself from reaching out to pluck it off. 

“Is that all you wanted to see me for?”

You don’t want to be rude to him, but it’s hard, especially when every instinct in your body is telling you to push him away - to keep him at arms length where he can’t pull you back in. 

“No,” he utters quickly, his feet shuffling as if he wants to step forward, reduced the metaphorical distance you’re trying to force between the two of you. “I was hoping we could talk.”

You just about save yourself from having your jaw drop wide open.

You’d tried to talk to him last month, before you left, and he had wanted nothing more to do with you. 

“In the middle of a football game?” You frown, daring to glance up - taking notice of the panic in his eyes when he reads you like a book, can recognise your retreating form from a mile off, by now.

“No,” he blurts out, “No, I mean later, if you’re free. Somewhere else.”

“I don’t know-,”

“We’re having a barbecue back at the house,” he interrupts, a look on his face like he couldn’t possibly accept no for an answer. “Like an end of summer send-off thing, you should come over, I know the guys would want to say goodbye properly.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” you finish your earlier thought, “Besides, your family probably all hate me.”

“Why would they hate you?”

“Because of what happened with us,”

“Oh,” He frowns, “No, they don’t hate you, I promise, not even Jack.”

“I find that hard to believe,” you scoff - when he had helped Ellie move rooms back in the sorority house last week, he could barely even muster a smile to send your way. He hadn’t been his usual stand-offish self, but he had hardly been friendly, either. You didn’t expect laughs and hugs and welcome-backs, but after the two of you had kind of made up back at his cousin’s wedding, and things were finally solid between him and your best friend, you thought some kind of bridge had been built.

Apparently not.

“I didn’t tell them.”

“Oh,” you don’t know whether you feel relieved or disappointed. He can’t have been that heartbroken about the whole thing if he never told a soul, right? Even you told your mom when you got home - granted, she was a whole bottle of rosé deep into the night and seconds from falling into a wine coma, but you still at least acknowledged your feelings to somebody. 

What did he do, just bottle all whatever feelings remained up and send them off down the lake? Enjoy the rest of his summer like you never happened?

“I didn’t think you’d want me to,” he continues, “You never really liked me talking about us with other people, so I didn’t.”

“Right,” you nod, biting your tongue to save from throwing out a bitter, thanks. You spent the last month watching heart-wrenching sad movies in your bed all day and he just went about his life like the two of you were nothing That’s fine. That’s cool.

“Ellie’ll be there,” he tries again, like she won’t be attached to Jack’s hip all night and you’ll be left on your own. “And a few of the Michigan guys, if you need a ride back to campus. I’d offer to drive you, but,” he nods down to his arm, “Or you can stay, your room is still free.”

Yourroom. Like you have any claim on any part of his world, still.

“I’ll think about it,” you tell him, because you can’t fully bring yourself to say no to his face. It’ll be easier when you’re back home, later, and can just ignore his texts, if he even cares enough to send any. “I should get back.”

“I can walk you back,”

“You shouldn’t be in a crowd with your arm,” your head shakes and you step back, your body language saying more than your lips even dare. “It’s fine. Thanks for the drink.”

“No problem.” He chews at the corner of his lip as he watches you retreat, like he has more to say. 

Despite spending the last month doing everything in your power to wipe your thoughts clean of Luke Hughes, you want nothing more than to hear it - but where you’ve been suffering and relating every pathetic, sad song you hear back to him and fighting every urge to reach out through fear of rejection, he’s been ignoring your entire existence. Repressing whatever feelings he may have had and neglecting any instinct he might have had to reach out, too. 

“Promise me you will?” He calls out when you’re a little ways down the tunnel, causing you to turn back to see him in the same spot, “Think about it, I mean. I’d really like to talk to you.”

Your fingers tense at the mere mention of a promise tumbling from his lips, your pinky sending signals to your feet to run straight back to him, practically itching to reach out and link with his. Instead, you nod, eyes darting to the big M that stretches across his chest, easier to look at that and lie than into his hopeful gaze. 

“Sure,” you tell him, because you can hardly make a promise you can’t keep. 

Not to Luke.

You’re not coming.

Luke realistically knew as much when Ellie arrived on her own - immediately going over to Jack and sparing Luke a glance out of the corner of her eye as she whispered to his brother.

But it’s taken him almost 2 hours to really come to terms with the fact - to stop keeping an eye on the door and whipping his head around any time a newcomer enters the house. 

He should have known when you refused to make a promise to him - not like you owed him anything in the first place. Should have known when the few attempts you made at joking around with him like old times, you’d barely mustered a smile - that familiar glint in your eye that shone only for him watered down into a dull gaze you refused to hold. 

God, he’s an idiot, he thinks.

He should have spoken to you when he had the chance - those few times you had tried to offer an olive branch, pushing a pre-poured glass of juice his way at breakfast or making space for him on the couch he’s now conveniently slumped on, all alone.

It feels a little like a lost cause now, trying to reignite some sort of spark between the two of you - not when you won’t even hear him out.

He’d felt a bit of hope when you’d met him at the stadium, thinking his text might have been left on read - and even though he’d made the effort to buy you a drink, he hadn’t entirely expected you to turn up. 

He thinks maybe that had been the first thing to throw him for a loop - arranging a meeting on a whim and you actually making an appearance. Maybe that’s why he couldn’t form a coherent sentence, or relay any sort of confidence in himself or what he was trying to sell you on. 

Maybe that’s why he couldn’t convince you to come.

He can’t blame you - your last 10 days here at the house had been miserable, on his account, and if he was in your shoes, he wouldn’t come back, either. He wouldn’t hear himself out, wouldn’t forgive himself.

The night of Ellie’s party should have been where he drew the line at avoiding you - the initial aftermath of your fight still sizzling, too hot to touch while the both of you were still reeling.

The morning after, he had been hungover - throwing back drinks like nobody’s business just to drown you out - and there was no chance of having a serious conversation, then, even though he had woke up alone in his bed wanting nothing more than for you to be there.

He’d gone downstairs sometime in the early afternoon, ignoring his growling stomach until he couldn’t do it any more , and had trudged into the kitchen only to find you there with Cole.

The bitterness within him fought violently with his need to puke, and he stormed back up to his room, no longer having any sort of appetite, and stayed there for the rest of the day.

The days that followed were no better - avoiding you at every given opportunity, ignoring your pleading eyes, leaving no chance for you to speak to him, despite all the times he could see that you wanted to. He’d leave every room you entered, turn away from every conversation you joined, and the final nail in the coffin was probably the time he ignored you knocking on his bedroom door one night, the soft call of his name feeling like a knife that twisted in his gut. 

You were gone the next day - your bedroom door open and the room empty when he walked past, your seat at the table vacant when he came downstairs for breakfast, and he seemed to be the only one who didn’t know. Ellie seemed unbothered, already having moved into Jack’s room, Quinn was drinking the green tea you had bought, that no one else was supposed to touch, Alex probably wouldn’t have cared either way, and Cole was already talking about meeting up with some other girl.

“Wow,” Luke had scoffed, throwing himself into the chair beside Cole’s and sneaking a peak at his phone screen, suddenly feeling a burning need to call the guy out. He was to the entire reason you called things off with Luke, and now he was talking to someone else? “Her bed isn’t even cold and you’re already moving on, huh?”

Ellie had glared at him from across the table, and Jack had frowned too, no doubt wondering why after 10 days of complete silence about the whole thing, he was daring to bring you up now.

“What are you talking about?” Cole chuckled, leaning back in his chair and raising a brow at Luke, who just said your name in response, with a pointed stare. “What about her?”

“Thought you were ending your summer with a girlfriend.” 

“Dude, where the hell have you been?” Cole snorted, amused, if anything, “She couldn’t have turned me down quicker if she tried. Man to man, don’t ever follow instructions from that one,” he pointed over to Ellie, “She led me on a wild goose chase all summer just so that I’d help her get her guy.”

“Hey!” Ellie called from across the table, “It’s not my fault you have no game. And I would have gotten my guy just fine without your help.”

Before Cole could retort, spurred on by the way Jack was chucking by her side, Luke frowned, straightening in his chair. “She didn’t want to go out with you?”

“No, but before you say anything, it has nothing to do with my game, alright? She’s into someone else, I guess.”

“Someone else?” Luke’s eyes darted over to Ellie, who just rolled hers in response, turning her attention back to Jack before she excused herself from the table.

“That’s my guess,” Cole shrugged, “She said she wasn’t into me like that, but come on.”

Wasn’t into him?

That wasn’t what you had said to Luke.

“Sorry man,” Luke offered, absentmindedly, head craning to see which direction Ellie left in. “As you were.”

He jogged out of the kitchen and up the stairs, just about catching her before she disappeared into her and Jack’s room. “Hey, wait,” he had called, watching as she let out a heavy sigh and turned to look at him with narrowed eyes. “She turned him down?”

“Did you not just have this exact conversation with Cole?”

“Ellie, c’mon,” he pleaded, desperation creeping up inside - feeling a little too much like guilt, and causing a serious discomfort in the pit of his stomach. “She said she wanted to date him.”

“You’re so unbelievably stupid.”

It didn’t quite hit the same as when you said it, shame washing over him at the way Ellie was glaring at him. 

“She heard you tell him that she wasn’t girlfriend material, and that she would just be hard work, and not worth his time. Lucky for you, she didn’t hear the bullshit you said before that.” Regret formed like a heavy ball in his gut, the weight of it almost pushing him to keel over. “She said whatever she had to to get you off her back because it hurt her less to push you away.”

“I don’t-,”

“And you’re the dumbass who just let her do it.”

That’s not fair, he thought. What was he supposed to do, just watch you move on without a care in the world, cheering you on with a stupid grin on his face while his whole heart crumbled to pieces at the thought of you being with anybody else?

“I’m not a mind reader, Ellie,” he tried to defend himself, “I can’t keep pushing at a door that won’t open.”

“My God, do you have a peanut for a brain, Luke?” She had shoved at his chest, “She’s been holding the door open for the last ten days, and all you’ve done is walk past it. She wanted to talk to you, and you wouldn’t even look at her!”

“I wasn’t ready! I thought she-,” 

He had thought you had taken Cole up on his offer of taking you out - had thought that’s the conversation he had stumbled into the day after the party - and he didn’t want to risk hearing anything about it, or seeing it in action.

“She said it didn’t matter.”

You had said that - he had asked you straight up, so there was no confusing it, but when he tried to remember, he can’t picture your eyes as you did. He must not have been looking, he thought, or maybe you weren’t looking at him. Either way, how’s he supposed to muster up a clear idea of your intentions if he can’t remember the look in your eyes as you spoke them. 

You couldn’t lie to him - you never could, even in the beginning, pretending to be aloof, pretending you weren’t into him, he could always see through you, back then, so why didn’t he try harder when it was something he didn’t want to hear?

“She’s really gone home? Not just back to Ann Arbor?”

“What are you gonna do?” Ellie scoffed, folding her arms across her chest, “Chase her down?”

“I don’t know, if I have to. We need to talk.”

“She’s probably back at her mom’s by now, she left pretty early. And I think it’s for the best if you leave her alone, Luke. She gave you a hundred chances to talk.”

“What am I supposed to do? I can’t just leave things like this, I made a mistake, I need her to know that, I need her to know I’m sorry.”

“It’s better if you both just cool off a little. She’s hurt that you’ve been ignoring her, it isn’t fair to keep playing hot and cold with her feelings.”

“That’s not what I-,”

“I know.” Ellie sighed, leaning against the wall and giving him a pitiful look as she finally took in just how panicked he had become, running hands through his hair and shifting between his feet. “Just give it time, that way you can both think about it, think about what you want to say without just saying things and not meaning them.”

And that’s all Luke has been doing since then.

Thinking about what he wants to say to you - thinking about how to fix things. All without knowing when it is that he would even see you again, or if you’d be willing to listen. 

He’d distracted himself with it - his mind stuck on just how bad he had messed things up, and it had put him into a rut - so much so, that he ended up hurting himself in training, an injury that would have him out for a good couple of months. And he had meant it, when he told you he thought it was karma, because he deserved a reality check, he thinks. It had shifted things into perspective, at least - because now he could stay in town a little longer, could try and make amends before he had to go home and properly start his season.

And when he’d noticed Ellie scanning the crowd back at the game, had followed her beaming smile all the way to you in the crowd, he thought his heart had stopped.

It had been 4 weeks since he’d seen you last - almost 6 since he’d spoken to you. Since he’d touched you, or kissed you, or seen you smile, and when your eyes meet his from the stands, widened and hesitant, he could tell you were feeling the same.

An insurmountable longing for something the two of you should never have thrown away.

He saw the truth, then, even as you looked away and diverted your attention back to Ellie - the truth he was too hurt to notice all those weeks ago back in your room in the lake house. 

That you felt the same way - you always had - you just weren’t used to it. Weren’t used to loving someone, or having them love you.

But he can’t quite tell if you still feel it.

He can’t expect you to, not with how reserved you’ve become.

He sighs, sinking into the cushions of the couch, legs stretched out and head thrown against the back as he squints against the light - the noise around him dwindling to a constant buzz. 

He’s too caught up in his head to notice when Ellie sinks down beside him until she nudges at his side, and he slowly looks her way.

“If it helps at all, I could tell she wanted to come.”

Luke snorts out a humourless laugh, eyes rolling. “If she wanted to come, she’d be here.” He says, the muscles in his jaw tensing. “She doesn’t want anything to do with me.”

“She doesn’t really open up to people,” Ellie sighs, and he can tell from the way she’s looking at him that’s only divulging this from a place of pity, although he guesses that’s better than her saying nothing at all. “It took us years to get to where we are, and even now I’m not sure she lets me all the way in, and we’re supposed to be best friends.”

“I feel like I don’t even know if she was ever into me in the first place,” he mutters, tracing at a scratch in the surface of the table. Even if he had thought different, back in the stadium, he can’t be so sure now that you haven’t shown. You’d have come if you still cared. “I’m still confused by the whole Cole thing-,”

“That was my fault,” Ellie interjects, “I thought I was doing the right thing, I didn’t realise that you two were-,” her teeth clash as she bites down, as if to stop saying the word, together. “Whatever you were. And she just got all in her head after she heard you saying all that stuff, it’s what she does, keeps her cards close to her chest until she loses them all.”

“That’s the problem, El,” Luke groans, “If she really liked me, she would have told you. If she was ever serious, you’d have known something was up. She wouldn’t have hidden it from her best friend and told me that she was gonna go out with Cole after all.”

“You know she turned him down, Luke, he said himself, she was into someone else.”

“Yeah, or so he assumed,” he grumbles, recalling the feeling he got when Cole had said as much, back on the day you left.

“And you know on my birthday when she overheard that conversation, she’d literally just told me that she liked you. That’s big for her, Luke. It might have taken her a while but she got there in the end. It’s your own fault for having such a big mouth and ruining it.”

“I told her I didn’t mean it,” he can’t help how whiney he sounds, lips pouting and a crease forming between his eyebrows. “I told her I was sorry.”

“And then you ignored her for almost two weeks until she had no choice but to leave. You don’t get to claim the moral high ground here, I’m sorry.”

“So what am I supposed to do? She won’t talk to me.”

“You just have to give her time, don’t give up again.” Ellie nudges him a little too forcefully, the sharp jut of her elbow in his ribs causing him to wince. “Really think about if there’s a version of you that could be friends.”

“What if I don’t want to be friends, what if I don’t wanna keep taking one step forward and three back?” 

“Then think about if you’d rather be nothing at all.”

“She hates me that much?”

“I don’t know, she stopped talking to me about it.” Ellie huffs, leaning back a little more into the couch. “But I’d take that as a no. If she hated you, neither of us would hear the end of it, trust me.”

He knows that’s true - all the odd comments you’d drop about Jack back in the beginning of summer. He knows you never hated Jack, but there was always a clear dislike, and you were never shy about voicing it to anyone willing to listen.

If you’re not talking about him at all, it means one of two things. You either give so little of a shit about him that you don’t see a use in bringing him up, or you don’t want to show vulnerability by admitting how much he hurt you.

He knows what he’d put his money on.

