#but it could as well exist. i might make it

[astonmartinii]

other side of the moon: interlude - a tango in barcelona | formula one imagine

interlude: a tango in barcelona

pairing: fem retired formula one driver reader x ??? fem retired formula one driver reader x platonic!kimi antonelli

dancing around her teammate on and off track, y/n looks to boogie her troubles away.

MASTERLIST | TIP JAR | PART ONE | PART TWO | PART THREE

may 2020, spain.

life at mclaren hadn’t started the way y/n had hoped. the days were long and surprisingly quiet, the latter mostly due to her teammate and his aversion to acknowledging her existence. she was tired already this weekend and they hadn’t even raced yet.

the barcelona heat was making her race suit stick to her already just walking to the grid for the national anthem. “it’s hot as balls” y/n whined as she slipped between max and george while the choir set up ahead of them.

“oh my sweet summer child, we haven’t even gotten to singapore yet,” max said taking off his ice vest and fastening it to y/n.

“ugh don’t remind me,” y/n wiped more sweat off of her brow, “i think singapore might kill me.”

george laughed, moving his umbrella to the left so it covered y/n as well, “singapore is a baptism by fire, but you’ve done well so far this season so i don’t think you’ll have too hard a time.”

y/n smiled up at the taller brit, “thanks georgie, maybe if you’re such an expert in singapore you’ll be able to catch me.” she punctuated it with a wink, george nearly dropping the umbrella in response.

“do you mind? you nearly took my eye out with this thing!” max hissed at george, flicking the umbrella. george lifted the umbrella to get it out of eye range of the dutchman, who in turn saw it as an invitation to seek refuge in the shade.

“no way verstappen, this umbrella is for pretty people only,” george grabbed y/n’s hand and moved them a couple steps away.

“if that was so, only y/n would be allowed under it beanstalk.”

“if my height is the only thing you can think to insult me about, i can live.”

“oh believe me there’s a lot more stored up, i just wouldn’t want to give you any inspiration for when you take out a backmarker and blame everyone but yourself.”

y/n sighed dramatically, “already? i thought you two were going to cool it down this season. i don’t even understand how you have a rivalry, you’re nowhere near him on track george…” george let out a scandalised squeal, “oh my bad george, you know what i meant.”

“i think what y/n means is that she doesn’t rate you ‘mr saturday’”.

as george went to bite back but the loud horns of the national anthem cut their quarrel off early. y/n fought to keep her laugh in throughout the national anthem, seeing george seething in her peripheral vision. he was so easy to rattle it was practically a pastime of half the grid at this point.

before george could get a dig back in, y/n and max were back in deep conversation, discussing their approach to turn two with just minutes until the formation lap. he yearned to be the one that y/n spilled her tips, tricks and secrets to but like most of his life, the dutchman had beaten him to that honour. now he knew how lando felt.

lando, george and alex had bonded long before 2018, but their three-way title fight in formula two brought them closer rather than forcing them apart. george cherished that friendship, he found it invaluable to have two of his closest friends with him as they entered the cutthroat world of formula one - he just wished he could’ve been that person for y/n.

lando didn’t often articulate it well, but george understood his curly-haired friend’s struggles. lando had gushed all off season about having y/n as his teammate, chatting animatedly about potential roadtrips, shared flights and sleepovers before it was all snuffed out in a moment. george always suspected that lando felt more about their friend than he let on (or thought he let on). once he had thought it was a victim of circumstance, teenage boys discovering what these new hormones were doing to their body did tend to fixate on the one girl in their midst. but as they grew up, that puppy love crush didn’t seem to wain, not that anyone else around them seemed to notice.

a single comment from one max verstappen crushed that. a late night discord call between the rookie trio and max had naturally seen the topic of y/n arise. lando, as usual, started to wax lyrical about the season ahead, with his vision for their teammate relationship constructed in his head.

“mate, we’ve already started.”

“huh?” lando’s voice stuttered over the call, he cleared his throat, “what do you mean?”

“y/n and i,” max continued, “we’ve already started doing sim runs together, watching onboards and all that jazz.” the dutchman said it so casually, unaware of lando’s imminent heartbreak - george’s too, he just hid it better.

“but why? i’m going to be her teammate, not you? why would she even use your sim, she’s racing for mclaren next year not red bull.”

not noticing the path they were hurtling down, max dug his foot in, “no offence lando, but if y/n wants my tips, i’m going to give it to her. it’s noble for you to want to look out for her, but realistically what tips could you give her that are better than mine… i am the only one here who has actually won a race.”

alex loudly coughed, stopping max before he could continue. “it’s getting late, maybe we should call it a night?”

“it’s nine o’clock?” max questioned.

“no, i’m tired,” lando let out an undoubtedly fake yawn, “i think it’s time for bed.”

“okay suit yourselves,” max said, going back to his iracing, “lando, don’t take it too personally that she chose me. we’ve been friends for so long, we don’t know anything but each other.”

“i’ve known her just as long as you!”

it was starting to get a little heated and despite alex and george trying to interject, the two kept going.

“you may have known her just as long, but you don’t know her. we’ve been there for each other at our lowest and our highest. it’s not a competition. i honestly hope she comes to you next season, i don’t trust your team as far i can throw them. it will be good to have someone in her corner.”

“oh well if you’re that magnificent then why can’t you be her white knight all the way from red bull, huh?”

“you know what lando, we’ll talk about this again once you’ve shaken off this weird primal urge you have to ‘claim’ her. a piece of advice, she won’t like that.”

“oh you insufferable little shit-”

“goodbye everyone!” alex interjected, kicking max out of the call.

“what the fuck was that lando?”

“you heard him, posterising, peacocking and then having the gall to say that i’m being territorial over y/n.”

george sighed, his affection for the same girl was going to have to be buried even deeper after this. “max wasn’t peacocking about y/n, lando. if anything he was showing off his wins rather than her,” alex tried to reason.

“no! he can’t let us - can’t let me have anything. it’s always been this way and with y/n it’s like he knows deep down that i want her so he has to have her instead. he’s clinging on to her and shoving it in my face - it’s not my fault he has a shit dad and he attached himself to her because she was the only one not afraid of him - so why am i being punished for it?”

lando’s outburst rendered alex and george silent. the older one was horrified to say the least, the season hadn’t even started and lando’s jealousy was already out of hand.

“lando, that was too far…” alex said softly.

“no! he thinks that because he has a shitty sob story that he can just claim her? she’s her own person!”

“right. i’m going to stop you there before you say something that’ll make me hate you for real. you need to get over what ever the fuck this is so you can be a normal fucking human being next season,” alex tried to reason with lando.

“i am in love with her!”

“are you? or are you in love with the thought of what could happen? have you actually stopped and wondered whether y/n likes you or even likes men? for someone so protective over her, you haven’t considered her feelings too much.”

lando has the foresight to look a little guilty. george stayed silent, he knows alex is suspicious of him too, but that can of worms can wait until another day.

“you need to get a life and calm down. max is one of your best friends and i know deep down you didn’t mean a word you said tonight but you need to get a grip before you say any of that in front of him or y/n because i’m sorry but i won’t be stopping them if they try to hit you.”

lando doesn’t say anything, but the guilty look on his face says enough.

“goodnight.”

the call ended there and was never brought up again. george watched y/n waltz back towards the mclaren garage, a big gap between her and lando. there had been no more outbursts since that night but if what george overheard from daniel, lando had still managed to completely screw himself. was george that angry at that news? not really.

°❀⋆.ೃ࿔:･°❀⋆.ೃ࿔:･°❀⋆.ೃ࿔:･°❀⋆.ೃ࿔:･°❀⋆.ೃ࿔:･°❀⋆.ೃ࿔:･°❀⋆.ೃ࿔:･

the race was pretty uneventful, barcelona usually was. y/n started in sixth and managed to pip charles to fifth after ferrari screwed up his pitstop once again. despite her deep love for sangria, y/n didn’t really feel like leaving her hotel room after she had scrubbed all of the sweat and grime off in the shower.

she was pleased with her points haul, smiling to herself in debrief as they analysed lando’s first lap incident with pierre gasly that lando just insisted was no fault of his own…

her ring tone invaded her peaceful evening, the name ‘albono’ flashing up on her phone. pressing accept,

“how can i help you on this fine evening, mr albon?”

“well i find myself in this fine dancing establishment, looked around and thought it was crying out for a little y/n y/ln action.”

“dancing you say?”

“i’m 100% serious, sebastian of all people has dragged also to a bar where they’re attempting to teach us the tango…”

“oh i love the tango! it’s my favourite dance on strictly…”

“so what i’m hearing is that i should get a tequila sunrise in preparation for your arrival?”

y/n sighed, “yes you may.”

“score! i’ll send you the address and an uber. see you soon.”

so there goes her quiet night in, but who wouldn’t love the chance to tango with your close friends in under the stars? and she had packed her little red number… maybe the y/n who packed that suitcase all those days knew something current y/n didn’t.

y/n elected to skip most of her makeup routine, her skin sensitive from all the sweat in her balaclava, swiping on some mascara, lip gloss and a healthy dose of blush. like alex said, the uber was waiting for her outside the lobby.

the outside of the bar looked closer to a college dive bar than somewhere you’d expect to find a group of formula one drivers, but she suspects that’s why sebastian chose it.

“buenes noches senorita,” fernando alonso gave her a spin on entry.

“gracias nando,” she curtsied in front of the spaniard, drawing a laugh out of the elder driver, “i am sorry to cut this short, but i am tired and i fear i have already promised my one dance to another.”

“how will i ever recover?”

“i think you’ll find a way old man.”

“you wound me, but alex is waiting for you by the bar.”

y/n made her way through the bar, spotting several drivers caught up in their dancing lessons from the locals. she tapped alex on the shoulder, with the tall driver turning, wielding her tequila sunrise.

“nice of you to turn up at last,” alex teased, handing her the drink.

“i’ll have you know i was snuggled up ready for some netflix action before you called.”

“you came all this way for a dance with little ol’ me?”

“of course, alex. i have missed you.”

“i have missed you too, the red bull stuff is piling up and i have been neglecting my big brother duties, i’m sorry. not that it seems to be effecting your rookie season too much.”

“don’t worry about me alex, i’m proud of you and what you’re doing at red bull, even if they’re being unreasonably hard on you.”

alex led her to the middle of the dance floor and put one hand on her hip, the other on her shoulder. they started to move to the music,

“i just miss when it was more laidback. i barely have time to stop between sim sessions and media duties and performance meetings. i miss sitting in your driver room laughing at your instagram private messages and watching stupid adam sandler movies.”

alex spun her and as she came back to him she said, “we can still do that alex! you don’t have to be alone, we can still watch adam sandler movies and ignore calls from helmut.”

alex smiled at her as the music slowed down.

“i wish i was here for you more in your rookie season,” alex laments but y/n interjects, “it’s only the fourth race. you’re focused on you and i wouldn’t want anything else. there’s time for us to find our way back to each other. you're a brother to me, like blood, there’s nothing that can destroy that bond.”

“i’m sorry lando is being a prick.”

“it is what it is.”

“no it’s not. we had each other last year, he should be there for you.”

“it’s whatever, i have max, i have you, i’ll survive.”

the music came to an end. the two embraced but when they broke apart y/n started heading for the exit, picking up max on the way through, the dutchman having already booked them an uber. y/n turned and waved to alex, she meant it when she said it was just one dance. she made a ‘call me sign’ and mouthed ‘adam sandler’ before rushing out of the bar with max.

alex turned and made his way to george who was still nursing his first drink at the bar. george didn’t respond when alex prompted him. the thai man nudged george laughing about how ‘y/n knows how to make a short and sweet appearance’ but still got nothing.

“you’re not seriously angry about a tango are you george?”

“no.”

“you’re a terrible liar,” alex whispered, “not as bad as lando but terrible nonetheless.”

“at least i’m not taking it out on her like lando.”

“no, you just use max as target pratice on your dart board for shits and giggles.”

“whatever.”

“fine, deal with it how you wanna big boy, but if you turn out like lando right now, i’ll be down two best friends and up two murder charges.”

°❀⋆.ೃ࿔:･°❀⋆.ೃ࿔:･°❀⋆.ೃ࿔:･°❀⋆.ೃ࿔:･°❀⋆.ೃ࿔:･°❀⋆.ೃ࿔:･°❀⋆.ೃ࿔:･

fin.

note: my first interlude! @deviltsunoda and i came up with these ideas so i could write shorter things while i have work and you guys still get fed! so enjoy this lil exploration into y/n and alex's friendship (they are so precious to me!) and why lando is being such an asshole... enjoy! the weekend should bring chapter four.

taglist: @folkloresreputation @hc-dutch @shimmermotorsport @96mcobo @eclipsedcherry @formulaal @czennieszn @gothicwidowsworld @emily-b @suns3treading @henna006 @kazgirl20 @anotherapollokid @littlegrapejuice @daemyratwst @annimausi @yawn-zi @lulu-1998 @xsilkesworld @justaf1girl @daddyslittlevillain @evans-dejong @abq654 @elizamoe133 @wierdflowerpower @t1nkerbel1 @okcurran @raizelchrysanderoctavius @skepvids @multilovebot @fernandoalonso14 @jules-kup-172 @m4xgirlie @rorabelle15 @minkyungseokie @formula1-motogpfan @peterholland04 @miureiz @freyathehuntress @lighttsoutlewis @aleatorio1234 @chaosandevelyn @blueberry648579 @dog-and-cat-person230 @fastandcurious16 @obxstiles @cosmicwintr @becca388510 @savagittariuspy

[snugglyporos]

// Christ I wish I could go back in time and erase concepts like 'unconscious bias' from the world of popular lingo because people apply it to things that they don't apply to. No, most people do not possess an unconscious bias that working class people are worth less than rich people, that's your classist ideology being applied to things that you shouldn't apply it to. We might call that a conscious bias.

What is actually happening is a mix of tropes being blended together and not changing over time. Namely, the idea that the more individuals there are, the weaker they are. We see this everywhere; fifty ninjas? Weak. Not a problem. One ninja? Super powerful. Legend. This exists in everything from James Bond movies to comics to Power Rangers.

The reality is that, narratively speaking, the random cannon fodder between the protagonist and the final boss do not matter. They don't! In real life they would, but if you tried to give ever goon a backstory and explain it you would have a shit story because the audience does not care about the backstory of unnamed good #23. After they take the punch from the protagonist, the audience has entirely forgotten they existed.

Which means that, narratively speaking, the killing of the main villain is more important and more impactful than the killing of some random goon. Now, if you're a good writer this shouldn't be the case. But this too, comes from the blending of genres and tropes.

In the late 1980s, fiction became more violent and more visceral. This means that a lot more violence was happening! And yet, writers still wanted to have their protagonist show that they were the protagonist, because people were all in on moral relativism. People would be like 'well, there's no difference between the hero and the villain if the hero kills the villain.'

The response was a lot of heroes started adopting a weird kind of no killing rule; Batman will break your fucking spine but kill the guy who just blew up a building? That's too far! 'I'm not like you, a guy who kills people, I just cripple them for life!'

And again, this is what happens when genre conventions (the hero should be morally superior than the villain, or at least attempt to be) mixing with trope developments (everything now needs to be brutal and violent to reflect real life).

Now, the circle has completed itself, where we're once again back to 1985, where people are like 'actually no, the hero should fucking kill that guy.' You'll probably be a big fan of the Death Wish movies and The Dark Knight Strikes Back; you know, things that lots of proto-fascists really love because they reinforce the notion that actually, heroes should wield violence against their enemies and impose their will through abject terror.

The reality is, people aren't sitting around going 'my work should reflect the idea that workers are less important than the boss' it's that narratively, the random goons exist to be smacked down to prepare the audience for the big bad, because rising action requires that there be rising challenges. This is mixing along with personal tastes in media.

Now, you could, for example, turn this new trope on its head and ask whether the Punisher murdering every jaywalker and low level drug dealer with extreme violence makes him a villain, because his ideal is that any lawbreaker should be murdered instantly no matter how low the crime. You might also argue that the trope should actually be that the grunts shouldn't be killed by the hero, but the guy who organized them should, because he's much worse than they are.

You could also argue that, the reason why the hero doesn't just kill the villain is that murder is wrong? Even if you think it's morally justified? I think people forget, when they fantasize about an ideal French Revolution, that the most common crime people were executed for was pickpocketing, and every day they would execute the guys who got caught working the crowds at the executions the day before. More poor people got killed in the French Revolution than rich people; you should probably keep that in mind!

Because the core reason you probably want your hero to not kill people in general is that you then have to ask who deserves it and your answer will inevitably include a lot of people you might actually like! You probably don't want heroes taking vague concepts like justice into their own hands because inevitably that makes them into the Death Wish protagonist, deciding that what really needs to happen is for a white guy with a gun to just start shooting up inner cities.

You don't want your hero to start killing people because this is corrosive and it will inevitably result in comparisons between people who got killed.

So no, it's not some kind of unconscious bias, it's because we've melted a worldwide demand for bloodshed and violence with established genre tropes and if you removed one or the other people would complain and be very unhappy.

Or, I guess you could go on and say that Freddy Kruger is anti-marxist because he only targets teenagers instead of people who really deserve it.

[cripplecharacters]

Writing Profoundly Intellectually Disabled Characters

[Plain Text: Writing Profoundly Intellectually Disabled Characters]

While there is a glaring lack of intellectually disabled characters - except maybe big, physically strong, white men who can’t “tell right from wrong” or have a personality - in all sorts of media, specifically profoundly intellectually disabled characters are next to non-existent, with the existing ones being used more often as plot devices rather than portrayed as human beings.

This does make a degree (and not more) of sense considering that 85% of ID people have it mild, 10% moderate, 3.5% severe and only 1.5% has profound ID, the larger group inevitably gets more representation (which doesn’t make it good, but it does exist). However, it hopefully doesn’t need explaining that minorities deserve to be represented too (...and represented well), so this is what this post will be about.

Please don’t treat this as your only source on writing a character like this (even though I’m willing to bet it’s the only one like this, at least on tumblr), do your research and always check other sources.

Also, for clarity: intellectual disability isn't an umberalla term for "mental/brain disability". It's a specific, singular diagnosis that used to be known as "mental [r slur]". It's not the same as brain damage, autism, dementia, dyslexia, and anything else that's not specifically "intellectual disability". It's something that you are either born with or acquire early in life.

How do I Include Them in the Story?

[Plain Text: How do I include them in the story?]

A profoundly ID person will spend the majority of their time either at home or in some sort of care facility since they will require 24/7 help. The easiest role to put them in is probably a family member of another character. I've mentioned on this blog before that the "ID characters always end up as the annoying younger sibling" thing is overdone, but none of these necessarily have to be true for this suggestion to work (especially not the "annoying" part).

A non-ID character could have an intellectually disabled older sibling, twin, cousin, uncle/aunt, the sibling of a grandparent, etc. Seriously - a severely disabled person can be an adult, or even an elder. Just not as a parent, since a profoundly disabled person can't consent (a lot of ID people very much can, but this is the one disability where your level of functioning is baked into the exact diagnosis - profound ID comes with the inability to consent/understand the consequences enough to consent).

"They're a family member" is basically the easiest "excuse" to include a profoundly intellectually disabled in a story (and, as a bonus, you don't have to figure out how the other character would react to meeting them for the first time, since they probably knew each other for a long time already).

If your story isn't about the profoundly disabled character and instead just features them as a character, it would be much easier to not make the other character their primary caregiver. It's simply a ton of work and the character wouldn't have time for fighting dragons and whatnot - it'd be easier to have the abled character spend time with the disabled character at home (or care facility; you can very much visit someone in one) hanging out rather than actually doing the caregiving part.

Outside of a home and a care facility, there are also day care programs that some people might attend. This is the rarest solution out of the three mainly because of financial reasons, but also these resources aren’t as common for people who can’t walk, learn self-care, etc. Going to one takes time (the profoundly disabled person isn’t gonna walk there by themselves) and probably requires a specialized van (that you can bring a wheelchair in, which is incredibly expensive). Most day care programs are focused on people who are moderately or severely ID at most. One made for profoundly ID people would require 1:1 aides, which generally means the programs are much smaller for logistical reasons, but also even more expensive. For most people, too expensive without funding. Basically, this is an option, but you have to consider your character’s financial situation and/or what kind of financial support do disabled people get where they live.

