#but this version is super powerful thanks to the illustrations

[the---hermit]

I am not saying here's a link to a free online version of the 1984 graphic novel but if it was there you should probably go read it.

[scary-grace]

sips drink. I am going to need. [ ring ] for shigraki

Thank you for the prompt! As usual, I went a little berserk with it, and there is. so much smut in this. If you're not a fan/this is not the vibe, let me know and I'll write you a different one, or do a better job with your other prompts! 9k, AU with demons, succubus!reader, tons of smut. If you're a big fan of super dominant Tomura, this is not the fic for that. MDNI + thanks to @dogblessyoutascha for beta-reading on short notice and putting up with tons of yapping and fic about this guy.

wanted (if you want me)

a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

You're a down-on-your-luck succubus who just got rejected by the guy who summoned you, and you can't go back to Hell until you find somebody else's soul to steal. Shigaraki Tomura, reeling from a Valentine's Day rejection of his own, is the perfect victim. Or so you think. (cross-posted to Ao3)

“Sorry,” the guy who just summoned you says, sitting back from the pentagram he’s drawn on the floor with a frown. “You’re not my type.”

“I’m – what?” You feel stupid, which isn’t how you’re supposed to feel. You’re a demon, and a mortal’s just summoned you. You should feel powerful and lawless, not embarrassed. Not rejected. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, you’re not my type,” the guy says again. He gestures awkwardly at you. “I was hoping for somebody – more.”

“Did you want a guy or something?” you ask. You cross your arms over your chest. Your clothes are barely worthy of the title, and you don’t want this guy seeing your nipples if he’s not even into them. “If you wanted a guy, you should have summoned an incubus. It’s not my fault you can’t read.”

“I like girls,” the guy snaps at you, rather than addressing the fact that you just called him a moron. “You were supposed to look like this.”

He picks up the grimoire he was reading the incantation out of and holds it up to you. It must be a new edition of the same old grimoire, because the last version of it you saw didn’t include illustrations. The illustration in question is a demon, identifiable as such by her horns and tail, but she looks about as much like you as you do like an angel straight from Heaven’s hideous art-deco gates. She’s got the kind of proportions that don’t work on Earth or in Hell – tiny waist, enormous breasts, ass that needs its own zip code, and her outfit is so tiny that you can see her nipples and her clit through it. And then there’s the face she’s making, straight out of some seedy erotic magazine, with blown-out pupils and open mouth and a delicate flush across her cheeks, all ready to be ruined.

Your outfit is skimpy, sure, but not that skimpy. You have the parts you need, but they aren’t that exaggerated, and if you tried that stupid expression, you’re pretty sure your face would melt off. If this is what this mortal expected, of course he’s disappointed to have gotten you.

His disappointment isn’t your problem, and now you’re in a mood. “Let me get this straight. You summoned a succubus – a sex demon from the depths of Hell – to fulfill your fantasies, and you’ve decided that now’s the time to get picky.”

“I’m not being picky,” he says. “Girls like you don’t do it for me. Can’t you send somebody else?”

“Sorry. All my sisters are seducing hotter mortals than you.” You feel a surge of pleasure at the way the man flinches. Guys like these – when they summon a succubus, they’re always thinking about the sex part, not the part where you’re a demon. “They took one look at you and decided I was all you deserved, and you know what? I don’t think you deserve me, either.”

“Well, I don’t want you, so –”

“In fact,” you continue, rising to your feet and internally cursing the fact that you decided to materialize in fuck-me heels, “I don’t think you deserve to get laid ever again.”

The mortal blanches. “What?” he demands, taking a step back as you step forward out of the pentagram. “You can’t leave the circle unless I say.”

“You really should look into those reading lessons. You’ll have a lot of time on your hands.” You were just going to lay the curse, but you decide that’s not enough. You nail him in the balls with a sharp kick, and as he doubles over, you speak, your voice crackling with the fires of Hell. “May your erections always wither, no matter how much porn you watch or how many drugs you take. May you disappoint every lover you take to your bed, and may that bed lie as cold and empty as the grave where they’ll bury your impotent corpse.”

It's a pretty good curse, if you say so yourself. “You bitch,” the mortal spits, but you snap your fingers and seal his fate. You know the moment the curse settles over him. You see the despair in his eyes. “Take it back!”

“No,” you say. You grasp his chin in one hand and lean in close, so close that your breath huffs out against his lips. You scraped your tongue for this guy. He deserves all this and more. “I’ll see you in Hell.”

His eyes roll up in his head and he collapses to the floor. You step over his unconscious form and survey the apartment you’ve found yourself in, dingy and filthy and smelling unpleasantly of human body odor. This is the kind of mortal who thought it was wise to reject you, just because you didn’t exactly resemble the absurd sketch in his grimoire. This is the kind of mortal who thought you weren’t good enough for him. Your lower lip begins to tremble, no matter how hard you sink your sharp teeth into it, and sulfuric tears begin to leak from your eyes. You were so excited to be summoned, so hopeful that you could do a good job for once. Now you just want to go home.

But you can’t. When you try to dematerialize and let Hell call you back, you can’t, and you realize why not in the same second as you realize that you didn’t curse that human nearly hard enough. You were summoned to this world to serve a purpose – to fuck some mortal so hard that they’ll sell you their soul – and until you serve that purpose, you’re trapped here. You need to find a mortal to sleep with, immediately. And you can’t go out looking like this.

You ransack the mortal’s apartment. None of his street clothes are anything you’d be caught exorcised wearing, but he has a long coat that he probably thinks makes him look mysterious and cool. You shrug it on, noting that it covers your skimpy outfit while still providing easy access to your body when it’s time to take it off, and keep searching, in case there’s anything else you can use. Money, as it happens – this human has a bank account and credit cards, and even unconscious, it’s all too easy to read his mind for the PIN. You pocket all of it, hide your demon form with a glamour, then leave the apartment door wide open on your way out.

As soon as you hit the street, though, you realize that you have an even bigger problem than you thought. You assumed it was some featureless winter evening, the kind where a bored, lonely mortal has nothing better to do than flip through a grimoire and get himself into trouble, but every storefront you look at is decorated with hearts. Every mortal you pass on the street is on someone else’s arm, or carrying flowers, or making out in the glow of a streetlight. It’s Valentine’s Day. You’re fucked.

Contrary to what humans like the idiot who summoned you think, Valentine’s Day isn’t actually about sex. Sex is a side effect of what Valentine’s Day is really about, which is romance. It’s about love and soulmates and tenderness and affection and forever, which is exactly nothing you know anything about. Succubi and incubi exist on the dark side of all of that, in its nasty, sleazy, prurient shadow. You don’t court, you seduce. You don’t make love, you fuck. You don’t show people the face of God, or whatever that dumb-ass musical says; you show them the gates of Hell and walk them through. Seducing a random mortal is a tall order for you on a given day. Seducing one on Valentine’s Day is going to be damn near impossible.

You feel tears welling up again and blink them back. Crying over rejection from a filthy, useless mortal was bad enough. Demons shouldn’t feel that kind of pain, and if they do, they shouldn’t wallow in it. Demons get the job done. And it’s not totally hopeless, when you force yourself to be honest about it. For all the mortals who are happily coupled, there are plenty who aren’t, and if the mortal who summoned you is anything to judge by, some of them aren’t averse to a little salacious, damnation-worthy fun.

As far as places to find single humans go, you’re spoiled for choice; while all the restaurants have Valentine’s Day specials for mortals out on a date with their special someone, it seems as though every club or bar is advertising an event for singles. You peer into a few bars, but none of them strike you as having the right mood. Most of them carry a pathetic air of hopefulness, as if the humans within believe they really might find someone to love tonight of all nights. You don’t need hopefulness. You need desperation. You need a human so lonely and desperate that they won’t question why a stranger wants to fuck them. If you were attractive in your human guise, you’d have a better shot, but apparently you aren’t. Only a human who’s truly desperate would go for you.

Finally you come across a bar where the mood seems a little more appropriate. Some sort of singles event is winding down as you come in, and you sense the despair beginning to set in. Most of the humans here could easily pair up with one of the others if they were willing to alter their standards, but humans have gotten entitled these days, and they all think they deserve a partner who matches their ideals. They cling to that fiction even as the mood in the bar worsens. They don’t need to settle. They’re holding out for true love.

Pathetic. You square your shoulders and wade into the mix.

The gender of your target doesn’t matter to you. It doesn’t even matter if they’re willing to sell their soul tonight – once you’ve fucked them, you can come back as many times as it takes for them to give it over. But even with your criteria broadened, you’re having trouble. As you search through the humans, tasting the flavor of their emotions every time you brush against one, you don’t find a single one who feels the way you need them to.

You taste sadness. Loneliness. Despair. Resignation or acceptance – sometimes they’re hard to tell apart. A few strange humans have even found refuge in faith, some idiosyncratic hope that they’ll find what they’re meant to find when the time is right, as if God has time to ordain such stupid things. On another night, you’d take pleasure in crushing their hopes, but your own hopes of getting out of here are sinking by the second. You need a human. Any human will do.

But just as you’re resigning yourself to seduce a woman, one whose loneliness carries just the faintest tinge of despair, you’re hit with a wave of exactly what you’ve been looking for. Not just despair, but disappointment. Not just loneliness, but hurt. Not just resignation, but frustration and embarrassment, at feeling hurt and disappointed and finding themselves here at all. You turn away from the woman without ever drawing her attention to you and follow the thread of rejection through the bar to a booth in the corner, where a mortal sits alone.

Along with the relief of finding a target at last, the first feeling that crosses your mind is surprise.  This isn’t the sort of mortal you’d expect to find alone on Valentine’s Day, just based on his looks alone – almost-delicate facial features, long white hair, a frame that’s broad-shouldered yet lithe, observable even when he’s seated. As you get closer, you see a birthmark below the corner of his mouth, scars over his mouth and eye, and long lashes framing his crimson eyes. This mortal is pretty. Some of your sisters don’t care what their targets look like, but you like your mortal men pretty.

The mortal looks up as you come to the edge of his table. He seems as surprised to see you as you are to see him. “You’re late to the party.”

“Apparently not, since you’re here. Do you mind if I sit down? My feet are hurting in these shoes.”

He looks down at your shoes, and just like you were hoping, his eyes trace upwards, over your bare ankle to your calf to your knee before it disappears beneath your stolen coat. “Go ahead,” he says. “There’s room.”

There’s plenty of room, but you sit down next to him anyway, your leg pressed against his. You feel him startle, feel him go tense, and decide it’s worth drawing attention to. “Did I scare you?”

“No,” he says, but you can hear his heart beginning to race. “Just wondering if this is a setup or something. People like you don’t usually want anything to do with people like me.”

“People like me?” you say. You turn towards him, elbow propped on the table, chin propped in your hand. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t play dumb,” your mortal says. “Looks like yours, there’s no way you’re single.”

You can’t imagine this mortal’s self-deprecating angle working on anyone, but the compliment makes you glow ever so slightly. “Strange. I was thinking the same about you.”

Your mortal doesn’t glow. He blushes. “Don’t lie.”

“Would I lie?” Yes, frequently and gleefully – but not right now. “You’re gorgeous.”

He scoffs, averts his eyes, but his heart’s beating faster. It’s cute, and since he’s opened this door, you might as well walk through. Time for a little touching. You start with the scar above his eye. “I like this, and this –” you trace the scar, then tuck a few strands of white hair behind his ear, letting your fingers graze across his cheek and down to his jaw before reaching the scar over his mouth. “And this –”

He speaks while your fingers are still against his lips. “Careful.”

“I’m being really careful,” you promise. You run your fingers over his mouth again, slow and teasing, then turn your attention to the birthmark. “And I like this. It really completes the picture. Whoever rejected you tonight, they were out of their mind.”

“I could say the same about whoever rejected you.” Your mortal’s hand brushes against your knee, then drifts away, and you shiver ever so slightly. You like this mortal. It’s always easier when you like them. “I saw you watching the rest of them. Why did you pick me?”

“Like I said, you’re gorgeous,” you say, and shrug. The shrug presses you a little closer against him, and you don’t pull back. “And you looked like you were having the same kind of night as I am. I thought we could make each other feel better.”

He gives you a skeptical look, but the flush in his cheeks gives him away. Oh, you like this one. Even if he gives you his soul tonight, you’ll come back to visit him at least a few more times. “How do you think we can do that?”

“By giving each other what we want,” you say. “Don’t you get tired of having to play a part, to be what someone else expects you to be, and never have your desires fulfilled? I could give you that.”

He scoffs. “You think you know what my desires are?”

“You’d tell me,” you murmur. “That’s the point.”

Your mortal’s skepticism doesn’t fade, but neither does his blush. “What about what you want? I don’t buy for a second that it’s just to sleep with me.”

The question gives you pause. It’s not one you’ve thought of before. Succubi don’t have sexual desires, really – your goal is always to seduce your target, which means it’s all about what your target wants. You aren’t very good at your job, but you’ve put up with all sorts of things, doing them or having them done to you, if it means the mortal you’re fucking will hand over their soul. What you want, personally, doesn’t factor in even slightly. What do you want from this mortal? You don’t know.

“You don’t know,” your mortal says, as though you’ve spoken aloud. His hand brushes against your leg again, settles there. “I’ll help you find out.”

“Only if you tell me what you want,” you insist, as he brushes your coat aside and finds your leg bare. His fingertips are dry and rough as they trail over your skin, brushing the inside of your thigh. “Oh –”

“Too much?” he asks. There’s an almost wicked glint in his eye.

You feel your own heart pick up the pace. This will be a challenge. You like a challenge. “Answer my question first. Every time you answer, you can move your hand.”

“I want you.”

“Wrong answer.” You close your legs, not that they were that far apart in the first place. You’re not easy. “I asked about your unfulfilled desires, and you just met me today. I can’t be the only thing you want.”

“Mm.” Your mortal makes a dissatisfied noise. Even as he leaves his hand in place, you see an awkwardness settle over him – nerves, or something like it. For such a gorgeous mortal, he’s an interesting contradiction. “I want – to be out of control.”