“Can’t you talk to her for me? Put a good word in?” He pleads, rounding his eyes in the hopes that Ellie’s pity extends to doing him a solid - he dedicated his entire summer to getting her and Jack together, after all.

“I think it’s best for the both of us if I stay out of her love life. My meddling is what got you guys into this mess in the first place.”

Luke sighs as he resumes his previous position, neck thrown against the back of the couch and eyes cast to the ceiling. 

Your room is right above - the bed on which you’d kissed him that first time, away from your scheming at the mall, still made and empty. The bed where you two would lay atop the covers, watching movies on the old staticky TV, sharing snacks between you and spouting commentary into the night.

He wonders, then, if you’d watched anything since the last time - before you left - and it’s that thought that has him pushing himself up and making his way up the stairs. 

Despite the amount of time since you were in here, it still kind of smells like you - like melon sunscreen and passionfruit perfume - and he casts a glance around for anything that might remain.

There’s nothing, though. No loose hair ties, forgotten jewellery, not even a book left behind.

And then he checks by the TV - the shelf below it housing a DVD player, and he powers it up just to press eject.

After a few seconds, a disc spins out.

Silver Linings Playbook, with Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence.

He might have seen it once or twice, can vaguely remember some of the storyline, but it isn’t until everybody has left the house a good hour or two later that he thinks he should watch it - if it’s the last movie you watched before you left - just to get an idea of your headspace. 

When he’s lounging on his own bed, the movie playing on his TV, Jennifer’s Tiffany saying to Bradley’s Pat, “I used to think that you were the best thing that ever happened to me, but now I think that you might maybe be the worst thing. And I'm sorry that I ever met you.” And it turns his stomach in a way he isn’t prepared for, tears pricking at his eyes at the thought of you watching this and thinking the same.

And then Pat responds, and Luke sits with the line for a good minute, pausing the movie as he ponders the response, "Good for you. Come on, let's go dance.” 

He wonders if you smiled the same way - soft and small, hopeful that one day the punches you throw to defend yourself are met with the same resistance, with a hand that grabs at them, and instead of fighting back, just pulls you closer.

It’s almost by instinct that he pulls his phone out, loading up the same app he always does when he’s watching a movie, ready to fill in a review when it gets to a part that resonates with him.

And there you are, on his friends feed - the last movie you logged being an hour ago, La La Land, which you had unsurprisingly given 5 stars, and had reviewed with just a quote - It’s pretty strange that we keep bumping into each other. Maybe it means something.

And he grins, really and genuinely beams, for what feels like the first time in a while, a small chuckle rumbling up from his chest as he checks for your review on Silver Linings - the same quote he loved so much sitting there under your 5 star rating. 

He doesn’t want to be nothing, he decides, then, like it was ever in question. 

And he realises it’s up to him to do something about it.

Luke’s first thought when it comes to fixing thing is to text you.

It’s simple, and it should be easy, but he sits staring at your name in his phone for 30 minutes trying to think of what would be best to say.

A casual, hey, in the hopes that you’d just instinctively type it back.

A call out, like, Bummed you couldn’t come over the other night, thinking you might have been feeling guilty.

A question, or even an invite, along the lines of, Do you want to meet somewhere? Because leaving someone hanging on an invite is just plain cruel.

But then he feels like he doesn’t want to force your hand - weirdly inspired by that La La Land quote you loved so much, about bumping into each other.

Only orchestrating a chance encounter was hard when you weren’t going out. Ellie had mentioned everybody going for drinks at one of the bars on campus, and you never turned up.

She told him your favourite coffee shop, and despite him hanging around all day one time, like a total creep, he didn’t catch sight of you once.

You weren’t with Ellie when he bumped into her at the mall, or at the diner, when he had gone for burgers with the guys and seen a few of your sorority sisters on the other side of the restaurant.

And even when Ellie had told him to come over to the house, that she’d take him into town to pick up some suits, because he was still in his sling and couldn’t drive himself, he had been disheartened to find out you wouldn’t be there - that you had a morning class, and Ellie hadn’t even seen you.

He settles for looking at the cute photo of you and Ellie on the mantle, greek letters painted on your cheeks, beaming smiles as you looked straight into the camera, and he still gets that twinge in his chest even looking at a photo.

A twinge that only grows when he hears a gasp from behind him, and he swiftly turns to see you at the bottom of the staircase, looking back at him, alarmed and surprised.

Luke’s eyes trail slowly up your bare legs, his throat going dry as they land on the oversized shirt you’re wearing - his shirt, he’s pretty sure, although he knows it’s probably best not to comment on that - before cutting up to your face, wide eyes staring back at him.

“What are you doing here?” You ask, stepping back toward the staircase where you rest your hand on the bannister, putting as much distance between the two of you as you can without completely retreating up the stairs. 

“I uh-,” he stutters, losing his train of thought as he stands there with his mouth agape, taking you in.

He hadn’t been prepared to see you, that much is clear - and especially not like this, dressed in his shirt, which you’ve obviously slept in, hair a little messy, skin bare of any makeup. It reminds him of those mornings in his bed, waking up before the rest of the house, your body bathed in the soft glow from the rising sun, trading sleepy kisses until you would sneak back off to your room.

It makes him yearn for that, again, and feelings like that need some kind of forewarning, otherwise they serve nothing but to make him ache.

“I said I’d drive him to an appointment,” Ellie says as she emerges from the kitchen, car keys in hand, “I though everyone had class this morning, you’re not gonna hand me in for having a guy in the house, are you?”

“I’m not a snitch,” you frown, tugging at the ends of his shirt, “I slept in, I didn’t think anyone else was here either.”

He didn’t exactly need the confirmation, considering your current state, but knowing you slept in his shirt makes the heat creep up his neck, his chest puffing as he really takes in the meaning of it.

So many things about you are screaming that you want nothing to do with him, but you’re sleeping in his old Michigan shirt, one you’d borrowed when your shoulders were burning out on a wakeboarding trip one day, he’s pretty sure - one he never even realised you kept.

“Do you need a ride?” She offers, stepping beside Luke, close enough that in order to look at Ellie, you pretty much have to look his way too, and every time you glance at him, he catches you. “We were gonna go get a drink before, so we’re heading your way anyway. Or you could come with, if you’re skipping."

“Uh, no,” you decline, without even thinking about it, Luke’s chest feeling a little tighter at just how quick you are to avoid being near him. “I’m gonna go to the library.”

“I could still drive you. I doubt you’d mind a detour, would you, Lukey?”

“No,” he breathes out, almost immediately, eyes staying on you. “I don’t mind.”

“It’s fine,” you offer Ellie a tight lipped smile, “I’ll walk.”

And that’s that - your figure retreating back up the stairs before Luke has anything to say about it, his shoulders slumping as Ellie offers a friendly pat to his back.

“C’mon then, I need to stop for gas, you’re paying.”

He follows Ellie out to the back of the house, where the girls usually park their cars off the street, and just as he’s climbing into Ellie’s Mini, he glances up to the one of the windows, just in time to catch the quick shift of a curtain.

“Don’t worry,” Ellie says as he adjusts the passenger seat, folding his long legs into the limited space, an assured smile sent his way before she starts up the car. “I’ve got a plan.”

“What happened to no more meddling?” He huffs as he buckled himself in.

“I can’t sit back and watch my best friend become boring trying to avoid you, Luke,” she sighs, “It’s borderline painful.” 

—

You don’t know when managing your social life became Ellie’s full time job - as if the two of you aren’t tumbling into the depths of your final year of school with very little direction or guidance - but you’re growing tired of it, quick.

First, it had been, you’re coming to the bar and I’m not taking no for an answer, except, she had taken no for an answer, she just relished in making you feel bad for it after.

Then it had been, I need your opinion on halloween costumes, and she had insisted you join her at the mall, but you had an appointment with the careers counsellor that you really couldn’t miss, and she had to settle with sending you photos, again adding incessant messages about how she wouldn’t let you turn down the next invitation out.

Never mind trying to avoid bumping into Luke during his extended stay, avoiding Ellie was becoming a real task - slipping out before she can corner you in the mornings and staying out most of the day.

She caught you off guard, the other day, though - inviting Luke around. Sure, you were supposed to be in class - would have been, if your alarm had gone off on time - but still, bringing him into your space was like crossing a line, breaking an unspoken rule.

She’s supposed to be on your side. She isn’t supposed to be bringing the guy who hurt you into your house and driving him around town like his personal assistant, all from the good of her heart.

She’s just trying to kiss up to Jack.

At least, you thought so, until she sent you a text later that day - a bunch of pictures of Luke in different suits, tailored perfectly to his lean figure, shirts that stretched taut across his broad shoulders and pants that clung perfectly to his hips, followed by the message, thoughts?

You had many, but none that you could possibly sent to her - only replying with a question mark until she apologised, claiming they were meant for Jack’s approval.

It became clear then, what she was doing - flaunting him in front of you until you burst at the seams, like one of those jackets looked like it was going to do in a few of the pictures from the back of Luke in the tailor shop. Sending you those had been no accident.

And that’s why you were sceptical when the weekend rolled around, and she was begging and pleading for you to go with her to a party at the hockey house - promising you that he was finally heading back to Jersey, and definitely wasn’t going to be around.

She’d buttered you up with groans of, I feel like I never see you anymore, and, school is stressing me out, already, I just want to let loose with my best friend!

And it was the promise that she’d let you wear a skirt you’ve been eyeing in her closet for the past two years that sealed the deal - a vintage Diesel mini that she had thrifted and guarded like her whole life depended on it. 

You can’t help it, anyway - it’s been so long since you’ve been out like that - probably summer being the last time - and you need to let loose too.

And that’s how you end up walking hand in hand through the front door, Ellie having styled your hair, the two of you looking like a million dollars, and it’s the first time in months that you aren’t disturbed by the feeling of eyes on you.

You kind of feel like your old self - confident, self-assured, like there isn’t a soul on earth who could possibly make you doubt yourself.

You wish the universe gave you at least five minutes to sit with that feeling before you saw him. 

Before you saw Luke, sling-free, bottle in hand, leaning against the wall, talking to Victoria Anderson, a girl you know he has history with - a girl you have history with, yourself.

You hate how quick the switch within you flips - the slight slump of your posture, the tension in your jaw, all your self-worth seeping from your pores like your body is actively trying to kill it.

Your hand slips from Ellie’s, immediately heading in the opposite direction to where Luke is - making a bee-line straight for the kitchen, straight for a drink.

Ellie is hot on your heels, grasping at your arm to keep up, “I’m sorry,” she calls after you.

“You said he wouldn’t be here,” you grumble, shoving through the swinging door and heading straight for the line of bottles on the counter. 

“What am I, his keeper?” She scoffs, trying to play it off as a lighthearted joke, but you can see it in her eyes that she knew. “I don’t know where he’s gonna be at all hours of the day.”

“You said he was going back to Jersey.”

“Yeah, well, I must have got my days mixed up!”

“Yeah, right,” you scoff, pouring out a shot from the first bottle you find without even reading the label, and throwing it back before you can think twice. You pour yourself a proper drink, after - a vodka with diet coke - and sip at it just to cool your nerves, trying to calm yourself down.

You don’t want to be mad at Ellie - whatever she’s doing, she’s doing it because she cares - but you’re so tired of overthinking this whole thing. All you want is a break from it all, and no one is willing to give you one.

“I’m gonna go find Ethan,” you tell her, figuring you can kill two birds with one stone - ask him about the class you missed the other morning, and avoid speaking to Luke, “If you want to make this up to me, I need you to tell Luke to steer clear, okay?”

“Fine,” she scowls, rolling her eyes as she has to pour her own drink.

You storm off back toward the door, and just as you get close, it swings open, the edge of it knocking straight into you - into the hand holding your freshly poured drink, which is now dripping down your front.

Your whole body tenses at the sensation of the liquid seeping through your shirt, only momentarily thankful that you hadn’t added ice before you remember the coke - remember the vintage skirt, with the light denim wash.

You hear Ellie groan from behind you, and you squeeze your eyes shut in the hopes that you’ll magically gain some sort of time travelling superpower - a rewind button, like Click.

“Are you okay?”

Of course it had to be him, you think - because you’ve somehow unsettled the entire balance of the universe, and this is how it’s decided to repay you, your eyes opening to find those concerned, grey-green eyes peering back at you. 

He takes the empty cup that’s being squished in your grip and tosses it into a trash can to the side before you feel a hesitant hand on your side, watching as he surveys the damage.

“And here I thought that skirt couldn’t get uglier.”

Victoria’s piercing blue eyes gleam back at you, a sinister smirk plastered on her lips, and you’re lunging before you even know it before a strong arm curls around your waist, the heat of his skin slipping straight into the gap between your skirt and t-shirt, and sending a shiver straight down the spine that’s now pressed to his front.

“Hey, c’mon,” he warns, pulling you back with enough force that there’s a good couple of feet between you and Victoria now, and her eyes narrow at all the points he’s touching you. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

You think you only let him guide you away to piss her off - and it isn’t until he’s ushering you into the small downstairs bathroom and closing the door behind him that you realise how little consideration you put into that.

You watch as Luke retrieves a towel from the small cupboard by the door, forgetting he probably still knows this place like the back of his hand, and starts to work at the front of your t-shirt before you snatch it away.

“I’ve got it, thanks.” You snap, entirely frustrated with the whole situation than you think you are with him, a small swirling of guilt immediately bubbling up inside you. 

You dab at the skirt, first, hoping there’s some way that it’s salvageable, or Ellie’s going to murder you. You lean against the counter by the sink, and glance down at the damage. It looks just like a water stain, for now, unfortunately placed, but you won’t know for sure until it dries, and dabbing at it with a towel isn’t really going to fix that.

“Did she hurt your hand?” Luke asks, low voice breaking the silence you were starting to cherish, and it’s only then that you realise where the door hit you. Your knuckles ache a little, but you can still flex your fingers, so you figure they’ll just be bruised tomorrow.

You do wish you could have bruised them another way - maybe with a fist to Victoria Anderson’s smug grin - but you’re supposed to be a pacifist, so maybe not. If anyone’s going to break that pattern, it would be her - your rival in every way ever since you came to Michigan. Academically, in all the same classes, socially, in opposing sororities, and even romantically, with her somehow always looking out for the same guys.

She’d even been at one of the parties back at the lake house, with her hands all over Luke - you remember hearing her shrill laugh and feeling like someone had just drug their nails down a chalkboard, all semblance of peace instantly lost. 

You’re brought out of whatever fiery daydream even her name elicits with the touch of Luke’s fingers to yours, the soft brush of his thumb over your knuckles as he surveys the damage.

“I’m fine,” you croak out, dazed a little by the feeling before you tear your hand away, “It was just a knock.”

“You want me to kick her ass?”

You blame the shot you took for the way you snort out a laugh - caught by surprise and unable to even consider the reaction, slipping straight back into your unguarded self around him - like the walls you’ve tried so hard to rebuild just dissolved. Not even a knock or a tumble of bricks, just them fading into nothing like magic.

Luke smiles back, soft and hesitant, like he’s waiting for you to fade away, too.

And then there’s that silence you thought you wanted - heavy and tense, and it’s too much for you to handle, so you slip past him, wordlessly, and head straight back to the door. 

And just as your fingers grasp at the handle and you prepare yourself to pull, a large hand lays flat on the surface beside you, trapped by a warm chest closing in on your back.

It’s quiet for a minute, the dull thump of the bass from the music somewhere else in the house now distant and fading, and the room feels charged way beyond the atmosphere of the party you’ve been away from a little too long.

You see the bend in his elbow before you feel his breath on the back of your neck, and you can feel the distance closing - an inch or two now, so close that you have to stay vigilant not to take even the slightest step back.

“Luke,” you breathe, your throat stinging in preparation for some sort of hurt, and your lip trembling until you start to chew on it.

“Just one more minute.”

“You have to let me go.”

“Please, I just want to talk.”

You turn, slowly,  and you don’t know why you do it to yourself, because it’s inevitable you’ll fall prey to the pleading look in his eyes. Your back falls against the door, and you’re craning your neck to look up at him, blinking slow as his eyes flicker between your own.

Every passing second feels like a minute, and just as you’re about to give in - to tell him to go ahead and talk, the door vibrates behind you, a fist banging into the other side.