Another way is having the disabled character in some sort of high position - in real life there were quite a few cases of profoundly and severely intellectually disabled royalty. Depending on the place and time there might have been pressure to not let the public see them, but this wasn't always the case. The biggest example of the latter was probably Emperor An of Jin (the first Jin, Eastern one) who was, as his title suggests, crowned at some point. He didn’t actually rule (his uncle did) but yes, you can have a severely disabled person as the head of a monarchy, it’s not without precedent.

In fiction you can do whatever you want anyway when it comes to ableism, you can have it be there, or you can have it not be there - and if it does exist then there are still different kinds of ableism you can portray that aren't the "literally killing-the-disabled-baby/hiding-them-in-some-dungeon level of eugenics" kind. Maybe a rich family who cares about their image would actually be unable to shut up about their kid to show how "saint-like" they are for caring for the disabled - it is unfortunately realistic, and can be a potential way to have the character exist in public, not ignore ableism, and also not go the aforementioned literally-just-murder route that writers usually do to show an ableist family.

Characterization

[Plain Text: Characterization]

Warning; the bar here is somewhere in the Earth's inner core. If your character has a single characteristic beyond aggressive/loud/unmanageable*, they're automatically at the top of most complex fictional representation of severely/profoundly ID characters. Congrats.

* - Some people are those things but, unsurprisingly, they're other things too. A lot of profoundly ID people can actually be completely quiet - you notice people who are loud because they're loud.

As with literally every character, you need to figure out what they like and not like. This can be quite literally anything, but try to think of the basic stuff. Do they have something they really enjoy eating (and conversely - something they refuse to eat)? Do they have some sort of comfort toy or object they don't want anyone touching (and maybe showing them playing with it with a different character could be a way to show how much they trust them)? In more modern settings, do they have a favorite show they always bug everyone to put on? Are they really clingy or do they hate physical contact (again, maybe they only enjoy it from a specific character)?

Another characterization could be comfort objects. A lot of profoundly ID people are autistic (which I'll touch on later) and will have an object that they bring everywhere the same way that non-ID autistic people might. There's nothing really specific here, just another layer of "this character is a Person". Maybe they have a blanket they really enjoy chewing because the texture feels good or some sort of plushie they like to throw around because it makes a sound they find funny. Lots of options. Maybe they have a personal “tell” to let others know they want their comfort object brought to them.

Keep in mind, you have to show this all in non-verbal manner. A profoundly ID person is probably not using any sort of AAC device (the most robust one I remember seeing right now was a low-tech one with "yes" and "no", but there are probably ones who operate on a larger amount of singular words). This is basically another opportunity for characterization - what do they do when they're happy - laugh, flap their arms, make sounds? - and when they're upset - scream, hit themselves, make different sounds? Obviously, you'd have to take other disabilities into account (e.g. many profoundly ID people won't move much, some might not be able to make much audible sound, etc.) but almost anything helps.

This brings us to…

Communication

[Plain Text: Communication]

An important thing (concept?) I'll throw here is "total communication", which can mean different things in different contexts, but here I'll use it to mean "using everything you can to communicate with someone who cannot do so in a ‘traditional’ way".

Communication can be categorized as having two sides; expressive and receptive. For most intellectually disabled people in general, receptive skills tend to be significantly higher than expressive ones, though there are specific disorders where it’s reversed or equal. As mentioned before, most profoundly ID people won’t speak orally, won’t use sign language, and won’t use AAC (though out of all three, AAC is the most likely one). Some might say single words, but that’s about it. It’s not a “physically mute but can write perfectly grammatically correct sentences” situation, it’s more of a “[single noun]” one, if anything. Receptive skills however are pretty decent (in comparison) and they would probably understand their name, the name/title of their carer(s), names of things they see every day, events they have some frame of reference to (e.g. if they grew up Christian, they would probably know what Christmas is), etc. Your other characters could (and should) talk to them like they can understand, even if they don’t catch everything or even most of it. I say a lot of “probably” there, but the people who can’t do so usually have other comorbidities, which I’ll mention later.

To go back to expressive communication, eye pointing can be used to figure out what the character wants. A change in breathing can be used to tell that a character got stressed. Throwing an object can be used as a hint that the character wants to play. Maybe them reaching towards person A means they want to eat, but reaching towards person B means they want them to sing a song for them. Maybe them making a particular face means they just had a seizure and need to be comforted. Whatever their "tells" like this might be, other characters who know them would probably be able to tell more-or-less what's going on - you don't have to go really in-depth, especially if it's a minor character, but figuring out the ways your character communicates with others will make it feel more like a person and not a Disabled Lamp (“if you can replace a disabled character with a lamp or a sick dog, they’re not a character”).

If you read some of these and go "that's a thing that a child would do" then you're not necessarily wrong. A profoundly ID adult might enjoy activities that primarily kids partake in. This is, I can't stress this enough, not the same as "mentally being a child". Otherwise, a whole bunch of adults on this very website would be "mental middle schoolers" based on the shows that they watch - but they're obviously not. A profoundly ID adult doesn't have the "mind of a baby" if their favorite game is throwing a toy, they have the mind of a profoundly intellectually disabled adult. Sometimes people assume that since ID people aren't mentally [incorrect age], they always "act their [actual] age" and essentially end up downplaying how much some people's ID affects them, when the point is that no matter what you do, you are your age. An ID character who is 26 years, incontinent, constantly puts their hand in their mouth, can't speak, whatever, is mentally 26 years old the same way that they would be if they had a wife and a mortgage.

For the last thing from this section I'll circle back to the assumption that all severely/profoundly ID people are loud, aggressive, etc. - as I said, some of them are (just like abled people). The thing is, this is not always an unreasonable response to being unable to communicate with the people who are caring for you. If you had a pressure sore but couldn't explain it to anyone you'd be pissed off and screaming too. That's an extreme example, but still applies. If someone is severely stressed out (for an abled person, this might be inheriting a ton of debt, for a profoundly ID person it can be a change in daily routine), they can lash out. It's an unpleasant but very much human reaction to have, even if what's behind the ID person's behavior is significantly different from what an average abled person might consider "a good reason".

So I guess my advice is, try to show some empathy to the character, even if they genuinely are loud and/or aggressive. Intellectually disabled people - including the profoundly disabled ones - aren't some alien species that is just mean and hates their caregivers for no reason, some just can't process their feelings the way an abled person might because of their disability. That's not to say that caregivers aren't allowed to feel frustrated - because they are - but that very severely disabled people aren't purposefully evil. As mentioned in the earlier parts, all behavior has a cause, just like for literally everyone. So if the character is being "unmanageable": maybe they aren't some cursed burden, maybe they're just stressed out of their mind and now someone they don't know that well is trying to do *something* to them, which they can't figure out because of their disability affecting their receptive language skills.

Resources and What to Keep in Mind

[Plain Text: Resources and What to Keep in Mind]

Some resources you might read about ID can be potentially misleading. Even if you specifically look for causes of the profound severity of intellectual disability, you will get results for mild ID. That's mainly because people with mild ID make up >85% of intellectually disabled people and those with profound ID make like 1%, so they're a minority in a minority.

Basically:

Down syndrome is a very unlikely cause. It's always listed as the main genetic cause of ID, but that's only true for mild and moderate severities. If you choose any of the common causes of ID make sure it actually has the symptoms you're looking for.

Most profoundly ID people will have either severe brain damage early in life (and this can come with cerebral palsy), cephalic disorders (e.g. microcephaly), genetic conditions that you've never heard of (e.g. Pallister-Killian or Emanuel syndromes, 3p deletion), genetic conditions that you've never heard of for a very understandable reason (e.g. X-linked intellectual disability-limb spasticity-retinal dystrophy-arginine vasopressin deficiency… there are hundreds named in this way), or just have it without a known cause. The last one happens much more often than people tend to assume.

For a reason I'll probably discover at some point, most disorders and syndromes that come with ID are said to have "autistic-like features" rather than being "comorbid with autism". In practice, it's the same thing. Your character is probably autistic.

In the same way, a lot of practical resources will assume that ID = moderate ID (since most mildly affected need no or minimal support, and severely/profoundly disabled ones are a small minority) so pay attention if you're looking at the right things. If it's talking about having a job, travelling alone, etc., then you got clickbaited.

Another subsection here will be comorbidities because there are a lot of them. I’ll mention the biggest ones.

Brain damage is the most common one (except autism) and can vary a lot. There is barely anything I can say about this one, it’s an enormous spectrum that for some people causes disability and for others barely affects their symptoms. Cerebral palsy, especially quadriplegic, is seen a lot and might affect the character’s mobility a lot. Some people might be unable to breathe or swallow and need a breathing or feeding tube.

Deafness and blindness are comorbid with a surprising amount of causes of ID. The thing is, you could take advice for deaf/blind characters as-in for a character that has both (e.g.) glaucoma and mild ID and not change much, but this doesn’t really work for a character who’s profoundly disabled like this. The situation that can happen here is that it’s not actually known if the person is or isn’t deaf or blind because they can’t tell you. As mentioned earlier, some people will have absent receptive communication skills. How do you verify if they’re deaf or just not reactive to language? Some people won’t react to even extremely loud sounds, even if they can hear them perfectly well (besides, a lot of deaf people can still hear some). Same for verifying if they are blind - obviously, sometimes there’s something visual going on, but often there isn’t. Especially since the main causes of both blindness and deafness will be brain-based, not ear- or eye-based. Another character not being sure if the disabled character is blind or just very uninterested in visual stimuli is a possibility, especially with less advanced medicine.  This is also why you might see those weird statistics of "between 5-90% of people with [condition] are deaf" kind.

Mobility is almost always severely affected. Some are fully mobile, but that’s simply not common. The average person will be unable to walk independently. It’s not always a muscle or nerve problem (though it absolutely can be), it’s mostly an issue of coordination. Because of this (and understanding physical space), operating a wheelchair (...successfully) might be impossible. This doesn’t mean you should just drop your character in a hospital wheelchair for them to get wheeled around because they will probably need a wheelchair that will actually support them - a headrest, ability to tilt, a harness, all that. This could be done with a powerchair (they can have controls on the back for a second person to operate), a manual wheelchair, or an adaptive stroller.

Now for resources;

One good resource I can recommend is SBSK (which I shared before), to my knowledge this is the only place that interviews severely and profoundly ID people (+their families) and the interviewer is great at actually interacting with many of them. 

Most resources on the practical things only ever talk about caregivers (who are very important) but completely ignore the actual person being cared for which IMO kinda defeats the point.

Good luck writing!

mod Sasza

[niniwritesxo]

nsfw alphabet - nam-gyu (player 124)

(it contains things like degrading, threesomes, and nam-gyu being an asshole tbh, if you aren’t into that i wouldn’t read this x)

saw this on @cybrasigilism ‘s page, you should really check that out ! (love their writing btw)

——————————————————————————

A = Aftercare (what they’re like after sex)

- sorry to burst your bubble but his aftercare is probably none existent, he might hand you the tv remote afterwards but that’s about it.

B = Body part (their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

- 100% his hands, obviously he had to add some rings, because he knows girls like you will go crazy over it. favorite part about you is most likely your boobs or your ass (basic am i right?)

C = Cum (anything to do with cum, basically)

- he for sure has a breeding kink (who said that haha)

D = Dirty secret (pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

- a dirty secret about namgyu is the fact he would to have a trio with thanos and you, the thought of seeing thanos fucking you turns him on more than he would like to admit.

E = Experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)

- i think he has had a lot of one night stands, so he knows what he is doing.

F = Favorite position (this goes without saying)

- he loves when you are on top of him, that way he can look at your body all he wants, the way your boobs bounce when he is thrusting into you, how you are so out of breath after a few rounds, he loves it.

G = Goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.)

- i don’t think he is very humorous in bed, he doesn’t even think about making a joke in the moment because he is so focused.

H = Hair (how well groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)

- i don’t think he has a insane bush, but lets just say he isn’t perfectly trimmed either.

I = Intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect)

- he sees you as a fuckbuddy, good for fucking. he isn’t looking for a relationship so he probably isn’t that romantic.

J = Jack off (masturbation headcanon)

- he looks up your (or your friends insta) and jerks off to your photos.

K = Kink (one or more of their kinks)

- i feel like he would love tying you up, seeing how you aren’t able to move while he gets to do whatever he wants. (and knife play ..anyways!)

L = Location (favorite places to do the do)

- definitely in places where you COULD get caught like, fittings rooms & public restrooms.

M = Motivation (what turns them on, gets them going)

- praise 1000%

‘Bet you’ve never been fucked like this huh?’ he says out of breath grabbing your chin, at this point it’s almost impossible for you to talk, it’s like he fucked your brains out. You decide to nod.

‘Fucking speak up’ he says glaring at you.

‘n-namgyu please, i need y-you please’ you manage to puff out.

N = No (something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

- anal.

O = Oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)

- he loves receiving especially when you suck him off. but he is also a munch, he loves going down on you. he could do it for hours.

P = Pace (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.)

- he is very rough and fast, it’s almost like hate fucking, nothing sensual about it.

Q = Quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)

- he loves quickies, especially in the games he would find places where he could quickly release his stress onto you.

R = Risk (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.)

- i think he has tried a lot already but will try all sorts of stuff on you.

S = Stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)

- depends if he is under the influence of something, if he’s taken something? he could go on for hours on end. if he is sober he’ll probably pass out after a good 40 minutes.

T = Toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)

- he doesn’t own or use toys, he feels like his hand are good enough to keep you satisfied.

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)

- he is such a tease, you definitely need to wait before you can cum and he’ll make sure you beg for it.

V = Volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)

- i don’t think he moans, he is more like a grunts guy. i feel like he talks a lot tho. (cursing and degrading you obvi)

W = Wild card (a random headcanon for the character)

- it kinda turns him on when you try to be bossy for once, telling him what to do and what he isn’t aloud to do.

X = X-ray (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes)

- he has a average body, leaning more towards a dad bod than a jacked up guy tho.

Y = Yearning (how high is their sex drive?)

- his sex drive is hiiigh, he always feels horny and is always in for a quickie.

Z = Zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

- give him ten minutes and he is gone.

english isn’t my first language so if i made any mistakes, i apologize x

[7ndipity]

Their Love Languages

Ot7 x Reader

Summary: What the members main love languages are(both giving and receiving)

Warning: none, I think

A/N: First off, I'm so sorry for not posting much the past few weeks, I'm really hoping to get back to posting regularly again, but thank you all for your patience and understanding. A big thanks to @universal-travel-er for requesting this, I hope you like it!

Masterlist

°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°

Jin: Giving: I think it’s a mix of Gifts and Quality Time. He seems to take a lot of delight in giving the members gifts, however odd some of them might seem(gold toilet brush lol). He also understands the importance of being with the people that matter most, so he definitely makes spending time together top priority(He literally planned a entire event at Lotte world so he could hang out with Army for the day)

Receiving: Quality Time and Words of Affirmation. He’s an introvert at his core, but spending time with the select people that he feels most comfortable with means the world to him. Even if you’re doing separate things, just being able to spend time existing in each other's proximity makes him happy. Also, I just feel like his constant plays for complements(I look handsome, right?” “Whaa! Have you ever seen someone play this well?!”) aren’t entirely for the joke. He really does crave them, they give him an instant boost of confidence like nothing else

Yoongi: Giving, there’s no question that his main love language is Acts of Service, we’ve seen it from him making food/snacks for his members, checking in on trainees, even just playing along with little requests from fans during livestreams. It warms his heart like nothing else to be of service to those around him. I also think he’s really big on words of affirmation. He’s always praising others in his soft, gentle way.

Receiving: I think it’s the same two, plus Quality Time. He appreciates acknowledgement of his efforts and someone who’ll look out for him as much as he does for them. He also values his free time greatly, and so someone making a conscious effort to dedicate time for him means a lot to him. Similar to Jin, you don’t even have to necessarily be doing the same thing, so long as you’re together(all those fics about hanging in his studio are onto something, tho I think he avoids working when he’s with his S/o)

Hobi: Giving: Gifts! He loves treating his members and loved ones to little surprises, whether that's with a simple coffee/dinner or some super elaborate gift(like when he made Jimin a physical copy of his song ‘Promise’ with a proper album booklet and everything). It makes him so happy to be able to provide for his loved one in some way, and he really loves finding special, unique things to show that he cares.

Receiving: He seems to really glow from Words of Affirmation, he loves having his efforts acknowledged and receiving praise. Acts of Service also seems to be a big one for him, The way he gets soo excited whenever one of the members comes by during a mv shoot or helps him with something(Jimin killing the bug for him during In The Soop lol), it makes him so happy to know that people actually want to help him too, not just the other way around.

Joon: He’s mentioned before that one of his love languages is Words of affirmation, both giving and receiving. He really values verbal expressions of affection and encouragement, and so he tries to give that back to those around him. Another big one for him as well is Quality Time. He’s very much an extrovert and knows the importance of spending time around those that you love, so he definitely makes an effort to be there for them as much as possible.

Receiving: Same as above. Having someone to just sit and talk with him about whatever soothes his heart like nothing else. It doesn’t matter if it’s a super deep topic or not(though knowing him, it’ll inevitably turn philosophical lol), just having someone spend time with him means the world to him. And that goes hand in hand with Words of Affirmation. As I said before, he really values verbal connection and encouragement, so genuine compliments or words of positivity makes his heart so happy

Jimin: For Giving, it’s definitely Acts of Service and Words of Affirmation. He’s very much a care-er, everyone who spends more than two minutes with him talks about how helpful and generous he is. He’s always making sure those around him are taken care of and encouraged in whatever it is they’re doing, or giving comfort if he sees someone struggling. Even in the military, other soldiers have shared how he treats them to food or gives up his phone time for them. He just wants to make sure everyone’s looked after and taken care of.

Receiving: Words of Affirmation and Physical Touch. We’ve all seen how physically affectionate he is with the members and his friends, he takes an immense amount of joy and comfort in physical contact, even if it's just a simple touch on his hand or shoulder. He also absolutely lights up whenever he receives praise, and really cherishes every piece of encouragement that he receives.

Taehyung: Giving: Words of Affirmation, He thrives on praise, and he also gives the same out to those around him happily. He’s always giving words of encouragement to the people around him. I’m reminded of him cheering on the crew in the middle of a sandstorm during the Yet To Come video shoot, and when a fan mentioned how she was joining the military because she wanted to help her family, and he told her that she was already helpful and valuable just by existing. He loves to lift up and encourage those around him through his words

Receiving: It should come as a shock to no one that his main languages are Words of Affirmation and Physical Touch. Look at the way that boy’s face lights up when someone compliments and try to argue with me. He absolutely thrives on praise. He’s talked about how he would work extra hard on choreo because he wanted praise from Hobi. He is also one of the biggest cuddle bugs I’ve ever seen, he’s always seeking out hugs and physical contact from the members or his friends, and this would only become more intense with his S/o.

Jungkook: Giving: Quality Time and Words of Affirmation. He seems to really put high priority on spending time with his loved ones as a way of making them feel seen and appreciated(yes, I’m still crying over his surprise weverse live, don’t touch me😭). He’s also always more than ready to give out compliments and words of encouragement to anyone around him, especially if he notices someone having a tough time.

Receiving: Quality Time, Words of Affirmation, and Physical Touch. Tbh I could’ve put all five languages for Kookie, he thrives on all forms of love and affection. The members have mentioned how easily sad he gets if he’s not included in things, he’s at his happiest when he’s with his people. He tends to be rather hard on himself, so he really relies on and takes a lot of comfort from praise and words of encouragement. He’s also mentioned how he really craves Physical Touch as a way to feel connected to his loved ones.

Taglist: @sopebubbles-replies @btsw1fe @this-must-be-my-tardis @whitefoxgirl @bethanysnow @coffeedepressionsoup @feminympho @classicalelephant @dfqcsqueen @mother2monsters @comingupwithacoolnameishard @bo0ghol @seleneacyoflove @k4ngelz @universal-travel-er

[nanenna]

Okay so I know you wanted him to specifically astral project into an empty husk/body but uh... what if just pure astral projection?

