#but like. it is crazy. to say. ik you’ve been making a little less than 3k a month for the last 3 years

[ghostzzy]

like i understand that this is how jobs work and at basically any moment anybody’s employment can be terminated with no promise of severance (especially in florida) but it is kind of nuts to be like. “yeah so you have 2 weeks to figure out what you’re gonna do about the fact that you now make half as much money as you did before. teehee”

[theragethatisdesire]

dall'inizio - eren x reader, 18+!!!!

welcome back to the ti penso universe everyone!!!! this is a continuation/prequel of the little series we've followed from my first eren x reader fic. i was really interested to see how they met and ....unsurprisingly, it's a one night stand that doesn't turn out as planned. this one is also super fun because we get to hear from both eren AND reader alternatively, plus reader is a confident, bad bitch and we love that for her. this one goes out to @philliam-writes bc ik you love this eren as much as i do!!!!!! here's ur part 3 bestie >:)

if you'd like to catch up and meet our eren x reader, find them here:

(1) ti penso ogni giorno

(2) nel bene e nel male

pairing: eren x afab reader

wc: 6.7k

DISCLAIMER: this post contains MATURE CONTENT that is intended only for those over 18. if you are a minor, please do not read below the cut.

CWs: smut (duh), consensual hook-up, rough sex, biting, dirty talk, oral sex (fem!receiving), alcohol/drug use (just weed nothing crazy), cussing, penetrative vaginal sex, swearing, use of names (baby), crying, multiple orgasms, eren being a lovestruck idiot (and so are you if you're being honest)

title (as always) means "from the beginning" in italian i'm obsessed with them <3

-

“You look like a whore,” Ymir says bluntly, dragging her eyes over your outfit– or, lack thereof.

“It’s not that bad,” you wave her off, turning back to the mirror to tug at the hem of your little black slip. You do look like a whore, but it’s intentional. You haven’t gotten laid in three months– your friends have been calling you dramatic, but that’s a lot, okay? You’re in college, you’re supposed to sleep around, right?

On top of that, your last few situationships just haven’t quite…well, they weren’t bad, but they didn’t scratch the itch. You desperately need a fuck– not just a fuck, a good fuck, and you have a feeling tonight’s going to be the night. It’s Halloween, the international holiday for running around in basically zero clothes, and you’ve taken great care to adhere to that tradition.

“Are you a mouse?” Historia wrinkles her nose at you from her spot at the vanity in the corner. She’s in a dalmatian costume; cute, spotted ears sticking up from her blonde hair, blue collar tinkling when she cocks her head at you.

“I’m a fucking cat,” you mutter, drawing a black triangle of eyeliner on the tip of your nose, “I didn’t have time for a real costume.”

“She just wants to get laid,” Mikasa announces, pushing through the studio apartment door with a huff, arms laden with plastic bags that are making a tell-tale clinking sound, “it’s been like, two whole weeks.”

“Three months!” You correct her, defensive.

“I understand,” Ymir, appropriately dressed as Cruella de Vil, grins, “it’s been…what, Stor? Two hours?”

“Ymir!” Historia, scandalized, flushes a furious red. Both you and Mikasa are unphased; in the last four months they’ve been together, the three feet they’re sitting from one another now is the farthest apart you’ve seen them.

“I’m not a whore,” you turn around, hands on hips, “I just…it’s been awhile since I had good sex. Floch was–”

“The worst?” Mikasa finishes for you. You hate how well she knows you; even after less than two years of knowing each other, she can practically read your mind.

“Yeah, you may have mentioned that once or twice,” Historia turns back to the mirror, immediately disinterested. “Or a thousand times.”

You throw your hands up, turning back to the mirror to finish your whiskers. “So none of you can blame me.”

“While you two,” Mikasa points between Ymir and Historia accusingly, “have been screwing like rabbits, and you,” her black-painted fingernail finds its way to you, “have been trying to figure out how to sleep with half of Manhattan, I took the liberty of actually making plans for us.”

“Jean’s?” You raise a knowing eyebrow at her, grateful to put someone else in the hot seat for the night. Mikasa’s cheeks tinge pink. Busted.

“He’s throwing a party, yeah,” she answers slowly, trying to talk her way around her obvious attraction to him, “but it’s not those douchebags he usually hangs out with. My best friend from home, Eren, just got into town, and,” she looks at you pointedly, “some of his friends are actually cute.”

You’re unconvinced. “Pictures?”

“You’ll have to wait and see,” Mikasa bites her lip mischievously, “but if you take a few tequila shots with me, I might be persuaded to show you one or two.”

You’re dubious. Mikasa’s definitely shown you a photo of these guys before, and you don’t remember a standout in the lineup. This Eren character, however…Mikasa has a framed picture on her bedside nightstand of them in high school, and you remember him being sort of cute. Dark, short-cropped hair, big green eyes so wide and earnest that he almost reminded you of a movie character. That picture was three or four years old now so…who knows? Maybe he’d grown into his features.

“Eren’s a no-go, though,” Mikasa continues, knowing your exact train of thought of course, pouring out shots of lukewarm, cheap tequila. Your stomach gurgles in protest at the smell as you accept yours. “He’s a nightmare to women, trust me.”

“Who knows,” Ymir pipes up, nodding her head towards you, “she’s a nightmare to men, so.”

“I am not a nightmare,” you narrow your eyes, “I just don’t like to be tied down, that’s all.”

“You’ll have to be at some point,” Historia argues, smiling when Ymir slips a hand into hers. You wrinkle your nose, uninterested.

“It’s 2018, Stor, not very feminist of you,” you tut, throwing back your shot and practically choking it down. Ick.

“I’m a lesbian, how much more feminist can I get?”

“Touché.”

“Just promise me you won’t get wrapped up with him?” Mikasa eyes you, still not trusting the glint of curiosity in your eye.

Ymir crosses her arms over her chest. “Are you positive you like Jean and not this Eren dude?”

Mikasa makes a fake retching sound. “Eren’s practically my brother. I’ve seen his bare ass more times than I can count. Way past the attraction threshold, trust me. I just…I know him. And I know you,” she glares at you, “it’s a toss-up as to who would do more damage to the other.”

“I’ll behave,” you placate her, throwing your arms around her shoulders, “…maybe.”

-

Eren might puke. No, wait, he’s going to puke– oh, no, just an unbelievably loud burp. Eren smiles contentedly, feeling much better even as it stinks up the entire taxi. Connie leans over Armin, scrunches his nose and squints his eyes.

“That fucking reeks, dude!”

“Sorry,” Eren shrugs, turning his head back to the window and ignoring Armin and Connie’s complaints. They were all a few beers deep- what did they expect? 

Eren’s lived a few hours outside of New York City all his life, but he’s never been, except maybe once or twice for field trips as a kid. He never remembered it looking like this, though: each little apartment twinkled like a star, giving the wall of skyscrapers the appearance of the night sky. Even as the cab screeches and jerks in the Lower West Side traffic, Eren feels like he’s in a spaceship, free and flying amongst the stars. 

Maybe he could talk to Zeke, convince him to move their little operation out of their garage and into the city. There was money here, right? And plenty of musicians who weren’t quite good enough to get signed by any major labels…

“Mikasa says she and her friends will be over in five,” Armin squints at his phone screen, holding it far away from him like an old man to type a response. Eren nearly rolls his eyes.

“Would you just get some fucking glasses already?”

“Annie said they made me look nerdy,” Armin shrugs. Connie groans.

“You two broke up like, a year ago–”

“Six months,” Armin corrects him, eyes growing sadder by the second.

“Okay, six months, whatever, we’ve got to get you laid tonight, dude.”

Eren lets the two slip into an argument about the “appropriate amount of time” to wait to sleep with someone after a breakup, much preferring his unusually contemplative mood to Connie and Armin’s bickering after their four-hour train ride together. He smiled to himself; God, it would be good to see Mikasa again. He wouldn’t have admitted it at gunpoint, but she was practically his mom growing up, and she’d been gone for over a year, only visiting for Christmas. Rumor had it that she’d been spending a lot of time with Jean as of late, so he needed to see what that was all about, too.

And who had Eren been spending a lot of time with lately? No one but bar rats and slim pickings from the frat parties at Trost University near his hometown. When was the last time he’d even gotten laid? A month? Two? Her name had been Jenna…no, Jenny? Josephina? Fuck, he should remember that. Eren needs to get laid, regardless, but if he dares to step near any of Mikasa’s friends, she’ll kill him, he knows that from experience. Then again, maybe this weird-ass Jean situation would come in handy. If Mikasa ends up distracted…

“Excuse me!” Armin disturbs his thoughts once again; Eren scowls. “Excuse me, sir? I think we’re here.”

Eren pays for the cab. Armin had bought the train tickets and the chain-gang costumes they were all currently sporting, and Connie was always flat broke, insisting his music career would work out soon. That could be Eren’s fault, though: Connie was one of his and Zeke’s first “clients”. None of them even bothered keeping up with the money exchanged between each other anymore; Connie had been in their kindergarten class, Armin’s mom had changed all of their diapers, Mikasa’s parents were the “cool parents” that let them smoke weed in the backyard, Jean’s mom made the best potato salad. They were a little family, separated by life and college at the moment, but a family all the same. Eren felt a little tingle of appreciation in his stomach as they climbed the stairs to Jean’s walk-up.

“Jaeger!” Jean was dapping him up and smacking a fist against his back before Eren could even properly look around the dark apartment.

“Kirstein,” Eren returns his embrace and has to shout over the music, suddenly smacked with a wave of homesickness at the familiar smell of weed and Jean’s tacky Hugo Boss cologne.

“Make yourself at home, dude,” Jean’s nearly inaudible over the thumping house music. He’s got some stupid mummy costume on that exposes his lean stomach, basically just shirtless and wrapped in toilet paper. Eren stifles a laugh, looking around the apartment for any other familiar faces.

Reiner approaches him next, a goofy, drunken grin splitting his face wide open, tackling Eren in a bear hug. Most of the greetings go like that; I miss you! How are you? How’s the business? Are you still in Shiganshina? It makes Eren’s chest tight, makes him miss the closeness of the people he loves. He was just always fucking working, helping Zeke with paperwork, running around town talking to clients, pulling at his face late at night looking over the finances of everything. He feels wound up, ready to burst, but the blunt and beer Bertholdt just handed him should fix that, at least somewhat. He needs…fuck, he needs to get laid.

His eyes search the room, looking for the one person he’s looking most forward to seeing, but he doesn’t find Mikasa where he expects.

She’s perched on Jean’s lap, giggling over her drink as Jean waves his arms wildly, telling her a story. That bizarre sight only holds Eren’s gaze for a moment, though, because there you are beside her, grinning wickedly with one of those stupid vapes between your teeth.

Eren stops dead in his tracks, speechless. Where do they even make women like that? He goes bottom to top, letting himself be impressed with how well you’re balancing on those high heels, ravishing every naked inch of your exposed legs until he reaches the hem of– fuck, is that just lingerie? Whatever little black thing you’re wearing, it makes his heart race, makes his pants tight. It’s low-cut in the chest enough to tease, a little collar around your neck, and your face…even your face makes him hard, so beautiful in the low lighting, eyes glimmering. You look evil and fun and sexy all at once, and Eren’s sold within the first ten seconds of seeing you.

Before he can make a beeline in your direction, he realizes he’s taken his gaze off of Mikasa and Jean long enough for them to approach him, Mikasa throwing her arms around his neck.

“Eren!” She squeals in his ear, clearly already drunk. Eren chuckles, trying to rein himself in enough to hold a stable conversation. The little black dress flashes behind his eyes as he smiles down at Mikasa.

“Hey Mika,” he ruffles her hair, making Mikasa grumble and reach towards her head to right what he’s ruined. His eyes wander back to you; you’re watching him too, sizing him up. He wonders if you like what you see, pulls at the zipper of his orange jumpsuit to inch it down, reveal some of his stomach. Eren’s not conceited per se, but he spends an unhealthy amount of time in the gym, and he knows it shows. As your gaze travels down to where he holds his zipper, Eren can’t look away, knows it must be obvious that he’s distracted.

“Bro,” Jean snaps his fingers in front of Eren’s eyes, looking over his shoulder to see what Eren’s staring at. He turns back with a smirk. “Yeah?”

Fuck, now Mikasa’s looking off in the same direction, returning her eyes to him with a scowl. Drunk or not, she never fails to scare the shit out of him. “No. No fucking way, Eren.”

“What?” Eren sips his beer innocently, shrugging. He was only staring…for now.

“She’s my best friend, Eren, no,” Mikasa says, firmer this time.

“Thought I was your best friend?”

“Didn’t she just break things off with Floch like…” Jean trails off at the withering glare Mikasa shoots him, turning red.

“She’s off-limits.” Eren nods, her words going in one ear and out the other. Mikasa’s scolded him before, and she won’t stop anytime soon, so what’s one more? She can read his mind, evidently, because she reaches up and pinches his cheek, yanking him down to her level.

“Ow!”

“Off. Fucking. Limits.” Mikasa seethes. “Do you hear me?”

“Yeah, yeah I- fuck, let go! I hear you Mika,” Eren rubs his sore cheek, frowning. He can see you laughing at him, eyes barely visible over the edge of your drink. Great, Eren thinks; getting a talking-to from Mikasa like a child was not the first impression he wanted to give you.

Mikasa’s grabbing Jean’s hand and pulling him back towards the crowd, presumably to play guard dog for you, but before she can get him too far, Jean leans back towards Eren, cups a hand around his mouth.

“She’s single, bro,” Jean manages to get out before Mikasa pulls harder, “go for it!”

Eren grins. If Mikasa wanted to bite his head off for this, now he could blame it on Jean. What the hell was he supposed to say to you, though? You’re leagues above the girls he’s been pursuing. If Eren’s honest with himself, he’s intimidated by you, but his only solution is to throw some more of his beer back for liquid courage. He’s always loved a challenge.

When he pulls the cup away from his face, you’ve appeared in front of him, smiling demurely and nearly making him jump out of his skin.

“Hi.” 

-

The second you saw him, you were hooked. He was gorgeous, dark hair pulled into a little half-bun on the back of his head, pretty eyes, and tall and broad to boot. He was almost stern-looking, dark eyebrows shielding his eyes. Dark and mean, just the way you like them.

Mikasa had given him a massive hug, interrupting the clear eye-fucking you were engaged in across the room; so that was Eren? Her long-lost best friend that was always too busy to visit? The happy kid from the picture? You watched her scold him, giggling to yourself at how childlike he became, crumbling under Mikasa’s pinch and pouting when she let him go.

You had no choice, really. Your promise to Mikasa had flown out of your mind the moment you saw those full lips pursed around the blunt, blowing out a puff of smoke, stretching into a wide, dangerous smile. You’re an only child and admittedly, a bit spoiled, so when you want something, you get it.

“Hi,” you can’t manage anything more clever, not face to face with his bare chest. Jean’s apartment is stuffy, and you catch the gleam of sweat on his chest in the LED lighting. You lick your lips.

“Hi,” Eren responds stiffly, looking as surprised as if you’d just punched him in the gut.

“You’re Eren, right? Mikasa’s friend?”

Eren hits his blunt again, nods slowly. “I don’t think we’ve met though, you’re…?”

You give him your name. He smiles and repeats it, rolling it around on his tongue and getting a taste for it. You can already see little hearts in his eyes, it makes you grin to yourself. You had expected him to put up more of a fight; there’s a dozen girls in this room alone that would fall all over themselves to get him in bed, but he’s enraptured by you, eyes never leaving your face. You’ve got him. 

“A cat, huh?” Eren addresses the costume, dipping his head in the direction of the little black ears on your head. You’re suddenly embarrassed, feeling a bit silly.

“I, uh, didn’t really have time to shop,” you shrug, pulling at the hem of your dress. Eren’s mouth quirks up. “A prisoner?”

“Yeah, I didn’t get to pick. I like yours, though, it fits you.”

You cock an eyebrow at him. “A cat fits me?”

“Yeah,” Eren says, growing surer by the second, “I don’t know. Just fits. S’cute.”

You’re embarrassed by the giddy flutter in your stomach. God, he’s delicious. “You think I’m cute?”

“I think lots of things about you,” Eren replies, voice low and sultry and hardly audible over the music. His eyes widen like he hadn’t exactly meant to say that out loud, but it’s too late now. You grin, all teeth and bad intentions.

“We just met,” you point out. Eren’s confidence has returned, he boldly brings a hand to the spaghetti strap of your dress. His fingers are hot– why do men always run so hot? His touch almost burns.

“You wore this,” he rubs the fabric between his fingers, “and expect me not to have a few thoughts on it? Wasn’t that the point?”

The breath leaves your lungs. Your confidence fizzles at the same rate as your arousal grows. There are plenty of hot guys here, but you might have jumped into the deep end with this one. Something flickers in his eyes, something hungry.

“Why don’t you tell me about these thoughts of yours?”

“I will,” Eren nods, sucking his bottom lip between his teeth, “later.”

“Later?”

“We’re at a party,” Eren takes the empty cup from you, replacing it with his own, much larger hand, “shouldn’t we at least dance a little?”

Before you can argue, he’s pulling you out into the center of Jean’s obnoxiously spacious living room, into a jungle of sweaty, gyrating bodies. You’re close enough to the speakers now that the bass pounds through your body to the same rhythm as your heart thudding in your chest. The crowded, makeshift dance floor pushes you into Eren, skin against skin. You have a fleeting moment to be grateful that you’re likely now obscured from Mikasa’s view before a pair of strong hands around your hips prevent any more conscious thoughts from taking shape in your brain.

“One of my thoughts,” Eren’s right beside your ear now, voice echoing in your brain, “is that I like you. Like this body.”

“T-thank you,” you stammer out, wanting to facepalm at not only your stupidly simple response, but the weakness in your voice.

“Move it for me.”

You obey him, letting your body move with the music, trying not to get too caught up in whether or not you look ridiculous with how you’re pressing your body into his, arms thrown around his neck. Eren seems to like the way you move on him, pushing and pulling your hips in the rhythm you’ve set, looking down his nose at you with bloodshot eyes.

Your panties are growing wetter by the second; he’s intoxicating, the feel of him against you, firm and tacky with sweat. His hands are tracing up your sides, dragging slowly as if he’s memorizing the curves of your body. You haven’t known him long enough to want him the way that you do, humiliated by the carnal desire simmering in the pit of your stomach, but you’ve had enough tequila not to care. The whole thing is too similar to what you really want, and you make it through a solid seven or eight songs before you can’t take the stifling tension between the two of you any longer, thick enough to cut with a knife.

You lean up on the tips of your toes, wobbling in your heels, and grab him tight around the neck, pulling him to you. Your lips finally meet; Eren’s slow to respond as you’ve caught him off guard, but he catches on quickly, lips falling open so you can kiss him deeper. His lips are softer than you expect, supple and giving as they move with yours. You trace your tongue through his teeth, hardly suppressing a whine. He tastes good, like cheap beer and weed and lust. You drink him in, a satisfied hum buzzing in your chest.

Without warning, Eren practically rips you off of him. “Not here.”

He’s dragging you through the people around you, knocking them out of the way and not stopping to apologize when he gets offended looks. He pulls you into what you know to be Jean’s room, wastes no time in shoving you up against the door and blocking you in with his wide shoulders.

You swallow hard; you’ve underestimated him.

“Another one of my thoughts,” Eren mouths at the area beneath your ear, makes you groan, “is that you’re pretty. Like, very fucking pretty. Bet you’re twice as pretty under this dress.”

“I think you’re pretty, too,” you manage to say, forcing the words from your mouth. Eren chuckles, smiling against the shell of your ear.

“C’mere,” he tilts your chin up, kissing you again. It’s troublingly gentle, long and languid as your mouths move against one another. He kisses you like he loves you; the thought makes alarm bells ring in your head, and you nip at his bottom lip to break up the emotional momentum, sink your teeth into it. Eren pulls back, chuckling down at you. “You’re mean.”

“Only a little.”

“Is that what you like?” Eren thumbs at your mouth, slipping his finger between your lips. You suck greedily, rubbing your tongue against the roughness of his fingertip. “Like it a little mean? Between you and me, I like ‘em a little mean, too.”

You nod, gently biting on his thumb. Eren groans, a low rumble deep in his chest. “Oh, I’m going to have fun with you.”

He’s pulling your dress over your head before you can stop him, sucking in a sharp breath when he gets an eyeful of your lace-clad breasts, the tiny thong you’ve slipped over your hips. Stronger than you’d expected, Eren pulls you up to wrap your legs around his waist, slamming your back against the door with a loud thud and knocking your stupid cat ears to the floor. You can hear a few sounds of surprise from outside; surely that got a few people’s attention, but you’re lost in him, whimpering at the feel of his jumpsuit costume rubbing against your clothed center.

Eren’s sloppy, placing open-mouthed kisses down your neck, pausing to suck a bruise underneath your ear. You gasp, canting your hips into his stomach, desperate for friction. You’re normally not so uninhibited, but Eren’s doing something to your head, has your mind spinning. He’s carrying you over to the bed, dropping you down onto Jean’s sheets. Eren leans down to pull your heels off, a sweet gesture if you could find the presence of mind to acknowledge it. You feel a flicker of guilt about doing this in Jean’s bed, but when Eren starts sliding a hand up your thigh, it flickers away into nothing, swallowed by your bottomless want. 

“Look at that,” Eren smirks, rubbing his fingers over your panties, “soaked. This all for me?”

“Mhm,” you whine, hips jerking up towards his touch. It is for him, it was from the moment you laid eyes on him, and you both know it. His hands are everywhere: unclasping your bra, pulling your panties down, palming at your tits. You arch your back up to him, offering him your chest; he responds by closing down on one of your nipples with his teeth.

“So pretty,” Eren’s murmuring around the mouthful of your flesh he’s got, twisting the neglected nipple of your right breast between his fingers, “so pretty.”

“Eren,” you sigh, running your fingers through his hair, pulling it out of its bun and wrapping the hair band around your wrist. His mouth is hot, scalding, even, but you pull him closer to you anyway, pressing his face into your tits. Eren doesn’t seem to mind, letting you move him this way and that, show him what you like and how to pull those pretty moans out of your mouth. Before long, he’s kissing his way down your stomach, hands gripping your hips like a lifeline.

“Want a taste,” Eren sounds more like he’s talking to himself than to you, “need to taste this pussy.”

“Eren,” you reach for his hair, trying to pull him back up to you. While you’d love to see what the mouth that had just kissed you breathless could do between your legs, the thumping music outside is an annoying but consistent reminder that there’s an entire party outside and you’re in Jean’s bedroom. The clock’s ticking. “Want to feel you, we don’t have time for–”

“Don’t have time?” Something wicked lights Eren’s face up as he shimmies your panties down your legs. “Believe me, it won’t take long.”

“Eren,” your protest is feeble but earnest, and you make another attempt to reach for him when a long, thick lick up your center renders you near-unconscious. You moan, a little louder than you would have liked to.