“Please tell me the skirt is okay!”

You press a hand flat to his chest and push, wedging some much needed space between the two of you - enough that you can swing the door open and face Ellie, and save yourself from plunging into whatever rabbit hole that would have taken you down.

“I won’t know until it’s dry, but if it’s bad, we’ll take it to the cleaners, okay?”

“Ugh,” Ellie groans, grabbing you by the hand and dragging you back to the kitchen for another drink, “I’m so running her ass over the next time I see her on the street.”

You look back at Luke, still stood in the doorway, watching the whole way until you disappear around the corner, and it’s only when you can’t see him anymore that your heart rate returns to an acceptable speed.

You successfully manage to avoid Luke for a good couple of hours, almost forgetting him, miraculously, despite being in a house filled with his closest friends. There’s even a point where you think he might have left, until you stumble out into the backyard to a group setting up a small fire to keep warm.

You’re too buzzed to comment on the legality of it, so far gone that the thought of campus police coming around barely even crosses your mind, and you throw yourself down into one of the camp chairs with a drink in hand as the group discuss how to pass the time.

You can’t remember who suggests Never Have I Ever, too distracted by the figure settling down on the opposite side of the fire, long limps stretching almost comically out of the small chair, meeting your eyes for a moment before you look away at the arrival of Nick, who comes with cards in hand. 

You’d usually make some sort of comment about how juvenile it is, but there’s this part of you that’s probably trying to cling a little to that, lately, so you let it pass, leaning almost sleepily back into your chair as it kicks off.

The game is pretty tame compared to other times you’ve played it, stuff like, never have I ever crashed a car, and, never have I ever broken a bone, coming from the top of the deck, and there’s only a few complaints about it needing more spice before it gets to Ellie’s turn to pick, a few people down from you. 

“Never have I ever,” Ellie drags out before picking a card, flipping between her manicured fingers and smiling slowly as she reads the rest, “Been in love,” she coos, turning it to show the rest of the group with a love-struck grin.

A chorus of groans sing out from around the circle, Luca reaching to swipe the card from Ellie as she takes a big chug from her red cup. “That’s so lame,” he huffs, “Pick another, this isn’t the Ellie show. We get it, you're happy, doesn't mean the rest of us should suffer.”

You glance down at your empty cup as the two of them start to argue about the rules of the game, Ellie grumbling how she didn’t write the cards, and Luca retorting with how she could have at least gone off-script to make it a little more interesting.

If you had any semblance of your inhibitions, any control of your reactions, your gaze would have stayed on the last few drops swirling around the base of your drink. Your eyes wouldn’t have trailed up slowly, past the dancing flames of the makeshift-campfire, and fallen onto another cup at the opposite side of the circle.

It wouldn’t have watched intently as long, slender fingers raised to bring said cup up, pressing to parted lips, the contents gulped down as you stare at the movement of his throat around the liquid.

When you dare to look higher, you find him already staring back at you, piercing green eyes burning hotter than the fire between you, and your own throat goes dry as you watch. 

And of course he makes a show of it, squaring his shoulders and swiping a thumb across his bottom lip to make sure there's no residue. No evidence of all that he had just admitted to. Nothing but the memory of it burned already into the back of your retinas, lingering like an ache all the way down your spine.

No one else seems to notice - but you suppose that’s just how things go between you and Luke. One more secret to add to the ever-growing pile.

Your hand trembles as if it wants to copy him, but you’re thankful for the last shred of dignity you have that tells you that even if you wanted to drink - even if you could play it off as assuming the question had been vetoed, and you were just quenching your thirst in the brief break in the game - there’s nothing left. Even if you wanted to drink - which you brain is so loudly telling you that you don’t - you can’t.

And when Luke’s gaze shifts, lowers painstakingly slow as everything else fades to background noise around the two of you, you don’t know why you find yourself tilting your cup when his eyes land on it, making a show of just how empty it is.

“You’re not gonna drink?” Ethan frowns from beside you, a nudge of his elbow knocking at yours and bringing you back down to earth with a painful splat.

Why would he assume that?

“What?” You ask, frowning as you meet his chocolate brown eyes, the reflection of the flames basking them in a warm, melting glow. 

“He said never have I ever been kicked out of a bar,” he chuckles, quirking a brow as your face morphs from one of confusion to one of recollection. “I know for a fact you have.”

“Oh, right,” you laugh, nervously, the reaction coming out more like a stuttered breath as the panic swirling in your chest dissipates just the slightest. “I’m running on empty. I’m gonna go get a refill.”

Ethan nods as he shuffles a little to let you out of the circle, watching with narrowed eyes as you lift yourself from the chair and edge your way out of the group and back towards the house.

The kitchen is thankfully empty when you get back inside, sliding the door shut behind you to block out the noise, your thoughts overbearing enough without still being able to hear everyone yelling out in the yard.

You move almost on autopilot, heading for the row of bottles on the counter and reaching straight for the vodka you’ve been mixing with diet coke all night.

You pour out a measured shot first, swirl it in the cup before lifting the it straight to your lips, leaving little room to think much more about it, and throwing your head back.

The liquid burns the whole way down - all the way from the back of your mouth, past your aching chest, and into the pit of your stomach, pooling there in a nauseating bubble of heat and regret - and you don’t know entirely if the need to drink was just to quench your thirst, to alleviate the warmth spiking up your neck, to quell the rampant beating of your heart, or to play along with the game. With Luke’s game.

Maybe some mysteries are better left unsolved. 

He wasn’t in love with you.

You think you’d know. He would have told you - he’s hardly shy about voicing his opinion, you learned that the hard way. 

He’s just being cruel, now, you’ve convinced yourself - probably payback for earlier, for leaving him in the bathroom and telling him to let you go. One final act of defiance, because he has to have the last word.

God, why would you even play along?

You shouldn’t have even looked his way - should have kept your eyes down, then you wouldn’t still be feeling like your whole body is on fire. 

Your eyes dart up at the sound of the screen door opening, and your heart thuds in your chest at the sight of who walks through.

You hold your breath as he slowly makes his way toward you - cautious steps carrying him toward the counter where you stand, and he places his empty cup on the surface beside yours, 

“You can’t avoid me forever.”

“I don’t have to avoid you forever,” you shrug, circling around him and trying not to let him trap you again, “I just have to avoid you until you go home.”

“I don’t want to go home without us talking,” he grasps at your wrist before you can fully get past him, levelling you with a tired look, one that says he’s resigned to his fate, but he can’t rest until he tries one last time. “Please.”

“Luke,” you groan, the remnants of intoxication slowly fading into exhaustion. 

“Just one conversation.” He begs, “Then you can be done with me, I’ll leave you alone.”

Your lips twist as you try not to give under the weight of his softened, pleading gaze. He’s persistent, you’ll give him that - and he’s technically surpassed the efforts you had made back before you left the house toward the end of summer, now almost 3 weeks since you had turned him down back at the football game. 

And do you really want him to leave you alone? You’re not entirely sure. Maybe talking to him can help you finally figure that out. 

“Fine.” You acquiesce. “One conversation.”

“You want me to walk you home?” He asks, his voice soft and low, a tilt to his head that makes his curls shuffle and a caring glint in his eye that makes your legs feel like jelly. It’s probably for the best if he does, you think, you’re at a serious fall-risk now. Tired and buzzed, a lethal combination.

You nod, wordlessly, watching as he seemingly tries to fight a small smile, straightening up to swipe your cup, stacking it with his own and throwing it in the trash. 

“C’mon, I already gave Ellie a heads up, I’ll come back for her.”

You soften a little at the thought of him considering her - even if it isn’t about you. If it’s on Jack’s behalf, and he’s just being a good brother, him looking out for your best friend is still sweet.

You let him guide you out of the house, and it’s quiet in a way you can’t stand, walking side by side down the otherwise empty street.

“You’re out of your sling, then?” You don’t know why you feel better to make small talk - but waiting with bated breath for him to say what he’s been trying to for so long now makes your heart pound almost painfully against your ribcage. 

“Yeah,” he flexes his arm a little, as if to prove a point. “I’m back in Jersey at the end of the week, will probably be doing no contact training for a while.”

“How long until you’re playing again?”

“They’re saying it’s looking like November,” he tells you, “Which sucks, but at least I don’t need surgery like Jack.”

“Do you miss it?” You ask, conscious of the way your steps are slowly turning toward his and trying to straighten yourself up. “Being back in New Jersey with your team, with Jack?”

“Jack doesn’t give anybody a chance to miss him, you should know that by now.” He grumbles, "In my texts 24/7 like it’s his second job.”

“Ellie’s too,” you tell him in a breathy chuckle, crossing your arms over your torso just to keep your hands busy with something as he shoves his back in the pockets of his jeans. “I don’t know where he finds the time,”

“He doesn’t need time, he’s annoying to his very core.” Luke scoffs, “I do miss the guys though, but there’s a couple group chats. And I’d probably miss the guys here if I was back there.”

“So either way you’re missing somebody?”

He gives an affirmative hum, kicking a rock down the side of the curb, figuring you don’t quite realise just how true that question rings to him. The sorority house is at the end of the path, now - closer than either of you really anticipated, and you almost start to panic, like the walls are closing in on you, like you’re running out of time.

“Listen-,”

“Look-,”

You both stop in the middle of the sidewalk, looking at each other wide eyed until you press your lips together, and gesture for him to carry on.

“I miss you,” he says, plain and simple, like it’s all he can muster up - and if you’re honest, it’s all you want to hear, an acknowledgement that without you in his life, there’s this gaping hole that no one else can fill. “I know that if I want to fix things between us, that I should give you this huge speech about how much I fucked things up, and that I should have trusted you, and listened to you when you tried to talk to me, and I do think all those things. I know those things, but I’ve been trying to figure out how to say them without it sounding like some bullshit excuse, and I figure I just need to be honest with you.

“I feel like the whole time we were together, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, you know, like I could never just be in the moment with you because I felt like it was gonna end. And I think maybe you were doing the same.”

It’s crazy, you think, how well he knows you.

“And neither of us were ever gonna be ready to be anything more, because we weren’t even acknowledging that this thing between us probably wasn’t healthy.”

You’re quite thankful for the sting in the back of your throat, because you don’t know what you’d say to that, if you could speak.

It hurts to hear it, but he’s right. 

“I just wanted to believe it was a good thing for as long as you’d let me, and when you said you’d have dated Cole, and that you’d have thrown it all away, and I just left without a fight, I-,” he blinks, like he’s trying to rid himself of the tears welling in the corners of his eyes, like he doesn’t want to give in and let them shed. “I don’t know, I thought it was best to avoid you all together than watch you put that final nail in the coffin, or whatever.”

“You know I never went out with Cole, right?”

“I know. He told me before he left for training camp. The day you left. Almost considered running after you to apologise for being such a dick. Even thought about flagging you down in departures at Wayne County.”

You let that thought sit for a moment - Luke chasing you down like something out of one of the romantic comedies you would watch together - like the angsty movies you watched after you went home, laying on your bed and wishing the two of you could have had a happy ending. 

“Probably for the best you didn’t chase me through the airport,” you tell him with a wistful smile, “declarations of love freak me out,”

“I thought they might.” He chuckles, breathily, his heart not entirely in it.

“I also took the greyhound.”

“You know serial killers get those things, right.”

“You watch too many movies.”

His eyes flicker to yours, then, knowing and amused - like a new inside joke has cemented itself into your dynamic. 

“I don’t want to be nothing with you.”

It’s a weird statement, almost nonsensical, but you get it.

It’s what you’ve been trying for ever since you left Michigan, after all, and especially after you returned.

You let the thought settle for a moment, your lips twisting and your eyes tearing up as you watch him wait for a response.

“You really hurt me, Luke.” Your voice trembles as you say it, and you think you’re only part spurred on by liquid courage, the rest of it probably the incessant need to open up to somebody.

“I know,” he practically whispers back, choked up as much as you are. 

“I don’t think I can do that again.”

He nods, pressing his tongue to the side of his cheek like he’s trying not to press you on it, stepping back ever so slightly and huffing out a deep breath.

You almost think he might retreat, entirely - accepting your reluctance this final time and letting you go, just like you’d asked, earlier.

“What about if it’s not,” he shakes his head, sighing as he tries to think of the best way to say it, “What if it’s not romantic, between us?”

“You really think we could be friends?”

“You don’t?” He asks, wincing a little like the thought of anything else is painful.

“We’re hardly gonna see each other,” you tell him, “Is there really any point in keeping it up?”

“I’d like to try.”

You don’t know what concept hurts you the most, the thought of trying and failing, or not trying at all. Either way, you lose him.

You wish, for a moment, you were in any way good at math - that you could work out the statistic for the other option, the one where it actually works.

The option where neither of you get hurt, and you get to keep him.

You imagine that it’s slim.

“I don’t know, Luke,” you sigh, unable to shake the heaviness of your doubt, “It feels like we’re just stretching out the inevitable, here.”

“I don’t think so,” he fights back, taking that step forward that he just took back, “Just friends, it doesn’t have to be anything more than that. Hell, if you want to build up to friends, I’ll take that, too. Just not nothing. I miss you too much to be nothing.”

You miss him, too. You missed him the past 3 weeks while he’s been in town, and the two of you have somehow managed to avoid seeing each other for the most part. You missed him for the month you were back at your mom’s house. You missed him those ten days over in the lake house, when he was still technically right in front of you the whole time.

“Can I think about it?”

“Yeah!” He nods, eagerly, the slight etching of a smile spreading across his lips. “Yes, you can think about it.”

You nod back, then, hesitant and before you can do something stupid, like wrap your arms around him as a goodbye, you step away.

You bid him goodnight, offering a thank you for walking you home, and you retreat into the safety of the house, watching through the window by the front door until he disappears back down the street. 

The start of your semester passes in a chaotic blur, and you very quickly, and very frantically, find yourself panicking a little about the what’s-next of it all.

With the last few months of your headspace occupied entirely by a certain brunette, you realise quickly that you really need to knuckle down and figure out what you’re going to do with yourself once school is over.

And that’s what brings you to New York City in the middle of October - one of your very few prospects for the aftermath of your college career discussed over iced teas in Midtown, Manhattan, before you’re crossing state lines through the Holland Tunnel and scrambling to get ready in the hotel room you and Ellie had booked.

You don’t know how you managed to hide all of your efforts behind a veil of secrecy, but Ellie had been all too distracted by you agreeing to accompany her to Jack’s team halloween party in Jersey City, and so she had little brain power left to question where you disappeared off to, or why you’d possibly have any sort of appointment anywhere near here as soon as you told her she could pick up a costume for you.

You should have known it would be something ridiculous, evidenced by the poofy yellow dress and cartoonish crown she had left on your bed for you to change into. 

When you emerge from the bathroom, fully dressed, she’s stood in her Princess Peach costume - the colour palette a lot more complementary to her than the yellow is to you, but you can hardly fight her on it now - especially knowing Jack is out there somewhere dressed as Mario.

You don’t know how it slips your mind that he and Luke play for the same team, or that they’re brothers, or that he could possibly at the same party, dressed as Luigi. Not until you and Ellie are walking into the party a little after it starts, and you meet his eye for the first time in a couple of weeks, your mouth falling agape as you realise just what Ellie has done.

You don’t even have a second to call her out before she’s prancing off to some far side of the room with Jack, all over him after their own extended time apart, and you literally have no option but to sidle up to Luke, tail between your legs, cringing at the entire situation as you stand beside him in a room full of his peers after you had only just shut him down not long ago.

Thankfully, it’s Luke - and he would rather choke than make you feel uncomfortable about it.

He offers an easy smile, amused, even, as he greets you from the tall table he’s occupying, handing you the beer he just opened for himself and reaching for another from the table behind him. 

“I don’t even know why I agreed to come with them, I knew they’d just split and make out in the corner,” you roll your eyes, taking a swig from the bottle and grimacing a little at the taste. “I don’t even know anybody.”

“You know me,” he shrugs, “I don’t mind keeping you company.”

“Yeah right,” you scoff, “You literally just came back, the last thing you need is to be lumped in a corner with me all night when you’ve hardly seen your teammates for months. I’m just gonna duck out in a little bit, no one will care.”