---

Kon was just heading in for the night when he spotted it, something glowing out on the edge of the fields, practically right on top of the property line. It was pale and greenish, not a good combo, but that made it all the more worth investigating. He flew down, approaching the glow slowly.

It turned into a figure, a pale person laying in the grass and looking up at the stars. Everything about them was pale: their hair, their skin, their clothes, not that he could make out much about their clothes. It seemed like more of a suggestion of clothes than actual clothes, the same with the person's bottom half. They just kind of trailed off below the waist, not even an imprint in the grass of where invisible legs could be, just hazy and then nothing. About the only color were the figure's bright Kryptonite green eyes staring up at the sky in a worried frown.

"Hello?" Kon asked carefully, trying not to spook the person.

They started and sat up, looking up at Kon with wide, blinking eyes. They suddenly had arms to support themself, strange that Kon hadn't noticed they didn't quite exist before.

Kon flew down slowly and gently, they didn't feel like Kryptonite.

After a long moment of staring, the person seemed to deem Kon not dangerous, or not interesting at least. They flopped back down and moved their misty hands under their head, their arms going hazy once more.

"Are you okay?" Kon tried, landing a couple yards from the stranger.

"They're different."

Kon looked up at the sky, the stars looked back. "Well, every planet has its own stars." It was all about perspective, Robin had explained when they'd gone on a few adventures on other planets. Well, Red Robin now, but he was still just Rob to them.

The person frowned harder, "Am I on a different planet?"

Kon moved to sit next to the person, leaned back to look up at the stars. "Maybe, I suppose it depends on what planet you're from."

"It has lots of names," the person said airily.

Kon waited for more, but the stranger seemed content to just star gaze. Kon couldn't blame them, the view out here was amazing, the milky way a dazzling splash of light and color across the sky.

After a long while the stranger sighed, "This is a nice dream."

"Oh, you're dreaming?" Kon asked. That might actually explain why they're only half there. Strange that Kon could see them though, usually someone who went wandering off in their dreams couldn't bee seen.

"Yeah. It's great so far, very peaceful, very quiet. It feels... safe here." They sighed again, a faint furrow to their translucent brow. Their next words were quiet and shaky, "I don't wanna wake up."

DP x DC Prompt/Plotbunny #6

After days? weeks? months? years? in this mercy-forsaken lab, Danny finds himself slipping; his core straining under the weight of what he's been subjected to. In a last ditch effort to save his fracturing soul, his brain simply stops processing the pain and allows his mind to escape into a waking dream.

Danny knows it's a dream. If he thinks about it; he can still hear, see, feel the scientists at work. He doesn't think about it; instead embraces whatever false world his mind decides to concoct for him.

.

Several states away, a young boy opens his eyes to the inside of a strange pod in an abandoned lab. Though he cannot see it yet, a strange metal tag dangles from his ear, stamped on one side with the word 'CADMUS' and on the other with 'R-13'.

[kawaiiwritingcomputer]

sonic characters when they have a crush on you || headcanons

Sonic 🍄

Sonic is the “doesn’t make it too obvious” king of guy. You give him something, he takes it with grace and a simple thank you and nothing more but behind closed doors he admires it. He holds everything and anything you give him or do for him dearly. His love language is gift giving but makes it seem like it was nothing.

“Oh yeah this old thing? No worries, just had to get rid of it anyway.” Meanwhile he totally thought of you and what you had mentioned. He’s the kind of hedgehog that can’t go too long without your attention without feeling weirdly huffy but refuses to admit he had a crush on you!

“Has anyone seen (Y/N)? I’m gonna go check on them.” Yeah. He totally doesn’t have a crush.

Tails 🍄

Tails makes his crush totally obvious. He’s inventing you things saying you might need them. Tails explain it thoroughly so you’re always well equipped and know what to do! He’s always looking for you everywhere just in case… Just in case what? Well, for just in case. Tails gets a little nervous that you might not like him back so he tries to overcompensate as a true friend! He’s so easy to fluster. He laughs at everything you say! Even if it’s not funny sometimes. Tails listens to every detail of your life and closely pays attention. Tails loves you so much to the point he’ll create anything for you!

Knuckles 🪼

The echidna will treat you with the respect he gives any other, overall being a kind person. He wouldn’t know what do to with himself, caught in your flames of love. He thinks of you often, yearning to have you in a hug. He’s so strong,, but not strong enough to deny these feelings. He is bad with hints, and to be honest he’s rather blunt.

“Y/N, here are these flowers I picked for you; and also some grapes! I think you are beautiful/attractive, and I would like to court you on a date!” He’s so serious, it’s very silly but you think it’s endearing and sweet. He’ll try to impress you and make a fool out of himself, eventually winning you over in the end because he’s such a silly cute guy and he makes you laugh.

shadow 🪼

He pretends like his feelings don’t exist, for as long as he can stand it. Damn, you’re just so cute, doing your own thing and enjoying every moment of it. You’ll try to drag him along somewhere for fun, and he’ll pretend he hates it but he’s loving every minute with you. He doesn’t make eye contact with you and he seems to be blushing a lot. He’ll only start to open up to you in private moments.

Shadow will show you small physical affections, like an awkward hug or simply trying to hold your hand. If you seem even a little bit off he will pull away, fearing you may think of him as a monster. You’ll have to reassure him yourself and make some of your own moves. “You don’t think I’m,,, dangerous?” He’s scared of hurting you, he doesn’t want to lose something he loves,, have it ripped away from him again.

silver 🍄

Oh Silver. He’s so awkward and shy! He can conversate for sure but if you show too much interest with your pretty eyes he starts to shut down. Silver practically melts but tells himself he must keep strong. He doesn’t want to look weak to you. He has everything under control! Including his crush on you… Or so he thinks. He yaps about the future and his special interests to you. Silver isn’t a show off kind of guy but if he thinks something will impress you, he’ll try to impress you for sure! Even if it embarrasses himself. Anything to hear you laugh!

scourge 🪼

Scourge always gets what he wants, even if he has to take it. From the moment he set his eyes on you, he wasn’t gonna give up. He had to have you. You would look so good as royalty by his side, sitting atop a throne. He would shower you with gifts, anything even stuff you wouldn’t care for. You may be flattered, but he’s a bad boy. He’s trouble, a straight up red flag that’s erratically waving!! He would make any comment he could about you, often really lewd stuff. Obviously staring at you from beneath those flashy sunglasses. He does have a hidden gentlemanly vibe on the inside, though, when he’s fallen into your trap instead. He’s like a moth to a flame fr.

“Have anything ya want from me, please, just take my heart already! I can’t stand it, someone like you lookin’ so good, you should be mine! Come on, I ain’t as bad as everyone says!” His huge fanged grin says otherwise, but at least he’s trying to be honest about his feelings. You get to be royalty, and he may not seem like it but Scourge is a very loyal partner to you.

amy 🍄

Amy is sooo obvious about her crush with you. She’s daydream scenarios and sighing dreamily to herself. You can always feel her eyes on you, and even feel her smile from miles away. Amy reads her tarot cards about you weekly to see when the perfect day to confess is but she gets nervous. What if it ruins the friendship? She can’t stand the thought of not being anything at all! Amy makes you home made gifts as a token of her love. You say you want new earrings? She’s on it! You saw a cute blanket? She’s knitting away! You would have to be blind to not see her crush. Will you accept her feelings?

rouge 🍄

Rouge is hot and cold with you. Is she being nice or is she flirting? Is she being mean or is shy flirting? She’s also very touchy, in a sly innocent way. If you questioned her, she would just shrug innocently. “Ya had something on ya, I was just trying to help.” Rouges love language can be hard to pinpoint. She comes and goes when she pleases but she always makes sure to talk to you. She doesn’t gift you anything because she doesn’t buy anything but she might steal you something. Rouge is playing the long game with you, slowly working her way into your life completely. She just thinks it’s cute watching you get flustered.

sticks 🪼

Sticks is attached to you in an endearing way, and she likes to talk a lot, so hopefully you can keep up with her. She’s not a prize to be won, you have to earn her respect and show her comfort before trust. She’s been through a lot,, and will be glad to have someone to finally talk to and lean on! She would make you primitive looking gifts, or go hunting to bring you something. She feels like she needs to give you something to represent her feelings.

She is quite flirtatious, and it could be confused with her also just being friendly- because she talks without thinking a lot. She makes compliments on your appearance, offers to show you new things, and tends to be kinda handsy. “You n me get along so good, we might as well become partners!” She would remark, hoping you’ll get her hints.

blaze 🍄

Blaze is direct. She befriends you and talks to you a lot. She goes out of her to see you then will go see others. You’re like a soft and safe place for her. She’s got a cool exterior and she feels like when she’s with you, it can be dropped. She knows she can be quiet or talkative around you and you’ll gladly just show up for her. Her love language is quality time and sharing things!

belle 🪼

First thing about Belle, she’s gonna stand up for you in all situations. She is very reliable, and also super intelligent and interesting. She’s so cute, she would love having your company,, someone to chat with while fixing up inventions. She longs for a partnership, and a bond where she doesn’t get hurt in the end. She’s a little shy when it comes to her crush on you,, and you’ll notice she’ll be more nervous and blushy, words don’t seem to come out right and she’s scared of messing up!!

When it comes to how Belle would confess, she would try to make it fantasy line for you. A beautiful environment to look upon, stars in the sky, and she would make you something related to your interests as a gift,, to show you she cares and she has a heart even if she is made of wood and other materials. She would protect you with all of her power, and always try to keep you happy.

bonus: robotnik

What?! Feelings?? Ivo has never felt such things, in fact he would rather laugh!! There is no feeling, only knowing, he claims to believe, and being deemed as unwanted all of his life has only driven these thoughts in harder. In truth he’s honestly scared of emotion,, he doesn’t like the way things can hurt him,, he doesn’t like to care. Vengeance against that hedgehog and his friend is his motivation…. At least until you came along.

There had never been any processing,, if there was room for love in his life. He’d try to calculate it into his plans,, but such an unforeseen situation would have his mind scattered. He’s a lil stressed about it, and may give you harsher conditions to try and push it all away- but he realizes he feels bad about it. Remorseful, he’s gonna apologize to you and try to set you free, you’re better off without him. If you try to stay— well he wouldn’t know what to do, but would blindly accept the situation, and fess up to you. He will always put you first and would never judge you. He never realized before how badly he craves touch,, and someone to love.

[melankkholy]

what size does love wear? (part 1)

✎ The lights, the podium, and the spotlight are all yours. As an upstart model, your life went by pleasantly with the girls, but maybe you were too dim to realize that you were living in an illusion. Could Leon, the one and only rockstar of the hearts, be the man you were waiting for in a milieu full of counterfeit people, or are you too much of a hopeless romantic?

cw: NO MINORS AND I MEAN IT WHEN I SAY IT, messy messy messy, drugz, fem! model reader, family drama aka daddy and mommy issues, very uncanny and might be disturbing for some people idek, vom!ting and possibly or (implied eating disorders), p in v, oral (fem! receiving) praises, reader is going thru some shii, MDNI, that's all i can come up with, but please let me know if i missed something very vital, and find the song lyrics:3

It all unfolds that night at a soirée to which you were invited in the most gingerbread-like language.

You don’t have a clue how fat cats hang out at such a lavish icebreaker. That these people took you in very recently, right after your meteoric rise to superstardom, and with a wham bang. You didn’t quite make it onto the Hollywood Walk of Fame with all those big golds and jet-set stars, sure, but your killer legs, waist, and pretty tits promised you a chance to eavesdrop a wee bit on Victoria’s secret. Well, who knows? Maybe one day, even without any formal studies in acting, you could star as an aspiring actor in some movie and kiss the handsome and beefcake famous guys. You could be the next lead in a new goofy movie like Fifty Shades of Grey. Hollywood is full of pretty model casts these days, anyway. 

So many possibilities. 

Mostly with your height, physique, and poise, which would make most men who can’t be more than 5 feet and 7 inches tall (barely) outclass them in every way (never mind the grandfatherly inheritance that your mother inherited from whomever-whatever-who-cares and your surname that unexpectedly gained a notoriety, even your daddy abruptly switched to your mother’s maiden name on paper), you’re the size perfection angel of the runways. Precious, precious you. 

A happy family tableau with your mother, who doesn’t listen to your advice to break up with that man, who happens to be your father, and he has a mania for alcohol and the girls younger than him of late. 

The only vestige of this particular and domestic picture is you here, dressed in the elegance of a collectible piece from a costly collection of so-and-so, to the party you were summoned to. 

“It tastes like shit.” 

Claire’s whining in front of you, idly brandishing a hurricane glass full of bubbly as pale pink and powdery as her rosy cheeks. Thankful for the leverage of your elbows on the bistro table between you, you lift your chin, planted in the inner cushions of your joined palms, and give her a passing glance. Then your starry eyes drift back to the human orgy you’ve been tracking since the moment you stepped in the venue. 

A myriad of eminent names. How exciting to be able to see their imperfect skin up close under the veneer of make-up. Turns out there is a huge Photoshop business going on in this particular circus. 

Still, it’s hard not to get caught up in the allure of their luster. Thinking about how you were unanticipatedly plunged into a world of gold and silver, of all the thesauri that connote the existence of riches, you should absolutely bask in it—if they’ll let you. 

“You’ve had too much to drink.” Jill gives Claire a little mouth joke from beside her, which elicits a muttered snort from Claire. 

“What else was I supposed to do?” 

“Dunno. Maybe snort a line or two. Together.” 

“You could’ve told me from the start, Valentine.” Claire rolls her eyes and surveys you with her big blue lenses. 

“Hey, you.” 

You look up at Claire, a giddy smile lacing your lips. 

“Huh?” 

“Get in the back room. Jill, you and I are getting the motherfucking sniff on some good coke.” 

Coke. Oh, great. 

The hot “sport” of your demographic. Once your wacky mom’s, too. 

The poison you swore you’d never put your mouth (actually your nose) on, or the antidote to survival, as your father would call it. 

A silly little girl’s dumbest and greatest fear. 

But you’re too much of a sucker to risk losing a high-profile group of friends like Jill and Claire, the only two girls you respect in this game of whatever. Just reject them, and in a fraction of a second, you’ll be all alone, and people here would pulverize you raw. 

So without saying a word, you tag along behind them on a whim, as if cocaine is your passion. Since your friends are here, you just came to kick it.

The proverbial back room turns out to be really far back. 

The smell of weed is tangy and mixed with other substances you can’t name the second you walk in. The scent of perfume adds a different festivity. Leaves a seductive melody and holds promises to give you airborne wings. 

This must be the precise definition of getting wasted. 

A few familiar faces greet you, occasionally stopping your group of three to take a quick photo—a social media travesty, for a photo that implies that the girl who wrapped her arms around you in nylon hugs with her platinum blonde and padded lips, whom you haven’t even said a word to yet, is a hoot on your social media account. Is it worth it? 

Hell, maybe. 

Followers are everything, even for you. 

Chris, ass up, nose to nose in the coarse dust strewn on the glass surface table of the Boeing 707, straightens up as three pairs of heels materialize in front of him, oozing through the see-through transparency of the glass table. 

“You’d be a great big brother if you didn’t always finish the best one ahead of us.” 

“I’m always a big and great brother.” Chris Redfield, big and virile, stretches up in front of your eyes and wipes his nose with the back of his sleeve like a credit card sliding horizontally and smoothly through a POS machine. 

Just like a goddamned joke. 

In flesh and blood, Chris Redfield, the lead guitarist—a member of the very band you’ve been a diehard fan of since you were a teenager and whose songs have lulled you into slumber—is in front of you. Yes, you really were sleeping with rock music playing in the background. 

His pupils are vacant. Like his cranium. 

“You all look like those three girls from that cartoon where a professor accidentally creates three special strong girls—ahhh—what was the name again?” 

“Powerpuff Girls?” Jill interjects at Chris’ reference with a wan grin, leaning her leg over the glass tilt table. Claire also crouches in front of her and clasps onto Jill’s knees. Almost as if she’s biding her time to eat her out. She might do that. Later.

“Yeah!” Chris snaps his fingers. 

“Uh, I...” You spring forward to introduce yourself before the conversation drifts. Girls are already nose-dipping in the dusty spill on the table, and you stick your hand out to Chris. 

Surprisingly, he accepts the handshake straight away. In the course of these formal introductions, whenever you were to extend your hand to someone, they’d be looking you over from head to toe like you were a little bit of a poseur. Ironically, Chris welcomes you with a genuine smile. It seems modesty hasn’t kicked the bucket. 

You’re being all polite, handing Chris your name, and then—cue dramatic music—someone crashes through the pivot door like it’s a Hollywood blockbuster. 

Every head turns in the cumulative direction of the sound, all but assured by the door’s dramatic swoosh, all collectively. 

Turns out it’s none other than Leon Kennedy, the finest and equally “big-time rockin’ rock star of the twentieth generation,” as they say. 

“His ass again?” Claire pipes up from where she’s sitting. She’s not a big fan of Leon. She has her reasons. In the interest of brevity, Claire and Leon had, in fact, dated in the interim. Once upon a time, there was a ship named Cleon, a name the adoring admirers nicknamed their own ship name in all corners of the tabloids. 

While you can understand how ticked off she is, you might as well not do it at all. There is, at last, a deck of cards in front of you that you may see for the first and last time in your life. In fact, he is even moving towards you with his own confident steps. 

For you, it’s a moment of blimey, but for him it’s as natural and insignificant as the instinct to pee when he’s drunk too much stuff. 

“Hi there.” 

Now you can understand people amplifying at the mere sound of a certain voice and, if necessary, wetting their pants, pussies, and dicks—Leon isn’t the pickiest about it, really. Now everything makes total sense. He must be getting laid as much as he’s making money with his mouth. 

And he is. Add a pinch of that buzzing singing voice to a muscular body, a tall stature, and money in swollen pockets, and Leon gets what he wants in a jiffy. Kiss his ass if you will. 

“There’s my cutest groupie.” Leon waves at Claire, heading for a fall. 

Claire draws her middle finger at him and bites back a repartee. 

Not a single name he doesn’t speak in the narrow circle of this social outlet. Then he sees you, and the wheel of fortune takes a reversal. 

A newfangled face, delicate facial expressions, and striking beauty. Clearly, you’re the precious neophyte around here. 

The art of the soft soap in the eccentric azure of his eyes is hard to miss. A depth to be dug into with picks and shovels. 

How he greets you with a small mental shake of his head in contrast to his expressive gaze is enough for the conventional first pleasantries. 

It’s hard to calculate how much it’s right to cast pointed glances at your friend’s ex-boyfriend. On a more cursory inspection, you and Claire weren’t that close, at least not close enough to make those ground rules—chicks before dicks ones. (Excuses!) You definitely need proper shrinks. 

“Fucker.” Claire coughs up any remaining resentment in an epithetical whisper under her breath.

The exes find their way out of the scene, separated, and Claire tugs on your arm and flings herself straight into the dance floor. Leave it to Leon to steal a glance at you. He stares long and hard at the beauty next to his ex as you stomp off the scene. To Leon, the past is in the past, and the present is here to be remade. It’s nerve-racking when you leave, but he loves to watch you walking away.

And Jill is too doped up on cocaine to join you all. 

─────────────────

“We never would have come if we knew he’d be here.” You tell Claire as she strums her hips to a peppy groove. You just want to bring your girl back to earth, even if it’s just a pulse.

“What? Jesus! Can’t hear you, gorgeous!” Claire curls her hands at the corners of her mouth as she lets it out. Of course she can’t hear you over this hubbub. You’re such an airhead. 

But point taken. You shrug your shoulders as if to say it’s nothing and dance in unison to the song along with her jigging dance moves.

─────────────────

The DJ gets you moving with the record and the tempo of his tunes, the laser disco lights blinking on and off like thunder, making you dizzy from the jetlagged fatigue of the fateful night. For how many hours have you been standing in these Pigalle Follies and guzzling Silver Oak? God, you’re a mess. A hot one, that is. 

The flashing disco lights alternately brighten and dazzle your eyes. You can’t even take a step, let alone do the dance. Sure, you’re running on fumes, but at least you look cute doing it. 