“See? Gonna make you feel so good, trust me,” Eren’s punctuating each word with a little kiss somewhere on your pussy: your clit, your lips, right over your fluttering entrance. You have no choice but to whimper and nod, canting your hips up towards him. You look down, immediately regretting it: Eren’s wiggled out of his costume, naked and beautiful and staring up at you from between your legs. You’re hardly able to swallow the inhuman sound that threatens to rip from your throat.

Where he’d been cool and calculated pulling you onto the dance floor, you quickly learn that Eren eats pussy like he can’t control himself, like his life depends on it. His massive hands wrap around the tops of your thighs, securing you against his face as you try to squirm away. He licks into you enthusiastically, moaning against you at the taste, sending a succession of vibrations through you that go straight to the fire in your stomach.

When his lips close around your clit and suck hard, you have to slap a hand over your mouth to stop a wail from reaching the ears right outside the door. Eren takes the opportunity to sneak a finger into you, curl it right against that gummy spot in your walls that has you seeing stars. As he works his finger in your cunt, he kisses his way back up to your mouth, greeting you with a sloppy kiss.

“Feels good, right?” Eren’s face is literally dripping with you, a sharp-toothed grin barely visible in the dim light.

“Feels good,” you whimper, daring to look down to where he’s grinding his palm against your clit. You can see the veins of his muscular arm straining as he pumps in and out of you; it’s a lewd sight, one that makes your head spin. “‘S so much Eren, I— fuck.”

“Yeah?” Eren’s smile grows darker, another finger slips into you easily. You’re practically dripping onto the sheets at this point, rolling your hips against his hand with your mouth hanging open. It’s humiliating but too gratifying to stop. “Gonna cum for me? You can do it, give it to me.”

“God– close, so c-close,” you can barely find the words to respond, the pressure in your belly swelling at an alarming speed. You’re going to squirt, you know you are, should move off of Jean’s bed or warn Eren or do something, but it’s too late.

You thrash in Eren’s grip, cumming so hard you think you can taste blood where you bite your lip. You can feel the wetness spraying from you, soaking Eren’s hand and the sheets and your inner thighs, can distantly hear your pitiful cries, but you’re powerless to do anything about it until the mind-numbing orgasm’s run its course. Eventually you do settle, babbling incoherently into Eren’s shoulder about Jean’s ruined sheets, about how you’re sorry for making a mess. Eren shuts you up with his mouth on yours; you can hear the distant rip of a condom wrapper.

“You’re so fucking perfect,” he laughs, rolling on top of you and lining himself up, “gonna have to keep you.”

Before you can even think to offer to return the favor or make a sarcastic remark about how you’d never let anyone keep you, Eren’s pressing into you, and your mind short-circuits. Shit, maybe you’d let him keep you.

You hadn’t gotten a good look at him in the darkness, but he’s big, bigger than you’ve ever had before, and big enough that you realize this when he’s not even halfway in.

“Eren…it’s so– s’big,” you hiccup into his shoulder, fingernails clawing into his biceps.

“Is it too much, baby?” You hate pet names, hate them, but from the greek god splitting you open right now, you love it, want to lick the word right out of his mouth and taste it on your own tongue. The genuine concern glittering in his eyes, the little furrow between his brows as he pauses, frowns down at you, fuck, you might be in love.

“No, not too much– feels good.”

Eren’s grin is feral. “Yeah? Tell me.”

“Feels so fucking good,” a little giggle sneaks out from your clenched jaw, Eren smiles wider and cups your face to kiss you again, far too gently to match the way he’s stretching you, bullying your cunt into the shape of him.

“Feel full?”

“Mhm,” he’s bottomed out now, impossibly deep, and you give him a little roll of your hips to show him just how okay you are, that you’re ready to see what he can really do.

“You’ve got–” Eren rolls his hips experimentally, punches a moan from your chest– “the best fucking pussy. So tight for me.”

Ordinarily, dirty talk makes you cringe, but something about the way he words things, as raw as if his inner monologue is spilling out of him, turns you on, makes your cunt clench down around him. That makes him happy, he sucks in a breath of air and starts pounding into you hard enough to make tears well in your eyes, hard enough to make you squeal in a way no one else ever has.

“Taking me so fucking well, baby,” Eren’s hands are grabbing your face, his lips pressing into your forehead, “never gonna let this pussy go.”

You grant him a long moan of agreement, so cockdrunk that for now, you’re more than happy to sign your freedom away to stay in this bed, pinned underneath him for all of eternity. He’s fucking into you so deep he’s practically in your throat; your breath comes out in short little huffs, choking on the brutal pace of his fucking. And god, he’s so big, but you’re taking him somehow, like you were made for it.

Eren moves one of his hands away from his face to swat your fingers away from where you’re digging into his arms, surely close to drawing blood.

“Fucking hurts,” he hisses, “just as mean as you are pretty, y’know that?”

He easily manhandles your arms above your head, pinning them above you by your wrists. The way he stretches his body to do so changes the angle he’s fucking into you at; now he’s hammering into the spot inside of you he’d found far too quickly with his fingers. Your eyes shoot open at the change, and Eren doesn’t miss it. He smirks.

“Right there?”

“God, yes, please– right there,” you sound pathetic, the few surviving rational brain cells you possess are laughing at you, but there’s no help for it. He’s already got you spiraling towards cumming again, the wetness from your cunt creating a sucking sound where he’s moving in and out of you.

“Fuck, m’close. Think you can cum again for me?”

“Yes,” you breathe, tilting your head up to nip at his neck, a tear or two running down into your hairline. You can do anything he asks, you think, anything in the world just for him, for how he’s making you feel. Eren practically growls, pistoning his hips faster.

“Need you to cum for me, okay beautiful? Cum right now.”

“S-so close– I– Eren, oh my god,” you’re babbling, eyes rolling back into your head. Eren smashes his lips to yours, grinding his hips into your clit and shoving you over the edge for the second time that night. You sob and convulse around him, back arching desperately and pressing your chests together. You’re seeing stars as he fucks you through it, grunting in your ear and growing sloppy as you tighten around him.

“Fuck!” Eren bites into your shoulder, hard enough to bruise, stilling his hips as deep inside you as he can manage. Your fucked-out brain wants the condom off, wants to feel the full warmth of him as he cums inside of you, grinding his hips against yours. Before he’s finished, Eren moves back to your mouth, kissing you deep and slow, a kiss that means a whole lot more than what you’ve just done together as a party rages just past the door.

As you’re panting beneath him, trying to ground yourself and come back to reality, Eren rolls off of you, whips the condom off, and to your surprise, takes you into his arms, pulls your head to his chest.

“You okay?”

You’re so blissed out right now that it’s a laughable question, and you giggle, watery and light into his chest. “More than okay.”

Eren laughs at that, a real laugh from deep in his stomach. The sound of it makes something warm and happy spark in your chest. “That good, huh?”

“You’re alright.” You’re trying to keep your eyes open, more than aware that your teeny tiny thong is on the floor and you’re naked in the arms of a stranger in Jean’s fucking bed, but Eren’s so warm, so comfortable, your eyes are fluttering despite your protests. 

“Oh?” Eren’s voice raises in pitch, gets breathy. “Yes, Eren! Right there, Eren! I’m cumming, Eren!”

“Oh my god, shut up!” You smack at his chest, cheeks burning, but you make no move to roll away from him, preferring your snug little hovel against him to the loud, smoky party that awaits you should you leave.

“S’okay,” Eren presses a kiss to your hairline, “I like that you’re loud.”

“Not loud,” you grouch, resolving to let yourself enjoy just a few minutes of keeping your eyes closed before you return to the party. The last thing you remember is Eren humming, tracing circles into your shoulders with his fingers. You think you recognize the tune; it’s a love song.

–

“Jaeger!”

“Oh my god, oh my fucking god, is that Jean? What time is it? Eren!”

Eren’s first peaceful sleep in months is disturbed rather rudely, in his opinion; he shields his eyes from the brightness of the overhead light, peering through his fingers to see you, hair a rat’s nest and smudged makeup in rings around your eyes. He scowls at the warm, empty spot next to him in the bed that you’ve already leapt out of, frantic with energy even through your hangover. You’re alternating between running around the room naked, trying to find your dress, and shaking him urgently. He bites back a grin; so you are real, and just as hot as he remembered.

“Chill the fuck out, Jean!” Eren shouts, using far more energy than he can afford to expend if he’s leaving the bed anytime soon. The alarm clock on the nightstand reads 7:01am. Shit. “We’ll be out in a second!”

“Get your ass out here, Eren!” Shit. Mikasa’s here too? Oh, he’s dead the second he leaves this room. All the better to stay put, then.

“Get up,” you hiss at him, looking every bit of a pissed-off racoon as you scrounge around on the floor.

“Need my hair tie back if you want me to get up.”

“Ugh, here,” you fling it at him, hitting him squarely in the forehead. Eren chuckles, pulling his hair off of his neck and into its usual bun. He feels empty, feels alone, realizes that he wants your touch, the same body-to-body contact that he’d enjoyed last night.. 

“They’re fine,” Eren grumbles, hoping you can’t see the amusement written on his face, “we’ve got a few more minutes.”

He reaches sleepily for you, pulling you back into the bed with him amidst your whispered protests, pulling your lips back to his where they belong. He kisses you slowly, indulgently, convincingly. Your skin against his does wonders for the soul-crushing anxiety he’s been putting up with over the last few months. You’re like a drug to him; just one hit and he feels worlds better, feels like he can actually get through everything weighing on him for now. Jesus, even your morning breath doesn’t turn him off; his cock twitches in interest beneath the covers. Cute when you’re angry, he thinks to himself. He has a feeling you’d smack him if he said it out loud.

“We can’t,” you breathe into his mouth, pushing weakly at his chest. Eren loves the feel of your palms on his chest, necessarily resistant in the name of a one–night stand, but lacking the force to prove your point. You want him too, he realizes. The thought goes straight to his dick, and he takes a deep breath to keep his composure, to stop himself from jumping all over you with Mikasa and Jean right outside. He’s rather impressed with his efforts, rubbing small circles on your lower back instead of grabbing a handful of your ass and pulling you into his lap like he wants to.

“We can,” Eren murmurs back, already ten times happier than he was a moment ago, “just want to kiss you, that’s all.”

That makes you pull back, fix him with a stern look. “I don’t want to come off as a bitch, but I don’t really do the morning-after thing. Don’t you live, like, five hours from the city anyway?”

Eren’s not the brightest when he’s tired, and he’s even stupider around beautiful women. He cocks his head at you, smiling. “Mikasa didn’t tell you? I’m moving to the city in a few weeks.”

You eye him suspiciously. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Eren’s bullshitting, bullshitting very badly and he knows it, “just have to get some things worked out with my brother and our business. Get the operation moved here, that’s all.”

He knows your type: flighty, heavily anti-commitment, and meaner than a snake when you’re cornered. But Eren hopes, he hopes stupidly and against all reason because even if it was just a night, he meant what he said in the throes of passion. You’re funny, you’re interesting, you’re sexy, and he doesn’t want to let you go. He wants to fuck you stupid, just like he did last night, for the rest of his life.

He can’t say any of this out loud, of course, but what if he’s not bullshitting? What if he can convince Zeke to move their amateur record label into the city, where they can pick up real artists, and he can fuck you stupid whenever he feels like it? Maybe he can even learn how you like your coffee, what your bra size is, where the junk drawer in your apartment lives. Eren doesn’t know you, he knows that, but he inexplicably wants those things, wants the mundane parts of you for himself.

“Get the fuck out here, Jaeger, that’s my fucking bed!” Fists pound against the door, threatening to barge into your little sanctuary. Mikasa’s calling your name from outside too, voice harsh and angry. Eren waits for you to scold him, waits for you to shove him off of you and tell him to fuck off.

To his surprise, you make no move to get up and offer him a sheepish grin, shrugging shyly as if you’re not fully naked in his arms. “I guess I’ll see you around, then.”

Eren’s heart swells. “I’m not chancing that. Give me your number.”“You can earn my number if you buy me breakfast,” you scoff, “and help me find my dress before Mikasa kills us both.”

[seongminiz]

ugh the jungmo thing u said.. so real (but yeah i’m also over here thinking hyunjae brainrot<333 i would say i have a love hate relationship with him he and juyeon are my twin bfs hyunjae is my devil n juyeon is my angel ummmm that sounds (more) insane (than usual) but i hope u get me 🫣😔)

nd thank u for ur support! i need to keep drabbling in my notes until i have smth concrete enough i could post 🥴🥴

so just for u.. jungmo hate-fuck brainrot?? <333

he gives me major loser perv vibes too but like imagine he’s like.. a guy u need in high school or smth. maybe u had the same friends but like u two weren’t besties or anything. he’s a bit of a loser. u all thought he was a virgin for most of high school (and most of college too?) but he’s definitely trying he just doesn’t have the best luck :( poor fella.

so as you’ve been two of the only ppl to stay consistent in ur friend group, you’ve gotten to know each other a bit better and often tease/make fun of each other and usually it’s light but u can cut a little deep but normally ur both fine with it and go back n forth. but maybe one day he says smth way off n maybe it’s about ur sexual history don’t ask me for specifics cuz i can’t think of it rn but yeah he pisses u tf off!!! and u say smth nasty back about how he’s a loser virgin and that’s it. u don’t talk to him for a while after that.

but then u meet again at a party. blah blah blah (sorry i’m typing this really fast) he’s being nice (enough) and then maybe after a couple drinks nothing too crazy he’s on u and proposing to “kiss n makeup”. whoever cums first has to admit they’re wrong and forgive the other one but at the end u both have to move on anyways. don’t ask me why it jumped to this i’ve been to like 1 party idk what goes on there. this type of shit i think.

so then ur in a spare bedroom or worse. a closet. touching up on each other and ur trying to make him cum as fast as possible n he’s trying to do the same to you. so it goes crazy, you try to get his pants off to suck him off but he like doesn’t want that?? cuz he knows he’s going to explode all over ur face if u do that so… <33 he’s slapping ur hands out of the way to dive his hand under the waistband of ur shorts, pushing ur underwear aside to insert a finger into you, finding you already wet so he mocks u of course “this is just business.. why’re you soaked..” and then would mock your moans when he adds another finger, beginning to pump them in and out, holding his breath so you can hear the way ur arousal squelches around his digits.

- 🧁 anon

yes i completely get u‼

N OMG WHERE DO I EVEN START WTF DID I JUST READ /pos 0-0

(side note i've never been to any party so ik even less than u do abt them ! 😀👍🏻)

jungmo literally making it his life goal to make u cum first aaaaaaaaaa fingering u so good until u almost froget what started all this in the first place , until u r abt to cum n jungmo (being the little shit he is) makes u beg for it just to feed his ego a little more </3 ofc he won't tease too much bc he doesn't want u to try n retaliate against him so it wont take long before he gives in to ur pleads n lets u cum :3

(once again this isn't written half as decently as it was when i thought in my head idk the thoughts r not thoughting n the english isnt englishing tonight 💔💔💔)

[ri-ahhh]

can u just give me mushy gushy shit with grayson like ethan has a girl over so the two of you decide to go out for a burger date and a walk at night? idk something like that pls 👉🏻👈🏻

A/N: I couldn’t even tell you how long this has been sitting in my drafts but I was looking through trying to find something to finish bc I was in the mood to write but not from scratch and found this lol. It was about halfway done and I have no idea where I was going with it but this is what it turned into as of today. Idek if there’s even anyone around here anymore to read this but whatever haha here it is.

You don’t usually mind being single. Even when your best friend/roommate Stella started seeing her boyfriend Charlie seriously, it didn’t give you any longing for a relationship of your own.

But there are some nights where you feel down and you just can’t handle it. The scenes of casual intimacy as soon as you get home and see them together — the vase of flowers on the kitchen island he must have brought over; the playful bickering across the room.

The incessant, unrelenting sound of a marathon session going on through the shared wall of your and Stella’s bedrooms.

You groan and turn the volume up on your AirPods, going straight to your messages next.

Wyd?

{G} 👀

Don’t be weird.

Pretty sure Stella and Charlie are trying to put a hole in the wall w her headboard and I can’t take it anymore.

Your roommate chooses that moment to let out a particularly enthusiastic “fuck!” If she weren’t your best friend, you might have given in to the urge to bang on the wall, but your phone lights up with Grayson’s reply anyway.

{G} E too.

{G} I mean like I can’t hear him but ik what’s going down in there

{G} I’d offer to pick u up but sounds like u need to get outta there lol. Meet me here?

You like the message and slip on some shoes, making sure to slam your bedroom door closed on your way out, as if it would make them pause even one thrust.

In the year that you’ve known him, Grayson Dolan has become one of your closest friends. The kind where you met as acquaintances, never talked much, but then you reconnected randomly and the conversation never stopped from there on. You talk about anything and everything, but recently you’ve bonded even more about being a perpetual third wheel. You knew he’d understand and not pass judgement on you in times like this, so it had been a no-brainer to text him as an escape from tonight.

He buzzes you into the gate when you get to his house, and he tells you over another text to go ahead and hop in the Porsche before he even gets outside. It makes you smile; night drives are your favorite, and while the Tesla is a vibe in its own right, there’s just something calming about someone (your attractive friend, no less) tangibly driving you around. It’s exactly what you need right now, no matter what destination he has in mind.

When he slides into the driver’s side not even a minute later, you’re almost overwhelmed by him. Looking far too good in your eyes for how casual he’s dressed in a well-fitting T-shirt and some grey sweats. Hair slightly damp from a recent shower.

He greets you with a grin and leans over the console to kiss your cheek, and you can smell the combination of his shampoo and a bit of cologne. You always appreciated that he doesn’t overdo the fragrance, and if possible it makes him even more intoxicating at times.

“Hey,” he says simply, sitting back in his seat and fastening the seatbelt.

“Hey.” You smile and watch him with a silent but fairly obvious appreciation as he reaches a hand to rest on the back of your seat, twisting the bit he needs to look out the back windshield. The Porsche has a backup camera, obviously, but he’s a cautious driver to a fault and insists he doesn’t fully trust them.

Grayson gets the car facing enough of the right direction to throw it in drive and exit down the long driveway. You shake your head and settle back, kicking off your shoes with a sigh and tucking your feet onto the seat beneath you.

“One day, we’ll be the ones making them leave the house,” he jokes, stopping for the gate to open.

You know it’s implied that he’s referring to the two of you with separate people, but you can’t help but consider the option that the two of you could make that happen together.

“I know for a fact you have a booty call list a mile long, Dolan,” you say with a raised brow. Despite the fleeting thought, keeping things lighthearted and platonic is much easier to deal with in reality. “You could have called one of them and done just that.”

He scoffs and pretends like you’ve just hurt him deeply, slapping a hand to his burly chest to clutch at his heart. “Excuse me, it is not a mile long.” He glances over at you with a held-back smirk. “A couple hundred yards, tops.”

You throw your head back with a loud cackle, looking out the window now as he turns onto the main road. “You’re incorrigible.”

“Damn, that’s a big word.” He likes to tease you about your extended vocabulary.

“Hopeless,” you elaborate, crossing your arms and rolling your eyes.

“Is that what that word means, or are you making fun of my high school dropout vocab?”

“Both.”

You let your head roll back against the headrest, turning to watch him, knees swayed to the side a bit. His form isn’t hidden in the dark at all, features lit up by the dash in front of him and the streetlights you’re passing by outside.

“Why didn’t you, then? Call one of them?”

Grayson shrugs. “Just didn’t really feel like spending time with people tonight.”

You’re silent for a moment and consider his answer. “Why did you agree to hang out, then? You didn’t have to.”

His eyes never leave the road, but you see the veins in his hand gripping the steering wheel bulge out for a moment as he squeezes it tightly.

“I guess I meant I didn’t want to spend time with people I don’t really care about.”

Your heart skips a beat, but you play it off with a sarcastic tone. “Aw, you care about me?”

“Of course I do,” he replies easily. “I’m not sure why, though. You’re so fuckin sassy sometimes.”

“You love it.”

The car rolls to a stop at a red light. Grayson’s hand slides from where it’s lightly gripping the gear shift, to yours, which is picking at a loose string on your leggings.

Your easy smile at the comfortable banter between you and Grayson falters some in surprise, but you let him turn your palm over and trace the lines of your hand softly. Both of your gazes are fixated on the way he tickles your skin when he says, “Yeah. I do.”

Your eyes shoot up, just in time to meet his. He looks at you with a weird mixture heat and vulnerability, and there’s a thick moment of silence, no longer than the single beat of your heart that you can hear thudding loud and clear in your ears, when suddenly the car behind you lays on the horn.

Both of you startle, and Grayson’s attention returns to the road ahead. He steps on the gas and takes his hand away, carding it through his hair roughly as you sink back into your seat with a disbelieving scoff.

“Oh my God, dude, you can’t just do that to me,” you blurt out, your heart in your stomach and your brain even lower. A helpless giggle escapes you, and you tug on your own locks. “Shit...”

“What?” he asks defensively, but you hear the tiny bit of the grin he’s wearing in his voice.

You turn your head to deadpan him, eyes wide. “You can’t just... imply something like that and give me sex eyes and not think you did something to me! Are you crazy?”

He gives a one-shouldered shrug with the arm resting on top of the steering wheel again. “Maybe. You’re proving my ‘sassy’ point all over again.”

“Oh my — don’t fuck with my head, Gray.”

“Hey.” His voice is deeper, more serious as the car comes to another stop. You’re only just now realizing you’ve reached the burger joint, and that the late hour made finding parking a nonexistent problem. He puts the car in park and unbuckles his seatbelt before doing the same to yours. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to fuck with your head, I promise. I just... didn’t want it to seem like I was coming on too strong too suddenly. I, uh, have a history of doing that.”

You stare at him, processing everything. “I know.”

He chuckles dryly. “Yeah, I know you do.”

There’s more silence. That heavy kind that happened right after his little impromptu confession.

“You know,” you finally speak up, finding your voice after mulling over your words, “I kinda love that you’re a douche.”

He looks a little taken aback, until understanding dawns on him, and his eyes light up in a way that has you smiling instantly with him. “Really?”

You nod. “Call me crazy.”

Grayson shifts closer in his seat, his pink tongue darting out to lick those plump lips. You mirror him, and this time you take the initiative to reach out for his hand. It’s warm and strong, just like the rest of him.

Like earlier, you watch your hands lightly caressing each other as you speak. “And I love that you come on strong. And that you put your heart out there.” You interlace your fingers, immediately in love with the contrast of his huge ones between your slim ones. “Makes things way easier for me.”

He grins wide. “There’s that sass again.”

You bite your lip through your smirk and tug him close to you with your clasped hands, your free one reaching behind his neck to drag his lips to yours. “Mm. Better shut me up, then.”