“I’ll care,” he chuckles lightheartedly, the ease in which the statement slips out and the certainty in which you feel it sends a slight shiver down your spine. “I’ve been back in training for a week, trust me, I’ve already had enough.”

You sigh, trying to ignore the convincing look he’s giving you - head titled, a lopsided smile and eyes filled with hope.

It was only just under two weeks ago that you told him you didn’t want to be friends, so you can’t really understand why he’s so intent on you sticking around. He should be personally ordering you an Uber back to your hotel and pushing you out of the door, but he’s giving you this pleading pout now that’s making you think his night would fall to pieces if you left so soon.

The thing is, you’re not that great around people you don’t know, not lately, anyway - especially not when those people are all big, bulky high performance athletes (and Jack) and their drop dead gorgeous partners. You feel like an intruder, like you don’t belong, and you can’t imagine anything happening to change your mind.

“I still feel like such an outsider at these things,” Luke huffs, elbows resting on the tall table in front of you, his body leaning onto it in the absence of any stools nearby until he’s more around your height. “This is the first time Jack’s brought anybody with him so I can’t exactly stick to his side like normal.”

You frown.

Is he serious?

Luke has never been the type to stick to his brother’s side - not from what you’ve seen, anyway, and you’d pretty much spent your entire summer observing the guy - you’re way past the point of trying to deny that, now.

“Isn’t that Seamus over there?” You point to the opposite side of the room, where you’re pretty sure you recognise another of yours and Luke’s previous classmates. “Aren’t you two friends?”

“We got into a pretty heated discussion during Thursday Night Football the other night, we’re on a break.”

You almost forgot how quick Luke can be, the slight quiver in the corner of his mouth giving away his attempts at deception, but you’re hardly in any position to call him out on it.

He’s trying to do you a favour, after all.

“In fact, I need you to stay for my protection. He might be out for my neck, you can’t let me die in a Luigi costume, that would be cruel.”

You snort as you take him in in his entirety, from the ridiculous hat, to the stretched out one-piece outfit topped off with a pair of white sneakers.

“Speaking of, aren’t you supposed to have a moustache?”

“It’s in my pocket, didn’t want to make Jack feel bad, ‘cause he can’t grow one and all,” he mutters, reaching into the front of the outfit to retrieve the stick-on prop, the back still taped up and in-tact. 

“Right,” you scoff, taking it from his hand and peeling the tape, “Jack can’t grow facial hair.”

You reach forward and press it to his upper lip, holding it in place until it sticks, careful not to actually touch his mouth in the process.

“I can grow it,” he rolls his eyes, “I just don’t suit it.”

“I don’t know,” you shrug as you pull back, admiring the results and trying not to laugh, “I’d say you suit it just fine.”

You reach into the pocket of your own dress to retrieve your phone, and snap a picture just to show him, pressing your lips together as you see his eyes widen in horror.

“Delete that,” he huffs, and you just about manage to stop him before he rips the thing off.

“No,” you whine, “Keep it on, it’s funny!”

“I don’t want to look funny, I want to look cool and hot.” He huffs, frowning when he seemingly realises how ridiculous that sounds.

“Halloween costumes aren’t supposed to be hot.”

“Easy for you to say, Princess,” he gestures down to your dress, and you once again have a visceral reaction to how natural it is for him to say things like that. You feel your ears going warm, and you break eye contact just so that he doesn’t see straight through you.

“I meant to say, sorry about this,” you gesture down, too, all of a sudden feeling every fibre of the costume that’s covering your skin, “I don’t know why I didn’t connect the dots sooner when Ellie said she and Jack were doing Mario and Peach. She just said she’d get me a costume, I didn’t think that we’d be-,”

“A couple?” 

“Yeah.”

“It’s no big deal,” Luke shrugs, sipping at his drink with a nonchalant frown. “S’just a costume. Besides, what else could you have been? I don’t think they sell sexy Goomba outfits.”

“Please,” you scoff, swatting lightly at the blue overalls stretched across his chest. “Don’t be ridiculous, if anything, I’d be sexy Toad.”

“Hmm,” he considers, with a long glance down your figure. “That might have actually worked.”

You feel the heat creep back up your neck before you can regulate yourself, not concealed at all by the sweetheart neckline of your dress, or the way Luke’s eye linger on any exposed bit of skin.

You press your lips together and divert your attention to Jack and Ellie in the corner, feeling every extended inch of Luke’s presence beside you, your heart thumping at the mere proximity of him, and you start to chew on your bottom lip. 

“Can’t believe we tried so hard to get them together,” you mumble, watching as they start to kiss, “They’re disgusting.”

“Absolutely revolting,” he agrees, “We were out of our minds all summer.”

You know he’s referring to the scheme you two kept up, you’re the one who even brought the topic into conversation, but you can’t help the instinctive way your chest starts to ache again at the mere mention of summer.

The two of you had talked about this, back in Ann Arbor, before he had come back to Jersey. You’re supposed to be over it, but it doesn’t make it hurt any less. You swallow thickly before reaching for your drink and chugging down the contents, avoiding his gaze as he watches you.

The thought of leaving crosses your mind again, but there’s a larger part of you that has missed this - missed him, maybe - a little too much, and those weeks back in Michigan last month had only served to weaken your resolve.

Keeping your distance had been a giant failure from the second you started to attempt it, and Luke is persistent - that much has always been obvious - so denying him any sort of contact is just pointless, now.

You had thought, back when he had dropped you off at the house the other week, that turning down his offer of friendship had been the right thing to do. You’d told him you would think about it, but it was always going to end up in rejection.

He’s in Jersey, you’re in Michigan. He has a really hectic schedule and career, and you’re supposed to be putting your head down and studying for your final year.

He broke your heart, and you broke his right back.

But you realise that you were naive to think that your paths would hardly cross.

Your best friend is dating his brother. You have so many mutual friends that you can hardly avoid him when he’s back in town. And beyond all that, you miss the versions of the two of you that just got on - before it all got messy in the summer. 

The banter, the inside jokes, the deep understanding of how each other worked.

And you had regretted it since - turning his offer down. 

Bringing it back up again is daunting, though. Opening yourself up to him, to say that you’d been thinking about him this whole time, and feel a deep, ever growing pit in your stomach now at the thought of being nothing, just like he had said he felt.

“Listen,” you start, with all intentions of figuring it out as you go along, only now feeling a serious urge to fix things, somehow, before you go back home, tomorrow, “I-,”

“Hold on, I gotta introduce you to someone. Hey, Pesce,” he calls out to his ever so-slightly taller teammate as he passes nearby, waving him to stop by the table the two of you are at before he walks away. He introduces you both by name, and you don’t miss the silent interaction between the two of them as he does, wide eyes and wiggling brows, a telepathic taunt from Brett and a wordless warning from Luke. “She’s my friend from back in Michigan, and he’s been my rehab buddy.”

You allow yourself to be distracted by that - not Ellie’s friend. His. Not a plus one of a plus one, or an outsider hovering around the edges of a private party. Someone he wants his teammates to know.

You like it more than you ever thought you would.

You feel your lips turning up into a natural smile, and a weight lifting off your shoulders - 7 words erasing the need for an entire conversation, already.

You probably could have told him to go fuck himself and that you hated his guts back on the street outside your sorority, and he’d still be out here calling you his friend.

Persistent.

“It’s nice to meet you,” you tell Brett, reaching out to shake his hand, matching his firm grip and meeting his steely gaze. 

“You too,” he smiles back, “I’ve heard-,”

“Lukey! Finally got a girl to notice you, huh?”

Another of Luke’s teammates approaches the table, and the absolute comedy of being introduced to a bunch of people in ridiculous costumes isn’t lost on you as he comes closer, a gigantic, teasing smirk almost overshadowed by a glaring red headpiece he wears.

“Nice to see ya, Curtis,” you watch as Luke embraces his other teammate, a wry, crooked grin on his face as he rolls his eyes fondly, and you try to ignore the weight of Brett’s discerning gaze on you. When he introduces you this time, Curtis shows no sign of recognition at your name, offering you a kind smile and extending his hand for you to shake. 

“Not talking your head off, is he? We’ve tried to train it out of him, but he’s a stubborn thing,” he chuckles, ruffling Luke’s hair like he’s petting an excitable puppy. 

“I’m used to it by now,” you shrug back, smiling when Luke scoffs, returning to your side.

“Nice costume,” Curtis looks Luke up and down, and it’s like you can see him trying to formulate a joke in his head, your lips twisting as you notice Luke anticipating the same, watching with a raised brow and a bored roll of his eyes. “That might be the closest we ever come to seeing you with facial hair.”

“Big talk coming from a dude dressed as shrimp.”

“I’m obviously a lobster, Luke.” 

“Obviously,” Luke mimics back like a child, his face sour and his lips pouted as his older teammate just laughs in his face. 

“C’mon, man,” Brett claps a hand on Curtis’ back, “Enough bruising the kid’s ego, you owe me a drink, remember?”

He knocks his free fist against Luke’s as he passes, offering you a wink and a nice to meet you before he’s guiding Curtis over to the bar and leaving the two of you alone, once more. 

“Sorry about them,” Luke mutters, “I could save them both from a burning building and they’d still treat me like their annoying baby brother.”

“It’s cute,” you shrug, sipping at your drink and catching his eye as they narrow toward you, clearly taking further offence at your choice of adjective. “They do it ‘cause they love you, Luke, it’s sweet.”

You try not to react to what you’ve just said - try not to think of that sentiment in the context of your own interactions with Luke, lightheartedly poking fun at him just to get a reaction because he can be so gut-wrenchingly adorable. 

It’s not the same.

But you can tell he’s thinking it too, looking at you with eyes that see straight through you, and a tilt to his head that’s almost mocking. 

“I uhm,” he sighs, stepping back a little closer to you and leaning down on the table so that he has to look up to meet your eye, “I told Pesch about you. About us.”

You blink back at him, waiting for him to say more - not really knowing how to respond, because you kind of had a feeling anyway. Brett has the worst poker face you’ve ever seen in your life. 

“It’s just been me and him training together, and we were getting to know each other, and you know how it is, he asked me about how I spent my summer, and about girls, and there’s just you for both, so it sorta just came out. Plus, I kinda felt like I had to talk about it with someone or I was gonna go crazy.” 

You look down, giving a slight nod of understanding - because you do get it. 

Also, the confirmation of something you’ve been wondering is kind of a relief. He hadn’t started anything with anyone else after you left, or back in Michigan, when you were making everything so hard on him.

There’s just him for you, too.

And it’s really hard, having one person consume your thoughts in such a way when you have no outlet to properly talk it through with anyone.

You never felt like you could talk to Ellie about any of it, and having all these feelings fizzing up inside you for so long is starting to make you feel like a volcano on the brink of eruption. 

Luke had done the sensible thing, finding an unaffiliated third party and seeking advice from someone with no bias. No scathing comments from his brothers, judgement from any of the guys back in Michigan or pitiful looks from your best friend.

“I didn’t say anything bad,” he assures you, “Not that there is anything bad, I promise I don’t think poorly of you or anything, and I wouldn’t go around telling random people if I did, especially not my teammates, I don’t want you to think-,”

“Luke, it’s fine,” you place a hand on his forearm, his eyes snapping up to meet yours at the slightest touch, wide and alarmed, like he feels like he’s digging himself into a hole. “I get it. Sometimes I feel like I’m gonna go crazy, too.”

“You do?” He frowns, like that was the last thing he expected you to say. 

You had told him you were hurt, so it can’t come as that much of a surprise that you feel some type of way about everything that went down between the two of you.

You’re not that heartless.

“What did you say to him?” You ask, hoping to engage with his incessant need to talk, rather than any attempt to eke information out of you. “About us?”

“Just that I didn’t like how we left things,” he tells you as you lean beside him, “It’s hard, not knowing where we stand, or what it’s gonna be like when I see you again. I still get the urge all the time to text you, even about stupid things. Someone was telling me about this Matthew McConaughey movie the other day, and I thought of you. Wanted to ask if you’d seen it.”

“It’s probably safe to assume I’ve seen all the Matthew McConaughey films. Even the bad ones.”

“It wasn’t on your Letterboxd.”

You swat at his bicep, your lips turning slowly into a grin as you can’t help but laugh at how little he cares about hiding his intentions.

You’d caught onto him monitoring your account somewhere between him coincidentally watching Notting Hill a couple days after you did while he was back in Michigan, the five star rating he gave to Call Me By Your Name, and him somehow knowing all the most obscure but gut-wrenching quotes from all the movies that really tore your heart out - writing them in his reviews like he was talking to you in some secret language that only the two of you spoke.

I think I’d miss you even if we never met, from The Wedding Date. 

I’ll do anything to make you happy. Tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it, from Past Lives.

There will be a piece of you in me always, from Her.

All movies you had listed after going home from the lake house - had laid in bed with teary eyes and trembling lips for the most part, and associated all those same quotes with him, too. And even without you putting them in your own reviews, he just knew every time which part of the movie made you think of your relationship.

You’d even tried baiting him out with Barbie, the other week, snorting to yourself despite your heartache when you imagined him seriously typing out, I only exist within the warmth of your gaze, without it, I'm just a little blonde guy who can't do flips, and hoping you would see it.

If anyone else had done it, it would probably have been corny. You’d have blocked them, the level of perception and lowkey invasion of privacy making your skin crawl - but Luke seeing you was different. Him being on the same wavelength - feeling the same feelings, thinking the same thoughts - was something you couldn’t ignore. 

“You’re not supposed to admit to cyber stalking me, you idiot.”

“What?” He chuckles, rubbing at his arm, “I missed watching movies with you.”

He shrugs at that like it’s nothing, but you can feel your cheeks go warm even if his don’t. You missed watching movies with him too - missed the long stretch of his legs far surpassing yours on top of the sheets, and the way he’d hold out candy for you to get some every few minutes. 

“Plus, you were stalking me, too. Why else would you be watching The Mighty Ducks on a Saturday night?” 

“I thought it might teach me about hockey.” You frown, although you’d been all too caught up with just how cute those movies were. You still know very little about the sport, but you can still appreciate the charm of a young Joshua Jackson.

Luke smiles, lopsided and gentle, but you know by now that’s his version of cocky - the kind of smile that shows you that something you’ve said has scratched at his ego, and he’s banking it somewhere in the back of his head.

“I can teach you,” he says, his voice an octave lower as he leans in - and you know he isn’t doing it on purpose, but it makes the hairs on the back of your arms raise, how he almost purrs over to you. “Can give you a crash course if you want?”

“Now?”

“Nah,” he sips at his drink, “Another time. Need an excuse to text you remember?”

“You can text me whenever,” you tell him, chewing at the corner of your bottom lip as he smirks at you, “Just so you know.”

You don’t tell him that you’ve been waiting for him to do it, anyway.

That for those first few days after he finally left Michigan, every buzz of your phone had your heart rate doubling. 

The first instant you had started to regret your decision, you had been hoping he would still try to change your mind.

You don’t tell him you started following a random team update account for news on how he was getting on with his injury, because he wasn’t letting you know, himself, or that you once spent an hour reporting people trolling him or talking smack in the comments just for something to do.

“What about FaceTime?”

“Don’t push your luck.”

To say you were planning on leaving as soon as you had arrived, you enjoyed yourself way more than you thought you would with Luke and his teammates - in fact, you’d probably go as far as to say it’s one of the best nights you’ve had since the summer.

Luke had introduced you to pretty much everybody, flitting around the room and making the rounds, and it had been nice to see how normal and nice everybody was - instantly making you felt like you belonged, to the point where you figured out that Luke had only said all that stuff about feeling like an outsider because he knew that was how you felt, knew it would tug at your heartstrings and make you stay.

You know from how close he is with the guys back in Michigan that Luke loves his teammates, but seeing it in action for the first time had been sweet. Seeing the other guys ruffling at his hair, play fighting, throwing their arms around him and indulging him in his corny jokes kind of made you feel less tense about the way you’re so instinctively affectionate with him. 