“Out of control?” You won’t open your legs just yet. “Tell me more.”

“You were right about me. I’m always doing what others want. I always have to be in control. I want to be outside my own control,” your mortal says. He can’t meet your eyes, and the flush in his cheeks looks almost uncomfortable. When you lean in to kiss it, his skin is hot beneath your lips. “I want someone else to –”

“Praise you? Worship you? Pleasure you until you can barely think?” You know you’ve got him by the sharp intake of breath, by the way he startles. “That would be my pleasure, too.”

You part your legs enough to free his hand, and his fingers, shaking slightly, work their way up the inside of your thigh. “What else?” you ask. “Be specific.”

“I want whatever you can give me.” He turns his head, looking away, which is an error on his part; it leaves his neck exposed, and you lean in to kiss it, feeling his pulse jump and race. “If I tell you it’s too much, I want you to give me more.”

“That was a good answer.” You part your legs a little further, and he takes it as the invitation it is. “Anything else?”

“I want to do the same to you,” your mortal says, and your face flushes. “It’s only fair. If you get to ruin me, I get to ruin you.”

Ruining him calls to mind all sorts of things, acts you’ve performed for other mortals by rote, acts you want nothing more than to perform for him, and the thought overwhelms you enough that you miss what he’s doing with his hand between your legs until he’s touching you, tracing your clit through the thin fabric. You realize with some degree of horror that you’re wet, and worse, that even his delicate touch has you spreading your legs wider. While you weren’t paying attention, your mortal made a bid for the upper hand, and he almost got it.

Not quite, though. You renew your efforts on his neck, feeling him shudder. You’ll do as he asks, as he desires – but not until he begs you, out loud, to give him what he needs. He shifts, squirms, in response to your attentions to his neck, much as you’re doing with his hand between your legs. “Mutual ruination,” you muse. “That sounds like a plan to me.”

Your hand’s been trapped at your side. You work it free and slip it behind his head, tangling your fingers in his hair. Then you turn him back to face you, drinking in the sight of him for a moment before you lean in to kiss him. The only way your mortal’s never had his desires fulfilled is if he’s never voiced them. You can’t imagine anyone looking at him, seeing him like this, and denying him what he wants.

Most mortals you’ve seduced lose patience with kissing quickly. The kind of mortals who summon a succubus only have one thing on their mind, but your mortal doesn’t know what you are. He kisses you eagerly, if inexpertly, and it’s only right for you to reward his enthusiasm. Besides, there’s something about kissing him that feels right, too right for the unholiness of what you are. If being with a mortal feels this good, you’re probably doing it wrong.

What does it matter? As long as you sleep with him, you’ll be free to return home. You’re a demon. Wrongness and rightness don’t factor in. You kiss your mortal carefully, paying some mind to the sharpness of your teeth and the delicateness of his skin. He’s less careful with his teeth. They nick your lip and blood wells out, and he licks it away without a moment’s hesitation. That flick of his tongue makes you consider other places it might belong, and you catch your breath. Or maybe it’s because he’s tugged your underwear aside to touch you directly, and you can no longer ignore the way he makes you feel.

You lean back, struggling to clear your head. A thought crosses your mind. “What’s your name?”

“Tomura.” Your mortal’s crimson eyes are dilated with want, the desperation you were so drawn to evident across his face. “Please –”

You kiss him again, and as he begins to finger you in earnest, stroking your clit and dipping his fingers shallowly inside you, you untangle your fingers from his hair and trace the inside of his thigh. Tomura startles at your touch, but spreads his legs at once, and your head spins with want. “How long have you wanted this?” you murmur against his lips. “Tell me.”

“Eternity.” Tomura twitches as you brush your hand over his groin before returning to toy with his thigh again. “But it’s not what they want me for. Nobody asked what I wanted until you.”

“Then they were missing out.” You bite back a gasp as Tomura sinks two fingers inside you, curling them just so, but his touch is only half the reason – the other half is the thought that you’re the first to see him this way, the only one to see him this way. “If they could see how pretty you are like this –”

“Do you want them to?”

“No,” you decide at once. You brush your hand over his groin again, noting how tightly his pants are stretched over his hardening cock. “I want you all to myself.”

His body jerks, craning upwards into your touch. “Now,” he says, almost demands. “I need it now.”

“People could see,” you warn. “If they walk by, they’ll know we’re up to something. Do you care about that?”

“Yes,” Tomura says, and you run your thumb over the tip of his cock through his pants. His body jerks, and you do it again. Again. “Fuck –”

“We can leave whenever you want,” you say, even as your body tenses around his fingers. You feel wound tight, your legs shaking from the strain, your lungs feeling as though they can’t hold on to even a single whisper of air. Mortals have choked you before while you’re seducing them and it’s never been like this. “Tell me to stop and we’ll go.”

Tomura doesn’t tell you to stop. You undo his belt, unzip his pants, and the instant your hand closes around his cock, he moans, loud enough to attract attention if anyone from the failed singles event is still around. He’s embarrassed by it – you can tell – but he doesn’t tell you to stop, and you keep stroking his cock. “So pretty,” you say, your voice catching as the heel of his hand presses against your clit. “Does that feel good? Let me make you feel even better.”

You grasp his wrist and pull his hand from between your legs, thankful for the reprieve. Tomura tastes his fingers, savoring them in a way that makes you feel almost awkward. “I wasn’t done.”

“No, but you’re about to make a mess.” You give a pointed glance down at his cock, which is oozing enough precum to stain his underwear. “I’ll be right back.”

There’s plenty of space for you under the table, and better yet, you’re out of sight, which means Tomura can’t see your reaction to the way he spreads his legs for you. And you haven’t vanished a moment too soon. You can hear footsteps approaching, and you sit forward and take his cock in your mouth just as the newcomers arrive.

“You sure you need this whole booth when you’re by yourself?” whoever it is asks. You hear Tomura start to answer, but you suck lightly on the tip of his cock, forcing him to bite back a curse. “What is your problem?”

“No problem,” Tomura grunts. You put your tongue to use, tracing it over his tip as you wrap your hand around the rest of his length. “Fuck – fuck off. There are other places to sit.”

The newcomer might say something else, but you can’t hear it around your own heartbeat thudding in your ears. Tomura wants you. He wants you so badly that he’s letting you blow him in public, that he won’t tell you to stop even when the two of you might be caught. The instant the other mortal leaves, you’re cradling his balls in your free hand, then sliding your hand a little further to press against his taint. Tomura’s entire body jerks and trembles. “Careful,” he forces out between gasps of air. “I’m going to – come –”

You wish you weren’t under the table, even if being under the table is necessary to contain the mess. You wish you could see Tomura’s face as his composure shatters, as he tries and fails to thrust upwards into your mouth and spills a ridiculous amount of cum down your throat. But he’s not quite out of control, not yet, and if you’re going to steal his soul, you really should give him what he wants first. You keep stroking his cock even as the shaking subsides, your tongue still dragging over his tip. He hasn’t gone soft just yet. You’re kind of impressed.

You’re impressed, too, with how he holds out. You know you’re overstimulating him, but he hasn’t told you to stop yet. And he asked you to keep going even if he told you it was too much. Still, you don’t like the idea of hurting your mortal. You renew your efforts, employing all the tricks you’ve learned to keep mortal men hanging on your every move, and to your shock, Tomura comes again. This time he’s almost sobbing, and you draw back at once, climbing out from under the table to check on your handiwork.

There are scratches in the couch cushions and on the tabletop, and both the napkins that were on the table have been crumpled out of existence. Tomura looks wrecked. He’s been yanking at the collar of his shirt, running his hands through his hair, and his face is flushed and sweaty. His eyes are blurred, and he’s still breathing hard, but when you lean in to kiss him, he obliges instantly. He’s unsteady, and yet there’s a strange hunger in the way he kisses you, a hunger that takes yours and amplifies it in a way you can’t quantify, let alone guard against. You find yourself melting into his touch, needing closeness, needing contact. And he gives it to you.

You’ve only just settled into a languid pace, your hands in his hair and his arms wrapped firmly around your waist, when someone smacks a server’s tray down on the table and startles you out of it. It’s the bartender. “Do you mind?” she demands, her face red. “This isn’t that kind of place! Take it outside.”

That’s fine with you. A little PDA is one thing, but whatever happens next between you and Tomura, you want privacy for it. You start to slide out of the booth, but Tomura won’t let you. He kisses you again, and you realize he’s giving himself cover to button his pants. But as long as you’re here – “What did I just say?” the bartender explodes. “Get out!”

You and Tomura stumble out onto the street, and the instant the door shuts behind you, Tomura pins you against it to kiss you again. “Does that feel good?” he asks, the same question you asked him earlier. You didn’t give him a chance to answer, and he doesn’t give you one, either. “Let’s go somewhere. You’re not the only one who doesn’t like to share.”

“Where should we go?” you ask. “I’d rather not go to a love hotel. Your place?”

He hesitates for a moment. “My place. Come on.”

You kiss on the train platform, mostly to keep out the cold, but on the train, you find yourself simply looking at Tomura, talking to him. You find out that he got rejected tonight, too, and came to the bar to mope about it. “They’re nothing. Their opinions don’t matter,” he says. Even his disdain sounds like yours. “That doesn’t change how it feels.”

“I know,” you say. You lean against him, your head on his shoulder, your left hand intertwined with his right. “My – date – said I wasn’t his type, then showed me this ridiculous drawing –”

“May his dick shrivel up and fall off,” Tomura says matter-of-factly, and you find yourself giggling. “If you aren’t enough for him, he doesn’t deserve to have any at all. Still –”

He trails off. “His loss, my gain.”

“You’re just saying that because I blew you.”

Tomura snorts. “Don’t be stupid. You asked what I wanted. Nobody’s ever asked me that. That’s not what I’m for.”

“What do you mean?” you ask. He doesn’t strike you as a sex worker – he’s too earnest, too vulnerable, in how he responds to you for it to be his day job. He shrugs, shakes his head. “I think you’re for whatever you want to be for. That’s how you are to me.”

His grip on your hand tightens for a moment, then loosens again, fingers tangling with yours. A strange spark, like an electric shock, ripples across your hand, and you look down to see an odd shadow around your ring finger. That wasn’t there before, but then again, you’ve never spent this long in the mortal world without fulfilling your purpose. “What about you?” Tomura asks. “Why don’t you know what you want?”

“I never thought about it before.” Some of your sisters enjoy their jobs, but it’s always felt like a job to you. Something to get through, so you can go home. “It hasn’t really mattered.”

“It matters now,” Tomura says. “When we get back to my place, I’ll show you.”

Tomura’s place is in a downtown high-rise, the third floor from the top of the building, and he gives you long enough to finally step out of your awful shoes before he peels you out of your jacket. For a single moment you’re convinced you’re about to see the same reaction as the mortal who summoned you, but instead Tomura’s eyes travel slowly over your form, lingering in every place you’d expect and a few places you didn’t. “This picture he showed you,” he says. “The one he thought was better than you. What did it look like?”

“Uh –” Where do you start, really? “The proportions were totally off. Its waist was tiny, and its breasts were huge –”

“Huh.” Tomura’s hands are at your waist, running over the curve from torso to hip and back with a firm, steady touch. One stays there, but the other migrates upwards, cupping your breast through your scant clothing. “What else?”

“It had this stupid outfit on. Like, way smaller than mine. You could see everything,” you say. Tomura’s thumb brushes over your nipple, then comes back to circle it, and heat begins to pool in your lower abdomen. “It barely covered her nipples – or her clit. It just looked kind of – I mean, I can hang in there with the best of them, but –”

Your voice catches. Tomura’s hand slides from your waist down between your legs, stroking your clit with his middle finger. His touch is featherlight, compared to the way he’s playing with your nipple, pinching and tugging it, making you squirm. “What else?” he prompts.

“The stupid face she was making. It was straight out of a porno – like, one of the really cheap ones. What some guy who’s never seen a woman come before would –” You startle as Tomura’s fingers slip further between your legs, then sink easily into you. “Tomura –”

“This drawing sounds like a fucking mess,” Tomura says. He reaches down and grasps your thigh, hiking your leg up around his waist and leaving you even more exposed for him. “I want to see the real thing.”

He wants you to come for him. You know how to fake a convincing orgasm – or an unconvincing one, depending on the target – but you don’t want to fake for Tomura. You promised him he can have what he wants, and he wants this, you. Your chest goes tight. “I don’t know if I can, like this.”

“I’ve got lots of ideas.” Tomura kisses you, and that need to melt into him resurfaces, even as your body responds to his onslaught. “Show me.”

You try to keep kissing him, but you can’t. Your legs are shaking again, and it’s hard to breathe, and you have to draw back to gasp for air. Somewhere in the back of your mind is the thought that this isn’t how it’s supposed to happen, that something went wrong in your seduction of this mortal if he’s the one trying to please you, but it’s stifled by other, more pressing matters. The heat flooding through you, the awful and yet indescribable exposure of your legs spread this way, Tomura’s hand anchoring you so you can’t pull back off his fingers until he’s done with you.

Or until you’re done with him. You come hard enough to blur your vision, hard enough that your legs almost give out, and Tomura keeps his fingers inside you until your twitching and squirming subsides. When he draws them back, you can see that his hand is soaked. He brings them to his mouth to taste them again, and you spot a shadow around his fourth finger. It can’t hold your attention for long. “That was good,” he decides. “But I want to see more.”

“More?” Your voice is shaky, and you’re hanging onto Tomura for dear life. “What do you mean?”

“You said I could have what I wanted,” Tomura reminds you. “This way.”

You follow him down the hall on shaky legs, into a bedroom with an enormous bed. Finally. You’re not getting into bed with Tomura still wearing your horrible outfit, so you peel it off, then turn to help him with his clothes. You undress him slowly, kissing every inch of skin you uncover, trying to regain some of your lost composure. But it’s hard to compose yourself when there’s so much of him to explore, to praise. So pretty, so noisy, so needy even when there’s no need for it – because you want him to have what he wants, and you want to be the one who gives it to him. The only one who gives it to him.