[fukurodaze]

five stars: part 3 | three words

IT’S EMBARRASSING: a third year cheerleader!reader x second year athlete!suna au

wc: 4.1k warnings: swearing

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you hate mornings. 

they feel restless and empty and full of longing to have something worth waking up to. sometimes it’s hard to even get up when your mind is full and your heart is worried.

but you do not hate suna rintarou. in fact, you’ve learnt a few new things about him.

one, he has a little sister.

two, he has a nice laugh.

three, he is only “occasionally lactose intolerant”, but not if he “tries his best”.

the things you already knew - his volleyball position, birthday, grade, home town - were never brushed up on, but somehow made their way to the forefront of your memory the more time you spent with him. you began to see him as simply ‘suna’, instead of ‘the boy you helped with physics last year’.

you wonder how you ended up spending every morning of the last two weeks with him. he seems nonchalant, almost lazy, when you see him around with his teammates: back slouched and face relaxed almost all the time. yet, when you let him walk you to class, he’s talkative. he’s eager. he’s walking slowly so you can keep up.

it’s a bit of a question for you, why he’s suddenly popped up into your life once more after waking you up on an unlucky monday morning. 

(he had told you that you had slept with your eyes wide open, and it took you some time to process everything as your chest fluttered with embarrassment.)

then again, you’re not complaining.

“if you notice over here,” suna leans into your side, pointing at the phone in your hand as the two of you walk through the school, “there’s a little cockroach at the corner of the room going out.”

“oh my god,” you laugh. the video on suna’s phone displays today’s fight between the miya twins at the gym. 

it’s your third week with him.

now, as he lets you hold his phone, the literal embodiment of all the volleyball team’s blackmail material, there comes the familiar urge of yours to steal a few glances, adjust your hair, or maybe do something absurd and see how he’d react.

it’s a strange feeling. stranger than when he walked you to your classroom once and you, in your half-awake genius, slipped him a tube of your lip balm in the open pocket of his bag in case you didn’t have an excuse to see him again.

“what were they fighting about again?”

suna shrugs, “osamu was having a bad day, and atsumu got pissed, so, naturally, osamu got pissed.”

“shit. everyone was crowding around i couldn’t even see them throwing punches,” you mutter.

“anything that the twins do usually gets a crowd, really.”

you pass the phone back to him. “yeah, the twins are crazy popular. especially with the girls. they’re like idols.”

“right,” suna pockets his phone, “you’re popular too.”

your brows are furrowed. “stop it.”

suna playfully tenses his shoulders up, hands shoved in his trouser pockets, “you’re, like, the kind of person that organises the culture festival and is like the secretary for the student council.”

“i actually am.” 

“you probably are.”

you two pause when the sentences come out at the same time, and it takes no time for the two of you to laugh it out, lightly, with snickers and giggles that you’ve never really heard from his mouth. 

“you know, i finally got to watch a movie last night,” you begin, changing the conversation.

he looks at you slowly, sweetly. “oh yeah? what did you watch?”

“uh, totoro...”

he stays silent, and you find his head tilted and his eyebrows raised. he looks amused. you ask him, “what?”

“solid movie.”

there is a questioning look that you give him, and you know he sees it, pupils focused to your side. he speaks again, “you like ghibli movies?”

“yeah. i think everyone does. don’t you?”

suna looks like he’s staring down the sky, thinking. he hums, and then tells you, “i don’t.” 

now he exaggerates his normally poor posture, chin tilting up to get a view of your reaction. the two of you keep walking, in an unusual silence, and you’re left watching his eyes as they stay indifferent.

“didn’t you just say totoro was a ‘solid movie’?”

the boy looks ahead, “yeah, so?”

you click your tongue, eyes narrowing, “whatever. i don’t believe you.”

suna has a satisfied smile on his face. he makes sure you don’t know it.

the two of you enter the building, even taking extra time to go to each others’ lockers. it’s only been two weeks since he had seen you laying on the bleachers, eyes embarrassingly open; two weeks since he had walked you to class the first time; two weeks since he had really started to know you.

when you reach your classroom, suspicious eye contact from classmates and the increasingly busy hallway tell you that it’s time for him to go to class, too. he sneaks in a cynical remark, and you playfully hit him on the shoulder, for the first time.

“i’m betting you and him get together by august.” your friend, honoka, chimes in as you enter the classroom. your neighbouring seat mates agree.

you’re starting to look forward to mornings.

unbeknownst to you, suna has a deadline.

the interhigh is only a week away, and so he’s told himself that he’ll do one thing before completely shutting himself out for volleyball training: asking you out on a date.

in other words, he is fed up with the volleyball team’s rendition of his “showoff mode”. he doesn’t lift his shirt up that much!

his first strategy is the straightforward, nonchalant way. he eagerly waits for you at practice.

“hey,” suna almost chirps, feeling a skip in his step.

“hey.” your squint your eyes at the unexpected energy, “are you- are you up to something?”

suna’s ears turned beet red at your statement. he couldn’t have possibly guessed that you knew what he was about to do.

a smirk crawls onto your lips. “oh, so you are up to something…”

“yeah, right. it’s nothing.”

you slap a hand on his shoulder, “hey, i get it.”

“what?”

“i mean, whatever pranks you and your friends are up to, just try not to get expelled, ‘kay?”

suna’s shoulders relax, but his eyebrows furrow, “wait, wha-”

“the volleyball team’s up to something, no?”

suna nods cautiously, not sure if he should be relieved or sad at the miscommunication.

“anyways, thanks for waiting for me after practice. i have a some paperwork to do for the student council, so you can go on ahead,” you give him a genuine smile. he always likes to see it, but it’s a little less lovely when the thought of a failed asking-out attempt is circling his mind.

“right. bye.” suna dashes off, hand fisted in his pockets. 

he tells himself it’s a work in progress.

“what the fuck am i doing making breakfast so well,” suna mutters under his breath one morning, preparing a cut of fish in the kitchen. he doesn’t even have practice this morning, and yet he’s skimmed through the entire oven manual and has found the joys of cooking fish meat. 

he even takes some of the fish and puts it in a metallic lunch box with rice to bring to school. normally, he would settle for the canteen’s average meat buns. 

“two bentos…?” he breathes. he has an idea.

it’s not long before he’s meeting you at the bus stop. he finds you sending him a small wave and an immediate groan about how your english teacher “is the definition of a nerd-bully equilibrium, what goes on.”

he laughs along with the complaints you have, even joining along with the flow of conversation. sometimes he thinks he changes a little bit when he’s around you, but he doesn’t mind. he likes talking and laughing and enjoying his time with you without worrying about what other people say.

he’ll give you a bento, maybe, he thinks, because he’s seen lots of girls give their boyfriends bentos in the past. maybe it would even give you a nod in the right direction.

right before the school’s building entrance, he stops you and takes you by the arm. it makes your heart skip a beat, but for him, all his heartbeats are centered around the lunchboxes in his bag.

“suna, why-”

your words are cut off when you see the boy eagerly rummaging through his bag, at first with a smile and then with a worried look. his hand is in his bag for a little too long.

there was only one bento.

so he gives you a beat-up ballpoint pen. 

it’s transparent, and from the outside you can see the ink tube only one-eighth full. it looks old.

“um, it’s a good luck charm... for your english test today.” suna keeps his mouth pursed and his look unfazed.

“oh.” you smile at the absurd charm. it seems questionable at first, but you try to convince yourself to trust in it. to trust in suna.

“i know, it’s kind of… beat up, and every-” it’s clear that suna is worried, for what you don’t know, but the way he hangs his head and his other hand fumbles with the strap of his backpack is enough to tell you to accept the surpising gift.

“no, i like it. even if it doesn’t work.” your hand keeps the pen in your fists. 

“it does work, by the way.”

you chuckle, “i’ll return it after class?”

suna shakes his head, “you don’t have to. if you do well you can keep it.”

you nod an okay, and he has a tiny look of satisfaction on his face. he had thought of giving you his lunch and not eating, but he decided against it when he remembered he didn’t bring any money to school that day. temporary success, fuck yeah.

(you get a ninety-two on the test. you keep the pen.)

as a last resort, suna tries through text. at least he’s proud that the two of you have been texting for two weeks straight. he still has you under “y/l/n-senpai (physics)”, and it makes him crack a small smile under his covers from time to time.

from y/l/n-senpai (physics): 2 notifications

suna slides the notification open. it’s always a pleasant surprise.

from y/l/n-senpai (physics): just watched arrietty its a ghibli movie

to y/l/n-senpai (physics): ik hv u watched howl’s moving castle

from y/l/n-senpai (physics): yes ofc

to y/l/n-senpai (physics): well. i havent

suna runs out of words to type. he’s not sure how to phrase it...

still, by the way that you’re typing, it seemed like he hasn’t messed it up. he rolls around to the other side of his bed.

from y/l/n-senpai (physics): then go watch it… (READ)

to y/l/n-senpai (physics): let’s watch together|

to y/l/n-senpai (physics): let’s watch tog|

to y/l/n-senpai (physics): let’s|

to y/l/n-senpai (physics): let’s go on a da|

suna sighs, thumb pressing the delete button like there’s no tomorrow.

except his thumbs are big. and phone keys are small. and his train of thought has jumbled up past usual cognition.

to y/l/n-senpai (physics): lets go, toge (SENT)

suna starts to stare down the volleyball in the corner of his room, wishing it would explode on command, when another ping lights up his phone.

from y/l/n-senpai (physics): 1 notification

he makes the slowest visit to his contacts to change your display name on his phone. he wants to stall.

but he always gives in.

from y/n: whos toge? (READ)

“fuck,” he grunts, burying his head into his pillow.

out of sheer shame and fatigue of asking-out attempts, suna doesn’t see you in the morning that monday nor text you for the rest of the weekend, having left you on read every time you sent a message. he thinks that if he reverted back to the time when the only interactions with you were stray thoughts in his mind, life would go on and this too would pass. 

it’s not like you would care, right? he would tell himself.

but suna seemed to forget that you were on the cheerleading team, and that the cheerleading team shares the gym with the volleyball club on mondays and fridays, not tuesdays and thursdays like he had very cleverly remembered.

“suna!”

you call out to him that afternoon. you have your cheerleader uniform on, having received them just today, and make sure to catch him while he’s on break.

big mistake.

you knew the volleyball team was tall, but you never really expected them to be slightly off-putting, too. it seemed like one call of his name made the entire team, consisting of over twenty boys, turn their heads at you simultaneously. then they looked at suna. then they smiled.

you find in your peripheral vision a wide-eyed kita, glancing back and forth once before going back to the volleyballs and game plans even during his break. 

you put on your sweetest smile, as expected of a cheerleader who’d just recently gotten her summer cheer uniform: v-neck, sleeveless top, pleated skirt, inarizaki lettering plastered across your chest in maroon and white.

he steps in front of you, eyebrow raised, “yeah?”

“can i talk to you about something?” your hands are behind your back, body weight shifting from left to right.

he nods, and as you take him out of the gym, you hear the volleyball team cheer and a certain miya twin shout, “fuckin’ suna!”

“fuck off, atsumu!” suna voices.

outside, your smile falters. you lean against the wall of the gym.

“did i do something wrong?” you say it softly, but firmly. you see his shoulders tense up, just slightly.

“um, no?”

you squint your eyes suspiciously, “but you’ve been ignoring my texts...?”

suna rolls his eyes instinctively. he regrets it when he sees a genuine frown on your face. “dunno,” he says.

your frown persists, and you start to bite on the inside of your mouth. “well, the last thing you texted me was, uh, ‘let’s go toge’. i’m so sorry if i missed something, or if it made you feel bad, so-”

“no, don’t be sorry,” he has his hands on his hips, “i never meant to send that.”

“what do you mean?”

“it was supposed to mean something else,” he looks down, scuffing his shoes against the brick floor.

“oh, was that message not meant for me? and who’s toge? sorry if i’m-”

suna gathers himself. he opens his mouth. he says eight words.

“i meant to ask you, ‘let’s go together’.”

the conversation comes to a halt. his words ring ambiguously in your ear, and it flusters you when the first thing that comes to mind is a date with the boy. you try to shake it off.

“like- like what do you mean?” you feel sorry for having him repeat the phrase twice.

suna shrugs, “i chickened out.”

“dude, you’re not making any sense.”

there’s a sharp pang in suna’s chest, and he visibly grimaces. “did you just call me dude?”

“maybe.”

“ouch.”

“wait, so what do you mean!” your arms flail around a little too dramatically for someone as tired as you.

suna contemplates whether or not to tell you that he wanted to ask you out. by the way you’d just called him dude, he wonders if you’d rather him give you a fist bump and tell you ‘nice toss!’ instead of hold your hand and take you out on a date.

so he counts his stars and he goes for the leap.

“actually, i wanted to ask if you wanted to watch a movie together.”

you back up into the wall at his words. there’s a heat that crawls through your body and beats through your heart.

“is that what let’s go toge meant?”

he nods, shoulders relaxing, arms to his side, “let’s go, together. like- like a date.”

his words take you by surprise. still, you’re nothing but glad.

“yeah,” you lick your lips, “i’ll go. and i take back the ‘dude’”

“oh, really now?” his shoulders relax. 

you roll your eyes.

“so he asked you out, right?” honoka asks during a water break in pe class. you couldn’t say no.

“yeah, i’m going to his flat next wednesday.”

“why not today? friday?”

you pouted, head turning slowly, “stuco meeting. we have our cultural festival late october, remember?”

“ah.” honoka sips on her water bottle, “i won’t be here by then.”

“what date are you leaving again?” you try not to darken your tone, pouting at the idea of losing one of your dear middle school friends to distance. 

“august eighteenth. a month away.”

you begin to slouch on your bench. there are more classmates that come to your bench after hearing honoka telling you her leave date. ‘oh my god!’s and ‘i’m gonna miss you!’s fill the corner of the gym, and soon the whistle blows, signalling the end of your water break.

the rest of the day proceeds as normal, and yet there’s that familiar emptiness that seems to continue to fill up even more of your days.

it’s tiring.

suna’s flat is extremely well put, for some reason. you’d always passed him for a boy who simply didn’t care, but now you see him at his own place, grabbing his laptop from his desk one-handedly.

you’ll admit going to a boy’s place alone is an awkward concept in itself, but it seems like suna doesn’t pay no mind. he’s plugged in his laptop to a charger, set it on the table, and has sat himself down on a floor cushion.

it’s a relief that you don’t know how suna’s heart is almost threatening to beat out of his chest.

“what do you want to watch?” you’re quick to sit down on the floor next to him.

he shrugs, “maybe you can convince me to like ghibli.”

you tsk at his line, yet it eventually brings you an ear to ear smile. you reach over to the laptop, scrolling through netflix. “i guess we could start with howl’s moving castle?”

your head turns to him, and he nods, before standing up all of a sudden. you look at him questioningly, but you find him walking over to his kitchen and returning with two paper bags and two glasses of water. 

your eyes follow him as he rests the items down on the table and scoots back on the floor. he gestures the paper bag towards you, “popcorn. it’s salty, so i don’t know if you’re into that.”

“ah. thanks,” you smile, and he reaches over to the laptop, pressing play. 

you don’t expect the movie to be the first thing on your minds - the both of you knew this. though you and him had spent some time marvelling at the movie, you find that for every other time you dip your hand into your popcorn, a pair of eyes turns to glance at you. 

you two spend your time silently during the movie, however. your eyes have developed a habit of simply tracing suna’s figure with your eyes, and it comes in embarrassingly when he had looked back and found your attention on him instead of the laptop at one point.

you’re surprised, though, because he does seem to be paying attention to the movie, more or less, and you can hear his small hums of amusement and surprise as the movie progresses. you colour yourself proud.

suna doesn’t even touch his food nor his drink, having felt too nervous to do so. he wants to know how you’re doing, silently, but whenever he meets your eyes, he decides that he’d rather fix himself on the movie. he wonders if a date like this means holding your hand or even saying goodbye with a kiss hug.

when the movie ends you ask him why he hasn’t eaten his popcorn, and how you feel kind of bad about it, but he ends up telling you how good the movie actually was.

“i don’t believe that you don’t like ghibli movies.” you squint playfully.

there’s a grin that grows on suna’s resting face, “i never said that i was saying the truth, i just said that i didn’t like them.” 

he stands up, bringing the food and drinks on the table to his kitchen counter, and you follow him over. the realisation hits you then, “oh. oh.”

“in truth i haven’t really watched many of them so i don’t know, but, yeah.”

“it’s funny because i feel slightly played.”

“well, you’re here now, aren’t you?” 

you watch as suna reaches into his refrigerator for some eggs. he glances at you, and you’re sitting on his tiny dining table. 

“do you want an omelette?”

your eyebrows raise. your heart skips a beat at the thought of eating his cooking. you tell him, “sure.”

suna takes the time he’s faced away from you to think about what’s next. he knows that you have some kind of inclination towards him, having agreed to his explicit naming of this hangout a “date”. still, his mind wanders towards the timing: is it too early to properly confess? hasn’t he technically already confessed? the omelette flips and suna thanks the world for having it look like the prettiest one he’s ever made. 

this one’s for you, he thinks.

when you do take the omelette in your mouth, you sigh a little bit. it looks pretty - almost beautiful, in fact - but also seems to be half-half-cooked. 

you don’t care, though, because it still makes your stomach flutter thinking about the fact that he had made this with his own hands. and if it takes some half-half-cooked omelette to eat, then, hell, you’ll eat it.

it’s not all bad, though, since he offers you some rice along with the egg as well, and it eventually turns into a filling meal. you hadn’t had one of those in a while.

when you look over to the other side of the table, you find he’s already finished with your food, and normal chatter makes itself more comfortable in the confines of his small flat. this is how it’s supposed to be, you tell yourself, just meaningless banter and humorous talks.

you find yourself growing to know him even better.

“isn’t it funny, how, some weeks ago, i had only seen you as that ‘one guy i tutored last year’?” you say after the date as he walks you out of his apartment. he tells you he’ll be walking you home, and though you tell him no, you ride the bus, he says he has some extra money in his wallet for the month.

suna agrees, “yeah. i would’ve just carried on with my life.” suna lies through his teeth. he’s been through the volleyball team’s teasing for his obvious crush on you. hell, they’d even dubbed it suna’s “showoff mode” (ginjima calls it ‘beast mode’) whenever you were within a five meter radius of him. 

you tell him time flies fast, and he tells you it walks slowly. for you, getting to know suna rintarou has been something you finally look forward to after all your work. but for suna, getting to know you is something he savours every second of, remembering how he wants to make up for the times he used to pine over your unknowing self.

when the two of you get on the bus, you sit next to him, yawning. he wants to have an arm over your shoulder, or your head on his shoulder, but he doesn’t exactly know how.

“my house is actually a few stops from here.” you say. it’s already nine at night, and though you’ve spent over five hours at his flat, you don’t want to lose your time with him to sleepiness.

suna notices how you try to fight it, even having told him, “don’t worry, i usually sleep at two am everyday anyways. i’m not going to fall asleep.”

he tells you, “you shouldn’t be sleeping at two every night.”

“it is how it is.”

he chuckles, “i once got shouted at for sleeping at five in the morning during a training camp. they forced me not to train at all that day. it was-”

the bus comes to a stop and your head falls on his shoulder. he calls your name softly.

you’re asleep.

suna keeps still as the bus ride continues, remembering the stop you said was yours. he counts them - one, two, three, four, five stops - and with each, his breathing steadies. he feels like the luckiest boy in the world.

“what am i to you now?” suna’s head tilts back, whispered question dissolving into the atmosphere. he doesn’t expect an answer.

instead, your arm circles itself around his.

taglist: @maitenight​ @natszoo​ @ssuna​ @erens-piss-cleaner​ @osamus-onigiri​ @volleybloop​ @etherealiwa​ @agaashesmilktea​ @bicchaan​ @anngelllla​ @tycrackculture​ @sins-over-tragedy​ @tsumuluv​ @daichibrainrot​ @underratedmage​ @sunasexual @kenmei @daydreamingtetsu​ @sunareii​ @bebegi​ (if your url is bolded, it means i couldn’t tag you)

send an ask to be added to the taglist!

as always, thank you to roo @yooroomi for beta reading this series!

[manyblinkinglights]

MY PERSONAL TAKE ON UNITY-”HUMANOID” FERAL AVATAR RIGGING FOR VRCHAT

First of all: this is actually not that bad. If you avoid the many pitfalls I will lay out for you in this tutorial, the worst thing about the hookup process is the same thing that’s bad about everything in Unity: dragging the little thingies into their little boxies gets kind of tedious. 

NUMBERED LIST: 

1. Start with Rigify’s meta-human. 

2. Modify it by deleting extra bones, and

3. altering the hips and legs and shoulders for compatibility with VRChat’s full-body IK, as per Kung’s YouTube tutorial. 

4. Build your quad model around the head, neck, chest, spine, and hips of your Humanoid. 

5. Lock your Humanoid legs and arms out of weight painting.

6. Rig your quad model, and

7. Get it into Unity. 

8. Start putting rotation constraints on all/most of your quad model’s bones (I’ll tell you TWO BIG SECRETS). edit: I forget what two things were supposed to be the secrets. Pick whichever two things helped you most and let’s just call those the secrets. 

9. Build and test your avatar, then start tweaking your constraint weights until you get the effect you want!

**

ADVICE: 

part A: You can test an activated quad leg rotation constraint directly in your scene by applying it, and then grabbing your humanoid thigh or shin transform and rotating that, but YOU HAVE TO CTRL-Z IMMEDIATELY AFTERWARDS. NEVER apply a rotation constraint to a bone that’s been left out of its default position!

part B: Always, always, ALWAYS and only, only ONLY work on your Armature in Blender from full X, Y, or Z isometric view with X-mirroring on.  

KNOWN LIMITATIONS: 

The levelling bone in your backbone always points directly back, relative to root, from the user’s hips; they twist up and leave it behind if they turn from side to side too far, all the way around, or, god forbid, hit VRCEmote 6 (backflip). You cannot sexy poledance or flop onto the couch in this style of avatar without making a spectacle of yourself. 

If there’s some crazy calculus that’d spit out the exact right leg lengths and constraint weights to perfectly eliminate foot-vs-floor clipping at every height, I do not know it. There are just too many variables at play; put whatever leg lengths onto your quad that it requires, and then try to come up with rough, biomechanically-inspired values for your constraint weights such that your quad feet wind up near the same elevation as your Humanoid core’s feet when you enter the Humanoid sit position. If you do this your end result will be PRETTY DARN GOOD at standing and bending/dancing heights, but it WILL get squirrelly as you approach crouch. That’s just the way it is; in fact I recommend replacing the prone and crouch animation blendtrees with the standing ones. While this tutorial will generate an avatar that crouches and crawls around prone okay/amusingly, you do get sent into the floor in crouch/prone and there simply isn’t anything to be done about it. 

There is also NO WAY to migrate rotation constraints from one avatar to another. You can copy a fully-constrained avatar and hot-swap in your own edited mesh, but you (basically) CAN’T EDIT bones in an already-constrained armature without turning it all into spaghetti. 