Even after what had happened toward the end of summer, and swearing off any sort of romantic connection since, you still want to touch him, still want to be near him, and while you don’t think his teammates exactly have those same thoughts, it makes you feel a little more normal, how much they all love him. Makes you feel less like you should be wedging all this distance between the two of you - because if they all love him like this, then why can’t you?

You don’t even realise that Ellie and Jack have long snuck off until you get a text to say not to come back to the hotel, and that Jack’s bed is freshly clean for you to sleep in. The thought of it is gross, but you figure that two athletes will have a comfy couch, so you’re not all that bothered in the end.

Plus, it gives you more time with Luke - to have a proper conversation, to figure things out. So, when it’s time to leave, and he ushers you out of the bar with a hand on the small of your back, you let him cross the boundaries of being nothing, and lean into his touch until you’re out in the cold, wrapping your arms around yourself as he shrugs off his jacket.

“Put this on,” he demands, throwing it to you and watching as you catch it with a clumsy grip, “We’re walking.”

“Walking?��� You ask, stumbling to catch up with him as he starts to make his way down the street, his long strides making it incredibly difficult, especially in the stupid costume heels you’re wearing. You ease into his jacket as you move, shaking your arms until your fingers just about peak out of the ends, and relishing the warmth that encapsulates your body.

“Yeah, it’s 10 minutes. I know that sounds like a lifetime in campus terms, but I’m assuming you still know how to walk.”

You scoff as you pretty much jog to keep up, taking rushed, small steps until you just about make it to his side. “I don’t have a car, remember, I walk everywhere. I just assumed we’d be getting an Uber or something."

“S’good for you,” he shrugs, “Clears the mind. And it’s only a few blocks back to the apartment. I can show you all the best breakfast spots for you and Ellie to visit before you leave tomorrow.”

“But it’s dark out.”

“What, you’re scared of the dark, now?” He looks down at you from the corner of his eye, his height advantage meaning you can so clearly see the amused way in which his mouth curves up on the side closest to you. 

“I’m scared of being abducted in a back alley and brutally murdered so that my organs can be sold on the black market.”

“That happens more on the other side of the river,” he hooks a thumb in the general direction of what you assume is the Hudson, but it could be anywhere for all you know. This is your first time in New Jersey, and your brief expedition into Manhattan in the morning had done very little to clue you in on the lay of the land.

“Murder is an international issue, Luke, I don’t think they draw the line at what state they do it in, look it up.”

“You watch too much TV,” he chuckles, “Who’s gonna mess with you when I’m around? Look at me,” he gestures down to his ridiculous costume, “I’m the picture of intimidation. You don’t think I’d protect you from the black market organ thieves?”

“You’re dressed like an Italian plumber, you dork, and you’ve got arms like toothpicks, they’d probably kill you first just for fun.” You retort, grabbing at his arm to bring him back to your pace. You almost can’t believe that in the brief expanse of one evening, you could possibly have returned to this level of comfort, but you’re trying not to think too hard about it - especially with a mind partially loosened up by a couple of drinks. “Could you at least slow down? Your legs are like twice the length of mine.”

“Aw,” he pouts, “Do you want me to carry you?”

“Don’t joke, I’d pay good money for a piggy back right now.”

“Shame I’ve got such toothpick arms then, isn’t it?” he fakes an exaggerated smile, and you narrow your eyes until he drops it.

You huff as he carries on, thankful at the slightly slower pace he seems to have adopted, and the way his chin keeps jutting in your direction to check on how well you’re keeping up.

“What about a fireman’s carry?” You suggest, looking up at him with pleading eyes and pouted lips.

“The best you’ll get is me giving you my gloves to wear as socks and I’ll carry your shoes for you.”

“And if I step on glass, cut into a vein and bleed out?”

“I suppose then I’d carry you.”

This feels familiar.

Feels comfortable and right, and when you look back on those nights in September when you had seen him - at the football game, in the living room back at the sorority, and the party at the hockey house, this is what you’d felt like you had been missing.

It doesn’t have to be awkward, or charged, or tense between the two of you. 

Maybe it can be like this again.

Like it was in the beginning, before everything got messed up.

“I meant to ask earlier,” he nudges at you with his elbow, “Ellie said you had an appointment over in Midtown,”

“You’re such a stalker,” you snort, shaking your head with a wry smile as you glance over at him, “Literally the snoopiest guy I’ve ever met.”

“Snoopiest?” He scoffs, “It’s called curiosity. I can’t wonder what my friend did with their day, now? I’m snoopy?”

“There’s a masters programme at NYU,” your eyes dart down to the floor as you start to tell him, figuring that you’ll feel less nervous if it just feels like you’re speaking in general, instead of confiding in him. There’s also a part of you spurred on by his immediate adoption of you being his friend - still reeling from the ease in which he had been introducing you as such to everyone all night. Opening up to him is just as easy, and now that you’re embracing the dynamic, it’s like the pieces that form all the resistance within you are shifting out of place, creating a bunch of cracks for him to seep straight into. “One of my sorority sisters has a cousin who’s in her final year, she set up a meeting so that I could talk about my application.”

“You’re applying to NYU?” He asks, quickening his step until he is a little ahead of you, turning on his feet until he’s walking backwards, giving you no chance of ignoring his presence anymore. 

“I’m thinking about it,” you shrug, “It isn’t a done deal, so don’t tell anybody.”

“I can keep a secret,” he promises, and that same ache starts to form in your chest again, at just how well you know that to be true.

“Plus, it’s a long-shot, so even if I did apply, I probably wouldn’t get in, and I don’t want to get Ellie’s hopes up that I’ll be sticking around.”

You have a job lined up elsewhere already for when you graduate - an entry level role in a PR agency over in Chicago, close to home, close to your mom - but the more you’re considering it, the less sure you are. The job would be pretty much you getting taken advantage of for being a recent graduate, and furthering your education could help secure something bigger and better. But throwing away a sure thing seems stupid, and you don’t really want to do so if you don’t have something else secured.  

“Getting into the NHL is a long shot, and you’ve just spent the night in a room full of people who made it happen,” Luke tells you, ducking his head a little lower until you look him in the eye, “Don’t underestimate yourself, you’re really smart, you’ll get in if you do end up applying.”

The way he says it is so sure - so different to anybody else, who you feel like is just saying it to make you feel better. Luke believes it, you can see it in the way he looks at you, confident and certain of your abilities more than you’ve ever been in yourself.

“I don’t think you can call you getting into the NHL a long shot, unfortunately,” you tell him, your lips twisting in the corner as you bite back a smile when he starts to frown. 

“Not you too with the nepotism stuff,” he scoffs, only partially feigning offence.

You swat at his chest, “Hey, I’d never,” you gasp, “I meant ‘cause you’re so talented.”

“I bet you did,” he snorts, falling back into step beside you, a little closer this time, your elbows knocking as you continue to walk. “Haven’t even played yet this season, what would you know about my talent?”

You think it’s the way he’s leaning in a little that seems to hypnotise you, rendering you a speechless, practically-spluttering mess as you struggle to form words or a single, coherent thought. You wonder if this is how he felt, all those times when you turned on the charm and innuendo and purposely tried to push his buttons. Defenceless and weak. 

“I’ll tell you what I do have a talent for,” he straightens up a little, increasing the space between you so that you feel like you can at least breathe again. “Important old man voice. If you ever need to put someone down as a phoney reference.”

“I’ll bare that in mind when the NYU admissions board loosens their policy on Kevin McAllister level schemes, thanks,” you chuckle, your smile lingering when he returns it, cheeks folding into a lopsided grin. 

“Hey, give a guy some credit, there’s a little Ferris Bueller in there too.”

“Yeah, ‘cause schools love Ferris Bueller types.” You scoff, “You’re such an idiot.”

You glance over to see him pretty much beaming in response, and, if you were a betting person, you’d put all your money on knowing his exact train of thought.

You have a tell, after all, you remember, for when you’re enjoying yourself more than you think you should be.

Walking back to his apartment gives the two of you a little time to properly catch up - away from tense conversations and teary admissions - he tells you about his training, you tell him about school, and it feels like seconds pass before he’s ushering you into his building with that same guided hand on your lower back, the heat of his touch felt even through his jacket, and into the elevator. 

You stand by his side as it slowly ascends, hands buried in the warmth of his jacket pockets and ever so often meeting his eye in the reflection of mirrored doors before you glance away with a flush to your cheeks.

Every time you look back, he’s smiling a little, soft and small, but sure of himself in a way that makes all those hardened parts of you melt a little inside. 

There’s something different about him that you can’t quite put your finger on - something in the way he carries himself, around his teammates, around you, even just in general - like he stands taller, somehow. Like here in Jersey, he makes a point to hold himself up a little more, and it makes you cherish the version of him you had, those months ago - vulnerable and raw.

You hadn’t appreciated at the time, just how much of himself he gave to you - all the little quirks and insights you got to see - but you appreciate them, now. 

“I had fun tonight,” you tell him, smiling instinctively when he meets your eye, “Thanks for not letting me leave.”

“Thanks for not leaving,” he chuckles, the doors opening in front of you and that hand going straight to your back again until he’s guiding you towards his apartment. “It’s been nice just talking to you again, I missed it.”

“Me too,” you admit, because there’s really no use in keeping it bottled up when he’s so freely opening himself up to you. He so easily tells you that he misses you, and wants to speak to you, and it enjoys your company, so you not doing the same only feels like you’re doing yourself a disservice - especially when admitting as much back to him earns you one of those cute, crooked smiles he’s so good at giving. 

He holds open the door for you and you have to brush past him to go in, but your hesitance to touch has long dissipated throughout the night, so you don’t entirely mind when he follows you straight in, and you can feel the heat of his presence.

“Are you wanting to go straight to bed?” He asks, hand on your waist as he passes you and heads for the kitchen, flicking on the lights under the cabinets and getting two glasses down from one of the cupboards.

“I probably should,” you huff, despite wanting to stretch this out with Luke - your mind going back to I miss watching movies with you, and considering flopping down onto the couch and putting something on, for old time’s sake. “Is your couch comfy? I don’t really want to sleep in Jack’s bed.”

“You can sleep in mine,” he offers, before he even has a second to consider it.

“Oh, I don’t know-,”

“I’ll go in Jack’s, it’s fine,” he nods down the hall, gesturing you to follow as he carries two glasses of water, knocking the handle to the room on the left until the door opens and letting you go in first. 

The sheets are the same as on his bed back at the lake house, and it’s the first thing that takes you aback, a familiar grey-blue comforter that you already feel the softness of from across the room, and a cream throw haphazardly thrown across the top. 

You can tell the sheets aren’t entirely fresh - slightly crumpled, and not-very-neatly made, pillows askew - but if you’re sleeping in Luke’s bed, weirdly enough, you would probably prefer it that way.

“Sorry, I should have tidied up a little,” he chuckles nervously as he passes you to place a glass down on the nightstand. 

“It’s fine,” you shrug, stepping forward just to fall down onto his bed - the mattress plush enough that you already feel yourself sinking into it, tension easing away from your muscles. 

You’re kind of glad you kept an eye on him, watching his gaze shift to the way your dress now rides up on your thighs, and the bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallows thickly before looking away.

“I’ll just get something to change into then I’ll get outta your hair,” he mumbles, trying to busy himself with something else as a distraction. Just before he can pass you to his closet, you reach out to grab at his wrist, and it’s almost like muscle memory is forcing you to do so - something within you not allowing him to get away.

He’s in front of you now, close enough that you kind of have to crane your neck the whole way to look up at him, and you watch as his eyes drag slowly from the point of contact to meet yours, every movement he makes unhurried and purposeful. 

“I just wanted to say thank you again, for tonight,” you start, speaking without any real plan as to what you want to say, but wanting to keep him just a little longer, “For keeping me company, and letting me stay in here-,”

“It’s no big deal-,”

“And for not letting me push you away.”

It might be the first time you’ve ever owned up to it - being the master of your own downfall, or the downfall of your relationship with Luke, and anything you still could have been after the fact - and it isn’t easy, admitting that you’re the problem.

But you feel like you owe it to him, as a reward for all this resilience in the face of your constant rejection. He’s been nothing but patient, and you’ve been nothing but hard work, and you’re willing to admit, now, that you’re done with it.

He smiles, eyes knowing, the relieved, breathy sigh he gives dissolving all the guilt that’s building in the depths of your gut, and sinks down beside you on the bed, his thigh brushing yours as he settles in. 

Hours ago, being this close would have terrified you. You’d have shut down, turned away, shuffled across the sheets until there was a healthy distance between the two of you, but you don’t move. You just turn, a little, to be able to meet his eye.

“Are you saying you’re done with that?” He asks, a little hesitant, assuming, probably, that you won’t be entirely open with him.

But you nod, chewing at the corner of your bottom lip as he presses his own together, eyes darting a little lower.

“So we’re friends?” He asks, his voice low, the depth of it causing a weird vibration to wrack down your body - a buzz that won’t go away, now that he’s this close, and he’s looking at you the way he is. 

“If that’s what you still want to be.”

The thought of him changing his mind makes you a little dizzy, an ache growing in your chest again at the thought of being nothing - but you’d deserve it, you think, after all the times you turned him down. 

It would hurt, but, as always, it would be your own doing. 

“And we won’t ever be more?”

The pleading tone in which he asks makes the back of your throat go dry, and all you can do to respond, now, is shake your head. Slowly, and hesitantly, but it shakes all the same, tears welling in the corners of your eyes as you take in his resigned acceptance.

And then, something shifts.

A subtle shake of his head, as if he’s fighting an inner monologue, and then an assured switch in his demeanour - a tilt of his head as he surveys your reluctance, and the swipe of his tongue to wet his lips, like he’s preparing to fight back.

“If I kissed you right now,” he asks, voice still low, eyes lower, pinned to the curve of your lips as they part as if by instinct, “Would you tell me to stop?”

“Luke,” you warn, no more than a whisper as you watch his lips too, “We can’t.”

“That’s not what I asked,” his eyes trail slowly up until your gazes meet, and his head tilts again in question, blinking heavily before he asks, “Would you push me away?”

Your lips form around a response that you can’t even think to give back, opening around an answer you’re not ready to give at all, and all your body wants to do is deny. You fight the urge to shake your head, but you think that it’s a losing battle, especially considering how much your brain feels like it’s being rattled around anyway.

You don’t know what you do to make him move forward, but you figure by now you don’t actually have to do anything. He can probably read your mind at this point, spurred on no doubt by the way your eyelids flutter closed when he’s close enough, and the tip of his nose presses to yours, slow, heavy breaths falling into the decreasing space between the two of you. 

You should stop him. You know that.

It isn’t good for either of you, letting this carry on, leaving the edges of your relationship so frayed that even the smallest tug could pull the whole thing apart, thread by thread. 

You should tell him to stop, should push him away, should hold a lighter to the loose ends and singe them together to prevent further damage. You’ve only just settled on friends, and now you’re not sure, again.

But the second he gets this close, you’re not in charge, anymore.

It’s like some force of nature takes over, brings the two of you together like tectonic plates meeting, and causing unfathomable destruction to both of your hearts in the aftermath.  

His kiss is so instantly tender that it hurts already, tears prickling at the seams of your scrunched-closed eyes, and all you can do is push through the pain. You kiss him back, lips closing around his again and again as your faces smush together, and you start to feel the passion consume him - something takes over almost like an urgency, where you’re clawing at his the front of his costume and he’s clutching at your waist, doing anything physically possible to close whatever gap still sits between you.

The pressure of his lips is almost bruising, now, but you like it that way - soft exhales puffing out from his nose so that he doesn’t have to part to catch his breath, fingers pressing so hard into your flesh that you hope they leave a mark.

He tastes just how you remember, and it takes you back all those months to summer - to stolen kisses over centre consoles and making out in his bed when everyone else was out. There’s a part of you that feels giddy with it, just like you had then, partaking in something so precious that was just for the two of you, and it starts to distract you from what this actually is.

A mistake. 

You pull away instead of pushing, bringing your chin back until your lips part with much effort, a hmmph and a furrow of your brow, and you can’t bring yourself to open your scrunched eyes, not yet, but you know when he’s going to chase.