That’s what happens when you drink on an empty stomach. Stupid bitch, you’re chewing yourself out. 

Lights are moving sideways and up and down. 

The sweat beading on the hair gathered at the nape of your neck is cold. You blink your eyes and cast them around for Claire, dim and desperate. Not a single facsimile of a peer stands.

Okay, but where’s she?

You push your way through the flesh and blood horde and find your way out of the club to the back door. Threshing, you flounder out of a dented metal door. The pit of your stomach is parched, as if tiny worms have colonized your entrails and organs.

Your hand pressed against your midsection is of no help.

Leaning against the wall, you’re propped up; you squint at the figure of a man (?) that now unfolds in front of you with the swoosh of the door. A lighted cigarette in his hand, he makes a knife-edge turn and spots you right off the bat. 

Sewn into his eyes is a tapestry of something akin to concern. They are adumbral but bloodless and ultramarine.

Voices buzzing in your ear burst the bag of intricacies with a sharp pinprick. When you can feel the echoes finally reaching your earbuds, you can vaguely feel the man reaching for your forearm and tracing circles on your skin with soothing strokes.

“What the hell are you so tipsy for?” 

Tipsy? Hell? He’s probing something about you. 

“Leave me alone.” 

“What? Leave you like this in the middle of an alley? What are you? Five?”

Your stomach produces a strange twinge, right there, in that very second. 

You totter, but the man holding you by the arm means what he says.

“Look at you. What a fucking mess, huh, girl?” There he goes, tutting you like it’s his favorite sport.

“Don’t push it, Leon. What’re you, my mother?” 

You just frown and shoot him a syringe of Claire’s inherited hatred but in your style. 

“Go away. I’ll be fine.” 

With all the audacity of a brilliant I-fucking-hate-my-best-friend’s-ex-boyfriend, you pull your arm free of his reach. 

“They’ll eat you alive in here. You know that, right?” His voice is scratchy, preaching to you, but it’s emptier than a banker’s heart. His gaze, as in. 

You don’t know. Makes you edgy, this one fucker. 

“Why do you care?” 

Really. What’s it really to him? Leon, too, in the clash of a second and a spontaneous question, unexpectedly finds himself striving for words. 

When you push off the wall against which you were leaning, balance beats the hell out of you. Standing on the spikes of your heels is like an arsenal of iron nuts. So much so that Leon sucks in his breath in sheer exasperation before gripping you tightly by the forearm and flicking the glowing amber stub to the ground. Savior complex moment perhaps; he’s a martyr to his savior complex, not even understanding why he’s going this far.

“Where’re those girls you’re always stuck with? Claire and Jill?” 

Obviously you don’t have an answer to that. You, for that matter, don’t have an answer to anything in the preamble. You just gawk at him with a vagabond animus.

You brush it off with a dejected shrug, and the withering stare you garner from him is quite enough to put you in your place, and then more. The abject skeleton in the closet that follows is beyond telling. 

The puddle of bile that you can’t hold in any longer gushes out of your mouth. There and then. Luckily, courtesy of your miraculous reflexes, you turn your back on him and excrete the stagnant liquor in your system. 

Leon retaliates by stepping back, as your arm falls out of his hands and you stoop, knees sore. A nervy and explosive burst of emotion is impinging on his face. You can’t see it, but you can more or less picture what kind of acrimony he’s donning.

What a perfect first impression spectacle. 

Your gagging voice dies from throwing up in the empty streets; warm, misty tears well up in your eyes, the usual stuff, but the averse touch of his hand brushing your hair back from your face is a special ooh. 

“You’re so fucked up.” 

He couldn’t be more serious. 

“You’re so pretty.” 

You can’t be serious either! 

But just as you lift your head to give him an answer, your stomach lurches to your feet one more time. So yes, you called your close friend’s singer boyfriend “pretty” in its truest essence, in all its pomp and circumstance. Delirious and graphic, hats off to you. You feel dizzy and more than ever dead. Like dead dead, open mouth, insert foot. The nebulous valance in front of your eyes is as opaque as an unaesthetic Instagram filter. Your balance is in tatters, and you slump, and then a thickset arm supports the back of your head securely. 

─────────────────

How you made it through the dawn is a big red question mark.

The bundle of sunlight struck by the zenith of the alarming number of the morning is bright and citrusy. Almost no trace of its golden amber flavor. That’s because it’s not a morning sun. This is a midday sun. 

You finally open your eyes at two o’clock in the forenoon. The sight that awaits you... what the hell is this? 

This certainly isn’t your house, but whose residence is this? 

And most importantly, where are your clothes? Why are you in your underwear? 

You swallow the venin on the underside of the tongue, finding no strings as you idle around because you don’t even have any clues to connect the pieces together. 

Could you have gotten so hammered yesterday that you fucked someone like those people in the movies? 

At least he’s rich.

The interior is lavishly decked out; your restless eyes drift from the bed to the rows of frames on the wall. Pictures and hyperlinks and whatnot. Why would anyone hang a picture of the fucking Golden Gate Bridge in their bedroom? 

What kind of moron did you fuck last night? 

It’s up to you to figure out the equation. 

You slip on a tacky jacket and spring out of bed. When you pick up your phone and peer at the screen and see that the digital numbers are advancing by leaps and bounds, you dash out of the room. Whatever the fuck you did in this bed yesterday with whomever you did it with has to be consigned to the past. No time for any of that. That’s what one-night stands are all about. 

“Oh, fuck. Claire, I overslept. You gotta help me sway Ada so she doesn’t give me a hard time, babe.” Your fingers are rapidly drumming, and your eyes are on the screen as you thump into someone’s fucking chest. 

It’s like lightning is spinning in your head. The phone falls out of your hand and thuds a heartbeat on the floor. Ouch. No shit. Apple, what a shitty marque of ass. 

“My phone!” 

It seems no matter how much money is just a green piece of paper to you now, or digital numbers with fat zeros in your bank account, there will always be a staunch ghetto in you. Somewhere deep in your very psyche.

“Jeez. Relax.” He crouches down and picks up the very remnant of your hapless phone.

“What happened to ‘hi’ and ‘hello’?” 

No, but wait a second. 

The distinct sound of yesterday’s “tryst.” 

“Leon!” 

Apparently your memory has erased all the barf memories from last night. Give them a little time, and they’ll chip away piece by piece and roast you in vile hell for the rest of the day. 

“Leon!” He’s impersonating your voice, or rather your holler. Pretty much verbatim. It’s disturbingly good. He hands you your phone. The screen is cracked and spiderwebbed, and you take it reluctantly. Cough it up. You have to get a new model. 

“Is this your place?” 

“Eh. Like what you see?” 

He’s acting like it’s all fun and games, and he wouldn’t bat an eyelash if the sky fell. His arrogance is of a priceless candor. 

Just take a deep breath, in and now out. Everything’s all right. Everything is right as rain. 

No way you fucked your best friend’s ex-boyfriend. You refuse to believe that. 

“Why am I here?” 

Leon gets the message.

Nonetheless, he doesn’t want to spoil your good mood by regaling you with your yesterday throw-up story, and he doesn’t want you to start your day like that. Everyone deserves to have a good day, and especially after a night of fuckery like last night, you need a whole Mediterranean circumnavigation. 

“Look, sweetheart,” he begins, “let me buy you a brunch, yeah? There’s this place, okay? Down the block. Oh, they whip up scrambled eggs so fine. I’m talking about finger-licking good.”

He really is treating you over for some “brunch.”. 

But why does everything have to be piled on top of each other? He just leaves you high and dry. 

“Come on. Omelet and coffee. Yummy. Huh, and a special mix for you that’ll sober up a hangover.” Leon reaches out his hand to you as if in a desperate bargain. 

“It’s a special Kennedy remedy.” 

Your eyes fall on his outstretched palm while he’s grinning winningly. 

“Sure. Why not? You do owe me an explanation anyway.” 

There you go. He’s got you under his thumb now—like a walk in the park. 

“Nice bra.” Leon can barely avert his eyes from your cleavage. “But don't forget to change, sunshine. I reckon I can find a spare shirt for ya.” 

What a dipshit. 

Rest is a moot point.

─────────────────

You’re not exactly sitting with the shittiest man in the world and chowing down on a portion of omelette. Really, the place where he brought you for a meal isn’t bad enough to be described as decent. 

“So last night—” 

He derails the conversation. 

“No. We didn’t.” He sips his coffee, which dribbles down his parched throat. He’s been telling you this story for what seems like forever, even though it’s downright laughable—something hard to believe. 

Pleasantly enough, you manage to shake off the blues, but now Leon’s hot under the collar. 

The truth is, these bitter coffees are not his cup of tea, ’cause he loves tea more, but when he saw you getting a heavy Caffè Americano, he ended up ordering one too, just for a little spice. 

Now Leon regrets his decision. Never again. Vanilla all the way, long live crony capitalism. 

“I can’t even bring myself to believe it.” 

“Neither can I. Who knew you had a little Viking god in you?” 

“Viking god?” 

Leon nods in approbation. The musing is rather sweet, but too much sweetness makes your cheeks fat, and that’s the absolute last thing you need. Pounds. Swollen face.

“They drink heavily too, don’t they?” 

“I don’t drink that much,” you rectify him. 

“You do. I know a blackout drunk when I see one.” 

You palm your face in dismay, because how long can you put up with this charade? 

“Why did you drink all that?” 

For what does it matter to him? That you have to implicitly profess to him that you detest him. Can’t be buddy-buddy with someone Claire hates; blood and guts be damned. 

“Nevermind. I mean, you don’t always get some chivalrous knight on a white horse coming to your rescue. Watch yourself. Get your shit together next time.” 

Get your shit together.’

You’re not planning to get your life together, which has never been in order, on his say-so. 

This is no picnic.

─────────────────

That day, after that specific coffee date, not only were you tardy for the last rehearsal, but you were also vituperated by Claire. 

“I don’t trust you.” 

“Claire, I swear to you—” 

“Oh, not this again!” 

Sheva’s writhing between you and Claire, her head is cracking open, so to speak. She keeps one hand on your shoulder and the other on Claire’s forearm, but her arms draw back, both of you rebuffing her every gesture. 

“You showed up in his jacket. For fuck’s sake. You’re looking me in the eye and fucking lying to me.” 

“It’s not what you think.” 

Your words have always been meager in expressing your true self-defense. It’s no better now. 

“So you really are fighting over a guy. This is really happening. Girls, this guy bleaches his hair regularly!” Sheva chimes in and maintains her equanimity. What you are doing is quite puerile in her eyes. 

“I wonder how you’d react if your best friend fucked your ex-boyfriend, Sheva. Would you be so cool and mighty about it?” 

Aww. She still considers you her BFF. 

“Yeah, that’s what it’s called, an ex! Why can’t you just believe her? If you can’t trust your best friend, who else can you trust?” Sheva nudges Claire with a little gust of force, and Claire slumps down on the couch. She’s cross and indignant and doesn’t care that her butt stings when Sheva pushes her. 

Seems calmer, or that’s what you’re praying for. Please let it be so. Please, please, friendship Gods and Goddesses.

“You need to believe me, Claire. I told you.” 

Not a word comes out of her mouth, and she purses her million-dollar lips closely. Looking like she can’t decide on what might fall out of her tongue.

“I didn’t sleep with Leon.” 

You grovel on your knees; just how pathetic you can be when you want to be. 

Another last whine, forlorn (you may have already said the same thing a hundred times since you’ve arrived home). 

“You saw it on my dress. Full of fucking retch, Claire!” 

More details to go, and you wish you could explain to her how utterly incapacitated you were last night. From under her pretty eyelashes, she gives you a downcast appraisal. 

“I went out for some air after dancing with you. I was a mess, Claire. I looked everywhere for you. Then he came, and, you know, silly me, I fucking dozed off.” 

Sheva hugs her arms across her chest, monitoring a hushed and more subdued conversation between the two of you. Probably best not to interrupt. 

“Ugh. He always loved being the big hero.” Claire finally swallows her reticence, endearingly vacillating. Thank God. 

“Don’t fall for him. Don’t be a moron. God, you’re so stupid. You don’t even know it. He’ll set you up in a game, and before you know it, you’ll be stuck in the mud.” 

Well, you weren’t expecting a herd of counselors from your best friend. It leaves a peppery ginger on your tongue. 

“Pfff. Claire, don’t be ridiculous. You really think I’m hung up on Leon? He’s not my type. Piers is my type, duh.” You say it like the kookiest thing you’ve ever heard in your life. 

For all the things you don’t know, you speak with the vanity of a clueless nepo baby, as if you’ve been in this line of endeavor since the day you were born. 

“I saw the way he looked at you. I know that look.” 

Ha. Now she’s channeling the ultimate Daenerys Targaryen speech. 

“Very well, Claire Targaryen.” You smile dotingly at her, thinking it wouldn’t harm sharing a witty little tidbit. 

“Seriously... just go, okay? Leave me alone.” 

That’s where the rubber hits the road. Claire, your dearest friend, wants you out of here. It’s unbelievable. In your head, your memory is bare and there are no words, but your heart is crushed in a tearful pain that you can’t articulate. There are no labels or names for this feeling in your vocabulary. 

You blink at her, twice and your smile frazzle subtly.

She won’t change her mind, that is for sure. She wants you gone. 

You get up and walk out of there while you can. Sheva lingers behind you, but you’re fast and rightfully upset.

─────────────────

Wearing Leon’s Schott jacket and the t-shirt combo he provided is not exactly the kind of fancy getaway you’d want to pull off, but you’re quite adamant.

You go to the only place you can go. 

To home. 

It’s been years; you haven’t seen your parents, and who knows what it’s like now? In the car, your model face, admired by millions, the one you bequeathed from those two people who hated each other like a curse on their souls so passionately, is in a state of shambles. 

Walking into the garden of a vast estate your mom bought for a pittance, you can spot your father’s nifty all-black Stellantis. It sparkles in the glow of the porch light just above the main doorjamb. 

You cringe and then look at the door and the gold-engraved “welcome” inscription on the double sash of the wooden door. Just how “cozy” would it be to step in here again after so many years? 

As you muster up the guts within yourself to ring the doorbell, the door itself flies open. Two pairs of eyes you’ve never seen before, but who instantly identify your face, are staring at one another. 

“Oh my God! It’s you!” The girl is the walking example of the L.A. accent itself.

Since she’s wearing a skintight “daddy’s girl” tank top and a short denim skirt, odds are good that you’re talking to one of your dad’s new dollies. You know, the bimbo and the Barbie ones. 

She envelops you in a bear hug. Sweet, toffee, and mucilaginous undertones of muscat perfume overwhelm all your senses. 

“I’m your biggest fan. Oh, my room and my walls are full of your latest Vogue photoshoots. Versace was such a fantastic choice for your palette. That dress... ah! I-uh. Was. In. Love.” 

There’s a certain luster in the girl’s eyes as she goes on and on. Really, Dad, how old could this poor girl be? You can’t stop thinking about it, but the more you think about it, the more deeply it sickens you. 

“Thanks.” 

As riveted as you were by the prospect, you had gotten far enough in this biz to learn how to keep those around you at bay with fake cheerful smiles. Perhaps you really do have that rampaging Hollywood blood coursing through your veins. 

“I came to see my dad, but—” 

She sweeps her arm down from your shoulder to your waist, and with her free hand, she whips out her flip phone, smiling at the camera. 

“Say cheese!” 

You don’t. 

Your pose with a faded pallor mirrors on her screen, and you catch a dubious glance from her. She’s plainly querying you. 

“A little smile would do you good...”

“Bitch.” She nags the last word in a barely audible coo, clammed up more than any of the preceding chunks of words that came out of her mouth. 

Excellent. 

Like you have no problems, and you have to put up with this horseshit. Why did you even bother coming here? This house isn’t even your home. Not anymore. They’ve carted away everything from your childhood, and a handful of crumbs of fragmentary images of the past are all that’s left of any of it for you. 

No point insisting on three drips of memories in a life that takes many liters to survive. Nostalgia is frivolous. 

Besides, you feel bitchy enough to give this girl her paycheck. 

Except your dearest father does intervene. His noisome mug never dims a morsel, not even when he sees you. 

“What a strange coincidence, sweetheart.” 

“Certainly is.” 

Forget it.

Could a man who never knew how to be a decent father suddenly, by some strange turn of fate, come to discover what it means to be one? You’re a delusional one. This is just one of your little glitches—the very first instinct of a little girl running to her daddy any time she’s hurt. He never knew how to mend and heal those little wounds in the first place. 

“Why did you come here?” Your father’s brows shoot to his hairline. A horrible sight for his hair is receding. Reprehensibly. 

Doesn’t look like he’s going to let you in, though. He appears quite happy with his new girlfriend on his arm, and his common-law wife, your mother, is somewhere who knows where. 

“Well. It’s Mom.” You perjure, drawing a blank verse or two. Moments like these are precisely when the words essentially latch at the base of your throat. 

“She’s not here.” 

“Ha. Yeah. I can see that.” Your facial tissues, your lips, they all start to ache from ersatz smiling arts and language. Poker face can only do what it costs. 

“I think—” 

“You need to—” 

Your words and your father’s words jar with one another. It’s a mess. Even for a glimpse, it baffles you how much emotion there is in the old man’s face. And him too. His girlfriend rolls her eyes, a numbing distaste for the father and daughter in all this kerfuffle. 

“Ugh. This is so boring.” 

She walks inside. 

You nervously fidget with the folds of the jacket Leon gave you as a provisional. 

“I think I’d better go.” 

“You’re right.” The old man clears his throat as if he were about to overcome an obstacle. He’s silently begging you to put an end to his misery here, and you’re doing that just fine; you’re always ready to walk the tracks. 

“Good night, Dad.” 

“Night, kiddo. I’ll call you when your mom gets home.” 

“Sure. I’ll be waiting.” 

You won’t. How would anybody give a fuck? It’s too late. 

It’s nothing but a night alone for a wounded heart and the coveting of a whim that never had a chance to bloom. 

Either your menstrual cycle is nearing or the end itself is near.

The billboards are lit up with crystallized lights. It’s a visual. Makes your eyes glaze over a bit. 

The sign just above it reads “THE END IS NEAR!” in capital lettering. Above that are plaques with the new single releases of Leon and his group. He’s the talk of the city, and the world for that matter, so his face is in the foreground, a cerebral display, and Chris and Carlos’ faces are hot on his shoulders. The chorus of their million-selling track on Spotify is rasping in your frostbitten ears. Leon’s voice is a smooth crossover riff, raspy, and he’s making love with the bass guitar. 

On the terrace where you are sitting, a breeze gently caresses your face, leaving the crisp touch of snow on your cheek. The cold sinks into your veins, blue-tinted blood rushing through your body, no thanks to the booze. You feel queerly toasty. 

Leon’s jacket definitely lasts through the cold winters. It’s like your personal furnace. 

The traffic is hectic past the glass handrail, jostled by the car lights streaming down, and the first baby snowflakes of January are pelting down from the sky. It’s quite late, the rush hour of hungover midnight. 

Even as the elliptical chases the minute hand, you watch the passers-by. The prominent and whitewashed faces are just names. They greet you, acknowledge you with gracious smiles, but that’s it. Never so genuine that they would actually sit down next to you. 

Except for one name.

Except for Leon, who, in what must have been an illusory twist of fate, casually crosses the table with a flute of champagne in his hand. 

He doesn’t recognize you at first when he passes by your booth, but on the second glance, he captures that swan-like grace at once. 

Stepping backwards, as if he’s moonwalking, he skips over to your side to forestall your horrified side-eye.

“I shoulda known you were a vampire. You never sleep.” 

He thinks he’s made a stylish enough debut with these words. Whatever it takes to charm you. 

“No, come on. Are you stalking me?” 

“Nah. I’m too much of a busy man for that kind of thing, sweetheart. Though I’ve heard on some fanfiction sites that there are people out there. They write me off as a complete weirdo.” 

He slides into the chair straight across from you. 

“Check it out when you’re feeling like it.” 

Absently your eyes wander over his shoulder and zero in on the mass of light in the distance. In shimmering floodlights, people are laughing and making TikTok videos, some twerking, others striking jaunty poses for the camera for their thirst trap edits. Bread and butter for the fans. 