**

ONE.

You need a working, full-body-tracking compatible biped skeleton to start with. But... there aren’t any out there (that I’m aware of) to start with, so I recommend scaling up a meta-human out of the Rigify add-on for Blender... here’s a guy walking you through that bit of it: https://youtu.be/DS885Sk1gSs?t=30 (we will not be making an “animation rig,” we are just getting a human-shaped Armature into the project with almost all of its bones named correctly already. So just do that part.)

TWO.

...and then deleting the face stuff, some other stuff, and the extra four non-finger hand bones out of each hand (make sure not to accidentally nuke part of your thumb, like me, because you might not notice until way later that you’ve given yourself a stumpy single-jointed thumb). You want to go from this:

To this:

I mean, I guess you could leave them, but too many useless bones will come back to bite you later if Unity decides it can’t figure your shit out and makes you drag every. single. handbone. into. the L and R hand slots yourself. Set yourself up for success and don’t skip this deletion step. Also, now’s the time to rename your hips -> spine -> chest -> neck -> head chain, since Rigify has them all as like spine01 spine02 etc.

Your penultimate guy:

THREE.

Now modify its thighs and hips as per Kung’s tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sfTEBAl8sA

Basically, for this armature in particular you need the tops of the thigh bones to be below the entire hip bone, as follows: 

AND you need the hip bone to be above the thigh bones (Rigify’s is too far back). Personally, I got good results from just grabbing my legs and scooting them backward. 

If you DON’T do this, PC people and three-point tracking people will still be able to use your avatar fine. But full-body people’s hips will jut forward in a super fucked up way. IF YOU FOLLOW THIS TUTORIAL EXACTLY and include a BEND bone, this will be a problem. IF YOU CUT CORNERS and disregard the BEND bone (and/or you choose to lock the hips out of weight painting--valid), you can skip this step. But you seriously might as well do it. 

IMPORTANT! The lengths and angles of your bones here determine, in part, the later behavior & vivacity of your finished model. I like this modified Rigify base because VRChat’s IK makes it nice and lively. If you use a different Humanoid base, like a ramrod straight turbocompatible one, or a cool but non-fullbody-compatible style one (hey, go for it! PC and three-point tracking people have rights too!) the flavor of your animations later on will be different! 

FOUR. Build your model around the head, neck, chest, spine, and hips of your inner Humanoid! Don’t hold me liable for anything that happens to you if you change the armature proportions, but based on this one time I helped a kid hook up their quad horse, you can get acceptable/interesting non-full-body-compatible behavior if you do change them (to perfectly follow your cool dragon neck or whatever). I will continue on as if you did not change them! Anyway, do your thing. If you’ve got someone else’s mesh for this step, do your best to pose it in a neutrally upright standing position, and then put the Humanoid in it like they’re the front half of a horse costume, scaling the whole rig up and down as necessary. Again, ANY CHANGES YOU MAKE TO THE PROPORTIONS OF THE HUMANOID RIG WILL CHANGE YOUR ANIMATIONS LATER, and break full-body compatibility if you go too far!  Here’s mine, see the little guy in there? Try to pick him out from the rest of the rigging:

Your head needs to be placed so it does a good job aiming its head/so you can set the view orb so you more or less see out its eyes, and your neck, chest, spine, and hips should be in its neck and forequarters, but your legs and feet DON’T have to match up with your quad forelegs or forefeet! Your quad feet can be anywhere relative to your Humanoid ones so long as your quad is in its symmetrical, neutral standing posture. 

You can see that mine are a bit in front. It’s fine.

FIVE. Parent the mesh to the armature (or uhhh is it the other way around? Whichever way around it is, do it) with empty groups. Go into your Vertex Groups panel and lock out the limbs--that’s shoulders, upper arms, forearms, hands and fingers, thighs, lower legs, feet, and toes. You want them zero and kept at zero (unless your want your arms for a taur). 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG82fogtuCg WATCH THE ABOVE VIDEO IF YOU HAVEN’T ALREADY. :V You can run the auto weight paint from here and/or start dinking around with weight painting your quad’s neck however is most comfortable for you if you want, but you still need to

SIX.  rig your quad model! Okay, here’s the one big rule for your grounded legs (wings and funky lil extra limbs that just wave around can do whatever): 

you must leave your Rigify legs straight up and down, no angling outwards, and YOUR QUAD LIMBS MUST BE STRAIGHT UP AND DOWN, NO ANGLING OUTWARDS.  

See mine: 

You don’t have to have them all perfectly in line from the front like I do, you could have your legs be set at any widths (say, wider stance in the armature hind legs than in the Humanoid ones, if your quad has wider hips), but they HAVE to all be exactly straight up and down, just like the Humanoid legs are. I tried matching my actual gryphon limb angles like in normal rigging once, and it resulted in incorrect foot placement/limb angles when standing neutrally (because VRChat’s neutral stance is not a perfect T- or A-pose). It’s fine if they’re different heights, though--here’s a side picture where you can see that my hind legs are lots taller, and my forelegs a little taller, than those of my Humanoid core:

Okay so maybe this belongs up there under FIVE. but, since you CANNOT add any jaunty character to your quad by adding naturalistic/sideways angling in its armature, the mesh, instead, must deviate from the armature to give you the illusion of a jaunty stance, and I DO recommend doing (just a little of) this. Your bones don’t HAVE to be in the center of your mesh volumes to still work okay, especially when they’re only serving as relatively-restricted legs (knees don’t twist, and neither do a bunch of quad bones driven by them). So, feel free to “pose” your quad legs in an interesting way around their upright bones, especially when it comes to giving your hind legs a different character from your front ones. Otherwise it’ll be way more obvious they’re rigidly linked, despite their different proportions. I recommend angling the apparent set of your hind legs out just a little, so your hind feet seem to be set wider than your front ones.

Not only does this help give each set of your legs its own character, to help with the illusion that they’re actuating totally differently, and that these are definitely your own original character do not steal’s full custom animations and not VRChat’s default ones--but your back legs are going to be operating the reverse of your front legs. This means that when the wearer adopts a wide stance, with their feet well apart from each other (as in many dances), YOUR BACK LEGS WILL CROSS. The amount of space I left between my gryphons’ hind legs, above, accommodates the normal amount of moving around that people do pretty well, but be advised that making a beautiful character with its hind legs neatly, narrowly posed might hit you with some heartbreak later! (You could get around this by instead rigging your quad to have its forelegs be the reversed ones, but this might be a little disconcerting for a fullbody wearer; or you could give yourself a “pacing” gait, where both your front and back left legs step forward at once, but this is a glaringly visible design choice for the kinds of people who notice these things. If you do this, make it a choice, not what-you-did-because-it-turned-out-you-had-no-choice.) 

(I did a bunch of bogus shit to make it so I could switch between regular locomotion and a pacing gait, but that’s outside the scope of this tutorial.)

Now, your BOB, LEVEL, and BEND bones!

BOB: Somewhere on your armature, put an unparented bone (any size) along your midline called BOB. (I put mine below my hips and called it dingle.dangle.) Ever ported a model in and left something unparented accidentally? Remember how it disconcertingly gets “left behind”? Well, we’re using that phenomenon to our advantage! BOB will be our rotation reference bone for LEVEL and BEND. 

LEVEL: So, LEVEL. Your quad’s back/torso should be/have one big bone coming out of the back of your Humanoid hips, call it LEVEL. It should be the parent for all your quad’s limbs, except for anything you have coming out of the head or neck (idk, whiskers, chinwings, whatever).

BEND: BEND is optional, but recommended; a bone that also sticks out the back of your hips, and stretches out more or less to the end of your ribcage, maybe to the middle-ish of your ribcage. Mine is parallel to the floor but that doesn’t matter much, and weighted at around strength .4 to the ribcage behind my shoulders, a little bit of the back of my shoulders where they meet my body, and tapering off towards my waist. Basically when you wiggle this bone up and down, it should arch and bow your back a little bit, over the top of your other weight paints, in whatever way is visually acceptable to you. Mine does this:

SEVEN.

Now, into Unity. Navigating Unity is mostly beyond the scope of this tutorial, but if you can add a VRC Avatar Descriptor, you can add a rotation constraint. It works the same, you just go find the bone (”transform”) in the hierarchy that you want and add a rotation constraint component to it. 

So, get your .fbx out of Blender and into your Assets folder or whatever. Click on it and go to Import Settings, set it as Humanoid, apply, configure. Pick out and add all the bones of your Humanoid armature to the Humanoid panel (if it hasn’t autopopulated--it might!), reset your pose and then enforce T-pose if necessary, delete the reference to Jaw, put Chest in and make sure there’s no Upper Chest, etc., all the usual things. You should see a little green T-posing person in the forequarters of your quad! Hit Done and you’re done. (Look up ordinary VRChat avatar 3.0 import tutorials if you’re having trouble with this step; you’re Humanoid at this point already, same as anybody). Now drag your newly-confirmed-for-Humanoid .fbx into your scene. Open up its hierarchy and look for the LEVEL bone; it should be under hips. Put a rotation constraint on this bone (click on it, Add Component button, search “rotation” or “constraint,” pick Rotation Constraint). Click the little plus to add a target, and drag BOB in there from the hierarchy. Leave the strength 1 above and 1 below (the 1 below will always be left alone at 1 unless specified otherwise), and click Activate. There! You did it! Now your whole entire ass won’t wave around!! You can hop right in and Test Avatar if you want--your head and neck will be the only things that move while your legs will all be stiff like a piñata, but by god, your back will be staying level. Try crouching and going prone!

Enjoy this first, sweet taste of quad success if you’ve gotten this far, because there are many, many ways to screw the rest of this process up, and even with me guiding you, you might find some brand new ones. Applying a rotation constraint correctly is as easy as above, but here are some pitfalls: if you move any bones in Unity with active constraints on them, or bones upstream of an active constraint, they get fucked up. If you activate a constraint on a bone that’s been moved, moving the bone back afterwards will fuck the constraint up. LEAVE YOUR MODEL IN ITS DEFAULT POSE AT ALL TIMES, UNLESS YOU’VE MADE SURE TO SWITCH TO GAME MODE. (Sometimes you get lucky and you can rescue a ruined bone by deactivating its constraint and then going to Modified Component -> Revert on the transform itself. But don’t count on it.)

If you change any values within a constraint while it is active, it gets fucked up. Uncheck “Is Active” before modifying any constraint!

But wait, there’s more! If you hot-swap your model (minimize Unity, open Blender, do edits, export your new .fbx, delete your old .fbx in the save dialog and replace it with your new .fbx, WAIT A FEW SECONDS because opening Unity in the middle of the hotswap borks everything, maximize Unity, it thinks for a second, then accepts your new model while hey presto preserving your rotation constraints), AFTER ARMATURE EDITS, so, again, if yo-- if you--*about to sneeze voice*--

If you hot-swap your model after armature edits, the whole thing can get fucked up and you might have to re-apply all your rotation constraints again. 

hhhhh that’s better. Now, you MAY hot-swap your model after wholesale bone additions and deletions, but rotation-constrained armatures lose their tiny minds if you change constrained bone lengths, positions, or angles!

Moving on! You just did LEVEL, now let’s do BEND.

BEND is constrained at .5 strength to BOB. Add a rotation constraint to BEND, set the strength to .5, hit the plus, drag in BOB. (Dial your reflexes in on this sequence because you are going to be doing it a lot.) The purpose of BEND is to bring a little life to your otherwise ramrod-stiff quad spine; you can experiment with strengths (of weight paint, of constraint weight, of bone length) but I recommend you try copying me to start. So that’s: BEND, a bone sticking out to about the end of your ribcage, weight painted at .4 or so to your ribcage and gradienting smoothly away, constrained to your unparented bone BOB at .5 strength (waving around without any constraint put too much wiggle in my gryphon). 

BOB, LEVEL, and BEND are the major engines behind my quad rigging giving an acceptable effect! You don’t need to throw $90 at Final IK if you’ve got some time on your hands and BOB, LEVEL, and BEND. :)

Now for ALL THE REST OF YOUR LIMBS!

A note before we begin. Unity rotation constraints can’t ever go past 1:1, that is, there is no way to “amplify” a motion to make it a bigger one. You can only approach parity with the reference motion, never exceed it. The clearest example I can think of is a tail. My tail is six bones, and I thought I could constrain each one to the head at .1 and they’d “stack” and make it so a small motion of my head would put an attractive curl in my tail. Lol, nope. The first one rotated the tail .1, the ones that followed each inherited that .1 rotation from their parent and had their constraints satisfied, and did nothing, and I had a tail that barely moved at all. (Blender’s bone constraints work differently and allow this kind of amplification; you can also test things out in there, but I could never figure out which settings would give me Unity-like behavior.) So, with that in mind, bring up a gait cycle of your target animal. If a video is too confusing, look for some static images (like an animator’s gait cycle) that show the gait. Try to see which bones rotate the most, and which rotate noticeably less. Use this to inform your constraint weight values later. If you picked a static image, you can even measure the rotations throughout the cycle to see which move most and least! I don’t know enough to use exactly specific language here, so, to the extreme literalists in my audience.... sorry about what I just said. If you find your ability to magically pick up on what I mean is poor, I’ll just give you my gryphon numbers later! Or you could just try some stuff, like having every bone at max strength & seeing what happens, and then picking just one to turn down to .5 strength and testing again. That should clarify the concept for you quickly.

Alternatively, the quick-and-dirty “I’m NOT HERE to acquire any sensitivities I don’t ALREADY HAVE” test is to just try to get your quad feet as close as possible to your biped feet’s level/height when the biped thigh is picked up to 90 degrees and the shin hangs straight down (the “sit position”).  Here’s how mine do:

Now, that’s half of the challenge, noticing which bones in the legs ought to be more or less responsive, and then roughing out an idea of the relative weights/responsivities each leg bone needs to make that happen, deciding which bones are liveliest and should be set at or near 1 and which are stiffest, or least active, and should go around .5 (you might even dip to .3). But (you might scream) what are you weighting these guys RELATIVE to? What are their TARGETS? Well!

...I’m not going to try to explain this. I’ve confused everybody every time I’ve tried. :p Just start with the shoulder constrained to the thigh, then the next bone down to the shin, then the NEXT bone down to the thigh again, then the shin again, and so on (thigh shin thigh shin thigh shin). This will get you 98% of the way there because most of the bones in a tetrapod leg-chain operate in simple opposition to each other. Basically, by rotating the shoulder like the thigh, when you raise your leg, your quad will start to raise its shoulder. By having the next bone rotate like your shin, and then continuing the pattern after, contracting your knee will make your quad contract its whole leg. This breaks down a little at the paw-and-toes, or the distal complexities of the horse, but just start with this pattern by rote. Then test it, and if one of the bones is obviously backwards, swap its target to the other one and test it again.

Last concept: if you have two bones in a row weighted to the same thing (like where you’ve got two bones that do not work in opposition to each other), the second one needs to have a bigger weight to the target than its parent. Because it inherits the parent’s rotation, and then only adds whatever amount that’s bigger. So, for my forepaw, I have it at .5 to the shin, and then the toes are at 1 to the shin. The whole paw acts as a shin-unit, but weighting the hand less than the toes allows the toes a little of their own flair. :v

(Okay that was a third-grade-biology-textbook lie. I actually have my upper paw .5 to the shin and my toes/beans at 1 to the foot. I might have a little bit of weight to the foot in the upper hand/palm part of my eagle foreclaws too. But I don’t recommend you add any weighting to the foot until you’ve got a good baseline result with just weights to the thigh and shin!!!!! The foot does things that you might find confusing and upsetting and which can introduce a LOT of incorrect limb placement/clipping, especially the further up the chain you allow it to interfere; it should be used sparingly or (as in my hind legs) not at all.)

Finally, the more your bone lengths and angles resemble your target animal’s (use a skeletal reference!), and the better you are at deciding which bones should respond a lot (and be weighted with high values) and which should respond less (and be weighted with lower ones), the more visual interest and species-specific character your quad avatar will have! You can see my gryphon’s rig above; here are its constraint values (where I go LR to LR, the left bits of the Humanoid control the left bits of the quad; where I go LR to RL, the left bits of the Humanoid control the right bits of the quad):

Back: LEVEL: 1 to BOB BEND: .5 to BOB Wings: upper_arm.LR.001: .5 to upper_arm.LR forearm.LR.001: .5 to (forearm.LR .5, hand.LR .5) hand.LR.001: .5 to hand.LR Hindlegs (targeted to the OPPOSITE side human legs): thigh.LR.002: .7 to thigh.RL shin.LR.002: .6 to shin.RL foot.LR.002: .9 to thigh.RL toe.LR.002: .7 to shin.LR Forelegs - EAGLE: thigh.LR.001: .7 to thigh.LR shin.LR.001: .8 to shin.LR foot.LR.001: 1 to thigh.LR toe.LR.001: .5 to (shin.LR 1, foot.LR 1) toe.LR.003,5,6: 1 to shin.LR toe.LR.004: 1 to thigh.LR Forelegs - LION: thigh.LR.001: 1 to thigh.LR shin.LR.001: .5 to shin.LR foot.LR.001: 1 to thigh.LR toe.LR.001: .5 to shin.LR toe.LR.005: 1 to foot.LR Tail: tail.001: .5 .5 to head tail.002: .6 .6 to head, etc. ***

REITERATION OF IMPORTANT PROTIP: Again, the quick and dirty test of your targets and values is to switch to Game mode and hike your Humanoid’s leg up so the thigh is parallel to the floor and the shin’s straight down (the sit position). Does your quad also hike its leg up, so its foot is in the neighborhood of your Humanoid’s foot level? Are all of your bones bending the right way? (Any that aren’t need their target switched to the other kind of leg bone.) If your quad is more or less “also contracting its leg so now it’s up,” then you’re either finished, or really really close!! If your quad daintily raises up its lil’ ol’ leggy for you, test your gait in-game and decide whether it has the right “feel”. If one of the bones is too stiff or too crazy relative to your reference animal’s style of motion, change its value so it behaves better, and hang the sitpose test. People mostly spend time standing, anyway, and your quad will likely look great standing and moving around even if it doesn’t do well at the sit test. 

[mistymazzello]

Cruel Summer | part iv

summary-they used to be best friends, but now that y/n has a boyfriend (that everyone hates), joe and y/n can’t seem to come to terms with their feelings, but it’s no secret to anyone how they truly feel.

warnings- cussing & angst

word count- 1.6k (it’s short ik ik)

a/n-If you’re from another country, the order of grades in highschool goes freshman, sophomore, junior, senior. also, i hate the way i wrote this chapter but here u go🥺this is really just a set up for the drama that’s gonna happen next chapter

based off of cruel summer by taylor swift

Joe hadn’t said much about the girl he was bringing. All you knew was that she was coming that night. You thought about not showing up, but you needed to talk to Joe, and you kind of really wanted to see the girl he was bringing, so as you put on your makeup and got ready, you tried to keep some dignity. It was embarrassing that you just broke up with your boyfriend for someone who doesn’t want you anymore, and it was even more embarrassing that Rami and Lucy knew.

Walking into Rami’s house was a death march. You could feel your heartbeat in your ears as you walked through his front door, Lucy grabbing your hand and giving it a light squeeze. 

“I’m sorry you have to do this. I know it sucks, and if you ever want to leave, just tell me and we can go.” She said quietly to you.

“Lucy,” you laughed “I’m fine. I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me.” You lied.

“Alright.” she sighed.

You walked down the steps into Rami’s basement and you felt like your throat had closed up when you saw Joe. He was sitting on the couch, a girl with dark curls clung to his side, holding onto his arm as if she was scared. You almost wanted to laugh. 

Lucy said hi to everyone, causing Joe and the girl to turn and look at both of you. Immediately, you locked eyes with Joe, who adjusted his grip on the girl who was practically wrapped around his side. You finally got a good look at her, and she seemed familiar, and you were pretty sure she went to your school. She was pretty, too. You started to wonder if she knew that Joe had tongued you down less than 24 hours ago. You wanted to laugh again.

“Joe, who’s this?” Lucy said, sitting in a chair next to the couch, scooting over to allow you to sit next to her. Gwil and Rami were playing pool while Ben sat in a chair across from the two of you.

“This is Vera.” He smiled. 

“Hi” She smiled. “Thanks for letting me come so last minute”

You smiled and looked at Joe. “I guess it is kind of last minute, isn’t it.”

He glared at you.

“Well, I’m Lucy, and this is Y/N.”

“You look really familiar, Vera, do you go to our school?” You asked,

“Oh, yeah. I’m a Junior.” She said, her smile never breaking. 

Lucy proceeded to talk to her, but you couldn’t. You silently prayed she would do something wrong so that you could hate her, but she continued to be lovely. You watched Joe intently for a while. You watched how he held onto her, how he would whisper things to her, how he treated her the way you had only dreamed of being treated by him. You realized this is what Joe felt the entire time you dated Carter. You tried to convince yourself that Joe only brought her because he likes her, not because he wanted to make you mad. You knew how conceited you sounded thinking that, but you couldn’t help it. It made sense.

You felt your phone buzz and you pulled it out. Ben had made a groupchat with everyone except Joe and Vera.

Ben-Does this seem a little weird to anyone else?

Gwilym-YES!!! There’s no way Joe was that close with someone and he didn’t tell us, right?

Ben-That’s what I thought too

Gwilym-Should I ask?

Rami-DO NOT ASK

Lucy-Maybe she’s just a clingy person by nature? Like it doesn’t have to be anything serious for them to act like that

Gwilym-They’re literally ON TOP of eachother

You sighed in relief. So you weren’t crazy.

Ben-If we all left they would 100% be fucking in ur basement rami

Rami-STOP

Lucy-I want to hate her so fucking bad but I CANT!!! WHY IS SHE SO NICE!!!!

You put your phone away and looked back at Joe and Vera. It felt like your heart had dropped to your stomach at this point, and it had only been 20 minutes.

You felt like a time bomb. You needed to tell Joe that you had broken up with Carter, and you needed to tell him how you felt.

“I’m gonna go get some water, do you guys want anything?” Joe said, standing up.

A beat passed and you stood up. “I think I’m gonna come with you.” You said casually.

He looked at you, his lips slightly parted. He knew he couldn’t protest, so he just followed you out the door and up the steps.

Your phone began buzzing as you walked into the kitchen but you were too invested in what you were about to say to look at it.

Gwilym-ASK HIM ABOUT IT

Lucy-^^^

Ben-Ask how long they’ve been a thing

Gwilym-WE WANT ANSWERS

You put your hands on the counter and watched him as he walked over to the fridge. “Joe, can we please talk.”

“I came up here to get water, not to have you mess with my emotions.”

“Please.” You begged softly.

He looked at you and sighed, then sat down at the counter. 

You sat down next to him and took a deep breath. “She’s really pretty.”

He nodded.