“Luke,” you whisper in warning before your eyes flutter open and you peer up at him through your lashes. He looks so soft, you think, despite all the ways he tries not to. Despite the sharp line of his jaw, and the hardened look in his eyes. You feel your walls crumbling at just the sight of him - defenceless to his charms, once again, because how much could Luke possibly hurt you? “Friends don’t do that.”

“Maybe our friendship starts tomorrow,” he hums back, “Maybe we get this out of our systems one more time.”

And it’s sitting on the precipice of that feeling you’ve been chasing since July that has you considering it - ever so close to finally getting closure on whatever the two of you were, or could have been.

Getting it out of your system sounds healthy. Sounds like a clean slate, a fresh start, and you have no doubt that if you’re going to be friends with Luke Hughes, that it’s exactly what you need in order to do so. 

Because, if you’re honest, it’s that exact thing that’s been holding you back this entire time - closure. With such an abrupt end to what the two of you had, how could you ever possibly close that chapter mid-sentence? How could you ever move on?

“One more time,” you try to sound stern, try to convince yourself of your own words, “Then we have to let this go.”

“You got it.”

“No more Luke, I mean it.” You have to push down this feeling of impending doom, or you’ll never get anywhere, but you need to warn him one last time, just to be safe. “Strictly friends after tonight.”

“I already agreed, can you please just let me kiss you again?”

“Okay, fine, just,” you huff, hands splayed across his broad chest and pushing until your bodies part, his butt shuffling back on the bed. “Take the costume off, first, I’m not feeding into whatever dorky cosplay fetish you probably have.”

You’re only part joking, but it’s the only way you know how to relieve the tension a little, and your nerves start to dissipate at his reaction.

He chuckles, with the kind of cocky smile that makes your heart jump, reaching behind himself to unzip the back of his costume with an affectionate shake of his head. He stands, then, to shuck it off, the whole thing dropping off of him until he kicks it across the floor, towards his laundry hamper, then stands in just his briefs, which are slung low on his waist. “You can keep yours on, I don’t mind,” he tells you when you’re distracted by the taut, defined lines on his stomach, eyes trailing slowly up to meet his, gleaming back at you.

“You’d love that wouldn’t you,” you scoff, watching as he draws closer, shuffling back a little on the bed to accommodate him, “You absolute freak.” 

“You can’t sit there and pretend you don’t want me to call you princess again.” He smirks, bending down until his hands are on either side of your hips, and you’re leaning back with your fingers pressed into his sheets and your head craned back to meet his eye, “Saw you getting all flustered about it, earlier.”

“Shut up,” you huff, curling a hand around the back of his neck and pulling him down into you - the two of you colliding in a clumsy, messy kiss. His body crawls over yours, encapsulating you entirely in an intoxicating warmth, and you find yourself melting into his every touch - large hands running down your sides, settling on your waist, and the other easing its way under the skirt of your costume. 

You put both hands to use too, one remaining behind his neck, scratching into the grown out curls that sit there and tugging when he starts to tickle up your thigh, the other on the warm skin of his chest - the rampant thud of his heart beating against your palm.

One more time, just to get him out of your system.

And then you can be friends.

What could possibly go wrong?

another a/n: I'll try to finish the next part asap!! thank you for reading, I know this was long lmao!! would love to hear your thoughts!!!!

[softtdaisy]

injury prompt 16 and 22 for reid perhaps... :D Love your writing btw <3

make my heart beat again / spencer reid

summary. spencer was sad. spencer was miserable. he thought he could handle it until he couldn't anymore. he thought he could deal with it alone until he couldn't.

words count. 2 249

prompt. “Why won’t you let me help you?” “…because I don’t deserve it.” / “You deserve to be helped, I—who told you this?” from here

what to expect. very angsty, spencer is so sad i want to hug him, i chose the mentally injured more than physically, mention of murder very quickly

a/n. ok first thank you so much for requesting it sweetie!! and i'm sorry, i wish i posted it sooner but i started it again to make it shorter and...it's not shorter, but it's here and i hope you will love it (and now i can work on your other request) 🫶

F1 masterlist | general masterlist | request

You weren’t quite sure how everything started again with Spencer.

One day he was a memory of the past, one of your biggest regrets. The next time he was back in your place, like he always belonged there.

You went on a couple of dates a few years ago, and it would be a lie to say your heart didn’t fall for that boy. Sweet, gentle, the nicest man you’ve ever met. And so beautiful with his always so messy hair, his gorgeous brown eyes that always seemed to look at you like you were one of the seven wonders of the world, and that perfectly shaped mouth that you loved to kiss.

You were sure things could have worked out with Spencer if a) his work didn’t take him that much time—and more. b) You didn’t have other issues in your life you had to deal with before thinking about love.

So you ended your relationship, or whatever it was at that time, before it could be more serious. And you spent way too many nights missing Spencer Reid. 

The way he would start every date with a fact that could either last a minute or ten and how you could notice the change in his eyes when he noticed you were truly interested in what he was saying. How he was blushing at any physical contact you were initiating, even in bed after he made love to you. Or even how you never said you loved each other, yet the way his lips would stay longer on your shoulder when you were falling asleep was speaking for your feelings.

You never thought Spencer would miss you just as much.

But he spent months contemplating the idea of seeing you again and trying to convince you this could be good. That he could be good for you. But months turned into a year. And when he celebrated his whole single year on the other side of the country, Spencer read into it that maybe he had glorified love. In all its aspects.

And this conclusion haunted him for years.

To the point Spencer stopped meeting new people and was barely trying to stay in touch with those in his life. He wasn’t seeing his mom much; his colleagues noticed the distance he was building between them, and Spencer couldn’t remember the last time he saw his “friends.”

Because at some point, the fear of losing people turned into a feeling of not being good enough to people’s lives and made him a loner. A sad loner.

That was something you immediately noticed the first time you saw Spencer in years.

Your life has barely changed from your last date. Still the same job, but at a higher place. Still the same apartment, but with a different setting. Still the same person, but more mature.

It wasn’t hard for Spencer to find you. And if he spent a whole year contemplating going back to your place before putting that thought away, the day he truly needed it, it took him a minute to decide it was time.

You didn’t question his presence here when you opened the door. Maybe he should have. But when Spencer grabbed your face after you simply said his name with confusion, nothing seemed to matter. 

Not his hair longer than before, not him looking more shaped yet more fragile, not the circle under his eyes being way darker than the last time you saw him. Not that he was eagerly kissing you, something he never did.

You remember Spencer being gentle, taking his time to appreciate every second with you.

No, he was hungry, like each second could be the last with you. For him.

“What are you doing here, Spence?” you finally asked him. You were both lying on the rug in your living room. His eyes were locked on the roof, like he was disconnecting from reality. His arm around your back, holding you against him, was brushing your skin slowly, but he seemed to do that mindlessly. 

And Spencer didn’t turn his head to look at you when you, you couldn’t stop looking at him. “I needed that.” Not you. You put away the pain hearing that and tried to see the good in this, that you were the one he went to. 

But still, something was different with Spencer.

It would take you a few nights to realize he wasn’t blushing anymore when you touched him. Or that he didn’t seem to have a lot to talk about.

Actually, Spencer wasn’t talking much anymore. 

For weeks, Spencer would come to your place at night. Either after a day at the office or when he came back from a case. Usually, when it was the latter, he would even stay the following day to fully decompress from what happened.

You tried to question him once or twice. But Spencer always had the same answer: going down on you to keep you quiet with your question.

It was a win-win situation. 

He was giving you pleasure and making you think about something else.

He was concentrating on something else, and your moans were filling his head with other thoughts.

Until one night, the sex wasn’t enough to put his problem away.

You didn’t expect Spencer to come. Two days ago, he told you he had to leave for a case and it would probably last a week. Nothing out of the ordinary. But it gave you the time to think about him and where this was going.

Yet, your bell rang at 10 p.m. Let’s say that dating an FBI agent taught you to not open your door to anybody. You almost played dead and ignored it. But your gut told you to look at who it might be. 

You didn’t expect to see Spencer through your spyhole.

You certainly didn’t expect to see him cry on the other side of your door.

“Spencer, what’s going on?” you said, opening your door and immediately bringing him inside. The saddest part was that he let you do it. He didn’t stop you when you took him in your arms. Neither when you brought him to the sofa and sat him on it while you kneeled in front of him.

He was shaking; his face looked red from the tears and the scratching he did with his fingers, trying to take the pain away. But it didn’t work. And hurt him even more.

You grabbed one of his hands to take it away from his face. You tried to ease his joints with a soft caress. You even tried to make eye contact, but it was a lost cause with the way he was closing his eyes hardly, probably hurting himself like that. “Talk to me, Spence,” you whispered, putting your chin on his knee. “Open to me.”

You hated how he pinched his lips together before talking, like he was trying so hard to not break down. “I can’t,” he sobbed. He repeated that multiple times, sounding more angry with himself each time.

But the fact he wasn’t letting go of your hand made you believe that maybe a part of him, maybe just a very little one, wanted to have you. He still came to you tonight, right?

“Why won’t you let me help you?” 

This was a genuine question. One that grew over the last weeks. Sometimes, you would wake up in the middle of the night wondering which signs you might have missed when he was here. What did he try to hide from you with kisses and attention that you weren’t asking for? And if maybe you weren’t an accomplice of his troubles by accepting all his treats, knowing it was an excuse to keep everything from himself.

And during these moments, you imagined what Spencer might have answered. That he didn’t want his burden to impact your relationship, that he didn’t want to talk to you specifically. 

But you never considered what was coming as an answer.

“…because I don’t deserve it.” 

The world went silent. 

Except for your heart that just fell on the floor and broke into a million pieces.

Except for Spencer’s sorrow being louder than ever in your small living room.

It was obvious that Spencer wasn’t doing ok. But you couldn’t imagine how broken he really was.

You couldn’t force him to look at you and make him see he wasn’t alone at all. So you put your forehead against his, his sweaty hair sticking against your skin. Your arms wrapped against Spencer so you could hold him against him. You couldn’t believe that this grown-up man, in his thirty, could be a broken kid inside. You tried to hold back the tears.

You stayed like that for minutes; you don’t even know how long. This could last an hour or two if he needed to. You probably could have stayed all night if it meant calming Spencer down.

Little by little, you felt his shaking stop and even one of his hands land on your arm. The pressure of his fingers on your skin wasn’t harder, almost like he didn’t have any strength anymore. It was more like a delicate touch. One that reminded you of the old days, when Spencer was too shy to touch you.

Once you felt he was ready to hear this, maybe not listen yet but at least be able to understand what you were saying, you stopped hugging him so you could grab his face in your hands. “You deserve to be helped. I—who told you this?”

You met the saddest eyes you’ve ever seen at this moment. Couple with his sad smile. Oh, how you wished you could just kiss the pain away for once.

“I just…” he started, with a grazed, hoarse voice. “Every person in my life ends up sad or hurt or dead. I’m a problem. I’m a burden. I don’t deserve someone to take the time to help me, be there for me. I can’t risk someone, you, taking the time to make me feel better if it means losing you at some point. I can’t, I can’t do that again.” You heard the sob in his voice at the end. 

You opened your mouth to speak, but Spencer gave you the look, one he strangely never gave to you but that you understood immediately, meaning that he still had a lot to say. And deep down, you were happy to shut it if it meant he was finally opening up.

“I was taking care of a kid these days. We knew he might be in danger, so I was supposed to make sure he would be fine while working the case.” Spencer took a moment to continue, but you could only focus on the tear running down his cheek. “He got killed. Because I couldn’t protect him. Everyone around me has something bad happening to them. Even in my job. How can I be such a bad person?” 

You started brushing away the tears with your thumb, but Spencer cuddled against your hand. There was something even sadder with this man feeling like he didn’t deserve to have someone yet still craving every attention he could get.

“You’re not a burden, Spencer,” you whispered, and he closed his eyes again. “I can’t imagine how hard it must be for you to go through all these moments by yourself. I can’t imagine how hurt you must be from living such difficult times over and over again. But that doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to have someone by your side.”

He didn’t answer. You weren’t sure this was the best decision, but you sat on his knees, trying to be closer to him so you could make him feel less alone. 

You thought that if he didn’t want that, he would push you away. But the way Spencer's hands ended up on your back so quickly made you think that maybe he needed that too.

“I can’t and won’t force myself into your life, Spencer, never,” you said, brushing his hair away from his face. “But if you’re ready to try, I can be by your side and help you consider that you deserve to be a supporter. Not only by me but by all the people that love you.”

Again, your words working on him, Spencer opened his eyes slowly. This time, even if the sorrow was still present, there was the smallest and almost slightest light in them. “Because people love you, Spencer Reid.”

As an answer, the only one he could give you, Spencer brought you against him and hugged you as hard as he could. It wasn’t the tightest hug he ever gave, but it was the best he could do. And it was enough. Enough to know that you opened a door in his mind. 

You offered your bed to Spencer that night, but he insisted on you staying by your side. He refused to let you know it was due to the fear of the nightmares he had for months now. Nightmares that always had different stories but ended the same way: with him losing someone and being alone.

All he needed was you, and you were willing to give yourself entirely to help him get better.

You didn’t know if you imagined it, but you were sure that when he was falling asleep, holding you against him like an antistress comforter, Spencer thanked you.

[akutasoda]

hello! platonic blade, dan heng,jing yuan and sunday with a teen!reader who is like fischl?

chuunibyo who roleplays royalty as a coping mechanism basically

royalties facade

synopsis - how are they with a fischl like teen

includes - dan heng, blade, jing yuan, sunday

warnings - gn!teen!reader, fluff, wc - 886

dan heng ★↷

↪from his years of experience with being on the express and knowing specifically march, dan heng was not unused to or even phased by your rather eccentric behaviour.

↪atleast, unlike some, you were the hardworking type which balanced out your often over the top actions and words. it was certainly a balance that dan heng found tolerable and your naturally keen instincts were something that interested him - especially when it came to your rather unorthodox ideas.

↪quite quickly, dan heng became accustomed to your presence and even to your manner of speaking which more often confused those around you. but it was his open mind and willingness to get along with you that meant the world for you.

↪while it was probably nothing for dan heng outside pure friendliness, to you it was something that you appreciated greatly - after all, not many would take the time to play along with your roleplay even if it was your passion.

↪and so, dan heng would soon be subjected to seeing your side out of roleplay. a version of you that was much more bashful and well behaved, and to dan heng, that was simply another version of you he could get along with.

blade ★↷

↪to say blade found you rather insufferable at first would be an understatement. it wasn't actually anything you did specifically, he just was never the type to be fond of outgoing people.

↪he was never fond of your outlandish remarks or naturally loud actions or even simply how you handled anything that came your way. anyone could be convinced that he simply loathed your presence.

↪but due to the fact that you were around him for long periods of time, blade, unfortunately so in his eyes at first, became unwillingly accustomed to you.

↪so much so, that you took the initiative and spent a lot of time by his side willingly - something blade would show displeasure to at first but soon seemed unfazed by it. blade would never pick up on it openly, but his accustomation to your antics was always greatly appreciated on your end.

↪and as a result of this growing closeness, blade began seeing you outside of your roleplay. you're more well behaved and reserved behaviour was almost foreign to him, he even found himself preferring the version of you in roleplay.

↪so while you may be too over the top for his liking, you still found a way to grow on him. your passion for roleplaying as royalty would be something that blade would indulge for you, even if it wasn't to his liking.

jing yuan ★↷

↪in some way, the general found your roleplaying rather amusing. but he never meant it in any type of condescending way, and more so in a way of curiosity - after all, it wasn't everyday he met someone such as yourself.

↪jing yuan took a genuine intrigue into this play of royalty you put on constantly, the formal tone in your voice mixed with an outlandish set of ideas and remarks was quite the contrast. although there was certainly no denying that you always did know what you were talking about.

↪even your knack for being able to investigate efficiently was interesting to him as it was clear you were certainly a skilled young individual.

↪perhaps it was the fact that he embraced and respected your roleplay of royalty that made the two of you grow close fast, but soon enough, jing yuan found himself being met with the other version of you.

↪the you that was much more reserved, a complete opposition to your usual demeanor. but jing yuan didn't mind, after all it was still you behind all that shyness.

sunday ★↷

↪sunday had met many people through his time on penacony, each and every one with different dreams and ambitions, different fears and regrets, yet he could barely recall half of them since he never took the time to know them enough.