And that’s what you find yourself murmuring, as you guide him down to the bed to lie on his stomach, as you brush his long hair aside to kiss his back and his shoulders. I have what you need. Everything you need. You’re mine.

Tomura’s breathing turned quick and shallow a while ago, worse as you kiss the small of his back, the arch of his hip. He stirs beneath you. “I want to see more,” he says. “On your back.”

He’ll fuck you now, and he’ll come, and then you can finally go home. You spread your legs, leaving room for him to settle between them, and he does – much further down than you expected. He anchors your hips to the bed before you can stop him, holding you down with strong hands as he lowers his head between your thighs. The way his hair brushes against them tickles. The marks he leaves on them are oversensitive, making your legs twinge long before his tongue drags over your clit, and you wonder how you’ll explain the marks when you get back to Hell. How you’ll explain the fact that this mortal seduced you almost as skillfully as you seduced him.

Tomura eats you out messily, enthusiastically, until you’re arching your back and thrashing in his grip. The heat of his mouth against you, the pressure of his tongue against your clit or the way it feels when he licks inside of you – it all feels almost sinful. Too good for you to have, too good to want more of, too good not to beg him to keep going. You can barely manage to praise him for it, but when you do, his grip on your hips tightens and he grinds against the mattress. It’s wrong. There’s something wrong, and you want it so badly, and for the first time, you understand a little bit of why humans are so quick to sell their souls.

Tomura makes you come once, then a second time while you’re still trying to recover, and you barely manage to scramble away before he can slide his fingers inside you and try for a third. “What happened to not being in control?” you ask, and he shrugs, half a smirk on his face. “Lie down. It’s my turn.”

You crawl over him as he lies back, tasting yourself on his lips when you lean down for a kiss. Tomura relaxes so easily for you now, so much that he lets you grasp his hands one by one, raising them above his head. For the first time since you cloaked your true form, you engage in a little bit of demon magic. Enough to conjure restraints, and tie Tomura’s hands to the headboard before he can so much as open his eyes.

You’ve shocked him. You can see it, and better yet, you can feel it, in the way his skin heats up and his heart races. “You said you didn’t want control,” you remind him. “And I said I’d pleasure you until you couldn’t think.”

“Are you?” Tomura’s voice goes raspy. He watches you with wide eyes as you shift further down on the bed. “What are you going to do?”

“Everything.”

You learned all sorts of magic in the course of stepping into your role as a succubus, but this is the first time in a while that you’ve used any of it. And it’s for small things – the restraints on Tomura’s hands, the feather you conjure to trace all over his body until he squirms, the lube you coat your fingers with before you start working them inside him. Tomura doesn’t stop you, but he has a request. “Don’t fuck me like that. Not tonight.”

“Just my fingers,” you promise, and he nods, his eyes dark with need. “Whatever you want.”

You haven’t had the chance to watch Tomura come yet, and you get a chance as you finger him to an orgasm. He takes your breath away, your mortal – so pretty, so vulnerable, so loud and expressive and lost in it that you can’t help but stroke his cock with your free hand while you work him up a second time. In an ordinary seduction, with an ordinary target, now is when you’d stop. Now, when all he can do is beg for you, now when he’d give you anything to keep going; right now is when you’d ask for his soul in exchange. You know how to phrase it so that the mortals never guess what they’re truly giving up. It would be easy.

And it’s not what you want. There aren’t words for how much you don’t want that. Not when you’ve earned your mortal’s trust, not when he’s certain enough that you’ll give him what he wants that he doesn’t feel shame in begging for it. You know Tomura’s close when he starts squirming away from your fingers rather than clenching down on them. “Ride me,” he pants. “Ride my cock.”

Demon magic cleans your hands, and you slip down onto his cock with only a little strain. “You’re perfect,” you tell him as he stares helplessly up at you. “We fit so well –”

Tomura’s hips jerk upwards beneath you, making you gasp. “If we fit so well, come on my cock,” he pants. He’s been yanking at the restraints. You made them soft, but his wrists are chafed. “I need you to. I can’t – fuck, I need you –”

You’ve never needed a mortal before. You’ve never needed anyone before, but you need him, enough that doing what he asks doesn’t feel far-fetched at all. You ride him slowly, finding an angle that suits you, realizing how sore you are in the same moment. It’s been a hard night’s work. Usually mortals can’t keep up with you, and usually it feels like work. Tomura’s fingers curl and uncurl uselessly as he fights the restraints, and you reach up to grasp them, to hold them steady. And that’s when you notice it – the same shadow marking around his fourth finger as around yours.

Where did that come from? What is that? The restraints you conjured vanish in the space of a single heartbeat, and Tomura’s hands clamp down on your hips, guiding you as he thrusts upwards. His hair is glued to his forehead with sweat, to his chest and his shoulders and the sides of his neck, and the same heat writhes beneath your own skin as Tomura takes control over your pace. His thrusts are unsteady, but every time, he finds the angle you need him to.

You can’t breathe. You can barely think. Everything narrows down to heat and pressure and friction and pleasure and agony, because your body’s wrung out and still needs more, because Tomura’s falling apart beneath you and pressing his thumb over your clit to take you down with him. Pleasure explodes through you, collapsing you on top of Tomura. His grip on you barely loosens, even as your efforts to hold onto anything fall away. Anything includes your human guise.

Damn it. You untangle yourself from Tomura as quickly as possible, only to tuck yourself in against his side, uncomfortably relieved when he holds you tight. If you keep your tail under control and he doesn’t get a good look at you, he’ll never know what you really were. He’ll know something’s up, though. When he wakes up and finds that you’ve vanished out of this world, leaving evidence only in the chafe-marks around his wrists and the taste of you still on his tongue, he’ll know there was something strange about you. And he’ll have a lot of questions when you come back.

And you will come back. That’s the only thing that makes the knowledge that you’re mere moments from being drawn back to Hell bearable. Most of the time you can’t wait to leave your targets, whether you’ve collected their souls or not. This time, though – “I don’t want to leave yet.”

But you weren’t the only one speaking. Tomura said the same thing, on the off-beats as you spoke. “You’re leaving?” you ask. “This is your house. Where are you going?”

“Where are you going?” Tomura retorts. His grip on you tightens further – tight enough to bruise, if you were human or mortal. “What –”

He sits up suddenly, pulling you with him. Hell is pulling you back, but not quickly enough. Tomura looks at you, sees you – sees your horns, sees your tail, which is lashing anxiously in spite of your efforts to calm yourself. But you see him, too. You see the ram’s horns curling from beneath his white hair, the sharpness of his teeth. He’s not trying to control his tail at all. It wraps around your leg tightly. “You’re a demon.”

“So are you.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why didn’t you know?” You try to separate yourself from him. Tomura should be letting go of you, should be shoving you away, but he’s still holding on, tighter every time you try to pull away. “Let go. If they find out –”

The world tears open around the two of you, well before you can pull away, and Hell pulls you back in at warp speed.

You don’t end up back in the spot you dematerialized from, and you doubt Tomura does, either. The two of you crash down on a rocky plateau, just on the outskirts of one of the cities, a desolate place no one comes to unless they’ve been cast out to wander amongst the souls of the dead. Why are you here? Is it because you came back together? Maybe that’s why – it couldn’t return you to your separate summoning locations when you’re so close together, so it split the difference and dropped you off here. Maybe there’s still time for you to hide this.

“Wow,” a familiar voice announces from somewhere behind you, and your heart sinks, “have the two of you fucked up.”

Tomura swears under his breath. “Is that your boss?”

Your boss, or your mother – nobody’s clear on which. Nemuri is picking her way through the jagged stones towards you, a vicious smirk on her face. “I can explain,” you start. “It’s not –”

“I tricked her,” Tomura interrupts. You stare at him in horror. “It was me. Not her.”

“No,” you snap. “I seduced him. I’m the one who –”

“I’m sure you believe that.” Nemuri’s smirk broadens, showing her fangs. “You’re so pathetically incompetent that –”

“Now, now, Nem. Let’s not let my guy off the hook here.” The new voice, loud and rich and full of almost-insane laughter, can only belong to another elder demon. Like Nemuri, he’s wearing a vicious smirk. “Remember, my guy’s the one who got rejected by his summoner and packed it in for the evening. At least yours gave it a second shot.”

“That’s my boss,” Tomura mumbles. “Fuck.”

“In fact,” Tomura’s boss continues, “one could argue that your girl’s off the hook. She did her job. It’s not her fault that my guy’s aura of misery was so strong that it made him actually look human. Or that he was so desperate to be wanted by somebody that he forgot to check whether she was actually a demon trying to steal his soul.”

Tomura’s shoulders hunch, and a surge of anger runs through you. “When you put it that way, Hizashi, it does sound like my nymphet is off the hook,” Nemuri says. “But when your pathetic little imp tried to take the fall for her, she wouldn’t let him. It seems they’re terrible at everything demonic, lying included. They’re telling the truth.”

“They really did seduce each other,” Hizashi muses. “That’s cringe.”

“More importantly, it’s against the rules.” Nemuri’s standing over you. Hizashi joins her, and the two of them leer down at you and Tomura, practically licking their lips. “Whatever shall we do with them?”

There aren’t many punishments that can affect demons – you’re basically gluttons for it. Then again, there aren’t many rules for demons to break. “I’m not sure,” Hizashi says. “Offer them up to Heaven for punishment? Banish them to the mortal world until the trumpets sound? Throw them out to wander with the restless dead forevermore?”

You might not love your job, but you have your sisters. If you’re cast out, you’ll never see them again. The only thing worse would be getting thrown to Heaven as an offering, one of Hell’s not-infrequent tithes to keep the peace. Tomura’s tail wraps around your waist, and you cover his left hand with your right as you wait for your fates to be decided. The thought crosses your mind, pointlessly, that you won’t spend an eternity of exile entirely alone. You’ve dragged someone else down with you, which might be the most demonic thing you’ve ever done in your life.

“Now that I think about it,” Nemuri says, her smirk broadening still further, “I don’t think we need to punish them – not when they’ve punished themselves so effectively.”

“What does that mean?” Tomura snaps. Hizashi is guffawing, his voice echoing off the jagged rocks. “Don’t laugh. What does that mean?”

“What does it mean, you gloomy brat?” Hizashi wipes at his eyes, still chuckling. “Take a look at your hands, both of you.”

You let go of Tomura’s and lift your own. Your right hand is clear, but your left – you remember noticing the shadow around your fourth finger, feeling the faint spark as it darkened a little further. It’s not a shadow anymore. Instead it’s a thin golden shackle, encircling your finger below your knuckle. No, not a shackle. A ring.

It won’t come off. You yank on it, try to dig your nails beneath it, but it won’t come off. Next to you, Tomura’s doing the same, cursing fluently, and Hizashi and Nemuri are laughing at you both, leaning on each other to stay upright. “It’s the first rule we teach you all when you’re spawned. No fucking your own kind, and this is why!” Hizashi is laughing almost too hard to speak, while you try to chew your ring off and Tomura breaks his own finger trying to remove his. “Thanks to your little tryst, the two of you are bound forever in unholy matrimony!”

“My congratulations to the happy couple,” Nemuri says. “The two of you are never going to live this down. You’ll be the laughingstocks of Hell. You’re going to beg us to banish you!”

“And we won’t,” Hizashi says. “I can’t think of a better object lesson than the two of you. We send you to the mortal realm to collect souls, and not only did you end up fucking each other, you didn’t commit a single demonic act!”

“I cursed somebody,” you protest.

“Me too,” Tomura says. “The mortal who –”

You remember what Tomura said about the mortal who rejected you: May his dick shrivel up and fall off. “You cursed the same mortal,” Nemuri says. She pauses a moment. “I will admit, it’s a fairly creative curse. The imp’s little add-on will make a nice insult to the injury.”

You’re better at cursing mortals than you are at seducing them, but you can’t imagine Tomura’s bad at it. Not with the way he worked you over. You duck your head to hide the heat coming up in your face. “Well, we’ll leave the two of you to enjoy your honeymoon,” Hizashi says. He shrugs off the ornate robe he’s wearing and drops it on the ground in front of you, revealing body chains, nipple piercings, and nothing else. “Wear this on your way back into the city. Maintain a little dignity.”

“Here, imp. Just for you.” Nemuri drops her robe over Tomura’s head, and he shoves it off into the dust. “Everyone’s going to know about your little bout of lovemaking, but I imagine you’d prefer if they didn’t know exactly how you’ve been chewing on each other.”

The two of them stroll back towards the city, arm in arm, still laughing. It’s a long time before their laughter fades, and then you and Tomura are alone on the outskirts. The wind, blowing hot a moment before, changes direction, growing cold and carrying sharp shards of ice. You put on Hizashi’s robe, then turn towards Tomura. He’s already shivering, arms crossed and shoulders hunched, Nemuri’s robe discarded in front of him. You pick it up and settle it back around his shoulders, shifting his hair aside so it won’t get caught beneath the collar – and then you realize what you’re doing. You freeze. “Sorry.”

Tomura shrugs, but the robe stays on. “You’re better at this than your boss says you are,” he says without looking at you. “I believed you.”

“I’m worse than she says I am,” you say. “I wasn’t lying.”

Tomura looks up at that, and you look away, your eyes stinging in the freezing wind. You never lied to Tomura, not from the moment you approached him. This would be so much less embarrassing if you had. If you’d listened to any of the moments where you sensed that it was going a little too well, that it felt a little too good. If you’d kept your distance instead of falling under his spell as quickly and easily as he fell under yours. “Your boss was talking out of his ass. Your whole thing worked really well on me.”

“Yeah. Except it wasn’t a thing.” Tomura’s tail wraps loosely around your wrist. “Mutual ruination. You were right.”

He’s got your right wrist. You study your left hand with its ring, and Tomura lifts his alongside yours. His ring looks the same as yours, although he’s dislocated his fourth finger in addition to having broken it. “Want me to fix that?”