“It’s really hard for me to sit down there and watch you with her, when less than 24 hours ago me and you-”

“You can’t get mad, Y/N. You have a fucking boyfriend! You have Carter, I’m allowed to have Vera!” He said. 

“What, so you’re just gonna use Vera to make me mad until I make up my mind?” You shouted back.

“I’m not using her.” He defended.

“Yes you are, Joe!”

“Make up you’re fucking mind, then!” 

“I already did.” You looked at him for a few moments. “I broke up with Carter this morning.”

He immediately looked shocked, his mouth opened then closed.

“For you, Joe. I broke up with him for you.”

“Why?” he asked.

You shook your head and stood up, walking away.

“Y/N, I’m serious, why’d you break up with Carter for me?” 

You kept walking straight towards the front door, not even bothering to go back into the basement.

He grabbed your arm. “Y/N-”

“Because I love you!” You snapped. “And if you want to be with Vera that’s fine, and I know I can’t get mad because I did the exact same thing to you!”

He let go of your arm. “Why didn’t you tell me?” He asked softly.

“I don’t know.” you replied.

A beat passed.

“I love you, Joe. I have for a while. Isn’t that the worst thing you’ve ever heard?”

You both stood there for a few moments and for a second, you thought he might kiss you.

He didn’t.

You didn’t see Vera at all the last week of school. You would think that since it was finals week you and Joe would have been on edge, but there was hardly any exchange between the two of you. It was awkward, and it’s not how you wanted your senior year to end. You didn’t understand how Joe was the one who kissed you first, but now you’re the only one who’s said I love you.

The day of graduation was going by quickly. You were all sitting in the gym, waiting for the ceremony to start. Lucy was crying like she had been all day, everyone was extremely emotional, but you seemed to be in denial. You hadn’t really accepted the fact that your time with your friends was coming to an end, and you didn’t want to. You were standing against the wall, your cap in your hand as you watched all of the people you had grown up with that you would never see in this setting ever again.

Joe slowly walked over to you and stood by you silently.

“It’s weird, isn’t it?” He broke the silence.

“What is?”

“Just like, graduating. It feels like we just started high school and now it’s over.” He stated.

You nodded your head, trying not to think about the fact that the last time you talked to him you told him that you loved him.

“Remember how me and you were like, each other's only friends freshman year?”

You smiled. “Yeah.”

You both stood there for a while, both of you probably thinking about the same thing.

“Haven’t seen Vera all week.” you said.

He shifted. “I don’t like Vera.”

You heard teachers start calling everyone to get in order.

“Why not?”

“I just don’t.”

You looked at Joe expectantly, silently begging him to say something, anything. You wanted him to tell you that he loved you so you didn’t feel so stupid.

“I’ll see you later.” He said. Not what you wanted to hear.

You nodded.

He began to walk away but he stopped himself, then turned around. “By the way, it’s not the worst thing I’ve ever heard.”

You wanted to ask what he meant, but he walked away. You did ask him if you saying that you loved him was the worst thing he’d ever heard, but this isn’t the kind of answer you wanted. Now you were just confused.

Gwilym was the valedictorian, so he had to give a speech. It was very professional with a few jokes, in perfect Gwilym style. You cried, Lucy cried, Joe cried (hard), even Ben cried. And that’s why, after the ceremony, you felt that it was ok that Joe hugged you. You were both sad, and you tried to convince yourself that it didn’t mean anything, but by the way he set his chin on top of your head and stroked your hair, you couldn’t help but convince yourself that it had to mean something.

You tried to make yourself forget the fact that you were in love with Joe that night. You tried to accept the fact that he wasn’t going to love you back and you needed to stop thinking he was, but everytime he said anything to you, you were convinced the next thing he would say is that he loves you.

He was convinced too, but he couldn’t do it.

-

taglist- @seven-seas-of-ham-on-rhye @briarrose26 @mrsmazzello @im-an-adult-ish @iamthebeth @cobaincreates @almightygwil @timmvrphy

[notbang]

rethaniel appreciation week day 3 → friction

nothing but the raw deal

It takes her a minute to register her surroundings when she stirs, unfamiliar as she is with them, even if the person currently sharing their sheets with her is someone she knows almost as intimately as herself, at this point.

“Mmm, good morning,” Rebecca hums, stretching and curling into him.

She’s just in the middle of craning her neck to get at his mouth to steal a kiss—morning breath be damned—when Nathaniel wraps a giant palm around her shoulder, holding her at arm’s length.

“What the hell happened to your face?”

“Well, rude,” she says, frowning, and then she starts to get an inkling of what he’s talking about because the pull of the grimace makes her skin feel tight and hot and sore. “Ugh. Dude. You. You happened to my face.” She shifts experimentally and immediately winces, dropping back down and burying her head with a sleepy, disgruntled groan. “And apparently also to places that are not my face.”

Re-emerging from beneath her pillow, she flips back the blankets, exposing the entirety of the unmistakable path of irritated skin rising into welts between her breasts and grazing a trail across her belly and below. Her left inner thigh got the brunt of it, she notes with only some mild contortion, where the general blotchiness is already breaking out into angry little red spots.

Nathaniel, to his credit, looks vaguely horrified.

She waves him off. “It’s fine, it was self inflicted. Kinda.” He raises a disbelieving eyebrow at her. “Fine—it was definitely mostly self inflicted, based on the indisputable fact that I was the one enthusiastically sitting on your face. Not that you needed much encouragement, for the record. And not to mention that you’re, like, the one with the face of a thousand spiky deaths that inspired the enthusiastic riding to begin with.”

“You said you liked the beard!” he says, an edge of panic dislodging some of the quintessential haughty defensiveness from his voice.

“I did like the beard,” she assures him. “Guatemala looks good on you. I’m just having some second thoughts about it now, in the cold light of day, where my entire body is on fire.” She swears she sees him pale in response, so she can’t resist grabbing for her foot and teasing, “Oh, nope—see, you missed a spot.”

Expression pinched, he continues to bristle about it as he gets up and sets about collecting their scattered clothing from where it’s been strewn across his hardwood floor, and it doesn’t entirely make sense, the way this prickly back and forth with him in the immediate aftermath of their long-awaited reunion fills her with such overwhelming fondness.

Nathaniel’s new apartment is bigger than his old one, but the interior design is currently a lot less magazine spread, a lot more living out of the miscellaneous boxes he’s only recently pulled from storage. One of the pitfalls to his bed actually being enclosed in, well, a bedroom this time around is that when he disappears to the bathroom, he’s both completely out of sight and earshot.

When he comes back, his jaw is entirely clean-shaven.

“Wow. You work quick.” When he shoots her a pointed look—something distinctly in the vein of you of all people should know why!—she can’t help but grin. “Aww. You’re so cute when you think you’ve somehow ruined your chances with me by giving me the ol’ stubble trouble.”

He still isn’t sharing in her amusement—she supposes she should know, by now, that making fun of him is always going to elicit a mixed bag—so she switches her expression to reassuring instead. “Nathaniel, honestly, it’s no big deal. I’ll slap some moisturiser on it and buy some concealer for my chin. Worst case scenario, I walk with an unfortunate waddle for a day or two. Which, you know what? Is just as easily blamed on… other parts of you than your facial hair. Also, how has this never happened to you before? When I first met you the razor-sharp scruff was basically your whole look.”

“Huh,” he says, some of the tension going out of him as he considers this, last night’s shirt still hanging limply in his hand. “Guess I never stuck around long enough—or paid enough attention—to find out.”

She pouts out her lower lip and places a hand to her heart. “See? That just makes it all the more romantic that you’re here, experiencing this ordeal with me now.”

He huffs, making a beeline for his hamper.

Having lost interest in his ongoing need to channel his persistent unease into creating some kind of order from their collective chaos, she collapses back on the bed, sticking her legs up in the air and splitting them, making a pathetic noise in accompaniment but on the whole completely unconcerned with her own—admittedly unseemly—display.

“Is that really necessary?” Nathaniel asks, pulling a face. “Does that actually help?”

“Unless you plan on getting in there with some WD-40, yeah, this is what we’re doing right now. Why, you expecting guests, or something?”

He balls up her light blue underwear and throws them at her. “Would you put on pants if I were?”

“I mean, I would probably be forced to consider it, yeah.”

“Glad to hear you still have a shred of dignity intact.”

“It is hanging by an admittedly small thread.”

After a long moment of staring at her, during which she makes no attempt to decrease the degree of her exposure, a strangled kind of cough works its way out of him that she thinks might finally be a laugh.

She drops her legs even wider and props herself up on her elbows to get a better look at him. “Are you having a stroke?”

“No,” he says, turning away briefly to compose himself. “I just—You’re so—I don’t know.” His eyes slink slowly back to hers. “I don’t… know… anyone like you.”

It could just be coincidence—that she’s merely reaching the upper limits of her own admittedly measly muscular endurance—but her knees start to cave in on her a little. She sits up properly, a toothy smile blossoming across her face of its own accord. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Nathaniel affirms, and comes to sit beside her on the bed.

After a few seconds of contented silence, she asks, “Nathaniel?”

“Mmm?”

“Did you just fall a little bit in love with me while I was bearing my beard-burned vagina at you?”

He makes a show of sighing loudly and rolling his eyes away from her, so she knows without a glimmer of doubt that the answer is yes. Heart bright and full, she grabs his hand in hers and squeezes, re-commanding his attention.

“Hey. I l…ike your new rug,” she says with mock sincerity, waggling her eyebrows at him when he registers the bait and switch. “Wonder what shade of red it’ll bring out in my knees.”

Nathaniel growls, making sure to push her back against the mattress by her relatively unscathed shoulders.

“You’re an asshole,” he tells her lightly, skin smooth against hers, and his voice is laced with nothing but the utmost affection.

[gasp-iwrotesomething]

I Get to Love You (SFW)

Summary: It’s an early morning and Hades is awake, stuck between the promise of more sleep and admiring his dormant wife. When she wakes, however, how will the rest of this blissful morning pan out?

Word Count: 3,284

Genre: Fluff (SFW)

Warning(s): mushy, feel-good, early morning fluff with the gentlemanly Hades :)

A/N: This is based off of the song I Get To Love You by Ruelle and is dedicated to the lovely @fan-girl-2 who requested this song-fic for Hades. I hope you enjoy!

Also (ironic, ik buuuuuttttt) thank you for your patience. I admit, my motivation’s been slacking off like crazy lately :(

but i’m better for now, so we’re good :)

Hades woke up to frivolous brown hair snaked against his face, the silky strands gently caressing his skin as he moves his head a little. The same scent of a coconut home graces his nose and the god snuggles closer, his strong arms swindling the brunette agent. He’d grown accustomed to mornings like this, where the first of his awakening senses were drowned with his wife. Any day that began with that simple blessing was sure to be one of Hades’ favorites. Mindlessly, his fingers drift through MC’s hair, catching on newly woven knots that seemed to unravel under his touch. The action was simple, uncomplicated, allowing Hades to sink into his mind and peacefully think. About their situation, about life, about MC... about anything that came to mind first, honestly. Of course the woman beside him was the first; there were hardly ever times where she wasn’t nowadays. Gently, he braces his weight on his elbow to peer over her arm. Her face was peaceful, features set into a sedate countenance, with her long hair draping over her cheeks and curling on her forehead. She looked the splitting image of beautiful and already, in the dawn of the day, Hades’ heart ran wild in his chest.

One look at you My whole life falls in line

Against his chest, Hades could feel the heat of her back pouring into his skin and the soft friction she creates with him as he shifts ever so slightly. He never would get tired of waking up with her like this, would he? Because almost every single time, Hades was mesmerized just by her sheer person. Everything, from the warmth her body radiated to the general air her presence gave him. A taste of home, something so alien to him that it swept him up off his feet each time he experienced it. Times like these, sprawled out in bed with the love of his life, made Hades wonder how he lived all those years with no MC by his side. It seemed like such a surreal time frame now that he had MC to himself. Was he even alive all those centuries? As in, what kept him from being a brooding god, unable to find joy in even the simplest things in life? 

Well, to be fair there was rarely anything except kin that kept his lips feeble to smiles. Persephone, for one. Her good-natured fun and free spirit were surprisingly very appealing to the God of Underworld; she was a beacon of light that Hades couldn’t help but admire. Then there was Cerberus, Nemean, and Orthrus. They and Persephone were alike, save for their boyish mischief that the three brothers loved to engage in; they were a lot of fun to be around, no matter how Hades felt. All people who he loved dearly; who he’d give anything for. Yet, there was something different with MC--something that diverged from the bond he shared with his family. An itch works its way into the back of his mind, picking at his thoughts. Hadn’t Hades, at one time or another, hoped for a bond like the one he shared with MC?

I prayed for you Before I called you mine

In his arms, MC stirs. Hades doesn’t dare move in fear of disturbing her sleep--if she wasn’t waking up at that moment. She heaves a deep sigh as she nuzzles further into her pillow, the ends of her hair tickling his chest as MC falls back into her deep slumber. Seconds drip by, practically tangible, before the god relaxes back against MC. He did this often, especially whenever he was thinking a lot like this. MC was incredible awake but the lure of enjoying her peaceful, unaware form appealed to Hades greatly. Nothing could compare to a morning laid out just for Hades to appreciate his wife. The God of the Underworld had seen and felt an abundance of things all over the spectrum, but there was something truly magical about thinking how lucky he was to have fallen for such an incredible person. Just the notion alone made happy tingles recoil in his chest--it was simply unbelievable at times.

Oh, I can't believe it's true sometimes Oh, I can't believe it's true

It was a little ironic. All his life, Hades had heard romantic lines similar to the one entangled around his thoughts shared between mortals and immortals alike. The god had never expected it to be something he’d engage with; he always found the wordplay to be too over-saturated and cringy. For the life of him, Hades had never been able to see the pleasure in saying those to another person. But now those words came organically and he had no such issue with stating them to MC. It was strange how quickly his view on romance and love had changed just with one woman. Maybe it was a common way of thinking but Hades truly believed that if he had never been able the privilege to love MC, then he would’ve never known the true beauty of love.

I get to love you,

Why was it an offense to have common thinking? It was a nice sentiment to hold, both in his heart and mind. He got to love MC--a person so incredible that Olympus seemed not as beautiful as it was when she was around.

It's the best thing that I'll ever do I get to love you,

That fact was the opposite idea that turned the tables and made the offense a compliment; and a flattering one at that. As his fingers strum through strands and her scent encompasses him, Hades fades off into an even deeper paradise of deep thoughts and unrequited love realizations. It was almost like falling in love all over again. But to be fair, that was how the god felt anytime MC did anything of even the smallest proportions. He guessed that his mind had gotten used to every little quirk she had and reigned in their bland yet endearing nature. Damn, he was more in love with her than he had know, wasn’t he? Hades didn’t mind; he’d made a promise to love her for as long as he was able, and he had no plans to reverse his vows.

It's a promise I'm making to you

He shifted a little closer to MC at that. Maybe it was the early sun that was branding his chest this warm, but it didn’t feel like a natural emission of heat. It felt natural but in the less traditional sense; like a habit plucked from everyday life, or a feeling that was born with you. More importantly, it felt unmatchable. Hades had the strongest inclination that a feeling this intense and incredible would be one that couldn’t be man-made; an nonrenewable resource that once it ran out, there was no way of replenishing it. Just like before, it didn’t matter if it was nonrenewable--Hades knew that those feelings he harbors would still exist regardless. He’d choose his wife’s heart above everything else, no matter the repercussion.

Whatever may come your heart I will choose,

But who was to say that their love would last forever? Certainly no one, but it was a beautiful thing to imagine. Especially with someone equally as beautiful, Hades believed.

Forever I'm yours, forever I do

The God of the Underworld would still get to love her and, to him, that was enough.

I get to love you (2x)

Just then, MC stirs again in his arms a little. It’s a slow movement, tractable yet predictable, that evolves into a big stretch. He knew she was waking up now, so the god cradles her closer against his body. MC takes the offered affection in stride and leans into him, capitalizing on his enticing warmth and loving embrace. 

The way you love,

There’s a phantom of a smile lacing her lips as she speaks. “This is a nice thing to wake up to.” Hades could feel the way her back heaved slightly with a barely repressed giggle and it his heart fluttered all the same. The reasons were rapidly blurring together these days; all he knew was that he loved her a lot.

It changes who I am

“Only the best for the best,” Hades’ trademark smirk bubbles up as the fingers treading through her hair fiddle with a particular lock, “a fair treatment, don’t you think?” MC’s back presses square against his chest as she snickers quietly. The hand resting on her hip is lapsed by her soft, smaller hand. The gesture has a swarm of butterflies flapping around dazedly around his stomach. How many times was that now?

I am undone, I thank God once again

“I don’t think I’ve ever agreed with anything more,” MC pledges, her fingers mindlessly drumming against his on her hip. Hades chuckles and silence follows; a comfortable silence that dressed them in a sense of trust and contentment. More thoughts cross his mind and for the millionth time, Hades asks himself what exactly brought her into his life. A generic question, but an emotion-ridden one.

Oh, I can't believe it's true sometimes

“You know, you’re too diplomatic with me sometimes, Hades.”

Oh, I can't believe it's true

Hades raises his head a little at that. “What? I am?” The God of the Underworld was stunned by this. He thought the morning was at a beautiful start but with the sudden critique... maybe this was taking an indirect turn. “More than you know,” MC adds, “but I guess that’s just who you are, you know? All your life you’ve been formal, so the inclination has been ingrained in you. It’s not like I don’t like it, I’m just not so used to something that isn’t so... casual in relationships.” Casual? Hades thought everything he said was casual, nothing bordering on professional language. But then again, he was a little biased--the god was talking about himself, after all. Hades felt a bridge of gratitude connect in his chest. Maybe her input was curating a better him day by day. Or maybe it was just her affection that patched him up. Either way, there was a sense of appreciation and it was there for her.

I get to love you, It's the best thing that I'll ever do

Hades opens his mouth to speak only to be cut off by MC once again. “I actually really enjoy it now that I’m thinking about it. It feels nice to be appreciated so regally by the man I love.” She turns on her side to peer at Hades, her eyes slightly puffy and glazed with sleep. There it was again--that uptick of beats as strong as a thunderstorm’s roar. The attention she set on him was uplifting and settled anything that might’ve set him off in the moment.

I get to love you, It's a promise I'm making to you

He could feel a margin of a smile collect on his face as he watches her eyes warm. “I’m glad that I can make you feel that way,” Hades sweeps some fallen hairs away from her face, his small smile beginning to turn wry, “and regally? I had to show my devotion to my queen in some way or another.” On his skin, Hades could feel her warm with embarrassment, physical representation of just how he stokes her fire. His head projected an image of her rosy cheeks, her face shying away to hide the color. But Hades always managed to catch a glimpse that still sucked the breath from him each time; just discreetly. “See, that’s what I’m talking about Hades,” she huffs, though her grip on him doesn’t lessen, “you and your agitating smooth talk...” Her bashfulness gets the best of her and her sentence trudges off, more a shy compliment than an aggravated complaint. Hades fought against a chuckle. She was too cute like this, sheepish and quiet with only her muse there to further burn that fuse. 

Whatever may come your heart I will choose,

Wanting to see how far her wick can shorten, Hades buries his face into the crook of her neck, his face grazing tufts of hair that had fallen slack. Some tickle his nose and subsequently his love as well. MC feeds him encouragement with a giggle, her body snuggling into the shape of his like a puzzle piece finding its destination. Warmth was braided together and hearts shared a full beat, the simple movement a conjuncture of so much more in the height of their adrenaline. Adrenaline... why, in the many occasions of intensive dangers he’s faced, did Hades’ heart not race as hard as it did in the comfort of his lover’s arms?

Forever I'm yours, forever I do

“What about it? I thought I was doing a pretty good job thus far.” His breath is muggy and hot as it caresses her nape, a touch that summons a rush of tingles down her spine. Hades could tell from the jerky way her back arches into him. “Yeah and that’s the issue,” half of her retort is swallowed by the pillow she turns her flustered face into, “how am I supposed to combat things you say when you say things like that, Hades?” She still feels hot but MC whirls around to face him, her waist twisted on her side. A few strands tumble down the side of her cheek and her jaw nudges his temple. Stubborn, Hades remains engulfed in her. “You have your ways of redemption, dear.” 

The god’s words intertwine with his arms squeezing her affectionately, doubling the effect into something that was reassuring. He didn’t think it was possible for her to be so unknowing of how she affects him; years in the making of their love, all sculpted and cooled with countless opportunities to grow and learn one another, and yet MC still didn’t know the half of the way she makes his heart sing. Hades sort of wished she did, just to pronounce evidence that could aid her when he struck. But another section, a broader and more wry selection, is thankful that she doesn’t know--so the upper hand is still in his possession... most of the time. Even that wasn’t of the greatest warranties with this marvelous woman.

An idea clicks on in his head; a light of love and a shadow of misbehavior.

I get to love you

“I mean, do correct me if I’m wrong, but you have many more... assets to use against me, MC.” His tone turns provocative and his touches become more sensual, driven. Hades nestles into the hollow of her collarbone, his lips smoothed to her pulse. He could sense the rapid jump and skip of her heart rate and he smiles, cuing her to giggle and nudge him slightly. “Assets? What assets? If anyone has assets, it’s-” she taps the tip of his nose a little awkwardly, their position the wrench in their exchange “-you.” Hades laughs, low and sweeping, crisp against her flesh as he relocates down an inch, then another, and another, and another...

I get to love you

“Maybe but you have the loveliest by far,” Hades’ mouth was now destined in the crook of her neck, drifting even lower until she shudders and he grins. She relaxes in his arms and slants towards his gentle touches, allowing his gradual adventure to continue down her shoulder. “You know how difficult it is for me to look at you all day and not be able to do this,” he presses his mouth to her shoulder blade for emphasis, smirking, “without losing it and taking you into my arms?” MC doesn’t answer but her skin feels hot and the tips of her ears beam red. “Hades...” MC whispers softly. 

I get to love you

Hades takes her quiet response as permission to venture further, down her arm to the crook of her elbow and finally at her wrist. He pauses to kiss the inside of her wrist, right over her pulse, before drifting to her fingers. MC sighs, content, as her husband decorates her fingertips in his lovely, ginger lips. “I feel the same way about you, Hades.” Her sentence is muted and timid, suppressed by her shyness, and he smiles against her. It made his heart float happily when she said things like that.

I get to love you

“I’m glad we share that feeling, love.” Hades says, muffled by her flesh to his mouth. He felt whole, his heart heavy with his passion and his mind tipsy and light with thoughts of her. One final brush of his lips and Hades releases her hand from his grip, allowing it to fall back to cradling the arm surrounding her waist. Their fingers furl together and a cozy silence blankets them. He holds her close while she embraces his touch and smiles into her pillow.