“’s rude to overlook someone when they’re talking to you. Didn’t your mother tell you that?” 

In your consciousness, you realize that even Leon’s name is lost in the cacophony of your milieu. You still do have a problem named Leon at this table.

“I don’t have time for this.” 

“Time for what?” 

Thoughts pile up in the back of your foggy brain, but they don’t coalesce into a harmonious, final answer. The blurry words worm their way out of your mouth, and they evaporate in the bitter cold air. 

Should you be kind and remind him that you’re weak? 

“I don’t know.” You bluntly say, but Leon can smell the suspense. 

“Are you drunk again?” 

The arch of your eyebrow furrows instinctively, automatic as the blooming of a flower when you water it—flourishing and blushing. But drown it too much, and it wilts, fades. He just doesn’t grasp it, can’t get it through his thick skull that you don’t want to chit-chat. 

Be that as it may, there’s one fact that’s indisputable: you want to fuck him. You’re simply at odds with yourself. 

The more Leon comes at you, the more you’re falling into error, but beggars can’t be choosers.

It’s unfortunate that you can roll over when you feel a stone. 

That thing you’re ruthlessly searching for could quite possibly be Leon. He’s the one who has reduced you to the devil’s quarry himself. Either that or you’re the one in extremis. 

Right now, however, it’s a bet neither of you care about. Unworthy of further discussion. Mouths are otherwise occupied. 

Your mouth shamelessly hyphenates his name while his mouth ecstasies on the honeydew betwixt your spread legs. Your eyes roll graphically as the tip of his nose, which looks good when he takes a snort from the lining of vanilla icys, bumps against the nacre of your clit a crack or two. It’s like you’re possessed by something, by demons or poltergeists.

The sullen and muffled fumes of profanity are belching out of the bedroom door where he’s propping you up against it. This is the very public domain information; Leon Kennedy is an excellent pussy eater. 

It’s one thing to hear from the women he’s slept with that he’s that swell; it’s quite something else to have the saccharine taste of your cunt melting in his mouth like cotton candy on the tip of his tongue just then.

“Leon... fuck. No. Want it.” Your tongue is all dry. 

You can’t remember the last time you felt the highs of ecstasy from a tongue fuck like this. Hollywood is full of people with small dicks, and the whole insertion and pull-out game sucks here, foreplay is long gone.

Luckily, you can always take a chance on someone (actually your best friend’s ex-boyfriend) who at least knows how to worship what he sees, and you reap the rewards of the risk you take. And he feels generous enough to let you have it all tonight. 

With a touch as sensuous as a butterfly’s wing, his thumb meanders through your aching bundle of nerves, igniting a fire of euphoria through your body. When he lightly palms your opening, when he feels the plushness of your slick walls, a delicate breath escapes your mouth, akin to a prayer of subservience to this very moment of pure pinch and rapture. 

“So sweet when you cum.” 

He blows your mind, the story of how you got here, the blowjob you pulled on him in his car — all that’s in the past. The only thing that matters is that you need to forget everything that happened tonight in the morning and the painstaking labor of that commitment. Pulling his belt on and off takes no extra time flat. His aching erection takes a toll on Leon, both psychologically and physically. 

When he tucks you properly into his bed, he casts a phantom over you like he’s your own exclusive brand of ghost. Kissing on a first date was never his thing, but he can’t let you go when his lips are still tantalized by your moreish taste. 

He’s making a nicer entrance than you’d expect and then some; you’re squeezing him so tightly, and he’s stippling hot kisses across the tender flesh of your throat. 

Breathless and forehead to forehead is too romantic and superfluous for a debut tryst, but that’s what rebound sex is for. 

“Fuck. Oh, fuck.” 

Maybe he’s louder than you are in these seconds— in these very seconds of his whet of thrust followed by the seconds of him pulling out soon to only bully back into your dewy cunt.

Makes your head reeling, and he wallows in the sin of the tightness stretching around the sheer girth of his cock. 

“Pussy’s so fucking good. She’s all swollen from me.” His whisper is fervid and sweeping against your cheek.

Yes. Indeed, his mouth doesn’t seem to be shutting up here either, even when he’s fucking you deep in his own bed. 

The deep azure shade of his eyes is clouded with pearlescent blue; his pupils are pitch-black orbs, and he watches his cock slide in and out of your drenched pussy in chaotic upheaval, the metal of his frenum piercing taunting your swollen clit as you drape his dick in a warm cocoon. 

“Pretty, pretty pussy suckin’ me so nice, yeah?” His voice is a throaty whisper that makes your poor, mushy brain tingle tunefully — an acrid, itchy scab that has just covered the wound. 

“Fuck,” he grunts crassly, “been thinking about this all—ungh!—night—this fucking skirt up and fucking you real loud, baby.”

Seriously, he could just write a song or a lengthy poem for your lovely pussy right here and then. 

A hubristic tinge variegates his pink lips, a wicked one that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He’s enjoying this; hell, he’s fucking loving it. His laugh-like treble is a low rumble as he pounds into you with a little more force, a little more urgency. The bed rocks under you, groaning abjectly. 

“C’mon, baby, cum on my cock. Y’know I got you. I got you so good.”

He knows how to do it.

Once bodies and emotions are merged, they move into a harmonic coherence, and just like that, he makes you cum for the second time tonight. A string of bland events that are frozen in your brain, clinging to your fiber, you feel your own tears trickling down your cheek in an attempt to get rid of them in one fell swoop, barely blinking open your eyes. 

You cradle his cheek closer, pushing away the wisps of hair falling in curtains in front of his blues. You want to kiss away the cruelty that cloaks his lips, but Leon, unable to tear himself away from your pussy that is still squeezing him, is too engrossed for such kisses. 

One blink and you’ll miss that fleeting moment as the seconds tick by, Leon barely pulls out a shred from you and strokes his cock on your belly until he finds comfort in it, painting white ribbons on your dainty skin. 

Seconds afterward are spent on your own, burdened by the cost of your one night’s slip-up, and you two stare at each other wide-eyed.

Two pairs of eyes, parted lips, and a kind of rare prettiness you usually find in men that will haunt you for a while. Ken blonde hair aglow in the light of the dawn and buried layers of emotions locked away in secrets that are too debauched to divulge.

Pearls of promise on the tip of your tongue, but you don’t dare spill them out. Heaven will hate you. Claire will hate you. 

In Leon’s estimation, per contra, you’re a damsel in distress, big eyes, and a girl who has somehow succeeded in wrapping all her depravity in the thin threads of her angelic eyes. Seraphic but dangerous. An inner part of his brain keeps hammering into his thoughts that everything has only just begun. 

[zwoelffarben]

The preveiling reddit opinion is that they were used to provide privacy to the saloon's goings-on and cut down on dust/sand blow, while still allowing for ventilation.

There's also the additional info that bat-wing doors on the entrance of a saloon were often paired with actual doors you could use to lock up or batton down, and that while they existed in the west, their prevalence is exaggerated by holloywood's practical and dramatic need.

...

I do like the vampire explaination; but it runs counter to well-established vamplore. The thing which keeps vamps at bay is the threshhold itself. There's disagreement on how precisely the threshhold does that ( the two popular theories right now are Confluence of Domestic Energy and Bound to Laws of Hospitality), but it's agreed that it's the boundary between 'inside' and 'outside' and not the door itself. The door merely makes the boundary physically apparent.

It's also thematically unlikely that west had to deal with old vampires: Most of the expansion into the west by colonizers was done by the disenfrancised among the colonists (though wealthy business folk did fund the project of colonial expansion): criminals, former slaves, the poor, immigrants. It was the rarest of exceptions that the american colonizers who'd make the best vampires, that is plantation owners, slavermongers, and the like, would travel away from their established seat of their power. You might see young vampires, eager to set up a new territory for themselves or their broodsire, sure; but old vampires, bar the one notable exception, do not travel.

thinking about those swing doors with no handles and no locks that open both ways and how they're really the Idea of a door more than anything. they're purely symbolic. anyone can walk in and anyone can walk out at any time but you still have to cross the threshold. you still have to make the choice. it still means something even if nothing could have stopped you. because there's a door there.

[luvergirl-866]

that’s so true

word count - 8.3k

pairing - paige bueckers x azzi fudd

c/w - language, toxic p/toxic relationship (situationship) (kinda toxic a too)? i guess you could call it angst? but it’s very unserious bc i’ve been doing too much serious stuff. fluff and happy ending. very dialogue heavy

a/n - i don’t usually like to incorporate music into my fics but the anon who gave this prompt specifically recommended it so i hope i did it justice! also, this takes place azzi’s freshman year so like 2021/2022, and i know this song didn’t exist then but this is fiction so i can do what i want 😛. hope yall enjoy!!!

They only have five minutes before they’re supposed to leave with everybody else to Ted’s. Unfortunately for Azzi, Paige Bueckers is very hot and also very much on top of her, and both of these things coincide to create quite the predicament: they can’t stop kissing.

It’s normal for them, lately. Kissing is easier than talking, concerning talking has gotten harder since they started—whatever this is. Or maybe restarted is a better word, considering they did this same thing in high school. But back then, the kissing was a little clumsier, often fast and desperate, whereas now they’re older, mature (yeah, right) and they take their time with these things, often just making out for hours before they move on to other things, relishing in not having to worry about either of their parents or siblings barging in on them like they used to.

There’s also another difference—back then, they were dating. Like, introducing each other as their girlfriends, going on dates, holding-hands-in-public dating.

That’s different because today—and for the past six months—they’ve been decidedly not dating.

“We don’t need distractions,” Paige had said after they’d fucked, only a month after Azzi came to UConn. (They had both agreed to stay just friends—best friends—but nothing more. But then they had to live in the same building and watch each other get all hot and sweaty at practice and see each other in skimpy pajamas and who were they to blame, really, when they fucked in that club bathroom one heated but sober night? They had spent a year broken up, a year of being long-distance besties, FaceTiming and texting and posting each other on socials with captions like “happy birthday i miss you” and “come see me”. It honestly would’ve been wrong for them to not fuck.)

“Mm—Paige, wait,” Azzi whispers when they finally separate for air.

“What’s up,” Paige says, eyes roving over every inch of Azzi’s face. Her voice is a little raspy from lack of use and it does things to Azzi’s tummy.

“I—you don’t—we need to go,” Azzi urges, pushing at Paige’s shoulders. Paige, of course, just smiles at that, pressing her knee up in between Azzi’s legs. It’s really not her fault when she gasps a little.

Paige chuckles, leaning down to kiss her forehead, then between her eyebrows. “Do we?” she mumbles, pecking the tip of Azzi’s nose and the corner of her mouth. “Like, do we really?”

“Yes, Paige, we do.” Azzi moves one of her hands down to Paige’s occupied thigh, trying desperately to separate the toned muscle from her aching core. “C’mon, it’ll be fun.”

“Definitely not as much fun as this is.”

“Well, we can continue later, when we get home.” That gets Paige to move her knee back, offering Azzi both relief and leaving an ache between her legs. She does her best to flash a sultry smile. “It’s a weekend. We can stay up all night if we want.”

Paige looks at her skeptically. “I thought you were stayin’ sober?”

Azzi moves her head back and forth. “Might not.”

“For real?”

“Uh-huh.” Azzi winds her arms around Paige’s shoulders, then scratches a little roughly down the length of her back, something Paige has always been into. It works, Paige’s jaw dropping just enough to show the pink of her tongue. “I want it, too, P. We just can’t ditch the team again. I think they already suspect us.”

“What?” Paige makes a face and scoffs. “Nah, we’re sneaky.”

“You called me babe in front of everyone at practice.”

“That’s a friend thing.” Paige waggles her eyebrows and plants a kiss on her lips, as if to prove just how friendly they are.

“Nika saw you basically groping me the other day, too.”

“I never did that.”

“My apartment, the kitchen. Movie night. I was making popcorn and you came up behind me and grabbed my tits.”

“Hm. Don’t remember that.”

“You said ‘I wanna fuck you from behind right now,’ and poor Nika walked in and stared at us and said, ‘This doesn’t look like you’re making popcorn’.”

Paige groans, dropping her head into Azzi’s shoulder and effectively laying the entire length of her body on Azzi’s. “I did wanna fuck you from behind. You were wearing those jeans…”

“Paige!”

“Okay, whatever.” Paige is a little muffled now, buried in the crook of Azzi’s neck. Her breath tingles, sending hot shivers up the length of her arm. “I do that to everyone, Nika won’t think anything of it.”

“Oh, really,” Azzi says, tone dropping into something utterly unamused, and Paige’s head pops up when she hears it. “So you say things like that to every bitch?”

Paige’s eyes widen. “No!” she grapples for something to say, and Azzi just raises an eyebrow at her. “I don’t—I meant—I just didn’t wanna admit you’re right, I wasn’t—baby.” Paige juts out her bottom lip. It kinda works. “You know I wasn’t thinkin’.”

This is another interesting thing about their current situation: because they’re not dating, they’ve never discussed where they stand in terms of other people. Sure, at the very beginning, they agreed since it was just casual sex, there was no reason for them to be exclusive. They didn’t want to get anywhere near that line of the all-consuming, intense relationship they had in high school, and they figured seeing other people—or at least having the option to do so—would steer them clear of that. And it worked for about…two seconds.

But then somewhere down the line things got a little blurry and slowly but surely Azzi stopped thinking of them as friends with benefits and as more of a slightly complicated but also fun situationship. Because at some point they started kissing without the goal of sex or even third base, just little pecks here and there when they had a second alone. And then they started staying a little longer each time after they’d fuck—at first, they’d leave directly after. But then they would stay for some basic aftercare, and then it got to full-on snuggling, and then it got to their clothes in each other’s apartments from how often they’d stay the night with each other. And the most recent development which really cemented things for Azzi: Paige has started using pet names outside the bedroom, something she only ever did while they were girlfriends. It’s only been a few weeks since this started and Azzi was absolutely floored when Paige had picked up her phone call with a, “Hey, baby.”

And now here they are, late for yet another night out because Paige is very clearly scandalized at the mere notion of her seeing another girl—even though it’s supposed to be allowed—and Azzi has to be honest, she doesn’t love the idea, either.

“Aw, c’mon,” Paige says when Azzi doesn’t reply. “Don’t be mad at me, mama.”

Azzi blinks up at her, officially not jealous and not overthinking about their complicated situation any longer. “You’re stupid,” she teases, scooting back and sitting up.

Paige follows closely, so that by the time Azzi is propped up against the headboard she’s on her lap. “You’re really stopping us?” she asks.

“We’re already late, I’m sure everybody left without us,” Azzi says, tapping Paige encouragingly on the hip, “so yes.”

Paige doesn’t yet move and doesn’t look like she’s going to until a sharp knock at the door makes both of them jolt. “Hey!” It’s Aaliyah’s voice. “Y’all cannot be taking this long to get ready.”

“I don’t…we just…” Azzi stammers as Paige scrambles off her, and they both get quickly to their feet, making as little noise as possible, “our hair wasn’t cooperating,” she says, reaching up to fix Paige’s tousled hair. “We’ll be right out!”

“You better be, we’re all waiting outside and it’s fucking cold.”

“Coming!” Azzi calls, letting Paige wipe some of her smudged lip gloss, rolling her eyes when Paige smirks at her and says, “Oh, you will be.”

She has no idea what Paige Bueckers is to her, but an annoyance will always take the top spot.

————————————————

When Azzi had claimed she’d stay sober with the other freshmen, she hadn’t accounted for the fact that she has a best friend who loves to party and who loves peer pressuring even more.

“C’mon, just a few shots,” Paige pouts, leaning in too close to her. Azzi glances around the bar, trying to see if anybody is watching them, but she can’t tell. There’s too many people.

“Nobody can hear us,” Paige assures her, placing her hands low on Azzi’s hips, pressing her into the wall of the corner they’re semi-hidden in.

Azzi swears this girl is horrible for her blood pressure. “Paige,” she hisses, removing Paige’s hands, “not here.”

“You shoulda let us stay home,” Paige says, and now that her hands are placed firmly at her sides her eyes do all the wandering for them, raking slowly down Azzi’s body and back up. “I woulda had you fucked out by now, I swear.”

“Oh, I believe you,” Azzi mumbles.

“You seem anxious, baby.” Bravely, Paige holds her again, though this time it’s at a more friendly place, higher up on her waist. Azzi tries to meet her eyes but they’re held firmly on her lips. “Fuck. I wanna kiss you so bad.”

“No, Paige,” Azzi says, as sternly as possible. She would rather like to kiss her too, but not here, not now, not when Paige is tipsy and Azzi is horrendously sober.

“Okay, I’ma go get me another dirty shirley.” Azzi swears she would marry that drink if she could. “And I’ma grab a couple shots for you while I’m at it. And then we’re gonna fuck in the bathroom.”

Azzi smacks Paige on the arm. “I’m done with public restrooms. Once was enough.”

Paige, still sober enough to have some sort of common sense, wrinkles her nose. “Yeah, you’re right. But I’m still grabbing shots.” She smacks a wet kiss onto her forehead and with that, turns around to head toward the bar.

Azzi doesn’t get a second of peace before someone else is sidling up to her. Though when she looks over she sighs with relief when it’s just Caroline. “Hey, Carol.”

“You’re so lucky you have a girlfriend who’ll buy you shots,” Caroline says, looking wistfully in Paige’s direction.

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

Caroline side-eyes her. “Uh-huh.”

“She’s not. We broke up.”

“And then got back together.”

Azzi shoves her away before pulling her back, linking their arms together as she leads them towards their team’s section of seats. “Nope. We’re still exes.”

“Exes who are romantically involved.”

“Carol,” Azzi groans, urging her to shut up as they approach the rest of the girls. “We’re just friends.”

It used to leave a bitter taste in her mouth, lying to her closest friend, the one whose shoulder she cried on when she and Paige broke up. But after six months of doing it, she’s used to it. And it’s not like Caroline believes her, anyway.

“Okay,” Caroline says skeptically. “So if the guy that’s been looking at you since we got here asked for your number, you’d give it to him?”

They’re at the team’s booth now, and Amari perks up at the mention of the slightest possibility of drama. “What guy?”

“I haven’t noticed a guy,” Azzi says, which is the truth. As it usually goes, she’s only had eyes for Paige tonight.

“Over there,” Carol says, leaning against the table and gesturing subtly across the bar. “Muscle shirt.”

“Immediately no,” Azzi replies, not even looking for him in the group of guys across the room. But he must be actively searching her out because just as she’s about to look away she catches his eye, and even though she immediately looks away, she can still see him grin out of the corner of her eye.

“Uh-oh,” Amari mutters. “You engaged him.”

“Don’t make eye contact,” Azzi says, turning away from him to face her friends. “Make yourself unapproachable.”

Caroline turns away, too, and the two of them lean over the table.

Aaliyah looks up from the conversation she was having. “What’re you guys doing?”

“Hiding,” Azzi hisses.

Amari peeks around Azzi’s shoulder, then settles back in her seat. “He’s coming over.”

“What?” Azzi wants to look at him but doesn’t, instead inching herself closer to Caroline. “Save me.”

“Who is that?” Aaliyah asks, not-so-subtly staring at the guy.

“A man about to flirt with Azzi,” Caroline says, nudging her away.

“Oh, Paige is gonna be maddd,” Aaliyah sing-songs, and they all giggle like this is funny and not absolutely awkward and stress-inducing.

Azzi glares at them. “She has no reason to be mad.” And it’s true, she kind of doesn’t, but that doesn’t mean she won’t.

“Oh, yeah?” Caroline asks, glancing behind them just as Azzi feels the man come up behind her. “We’ll see about that.”

And then there’s a tap on her shoulder, and Azzi takes a deep breath before turning around with a strained smile on her face.

“Hey.” Muscle shirt is standing a little too close for comfort, which she’s sure he’ll excuse by the crowded bar but is obviously just him being weird. “You’re Azzi, right?”

“Uh-huh,” Azzi says, leaning back against the table.

“I’ve seen you around,” he continues, smiling cockily, obviously very proud of himself for being brave enough to approach her. “You come here a lot, right? To Ted’s?”