↪so while he may have appeared unphased on the surface when presented with your rather loud behaviour and insistence on being classed as royalty, beneath he had many things he'd rather not say out loud.

↪it was safe to say that he certainly hadn't met someone exactly like you, although, just like royalty, you did speak with a formal manner that he quite liked - sunday didn't even need help from your raven, someone he also found intriguing, to translate your speech.

↪but some part of you, a small fleeting part, reminded him of how his sister used to behave when she was young. so sunday, surprisingly to outsiders, happily indulged in your roleplaying.

↪he never viewed you strangely or judged you for it, in fact he even commemorated just how much passion you put behind your facade. and that meant everything to you, something you appreciated deeply even if you never outwardly showed that appreciation.

↪sunday wasn't too surprised that beneath your roleplaying was someone who was rather shy and dedicated to their work, after all the royalty and eccentricity was only a facade - but he treasured how much you trusted him to show him that side of you.

[burning2know]

Since people seem to be interested in inferring the real political opinions of the devs (or whoever's vision was realized in these games), here are some shower thoughts.

disclaimer: just some personal observation, i'm pretty ignorant about history and politics.

So imo, Anders follows very much the cultural narrative of a post 9/11 world (at least in my bubble). Violence is bad (especially terrorism), and we're meant to not fall prey to its tantalizing justifications because that's a slippery slope to war, genocide, the whole nine yards and then some. (We had to allow some time to mske it okay to even talk about capital T terror and sympathizing with perps).

DAI sets Solas up to redeem the writers for Anders, potentially. And given recent events in the past, idk, few months, year, I've seen that north american society no longer thinks about violence the way I thought it did (yes social media has a big role to play in that). Considering this background, da4 seems weirdly regressive and also on trend, all things considered. Opinions on the quality of the game notwithstanding.

Now I feel like the expressed-in-public sentiment is that violence is okay depending on which side you agree with because peaceful protests don't do fuck all, whereas some 10 odd years ago, it was that we like the change but not the violence to bring them about... Because change without violence is possible. But we've proven to ourselves time and again that the chsnge that happens without violence is overwhelmingly one-sidedly benefitting the powerful. There are through-lines over time, for sure, but things were indeed not always like this. The narrative of who is allowed to be sympathetic used to be controlled by keeping us ignorant, whereas now, it's being controlled by moral imperatives. Because it's gotten a lot easier to know.

Judging by what made it into the artbook, they were never going go where I hoped. But I think the da4 libs aren't quite the same flavour as the DA2/DAI libs. And that's... Something (neutral). Whether that reflects a single perspn on the team's views or the company's, I can't say. But it tracks with what I think is the zeitgeist.

However. I think it'd be remiss to not account for the change in leadership and vision of the world of thedas between dai and da4. To argue that the writers had always been like this is to ignore a major part of the problem. I felt that something had fundamentally shifted between dai and da4. The op's critique not withstanding (and I think you're right). The characterizations in dai were a hell of a lot more progressive than in da4, if only by virtue of da4 being extremely regressive through its bare-faced simplicity. In a nut shell, I just don't believe that the people who created Mythal and Flemeth and Morrigan would write the characters in da4. And it aggrieves me to have them lumped together with the likes of miserable little epler... They are not the same. This was not always the world view of DA.

Lastly, and this point is inane af, but I offer a more mechanistic explanation of the grace offered to blackwall. blackwall killed a single noble family, you can count that on one, mayhe two hands. Servants do not count as real people (I come back to this later, bear with me). anders and solas sought to destroy institutions forming the very fabric of society. The latter is much more visibly destructive, obviously, since such visible destruction is the ultimate goal. Whereas the violence perpetrated by the accepted authorities and instutions are so mundane as to be invisible or inevitable or "do not count" just as the servants thom rainier killed did not count. It's seemingly worse on an utilitarian scale. this often is used as justification against non-sanctioned violence and progressive ideas in general.

genuinely curious how the writers and larger dragon age audience would treat thom rainier if instead of being appropriately* repentant and putting himself in prison he blew up a major orlesian government building to instigate a chevalier rebellion or tried to have someone do some necromantic blood magic ritual involving uncertain danger and possible sacrifices to bring the innocent children he ordered killed back to life

[aversiteespabilas]

HERE IT IS!! THE LONG-AWAITED RRCU MASTERPOST!!!

WHAT is the RRCU, exactly?

The Rise Rabbit Cinematic Universe is a series of derivative fanworks featuring original characters inspired by Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo comics and the spinoff show Samurai Rabbit, with lore and events set in the canonical world of Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It was created by myself (@aversiteespabilas) and @rhinocio, together with my best friend Iggy (@r3xcorvus) contributing with their own characters and plot and acting as writing consultant for the rabbits. If you know Stan Sakai's characters, you may find some things familiar, but ultimately, these are completely original characters with original storylines. It started with Rhin and I playing with the concept of our distinct versions of Rise!Usagi being estranged family, and it's now become a rich world of stories and characters that we really feel is worth sharing. Enjoy the ride!

Is this a Rise AU (Alternative Universe)?

Technically, no. RRCU stories are written on the assumption that everything that happens on the ROTTMNT canon does happen exactly as is. We're not working with alternate dimensions either, as the Usagi family are yokai, just like any other in the Hidden City. This is rather a Rise spin-off, focusing on original characters, how the yokai world or Ikai works, and our take on Hidden Japan. It's not an alternate universe, the rabbits are just busy doing their own stuff. However, we do have different alternative timelines or AUs within the RRCU. I'll get to that.

Are they like, dragon riders?

They are, thank you for noticing! I take great pride in that idea 'cause it's allowed me to do a lot of cool stuff. In the RRCU, tokage are large winged lizards, and the characters can ride them! Yuki's best friend Spot is also a loyal flying mount who carries him to adventure.

What's with the amount of rabbits? Seriously, there are SO many.

Well, this is about the Usagi Family. Several generations of them, in fact. We have a wide array of characters we write about or draw artwork for, young and old, living and deceased. At its core, the RRCU is about family, overcoming generational trauma, dealing with your heritage, and reconnecting with those you love.

Okay, but who is dating Leonardo Ninjaturtle, exactly?

Sometimes a rabbit. Sometimes a different rabbit. Sometimes, not a rabbit. Bottom line: It's not about Leo, though he does cameo and romantically feature in some of the fics. When we started merging our concepts of Usagi, Rhin and I already had plenty of canonical work written that featured Leo getting romantically involved with our respective Usagis. As a result of that, we decided each of us would take care of a different timeline or AU based mostly on who Leo is dating. Most of the time, in my own work, Leonardo will be dating Yuki. In Rhin's work, Leonardo might be dating Yusuke (in Rise's apocalyptic future) or perhaps a loveable human named Juan. Or perhaps nobody in particular.

Why are there fics in spanish in the Yuki Usagi (ROTTMNT) ao3 tag? Why do Yuki-focused fics reference stuff that hasn't been published before?

That is because I am spanish, and because before my fic journey, Yuki's story was developed in private (spanish) roleplay. That is why in Yuki's fics, I am assuming Leo and him are already friends, but in Run O' The Mill Rabbit I did my best to retroactively explain the events that led to their friendship regardless.

He's the young heir to the Usagi Family, and that comes with a massive amount of pressure that he's always been able to take in stride, in spite of his hearing disability. With unwavering confidence, commitment to Bushido, and a penchant for silliness, Yuki is always ready to take on any challenge. As an Usagi, though, his greatest challenge may actually be admitting when he's having real trouble, and letting others help him instead.

He's the Usagi Family's long-lost son, Tetsuya's 20-years-younger brother, and Yuki's forgotten uncle. After struggling to meet his samurai family's very strict expectations throughout his childhood, he travelled to America in search of purpose, and accidentally got Mariko pregnant instead. Since then, he's been forced to cut ties with the Usagi and has become radio silent. Weighed down by his shame and used to constantly running away, his only anchors are his son Jotaro and his very dear friends Mariko and Kenichi; yet, he still refuses to truly face the people he loves.

He's Yuki's father and Yusuke's 20-years-older brother. As the Usagi Family Head, his duty has always been preserving the family's dwindling reputation, ensuring traditions and protocol are followed, and being in charge of absolute perfection. However, this mindset has historically not made his family... like him very much, as hard as that is to believe. After his wife's passing and both his little brother and son running off to America, his loneliness has led to regrettable events that are forcing him to accept that he might not be all that perfect himself, either.

She was Tetsuya's first wife and Yuki's mother, before her unfortunate death in the line of duty. She was the lightheartedness and sweetness to Tetsuya's inflexible demeanor, and Tetsuya was a safety line for her more impulsive and daring traits. She had affinity for a very powerful mystic sword that her son Yuki inherited.

She's a hare, and Tetsuya's second wife. A ninja and skilled assassin sent to kill the Usagi Family Head, who eventually decided none of that ninja stuff was worth it anyway. She is supremely chill about everything, in ways the Usagi are still getting used to.

He's Tetsuya and Toshiko's son, which makes him Yuki's baby brother, and a hare-rabbit hybrid yokai. We are sure he will not grow into a troublemaker or anything.

He's Yusuke's very american best friend (though he himself would prefer a different appellative), Mariko's husband, and the dad who stepped up. His love for his own pack is fierce to a fault, so his distaste for the Usagi and everything they stand for often feels more personal than warranted.

She's Kenichi's wife, Jota's mom, and formerly (though she herself would prefer it were currently) Yusuke's date. Also coming from a high-standing family that kept clipping her wings, Mari's gone with a totally different coping mechanism from Yusuke's, and has adopted the Fun, Cool Mom label for herself. She will not be made to choose who she's allowed to love, or how intensely. Not anymore.

He's Yusuke, Mariko, and Kenichi's wonderful son, and he was named Jotaro first, okay? Tetsuya just never even knew it. Although his parents have done their best to keep him away from their own complicated family issues, Jota has become a very emotionally intelligent and mature child regardless, and gets frustrated when they insist on babying him.

She's Keiko's older sister, and Yuki's beloved aunt. Multifaceted, a bit eccentric, and the family's first polyglot, she's constantly learning new skills, and will support and encourage openness of mind in the Usagi as well, though she's not interested in courtly life at all. She was the one to teach Yuki english, and they also learned japanese sign language together, which has led to the two of them having a very deep connection. He often asks and accepts help from her in a way he's never had with anyone, not even his own parents.

He's a young eagle yokai raised under Bishop's orders and yokai fear-mongering. He would eventually become Mikey's best friend, and, as he unlearns his misguided beliefs and opens up to others, he occasionally stumbles upon the Usagi, who are keen to adopt angry street rats like him.

Would you like to learn how I draw our characters?

I'm currently working on a series of RRCU character design notes, so check that out!

Banner art by @rhinocio

This is not an exhaustive list of RRCU fics! There are more works in the series that won't be featured here. This space is meant to showcase the fics I personally think are most relevant and essential to understand the rabbit characters, their lore and main storyline.

Find the entire RRCU fic series HERE!!

After a mysterious alien invasion has destroyed New York City, Usagi Yuki's trip to meet his american friend Leo becomes a trip to help the denizens of New York instead.

Category: Gen

Setting: Post-ROTTMNT Movie canon

Status: Completed

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

Chapters: 7

Characters featured: Yuki-centric. Also features Sakiko, Tetsuya, Keiko, and (briefly) Toshiko and Jojo.

Why read this one?: This is probably the best introduction to the RRCU if you're already a fan of Rise and want to see an interesting take on teen Usagi. It features a bunch of familiar secondary characters and settings from Rise.

Famed samurai Usagi Tetsuya's wife just passed, and he is left to live alone with a teenaged boy and the guilt of their estranged family. As the eldest daughter of her clan of assassins, Toshiko is expected to succeed her mother and earn her place as mistress of the clan. However, she must first complete one last mission: kill the head of the Usagi family.

Category: F/M

Setting: Hidden Tokyo, spanning from the time leading to the Shredder's awakening to some time after the ROTTMNT movie canon.

Status: Work In Progress

Rating: Mature

Chapters: 4/9

Characters featured: Tetsuya and Toshiko-centric. Also features Yuki, Keiko, Yusuke, Sakiko and baby Jojo.

Why read this one?: If you're interested in Tetsuya's side of the story, and/or would like to delve into a fully original Hidden City, and/or are into a POV-switching romance story between older characters with terrible secrets, this is the one for you.

Usagi Yusuke is the second son of Hidden Tokyo's Usagi Clan. He is a mediocre, masterless samurai-in-training. He is also, abruptly, a father. The last of those, according to his elder brother, is a shameful thing. The last of those, in Yusuke's opinion, makes the former unimportant. He will do what he must to provide for his son, even if that means moving half a world away and cutting ties with his family entirely. Of course, just because he has loved and let go does not mean his nephew has the same intention.

Banner art by @rhinocio

Category: Multi

Setting: Post-ROTTMNT Movie canon, alternating with Hidden Tokyo flashback chapters.

Status: Work In Progress

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Chapters: 21/46

Characters featured: Yusuke-centric. Also heavily features every other rabbit character.

Why read this one?: If you're looking to understand why the Usagi Family is the way it is, the nature of all their issues and exactly how they get through them as a family, this is the one fic you should check out. It is also my most favorite one, personally.

It’s not like him. Not like either of them, rushing into a game without joking about it first. They’ve got an established back and forth, and they've been using it for years: Leonardo’s the Rebel Leader who teases like he means something, Usagi’s the Bodyguard who humours him, and nothing they say ever goes anywhere.

Banner art by @rhinocio

Category: M/M

Setting: ROTTMNT Apocalypse timeline.

Status: Work In Progress

Rating: Explicit

Chapters: 12/21

Characters featured: Leo and Yusuke-centric. I will update this section if more RRCU characters are featured.

Why read this one?: Those of you looking for leosagi smut that's mature and has an Usagi with an interesting backstory should absolutely check this one out. This is also a peek into what Yusuke is like in the Krang-dominated apocalypse, where he never gets a chance to face his many issues.

Banner art by @rhinocio

Browse commentary and artwork here on tumblr through the tags!

Main tag: RRCU

Character design notes tag: RRCU design notes

Tags by fic: ROTMRfic, H&Hfic, under the sword lifted high, NONUfic

Tags by character: usagi yuki, usagi yusuke, usagi tetsuya, usagi keiko, usagi toshiko, usagi jotaro, usagi jota, usagi jojo, yoshikawa kenichi, kobayashi mariko, payne

We hope you guys enjoy playing in the rabbit sandbox with us! Please, don't hesitate to comment, send asks or just chat with us! This is our pride and joy and it makes us so happy to know people enjoy our work!

[daughterofthesunlands]

Blessings

a short story about Gil-galad in the Valley of Imladris.

A day and two nights had passed since he had led Eregion's survivors down into the valley of Imladris. While Galadriel recovered from her deadly wound, Elrond and Arondir tended to the soldiers, mothers and their children, who would soon join his people in Lindon. 

The High-King himself had found nor sought rest in those two days. In fact, he had isolated himself from the rest, even Elrond, sought a high hill and stood watch by its cliff. 

Somehow, for whatever reason, he always sought out solitude, wherever he found himself.

The second night, Elrond had surprised him when he appeared out of the nightly shadow of the woods.

"High King."

He turned only slightly to peek over his shoulder as he heard his voice.

"Why won't you rest? I can keep watch in your stead."

"No," he breathed gently, before he turned his head again. "I'm the King. I need to keep watch over my people. As vulnerable as they are, now more than before. And you, as one of my subjects, should also be resting."

Elrond lowered his head, a weak smile tugging at the corner of his lips, before he looked up again, this time lifting his eyes up enough to gaze at the stars in the night sky.

"...even in Lindon you act as though the sun never sets, High King." he said, stepping closer.

"The High tree, always keeping you company."

"I consider it a blessing," Ereinion replied, this time turning some more to meet Elrond's eyes. "to be able to watch over Elvenkind. I do not take it for granted."

"When the Varda created the stars as our kind slept, we awoke to their light as a blessing from them. ... I like to believe that rest is when blessings befall us." the Herald almost whispered the last words, before he lowered his eyes back onto his King.