“Demon magic doesn’t fix things.”

“It’s not supposed to marry people, either.” You’re not expecting that argument to work, but Tomura lets you capture his hand anyway. You relocate it manually, then try to work some magic over it. All your magic serves to make a seduction easier, so it shouldn’t be hard to twist it into something you can use for the sake of your – “I think it worked. How do you feel?”

“Like I fucked up,” Tomura says. Fair enough. “And I’m not sorry.”

“What?”

“You heard me.” Tomura’s hands slip inside your stolen robe, settling into the same place he was holding on as you rode him. “This isn’t that weird. Mortals do it all the time.”

“Except mortals who get married in Vegas can get divorced,” you point out. Somebody has to play angel’s advocate here, even if you’re already unfolding yourself from seated so you can get into his lap. “We didn’t even make any vows.”

“You did,” Tomura says. “I heard you say it.”

You’re mine. Is that really all it took? It makes a certain kind of sense, when you force yourself to look at it honestly. Mortals almost never doom themselves consciously. It’s always a moment of weakness, a split-second lapse, an instant where desire rules over reason. “Then you can break us up. Since I’m the only one who vowed anything.”

“No way.” Tomura’s lips brush the side of your neck, making your nerves twinge. “I agreed.”

You set your hands on his shoulders and push him backwards, and he goes willingly. The way he’s looking up at you counts as a sin all on its own – crimson eyes half-lidded, pupils already dilating, his cheekbones already dusted with pink. “Did you figure out what you want yet?”

“I have some ideas,” you say. You collect his hands from your waist and pin them on either side of his head, leaning down for a long, slow kiss. “But I’ll start with you.”

[jesncin]

I absolutely love the way you've recreated some comic variant covers with your versions of Clark and Lois (the Jorge Jeremez homage and "Superman '78" recreations are my favorites). I was just wondering, have you ever considered doing a recreation of the iconic "kiss on the moon" from All-Star Superman?

Thank you so much! I have been asked about re-drawing the moon kiss from All-Star Superman, but I don't draw it because 1) it doesn't interest me, 2) while I've joked about Super Lois before for fun shenanigans, I don't personally like the idea of a super-powered Lois especially for my version. Lois Liando is meant to ground Superman's allegorical themes as an immigrant, and I find giving Lois powers detracts from what makes her relatable-y human. 3) I haven't drawn a Clois kiss yet and I want it to be iconic when it happens :p

I love drawing those redraws though!! If I bump into a comic or cover of Clark and Lois I like as much as the Jorge Jimenez and Jamal Campbell illustrations, I'd definitely be tempted to redraw it.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

I saw your one post about Yuu getting super powers. I don't think it's very likely as well. I think it's largely thanks to western storytelling expectations and tropes for the western audience.

In a lot of western YA or Middle Grade books, the protagonist in a fantasy series will start off as ordinary, standing out and never fitting in. It turns out that they are indeed special and powerful in their own right. Think Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Clary Fray, and the list goes on and on.

There are also times when the protagonist is forced to change forms literally to become more powerful. For example, Feyre from ACOTAR starts out as a simple human. But then, she is killed off, and then is brought back to life as a High Fae. Same goes for Bella from Twilight where she dies during childbirth to a demon spawn, and then she is transformed into a vampire.

Western audiences are expecting something similar to happen. But, it's not very likely due to "main character" and individualism not being as much of a thing in East Asia. I've never seen as many stories like that from Japan as I have from the west out of all of my years of being a manga/anime fan.

Although, having said that, Yuu is still something to be desired writing wise. I still wish that Yuu had more of an impact on the plot and had more personality than a tuna can. I don't expect them to be a fully fledged character on par with the rest of the cast. Even other otome and JRPG self inserts like Persona 5 I feel are better written than them, because they matter more and the dialogue choices impact the game more. They are the main character. Act like it!

[Referencing this post!]

There's certain genres of animanga that have those power fantasy/wish fulfillment tropes that we see in western media. A big one that comes to mind are fantasy isekais where the main character tends to be a weirdo or a loner that's actually super powerful/smart and quickly amasses a group of doting anime girls to fawn over him (although now isekai is much more diversified as a genre). It's definitely not just something exclusive to western media, although I will say maybe it's more prevalent in the west (again, due to differences in cultural values).

I feel like we need to remember that Twst is ultimately Japanese media, so it will most likely default to Japanese storytelling conventions and trends, not western ones. While it's fine to wish for a different version of events or to dislike the current version, we should be careful to not let personal frustrations turn into demands to cater to those wishes.

I will say that I've noticed the localization attempts to give Yuu more... character? Many of Yuu's dialogue options are written to be more sarcastic than they originally were. The JP dialogue options are much more neutral. Here are some examples from book 1 alone:

After fighting some mob students in the cafeteria, Yuu has "Even though we were just told to not get into fights" and "I thought we were done for..." as options. In EN, Yuu's options are, "What happened to 'no more incidents'?" and "I guess this is my life now. *Sigh*". You can see how Yuu reads as sassier or more fed up in the latter, even if the same overall message is conveyed.

When seeing Jack for the first time, Yuu's Japanese options are "He has dog ears!?" and "A muscular guy with dog ears is a new sight". In EN, the top option is basically the same, but the second option becomes "Muscly dog man, sure why not."

Other dialogue options change entirely. For example, when Leona threatens to claim a tooth as retribution for Yuu stepping on his tail, our options are, "EEEEEH!!" and "H-He's going to hit us!" EN's options become much more humorous, with Yuu either claiming "Please! I don't have dental insurance!" or "I can't afford to pay anything!"

These are just a few examples, and not even all of the dialogue options in book 1 that exemplify what I’m talking about. I hope that this helps illustrate what I mean!

I think it can be argued that Yuu does have an impact on the plot, but the way the story is written doesn’t grant them much agency. There are points where Yuu makes decisions of their own volition but then the story never commits to letting them be entirely independent. For example, a lot of players like book 3 because they feel it is when Yuu is the most involved in the story. They make the decision to make a deal with Azul, and then they contribute to figuring out a way to outwit him—but then in later books, Yuu basically stands there doing nothing (lookin’ at you specifically, book 5). Yuu also doesn’t get to spend a lot of alone time with the characters to actually… I don’t know, influence their change and growth? Their activity and involvement is just wildly inconsistent. I have my own gripes with how Yuu is written and proposed my own ideas for how I would change them. If you’re interested in reading that, the post is here.

It might not be the best to compare Yuu to otome and JRPG self inserts 💦 In otomes (or general dating sims; I’d like to be inclusive of my non-women audience), romance is the primary objective. Of course the self-insert player character will be the center of the story and the one that the other characters will revolve around. JRPGs are typically console games; they have more bandwidth to go bigger and be more ambitious with their stories + gameplay than your average visual novel style mobile gacha game. (I specify “average” because I know there are now open world and 3D style gacha games.) The story of every game is also different and might call for different kinds of main characters to most effectively tell us its tale. Having an active main character isn’t needed for every story, and nor does having an active character automatically make a story better.

I’ve noticed that we commonly conflate the terms “main character” and “protagonist”, especially when it comes to Yuu. To clarify, the “main character” is the one whose perspective the story is primarily told (ie our POV character). A “protagonist” is who the story is actually about, the person who drives the story forward. “Protagonists” are the ones facing challenges and undergoing significant change in the story. A “main character” and a “protagonist” may be the same person, but they could also be separate people.

Yuu may be the “main character” in the sense that we see the story mainly through them (as someone who is brand new to Twisted Wonderland, much like the player is). This makes Yuu an excellent sponge and prompter for lore and explanations to be dropped on us. However, I don’t think that Yuu is also a “protagonist” for most of the game. I would say that the protagonists are the main cast of NRC students, especially the OB boys. These are the characters the story truly centers on, and this is reflected across events and vignettes as well. Yuu appears in very few vignettes and is often a footnote conveniently dragged along on events. So much of Twst’s content revolves around the boys, their relationships to one another, and how they develop and better themselves. Does Yuu play a part in that, no matter how minor? Yes. Does Yuu also form friendships with these boys? Also yes. But this is not the bulk of game content, nor what most of the conflicts or solutions focus on. So 💦 Yuu definitely “acts like a main character” (ie being the lens we view the story through), but doesn’t “act like a protagonist” (ie is active in the story and pushes it forward, is the one that significantly changes, etc).

[moon-floret]

Every Fetish Account Does a Political Post, Eventually

I'm doing my one and then we'll be back to yaoiposting - this one's even on theme for the blog!

I know everything is super fucking overwhelming right now - trust me I get it, but if you want to make a difference with something small I implore you to just send one email.

My home away from home in Jefferson County, West Virginia is facing ecological disaster as a manufacturing company is trying to build a water bottle plant just outside of the residential areas risking polluting most of the areas outside of Sheperdstown. Currently the city is open to comment, in which the Jefferson County Foundation has made a template for people to send in-

Jefferson County is a small, rural county. This is not an effort to try and topple the federal government - the power of the little guy in intermediate numbers is enough to protect my second family.

I even have incentives! Send in proof of your email and get COOL REWARDS! Askbox, submissions, smoke signal, carrier pigeon, etc. All you need is your name, email, and some level of personalization to not get flagged as spam!

5 emails ; I post every single sketch that I haven't posted on tumblr - including behind the scenes concept art for APOWIA and Beltane Wildfire, and concept are for fics yet to be posted!

10 emails ; I will finish one of these sketches to fully polished glory

15 emails ; I add sex to the next chapter of APOWIA

20 emails ; Said sex will be fully illustrated

35 emails ; I drop the voyeurism idol oneshot thats been sitting in my drafts

40 emails ; I make an f/f version of said oneshot

45 ; I illustrate said oneshot

50 ; I illustrate both versions

If I am ever so blessed to recieve verification of over 50 emails I will take suggestions!

THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH I APPRECIATE YOU PROTECT THE PLAMPTS SO WE CAN STILL FUCK EM !!!!!!!!

[tofupixel]

Thank you for getting me to finally try pixel art! I‘ve always wanted to get into pixel art but I never knew what to start with and always ended up procrastinating. Your blog and the post you made on learning pixel art were what finally pushed me to give it a go. It was really helpful and I managed this little animation in Libresprite.

I definitely want to improve and your art is like the ultimate goal lol. Do you have any tips or instructions for how to get better or on what to focus on in the future? I‘d appreciate any kind of criticism/input you are willing to give! How do you manage to make such gigantic and beautiful landscapes?

thank you!! and i'm so happy you decided to give it a real go, you're doing great already!! the rendering on the body and the pink shading is really nice.

i can help a little with animation stuff but i'm not an expert, ill write something out about backgrounds at the end

i hope you don't mind but i edited the sprite a little, just to illustrate some stuff

🤺Animation stuff

i added an extra frame near the top of the arc so it slows down. this is called ease or slow in/out and usually happens at the beginning and end of movements. u can do even more slow but this is just a quick version

i also removed the middle frame (where the tail is straight down) to make the swing appear a bit more powerful. this could be the principle of timing in the same video. you can exaggerate smears if you do this, its up to you!! lately i tend to exaggerate stuff a lot, things arent super noticable in motion

i also got a good bit of advice from nickwoz that helped me, basically when you begin to animate, it really puts the rest of the sprite being still into focus. try to think of how you could animate other parts of the body, even subtly. and sometimes if individual pixels stay still they can catch the eye in an unintended way as well, just keep it in mind!!

if you want to learn animation more, you could take a look at duelyst sprites, they have incredible idle and ability animations, i study them a lot

heres one i downloaded a long time ago. i recommend just downloading stuff you like and looking at it!! i have a huge collection of pixel inspo. slowing animations down can really help you understand whats going on. its just a bunch of simple elements put together that makes it look so good.

IF U WANT MORE RESOURCES/ARTISTS I REOCMMEND TO GO AND STUDY LMK!!! IM LIKE A WIKIPEDIA, I AM A BIG FAN of pixel art and love to share

🌿 OK lets talk about landscape stuff

it looks like you have art experience already, but im gonna talk as if youre a complete noob cos it might help some other people who read this!! ur doing great 👍

❓ how to learn: study (and practise a lot)

what i mean by study: draw it, copy it, try to understand it. you can try to change characteristics about it. changing the angle or lighting can help u understand how something works in 3 dimensions.

sometimes it takes time, dont worry, you will figure out your own style through doing studies, its all a process

❓ how to draw landscape details?

study pixel artists and how they do it recommendations: fool, slym, jubilee, deceiver

also please look at real world references!! you got to build that visual library

❓ how to learn composition?

study traditional artists or animation. i did a ton of studies of ghibli backgrounds which i think helped my growth a lot recommendations: arcane, studio ghibli, traditional painters

im gonna break down a piece as well and maybe that will help. this is one from 2022 but its still one of my most popular and its pretty simple too!!

if we remove all the fancy stuff what we have is actually really simple. just a few large, overlapping shapes that all point towards our focal point. it's the brightest area with the most contrast and many edges point into it.

go to pinterest or google and just search "pretty landscape" or "mountains" or something and you can see what i'm doing is nothing special or unique!! break it down into bigger shapes to begin with, its just different areas of material mostly.

and heres how you can make any landscape from any colours. purple sky or mountain? orange grass? ok !! it all works, it doesnt matter. i just blend the colours.

when parts of the landscape are in the distance they become closer to the sky colour as there is more "sky" in between you and it. its called atmospheric perspective. so if the sky was red, the clouds would fade towards red.

OKKK i dont know what else to say so i hope that helps!! honestly 90% of what i do is intuitive and hard for me to really explain, so you dont have to know The Rules, you just kind of pick up stuff as you go.