And they say love is a journey,

Hades couldn’t help but feel this... epiphany glow in his chest, matching the staccato of her heart and the purpose of his lungs as he inhales her sweet scent. She smelled like fresh-picked flowers in the arms of an infatuated lover. She smelled like home, a calming aroma that once perceived makes the levels of stress and worry disperse. MC smelled like comfort and love and empathy all wrapped with ribbons and fancily tied bows that made you want forever. Hades never wanted to wake up to an empty spot beside him on the bed, bankrupt of the intoxicating scent of MC. Hades wanted every morning to start as this one does, one swell of affection to power and influence Hades through the rest of his day until he can reunite with MC and find... home. 

I promise I’ll never leave

MC squeezes the fingers curled around hers. “I love you,” she murmurs. Like a sun climbing the sky at dusk, Hades’ chest beams with the declaration even though he had heard it thousands of times before. Still, hearing it manufactured the sense that he was cherished and loved just as he did to MC. “I love you too.” Hades reciprocates, treasuring the warmth curled into him. 

When it’s too heavy to carry,

Another spout of comfortable quietude consumes their space and soon enough, after a few more minutes of snuggling and teasing quips, Hades grows drowsy as his eyelids begin to become heavier to lift. He drinks in her achingly sweet warmth and the reassuring scent that wafts off her, some culminated with the berry-flavored shampoo she washed her hair with. Hades reigns in her like a king to his throne and sighs, content with the sunshine soaking him and the dazzling woman in his arms adding to the sun’s warmth. Soon, the gentle rise and fall of MC’s chest indicates that she’s fallen back asleep too, coaxing Hades in after her. Things were peaceful, uncomplicated, the layers peeled by the simple lack of complication. Just... them, lounging in their bed, trying to shake the final tendrils of sleep off before they tug them under again. Obviously they were failing at that, but still. Just them.

Remember this moment with me

Hades drifts off all too easily,

I get to love you

Falling into a dream about something wonderful.

I get to love you

The setting was unclear and the purpose wasn’t something he was cognizant of,

I get to love you

the only thing certain being the woman swathed in his embrace and her musical laugh tinkling in his ears; the woman he got to love for as long as they prospered. 

The God of the Underworld wouldn’t have it any other way.

~THE END~ 

Oh and before you go, show your support for @vowtogether!!

[violetwolfraven]

Newsies TDM AU

As far as I’ve seen this hasn’t been done yet so here goes.

Warning: this is gonna be long. Also the actual fic will probably show child abuse and blood but this only briefly mentions it.

For those of you that haven’t read it, in the Darkest Minds, most of the kids in the US die from a disease with no symptoms. But those that survive become Psi kids and develop abilities in color categories. Listed in order of how common they are, Greens have super intelligence and photographic memories, Blues have telekinesis, Yellows have electrokinesis, Reds have pyrokinesis, and Oranges have telepathy. The government basically locks them all up and severely abuses them, using White Noise which is painful sound frequencies that only Psi kids can hear, to control them.

Jack is 14 and a late bloomer. He loses his younger brother to IAAN but it turns out he’s one of the lucky ones. Nobody thinks to send him to a camp because nobody thinks he got powers.

In reality, Jack is about the hottest, most powerful Red in the country.

When his parents find out, they don’t send the PSFs after him, but they don’t want him either. They kick him out.

Jack doesn’t mean to get caught but he ends up in a camp that’s under construction. As far as he knows, he’s the only one there, being the only Red. He’s there for 6 months before his escape.

Snyder isn’t hard to evade with his powers and Jack’s pretty much home free when he hears screaming and as much as his instincts are telling him to runrunrun he can’t quite abandon whoever it is, so he turns back, nearly blowing his opportunity for escape.

He winds up with a 12-year-old boy with a bad leg who doesn’t talk much and seems to know more about Jack than he should.

Jack’s seen enough crazy things to not question this. He just gives the kid some space (except when he needs to do what Jack says or get caught again) and lets him talk on his own time.

The boy eventually says that his name is Charlie Morris, he’s been in that camp for a year and a half, he’s an Orange, and he’d been screaming because Snyder found out and was going to kill him.

Jack notices how Charlie kind of flinches whenever he hears his name, like he’s not used to it being said by a friend, so he starts calling him Crutchie, and Crutchie is fine with that so they get along great. They make a pretty good team, sensing a threat before it sees them and fighting if they can’t avoid it.

Eventually, Crutchie opens up to Jack about the camp, what it was like there and how he read Snyder’s mind that they were going to move all the other kids to a bigger one with better security.

Unfortunately, he tells Jack this the day before the move, so they don’t have a lot of time to plan a break out, but they manage and wind up with ~100 kids who have been there anywhere from as long as Crutchie to a shorter time than Jack, most of whom adopt the nickname thing once they find out about it cause no good memories come with their real ones.

Jack’s pretty excited to find his 13-year-old cousin, who now goes by Spot, who he thought he’d never see again after he got taken by the government. Spot is a Red, too, but was smart enough to pass as a Blue with the help of his friends.

But his parents gave him up and Jack looks a little too much like Spot’s dad so Spot takes his group of friends and moves not too far away to send for help, but far enough that they don’t see each other a lot.

A few other kids take small groups and spread out across the woods but a good portion of them stick with Jack or at least drift between the tribes, staying with whoever they feel like each night.

The tribes name themselves after neighborhoods in New York because they’re all city kids so why not?

Jack’s ‘Manhattan’ tribe ends up like this:

Yellows: Race (13), Sniper (9), Kid Blink (10), Finch (13), Jojo (13)

Blues: Albert (14), Romeo (13), Smalls (9), Elmer (12), Buttons (11), Mike (11), Ike (11)

Greens: Specs (14), Mush (10), Henry (12), Tommy Boy (12)

Basically for a couple years they’re surviving however they can but their dynamic is exactly the same as canon.

Jack, at the ripe old age of 16, has to give The Talk™️ to a bunch of 12-year-olds who are asking questions about the *cough* horny *cough* older boys’ jokes.

And he’s also So Stressed because at first he was worried about boys and girls of around the same age living together with no adult supervision but now he has to tell Race to stop sneaking out to Brooklyn and Blink we’ve got other seats besides Mush’s lap and nO Sniper you and Smalls can’t date you’re 11.

It’s not that he doesn’t support them but if anybody breaks up that could create drama that he doesn’t want to deal with.

But fast forward another year and they’re doing fine. They run hits on small camps to free new kids whenever they can and take in whoever comes their way. (Enter oc Newsies.)

All the tribes stay in contact and know each other are safe pretty much all the time and they’re strong alone but on the rare occasion all the tribes unite, they’re so strong with so many boys (and a few girls) that the government knows they’re there and at this point can’t do anything about them.

*record scratch, freeze frame* Enter the Jacobs siblings.

Davey (16) is an Orange, Sarah (16) is a Blue, and Les (10) is a Yellow. Their parents managed to keep them safely hidden until Davey got spotted.

So they had to run, and it isn’t too long before they bump into the Psi Tribes of New York, the Manhattan tribe.

At first, both Davey and Sarah want nothing to do with it, but Les points out that they might be safer with them because government knows about the tribes and hasn’t killed them yet.

Davey is extremely uncomfortable trying to read anyone, but he does when Sarah asks him too, just enough to feel that Jack is genuine in wanting to help them.

The Jacobs siblings are amazed to see this fairly large community of Psi kids living together, practicing their abilities openly and experimenting, testing the limits of what they can and can’t do. Les and Sarah love it. Davey is less certain.

Davey thinks that his abilities make him dangerous. He’s afraid that based on stories of others like him, he might go dark and hurt someone. It doesn’t help that it’s technically his fault they had to go on the run.

Jack helps him see that his powers are a part of him, darkness and all, and helps him get more confident in himself—“Hey, I got an Orange who’s practically my brother and he ain’t so bad.”

Davey won’t admit it but he likes it there. He likes it with Jack even if he thinks he his siblings will move on eventually.

They manage to stay there in relative safety for about a week before disaster finds them.

Disaster being Katherine, an 18-year-old late bloomer Green running from the government, who seem to want her more than any other Psi for some reason.

She’s with her friends Bill and Darcy, both her age and also Greens but the government doesn’t want them as much.

Jack isn’t going to turn them away just because of danger so he takes them in, but the government basically fences off the forest borders they can’t patrol and traps the tribes inside and the tribes Do Not like that very much.

But the soldiers are too scared to go in and really deal with them and yes they’ve got White Noise machines but there’s just so many kids of varying colors in there many of whom have been dealing with it for years so it wouldn’t really be effective.

So the soldiers just keep the perimeter up and hope if they wait long enough they can smoke them out.

That... does not work. The tribes know how to hunt and survive on whatever’s growing around in the woods already and they may have a smaller territory now but they make do. They may not like being trapped but they can deal with that, too.

So after a while the soldiers get impatient and send a message.

Surrender Katherine by sundown tomorrow or we come in and take her.

As concerned as they are for their own survival, none of the tribes are just going to hand Kath over. However being threatened like that makes them think of their own experiences in camps and they start getting angry.

Katherine has never been in a camp but she tells Jack that she saw the schematics for the biggest one in New York and there’s serious weakness there. As in, they could storm it with even their group of only a bit over a hundred kids.

Davey doesn’t think it’s a good idea but once he sees that Jack is doing it with or without him of course he agrees.

The entire Manhattan Tribe wants to try.

But other tribes, including Brooklyn, aren’t sure they want to make the first move. They know war is inevitable, but don’t know if they want start it.

The Blues dig tunnels out of the forest so they can get out and head for the camp.

Unfortunately the guy who runs the camp, Pullitzer, is expecting them since he knows Katherine saw the schematics.

Basically they go in and get beaten. Crutchie may be one of the most powerful but he doesn’t make it back.

Back in the forest, Jack blames himself.

As much as he likes Katherine, he starts thinking about handing her over to save the rest of his tribe.

Davey convinces Jack not to give her up and figures that since they already got their asses kicked the last thing Pullitzer is going to expect is them attacking the camp again.

Only this time Spot and the other tribes are willing to come with.

Jack still isn’t convinced and they have a conversation that goes something like:

“I can’t put the others in danger like that.”

“They’re in danger just by having their abilities. Look, I know you’re scared but—“

“You don’t know what it feels like! You’ve been here what—two weeks?”

“Actually, I do know what it feels like. You keep forgetting I feel everything you do.”

Jack eventually agrees right as Katherine comes to them with another confession.

She’s Pullitzer’s daughter. That’s the real reason he wants her caught so bad.

They use it to their advantage, having Bill and Darcy march her up to the soldiers only to go psych! Spot and Brooklyn tribe are waiting with an ambush to keep them busy while Jack takes Manhattan and everybody else to take down the camp.

They eventually succeed, getting Crutchie back in the process and saving enough Psi kids that they can definitely hold what’s left of the camp, the woods, and the surrounding areas by themselves.

So they just stick in that area living in their new large territory and the government can’t do much about them.

It will be another 3 years before all that stuff with Ruby and her friends happens.

But basically the Newsies have powers and are fine and also javey, newsbians, sprace, blush, and smallsper happen at some point in there.

I’m gonna write an actual AU about this but I thought I’d give y’all an idea of what to expect and I honestly don’t give a damn if nobody reads it.

Edit: if anyone has a Newsies oc they would be okay with me inserting please send me their name/backstory/personality cause I will make sure to at least mention as many as I can.

[louisapennyfeather2021]

Newsies Teen Wolf AU, except it's random scenes with little to no context!

1) More Bad Than Good, Season 3 episode 14. This is technically episode 2 of 3b/The Second half of season 3.

Brief: Race, Jack, Katherine, Sarah, and Albert are out searching for Jojo, who is a Were-coyote stuck in the body of a regular coyote. Blink is trying to keep JoJo's dad from shooting Jojo, having blamed the coyote for the death of his family.

Warnings: Possible major injuries, panic, mentions of guns, mentions of weapons, mentions of traps

___

"Jack,it's me, you got to call me back as soon as you can. It wasn't Jojo's doll. It was his sister's. Jojo left it at the car for his sister. It's like bringing flowers to a grave, okay, and we stole the flowers. So, that's all he's trying to do, right. Bring the doll back to the grave, to the car wreck. That's where he's headed. The car wreck." Race paces as he talks, anxiety bubbling up in his stomach. They've spent the past day and a half looking for this boy who's apparently been in the body of a coyote for the past eight years, Race might actually go insane if they don't get him.

"Race." Albert's voice is oddly quiet as Race drops his phone from his ear to text Jack in hopes of getting his message across.

"Yeah?" He calls back carelessly, still texting.

"Race!" The panic in Albert's voice makes Race turn around and his heart freezes when he sees Albert frozen mid-walk, his foot now in the center of what Race recognizes as a bear trap. He curses, remembering how Blink told him that JoJo's dad set up multiple bear traps in the woods for the coyotes and how Race needed to be careful.

"Oh my- okay, Albert, don't move." Race hurries over to Albert and sits on his knees, looking for any way to get Albert out without his leg getting caught in the teeth of the trap.

"Look for a warning label." Albert's voice waivers. His hands shake as he squeezes them into fists, know any type of pressure could set off the trap.

"A warning label?" Race asks, confused. Where would the trap even have a warning label? It's a trap, there wouldn't be instructions on how to disarm it.

"Race, animals can't read, there's going to be instructions on how to disarm it." Albert all but yells. Race quickly starts clearing leaves away from the center of the trap and he wants to cheer when he finds a yellow "WARNING" label.

That excitement quickly fades when the letter start moving and everything blurs.

"Albert we have a problem." Race starts to panic as he shines the flashlight of his phone on the trap, blinking repeatedly in hopes of maybe seeing everything. If anything, it all blurs together even more. "I can't read either."

"Okay, alright. You don't need the instructions. When was the last time you've ever used instructions? Am I right? You don't need them because you are too smart to waste your time with them, okay? You can figure it out. Race, you're the one who always figures it out. So you can do it. Figure it out." Albert forces any fear out of his voice because he knows if he sounds anything less than confident, Race will cave and they'll be stuck. Either that, or Albert risks getting his leg all but cut off. Albert can see Race starting to panic and he squeezes his eyes shut to try and stay as calm as he can.

Until he hears Race moving more leaves around the trap.

He opens his eyes to see Race now staring at a small wheel.

Albert immediately recognizes it as a release valve, one that delays the trap.

"Alright, here we go. Ready?" Race's hands shake as he reaches for the valve. He shares look with Albert, knowing this could go one way or the other.

"Now!" Race twists the valve and Albert's quick to step off of it, crashing into Race. Race barely catches him, but manages to stable both of them as the trap snaps shut. Race lets out a shaky breath he didn't realize he was holding and he's vaguely aware of Albert clinging onto him.

"Remind me to never go anywhere that involves a crazy coyote hunter." Albert mumbles and Race is now acutely aware of his friend holding him in a death grip hug. He's also aware that he's hugging his friend back.

Who is he kidding, his longtime childhood crush is hugging him and he's hugging him back.

Que a different kind of panic.

____

2) Galvanize, Season 3 episode 15, technically episode 3 of 3b/the second half of season 3

Brief: After successfully changing Jojo back from a coyote to a teenage boy, Race and Jack go to school where they see Mike and Ike for the first time since Jack became an alpha. Well, the first time at school, not including when Jack asked them to beat him up to help him control his power.

Warnings: Nothing really? Maybe mentions of previous violence and death.

Notes: This is actually meant to be a kind of funny scene.

____

"Jack, you gotta hear what I'm saying. The dot on the 'i' in the Pringles logo is actually a Pringle." Race waves his hands around as they walk until there are suddenly two bodies in front of them. "Oh boy, didn't expect to see Hansel and Gretel today."

"You're back in school?" Jack ignores Race in holes of distracting the twins from the sarcastic entity he calls his brother.

"Just to talk." Ike sighs. He already seems done with the conversation, like he knows the outcome.

"Oh, well that's a change of pace. Usually you guys are hurting, maiming, and killing." Race grins sarcastically, knowing full well that neither twin would try to pull something.

"You need a pack, we need an alpha." Mike blatantly ignores Race and looks to Jack.

"Right, yeah, absolutely not, that's hilarious though." Race tries to grab Jack's arm to walk around the twins, but both move with them.

"You came to us for help and we helped." Mike is unusually calm, especially since he's not exactly the calm one of the twins.

"You beat his face to a bloody pulp. That's not exactly helping. In my opinion, that's actually counter productive." Race shrugs. Jack just listens through exchange, knowing that if Race doesn't anger one of the twins first, that they might bring up a good point.

"Why would I say yes?" Jack asks. The twins have hardly been helpful in any way, they've done more bad than good. Even if they have changed in the last week, it's not like Jack can just automatically forgive and forget.

"We'd add strength. We'd make you more powerful. There's no reason to say no." Mike makes a face as if he's so confident in his points. Jack can admit he's not wrong, but he is at the same time.

"I can think of one." Suddenly Katherine is next to Jack, her arms crossed and a glare on her face. "Like the two of you holding Spot's claws so he'd impale Sniper and kill her. In fact, I don't know why we're not impaling them right now."

"You want to try?" Mike takes a step closer. Low growls are exchanged between him and Katherine before Ike is pulling Mike back and Jack has an arm in front of Katherine.

"I'm sorry, but they don't trust you. And neither do I." Jack shakes his head. He values his friends over everything. He values what they have to say and he knows when they're right. He offers the twins a sympathetic nod before walking towards the school with Race and Katherine.

"Alright, that's my guy! Great decision! Great Alpha decision!" Race claps his hands on Jack's shoulder as they stop at his locker, Katherine hurrying down to her locker a few spots away.

"I hope so." Jack sighs. He opens his locker and starts exchanging his books when he spots Sarah talking with Katherine, both smiling, which is odd to see when the two are together.

"No, you know so, then I can- What are you staring at?" Race poking Jack's shoulder makes him snap out of his borderline creepy staring.

"Me?" Jack stiffens, knowing Race is just going to tease him.

"You're staring at Kath and Sarah, aren't you?" Race narrows his eyes suspiciously. "You're jealous."

"What? No, I'm not jealous." Jack shakes his head and suddenly becomes aware of how his voice sounds just a bit higher than usual.

"Dude, you don't need to think about past relationships. You could literally get anyone." Race sighs when Jack makes a disbelieving expression and he quickly grabs Jack's shoulders. "Alright, Jackie, listen, I don't think you get it yet. You're an Alpha. You're the apex predator. Everyone wants you. You're like the hot girl that every guy wants."

"The hot girl." Jack deadpans, raising an eyebrow at Race.

"Jack, you are the hottest girl." Race shakes his shoulders a bit before giving Jack a slight shove and hurrying off to his first class. Jack ponders the thought, a dopey smile working onto his face. He hardly notices Katherine and Sarah walking up to him.

"What?" Sarah asks, genuinely confused by the cheerful smile on Jack's face so early in the morning.

"I'm the hot girl." Jack doesn't notice the concerned look that Katherine and Sarah exchange, too lost in the boost of confidence.

"Yes you are?" Katherine hesitantly agrees, trying not to laugh as Jack starts off for his first period, seemingly having a literal pep in his step. As soon as he rounds the corner of the corridor, Katherine and Sarah both start laughing.

____

3) Galvanize, Season 3 episode 15 , technically episode 3 of 3b.

Brief: A shrapnel bomber who bombed a school bus is on the loose and Albert thinks he's at the school. Race tries to convince Blink to stay, but he doesn't because he believes and eye witness over Albert's banshee senses.

Warnings: Mentions of death, mentions of bombs

Notes: This isn't as intense as it sounds, it's really just a brief scene where the group is searching for the bomber in the basement of the school with some comedy thrown in.

____

"So this is how it's gonna be? We just trust them now?" Katherine asks as she carefully walks next to Jack through the corridors of the basement. She begrudgingly left Sarah upstairs with Race and Albert so she could check the basement with Jack and the twins.

"Just because I'm letting them help doesn't mean I trust them. I can't just say no to them when they should have a least one chance to prove themselves." Jack answers, mindlessly letting the words come out of his mouth as he cautiously walks down the hallway, knowing something could go wrong any second. Blink said the bomber was after kids with glowing eyes, meaning werewolves.

"Yeah, well I don't trust them either. Or like them, for that matter. In fact, I hate them and just want them to die." Katherine shrugs carelessly. She doesn't flinch when Jack gives her "the look", one he usually saves for when he's about to lecture someone. It's very similar to what little Katherine has seen of Davey's looks.

Meanwhile, Mike and Ike check the opposite side of the basement. Ike leads the way, Mike close behind. They keep quiet to listen for any sounds. Breathing, a heart beating, any noise in general. Suddenly Ike stops, angling his ear towards the corner of the corridor.

"You got something?" Mike whispers, so quiet only Ike should be able to hear him. He's ready to react when Ike suddenly walks to the corner, but he's not ready for the sight he sees.

"Oh really?" Ike plants his hands on his hips and cocks his head to the side. Mike looks around him to see none other than Boots, aka the boy Ike was together with before everything went down with Jack, pressing another boy against the wall, shirts half on. Mike can't help but laugh, having to cover it up to not laugh too loud.

He's only laughing because Ike technically shouldn't be mad, he didn't exactly let Boots know where they stood with each other, but it's just funny because it's right out of a teenage rom-com movie.

To put it simply, the search for the bomber was forgotten for at least two minutes.

____

Hello! This is another small post with some of my all time favorite scenes! Again, they probably don't make much sense if you haven't seen the show, but please interpret these how you wish! Or watch the show, whichever suits you best!

If you have any requests for scenes or any thoughts, you can always ask! I'm open to anything and everything!

[stvrwar]

wait out the plastic weather

marauders social media au | 2k words | they’re youtubers bc why not and bc @frxddi is up this trope’s ass | ao3

james potter to tucci gang: you guys see the newest vid

sirius black: you mean the newest video that all of us are fucking in

sirius black: that cideo?

sirius black: *video

remus lupin: the video you uploaded and sent all of us the link to like…twelve minutes ago?

peter pettigrew: I think he might mean that video

james potter: fuck all of you not that video

james potter: and it has a name. it is out cHILD

remus lupin: pardon me, I didn’t realize “getting kicked out of Walmart #4” fit on the birth certificate

james potter: I have small handwriting

remus lupin: my mistake

james potter: ur mistake indeed but

james potter: not our fucking video morons

peter pettigrew: ur unnecessarily mean to us

james potter: lily evans video. The woman of my dreams. The greatest youtuber to ever fucking live

sirius black: now that’s just hurtful

remus lupin: and also why the fuck would we have watched her video?

james potter: now who’s hurtful?

-

remus lupin to so pete davidson and ariana grande are engaged and idk who I am anymore: sirius why is this our chat name now

sirius black: bc idk who I am anymore

peter pettigrew: is it bc ur in love with ariana grande

james potter: he loves ariana and he’s in love with pete

remus lupin: I can’t believe you’ve never told us

peter pettigrew: im touched

remus lupin: when’s the wedding?

sirius black: okay fuck all of u she is an icon and he is hilarious

james potter: ur face is hilarious

sirius black: im leaving you for him

james potter: babe no I didn’t mean it

sirius black: u’ve hurt me too many times

james potter: I promise I’ll change for you

remus lupin removed sirius black from the chat

remus lupin removed james potter from the chat

peter pettigrew: this happens like twice a fucking week

remus lupin: so how’ve you been pete?

peter pettigrew: pretty shook about that engagement tbh

remus lupin removed peter pettigrew from the chat

remus lupin: I am an island.