Azzi shrugs, looking casually to her side in the hopes that Caroline will rescue her, but to her astonishment she has slid into the booth next to Aaliyah and is now chatting happily with the rest of the team. “I guess.”

“Noticed you weren’t with Bueckers,” he says, and she winces. Not five sentences into the conversation and he’s already brought up her current situationship. “Thought it was a good opening.” He laughs. She doesn’t.

“How so?” she asks, a little nervously.

“I mean, she obviously doesn’t want anybody coming near you.” A girl squeezes past behind him and he takes it as an excuse to inch even closer to her. Azzi presses herself further back into the table. “Can’t even look your way without her looking like she’s gonna fight someone.”

“She’s just protective,” Azzi says. As if Paige would do that for any of their friends, as if that level of pure possessiveness is normal.

“Right.” He doesn’t sound fully convinced. “You didn’t ask my name.”

God. Why are men so…gross? “My bad.” He stares at her expectantly. “Uh…so…?”

“I’m Elliot,” he says, grinning at her. That muscle shirt is really not doing good things for him. “You want me to buy you a drink?”

“Um, actually—“

“She’s good.”

Azzi’s shoulders sag at the mere sound of Paige’s voice. She can’t help but smile when Paige approaches them, moving roughly past Elliot to sidle up next to her. She hands her two brightly colored shots before slinging an arm around her, firmly ignoring Elliot. “Gotchu these. Lemme know if you don’t like ‘em.”

Azzi nods, and usually she’d shy away from the physical contact, especially right in front of their friends, but now she leans into it, safe under Paige’s arm. “Thanks.”

“Sorry I took so long.” As if sensing her discomfort—which she probably can—she rubs her thumb soothingly over her shoulder. “They’re super busy up there. You okay?”

Azzi opens her mouth to respond, but Elliot interrupts her. “She’s fine, dude. We’re just talking.”

Paige looks at him. “Aight. Well, you can be done talking now.”

Their teammates have gone mostly quiet behind them, and Azzi rolls her eyes when she hears them snickering.

Elliot scoffs, but he’s skinny and a little shorter than Paige, and when her arm tightens around Azzi’s shoulder he puts his hands up. “Damn, okay.”

Azzi breathes a sigh of relief when he’s gone. “Thank god. That was so awkward.”

“You shoulda called me,” Paige says, dropping her arm to turn around and face their teammates. “And y’all shoulda helped her out.��

The girls look up at them innocently. Amari smiles charmingly at Paige and says, “We knew you were gonna do it soon enough.”

Azzi shakes her head and downs one of the shots. It is as disgusting as it looks.

“You guys suck,” Paige says, pulling Azzi into her side once again. “Leaving my girl in the trenches like that.”

Dozens of eyebrows raise at that, and it’s then that Azzi smells the booze on Paige’s breath. She flushes, trying to pull away. “P,” she mutters.

“I know,” Paige says, holding fast to Azzi’s waist, setting her shirley on the table so she can wrap the other around her, too.

“Paige,” Azzi urges, pressed completely now into Paige’s chest and trying desperately to ignore the scrutinizing looks from her teammates. She hopes they’re all too drunk to think hard about Paige’s behavior.

“Yeah,” Paige says, her hand creeping slowly down Azzi’s back.

“Did you have another drink?” Azzi asks, trying to walk them away from the booth, but Paige keeps her feet planted.

“I might’ve had another shot.” Paige grins, and Azzi would easily admit she likes it a lot more than muscle shirt’s. “Missed you, baby.”

The girls are pretending not to eavesdrop, but they’re clearly listening, sharing furtive glances with each other. Which is just—great. Because tomorrow the girls are going to have questions and Paige will be sober enough for that to stress her out, which will in turn stress Azzi out, and there will be no saving face if she lets Paige continue on like this.

“Not now, Paige,” she hisses, trying desperately to push her back.

Paige pouts. Their faces are far too close together. “What, you wanna go back to that guy or sum’?”

Azzi knows she’s not serious, but it still annoys her, and she doesn’t feel quite as comforted in Paige’s arms anymore. “Seriously, I’m not in the mood.”

Paige scoffs, maybe a little more serious now. “Course you aren’t.”

Azzi blinks at her, and when Paige’s hands drop to her sides she takes a step back. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I dunno.” Paige gestured between them. “Just that you never wanna be around me unless we’re fu—“

Azzi’s overstimulated and irritated, but she still has enough common sense to shove Paige hard enough to shut her up. “Don’t.”

Paige watches as Azzi drinks her other shot. “What? You really don’t want anybody to know, huh? You that embarrassed or something?”

Azzi shakes her head in disbelief, stepping back towards Paige so they can at least have this conversation to quiet for anybody to hear. “Are you dumb? You’re the one who wanted to keep this secret.”

“Because I didn’t my teammates thinking I was distracted!”

“Our teammates, Paige.” Azzi gives her another little shove for good measure, and then she steps away again. “You’re acting stupid. Go chill out and come back when you wanna be normal.”

“Fine. I will.” With that, she turns on her heel and disappears into the crowd. Azzi rolls her eyes at her hot-headedness. They’re both too stubborn for their own good, but Paige is ten times worse when she’s drunk and Azzi has always been more logical. Little, senseless arguments like this never happened when they were dating—or even when they were broken up—but now that they’re at this weird in-between, they’re becoming more frequent.

Hence why they prefer to kiss instead of talk.

Azzi plops down beside Amari, grateful when nobody questions her, and feels a little better when she thinks about how good the make-up sex will be later.

—————————————

There will be no make-up sex tonight. Or ever, Azzi thinks bitterly, glaring daggers at the girl Paige is currently feeling up.

Okay, feeling up might be an overstatement. She has a hand on her arm. But Azzi knows better than anyone that for Paige, hand-on-arm action might as well be foreplay. And the girl seems to sense it, too, if her batting eyelashes and twinkling smile have anything to show for it.

“She’s just doing it to make you jealous.” Once again, it’s Caroline, sidling up next to Azzi to study the tall blonde across the bar.

“I have no reason to be jealous,” Azzi all but spits out, and Caroline smirks.

“Pretend all you want, Az. But it’s impossible to not see what’s going on with you and her.”

“There’s nothing.” Paige’s fingers trail down the length of the girl’s arm and it’s almost like Azzi can feel it, too.

“Are you guys exclusive?”

“No,” Azzi responds immediately, too tipsy to be thinking straight, and when Caroline smiles proudly to herself, she backtracks. “I mean, obviously not. We’re not anything.”

“Well, if you’re not exclusive, she’s not doing anything wrong.”

Azzi hates this bitter reminder and turns her anger onto her best friend. “Shut up, Carol.”

“You two should probably talk about not seeing other people,” Caroline says, as wise and perceptive as ever. (She is also significantly more sober than Azzi is.)

“She can see whoever she wants,” Azzi seethes, stirring the ice in her drink. “I don’t care.”

Paige’s eyes flit from the girl’s face to Azzi. And then, with a little smirk, she leans in to whisper something in her ear, blue eyes never leaving brown as the girl giggles and grabs onto her arm. She smiles, too, and Azzi takes some satisfaction in the fact the girl has no idea she’s not the one Paige is doing this for.

She’s always been good at putting up a show. And Azzi has always been her captive audience.

Not tonight, Azzi decides as she looks firmly away. It’s about time Paige learns to behave herself.

—————————————-

It’s been a long night of drinking and trying not to watch Paige attach herself to this random girl’s hip when Azzi is approached by none other than random girl herself.

She’s gorgeous up close, but Azzi can’t help but notice her brown curls and crescent dimples, the way they’re the exact same height. It nearly makes her laugh.

“Hey,” the girl says, drop ping into the bar seat next to Azzi.

“Uh,” Azzi says, vey tipsy and very irate. “Hey.”

“What’s that? It looks so good,” the girl asks, pointing to her drink. Her voice is soft and kind, nothing malicious gleaming in her eyes. Azzi hates it.

“Just a mango daiquiri,” Azzi responds, kind of unable to be snarky about it with the wide-eyed way the girl is looking at her.

“Oh, fancy! I’m definitely gonna cop that.” She smiles conspiratorially at her. Azzi can’t help but smile back. Okay, now she just kind of hates herself. She’s never been one to be rude to girls she’s jealous of. Especially not harmless, sweet ones.

“It’s so good,” she’s saying before she can help it. “And they come in all different flavors so there’s like, endless possibilities.”

“Stop,” the girl gasps.

“I know!” and then they both giggle like the tipsy college students they are. This is possibly even better than hating her, because it’s almost like a smack in the face: look at me, Paige, being the bigger person. Making best friends with your target of the night. How’s that feel?

“Hey,” the girl giggles, leaning her elbows on the bar. “You’re Azzi, yeah? You play so good.”

“Thank you!” Azzi gushes, flashing her dimples as the girl does just the same. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Haven,” she replies. Even her name is nice. Azzi thinks about how Paige must’ve thought the same thing when they met a few hours ago, but she doesn’t like the thought, so she pushes it firmly away.

“Hey,” Haven says, sounding suddenly hesitant. “Um, I actually wanted to ask you something. About…Paige?”

Azzi’s eyes snap to where the blonde sits at the team’s booth—she always seems to know where Paige is in a room, though she never remembers tracking her movements—before she quickly looks back to Haven. “What about her?”

“Well…that,” she says.

“What?” Azzi asks, stirring her drink casually.

“The reaction you just had to me saying her name.”

Okay, so Azzi apparently does not appear as cool and collected as she thought. “Oh, that was just—I mean, she’s my best friend.”

“Yeah?” Haven asks. “Because I kinda got the impression y’all were…”

“No,” Azzi says, trying to contort her features into something like disgust. “Ew. Never.”

Haven raises her eyebrows. “Never?”

Why is everybody deciding to clock Paige and Azzi’s shit tonight? “Okay, like, maybe at one point. But it’s over.”

“Really.” She does not sound convinced at all. Glancing over at Paige, Haven leans forward, as if she’s afraid they’ll be heard. “It’s just, she keeps looking at you and you keep looking back and I saw her all over you earlier, so like—“

“I wouldn’t say she was all over me.”

“She totally was.” Haven’s looking at her like she’s clueless. “I just…listen, Paige invited me over tonight.” Azzi’s stomach drops. So definitely no make-up sex then. In fact, Azzi might as well pack up her vagina right now because Paige has ruined everybody else’s for her, too. “And I don’t wanna get in the middle of anything,” Haven continues, completely oblivious to Azzi’s internal vow of celibacy, “especially nothing messy.”

“Yeah, no, I totally get that.” Azzi sighs heavily; considering their situation is exactly what one might describe as messy, Azzi figures it’s probably the right thing to do to tell this poor girl the truth. “To be honest, we kinda are…I dunno. I mean, we fuck.”

“Uh-huh,” Haven nods.

“She stays over most of the time. I stay at her’s sometimes, but she mostly stays at mine.”

“Spare toothbrushes in each other’s bathroom?”

Azzi winces. “Possibly.”

“Yeow.”

“And, like, generally, we don’t see other people. We used to, at the beginning, but not anymore. We were just talking about it today, actually. Well, not talking about it—we don’t talk about stuff. We’re not serious enough for Paige to wanna talk about stuff.” Azzi is rambling now, and Haven is hanging onto her every word, and Azzi thinks she loves making fast friends with other girls then realizes this is the exact thing that happens every time she gets drunk. Perhaps she crossed over that line awhile ago.

The two of them have their heads close together now, the rest of the bar completely shut out. “But anyway, she said something and I was like, what, you say that to all your bitches? You know, mostly joking but not.”

“Of course.”

“And she was all, no, baby, I would never ever have other bitches, don’t be mad,” Azzi says, deepening her tone in a stupid caricature of Paige’s voice.

Haven gasps. “That was today?”

“Like ten minutes before we came here.”

“And then she was all up on me tonight.” Haven glares in Paige’s direction. “Damn.”

“I know. But like, yeah, we’re not exclusive or anything so it’s fine. But it’s not, you know?”

“Oh, for sure. That’s fucked up,” Haven says haughtily. “So, wait, how long has this been going on for?”

“Uh…six months?” but no, that doesn’t feel right. “Well, I guess, like, four years? But six months.”

Haven blinks at her.

Azzi sighs. “We were super serious in high school.”

Haven nearly screams, slamming her hand on the bar. “She’s your ex?”

“Yes!” Azzi cries, and it feels so, so good for someone to understand her situation. “We were so in love and shit! And then things started feeling weird the summer before she came here—because, like, I’m a year younger than her so she was gonna be in college while I was still in high school and I—I could tell she didn’t wanna be tied down by her lame hometown girlfriend so I ended things.”

“Girl!” Haven yells.

“I had no other choiceeee,” Azzi groans. “She woulda broken me if I hadn’t broken up with her.”

“You’re crazy,” Haven says, shaking her head. “That girl is down. Bad.”

“Stop,” Azzi says, waving her off.

“She is, horrendously.” Haven gestures over to Paige. “As soon as you got to UConn she wanted to start something with you, right? And then y’all have a little tiff and she’s doing the most with another girl just to get your attention?”

“She asked you to go home with her,” Azzi points out. “That definitely wasn’t for my benefit.”

“Um, I’m sorry, have you not noticed how scary alike we look?” Haven asks, and Azzi flushes. “She was definitely gonna pretend I was you. Which I’m not down for, like, at all.”

“She’s such a dick,” Azzi says. Because she may have been in love with Paige Bueckers since high school, but yeah, she’s still kinda a dick.

“Totally,” Haven agrees. “But…

“Don’t tell me you’re about to defend her.”

“Listen!” Haven places her hands on Azzi’s shoulder. “I think her heart’s in the right place. She wants you. She’s just a little…misguided.”

Azzi shakes her head. “She was the one who said we couldn’t be serious. She said we couldn’t have ‘distractions’.”

“And you didn’t stop to think that maybe she was still insecure and hurt by the fact you broke up with her and was protecting herself from getting hurt again?”

Azzi blinks at this drunk, genius girl in front of her. “Whoa.”

“Yeah. You know what, I’m starting to think maybe you’re both a little stupid.”

Azzi shoves her. “Don’t get so cocky, you could be wrong!”

“I could,” Haven admits. “But where would that leave you? With an asshole ex-girlfriend who messes with your head for fun?”

Azzi thinks maybe, if they didn’t look so uncannily alike, she could kiss this girl. “I love you.”

“Girl, I love you more.” Haven pats her arm and leans back on her barstool. Now take Auntie Haven’s advice and give her the silent treatment for a few days. She’ll realize her mistakes and come running back real quick.”

“What if I don’t wanna take her back?” Azzi says, already knowing it’s bullshit.

“You do. But you gotta make her work for it. And then you have to communicate with her.”

Azzi makes a face. “Didn’t I already tell you we don’t like talking?”

Haven rubs her temples. “There’s your main fucking problem, Azzi.”

It’s then that Haven’s eyes trail to something over her shoulder and before Azzi can ask there’s a large, warm, all-too-familiar ringed hand on her shoulder. “What’re you two talking about over here?”

Azzi looks first at the hand on her shoulder, then slowly up to Paige’s face. Paige raises her eyebrows, waiting for an answer, and then Azzi looks back at Haven, meeting her eyes.

And then they laugh.

“What?” Paige nearly demands.

Azzi brushes her hand off, still giggling. “Leave us alone, Paige.”

“I just didn’t know y’all knew each other,” Paige says, and Azzi delights at how confused she sounds. “Because you two seem pretty buddy-buddy over here.”

“Didn’t realize you were watching so closely,” Haven quips. Azzi giggles.

“Never said I was.” Paige moves from behind Azzi, going to stand beside them, studying them closely. “You two are drunk as hell.”

“So are you!” Haven and Azzi both say at the same time, and tears are forming at this point. Azzi holds on to Haven’s knee to keep herself from falling off her chair.

“Aight, yeah, I’m getting you an Uber,” Paige says to Haven, before touching Azzi’s arm, “And I’ma walk you home.”

“I can get my own Uber,” Haven says haughtily, but Paige already has her phone out.

Once again, Azzi bats Paige’s hand away. “I don’t wanna go home with you.”

Paige rolls her eyes, still navigating through her phone. “I figured, Az. But we live in the same building. Just lemme walk you.”

“You’re not sober enough to walk me.”

“I’ve been drinking water for the past hour, I’m pretty much good.” Paige shuts her phone off and looks at Haven. “You car’ll be here in fifteen.”

“Wish you were pretty much good a couple hours ago,” Azzi grumbles.

Paige’s expression becomes a little less nonchalant at that. “I know, mama, we can talk about it tomorrow.”

And that almost works. But then Haven sends her a warning glare and she straightens up. “No, thanks.”

Paige’s face scrunches up like it always done when she’s shocked, and Azzi hates that it’s still the cutest thing in the world. “Whatchu mean?”

“Exactly that,” Azzi says, standing from her barstool. Her butt is sore from sitting for so long. “And I’ll walk home with the rest of the team, thanks.”

Paige splutters. Haven gives her the middle finger.

—————————————

Later, when they are walking home—stumbling, more accurately—Azzi is leaning against Aubrey when she hears familiar footfalls coming up behind them and braces herself.

“Hey, Azzi,” Paige calls, catching her arm as she catches up. “Come walk with me.”

“I wanna walk with Aubrey,” Azzi says petulantly.

Aubrey looks awkwardly between the two of them.

“Bro, just—“ Paige stops, mindful of their audience. “Let’s just talk, okay?”

“No, thanks.”

“Azzi, c’mon.”

“I’m drunk and I’m cold and I’m mad at you. Leave me alone.”

Paige looks desperately to Aubrey for help. Aubrey just shrugs and says, “What’m I supposed to do? She said what she said.”

“Thank you,” Azzi huffs.

“Man, fuck this,” Paige says. Azzi feels very satisfied when Paige falls back, leaving her alone. But her arm also tingles where Paige had caught it.

Oh, yeah. This makeup sex had better be good for the trouble she’s going through.

—————————————

It isn’t until the next day that, during a car ride with Caroline, Azzi disovers it.

The two of them have always had similar music tastes, so when an unfamiliar song comes on over the speaker, she’s a little surprised. However, as she listens to the lyrics, she finds herself even more surprised at how much they resonate with her.

I could go and read your mind

Think about your dumb face all the time

Living in your glass house I’m outside

“Hey,” she says, “what song is this?”

“That’s So True,” Caroline answers, still staring ahead at the road. “By Gracie Abrams. Why?”

Looking into big blue eyes

Did it just to hurt me, make me cry

Smiling through it all, yeah, that’s my life

“Oh,” Azzi says casually, “no reason.”

——————————————

It becomes very apparent there is a reason when, over the next week, the song becomes everyone else’s problem.

So apparent, in fact, that the team actually starts to worry about her.

“What did you do to her?” Aaliyah asks as soon as Paige walks into the apartment.

“You broke her,” Amari says.

“That stupid song kept me up all night and it’s your fault,” Aubrey continues, pointing menacingly at Paige.

“I didn’t do nothing!” Paige says, backing away from her angry friends.

“You better fix it,” Amari says. “Like, now.”

“Fix what?”

Oddly, they all go quiet at this. Paige is about to ask what’s up with them when music begins blasting from somewhere in the dorm.

“That,” Aaliyah says.

Paige scrunches her nose. “Bad pop music?”

“It is not bad,” Caroline says defensively, joining them in the entryway. When she gets judgmental looks from the other girls, she sighs. “Okay, it wasn’t bad. But Azzi’s been listening to it nonstop for a week and it used to be my favorite song and now I’m sick of it.”

“We’re all sick of it,” Amari adds unhelpfully.

“I still don’t understand what this has to do with me,” Paige says, but of course she’s lying. From what she can make out the lyrics are about a break up, maybe, something to do with jealousy and anger. With the way Azzi’s been dodging her this week (calls sent straight to voicemail, texts left on read, not even a hint of eye contact when they see each other) she knows she fucked up at the party.

It’s not like them to fight—really, it’s not. They’ve gotten into more arguments this year than they have in their entire friendship. Obviously, there’s a correlation there, something major signaling that this whole friends-with-benefits thing doesn’t work for them. Or maybe it does. Maybe it’s the whole best-friends-who-dated-then-became-exes-then-friends-with-benefits thing that they can’t do.