GL and thanks so much for showing me your art!! please keep going!! 💕💕💕💕

[apurpledust]

Don't tell my friend that I did not sleep immediately (she will scold me XD). But what is Napoleon and Junot about? Gib their interactions, their history, the tension, their secrets, what you thought about them, what is good and bad about them, headcanons, some things that you love about them, anything that will save my curiosity before I go to sleep in 4:30 am 👀

That is all. Have a nice day/evening 😌

HELLO!! sorry for my late reply I have the cold and I was figuring how to write this without sounding too crazy 😭😭 thank you @whatever-whatsoever for reminding me to check my inbox 🤩 YESSS NAPJUNO ASK!!!! THANK YOU ❤️❤️ I'll have to give a super abbreviated version because they had so much history *sniff* 🥺

I may yap more about my personal head canons and why I love them in a separate post hehehe👅

disclaimer: I don't claim to be objective or an historian as this is very napjuno-biased :P English is not my first language so there will be many grammatical mistakes😭

I feel like I should first mention that Napoleon and Junot had a long history of correspondence throughout their lifetime. And Junot kept every. single. letter Napoleon wrote to him. Unfortunately none of these letters exist anymore because Napoleon sent a lackey to have them burned the moment Junot committed suicide. (I WILL NEVER FORGIVE NAPS FOR THIS 😭) so most of what we know about their relationship is secondhand from Junot's wife, Laure Junot's (Duchesse d'Abrantes) memoirs. She's also not the most reliable person so it's possible she might heavily exaggerated on some stuff

As for the letters, it's always been up for debate why Napoleon wanted them gone but my personal headcanon is they must've been written in a very romantic tone... and Napoleon was so heavily trying to suppress his feelings for Junot and burning those letters was a way of burying their relationship once and for all

OKAY, SO A BRIEF HISTORY ON NAPJUNO!!

Junot's fated meeting with Napoleon began in 1793! He was already promoted to a segreant when they met and Napoleon was already a General at the age of 24(!). It was during the Siege of Toulon that Naps had asked for someone who had beautiful handwriting to dictate a letter and Junot volunteered to write what he dictated before a cannon fire sprayed it with dirt. Naps was so impressed by his coolness that he made Junot his secretary and Aide-de-camp, and soon they'd become inseparable

soon after Toulon, Napoleon was accused of treason for his connections to Augustin Robespierre and was jailed. Junot , of course freaking out about this wrote him letter to offer an escape but Naps declined.

^ this illustration by Jacques Onfoy de Bréville represents one of their "leisure moments" together circa 1794-95

so after a little while Napoleon got married and found his fortune, Junot continued to follow him to his legendary Italian and Egyptian campaigns. In Egypt, he was promoted to General but he was actually not too happy with this since this means he'll be away from Napoleon often. There's also this famous (or infamous?) incident where he challenged General Lanusse to a duel ,simply because he opposed Napoleon's leadership , with this words :

«We must fight; it is essential that only one of us survive. I hate you because you hate the man that I love and admire as much as God, if not more»

sounds like a chivalric romance doesn't it? :3 It was also during this campaign there were rumours within the army comparing Naps and Junot to "Hadrian and Antinous" . of course Junot does nothing to dispel those rumours 🤓 Poor guy got wounded in the stomach and Naps didn't visit him until the last minute.

Napoleon wasn't able to take Junot with him when he left Egypt and by the time Junot made it back to France in 1800, Napoleon was already First Consul and the power differences between them already put a strain on their relationship. This was further exacerbated once Naps became Emperor.

When Naps sent Junot to Portugal , he wrote a bunch of desperate letters begging him to reappoint him as his aide-de-camp again and Napoleon once confronted to Junot's wife about the letters he wrote to him (I'm like 99% sure it probably sounded more romantic than the ones he wrote to her) . it got to the point that Laure Junot ahd to admit that Junot possibly loved Napoleon more than her and their children.

Junot was often sent away from Napoleon during from like c. 1806-1810ish? and didn't interact much except by correspondence (I think) I'm going to skip over the Portugal /Spain period

Okay so by the Russian Campaign of 1812, Junot pretty much fell out of favour from Naps and the consequences of Junot's actions almost completely destroyed their relationship. By this time period, Junot's mental and physical health was very, very fragile from his campaigns in Portugal & Spain and Napoleon was no longer the Napoleon he knew back in their youth. Napoleon was furious and even shamed him on the military bulletin. Junot was devastated at this and the thought of losing Napoleon's friendship was unbearable after 20 years of being devoted to him.

After he returned to France from Russia, there are several anecdotes mentioning how he would wanderlessly mutter out loud that  “The Emperor no longer loves me” in his apartments😭 Napoleon's love for him was all that mattered😭😭💔

There's this scene where Duroc (Napoleon's Grand Marshal of the Palace) and another friend visited Junot to comfort him and this happened:

Junot obviously didn't believe the Emperor still loved him of course💔

Soon after spending some time resting and with his family, he was appointed Governor of Illyria. (I think Naps sent him there because he wanted him out of France but Idk). His insanity finally set in and there's this infamous incident where Junot attended the ball completely naked except for his medals and hat and his battle wounds were on full display...

Soon after that, he had to be forcefully be sent back to his father's home in Montbard. It was there where he committed suicide by jumping out the window.

💔

Junot's last letter to Napoleon is heartbreaking by the way....

“I who love you with the affection of a savage for the sun, I who am entirely yours. Well then: This eternal war that we must fight for you, I WANT NO MORE OF IT! I WANT PEACE! I want finally to repose my tired head, my sore limbs … to enjoy that which I earned … with my BLOOD! The blood of an honest man, of a good Frenchman, of a true patriot. I therefore ask, at last, for that tranquility that I earned through twenty-two years of effective service and seventeen wounds from which my blood has flowed for my country, and for your glory. 

Like I mentioned in the beginning, soon after the news of Junot's demise reached the public, Napoleon immediately sent someone to his house in Paris where his wife and brother-in-law were at and forcibly searched through Junot’s home to seize and burn his letters.

Oh yeah there's more but I'll leave it at that for now </3 LIKE WHAT THE HELL NAPS WHY DID YOU BURN THE LETTERS 😭😭Like they must've been fucking crazy man,,, omg sorry this keeps me up at night 😭

they make me so

Junot's ending was sooo tragic.... he was definitely a Greek tragedy-esque figure😢 He possibly died believing Napoleon hated him when that wasn't the case. Napoleon, despite reprimanding Junot very harshly for Junot's actions (non-actions?) during the Russian campaign, he still had a soft spot for him.

I also think of like how his life would've been better without meeting Napoleon. But also thinking again how much Junot treasured his meeting with Napoleon.... ough they're so painful sdkjskdljdhljhdjfhdkjhfdj excuse me while I combust

NapJuno was basically like painful unrequited love slow burn over 2 decades . Or maybe it wasn't completely unrequited? I like to think Napoleon was in denial and constantly tried to suppress his feelings for Junot 😔😔😔 anyway Junot was so delulu... (he's my precious delulu cat) he kept hoping Napoleon would still love him like he used too pre-Emperor days. Of course those days will never come back. I guess he was always living in the past while Naps moved on 🥲💔

well even if Napoleon doesn't love him at least I do 😤

as my friend @ promises-of-paradise once said, I think Junot was almost definitely romantically obsessed with Napoleon. Like actual romantic love (I'm not even being delusional this is what I truly believe). Whether they actually did anything together is up for debate, but it’s clear that Junot’s feelings for Naps were a lot more intense than a regular friendship.

also I highly recommend reading these posts regarding Junot and NapJuno's relationship:

The NapJuno bible of course: https://erenow.org/modern/napoleonic-friendship-military-fraternity-intimacy-and-sexuality/4.php

BTW THERE'S A NAPJUNO RPF WRITTEN AND PUBLISHED IN A FRENCH MAGAZINE BACK IN 1926!!!! I JUST NEED TO FIND THE LINK (it's also in French)

and Laure Junot's memoirs! it's available on the internet and she (and imo rightfully) suggests Napoleon and Junot were possibly incredibly intimate during their broke days. Girl was the OG napjuno shipper istg

~~

If any of my fellow NapJuno fanatics want to add info about them more please do so!!! I'm probably forgetting some stuff 😭

[galacsin]

Thanks for being open to a discussion about this, I appreciate hearing your insights into these characterisation changes! (Sorry for how long this got)

I have finished the Flash comic now and yes you're right it was boring, at least Riddler's parts, which actually fits right in with something your original reply made me think of, that is, that a lot of the more mainstream 'serious threat' versions of Riddler are, frankly, simply quite boring. In attempting to make him more of a threat they, like you said, rid him of all his most interesting traits - bafflingly including his gimmick like in this Flash comic (unless I missed something he didn't tell a single riddle) or, worse, in OBD - which makes him not just bland but a cardboard cutout that could easily be replaced by other villains (this Flash one by Lex Luthor, TWoJaR by Hush, S6 '14 by Joker, etc) without really having to change much about either the story or characterisation. These kinds of adaptations make him an empty shell that fulfills only the most basic and stereotypical of villain characteristics - stone cold genius, powerhungry megalomaniac, etc. - which are much better explored in other characters and ironically never have really been a part of his personality before this.

You said that he's classically a sort of "just some guy" villain whose gimmick is hard to write if you don't happen to be into riddles yourself, and I completely agree. It's interesting to me how him being 'just some guy' seems to be part of what these writers dislike about him: a lot of the traits that have been changed or erased are ones that mark him as 'average' or 'not special' - his working class background, his mediocre grades and average or low educational level, the limits to his skills and abilities, winning never coming easy for him or even his outward appearance being changed from 'bland' dark hair and brown or grey eyes to bright red hair, piercing blue or green eyes and uncommon styles of facial hair like the infamous mutton chops - with the rest of them being the ones that make him 'weird' or 'weak', like his emotional instability or riddle compulsion. And it feels ironic to me that despite the writers probably assuming that changing these 'average' or 'weird' things about him would make him more special and cool, doing this has exactly the opposite effect, making him just one more guy in a sea of super genius cold mass murdering power broker villains and evil stem majors, when he used to be way more unique as the one 'weird average joe' among the rogues' lenghty list of murderous top-of-their-field genius doctors and professors.

Being a flamboyant thief that likes threatening people but ultimately considers murder boring and whose crimes include such illustrous examples as filling an office building with two tons of prunes or stealing an old baseball contract while wearing a curly fake mustache simply make him much more of a standout than being yet another sadistic mass murderer trying to take over Gotham via toxic gas or Central City via an array of murder drones, like that isn't the exact thing every other villain has been doing in every single arc for the past who knows how many years already. And genuinely? These old 'silly' versions often seem much more threatening or menacing to me than the modern ones, because him usually being a goofy or whimsical minor threat that presents himself as relatively nonviolent makes instances of him losing control of his emotions and flying off the handle or situations where his complete disregard for human lives are on display much more unsettling than if I already expect to see him brutally murder twenty random people before the end of the first arc. Keeps me on my toes.

Anyways this has already become much longer than expected and hasn't even touched on the other things you said about all his different variations being canon at once etc. so I'll end this here and thank you for reading this far!

(Just one more side note: I love that you brought up Villain of the Year because I always found it funny how hard it goes against New 52/Rebirth canon, trying to tell us Lex wouldn't want Eddie on his villain team because he is too much of a silly loser as if Prime Earth Riddler hasn't taken over Central City for a day and Gotham for a month, turned it into an apocalyptic wasteland and just one year after orchestrated the most brutal gang war the city has ever seen. Love the implication that a Riddler in the same timeline as TWoJaR apparently randomly decided to stop being a megalomaniac mass murderer just to become a C lister and do embarassing silly crimes instead for a while.)

... or stealing an old baseball contract while wearing a curly fake mustache simply make him much more of a standout than being yet another sadistic mass murderer trying to take over Gotham via toxic gas or Central City via an array of murder drones ...

Just so people reading this understand whats happening in the later one.

Eddie in these issues:

Breaks his copycat, Arthur Brown, out of prison with the help of Query and Echo.

Pays someone to break his arm so he can get into the hospital, where he executes an escape plan while high as a kite on drugs.

Straps a bomb vest onto Arthur Brown and sends him on a deadly Easter egg hunt to distract Batman.

Dresses up in a ridiculous costume to steal a baseball contract. Images from Detective Comics #705-707

This is the kind of bullshit, I expect when I read about Eddie. I mean even Arkham Riddler, a decidedly more serious take on him has his silly moments.

I am going to ramble on a bit more under the read more.

And don’t even get me started on One Bad Day. I wouldn’t be that mad about it if it weren’t for the fact that we so rarely get stories focused solely on him, ones that are supposed to offer a deeper dive into his character. One of these days, I’m going to rewatch the interview where Mr. King talks about his approach to writing that comic and rant about it here. Why him? He doesn’t care about the Riddler, doesn’t like him, and clearly knows nothing about him. And yet it won an Eisner Award.

Even if you set aside the fact that it’s a terrible Riddler story, it’s just... meh. It ranges from unintentionally silly to “what the hell just happened?”

The points you touch on are fascinating, especially if you consider which iteration of him has what skills. Personally, I see him as someone incredibly talented, dedicated, and hardworking, but he pours all of that into being the Riddler. That’s why I love the idea of him struggling in academia. He doesn’t fit in; his brain works differently. He’s propelled by this almost supernatural drive to do all the insane things he gets up to.

These old 'silly' versions often seem much more threatening or menacing to me than the modern ones, because him usually being a goofy or whimsical minor threat that presents himself as relatively nonviolent makes instances of him losing control of his emotions and flying off the handle or situations where his complete disregard for human lives are on display much more unsettling than if I already expect to see him brutally murder twenty random people before the end of the first arc. Keeps me on my toes.

Exactly. Also this does not make him less of a threat but for writers . Bunch of murder and uninhibited sadism = serious villain.

I’m happy to answer your questions, but if you could focus on just one topic at a time, I’d appreciate it. It’s hard for me to address every observation you’ve written about all at once.