-

sirius black to the office season 2 episode 7: yo Walmart 4 is on trending wtf

james potter: !!!!!!!!!

peter pettigrew: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

remus lupin: im not gonna do that

sirius black: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

james potter: what number is it on trending??? Is this twitter or youtube btw

sirius black: youtube and #6

remus lupin: shit that’s our best yet

peter pettigrew: anyone check the subscriber count recently????

sirius black: the marauders are at 3.1 million what the FUCK IS UP YO

remus lupin: im so surprised u aren’t key smashing

sirius black: is it because im gay

remus lupin: no it’s because u have massive thumbs and can’t text to save your life

remus lupin: yes because you’re gay

sirius black: that’s homophobic. Im not gay bc I keysmash

peter pettigrew: ??? neither of you are straight. ????

remus lupin: no you keysmash bc you’re gay

james potter: WE ARE TRENDING WE CAN ARGUE ABOUT THIS LATER

james potter changed chat name to BRAINSTORMING SESSION ASAP

sirus black: porn

james potter removed sirius black from the chat

peter pettigrew: tasteful porn so we don’t get demonetized

james potter: keep talking

-

james potter to twinky winky is a great porn parody title why are you booing me: aquarium vid is a goooooooooooo

remus lupin: but the question is, can we live up to Walmart 4 hype

remus lupin: bc that shit is going insane online. People love it

remus lupin: we’re hoodlums, vandals

sirius lupin: loveable vandals and hoodlums

peter pettigrew: I feel like that’s debatable tbh

remus lupin: we as a collective whole have been kicked out of four separate walmarts

remus lupin: do you know how far I have to drive to get my fried chicken at 2 am

james potter: why the fuck are you getting fried chicken at 2 am

remus lupin: I don’t need this judgement

sirius black: so how’s the aquarium vid faring

peter pettigrew: u know what sirius is being the rational one for once and im too focused on the fried chicken to be amazed

remus lupin left twinky winky is a great porn parody title why are you booing me

peter pettigrew changed the chat name to colonel lupin’s fried chicken

sirius black: is it really that rare that im the rational one?

sirius black: jk ik im a messy bitch

-

peter pettigrew to three’s company: uh. Guys has james seen this yet

peter pettigrew sent an image

remus lupin: oh fuck

sirius black: well I haven’t heard any high pitched screeching yet so, no

peter pettigrew: she’s got more subscribers than we do, it would be good for the channel

sirius black: she’s a video game streamer what sorta collab are we supposed to do with that

remus lupin: idk, maybe a vid on her channel, a vid on ours? She’s in the same city so like, shouldn’t be too hard, right?

sirius black: welp he’s screaming so he definitely has seen the comment now.

-

james potter to chad and ryan were gay fuck you disney: “hey we should totally do a collab sometime! Message me :)”

sirius black: u have sent that TWELVE FUCKING TIMES NOW

sirius black: TWELVE

remus lupin: let the boy live

peter pettigrew: okay but the smiling is a little concerning tbh

remus lupin: @james potter have you even sent the fucked message yet? What did it say?

james potter: “hey! I’m so excited that you wanted to do a collab with us! I love your channel and doing something would be super great for both of us. Anything you had in mind?”

james potter: did I come off as a crazy person?

sirius black: in the best way possible

remus lupin: somehow that doesn’t feel like a compliment?

peter pettigrew: maybe you should use MORE exclamation points

james potter: stfu I am an expert at talking to the most beautiful woman in the world

sirius black: excuse me

james potter: I said woman

sirius black: tell me im pretty

-

james potter to little pig boy comes from the dirt: fuck gotta clean this shit up

james potter changed chat name to the marauders group chat

sirus black: ??????????????? wtf

remus lupin: has james been bodyswapped

peter pettigrew: like the movie face/off with nic cage?

remus lupin: I feel like there are better examples of body swapping

james potter added lily evans to the marauders group chat

sirius black: oh fuck now that makes sense

remus lupin changed chat name to little pig boy comes from the dirt

lily evans: from that SNL skit?

lily evans: I fucking love pete davidson tbh even though he breaks in like every skit

lily evans: did you guys hear that he and ariana got engaged? Idk who I’m more jealous of

sirius black removed james potter from the chat

sirius black: she’s our new james

-

peter pettigrew to owen wilson saying yeah for 2 hrs: drink every time someone comments about sirius’s appearance on a vid

james potter: “im a simple girl. I see sirius, I click.”

remus lupin: the words that will haunt my nightmare

james potter: the comments on the drag trying vid are…bonkers

peter pettigrew: who even says bonkers

lily evans: wow okay some of these commenters are…creative

james potter: by creative, do you mean terrifying?

lily evans: yes yes I do

remus lupin: I don’t even get it. He’s not that great looking?

sirius black: okay fuck you, u trick ass hoe

remus lupin: like, you cannot be everyone’s type

sirus black: trick ass hoe

remus lupin: im just being rational. You’re also like out. So who is thinking that saying they wanna have your babies is valid

lily evans: surrogacy?

peter pettigrew: sperm donation?

james potter: adoption?

remus lupin: fuck all of you individually and as a unit

sirius black: trick ass hoe

-

lily evans to shake shake shake senora: okay just posted my collab vid let’s see how this goes

james potter: what did u end up calling it?

lily evans: “i teach 4 idiots how to play overwatch”

sirius black: harsh but fair

remus lupin: we didn’t do that badly

peter pettigrew: remus die with dignity we did fucking awful

james potter: idk what it meant when lily kept calling me a hanzo main and laughing but it felt hurtful

lily evans: good. It was.

-

remus lupin to three rings to rule them all: so has james seen that people are shipping him and lily yet

remus lupin: because we should NOt let him know about that

peter pettigrew: he’d fucking cry

sirius black: theyd be called lames

sirius black: ha

-

sirius black to james potter: dude you gotta stop staring at lily when she comes over for pizza nights

sirius black: she’s gonna notice

sirius black: or like stop pretending that she isn’t noticing

james potter: wait you think she’s noticed

sirius black: christ you dumbass

-

lily evans to marlene mckinnon: you seen my newest collab with the marauders

marlene mckinnon: we’re roommates, obvi

marlene mckinnon: did u steal my lipstick

lily evans: okay but like. The comments

lily evans: …………………………………..what of it

marlene mckinnon: gonna kill u evans <3

marlene mckinnon: okay wow they really want u to get all up on glasses

lily evans: that one’s potter

marlene mckinnon: they want u to climb him like a tree

marlene mckinnon: do the horizontal tango

marlene mckinnon: netflix and chill

lily evans: these are getting less clever

marlene mckinnon: suck his dick

-

peter pettigrew to wwlbd (what would leonard bernstein do): uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh guys we are on tv

peter pettigrew: TV LIKE WE ARE ON FUCKIN TV

peter pettigrew: TELEVISION

sirius black: what

james potter: what

remus lupin: what

peter pettigrew: OKAY like not us but like. Our video. Walmart #4

remus lupin: great now everyone’s gonna know we’re fucking vandals

james potter: im fucking crying

sirius black: IM FUCKING CRYING

peter pettigrew: oh shit now it’s the video with @Lily Evans

peter pettigrew: we are being called charming and loveable with an “adoring” fanbase

lily evans: oh my god??????????? How’d you (we) even end up on tv

peter pettigrew: idfk! Some like...social media segment or something

-

sirius black to smonk wed: settle a bet for me

remus lupin: christ here we go

sirius black: I don’t appreciate the tone

remus lupin: christ! Here we go!

sirius black: whatver, acceptable, james wants to bone lily

remus lupin: uh

peter pettigrew: that be known

remus lupin: u know this isn’t the three man chat right

lily evans: uh

james potter removed sirius black from the chat

-

peter pettigrew to remus owes me like $20 and some triscuits: who ate all my freezy pops

sirius black: who the fuck calls them freezy pops

remus lupin: who let you back into any of the chats

sirius black: fuk u m8

james potter: he was crying so i let him back in

sirius black: and lily isn’t in this chat so i can say all the shit i want

james potter: i wish u wouldn’t

remus lupin: seconded

peter pettigrew removed sirius black from the chat

james potter: problem solved! peter pettigrew: okay but who ate my freezy pops

-

lily evan to james potter: so are we going to talk about it

james potter: about what precisely

lily evans: the revolution of the moon and the fact it’s made of cheese?

james potter: ah yes, it’s swiss btw

lily evans: the moon?

james potter: clearly

-

COMMENTS ON “THE MARAUDERS TRY DRAG FT. LILY EVANS (EVANSLY)

Chaitea7: oh my god why the fuck is sirius so pretty im jealous wtf

Janeyloo: okay but anybody else picking up on the tension between james and the redhead??

                  VIEW REPLIES

                            4marauderssssss: @Janeyloo that’s lily evans, she’s                                        another youtuber and she’s fucking great

                            dva-main3: they are definitely a thing, i agree

                            greektragdy: okay but does this make their ship name                                       lames? LIMES?

thomasthetrainbdsm: is wormtail ever gonna make another appearance? I love that funky little rat

dwightkshroooot: okay but why isn’t lily actually a like...try vlogger like these guys? she outdid sirius which is like. Unheard of.

                  VIEW REPLIES

                             dianaprinces234: like i never thought id see the day

                             yalldve: she looks so good wtf im shook

dhfakjshdgljdsl: i want lily evans to step on me and i would                              say thank you

                  VIEW REPLIES

                             honeynutcheetos: p sure james thinks the same thing lmao

                             011000110110000101110100: lmao right???? Im so gay

                            TheMarauders: I definitely think the same thing -James                                     Potter

[rkxblue]

happy #rkfifth !

i told myself i wasn’t going 2 do this b/c ... i’m lazy bean, but here we are anyway! let’s get it!

but anyways starting off rookies was kind of like a vacation to me, rp wise. before rk i had my own rp that lasted a while but during 2013, there was just some drama between members that i constantly had 2 deal with and honestly it was like ... dragging me down, making admining seem like a chore and i loathed logging on to the main b/c i knew there would be some shit w/ these certain people that i had to deal with. so seeing rk in the tags being a different kind of idol roleplay ( and shout out rk for being a trendsetter ) /and/ the fact that reserves were filling up so quickly for a new rp, i quickly sent in a muse.

and it was a little ... idk at first. i did feel out of place considering most came from a different rp in the beginning and i wasn’t, and on top of me being v awkward w/ talking 2 people on instant messengers, there was a bit of time where i felt like i didn’t fit in and almost dropped like 2 weeks after i joined, LOL. luckily at the time a lot of things were going on which helped w/ plotting and meeting new muses, and everyone was super friendly and nice and that’s what kept me here!!!

so then rk turned from a vacation you didn’t want to leave from -- i ended up slagging off p majorly on my responsibilities as an admin at my own rp for a while because i was having such a good time at rk -- it rly brought back my love for rp and muse and tbh if you look back at rksunyoung’s archive back in 2013 - early 2014, i don’t think i’ve ever written as much on tumblr as i did back then, LOL. rk has definitely had it’s ups and downs and i’ve dropped both of my muses before -- but it wasn’t too long before i was bringing them back because there really isn’t a place like rk within krp. that, along with the dedication between both members and admins, is why it’s lasted so long and is still thriving with a super active dash after five fucking years. that’s crazy!! i think i remember mei saying something similar on twitter -- but when i see old rp friends and they ask “omg ur /still/ at rk???”

so it’s obvious to see why this rp went from feeling like a vacation to a home, right?? it’ll always have a special place in my heart  ♡

anyways moving on to my characters too -- when i first brought rksunyoung, now miss rkxblue, i never thought that she would last more than a couple of months, much less be involved with so many things within rk’s history!! it’s ... p wild to think about, especially since i’m someone that has a hard time committing to hobbies and such. it’s been a fun ride watching her go from someone who was wild and reckless and had a problem with love and a little bit of anger issues to someone whos a lot more well rounded, a soft idiot LOL. she even finally got herself the sweetest boyfriend after four years of being shipless on the rp, which i still can’t wrap my head around because denying herself love and believing that it doesn’t exist was one of her /things/ for the longest time. the list of stuff she’s done is so long and now that it’s lead to her finally debuting it’s ... scary yet exciting for her, to be honest, she thought she’d be a trainee forever!! i’ve had a lot of ups and downs with her muse as well, to the point where there was like years ( i think ) of inactivity on my end and she should have 4238972389 more points than she does atm because of that. i do feel sorry for her b/c that was just me being lazy ofc, but in the end i’ve gotten my shit together on her and have been pumping out replies p consistently this year and plotting w/ trainees which has done wonders for her muse. and although hyomin was literally /the/ perfect fc for her considering her personality, the fc change 2 yura has also helped majorly with my muse and it’s been so much easier to plot and reply and even with her characterization too.

as for miss rknvna!! she hasn’t had as much development as sun, aside from her tumultuous rls with a former song minho and being a royal trainee during her first run, and that’s mainly been due to my laziness again jfkafl;a. the good thing tho is that i’ve finally been able to experience life as a rookie with her, considering the times my girls have become trainees were v quick ( sun’s first time was like a week or two after the rp opened, then 3 months after i rejoined w/ her, and nana became a trainee only a month after she joined the first time ) so it was nice to experience the freedom that came with being a rookie!! since 2018 has been sun’s year, i’m going to focus on nana for 2019 so that she can branch out more!!

i guess before i move on i should give shoutouts to all my other rkmuses throughout the years whose lives were so short that i can’t even remember their urls LOL -- my song jieun, park kyungri, goo hara, and choi jinri muses!! i’m sure there’s at least one more that i’m forgetting, but they all lasted around 2 weeks so...

but i also want 2 thank rk for allowing me to be more social as well!! i’ve said this in the last anniversary post i wrote 25238957 years ago but i used 2 have a phobia of sorts when it came 2 instant messengers, so i didn’t rly have one when msn was popping and therefore, didn’t talk 2 many people ooc wise in rps. i made an aim when i came to rk and just ... diving in and talking to people helped out a lot with that, even if i do still get anxious from time to time w/ just simply messaging people. :(

i’m a shy individual ( and for some reason its only exacerbated online??? idk fam ) and unconsciously rather private as well, so that definitely hinders me from making friends as much as i would like to, but it’s a day by day process!! it’s something i’ve come 2 terms w/ as of late and will seriously work on within the next year! but even w/ me being the way that i am, i’ve been able 2 meet a couple of people that have made my experience in rk just a little bit brighter so a ( very brief ) shout out 2 them ~

to maria ( @rkjinkis ) : my sweet angel!!! i’m so glad that rk brought us together because you’ve honestly become one of my closest friends from this rp and in general tbh!! ur so super sweet and caring and a blessing 2 my life, just as much as jinki is to ahyoung’s!! i’m sorry that sun is too independent for her own good but she’s working on it okay!! baby steps!! i love how genuine u are and how we can rely on each other through thick and then, and honestly i want the world for u and more. i love love love LOVE u so much, and i’ll make sure u never forget it!! thank u for being my friend and my source of happiness!!!  ♡ ♡ ♡ 

to hamin ( @rksoohyun ) : despite the fact that we knew each other from snu it was rk that actually got us 2 start talking and i’m so grateful for that!! u literally are the cutest girl in the entire world and ur just as outgoing irl as u are online; seeing morning musume ( a group i thought i would never see live ) w/ u was truly a highlight in my life!!! and ofc soohyun will forever be nana’s fuckin child and she’ll always be rooting for her happiness!! i love u u sweet buttercup and i can’t wait until ur back so i can talk 2 u again!!!  ♡ ♡ ♡ 

to mei ( @rkariel ) : man i admired u for the longest b/c i’ve always loved the way u write and ur characterization of tiffany / ariel, so when years ago nick told me that u were actually paying attention to the minana plot and threads i was so shook i nearly tripped over myself LMFAO. i’m happy that we actually started talking b/c of that tho!!! it’s so easy 2 write w/ u and i honestly have so much fun regardless if we’re just talking about our characters, getting carried away on dash or twitter, or hurting each other w/ headcanons!! ariel has become nana’s rock p much and w/o her i’m not sure how she would of fared her time w/ mino w/o her and their discussions!!! i hope that we can become closer in the future!!

to razel ( @rkcheri ) : hiya boo!!! ik we don’t rly talk anymore but i still wanted 2 mention u b/c u were one of my first friends in rk when i felt kinda lonely, and that was definitely one of the reasons i was able to stick around!! i loved writing w/ u b/c ur writing style was always so unique that i could actually point u out whenever we were in past rps together and it’s an honor 2 even write w/ u fjkalf;a. i’m sorry that sun is such a shitty friend and i’m looking forward 2 the day jihyun kicks her ass about not telling her about jinki b/c she deserves it LOL. but just, thank u!!!!

to amy ( @yienrk ) : are u surprised ur on here?? HAHA we don’t talk too much either but i do appreciate u checking up on me whenever i’m down and just generally being supportive and nice!!! also i’m in awe about how knowledgeable u are about idols in general ( i remember one of our first convos being about how sixteen came 2 be and the collapse of all of jype’s trainees and such ) and i love yien and nana’s supportive relationship too!! i can’t wait 2 see how they develop, and i hope 2 get closer 2 u in the future!! ; u ;

to eclipse girls ( @rkariel , @rkaudrey , @rkhaseul , @rkjennie , @rkyeri ) sun couldn’t of asked 2 debut w/ a better group of girls and i’m so glad that they harmonize w/ each other so well!! i’m excited 2 see what debuting brings for them!!  ♡ ♡ ♡

and a shoutout 2 snu crew too ( piper / hoonji, nanu, @rksang, @rktomu, @rksoohyun , @rkjinhwan94, @rkpcy ) : even tho ik majority of u probably won’t see this i’m still tagging and talking about y’all anyway!!! i have so much fun reminiscing w/ u guys whenever we can, and i’m happy that i’ve grown closer too u all as well!! i’m sorry i was such a shit admin back in the day, and what brought y’all together was bad circumstances, but i’m glad it’s something that we can all look back on and laugh at now. i miss being together w/ all of u at once but i hope y’all are doing okay!!!!  ♡ ♡ ♡

and naturally, the admods too!!! thank u guys for putting up w/ all my shit whenever i was in a slump or i sent in points late or fucked up the points ( honestly kyle u are such an angel for real LOL ), and for just keeping the rp in tip top shape!!! ur the back bone of rk and we couldn’t of made it this far w/ each and every one of u and ur contributions and dedication 2 the rp!!! i’m super proud of u guys and am proud 2 call u my admins!!!!  ♡

and ofc shoutout 2 everyone that i’ve ever plotted and threaded w/ in the past and present -- i’m super shit at replying 2 those in general so thank u for being patient w/ me even though i don’t deserve it. i don’t know how else 2 end this b/c i’m also super shit at ending things so uh.... happy fifth year anniversary rk!!! here’s to many more!!!

[greetingsmag-blog]

Happy Wednesday Quotes And Saying-Facebook & Whatsapp Status

Wednesday is a day in the middle of the week that is just little away from the weekend. It is a kind of key to the upcoming weekend. Now you may freely plan your activity and meetings. Everyone start to plan their weekend when Wednesday is finally here. Everyone knows how important it is to overcome this monotonous working routine. Wednesday is often considered a difficult day to get through it. Nevertheless, this aspect of the day is often found in a more amusing way, and for the same reason it’s also referred to as the “Hump Day”. Every Wednesday we throw ourselves into the work. Think about little things like weather conditions, financial trouble, traffic jams and how tired we are. It seems that we’ve been working for centuries, but we’re still disgustingly far from the weekend. Rather than experiencing mass groans and complaints in the mid-week day, you can study our collections of interesting Wednesday quotes to distract yourself from the negative and catch inspiration. There is nothing better than smiling at the workplace for a few minutes. You can also share our funny pictures and sayings with your colleagues. It’ll definitely put them in the good mood and create friendlier atmosphere for the team. We hope you enjoy this Wednesday!