"Good night, my King."

He heard the elf retreat back into the forest. Just as he did, a gentle breeze found the cliff. Briefly, he closed his eyes and exhaled as the winds combed through his hair. 

——————————————————————————————————

The sun rose after what to him seemed only hours after.

Soon, his fixated gaze on the end of the trees that surrounded the valley broke, as the people awoke and began to grow lively with noise. As he watched them move about, he began to toy with the idea to come down from the hill. He loved his subjects, but he never had been keen to interact too much with them. In his first century as King, he had been advised to act so. He remembered it being difficult at first. Then, with time, he began to crave company less.

Now, it almost seemed an almost strange need if he ponders on it for too long. Its memory, almost completely eroded. He had long forgotten how to soften his rigid ways. Children mostly, called forth in him feelings of timidness. He never knew how to deal with them...he'd accepted that he never would.

The sudden loud sound of the people pulled him out of his mind. As his eyes found them again, he realized what had caused them to cheer: The dwarves had arrived with food. He rose from the trunk he'd sat on and began to make his descent back into the valley. 

As he arrived, the Elven children were still running out of their tents to join the dwarven soldiers, who were generously filling their little hands with bread and fruit. Elrond was beside them, handing out covers and blankets to the mothers, wielding a smile Gil-galad thought he would never see again.

The King gently found his way through the children, trying to ignore the smallest as they suddenly stood still and stared at him as he moved on, towering over them. As he advanced, Elrond saw him out of the corner of his eye, and he too halted, overcome with surprise. 

Narvi, who had come, followed Elrond's eyes. And when he did, he, too, found the King.

Gil-galad meet the dwarf's eyes only for an instant, before he diverted his eyes and bowed his head. 

"Thank you for coming to our aid in this time."

Narvi looked at Elrond, before he nodded, bowing in turn. 

"The King and the Queen told me to let you know to only ask if your people require more of our aid, your Highness."

"We will be forever grateful."

Narvi extended an apple to him. He took it, nodding as a weak smile appeared on his lips. As he lowered his eyes, he startled as he met the dozen little pairs of eyes that had fixated him, looking up at him as if he was a strange creature that had appeared among them and had drawn them in by his aura. By his foot stood a very young girl with a head full of red curls, holding onto a bitten plum that seemed so big between her small hands. When their eyes met, a smile appeared on her face. 

He in turn diverted his eyes almost timidly, clearing his throat before he slowly backed away and turned to make his way back. Narvi watched in bewilderment as something in the tall and strong Elven King suddenly shifted. 

The children turned their heads and followed him with their eyes as he silently walked away, growing smaller in the distance. 

—————————————————————————————————

He'd long passed the last tent. As he'd walked, he'd suddenly found himself overcome by exhaustion. He had not noticed that the grass had begun to grow everso taller and that flowers had begun to appear like colourful dots in the green sea he was crossing, until it reached his knees. All his eyes acknowledged were the Oak tree, that grew everso closer. Its comforting shade called his name.

When he reached it, he found soft moss at its roots. 

He exhaled, looking over his shoulder. He could still see the tents. 

He could keep watch from here. 

So he put down his sword first, laying it into the moss, before he lowered himself against the trunk of the old tree. His eyes remained open...until they did not. The wind and the bird's sounded in his ears, until he suddenly heard them no longer. Slumber claimed the Elven King. The apple he had held onto rolled out of his grasp, into the low grass that surrounded the tree's roots.

Silence reigned for a long moment, when the high grass suddenly rustled.

It was silent enough not to wake him. 

Out came the little girl with the red hair. Out of breath, she halted as she saw him asleep against the tall, old tree. 

In her little hands, she carried only the heads of various flowers she had picked on the way, as she had silently followed him.

Almost too many to hold all by herself. 

Her eyes wandered over his Face. Strands of his long brown hair moved from the kind wind. His brows were relaxed, and his face was gentle.

She then noticed the hand the apple had rolled out of. It made her remember picking flowers and giving them to her father to carry when hey took walks in the forest that lay not far out from Eregion. Her father's hands had always been big enough to carry all the petals she had found.

She had not seen him since they left the city.

She approached him almost carelessly, coming to a stand right next to him, before she knelt into the grass, sitting down. She emptied her hands into the grass, before she then picked up the first flower head, an oxeye daisy, and let it fall into his open hand. Carefully, she looked up to study his face to see if he'd awoken.

When he hadn't, she took one after the next and placed it in his hand, until he, in the end, held the colourful heap of them. When she was finished, she clumsily took the apple and took a bite, looking around and listening to the sounds of the forest behind them.

Her eyes found him again. His eyes were still closed. 

Slowly she got up, dropping the apple as she did, and walked back into the grass, only to return with a daisy she had this time picked by its stem. She looked at his hand full of flowers. 

There was no more space left to place this one.

So she placed it into the King's lap.

It was the gentle brush of her fingers against his thigh that made his eyes move behind his lids and his slowed breath liven again. The little girl startled at his sudden movement, and ran away, back towards the other children.

As Ereinion's eyes fluttered open, he saw the tall grass move.

Only after did the sensation of the weight in his hand make him shift his eyes, to find that the apple he had been given by Narvi had been bitten. 

And that blessings had befallen him as he had rested.

Wordcount: 1.509 words Characters: Ereinion Gil-galad, Elrond & Narvi Location: Imladris

Just something sweet I thought writing about for weeks now. :)

[talenlee]

3e: Magical Rings

Rings. Simple circles of metal, worn on the fingers or toes or sometimes in the ears, these delicate pieces of human artistry are some of the earliest examples of creative expression we know can last beyond our lives, and therefore, serve as some of the most iconic examples of the way we use our signifiers to craft narratives of our lives. The promise ring, the engagement ring, the wedding ring, which are of course, all the same thing but companies want us to gild that lily forever, rings serve as a circle present in so many stories to symbolise a bonding, a binding, an eternity that we commit to in our lives and that we can only hold up as long as we continue to believe in that which the ring symbolises. Every ring can be called a ring of power, because it is the belief in stories we imbue in the ring that serves to give it that power.

And as any good item with significance, Dungeons & Dragons decided to start jamming a mechanical system onto them.

This is by no means a new thing for 3rd edition D&D; since earliest versions of the game, I’m sure there were people making ‘magical rings’ important on day dot. This is a game for hacks who want to remind you of the cool fantasy books we’ve read and back when the game was brand new, there really were only so many fantasy books that could be considered cool. Unbelievably, people considered Lord of The Rings one of them, yeah, I know, and apparently, they enjoyed those books and implemented their ideas into their own work. Wild, I know. Point is, it wouldn’t surprise me if D&D’s vision of magical rings predate D&D. What 3rd edition brought, in my experience reading the rulebooks, is a sense of acceleration and omnipresence.

The rules around rings in 3rd edition onwards is that you can wear two rings, and those rings will give you some magical benefit or advantage based on what they’re supposed to do. This is where stacking bonuses tend to rear their head for newer players. After all if you have a Ring of Protection that improves your armour by +1, and you have ten fingers, and those rings are cheap, why not buy a few of them, wear them on different fingers and get a lot better armour? The game saw you coming and instead, the rules limit these bonuses by type and also limits you to one ring per hand.

My time with 2e, towards the end, represent the loot cavalcade that was Baldur’s Gate 2, in which the world is lousy with magical gear which is designed to make it possible to approach a reasonably open world of quests. In this case, you wind up with enough magical rings you just start selling them in sacks, to the point where it can honestly not be worth picking them up in the early game because who’s gunna carry that malarkey? I do not want to pretend that 2ed lacked for this situation. Instead I want to describe the way that 3rd edition brought the idea of Unspecial Rings to everywhere. Almost every resource in the game that players got access to would bring new magical items, new feats, new character options to the board, and with that, you’d see some new rings.

When creating new magical items, the game provided a set of rules that described things that magical items could do, and the general family of effects they could have. Weapons, you might not be surprised, were good at making you better at attacking, and did special things when they hit things. Armour increased your defensive stats and made you better at surviving or enduring things. This could have some interesting side effects, some things that were judged on vibes — like, a trident that meant you could breathe underwater while you had it was probably okay, but it was definitely less okay than a suit of armour that gave you a swim speed and also meant you could breathe underwater. These were all put together by a complicatedly designed set of formulas that tried to price effects based on spells and then on the duration or effect of those spells.

What this meant is that knowing the best spells meant you knew the best ways to break these rules in weird outlier ways. An example that came up commonly was the ‘ring of true strike’ design a lot of players would conceive of, where you would make a ring that cast the spell true strike on use (ie, whenever you attacked). The formula for this implied that as a 1st level spell, cast as a 1st level wizard, this should cost 1x1x2000 gp. Since true strike granted you a +20 to hit on the next attack you meant, this item would obviously trivialising hitting things and that’s pretty nuts.

(Please ignore that a wand of true strike was a level 1 item for 750 gp that would give you this effect for 50 attacks, but only if you were a wizard or a character with the appropriate spell on your list.)

Anyway, the math kicked in at this point and looked for the most expensive way to price the effect. This ‘ring of true strike’ was granting a +20 to hit, and that was priced differently to the 1st level spell that gave it to you, meaning that instead of 2,000 gp, it cost you 20x60x2,000 gp, or 2.4 million gp, which is, uh, a lot more than 2,000. This is because to craft a tohit bonus like that, you needed to be 3 times the level of the bonus, meaning that you needed to find a level 60 wizard who had the time to waste on your nonsense.

Point is that things were examined in terms of their effect and their style. Armour did things that weapons didn’t do. Some weapons could improve your armour class but they needed a good flavour for it — like deflecting something, or blocking hits in melee. Staffs could store spells, wands could store spells but wear out, scrolls could store spells but only once, amulets could protect you in some way like improving a saving throw… and rings…

Rings could do anything.

Where most of the magic items have rules in them that make them hard to use in most situations, or gave them specific types of things they were best at replicating, rings could do anything. Permanent spell effects, on-use spell effects, permanent bonuses, a ring could be a real everythingamajig.

This was such a problem because it meant that even low level rings would wind up being useful, handy even to have around. A ring of sustenance turned off your need for food, for good, so you should probably have one of those for long distance travel. It’s real cheap, after all, and all it takes to swap it off is to swap a ring on a finger. A ring of feather falling could be jammed on a finger while you fell if you were falling far enough. And a ring of jumping could be handy for mobility, and none of these things were particularly expensive (by the standards of an adventurer) by the middle of the game.

The really cracked thing though?

These rings were so good and so worth keeping around in a big keyring for handy applications most of the time because they let non-wizards access all the handy utility stuff wizards had all the time from day 1. When a category of magical item is desireable because it lets you replicate something that the wizard can already do for a fraction of the cost – oh hey, there’s that wands conversation all over again! – you may have a problem class in your game.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[firealder2005]

I honestly don’t post about any sports all that often. But this Super Bowl compelled me to write this.

Now, right out the gate I will tell you I am a KC Chiefs fan. I was born one. I am a third-generation fan, going back to my grandpa who picked them at 19 when they were a godawful team and barely televised through my mom’s childhood, because only the good teams were televised then — so if they could watch them, it was to watch them get POUNDED.

I got to watch them win a Super Bowl after a 50 year drought. It was an exhilarating feeling, especially since I was constantly picked on at school by a classmate because of my team (he would go out of his way to harass me whenever his team — Ravens, btw — beat the Chiefs. And he was blissfully quiet the whole day after).

I got to see them win another one two years ago, in the affectionately nicknamed Kelce Bowl because of the Kelce brothers playing against each other. That was a fun year.

And another one after that.

Am I all that cut up about them losing this year?

No. I am not. Because I know it’s just a game. The dudebros need to chill out fr.

But I also know that this year…it wasn’t quite just a game, either. There’s other forces at play.

I honestly had no idea that some of the major Chiefs players supported trump until today. Just before I started writing this, in fact. I didn’t know trump wanted them to win either.

There was a bad taste in my mouth when I found that out.

I don’t consider myself to be a fanatic fan. But I am a proud fan. Someone once called me a bandwagon and I got offended.

But. But.

I am not a fan of this. Of the support and cozying up to of fascism, racism, queerphobia, you name it. It boggles my mind too because there are Black players on the Chiefs, there are Black players who CARRY the NFL’s legacy on their backs, and to support the trump administration is to take away their support.

You know what I am a fan of?

The political message of Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show.

I have never listened to any of Kendrick’s discography. I’ve never really been all that into hip hop or rap (my whiteness is showing I know).

Honestly, while I was watching, a lot of what was going on flew over my head. And I also had a hard time hearing the lyrics 🫣 again, not used to this genre of music 😅

But that’s what I thank tumblr for. Tumblr always has a way of bringing the unknown into the spotlight, and expanding my own knowledge on it.

I am very much not knowledgeable on the Black history surrounding Kendrick’s performance. But looking back, with a fresh set of eyes, what I do know and have put in effort to learn starts to be clear.

And I think it was genius. I think Kendrick Lamar’s performance is what saved this Super Bowl for me because I am vastly disappointed in my team right now, and still would have been even if they won.

I do not begrudge the Eagles their win. After all, this was a rematch 😜 Only fair you have your time to shine.

But in all seriousness, I think I prefer a loss to a win simply because I would not be able to enjoy that win knowing what I do now.

Besides. if it comes with the bonus of trump’s night being ruined? having to live with spending TAXPAYER MONEY (my money!!) to go and watch the game only to leave halfway through because Kendrick called him out? good. I can handle the sidelong taunts about the Chiefs and their bad decisions. I am mature enough to see that.

I am mature enough to see that an Eagles win, packed with Kendrick Lamar ripping the right a new one, is a win for us all — Chiefs fans included.

The next four years will be tough. But with such a spectacular performance? The trans flag? The Palestine and Sudan flag? Everything?

I think we have what we need to keep fighting. Kendrick, Chappell Roan, Lady Gaga, all of these artists lending their voices to support those who will be grievously impacted by what comes next is so important, especially at events like the Grammies and the Super Bowl. It shows that people care.

It shows that we can always care.

It’s just a game, yeah. But now it’s so much more.

[wickedsick]

Star of Beethoven wins "crazy but fun"

The art style does a good job of making Beethoven stand out from all the other characters, and the premise seems intriguing. Beethoven especially is excellently written, and you can tell that the idea as a whole comes from sincere love.

But my God, is Beethoven a freak. It's awesome.

Embers wins "yeah, I figured"

This was a predictable trajectory for the series to take, but it was predictable for a reason - it's a good idea. The comedy was good, I like the new characters, and that spread of stealing the ball was great. I hope the author can keep this up.

One Piece wins "best character intro"

Gaban seems fun. He's got some excellent parallels to Sanji, but his general vibe is his own, and I love him for it.

Sakamoto Days wins "best beatdown"

The two sides of this chapter were both great. We get more confirmation on Shin's past (there was always a high likelihood he was a JAA orphan, probably al-kamar), and both the bubble gunshot and this waterslide combo were great fun. Suzuki's art is always so kinetic.

Kagurabachi wins "my god he's so fucked up"

Going from discussing school and specifically pointing out that Iori and Chihiro are the same age to the rapid switch to... This; it puts into perspective just how fucked Chihiro's life is.

Meanwhile, we get a better view of Hiruhiko's philosophy and style, showing how it differs from Chihiro's, and sets them up for a rapid confrontation.

Blue Box wins "oof ouch my feels"

This was a great cooldown chapter after the game. I'm not really sure what else to say.

Ichi The Witch wins "Oh she got one of them traumas"

This is such an effective set of panels. His name, the single memory, then that tiny panel of blood and the wine splashing over him...

GOD, it's so fucking GOOD!

Ultimate Exorcist Kiyoshi wins "best singular attack"

The Thirteen Club is great, but this spread from Hijiri had to be my pick simply because of how effective it was. I can already picture it in motion, and it's yet another example of this series' "School Notebook aesthetic".

Akane-Banashi is runner-up on "best character intro"

Taison is fun, and it's great to use him to show general perception of Akane. I hope she knocks Rien's fucking socks off.

Witch Watch wins "author filibuster"

Sometimes I forget about this whole subplot of the manga writer. This was definitely... A choice, for ways to bring it back, though.