But either way—fights? Like, actual fights that Paige can’t talk (or kiss) their way out of? Those are rare.

She didn’t think their argument at the bar was that big a deal. Didn’t even think her flirting with another girl would make Azzi mad. (She’d been hoping for jealousy because dysfunctional as they may be, the sex is really good and it’s even better when one of them is all riled up).

She has a sneaky feeling this all has to do with that girl at the bar. Haven. The cute one who looked a lot like Azzi and seemed super into Paige until she turned around and became best friends with none other than Azzi herself. She should’ve known that would happen. Azzi always makes friends when she gets drunk.

She just wishes this bout of silence (and celibacy) between them would end already.

“You can’t be serious,” Amari says.

Paige shrugs.

“We all know you two are fucking, Paige,” Caroline says quite bluntly.

And, okay, the sheer panic that Paige feels at this is maybe a little ridiculous.

She never wanted the team—anyone, really—to know she and Azzi were back together. Because, well, they weren’t, for one, and there’s no good way to tell your parents, “Hey, you know how I was super emo about how the love of my life broke up with me before college? Yeah, well, it’s been a year and I’m not totally over it but I fucked her in the bathroom at a club and we’re going steady—as in, fucking—now!”

But the main reason she didn’t want anybody to know is because she was—is—so afraid of having her heart broken again. And if she keeps this to herself, then she gets to act like she doesn’t care if history repeats itself. Gets to move on and not think about it and use other people as rebounds without anybody batting an eye.

But it’s been six months of them going from friends with benefits to best friends who also kiss and have sex to best friends who kiss and have sex exclusively with each other. She may have gotten a little too cocky, may have thought they were finding solid ground, and may have not put so much effort into hiding it.

But Azzi hasn’t spoken to her for a week and she doesn’t even remember what solid ground feels like anymore so yeah, the notion of her friends knowing about them when they may be on the brink of ending is a little scary.

“Okay,” Amari says tentatively when Paige stares blankly at them, “don’t freak. It’s not a big deal. We don’t care.”

“No, I—I know,” Paige stutters.

“Seriously, P, it’s cool,” Aubrey says, patting her shoulder. “Just, you know, go fix it.”

That song has played three consecutive times since this conversation started. They may be right. Paige might’ve broken her.

Might’ve broken them.

“And while you’re at it,” Caroline adds, giving her a little push in the direction of Azzi’s room, “make sure you guys are official so we don’t have to deal with this again.”

Paige tries to plant her feet to prevent her advance towards Azzi, but Aubrey rounds to her front and starts pulling at her arms while Amari pushes and then she’s directly in front of a door with a pink ‘welcome’ sign hanging off the front. As that song thuds accusingly through the door, Paige doesn’t feel very welcome.

“Okay, stop being a pussy,” Aaliyah pipes up from behind them, “and go in there. Please.”

“Make it stop,” Aubrey says. She almost sounds like she’s about to cry.

Paige stares at them, wondering if they’re really going to make her do this. But they all nod at her before disappearing down the hall so it’s just Paige in front of Azzi’s door and she could leave, could just go back home but she’d never hear the end of it from her teammates. (And she might end up hating herself if she does that, too.)

So, with a deep, steadying breath, Paige lifts her fist and knocks.

“Coming,” Azzi calls. Blessedly, the song turns off and there’s some rustling inside before the door creaks open.

Paige expects a lot of things when Azzi first sees her—anger, upset, a door slamming in her face.

What she doesn’t expect is the satisfied smile that flits across Azzi’s face before she carefully fixes her expression into something more somber.

“Uh, hey,” Paige says. “Can I—“

“Come in,” Azzi says gravely, opening the door all the way to let her through.

“Uh, aight.” Nervously, Paige walks past Azzi, a little afraid that is some sort of trap based off the strange way she’s acting. Once she’s inside and the door’s shut, she faces the younger girl, though doesn’t quite look her in the eye. “So, I just…you know, about the other night. At Ted’s.”

Azzi nods. “Go on.”

“Well, I know I started that lil argument and I feel bad.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I was just drunk and I wanted your attention so I acted stupid.”

Azzi crosses her arms impatiently. Paige wishes she had written this down and practiced beforehand or something.

“And with that other girl—“

“Her name’s Haven,” Azzi says sharply.

Paige blinks at her, surprised. “Yeah. Her. Well—“

“She’s actually really nice. We’ve been texting.”

Paige can’t help but scoff a little at that. “What, you gonna leave me for her or sum’?”

“We look related, so no,” Azzi says, raising an eyebrow. “And if I remember right, I thought it was you asking her to come to your place that night.”

Shit. So the two of them really did talk about everything. That’s not great for her.

“I didn’t mean it,” Paige says, which is very much true—she doesn’t know what she would’ve done if Haven had agreed to come over that night, but she certainly wouldn’t have kissed her. “I just, we were arguing and I wanted to make you jealous so we could, like, kiss and make up.”

Azzi crosses the room to sit on her bed, and Paige hovers awkwardly, wondering if she should follow. She decides on staying put. “I was jealous,” Azzi says. “But it just pissed me off.”

“I know, and it was a stupid thing to do.”

“I just—I thought we weren’t really, like, seeing other people.”

Paige freezes. This is completely outside of argument-at-Ted’s territory and it seems a little more like serious-talk-about-us time. Which Paige is just not prepared for at all. She should’ve made notecards for this.

“I mean—we aren’t—but, like…” Paige trails off, and she knows it’s bad how uncertain she sounds when hurt flashes over Azzi’s expression.

“Have you? Been seeing other people,” she asks, and Paige can tell she’s trying to sound nonchalant, putting on a brave face, but in reality she’s terrified of the answer.

Paige rushes to reassure her. “No, Az, no. Not a—seriously, not a single person. Not since that day at the club.” Not since the day Azzi came to UConn, if she’s being a little more accurate. But Azzi doesn’t need to know that.

Again, Azzi tries to act like it doesn’t affect her. But Paige knows her far too well—far too intimately—to miss the way her features relax, her shoulders lowering just a little bit. “Me neither,” she says softly.

Paige lets out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding at that. “Okay.”

“So…what does that mean?” Azzi asks tentatively.

Now that Azzi seems a little less guarded, Paige takes her chance to sit beside her on the bed, though not too close. “I dunno,” she says lamely, but when she’s met with a heavily annoyed silence, she sighs and tries desperately to think something up. “I mean. We can’t really be casual and exclusive. That’s not really how that works.”

“Yeah,” Azzi says.

Paige waits for her to pick up the conversation at least a little, but she doesn’t, and Paige is forced to go on. “I don’t—I think it’s not even something I want anymore. The whole casual thing.”

It’s hard, getting the words out, like each syllable is a barrier being broken, and maybe it is. Paige looks down at her hands, fiddles with them, anything so she doesn’t have to watch Azzi’s reaction.

“Paige,” Azzi says quietly.

And when Paige catches the hesitancy in her tone—the fear—she is suddenly too desperate and maybe even too in love to keep quiet just because it’s hard. Because she can’t do this, not again. She can’t watch Azzi walk away without at least putting up a fight.

“I know what I did was wrong,” Paige blurts out before Azzi can say anything else. She looks up, stares at the wall ahead, before turning to Azzi. She tries to detect the look in her eyes and what it may mean, but can’t. “At Ted’s. And I’m sorry. I guess I just—these past six months have been so—I mean, they’ve been good, but they’ve also been super fucking confusing and kinda scary, too. It’s like I’m always on edge waiting for you to end things, so whenever we get too close to how we were—before, in high school—I back out, no matter how hard it is. No matter how good it feels to have you again.”

Azzi opens her mouth, the beginning of a word escaping, but Paige’s heart races and she stands, stopping her. “But I’m realizing that I don’t think I can do that with you. I don’t think I can be just friends with you, or friends with benefits, or even whatever the hell it is we’ve been doing. Every day since you ended things I’ve been a fucking wreck, Azzi.” And it’s true. Her freshmen year had been hard, spent sleeping with random caramel-skinned, dimpled girls to try and fill the Azzi-shaped void in her heart. And the summer after was hell, too, reconnecting with Azzi long-distance and trying to become friends again, acting like they were never anything more. And the past six months has been the worst of it all, because having Azzi but not really having her, keeping her at an arm’s length and teetering on this edge of will she do it again and when will it happen proving almost painful.

Azzi stands, too, stepping in front of her, tilting her chin just slightly up to make eye contact like she’s always had to do. “I didn’t want that, Paige,” she says, almost as if she’s pleading. “I wanted—I thought you’d have more fun if you were single. I thought you’d resent me for, like, tying you down.”

Paige looks at Azzi for a solid few seconds, trying to discern whether she’s fucking with her. And when Azzi doesn’t laugh or tell her this was all a stupid prank she turns around, pushes her hand through her hair, and then faces her again. “Are you fucking for real?”

“Yeah,” Azzi says sheepishly. “I thought—I don’t know. I was also sixteen and stupid and insecure, and I just wanted to make you happy. I didn’t think about what I wanted.” She looks down at her feet. “Didn’t realize how hard it’d be.”

“Yeah, you were stupid,” Paige snaps, and when Azzi flinches, she takes a step towards her. “You really thought that I’d—what, not want you? Want to fucking break up so I could hoe around?”

“Kind of!” Azzi says, throwing her hands in the air. “Things already felt off that summer before you left—“

“Because I didn’t want to leave you!” Paige practically shouts, and she wonders briefly why they never bothered to discuss this before. “I had no idea what I was gonna do when we were so far apart, but you know what? We could have handled it. We could’ve handled a year. I wanted to handle it, if it meant we could stay together.” She takes another step closer, so they’re face-to-face now. “I thought you were bored of me or sum’, you know? I was so fucking hurt.”

“I wasn’t trying to hurt you!” Azzi cries. “Obviously I wasn’t bored, Paige, or I wouldn’t have jumped your fucking bones the minute I got to school.”

“And obviously I didn’t wanna be single or I wouldn’t have let you!”

Silence washes over them, and Paige is sure she could hear a pin drop, almost as sure as she is that their teammates are thoroughly listening to this argument outside the door. But she doesn’t care. Not when she’s looking close-up at the girl she’s loved forever and seeing her for the first time in almost two years—inches apart without hidden hurt or secret regrets tucked between them.

They’re both breathing heavy, both affected by everything they’ve just said and everything that still needs to be said but it’s not a surprise that they hold each other’s gazes, both too stubborn to be the first to look away.

And when the eye contact becomes too much for Paige to bear, she decides she will not chicken out, will not let her trepidations hold her back this time. And she leans forward and kisses her.

They’ve kissed—a million times, probably. Maybe more. At this point, they’ve learned each other down to the last breath, the last hair on their heads. They know exactly where to put their hands, exactly how to tell what the other is feeling based off the way they move their lips, exactly what things to say in between kisses. But despite all that, this—this feels brand new. Gentle, and tentative, but excited, too, like they know it’s the mark of something different. Something better.

———————————-

A week later, when Paige appears at her doorstep with a nervous little smile and flowers to take her on their second-first date, Paige asks her about the ‘lame girly song’ she’d been playing on repeat. Azzi tells her the song is not, in fact, lame, and is actually really quite good. She doesn’t admit that she can’t listen to it anymore.

(And, because I know you’re all wondering—yes, the makeup sex was as good as Azzi’d hoped.)

[kiryoutann]

i wanted to rant about simon.

what do you think so far like what are your actual headcanons for the canon simon vs this simon from this series?

my feelings about the actual simon is quite vague. i've read far more fanfictions than bothering with the actual material so my picture of his is not really...constant? idk

but with this simon, he scares me. just to think about people that can engage in such romantic and sensual acts with little to no feeling involved.

or the mc's father. her dad makes me feel such an anger and injustice that i don't know how to express it and i know we probably won't get a satisfying update on him.

you don't like your wife fine i could understand the distance between them, but how can somebody forget their child no matter if they share the same blood or not, after all the time he raised her

leaving all that behind just to start a whole new life. how can that not eat somebody alive

OHH this is actually a good question. honestly for me, simon is probably one of the hardest character to write about because he doesn't give away too much. too calm. too know-it-all.

we're just gonna talk about the romance aspects!

but based on my head-canon of the canon simon, he has those younger years where he avoids romance, but not this actively and aggressively. it's more because he has too much on his plate (anger management issues, PTSD, depression) than because he think he's not good enough for some happiness (but he also doesn't expect/hope for it.)

canon younger (probably 6-7 years after he killed Roba) Simon lives his life without the need for things to turn out in certain ways. as he gets older (yes, the 2022/2023 ghost) and better mentally, he's become a little more open to the idea, though.

he's still not actively seeking romance, settling on one-nightstands and things that don't require any strings attached. however, he's not completely closed off to the idea too. if he has someone he likes AND TRUST (this is already a high wall to get over), he might act on it. but again, not really actively pursuing it and knows he doesn't need it.

and this might come as a surprise, but he's actually the biggest flirt out there—well, at least when it's only the two of you. when in front of his taskforce, he goes back to acting like he's the calm, collected, cool, stoic, scary lieutenant that everyone knows. can't have you ruin his reputation, right?

"it's private but not secret," with him. though it's not loud PDA, sometimes he lets his hands linger in places like your waist, your hips, shoulders. his love language is act of service, gift giving, physical touch—he makes sure to always appreciate you with compliments and love affirmations, but he's never really a man who's big on words.

WHILE THIS SIMON, hmmm.. he's a bit more complicated. and a mess. at some point, you can think of him as the younger version of canon simon we just talked about to simplify it, but even that's not really accurate considering the different ways they handle "all that sappy stuff" (as simon would say). this one actively and AGGRESIVELY avoids romance.

and while they both (my ver. of canon simon and this simon) sort to flings and one-nightstands, the canon simon is more careful and actually follows the boundaries he draws himself. while this simon outlines the boundaries, follows his rules until an interesting bird enters his orbit, violates them, and destroys them himself before he goes around saying "you read that wrong, darling."

NOW, ABOUT THE FATHER. . .

RIGHT! in my opinion, it's better for them to get a divorce actually and Dad still plays a role in MC's life rather than just leaving her. like, i know it'll still hurt the MC but, at least she can still have both of her parents even though in different houses! at least she doesn't have to feel neglected in her childhood.

okay, you hate someone you thought you would love forever, but abandoning your child? whose very existence was created because of you? talk about the Dad will come up in the sequel. hell, he'll even make an appearance with his two ballet loving new daughters. imagine how MC will feel.

sadly, this happens a lot in real life. fathers leaving and starting a new life without thinking about his "old" family. how people shame single mothers but never the absent fathers. people shame many women who have "daddy issues" or call them "fatherless" yet never call out men's incapability of being a real, PRESENT father.

[midnight-bay-if]

Crushing!ROs reactions' to the first time they see the usually-grungy MC all fancied up?

S: Their eyes wander to yours, and all movement, aside from their shaky intake of breath, stops. The fancy baubles and expensive materials are mere decorations for your magnificence, but every feeling you have ever evoked demands they bear witness to you now. You are resplendent.

They cough, averting their eyes to prevent staring. "You never fail to surprise me."

Rain: They never placed much stock in appearances. People looked the way they looked until they didn't. That's just how they saw it. Then, you walk in dressed so intricately, and they forget how to breathe. You look like a painting; breathtaking, iridescent, a masterwork. Rain itches to grab their paints and put colour to the memory, so they never forget when your eyes met theirs.

"I... I don't think there's going to be a person in this place whose eyes don't stray to you tonight..."

Taj: They don't care what you wear; they care more about how stupidly long the wait has been for you to make yourself presentable. Then, they see you, and the ache in their feet vanishes instantly, and their ears twitch as their stomach churns uneasily. Suddenly, you feel so far out of their reach that it brings them shame.

"For what it's worth," Taj states before their nerves can silence them, "I don't think you need to be fancy to turn heads... You do it well enough already. Ask me to repeat that, and you'll regret it."

N: They have waited for this moment with trepidation. You allure them well enough without needing extravagant detail, but N has always desired the finer things in life. Upon hearing of the excuse to play dress-up, N was practically flinging you into a changing room to get started.

The moment their eyes meet yours, they are besotted. Their elegant lines of clothing only accentuate what they already knew existed beneath. So much of you had been hidden before; now they see it all plainly, and it utterly seduces them. What a fool they must be.

"You are a spectacle, my dear. I hope you will stay close; I would hate to have to share you this evening."

Umbra: Clothing is practical; it has uses. They weren't aware clothing could also be a statement until you revealed yourself entirely changed. They don't understand why their ice-cold heart begins to thaw upon the sight. You are wonderful. They have thought so since your tiny hand reached for them in darkness, an outreach of kindness despite their bloodied blade.

They saw you then. They see you now. You are wonderful.

"I am afraid my darkness might cast a shadow on your shine, MC. But allow me to bask in it a moment longer, at least."

[morgannalefey]

I'm going to try one more time because I'm I dunno a glutton for punishment or something. I don't have a lot of hope, though. My impression is that most folks aren't actually reading everything I have to say and are, at best, skimming. Which, to be fair, is par for the course on this site. For this reason there's a tl;dr at the end you can jump to if you're so inclined. The rest of this post is pretty long in order to explain, but if you don't really care about the explanation and just want to be horrified, go for it.

I'm fifty nine years old. I have been married for thirty six years. Prior to that marriage, I had been with a lot of different people in the 8 years between when I became sexually active and I got my spouse. So I am not inexperienced in either sexual encounters, problems relating to sexual relations, relationships (both long and short term), nor differences in hygiene habits.

In response to your incredulity over people's learned behaviors fading over time:

Habits of childhood can be difficult to unlearn. It's possible to make an effort to change a habit, but then for other things to come up that distract and the change gets forgotten in favor of the muscle memory from childhood. There are many things that I've learned over time that are better ways to do a thing, but sometimes still forget that I've learned a better way and resort to how I originally did the thing. There are many reasons why this might happen such as distractions or having too many things to think about so my body operates on autopilot for some things. If this continues for a while, one typically loses the new habit and has to relearn the new way of doing things. Though it does tend to come back faster than the initial attempt did, it's still a conscious effort that has to be made.

Back to the main point. The assumption I'm attempting to address here is the one where everyone learns all the same basic hygiene lessons and that no one could ever have any reason for not having learned to make sure to wash their privates all the way down to and including the perineum and anal area. This assumption carries a whole lot weight. Here's a partial list of things being assumed:

That they have a parent or family member who has taught them how to clean themselves well.

That the family had water that was safe to wash thoroughly in most of the time.

That the family had the money to pay for the water bills and didn't deliberately avoid certain washing rituals because of the cost of water.

That they had present family members at all.

That they weren't living unhoused for part or most of their childhood, making washing (and especially washing the private parts) less common or safe to do because showers and such weren't always available and washing on the street could get one arrested.

This is a list of situations I can think of off the top of my head that might mean a person wasn't really taught how to clean themselves properly or that might have prevented them developing the habit. It is hardly exhaustive.

Because I recognize that people have very different lived experiences than I have had, when I'm faced with a situation like has been mentioned in this thread, I'd be more likely to just ask some questions or try to have a conversation about it. As I said before, assuming that the relationship was otherwise a good one. No one is perfect and if I threw out an entire, very good, loving, and supportive relationship because of discovering a situation in my spouse's upbringing that was weird and a little gross to me, I wouldn't still be with my spouse. If, after talking with them, it turns out that they're just a lazy, dirty person who won't even try learning a new way to exist in order to not make their partner sick, that's a completely different situation.

Now that being said, I've broken up with a guy because of how he chewed (I could not stand it, his whole family chewed like that. Even the slightest possibility of having to spend my life around those people gave me the screaming willies. Still, I did mention it to him and he was unwilling to adjust how he chewed for me. So that was it). I've broken up with guys because I couldn't stand how they smelled even after showering.