Wednesday Morning Quotes

Getting out of the bed, getting dressed and going to work aren’t those actions we love taking in the mornings, especially when it’s only Wednesday. Believe it or not, most of people you work with feel the same way. Do you and your co-workers feel exhausted and have no energy to work? Use these quotes and pictures to lighten up your Wednesday morning and be charged with good mood for the rest of the day. Read More: Happy Thursday Quotes And Sayings

I have Wednesdays that feel like Mondays when I wish that they were Fridays. Focus on good thoughts and good things will happen. Stay positive, think positive and do positive on this Wednesday morning! Happy Wednesday! Look at the bright side! At least it’s not Monday’s morning! Each morning is the open door to a new world – new vistas, new aims, new plans, new things…Wednesday morning is no less. Happy Wednesday! Be happy with who you are and what you do, and you can do anything you want. Good morning! Wishing you a day full of joyful moments. Happy Wednesday! Worry-free Wednesday! Because worry is like a rocking star: it gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere. Smile increases value of face, Anger spoils beauty of soul, faith is force of life, confidence is companion of success, so keep smiling. Good Morning have a beautiful wednesday. Happy Wednesday! Have a Bright and Beautiful Day! Happy and blessed Wednesday! Wishing you all God’s blessing today and every day! Happy Wednesday! Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none. Funny its Wednesday Quotes Don’t know about you, guys, but as for our opinion, Wednesday is a great day. Just think about it. You can divide your week into sections. The first one will be from Monday to Wednesday and the second one from Wednesday to Friday. Do you agree that Wednesday wins one way or another? It signifies the end of the first, unpleasant, part of the week and starts the second more positive one. It’s finally Wednesday! Think about it in a positive way – after all, the weekend will come soon. You can share the quotes you like most on your personal blog or in your favorite social network. Read More: Friday Status for Whatsapp & Funny Friday Facebook Messages

It must be Wednesday, there goes that camel again. It’s Wacky Wednesday.  Be Happy.  Be Crazy.  Be Silly. Smile! It’s Wednesday – Hang On!  We’re half way to Friday Wednesday:  It’s almost, sorta, kinda, close to, just about, nearly the weekend. Keep Calm.  It’s only Wednesday.  We still have 2 more days to go. It seems to be Wednesday today, but I want to kill everyone, like on Monday. It’s Wednesday! Have a wonderful and blessed day! To some, it’s Hump Day. To us, it’s Wednesday’s getting its ass kicked and Thursday just asking Friday to switch places.” – Dwayne Johnson It’s woohoo Wednesday. Today is going to be a good day. Did you say it’s only Wednesday? Can I have more coffee please? It’s only Wednesday. Put your ‘it’s only Wednesday’ face expression on. Nothing screws your Friday more than realizing that it’s only Wednesday. TGIW – thank God it’s Wednesday! It’s Wednesday. That means that we are over the hump! Wednesday Inspirational Quotes ‘Good job!’, ‘Well done!’, these are the phrases each person likes to hear in order to do more. The same is with Wednesday mood, you need to read something inspirational to be ready to get through the rest of the week. We suggest you get inspired by quotations this Wednesday morning. These collected bits of human wisdom help to inspire new ideas, look at the world in a different way and simply enjoy your day. Keep Going.  You’re half-way to the weekend. I would come home from school every Wednesday, order pizza, and watch ‘X-Files.’ I was devoted. (Ben Foster) It’s Wednesday! I’m breathing. I’m healthy. I’m truly blessed. I’m grateful for this day On Wednesday afternoons I could be practically anything. (Kit Williams) Keep your head high, keep your chin up, and most importantly, keep smiling, because life’s a beautiful thing and there’s so much to smile about. Read More: Happy Saturday Quotes – Facebook Whatsapp Status And Messages

Happy Wednesday! Look at the bright side! At least it’s not Monday! Wednesday is a day to help others celebrate life. You and only you are accountable for what you extend and give to others. One smile not only increases your value but it gives joy to each person you meet. On Wednesday, when the sky is blue, and I have nothing else to do, I sometimes wonder if it’s true That who is what and what is who. – Winnie-the-Pooh Happy Wednesday! The sun is shining! It’s a brand new day, and I’m alive! Happy Wednesday! Cast your love to all, trust in the team to which you are joined, and do not do wrong to others for your own self gratification. “Elephants love Wednesday, and so will you.” – Anthony T. Hincks When a day you happen to know is Wednesday starts off sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere. Sayings about Wednesday Are you seeking for some cool quotes on Wednesday to share them on your blog, Facebook, Twitter or other social networking accounts? Then you are at the right address. We are more than sure that some of your subscribers are having a hard time dealing with so-called midweek depression. If there a word for such thing. So, share these cool quotes with them to make them feel better. After Monday and Tuesday, even the calendar says W – T – F. Monday for wealth, Tuesday for health, Wednesday the best day of all: Thursday for crosses, Friday for losses, Saturday no luck at all. Wednesday’s child is full of woe. When the president decides something on Monday, he still believes it on Wednesday – no matter what happened Tuesday. I like the good life too much, I’m not good at going on stage night after night and on wet Wednesday afternoons. Read More: Beautiful Sunday Quotes & Wishes – Whatsapp And Facebook Status

Wednesdays were the best thing about Atlantis. The middle of the week was a traditional holiday there. Everyone stopped work and celebrated the fact that half the week was over Help!!!! Why is Wednesday spelled like that !!!! – Blake Shelton On Wednesdays we wear pink. from “Mean Girls” When people refer to ‘Back in the Day,’ it was a Wednesday. Just a little fun fact for you. Dane Cook Wednesdays were the best thing about Atlantis. The middle of the week was a traditional holiday there. Everyone stopped work and celebrated the fact that half the week was over. – Walter Moers “Wednesdays will always bring smiles for the second half of the week.” –Anthony T. Hincks I’ve heard of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, but I’ve never heard of Someday. – Reverend Ike Wednesday Sayings about Work If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. Whoever said this must have never worked on Mondays after a wild weekend. We’re kidding, of course, but the thing is, even if you can’t imagine your life without your job, there comes the day when you feel the lack of motivation. Can you boast of your enthusiasm working in the middle of the week or do you feel depressed? Look at these funny quotes to cheer yourself up and share them with your workmates and friends working in the office to make them enjoy this day as well. Read More: Happy Monday Quotes For Your Motivations – Whatsapp & Facebook Status

By Wednesday, work is something that’s easy to complain about. But at the end of the day, you’re making money and making a living. If you do not want to work the third consecutive day, today is Wednesday. When you work without a weekend, Monday is no longer frightening, Friday is not happy, but Wednesday is still fucked up. Wednesdays are like Mondays in the middle of the week! I don’t even feel like working. I went out there for a thousand a week, and I worked Monday, and I got fired Wednesday. The guy that hired me was out of town Tuesday. Boss: This is the third time you’ve been late to work this week. Do you know what that means?  Me: It’s Wednesday? Wednesday, pronounced as ‘wenzdei’, noun, meaning ‘Still not Friday’. “My job is to give people who work hard all week something to enjoy on Saturdays and Wednesdays.” – Arsene Wenger “Happiness is an attitude. We either make ourselves miserable, or happy and strong. The amount of work is the same.”– Carlos Castaneda Practical! On Wednesday afternoons I could be practically anything. What’s up? – Kit Williams Work hard, be kind, and amazing things will happen. – Conan O’Brien Every morning starts a new page in your story. Make it a great one on Wednesday! Wednesday Motivational Quotes We’ve already decided that Wednesday is cooler than Monday but not so cool as Friday. No matter how desperately we want it to be closer to the weekend, Wednesday is the mid-week day. Therefore, everyone needs some drive, push and motivation to begin this day. You can keep yourself going, and you can charge up your friends, relatives, and workmates using Wednesday motivational quotes and wishes. Wednesday has come – the week has passed. I don’t really have any position to complain about my job. Yeah, every job has its moments like, Ah, you know, it’s Wednesday. But I’m blessed. I love my work. (John Darnielle) “Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, “What’s in it for me?” Read More: HAPPY TUESDAY QUOTES WITH IMAGES

Home may be where the heart is but it’s no place to spend Wednesday afternoon. The only person you should try to be better than, is the person you were yesterday. Wednesday is Latin for “almost Friday. “Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.” – Theodore Roosevelt The secret of getting ahead is getting started. – Mark Twain “Commit to your goals – Once you have set your goals, you have to fully commit yourself towards achieving it.” – Mia Conrad Happy Wednesday! Happiness is found from within when you learn to appreciate your blessings, LIVE in the present and LOVE! – Tracey Edmonds Wine Wednesday: like a little holiday in the middle of the week. Positive have a Great Wednesday When it comes to Wednesday, there are two types of people. The first are those who don’t count this day and can smell the tacos they will be enjoying with friends on the Friday evening. The second category are those who see Wednesday as a distant cousin of Monday and really hate it.  Optimists or pessimists, half full or half empty glass – call it want you want. But it is very important to find something good even when you are tired and you want to give up everything. We have collected positive quotes for you to lighten your Wednesday up. May you find moments that make you smile today! Have a great Wednesday! My we begin this day with a smile and a heart full of gratitude. May the Lord bless you most abundantly. Have a great Wednesday, stay happy and blessed! Every morning starts a new page in your story. Make it great one today. Have a great Wednesday! Always keep a bottle of wine in the fridge for special occasions. You know, to have a great Wednesday, for example. May you find moments that make you smile today! Happy Wednesday! Read More: 250 Cute captions to Add Under Picture of Yourself

Smile increases the value of face, Anger spoils beauty of soul, faith is the force of life, confidence is  companion of success, so keep smiling. Good Morning and have a beautiful Wednesday. Welcome to another wonderful Wednesday! Wake up and be thankful! Wednesday will be amazing so wake up and smile! We must move forward, we must continue to dream and we must stay focused in order to overcome. Have a great Wednesday! Happy Wednesday! Practice compassion. Lift others. Learn to encourage rather than criticize. You’ll feel better when you help others feel better. – Tracey Edmonds “What’s in a Wednesday?You! That’s who!Happy Wednesday. ” – Anthony T. Hincks Always keep a bottle of wine in the fridge for special occasions. You know like Wednesday!) Have a good day! Wednesday Quote of the Day Have you ever thought why all the successful people like quoting other successful people? Because they have learned something from them and want other to do the same. Read one interesting quote or fact each day and you’ll be surprised by the results. There are some amusing quotes that will build the positivity up and brighten your Wednesday up. Do not forget to share them with your friends or on your social networks accounts. On Wednesday, when the sky is blue, and I have nothing else to do, I sometimes wonder if it’s true that who is what and what is who (Winnie-the-Pooh / A. A. Milne). This must be the Monday est Wednesday ever. Read More: Friendship Status – Best Friendship Status For Friend

They didn’t want it good, they wanted it Wednesday. If I love you Wednesday, What is that to you? I do not love you Thursday — so much is true. When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere. When the president decides something on Monday, he still believes it on Wednesday – no matter what happened Tuesday. There are more myths about Black Wednesday than the Greeks ever created.” – John Major I think vestigially there’s a synesthete in me, but not like a real one who immediately knows what colour Wednesday is. – A. S. Byatt I live for Tuesdays, and die by Wednesdays. – David Cook Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus. – Alexander Graham Bell “Inspiration is one thing and you can’t control it, but hard work is what keeps the ship moving. Keep up the good work.” – Kevin Eubanks Wednesday Hump Day Quotes As we were saying, Wednesday is often called “Hump day”. Funny name, right? We still can’t get the image of a happy camel out of the head. We provide you some ridiculous hump day quotes to express what you’re feeling about this day and make you get through this Wednesday. At least, there are two days until the weekend! Read More: Cute And Sweet Good Morning Messages For Him OR Her 2019

The only way I can get through Wednesday is by avoiding people who call it Hump Day. To some it’s Hump Day. To us, it’s Wednesday’s getting its ass kicked and Thursday just asked Friday to switch places. Help! Why is Wednesday spelled like that? A Wednesday with no rain is a dry hump day. Hump day is disappointingly misleading… It’s already past lunchtime and I haven’t been humped once. Be a little naughty. It’s Humpday! Hump Day – not as ‘depressing’ as Monday, not as ‘exciting’ as Friday. Rise and grind. It’s Hump Day! Today is Hump Day! Happy as a unicorn eating cake on a rainbow. Nothing ruins Humpday like not getting Humped. Hump Day with you is the happiest Hump day ever! Today is full of possible. Happy Hump Day! Wednesday Quotes and Pictures Congratulations! Dreadful Monday and less terrifying Tuesday are left behind. You almost see Saturday from here. But it still means that you have to work half of the week. Instead of being afraid of the mid-week day, may laughter be your motivation and let it remind you’re not alone. Wednesday is usually associated with a lack of assertiveness, creativeness, and motivation, although it does mean that the weekend is only two days away. If you feel low this day, have a look at our collection of interesting pictures with quotes. Besides there are no such days which couldn’t become brighter the time you see pictures of cats or hilarious minions. Even if you firmly believe that funny pics don’t work, at least you can give it a try. Read More: Love Status – Best, Cute and Romantic Love Status

Wednesday Quotes Images So what does ‘Hump Day’ mean exactly? The explanation is simpler than you think. People often refer to Wednesday as to imaginary hill which they need to climb to get through a hard working week. After Wednesday, it is a lot easier for you to handle the rest of the week as if you are climbing down the hill. Funny images always cheer up! Especially we need a bit of positivist during such difficult days as a “Hump day”. Look at these pictures and have a good Wednesday! Read More: Best Good Night Images For Whatsapp : Download Images For Whatsapp

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[skyfcx]

❝ the truth is, i want to change. i need to change. ❞

Psyche Starters || From Here

     Legs dangled and swung from their chair, fingers drumming without sound against a metal table the two had been chatting around for what felt like forever and never at the exact same time. This one was a little jumbled up on the inside, it seemed. And that was putting it lightly. 

     She had said so much, yet still Tails felt like she had only spoken the beginning layers of what merely framed her sorrowful existence. It didn’t make the fox any less inclined to stay around her, no... he was just upset he didn’t know how to help.

     He hummed, one brow lowering, mouth quirking to the side. “That’s the thing with change... Personal change, anyways. At the end of the day, it truly has to be you that makes the decision to change. People can influence that decision in a whole bunch’a ways, but this is one of those things where it’s you who’s gotta take that one final step. That’s not to say you’ve gotta go it alone from start t’finish, now. I’m sure your friends’ll be with you for every step up to that last one, though, and that’ll make the way toward that change a lot easier.”

     “If someone tells you to act a different way, then you didn’t change. You’re just being directed down a path you can either accept or refuse. But that’s not change.” Eyes drift off for but a singular beat, thinking about Eggman and the likes, before returning to Cosmo. “Like... here.” Fingers press up against themselves in thought, brain rolling before a casual point of the finger is slung toward Cosmo.

     “Sonic and I, he’s changed me in so many crazy ways, I wouldn’t even recognize myself if I saw the before and after! I’m more confident, I trust in my own judgment a lot more, I’m not afraid to use my skills instead of the skills of people I admired...

     Because for the longest time, I wanted to be just like Sonic. To a fault. And because of my infatuation with the guy, I was capping myself to be nothing more than a lesser version of him. It wasn’t until I recognized the problem, identified it, isolated it, and changed it. I allowed myself to change into someone comprised of both his parts and mine that I could be even better than I would be residing strictly in Sonic’s shadow!”

     ...The fox’s head collapsed dramatically to the table, arms splayed out wide and far, one hollow beat of a chuckle falling out and to the floor. And when his head lifts? The only way to describe his face is tired. “Did any of that make sense? I.... I have a tendency to ramble about stuff people don’t get, so don’t be afraid to stare at me like I just grew a third tail.”

[paisleywraith]

Curses, Curses. Chapter 4

Junior year is often considered the most difficult year of high school. Kyle would agree with that on a regular day, he didn’t need some magical bullshit wriggling its fingers at him and turning him into an ass-old Bill Murray movie reboot.

Okay, so sharpie marks do not remain on him when the day resets. Kyle would write that down somewhere, but that would be pretty pointless, wouldn’t it?

           Kyle gulped down a bowl of cereal, the thought of eggs again giving him a nauseous feeling as he gave Ike a goodbye hug that lasted a little too long for his little brother’s tolerance and skittered out the door faster than usual. He was going to keep his word to Kenny, even if the guy didn’t remember a thing. He and Karen had one of the longest walks to the high school anyhow, Kyle didn’t know why they didn’t take the bus and keep from freezing.

           Yes he did, actually. A bus would be too late for Karen’s tutoring.

           Kyle pulled up in front of the McCormick residence he heard many a highschooler jokingly refer to as “the ruins”. It really was getting worse as the years went by, but Kyle tried not to think about it.

           Kyle B: Hurry it up in there, will you?

           Oh shit. He forgot- well, he remembered but he didn’t think about- technically he hadn’t talked to Kenny for more than a couple sentences in a couple of years. He was going to come off as weird as fuck sitting in front of his house in his fucking car what the fuck, Kyle.

           Just as he started to wonder if smacking his head against the steering wheel to induce coma might be worth it to avoid this singular day, a curious blond head poked out the front door.

           Kyle stared back at him, trying to think of what might be the least creepy way to explain when Kenny grinned, beckoning inside and hopping down the disintegrating front stairs as Karen darted behind like a shadow.

           “Well hello, Mr. Broflovski,” Kenny called, muffled through the closed windows. His broad grin stretched his face almost maniacally. “Long time no see.”

           Kyle almost laughed at that, not because it was funny, but in a bitter, approaching-nervous-breakdown kind of way. Oh god, he needed to make a plan today. Something.

           “It’s freezing out today. No reason for you two to walk.” Kyle tried to brush off the underlying question as casually as possible.

Karen was already in the back, situated again where she could see both boys from her seat. Kenny moved to sit down after her, pushing his backpack down by his feet exactly as he did yesterday. Kyle tried to shake the jitters.

“Much appreciated,” Kenny drawled, leaning back into the heated seats and sighing. “Whatcha at school so early for?”

“I always get up early for school.” Kyle murmured. He almost asked why they were up, and he was actually aware of the time loop. Either some things wanted to become reality on their own, or it was social norms gnawing on Kyle’s manners and that was much easier to think about and not have an existential crisis. He chewed on his tongue. He didn’t know what to say at this point.

Kenny was watching him closely, ankle crossed over knee. Kyle pointedly wasn’t looking at him the whole ride over, and without an offer of speech from the Jewish boy, it was an awkward ride to the school. The trio was silent until the car stopped.

“All out.” Goddamn it. “I’ll…see you later.”

“Thanks, Kyle.” Karen said, this time not nearly losing a boot. Kyle nodded.

Kyle glanced over at Kenny, who didn’t move. The two stared at each other. Kyle raised an eyebrow.

“When do you get off of school?” Kenny asked suddenly, a slight furrow between his brows and a far-too-serious look on his face.

Kyle shrugged.

“Kyle.”

“Kenny.”

“When’s your last class?”

Kyle sighed, leaning back against his seat. “I’m not going to class today.”

There was a moment of silence, more or less forcing Kyle to finally look over. Kenny’s eyebrows were in danger of getting lost in his hairline.

“Don’t look at me like that. You’ve skipped school before.”

“Sure, but that’s me.” Kenny squinted at him. “You don’t skip school. And you don’t look sick. Wait,” His brows furrowed now, and those mosaic-blue eyes were watching him with something like fierce intensity. “Why’d you come pick me and Karen up if you weren’t even going to school?”

Out of all people, Kyle didn’t think Kenny was going to be a problem.

“It’s a long story, okay?” Kyle fought to keep from lashing out any further. “Just drop it, dude.” He didn’t want sympathy, or to be admitted to the hospital again. Ugh. Just thinking about it made his stomach churn, and he wasn’t even Stan levels of hospital-discomfort.

“Nope.”

Kyle glared, a look that didn’t even make Kenny blink. Someone honked behind them, and rightfully so, given that they were blocking the unloading lane.

“Dude, fuck off.” Kyle was shaking now, not that he really knew why. Anger. Cold. Fear. He couldn’t stop shivering. “You have class.”

“So do you.”

“Kenny McCormick, I fucking swear-”

The car honked again, more insistently, and Kyle made a strangled noise as he pulled out of the way. He was still trembling, hands visibly shaking on the wheel.

“Kyle, what is going on?” Kenny’s voice was far too serious, deepened to something almost un-Kenny-like entirely.

Kyle grit his teeth.

“Kyle. I’m not dropping it.”

He pulled angrily into the parking lot, slamming on the break a little harder than necessary and reveling in the oof he got from the taller boy.

“Fucking- Kyle, you’re shaking and acting like you’re fucking scared of me, what the- what’s-”

Looking at Kenny was a mistake. The blonde looked distraught, sharp features drawn down by furrowed brows and a deepening frown. Speechless. Kenny was speechless.

“I can’t tell you.” Kyle flopped back against the driver’s seat with a huff. “It’s complicated, it’s my problem, and you’d just think I’m crazy if I told you.”

Kenny’s eyes lit, as if that was a challenge. In a flash his old smile was back, showing off uneven teeth. “I think you’re crazy anyway, Ky. Hit me.”

Kyle grumbled. He sighed. He picked at his jacket sleeve. He pulled his hat further down until it just touched his eyebrows.

“I’m…experiencing the same day over and over again.” Kyle felt like no matter how many days he relived, he’d never be able to say that without sounding like a complete ass. “I’m on day…four, I think. No, Five. Or…” He trailed off awkwardly, resolutely staring at the car ceiling. “I tried writing it down but it disappears. Any record, I mean.”

Both were quiet. Outside, Kyle could hear the muffled shouts and laughter of other highschoolers as everyone began arriving.

“Well. Okay.”

Kyle looked over at Kenny at last, who looked thoughtful but no longer angry.

“You’re just going to accept that?” Kyle asked suspiciously.

Kenny shrugged.

“Sure.” The blond leaned back at last, watching Kyle with a solemn but relaxed gaze. “So it’s been happening for five days? Ish? You tell anyone else?”

“Uh-” Kyle tried to think of how to formulate sentences. “I kind of had a breakdown two days ago. Freaked out my family. I didn’t tell anyone yesterday.”

“What’d you do yesterday?” Kenny asked, and Kyle found himself biting his tongue.

“What are you, my therapist?”

Well that was a mistake. Kenny’s grin was back and he kicked his feet up on the dash.

“Doctor McCormick is in, darlin’. Sit back and tell me your childhood woes.”

“For starters, my friend is an absolute asshat.”

“Aw, Stan’s not so bad.”

“Fuck you, man.” Kyle couldn’t help laughing through the sentence even if the words were harsh, color back in his face for the first time in…a day, technically.

Kenny looked nothing short of ecstatic. Kyle couldn’t help the smile, and sank into the car seat as his shoulders finally relaxed from their tense hold.

“I totally believe you, Kyle,” Kenny said, smile softening but still fully visible. “So confide in your therapist. What about yesterday?”

“I just spent time with Stan. And you.” Kyle awkwardly gestured at him. “Karen is getting tutored in chemistry.”

“Yes, she is.” Kenny’s expression was thoughtful again. He tapped his thumbnail against his chin. “What about the day before the first day? Anything significant happen?”

“No.” Kyle held his fingers in front of the car heater, jaw clenched. “I’ve thought about it for about five days, Kenny. I don’t know why. And I don’t know how to make it stop.” His whole body shivered. “I don’t know if it will.”

Kenny didn’t say anything to that, and honestly Kyle was relieved. If he’d offered some fluffy bullshit about everything turning out okay, he might’ve been tempted to smack him. Both boys remained quiet.

“Come get me.”

Kyle looked over, furrowed look making a ridge between his eyebrows. “…What?” He asked, when Kenny clearly wanted him to ask for clarification.

Kenny responded by leaning over the console, looking at Kyle seriously while invading his personal space.

“Every day, I want you to come get me when your day resets.” Kenny rested an elbow on the console. “I might not remember but I promise, I will believe you. Okay? Every day. Come get me.”

Kyle eyes flit between Kenny’s, brows furrowed darkly. It couldn’t be comfortable sitting like that, legs on the dash and leaning into his space. It was distracting. What damage he was doing to his spine.

Kenny wasn’t saying anything, but he was getting a smug kind of look on his face that made Kyle increasingly uncomfortable. Kyle wrinkled his nose at him.

“Okay,” He finally said, eyes still locked on blue. “I’ll come get you tomorrow.”

Kenny pulled the hat off his head, earning a protesting yelp from Kyle, and leaned back into his own space.

“I’ll just bill you for one day, then.” Kenny grinned, pulled the hat down over his own ears. “Now, your doctor recommends a trip.”

“Trip?” Kyle asked flatly.

“Let’s get out of town. Road trip!” Kenny’s grin was infectious. His beat up sneakers on the dash wriggled to convey his excitement. “It’s not like you’ll be missing anything. We don’t have to go far.”

Kyle pursed his lips. Getting out of South Park for the day did have its appeal. Something different. Five days in and he was losing his mind.

“Look, tomorrow we’ll figure something out,” Kenny’s voice was firm, a quick switch from the cheery tone. “But you look like you’re minutes away from a breakdown. Breathe, dude.”

Kyle’s jaw was so tight he was probably doing some major damage to his molars.

“Relax today. Everything is fine.” Kenny’s voice nearly crooned. He was trying to be soothing. “Tomorrow, I’m going to believe you. And we’ll think of something. Right now you need out of South Park, you need to stop obsessing over this- because I know you and I know you will- so just go along with this.”

Kyle was silent. 

He took the car out of park. Kenny whooped.