[cardinalvalentino]

i was tagged by angelika @parsleyroot to talk about my favourite characters from my childhood :) thank u dearest <3

gonna go ahead and put the tags up here cause the post will probably be kinda long: @belledamn @gabriestat @dragonji @officiallanxichen @thepromisedbride if you feel like it <3

these are all book characters cause i was raised by very anti tv and any kind of technology parents so i just read a lot... that being said theres a lot of things i dont remember super well so the list probably wont be very long :) also its not like a ranked list its just in order of what comes to mind first

robin hood - i just really liked robin hood i think when i was in preschool i had this illustrated book and i was just captivated by living in the woods as a mischievous outlaw... the illustrations of their hideout were so charming with the treehouse and tibetan bridges and all that.... as a little kid who spent a lot of times in the woods with friends that was kind of the dream... my father made me a bow and some arrows and taught me to shoot and id just pretend i was robin hood with my merry band of outlaws. side effect of this i did climb trees to shoot arrows at actual people

gawain from arthuriana - oh yeah baby the gawain thing dates back to childhood. i really liked him i thought his sun powers were swag and since of course the stories i read versions of at the time or was told by people were not the darker ones where gawain is the evil guy i now know and love i just really liked how he was charming and chivalrous and all that jazz. cue me attacking random people with a stick (sword) in an entirely unchivalrous manner

jo march and laurie from little women - i cant really choose a favourite between the two, but i really loved their friendship, the contrast between jo's brashness and lauries sensibility, their shared intellectual interests.... i dont know they just kind of meant the world to me i really love little women :)

the beaver from my dads bedtime stories. also the ibex from my dads bedtime stories - when i was a kid my father every night told me like an episode of this really long story with a lot of characters and places and geography and stuff, all the characters are animals and it starts with the animals living around this lake and then gradually they travel and meet other animals etc. there were things that happened every year like they put on a play or things like that, and my dad also taught me a lot of random things through those stories like if the characters were going sailing hed explain how a sailboat works, or how hemp is made into ropes and cloth, etc. and now for the past like decade or so he has been writing them down (he remembers word by fucking word its crazy) and making them into books and gifting a new volume to me and my brother at christmas every year. i believe its actually fully possible to purchase them on amazon lol but im not doxxing myself like that. anyways beavers were my favourite animals and he was super crafty and i always loved mountains, snow, climbing and such so of course big fan of the ibex he was living the dream

ernő nemecsek from the paul street boys - i really loved that book and i have to be honest i dont remember much of it so i dont remember too well why i really liked this guy? i think he was kind of the underdog like he was weak and the other boys picked on him. and well hahaha lets just say primary school me could relate

peter pan - i also wanted to play forever on an island with my friends. all the various metaphors the story was supposed to convey were fully lost on me cause i wanted to play forever with my friends and never grow up just like peter pan

geronimo stilton - i fucking love that mouse. the realest mouse to ever do it. i also really liked tea and a bunch of side characters like the secret agent from the ruby theft story

george from the famous five - well. you know.

WAIT EDIT. I FORGOT. COMIC BOOK CHARACTERS HONOURABLE MENTIONS: tex willer, astérix, tintin, lupo alberto, mickey mouse, eega beeva also from mickey mouse

if uve made it to the end comment a tree emoji. just kidding but wow this was kinda long... and also really revealing about my character and personality lol.... ok bye i love u

[magioftheseas]

The Concept Of Self

Written for @sayakazine Please check out the fundraiser!!! Summary: Sayaka needs a change in direction when it comes to her image. Who better to ask but the Ultimate Fashionista? It's strange, then, that Enoshima Junko doesn't act like expected at all. Rating: PG Warnings: None really. Notes: This is one of my two fics posted for the Sayaka Zine! It's Ikuzono-focused but you can read it platonically. I've always been super interested in the idea of Sayaka interacting with Mukuro while she's disguised because, uh, Mukuro's not the best at acting and Sayaka would definitely notice. I love writing Sayaka as more shrewd and inquisitive while Mukuro is floundering. I think they're cute. Currently, the Sayaka Zine is running a fundraiser, so please show them support! Special thanks also to @softausterity for the illustrations, which are included in both the zine and the Ao3 version. Go check them out, too! ***Alternative Ao3 Link*** Commission? Donate?

She didn’t look at many fashion magazines growing up, even after she debuted.

She loved fashion and pretty dresses as much as the next person, but it had never been her passion. Just something she appreciated and respected from a distance with little understanding beyond if she thought an outfit was cute.

At the beginning of her career, she was told it was okay to not concern herself with such things.

“You’re cute enough without trying!”

Except now it’s become,

“You can’t keep coasting on your natural charm forever.”

She supposed she had expected this to a degree. As distant as she was from the normal teenage girl, she would’ve been a fool to not notice the rising star of the fashion world.

One Enoshima Junko.

–

There were other girls with noticeable style, of course. The Black Cherry girls were a strong example with the guitarist especially standing out. That guitarist, Mioda Ibuki, had a personal style that was as bold and brazen as her music.

Sayaka admired that commitment to individuality, but when she looked at herself, the difference between her and Mioda-senpai was as stark as peacocks and sparrows. No, Mioda-senpai knew herself better than anyone, but Sayaka didn’t think that she’d be understood at all.

But someone like Enoshima-san might be different. Enoshima was similarly bold and outspoken, but her interviews also depicted her as someone with a keen perception and a knack for understanding not just people but people at their deepest and basest.

When she finally met Enoshima, she had been on edge.

…but Enoshima-san wasn’t what she expected.

–

“Enoshima-san, can I speak to you for a moment?”

“Uh, why?”

What caught Sayaka’s attention first was that Enoshima was always on edge around her.

“It’s nothing serious! I just want to talk!”

“O-Oh, that’s, fine, I-I guess?”

Enoshima would cross her arms defensively and not at all like the powerful young woman who was predicted to take Japan by storm. Almost as if that person had been nothing more than an illusion.

But the Enoshima-san in the magazines absolutely isn’t a person that the press could fake.

There must be something that Sayaka is missing.

“Have I done something to offend you in some way?” she asked innocently, taking in the twitch in Enoshima’s eye. How Enoshima just barely manages to disguise her grimace as a grin. “I’ve actually come to you for advice, Enoshima-san.”

“Oh. Oh!” Enoshima does perk up at that, but she still seemed strangely flustered. “L-Like about…boys?”

Oh. Oh.

“It’s not about Naegi-kun at all.”

“I-I didn’t say–!” Enoshima balked, face a now brighter shade that rivaled her red nails. “W-What even gave you the impression?!”

“It’s a joke,” Sayaka chirped with a laugh. “I know there are rumors about Naegi-kun and me, but an idol is nothing without her fans. I’d never do anything to break so many hearts.” She does pause, switching to a more serious mode. “It actually is about my fans. More specifically, the image I present for them.”

The sky was unbearably bright. A more blinding blue than the shade of Enoshima’s widening eyes. Enoshima was no doubt taken aback.

“How am I supposed to…?” Enoshima stopped herself, flushing again. “Wait, so you’re looking to change…your look?”

Sayaka felt her smile strain. A shameful slip that had her want to dig in her nails and heels.

“In a manner of speaking, Enoshima-san. I’m glad you understand.”

It’s supposed to be Enoshima’s talent. Enoshima should understand fashion and image better than anything, from the matter of boys to the matter of her own heart.

Enoshima’s shoulders hunch in the most pitiful way. She worries on her lower lip extensively. Her bright blue eyes go downcast. Her mouth works to speak, but hardly a sound comes out. The bright red of her cheeks really does bring out those homely freckles.

“If you don’t have the time,” Sayaka said, with a pang of sympathy overriding any disappointment. “That’s fi…”

“It’s fine!” Enoshima exclaimed, finally bursting. “I-It’s absolutely fine, Maizono!” Tilting her head back, she forces a hearty laugh. “I’m just surprised! Didn’t think you’d go out of your way to ask me about something like that!”

She’s being honest.

Enoshima clears her throat.

“S-Say,” she says, quirking an eyebrow in a way that only slightly distracted from the sweat dripping down her cheek and the clamminess of her clenched hands. “How about a shopping trip? J-Just us two girly girls.”

She’s uncertain, but she’s earnest.

Sayaka doesn’t have to force her smile in the slightest.

“I would love that, Enoshima-san.”

–

There’s a shopping district nearby Hope’s Peak Academy. Since a lot of Ultimates flock there, it’s always bustling especially in the afternoon. To call it a cornerstone of trends would be an exaggeration. It’s a perfectly ordinary distinct, it’s just in a convenient spot.

Not that Sayaka would know for sure. Enoshima was wetting her lips in a clear sign of nerves rather than offering any judgment on the matter. When Enoshima noticed her curious stare, she forced a grin and snatched up her arm.

“Let’s do this, Maizono!”

Her voice cracked at the honorific. Likely also nerves.

Sayaka had already put on her best-disarming smile, but Enoshima was already tugging her into the first clothing store, closest to the entrance.

Was it convenience, or…?

It wasn’t her place to assume.

–

“This is cute, isn’t it?”

She had picked out a soft blue dress. Rather plain but the kind of thing worn in movies going for a rural charm. It’s the kind of unassuming but lovely thing that Sayaka would usually go for.

She can’t help but think that the Ultimate Fashionista would call it drab, but Enoshima is terribly tense as her gaze flickers from Sayaka’s innocent face to the cloth.

“It’s, uh, fine, yeah.” Enoshima finally forced a grin and a thumbs-up. “Is it what you’re looking for?”

…so that you can hurry up and leave?

“I’m not sure,” Sayaka said, and it was a nugget of truth despite everything. “Can we keep looking?”

Enoshima looked like she might be sick, but kept up that grin.

“S-Sure!”

The next outfit that Sayaka entertains is a poofy blouse. Enoshima simply nods along, agreeing that it’s cute. She even points out that the mannequin was wearing it so it must be popular.

Shouldn’t she know based on her own intuition?

She did notice. Enoshima looked over clothes as well, but idly like she had never been clothes shopping before. Enoshima did seem partial to some colors and designs, but they largely seemed more suited for blending in with the bushes over dazzling a crowd.

Just to test her, Sayaka did pick up a dress that was patterned with earthy tones of green and brown. She knew who it’d remind Enoshima of, and she saw how Enoshima’s eyes brightened when she brought it over.

“How about this, Enoshima-san?”

It’s a dress that even Sayaka knows she wouldn’t be able to wear, regardless of how charming it was. It’s too unassuming. Even her plainest clothes needed to have some level of flashiness. The Ultimate Fashionista would also say as much.

“Uh…” Enoshima-san hesitates, cheeks pink. “Is that…what you’re into?”

Sayaka just smiled as she always did. Smiled, smiled, smiled.

“Why? Do you think it’d look good on me?”

“Well,” Enoshima stutters. “I don’t want to recommend something you don’t want to wear. And I’ll be real, I don’t even know what you want to wear.”

“I’m not picky.” Her smile wouldn’t twitch. “This is for the fans as much as it’s for myself.”

Enoshima just frowned at her.

“Are you sure? Are you sure it’s for yourself as much as it’s for your fans?”

Ah. Enoshima-san is making herself into a problem now.

“Sure I’m sure!” A cute laugh here. Smile, smile, smile. Turn up the CHARM! “Why wouldn’t I be sure?”

Rather than at her, Enoshima looked up at the store lights.

It smarts a little.

“Do you like the dress or not?” She finally cut straight to the point. “Do you think it’s cute? Unassuming but so very charming? Because I’ll trust your opinion on anything, Enoshima-san. You’re the Ultimate Fashionista, so this is your talent, right?”

Enoshima looked at her shoes next. Her cheeks are flushed, and it’s likely not because of the dress.

I feel like I’m bullying her. That’s not how an idol is supposed to act at all. What’s wrong with me?

Enoshima doesn’t even assert herself. She just shrugs before sullenly nodding. Sayaka had once thought that the Enoshima-san she read about would tear someone apart if they dared to cross her. She had envied that idea to an almost sickening degree.

I’m already twisted, but…

“Do you think I should just forget about my fans?”

Still, I…

“That I shouldn’t consider them at all?”

Enoshima’s shoulders hunch.

“...m-maybe?”

She sounded so unsure.

“I-I mean.” She’s stuttering. “Isn’t this about you and what image you want to put out?”

“In a sense.” Sayaka is calm. “But idols aren’t anything without their fans. Not considering them at all would be cruel. I exist for their sake, so…”

“So you’re going to restrict yourself based on what you think they want?” Enoshima’s frown deepened. “I don’t think that’s what self-expression is about. It, uh, sounds like the opposite, actually.”

The thing is that Enoshima’s sentiment was sincere. She still wasn’t confident at all, but it was still a belief from her heart.

And it was ridiculous. Cliché and cheesy, but Sayaka had begun to suspect…

Maybe Enoshima-san has a secret twin or something.

That should’ve been the end of it. If this Enoshima wasn’t actually the Enoshima-san that she read about, then what actual good was she? This trip was a waste of time. A total waste, but she supposed it made for a pleasant enough detour.

And this Enoshima-san isn’t a bad person. She’s cute much the same way that Naegi-kun is. But my fans always come first.

“It can’t be helped,” Sayaka found herself saying. “I’m an idol, so that’s the way that things need to be. I can’t be like Enoshima-san.”

Enoshima warily regards her. That’s her first cue.

“I had a great time.” She made a move to put the dress back on the rack. “And I really do appreciate your help. I’m sorry for wasting your time.”

“You’re just going to cut things off here?” Enoshima’s voice rose. “Seriously?! You haven’t even tried on any of the clothes you showed me!”

Just like how unassuming Naegi could be full of surprises, it was a shock when Enoshima reached out and grabbed her wrist.

“So what if it’s not what the fans want? The fans aren’t even here, Maizono-san! If you want to wear these outfits, you should! I won’t judge!”

“A-Ah…”

Enoshima’s grip was stronger than she could’ve imagined. Enoshima realized that too when she winced, hurriedly retracting her hand.

“S-Sorry, I just…” Enoshima scratched the back of her neck. She dug in her nails like it itched terribly.  “I’ve just been thinking… I want to see what you want to wear. Even if it’s not what others want; if it’s what you want… What’s the harm in dressing up? That’s…what I wanted to say.”

Her wrist wasn’t swollen, and she really should leave. She really should.

Instead, she says. “It might be underwhelming or disappointing. I’m…afraid I’m not as sparkly on my own as I am on the stage.”