I'm not saying it's not a break up worthy offense to not keep one's privates clean for one's partner. I'd probably be far less inclined to talk to him if he were an occasional partner, not a "boyfriend" but "boyfriend" suggests a certain degree of emotional entanglement that usually means one has put some effort into the relationship. It just seems extreme to not even talk to the boyfriend about the issue to see how they respond and instead to just dump them, but maybe that can be chalked it up to my extreme old age.

tl;dr Not everyone learns exactly the same lessons about washing their privates. Basic hygiene is a skill that has to be taught, it is not instinctive. Not everyone grew up with the same resources, family, water, time, as everyone else. The term "boyfriend" seems more involved than "fuck buddy" and so taking the time to talk to the boyfriend about something that's bothersome doesn't seem like an unreasonable course of action.

[kazenehoshizora]

The Third Division cafeteria buzzed with its usual activity. Plates clattered, voices chattered, and amidst the commotion, you stood frozen, staring at an empty dessert plate. Your Mont Blanc—the one you had carefully hidden earlier—was gone.

As if on cue, Vice Captain Soshiro Hoshina strolled in, looking entirely too relaxed. Spotting you, he waved casually, then stopped mid-stride as if recalling something. "Oh, by the way, that dessert in the fridge? Damn, that was somethin' else. Didn't think I'd like chestnuts that much."

Your jaw dropped. “That was mine!”

Hoshina blinked, then winced slightly. “Ah... my bad. Didn’t have a name tag on it, so I figured it was free game.”

You glared at him, crossing your arms. "Free game?" Without another word, you turned on your heel and walked off, deciding then and there to give him the silent treatment.

-------next day --------

The cafeteria buzzed with activity, but for Vice Captain Soshiro Hoshina, there was one notable absence—your usual cheerful greetings. Over the past four days, you had mastered the art of ignoring him, and he was not enjoying it.

As the Third Division prepared for the kaiju subjugation that evening, Hoshina spotted you near the mission briefing area, double-checking your gear. With his usual laid-back grin, he approached.

“Yo, rookie! All set for tonight? Make sure ya don’t forget anythin’—wouldn’t want ya to freeze up out there.”

You didn’t even glance at him. Instead, you adjusted your helmet strap and walked away as if he didn’t exist.

Hoshina blinked, momentarily stunned before muttering under his breath, “Cold as ice. Thought we Kansai folks were supposed to be the stubborn ones.”

---

Four Days Later: The Subjugation Mission

Night had fallen, and the Third Division was fully mobilized for a large-scale kaiju subjugation. The battle was intense, but the team worked like a well-oiled machine. However, just as victory seemed within reach, the ground beneath you and Vice Captain Hoshina gave way, sending you both tumbling into an underground chamber.

Dust filled the air as rubble settled around you. Groaning, you blinked and realized you were pinned under Hoshina—his arm braced against the wall to keep from crushing you entirely. The awkward proximity made heat rise to your cheeks, but Hoshina seemed unfazed.

“Well, this ain’t ideal,” he muttered, his Kansai accent slipping into his voice as he shifted slightly.

“Operations room, this is Hoshina!” he called into his earpiece. “The attack of the other beast caused our footing to collapse, and we’ve been buried under rubble in the ○ area! There’s a possibility of secondary damage, so we’ve determined it’ll be difficult to escape by releasing our fighting forces. Please send immediate support.”

Konomi Okonogi’s voice crackled back. “Copy that, Vice Captain. Are you and the recruit injured?”

“Nah, we’re fine fer now,” he replied. “But ya might wanna hurry—this ain’t exactly comfortable.”

“I’ll dispatch reinforcements immediately,” Konomi said. “Hold tight.”

As the earpiece fell silent, Hoshina shifted again, trying to ease the pressure on your legs. “I’ll be like this for a while. If the position’s uncomfortable, don’t hesitate to tell me.”

You huffed quietly, muttering, “Ha... yes.”

Hoshina chuckled lightly, his lavender eyes glinting in the dim light. “Still givin’ me the silent treatment, huh? Four days, rookie. Gotta admit, I’m impressed by your commitment.”

You bit your lip, refusing to meet his gaze.

“C’mon,” he said, his tone softening. “Look, I’m sorry ‘bout the Mont Blanc, alright? I didn’t know it meant so much to ya.”

Still, you didn’t respond, though your silence felt less like defiance and more like hesitation. Hoshina tilted his head, his expression turning curious. “Wait… was it somethin’ special?”

Finally, you sighed, the words slipping out before you could stop them. “It wasn’t just for me. It was a gift. From the whole recruitment team. For you.”

Hoshina froze, the weight of your words sinking in. “For... me?”

You nodded, looking away. “We wanted to thank you for being such a great mentor. Everyone chipped in to get it. And you just... ate it without even knowing.”

There was a long pause before Hoshina let out a low laugh—not mocking, but warm and slightly self-deprecating. “Well, damn. Guess I really screwed up, huh?”

You didn’t answer, but your pout deepened.

“Alright, alright,” he said, his voice taking on a playful lilt. “How ‘bout this? I’ll make it up to ya. I’ll treat the whole team to somethin’ better. Or maybe I’ll bake one myself. Couldn’t be that hard, right?”

You snorted softly, unable to hide your amusement. “You? Baking? I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Hoshina smirked. “Don’t underestimate me, rookie. I’ve got plenty of skills you don’t know ‘bout yet.”

The tension between you began to ease, his lighthearted banter making the situation feel less dire. His voice dropped into a softer tone as he continued, “Y’know, for someone givin’ me the cold shoulder, you sure look cute when you’re mad. Maybe I oughta mess up more often.”

You rolled your eyes, though your cheeks flushed. “Don’t push your luck, Vice Captain.”

Hoshina shifted slightly, careful not to worsen the situation. “Alright, rookie,” he said softly, his Kansai accent thick but his tone unusually tender. “This ain’t exactly how I imagined spendin’ the night with ya, but I reckon it could be worse.”

You turned your head to avoid looking at him directly, your face flushed. “Vice Captain, now’s not the time for jokes.”

“Who said I’m jokin’?” he teased, though his lavender eyes softened. “Honestly, though… I’m sorry. Not just about the Mont Blanc. ‘Bout the whole thing. If I’d known it was somethin’ so special, I’d have guarded it like my swords. You didn’t deserve me makin’ ya feel ignored.”

You blinked, caught off guard by the sincerity in his voice. “It… It wasn’t just for me. It was from all of us.”

“I get it now,” he said, his voice dropping lower. “And I’m touched, rookie. More than you know. Y’all wanted to thank me, but here I am makin’ a mess of it. Guess I owe y’all big time, huh?”

You hesitated, your pout lingering as you muttered, “It’s not about owing us…”

Hoshina’s gaze softened further, his smirk fading into a rare, gentle smile. “Nah, it is to me. Yer one of the most dedicated recruits I’ve had the pleasure of workin’ with, ya know that? Yer silent treatment these past days—it hurt more than I thought it would. Made me realize how much I enjoy our chats, even when yer givin’ me sass.”

Your cheeks flushed, but before you could respond, he continued, his tone turning more playful again.

“Plus, ya look kinda cute when yer mad,” he drawled with a wink. “Almost makes me wanna steal more desserts just to see ya all pouty again.”

“Vice Captain!” you protested, finally meeting his gaze, though your embarrassment was evident.

He chuckled, the sound deep and warm. “Alright, alright, I’ll stop. For now. But seriously, rookie… Thanks for tellin’ me the truth. I’ll make it up to ya somehow, even if it means learnin’ to bake somethin’ better than a Mont Blanc. Think I could manage that?”

You couldn’t help but laugh softly, your annoyance starting to melt away. “I don’t think anyone would survive that experiment, Vice Captain.”

“Ya wound me, rookie,” he said dramatically, though his grin didn’t fade. “Guess I’ll stick to what I’m good at, then—swordplay and sweet talkin’ ya outta yer bad mood.”

You rolled your eyes, but the hint of a smile tugged at your lips. The atmosphere between you grew lighter, even as fatigue began to settle over you.

Hoshina noticed the way your eyelids started to droop, and his expression softened again. “Hey, don’t tell me yer driftin’ off already,” he murmured, his voice quieter now. “Ain’t exactly the best time for a nap, rookie.”

“I can’t help it…” you muttered, your voice barely above a whisper. “It’s been a long day…”

“Yeah, no kiddin’,” he replied, adjusting his position slightly to give you more support. His shoulder became your makeshift pillow, and he made no effort to move you. “Guess I’ll just sit here an’ keep ya safe till help gets here. Not like I’ve got anywhere else to be.”

The warmth in his voice made your heart flutter, but the weight of exhaustion pulled you under before you could say anything more.

Hoshina tilted his head slightly to glance at you, a rare softness overtaking his features as he watched you sleep. “Ya really know how to keep a guy on his toes, don’t ya?” he murmured.

For a moment, he let the silence linger, the chaos outside feeling worlds away. “You’re somethin’ else, rookie,” he added quietly. “An’ maybe… maybe it’s not just yer fightin’ spirit that’s got me so hooked.”

He sighed, leaning his head back against the rubble as his eyes flickered closed for a moment. “Guess I’ll just have to stick around long enough to figure out the rest, huh?”

The faint sound of distant footsteps signaled the arrival of reinforcements, but Hoshina didn’t move. Not yet. For now, he stayed still, letting you rest against him, a small, genuine smile tugging at his lips.

Hoshina smirked faintly, his voice soft as he murmured, “Guess I owe ya more than just a Mont Blanc, huh?”

[threestarsaboveclouds]

do you have a favourite celestial body?

TSAC: I hesitate to pick just one object of interest... my area of study finds me analyzing the sky as a whole, after all.

However, if I had to choose... one type of object I enjoy observing are supernova remnants. These nebulae are left behind by the collapse of a massive star, and they often exhibit very unique properties. One supernova remnant in the constellation of the Rain Deer is particularly intriguing.

The nebula is very young by astronomical standards- the supernova that created it is thought to have been recorded by astronomers of the early Green Hegemonic dynasty, before the Void Fluid Revolution. It was even bright enough to be seen during the day! This apparent disruption of the Celestial Spheres was considered quite exciting to scholars of the time.

In the present day, the corpse of the massive star that created this supernova remnant can be found in the center of the nebula as a pulsar. This dense, rapidly spinning stellar remnant is a very strong source of radio emissions, as well as x-rays and gamma radiation. This energizes the surrounding gas of the nebula and causes it to glow unusually brightly.

I enjoy listening to pulsars such as this. The tempo of their pulses is extremely stable, which makes any changes in their output very exciting. The pulsar at the center of this nebula occasionally exhibits "glitches" in its otherwise stable period of rotation. The source of this instability is unknown, but might be related to activity below the pulsar's surface. I believe the exotic matter existing inside of dense stellar remnants such as this may shed some light on the more enigmatic properties of Void Fluid, and the Void Sea by extension. I find this prospect quite exciting!

On a different note, another focus of my research is the discovery of other planetary systems orbiting distant stars. Studying the properties of these planets might help us understand our own planet's relationship to the Cycle.

In my research I have come across many potential exoplanet candidates, a portion of which are even within their Suns' habitable zones, where liquid water may exist.

One exoplanet system is of particular interest. Planetary transit analysis of the system's G-class host star has revealed at least eight planets; four gas giants and four terrestrial planets. Two of the terrestrial planets are potentially within the system's habitable zone, with spectral analysis showing one in particular has a substantial atmosphere with a considerable amount of water vapor.

Liquid water is considered essential for life, even on other planets. This distant planet could possibly be home to an array of complex alien life forms! If life does exist on this planet, I wonder if its inhabitants are bound to the Cycle as well. One can only speculate!

[ OOC: If you want to see the un-obstructed projections you can find them here! ]

[altruistichellhound]

Beastars Boyfriend Head cannons!

I’ll be doing a separate post for the shishigumi. Let me know if you want anyone added to this.

I made this as non specific and gender neutral as I could. I wanted everyone to read this and imagine themselves as whatever person/animal you see yourself as.

Legoshi

Legoshi cannot control his tail around you. Smile at him? furious wagging. Laugh in the sweetest of ways? furious wagging. Kiss him? He’s taken off like a helicopter with how fast his tail is going.

Absolutely loves being close to you! Cannot get enough of your scent, breathes it in more than the air around him.

Territorial of you, anyone looks at you and he’s pissed. Not that you can tell, or anyone else really. Isn’t outright jealous/confrontational unless you are out right disrespected. Absolutely not afraid of getting in fights for you.

When Legoshi is comfortable he will go on and on about his interests. He is so incredibly smart, especially when it comes to bugs. At this point you’re pretty much an entomologists.

Teaches you about the way of the sea and some of the seas language. (You’ll probably be pronouncing it wrong the same as him..)

At the beginning of your relationship he found it hard to communicate his feelings, not he fully able to express his wants and needs. It works very well for the both of you as he is an incredible listener.

Very oblivious…

Loves taking you on dates, especially private ones like picnics and star gazing.

You>Anything else

Louie

If you don’t come from a deer family of high value you’ll be his secret.

He might not show it with words but lord does this man love you.

Endless, and I really mean endless gifts. You offhandedly mention something you like? Oh what’s this, he bought it for you! He’s out and he sees something that reminds him of you, bought it. “Oh that’s cute!” Boom he bought it.

Secretly likes it when you give him massages. Poor man is so stressed out he needs that extra care. He wants a quiet life with you. One where he can be the beastar but come home to your little cozy home where it’s soft and quiet.

Knows you guys simply cannot exist together but pretends like it’s not reality…

Openly jealous, “I don’t like him”. Tells you when he thinks someone has bad intentions. Tries his best to protect you but sometimes it’s slightly misguided.

Acts like he needs to be the dominant one in the relationship but really likes it when you take control.

A balance of all out luxury dinners and simple little cafes you two like to frequent.

If it comes to it he would give up everything, including his relationship with his father; for you.

Gohin

Works out in front of you totally not on purpose. Flexes his muscles when you just happen to be looking at him.

Gohin is such a tease! Doesn’t matter what it is he’ll make fun of you for it. If you don’t like it he’ll tell you it was just a joke but he takes it very seriously and makes sure not to tease you like that again.

Tries his best to keep you away from his work. If you want to help he will tell you no until you persist so much he caves. While he loves you he cares about your safety more, so much training. He will run you until you colapse; he would never forgive himself if something happened to you.

Tea after training/work. He enjoys making you two a drink then sitting and talking about your day between sips.

Even if it doesn’t feel like it I promise you he listens. If he is busy or stressed he will respond with simple, hmm and mhms. However, he heard everyone word and won’t forget what you’ve told him.

At first he’s an awkward kisser, but he’s a quick learner and you’ve never had a better kisser in your life.

You remain the light of his life.

Bill

Childish. Not necessarily a bad thing but sometimes you want to beat him with a stick.

PDA to the max, you’re his and he’s yours. Why shouldn’t the people know? Hold his hand and steal quick kisses please.

Not the best at planning things but he’ll try his best. His goal is to make you happy and have something that will last.

Doesn’t really think about a serious future that much. Not that he doesn’t want to be with you, just that he hasn’t planned ahead enough to really put thought into marriage and a possible family.

This man makes you late to almost everything. Unless it’s the club, he is not on time.

You basically aren’t ever not laughing. He loves to see you smile and squirm around while you laugh so hard your stomach starts to hurt. Surprisingly his jokes are actually funny and land quite well.

All his friends know you very well, all he does is brag about how amazing and hot you are.

Jack

The sweetest man to have ever existed.

Had a crush on you for thee longest time before he either got the courage to talk to you or you finally went up to him.

Wants you to be happy, in his mind he can never do enough for you. He doesn’t want you to be happy, he needs it. If you are sad or angry he tries his darnedest to make cheer you up in a way that suits you the best. Listening, taking you out, leaving you alone, really whatever you need he will give.

Snores. Not loud though, sweet little snores and huffs throughout the night. At this point you can’t sleep without hearing him.

Always smells weirdly good. Like it’s unnatural how he always smells the same and it’s never bad. He could sprint three miles and still smell insanely good. When asked about it he just shrugs.

Constantly blushing! He can’t help it around you, doesn’t matter how long you’ve been together.

Collot

You trim his bangs. He lets you but in all honestly doesn’t trust you after you cut them way too short last time. He won’t tell you that though.

Suspiciously calm, makes him a good listener but sometimes it’s frustrating when he doesn’t get mad with you.

Speaking of anger he hasn’t really gotten mad with you. Maybe a few spats here and there but he has never once raised his voice at you.

Worst sleeper in the world! Moved, kicks, loud sleeper, talks. How did he kick you in the face? You don’t know and neither does he. Scares the crap out of you, “He’s coming.” You proceed to violently shake him until he wakes up and reassures you back to sleep.

Really likes playing video games with you or just doing things quietly next to each other.

Riz

Tries his very best to control himself around you after what happened. Really doesn’t matter to him what species you are he’s constantly afraid of hurting you. Cannot let go of you even if he’s afraid.

You on the other hand aren’t afraid of him. He told you what happened and you understood him. He would never hurt you, or so you think.

Protective as hell. Does not matter who it is no one will ever get to you.

Practically worships you. Would kiss the ground you walk on if he could. Lives to serve you, you want something it’s already been done.

Constant cuddles, he always wants to be the big spoon unless he’s sad. Being around you makes him feel powerful knowing in that moment you are untouchable. When you hold him he feels vulnerable, he hasn’t decided if he’s okay with that feeling yet but he knows that it feels good to be the one being protected for once.

Really likes cooking with you and for you.

Pina

Best way to describe him is annoying, but in the best way possible.

Can, and will, talk your ears off. Constantly yapping about something and expects you to listen. He’s offended if you ask him to give you even a second of silence.

Really loves it when you touch his horns.

Best lashes in the room, better than you and he will constantly brag about this. He tells you he’s joking (he’s not).

He’s just a little bit of a freak, “Eat me.” Doesn’t matter if you’re a carnivore or not. “What the hell Pina?” You can’t tell if he’s being serious…

He knows absolutely everything about you. Some things you didn’t even know about yourself! Not only does he know you but he knows everyone else. Tells you all the best gossip and keeps you up to date with rumors even if you don’t care.

Definitely needs someone to keep up with him.

Melon

Crazy but that’s okay!

Would kill someone if you asked him to. Neighbor pissed you off? Gone. Boss is being a dick? Gone. You tend to abuse this fact.

Okay he does not know how to express his love for you. He’s not even sure if what he’s feeling his love. He knows he oddly doesn’t want to hurt you but is that love? Who knows he’s just going with it.

This relationship is pretty much the definition of playing with fire.

You get to see such a different side to him, quiet and maybe even a little soft. Sad maybe? Is it an act? You don’t know but you’ve decided it’s okay not knowing you. Even when you have that nagging feeling that you should care.

Potentially likes you so much because you are very similar to him.

Won’t ever tell you or anyone this but he likes it when you hold him. He also enjoys that you aren’t afraid of his fangs. Will bite you if you let him.

Would both love and hate you even more if you were a hybrid.

Gosha

Biggest softy with you. Would do absolutely anything for you, to him, you are nothing less than the universe.

Thinks you are the most wonderful thing to have ever graced this world. He loves to show you it too. Random gifts, always brings you fresh flowers before your last ones die.

Evening walks are the best with him. As the sun turns the clouds orange and pink he’ll tell you about his adventures as a youth and his previous dreams of becoming the beastar.

The best support you’ll ever have. He whole heartedly believes that you can do anything you set your heart to. Encouraging your passions and making sure whatever you need to meet your goals is there for you to use.

You’ve never felt so safe than right by his side, and rightfully so. No one would even think to mess with you with him around.

Everyone knows you too are together, he’s made sure of that the way he runs around bragging about you.

Yahya

Tries his best to keep you and work separate. This is not only for your safety for also for him. He never expected or wanted a relationship because of his goals but when he saw you he just couldn’t let you go.

Manages balancing you and protecting the world pretty well. Though, he is in fact just a man like everyone else.

Missed dinners often which turns into arguments which ends in mutual apologies and making up.

He is so tired. Needs you to rub his shoulders and lightly scratch his back.

Can’t really sleep but if you tell him stories or hum softly while playing with his mane he knocks right out.

Keeps you out of the public eye because he knows that if he didn’t you’d have a target on your back. Constant security watching you from afar.

Makes sure to provide a good life for you first and foremost, but also is very focused on changing the world. It is a relationship based on understanding on both ends. Compromises have been made.

You are the closest thing to his heart and constantly on his mind.