“That’s fine,” Enoshima almost replied too quickly. “I still want to know more about you. Despite our, uh, differences, I think we could get along.” Then, quieter, she mumbled. “You kind of remind me of someone I really like and admire, so I do want to help you…”

“Ah. Hm.” Sayaka tilted her head, genuinely curious because that person couldn’t be Naegi. “Who?”

“N-Not important!” Enoshima squealed. “Do you have to try and distract me instead of just answering the question?!” She’s whining, too. It’s so childish. “You always do that!”

She’s the one that’s like Naegi-kun. I can’t help but tease her.

She can’t help but laugh.

I can’t help but like her.

She takes the dress back and holds it close.

“Alright!” She exclaims like it’s easy. Like it’s simple. Like her heart really is light. “I’ve actually always wanted to wear green. I like green more than pink if you can believe it.”

“I don’t,” Enoshima said bluntly. “But I understand it.”

Sayaka smiles wide, and it doesn’t even hurt in a bad way.

[oryu404]

Hi, I loved your Sting analysis and I 100% agree with all of it so allow me to send you my "how the Sting/Rogue Vs Natsu/Gajeel fight should have happened" propaganda, because I spend way too long thinking how to fix it and I love my version:

So basically, since Sabertooth was presented as the unchallenged 7 year running victors, strongest guild in Fiore and they are amongst the also seemingly unchallenged top 5 of that guild, I think they *need* to be shown to be stronger than Natsu to live up to the hype. (And the most annoying thing is that Mashima *can* write 'Natsu goes against a stronger opponent and win' satisfyingly, exhibit A: Laxus) Like come on, Natsu is a badass but he was never before shown to be an undefeatable super powerhouse, and Sting/Rogue are the current antagonist that got hyped up a lot, story wise they have to be stronger! If the twist is actually every other guild except FT is kinda weak and therefore so is Sabertooth that's a bad twist! And it's not even satisfying to watch!

But they still need to lose, so how? Imo the most satisfying would be: due to their own overconfidence, it's fun and it works with the themes too!

So the way I would write it, (first by forgetting the 'Gajeel and Natsu weren't starting full strength' BS, like since when??? This is FT, where no one ever holds back, not Dragon Ball) but I distress so:

Sting/Rogue are winning handily, throwing unison raid like candy so Sting decides to solo them, goes into Dragon Force and keep winning, even if not as easily and Natsu, who does tend to overestimate himself if it's not life and death, still goes all 'I don't need you Gajeel, I'm gonna win by myself' but he doesn't kick him out of the arena, because that was terrible, and Gajeel is staying around like 'fine go get your ass kicked, I'll laughs'

And 2v1 was hard enough, 1v1 Natsu is losing fast, only Gajeel isn't stupid and he wants to win so he had a plan: while Rogue was distracted and not paying attention to him, having kinda disregarded him as a threat, he jumps him and doesn't let him use Dragon Force, maybe Rogue is the one who get kicked down a mine shaft even.

And then Gajeel somehow creates an explosion to give fire to Natsu and rejoins the fight. Gajeel is still relatively fresh while Sting has just been burning through a ton of magic between Dragon Force and unnecessarily showing off and so Gajeel/Natsu show that they can in fact fight together decently and they win, preferably with an unexpected unison raid.

That way the fight is hard won and thus satisfying to watch, Sting/Rogue were defeated by their own hubris (and separately!) even though they actually were stronger, illustrating the whole 'the strength of friendship beat being personally strong and is more important' theme (AND it gives more weight and more anticipation for Rogue Vs Gajeel future fight, but that would be a whole other essay) AND *it's not the only duo showing the power of friendship who loses* because genuinely, I think Mashima might have forgotten who he was trying to make us root for? (Why give Sting the Power of Friendship tm AND an emotional motivational flashback and then make him lose like that???)

Anyways, so sorry this got incredibly long, but I don't want to erase it now that I wrote all that ^^' Please do ignore me if I was bothering you

Hi! I'm so glad you liked my Sting rant analysis! Also, uhm...Hell Yes to your version of the dragon slayer tag battle! It hits a couple of points that I think are very satisfying, and that would make a lot of sense.

- Sting and Rogue being defeated separately, and directly thanks to their own arrogance: The Twin Dragons have insane teamwork and amplify each other's strengths. Separating them should be step 1 towards defeating them. Plus, they've shown arrogance (Sting) and indifference (Rogue) from the beginning. Having those attitudes be their downfall would fit very nicely into their humbling and later character improvement. And the scenario you posed works really well: Sting showing off and blowing through his MP, and Rogue letting his guard down when he lost interest. Mistakes neither of them care to make again on the last day (especially after the beating from their master). Sting now saves up all his strength for the final confrontation, while Rogue focuses on settling his score with Gajeel.

- Natsu and Gajeel teamwork: These two are rivals who never had the friendliest dynamic, so showing them put all that aside and win this battle for FT? If that ain't power of friendship, I don't know what is.

- Rogue getting kicked down the mineshaft....Now that would be very interesting considering what he'd find there. He and Gajeel wouldn't be able to really finish their fight so it would absolutely up the anticipation for their second encounter on the final day. Still trying to figure out what it would mean for the stuff with Zirconis, but I'm very intrigued by the idea.

Thanks so much for this message, I absolutely loved it!

[tripleace-unofficial]

What's new

Finally, I'd like to apologize for leaving this blog empty for so long, last year was very hectic. Thank you for your patience and I hope I can be more consistent with this blog from now on.

New episodes

The latest episode is 49. We're already on season two! You guys are lucky you didn't have to wait after the end of Season 1 for it. The ending of the original run was episode 86, which means we're at 57% of the story. Please look forward to the rest of it!

Extras

If you didn't know, Pía just made all compilatory zines of Triple Ace available to download for free. These zines collect all the extra stuff posted on social media, as well as new content exclusive to them, such as character profiles and behind the scenes commentary. Even better, I just did some calculations and the first 3 zines only spoil up to what's been published in English, so after you catch up you're good to read them! (Zine 4, of course, was made after the ending, so don't check that one yet unless you want to get super spoiled!) I'll be translating those from now on instead of the individual posts on Instagram, but I'll keep an eye out for anything that didn't make it to the zines (I think there's a few extra colored illustrations for when Triple Ace won a local BL award, but I'll have to check).

Physical Media

If you also didn't know, Volume 3 is out tomorrow. By now the webtoon release of the English version is ahead of the printed chapters, but if you're still interested in owning the printed versions, they come with extra art and a little AU comic that's never been released online.

"When will they print an English release?"

DISCLAIMER: I'm not Pía, nor am I associated with her, her editorial team, Webtoons, Planeta Manga, or anyone in any official capactity ever in the world.

The best way to go about these things is making your interest known to your local publishers. I don't know how it works in English speaking communities, but Spanish printers often host request threads where they ask people what new licenses they'd like to see, and they acquire and translate them based on what's popular or comes up a lot. If you ever find your favorite printers openly asking for requests, let them know Triple Ace is in need of a physical English release.

Please remember that authors often have little to no control of translations and sales in other countries beyond their own, but rather it's publishers who have the power (and money) to bring them to you.

[saradesuchiha]

DES Ü'S NARUHINA FAIR WRAPPED!

PS. LONG POST LMAO

hogwarts au // this was alot of fun to make. this was supposed to be like a quick draw but i was enjoying the moment rendering this comic i ended up w a full blown illustration lmao

1. sunshine family 2. vampire 3. arranged marriage 4. forbidden 5. right person, wrong time

i discovered alot of new creators and very much loved and enjoyed @lavdiiaa and @narutosgirl7's entries :D

//in no particular order

powerful_niya day 12/15/28 entry @powerful-niya - arranged marriage / gifted & cursed / royalty HISTORICAL AU IS MY WEAKNESS. I'M SUPER IN LOVE W THIS. i loved the combination of the elements and it is beautifully written. 100/10 STARS *CHEF'S KISS*

narutosgirl7 day 27 entry @narutosgirl7 - smile FLUFF. FLUFF. FLUFF. i was a smiling idiot reading this. U OWNED MY HEART

secrettastemakerland day 27 entry @secrettastemakerland - smile DORKY IN LOVE NARUTO UGHHHHH hinata w braces ashflaksfhakla + sakura being the best wingwoman!! this fic is so adorable

croissantandmacarons day 8 entry @croissantandmacarons - in-laws HINATA MEETING NARUTO'S FAMILYYYYY AAAAAAAHHHH i love their interactions. minato and kushina and jiraiya in this story. very heartwarming

jimni_soo day 6 entry -sick this is a portuguese fic. i read this w google translate. i balled my eyes reading this. i couldn't think straight. i'm too soft and very emotional for fic like this and yet i loved it

//in no particular order

nuella day 3 entry - study dates NUELLAAAA GURL U KNOW I LOVE U AND UR ART. i'm so in love w this. this was inspired by our times. i adore that film sm!!

hyorinbaek day 23 entry @hyorinbaek - cottagecore I LOVE THE COLORSSS. SO PRETTYYYYYY

jjoneechan day 28 entry @jjoneechan - video game THIS IS SO COOL. JEI IS SO TALENTED.

av_bocetos day 28 entry @avbocetos - royalty AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA this was for prompt exchange. i love royalty aus. i didn't expect her to make so many entries in this prompt. GURL U SPOILED ME SMMMM ILY

lavdiiaa day 9 entry @lavdiiaa -crossover for the nth time, i love historical aus LSHFALSKFHSALKFHAF THIS IS TOO CUTE. LOOK AT THEM FLIRTING. ANDDDD HANABI IS TOO DAMN ADORABLE. for some reason ur art reminds me of one of julia quinn's book covers. i can't recall which is it but it's one of the illustrated versions

//in no particular order

@sessakag @powerful-niya @secrettastemakerland @narutosgirl7 @/fernand53914020 (twitter)

i was patiently waiting and also always excited to see ur entries. i literally put off my reading list to read fics this month. i read fics in the morning and didn't expect to read some smut at that time lmao. thank u sm for all ur wonderful works.

//in no particular order

@/nuella (twitter) @/toyokonotokoro (twitter) @shamylicious-blog @/hinahimalena (twitter) @popipapepu

talented. amazing. wonderful. beautiful. idk how many adjectives to put here abt u and ur art/socmed au. thank u for blessing us w ur work.

funny, we had nh fair idea + plans wayyy back feb 2022.

it was supposedly for nh week (april) but considering we just finished nhmonth2021 and sunshine siblings week (jan) we thought creators needed a creativity break.

we were also considering the possibility that someone might host nhmonth2022 around may. bc last year, we had a backlash setting nhmonth2021 in december. some ppl told us it's overshadowing hinata's birth month and told us to move it around november instead or may since they told us it's naruhina's wedding month. but our main concern was for the participants bc they were the ones needed more time to prepare their entries for we announced it last september.

this year, that one anon ask ignited this to happen.

tbh i was hesitant at first to host again bc of last year's experience. it was fun but it was quite nerve-wracking bc i thought no one will participate considering there were ppl boycotting nhmonth2021. i was afraid it may happen again. very grateful for ate @quirrrky uplifting my spirit to continue hosting this event.

this year's celebration was a BLAST

i literally had the time of my life.

i did mention earlier that i experienced emotional stressed. it's bc of some internal fandom conflict but it wasn't related to the event. but some misinformation happened and the event was thrown in between, so i had to put myself in the situation and mediate. i didn't expect to be this emotionally attached to this fandom. i don't like seeing my mutuals fighting and it was quite hard for me to deal w the situation. it somehow got into me and derailed my momentum, so i took a break.

very grateful for all the entries bc it has kept me going every day. my heart swells w pride and joy seeing everyone's work. i enjoyed seeing and reading each one knowing the creator put their heart and soul into making it for naruhina. i wish i could express myself better w words and tell everyone i truly feel. i just hoped u feel our gratitude and our love and respect through our thank u cards.

i also loved seeing ppl commenting to the creator's post. sending their love. some got inspired to write or draw based on ones entry. i also love seeing ppl giving ideas according to a specific prompt and maybe someone will took inspiration from it.

how i wish i could have more entries. i only have 12 prepared before the event started. i wanted to draw the remaining days on the same day to challenge myself like i did last year, but i failed this year lmao. i was also anticipating some random things to happen that may inspire me to make art.

well, it turns out it did. one for the dilf thread and one from my crazy interactions w ate @bornonthebreakofdawn and @keycipo. i was just innocently scrolling through twitter, i did not expect to see that underwear huhuhuhu. i always send ate born anything naruto related and when i saw that post, i immediately sent it to her. didn't expect senny's posts abt giving naruto little hats. then suddenly both random ideas merged KLASHFKASHFSALKFA IT WAS CRAZY. i was smiling the entire day. i wasn't expecting @wickermayne to join in and write something too hahaha thank u sm for that wonderful, smutty fic. it was such a treat!

my total entry count is 16 but i have +2 more pending bc it's a collab w @keycipo. +2 more i didn't release; one is i decided to delayed posting for personal purposes. the second felt like it didn't fit the prompt. but i'll post these soon at the right time.

speaking of collabs, i'm very grateful for the ppl i collaborated w this month:

@powerful-niya, i can never thank u enough. u are such a sweet heart and a visionary. i very much loved and enjoyed working w u. i'm so happy i met u. my door is always open for ur wonderful ideas. can't wait for us to collaborate more in the future.

@mysummerchoi i know u very much hate angst but i'm very grateful u jumped in and took time and effort to make our collab possible. thank u for always putting up w my crazy ideas. love u always ancient one.

@jjoneechan so happy that we're able to collaborate! jei is one of my fav artists in narutwt. we both have different styles and putting our drawings together was quite challenging. i was scared at first that i might ruin their art when i was editing them together. but i really loved how it turned out. IT WORKED SO WELL *chef's kiss*

@avbocetos AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH u are a wonderful wonderful person. so happy we did this huhuhu. i didn't expect for u to make THREE/FOUR ART from the prompt i choose HUHUHUHU thank u thank u smmmm~

@keycipo I BELIEVE IN U. take ur time. we can post anytime ;)))

THIS GETTING SO LONG. I STILL HAVE MORE TO SAY HAHAHAHHAAHHAHAHAHA but i'll cut to the chase.

to the ppl who donated and bought the printables on my ko-fi, thank u sm. i hoped u enjoyed the materials and goodies we have for this event.

i already express my gratitude abt creator spotlight. huhuhu

I'M FOREVER GRATEFUL TO THIS COMMUNITY. my love for naruhina has extended for u guys. thank u for welcoming me and my art. thank u for giving me an opportunity to host an event for naruhina. thank u for always believing in me. thank u for the friendship and love and support and everything. i love all very very much.

🌤️

[nationalharryleague]

Two for the Show

Summary: Jeff plans for Harry’s new opening act to be more than that. 

Genre: Famous Fake Dating! 

Word Count: 17.1k!

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A/N: Hey babes!! This is something I’ve been working on since December now and I’m so fucking proud of it and how it turned out!!! It’s the longest thing I’ve ever written and I’m so so so excited to hear what everyone has to say!! Giant thank you’s go out to the incredible soph (@theharriediaries​) and Lu (@meetmymouth​) bc this never would have come to fruition without them and their help!! Please let me know what you think!! More of my writing can be found in my masterlist!! Happy reading y’all :)

***

Keeping appearances in the public eye is a delicate balance.

If Y/N was being honest with herself, everything Full Stop Management had ever suggested to her had worked, and very well. When they suggested her music took a more pop direction, they set her up with a team of fantastic producers and her music sales and popularity skyrocketed. And when they set up an appointment with a celebrity stylist to figure out her signature style, it worked; they turned her into the 1970’s inspired goddess she had always dreamed of being. Even the hours of media training that she had been put through worked, helping her learn how to bob and weave even the most intrusive of interview questions.

But this time, she thought they might be going too far.

“Jeff,” she began with a sigh and a doubtful shake of her head, “I don’t know about this one.”

“It’s just a few months before and during the tour,” explained the man sitting across from her at the long conference table. “You’ll be seen in public a few times to drum up publicity for the tour and your album, maybe do an interview or two together, and some light PDA.”

His expression was honest and earnest. In the time he had represented her, he had never done anything to her that didn’t help her succeed. It was not hard for her to believe that he just wanted what was best for her and her career.

But something kept holding her back.

“I just got my heart broken in the most public way,” she said softly, absentmindedly fiddling with the base of her ring finger where an engagement ring once sat. “Isn’t it a little too soon to be seen jumping back into a whirlwind romance?”

“I don’t think so. If anything, it will make James look even worse than he already does after what he did to you.” She had to admit the idea of a little revenge did perk her ears up a bit. “And it doesn’t hurt that Harry is so universally loved and known for being such a good guy.”

That was another reason she was skeptical of this entire plot. This was Harry Styles they were talking about; Harry fucking Styles. She had only met him once or twice while working out details for her to be the opening act for his upcoming tour, but she had been a big fan of his and idolized him since she was a teen. Just meeting him threw her inner 16 year old self for a loop, let alone trying to pretend she was in love with him.

In all honesty, it probably wouldn’t be too hard on her end once she got over being starstruck; she wasn’t so sure she still wasn’t kind of in love with him, or at least the version the public saw.

“Listen,” Jeff began again, his voice taking on a bluntness, “no one cares about the opening act. No one bought tickets to see you; they’re there to see Harry.” His words stung but she knew it was the truth. “But if they think you are a part of Harry’s life, they care about you too. And they will keep on caring about you after they leave the show.” Her apprehensiveness must have been clear on her face when he put on a gentle smile. “He’s a really nice person. I promise.”

“I know,” she breathed, a small pout finding its way to her lips. “Fine,” she conceded after a moment, throwing her hands up in the air dramatically to signal surrender. “I’m in.”

A triumphant grin spread across his face. “Thank you. I’ll go call Harry and tell him you’re down.” She watched as he got up from his chair and came towards her, pressing a brief and friendly kiss to the top of her head. “You won’t regret this, Y/N.”

“I better not, Azoff,” she chuckled while shaking her head slightly.

Soon she was alone in the conference room, basking in the light from the floor to ceiling windows that sat before her.

“What did I just get myself into?” she mumbled quietly to herself.

***

The answer to that question came two weeks later when she was sitting across a table from the Harry Styles at a small outdoor brunch spot in LA. Their meeting place was strategic, a small restaurant, not too flashy so it didn’t look like they were seeking attention, but outdoors where anyone could see. It was only a matter of time before he was recognized, and the sighting was almost guaranteed to be trending on Twitter only minutes later.

She couldn’t say that she wasn’t nervous. The inside of her mouth had been chewed raw and the bags under her eyes showed she had been having trouble sleeping in the nights leading up to their first appearance together. By the end of the day, she would most likely have countless articles written about her and possibly have millions of angry fangirls coming after her; even though their “relationship” wouldn’t be officially confirmed for a few weeks.

If all went to Jeff’s plan, she would become an A-lister overnight.

She stood in front of her closet for over an hour, trying on and taking off outfits before finally settling on her favorite pair of bright red corduroy flares and a crisp white textured halter top. She paired the outfit with a new pair of heeled leather boots. They were a flashy pair that were split down the middle, bright yellow on one side and white with yellow stars on the other, hoping Harry would appreciate the bold colors.

She meticulously did her makeup, sure to match her lipstick color exactly to the shade of her pants; and spent far too long in front of the mirror fussing with her hair, praying it would lay the way she wanted it to.

She knew that she was going to be photographed in some way shape or form, and with the fashion icon himself. She had to look good. He had been on the cover of Vogue for god’s sake.

When she finally arrived at the cafe, Harry sat quietly across from her. He looked casual, or as casual as Harry Styles gets. A yellow t-shirt, that was tight enough to look as if it was painted on, showed off his muscular chest and arms. His iconic tattoos illustrated his arms and she hoped he wouldn’t notice as she covertly tried to examine closely. He uncomfortably ran his palms down the legs of his high waisted denim flares that had been paired with his signature pearl necklace and ratty, but well loved, white vans.

And she couldn’t forget his rings. His signature gold ‘H’ and ‘S’ looked back at her as he gently grasped his flute filled to the brim with a mimosa, bringing it to his pink lips that were surrounded by the short stubble he had been wearing lately.

The pair sat in a slightly awkward silence, both seeming to down their mimosas quickly just because it was something to do with their hands and could occupy their lips so they didn’t have to talk.

To say she was panicking, wouldn’t be too much of an over exaggeration. She was sitting across from one of the world’s biggest stars, and as one of his biggest closeted fans. The things he could do for her career were astronomical and it was hard to ignore that, but she also had a hard time getting over the way his hair seemed to fall into perfect tousled curls and his dreamy green eyes.

She had been in love with him (or at least the idea of him) since she was 16. She couldn’t help it.

But the bottomless mimosas helped to break her anxiety, and apparently his as well, as they both began to feel a slight buzz.

“So how did Jeff end up talking you into this?” Harry eventually broke the silence, the alcohol lowering his naturally shy inhibitions just enough to kick off their conversation.

She let a playful eye roll take over her face before she began. “Oh Jeff,” she said jokingly, letting out a long sigh. “I was convinced somewhere in between ‘it’ll make your ex look bad’ and a stern ‘no one ever cares about the opening act,’” she chuckled, while sarcastically wagging her finger in the air, dramatically re-enacting his scolds.

He sucked in a breath through his teeth, letting out a dramatic ‘ouch.’ “He’s not always gentle, is he?” matching her chuckle.

“He knows where to hit you where it hurts,” she laughed, while nodding in agreement. “How did he convince you?”

“Coincidently, he also took a low blow involving my ex. I believe his words were ‘You wrote an entire album about her and haven’t dated anyone since and it makes you look kind of pathetic.’” He dramatically used air quotes and did his best impression of Jeff’s American accent. She couldn’t hold back the giggles that erupted from her.

“Oh my goodness,” she let out through slightly buzzed giggles, “you definitely win.”

From that point, their conversation began to flow more easily, easing her anxiety as she learned he was generally easy to talk to. He laughed at her jokes, and she laughed at his. He really did have the calming and disarming quality that people always said he had, like could melt down any walls and convince you to be honest with him, even if you didn’t really want to be. She was shocked to find that she wanted him to genuinely be a friend to her so badly. He was just so nice and such a good listener.

Their conversation took a turn when Harry’s super power of knowing when his picture was being taken kicked in. “Give me your hand,” he said to her, diverting from the pleasant conversation they had been having about their families. “Don’t look but there’s someone across the street taking photos of us.”

His instructions brought her back to the reality that they weren’t really friends and that all of this was for show.

She brought her hand up to meet his, strategically resting on the side of the table that faced the street, giving the camera the best view. The cool metal of his hand full of rings felt good against her skin that had been baking in the hot LA sun and he passed his thumb over her knuckles with faux affection.

She couldn’t help but feel a dishonest weight pulling on her heart. She knew everything was going to plan and this was all for the best, but it also felt slightly wrong. She played with her small heart shaped earring to distract herself from the sinking feeling.

“Harry,” she began, knowing the people across the street were out of ear shot. Her voice brought his attention from her hand back up to her eyes. “Does this feel wrong to you at all?”

“How so?”

“It just feels dishonest, like we’re lying to millions of people, our–well, mostly your fans.” She couldn’t help but correct herself.

His eyes softened at her words, like he was taking in the innocence she still held onto after only being in the industry for a short time, compared to his decade in the spotlight.

“I try not to think of it as lying,” he spoke slowly after a moment of thinking. He nodded along softly to punctuate his words. “When you think about all this as lying, it starts to weigh pretty heavy on you as a person. I try to be as honest as possible in my music and daily life, but that’s not always what people want to see. They want a show that will entertain them, and it is our job to give it to them.”

“I see,” she mused.

They sat together for another hour or so, allowing their small mimosa buzz to wear off enough for them to drive the short distances to their homes. The pair eventually found their way back to a comfortable conversation, but Harry’s comment about being in the public eye still weighed on her.

Suddenly, she wasn’t sure if all of this was worth it. Y/N was a master at dodging a question and turning the charm to 10 when it was needed, but she wasn’t a liar and she definitely wasn’t an actress. She hoped she (or Jeff) hadn’t bitten off more than she could chew with all of this.

Harry eventually walked her back to her car that was parked a few blocks away, and while she was sure he was doing it for the cameras, she didn’t doubt that he would have done it even if they weren’t there. He just seemed like that kind of guy to her; caring and trustworthy.

“Thank you for a very nice date, Harry,” she said, winking and chuckling along with the extra emphasis she put on the last word.

“My pleasure,” he smiled down at her. He moved along with her as she walked to the driver's side door, opening it for her like a perfect gentleman. The two stood close, his body hovering over her’s as they stood inside the open door. Her heart rose to her throat as he leaned down to her and pressed a gentle kiss to her burning cheek.

Y/N  looked back up at him with rosy cheeks and a tightlipped bashful smile. She watched as he walked backward carefully, taking her hand that had been locked with his until he was too far and let it fall back to her body.

She situated herself in her drivers seat and was ready to leave when she heard a knocking on the passenger side window that startled her. Harry had bent himself over and was motioning for her to roll the window down. When she did, he leaned himself in, an honest look in his eyes.

“Before you go,” he said gently. “A word of advice from someone who had been in the public eye for a long time,” he spoke with a tender yet serious tone, eyes locking with hers. “When you go home today, don’t go on social media. People are mean, and it’s just going to hurt.” She nodded along with his words and watched as he pinched his bottom lip. “And when you inevitably can’t resist, text me if you need to talk about it.”

***

They must have done a good job putting on their show because within an hour of her returning home to her apartment, they were all anyone was talking about. Their names were trending worldwide #1 on Twitter. Streams of Y/N’s debut album were up by 800%, and even Harry’s streams had taken a considerable jump. Y/N had gained 40,ooo new followers and views on every interview she had ever done were steadily rising.

All was going according to Jeff’s plan.

Harry’s words circled her brain for hours. “Don’t go on social media,” she heard him say over and over again as she paced her apartment, only stopping to look at the phone sitting on the kitchen counter every so often.

She had taken a shower, done her hair, tried to watch TV, cooked herself dinner, and even tried to sit down and write a song; it all got her nowhere fast. The unknown was eating at her inside.

Y/N broke when she heard the small ding signaling she had gotten a text message. She had all but sprinted to see who it was, reunited with the outside world through her touch screen. Unsurprisingly, it was from Jeff; the message sent to her and an unknown number she assumed to be Harry’s.

Good job, kiddos., was all it read but there was a photo attached to the message. Her heart stopped while she waited for the photo to load, cursing her slow wifi in the process. After a few breathless moments, the photo came through.

It was a screenshot from the website of one of the biggest entertainment magazines in the country. A picture of him kissing her cheek was the front page of the website.

Harry Styles and Y/N Y/L/N Rumored To Be Music’s New Power Couple Ahead of Tour

She was honestly speechless. This was huge.

She would like to say the sheer shock blurred her judgement, but the curiosity just got the better of her. Harry’s words repeated over and over again in her head, telling her not to, even as her finger connected with the icon of the little blue bird.

She was the most talked about topic in the entire world, her name hovering in bold letters on the trending page. She did everything she could to not click on her name, but her fingers did it all on her own.

The first few tweets were nice. Someone said they liked her style and that they looked cute together as a couple. Another said that they had always enjoyed her music and that they were happy for them.

But as she scrolled, it became harsher and just mean. People commented on her weight, said she couldn’t sing, and criticized her personality as seeming fake and forced. Her eyes were locked on the screen, unable to look away, as her heart began to break and few tears began to roll.

It took one final, and the most painful, tweet for her to consider deleting her account completely. She swiped out of the app fast, but the words were still burned into her brain.

Y/N is using Harry, just like she used James before he got rid of her and found someone better.

The words knocked the wind out of her, pouring salt on an open wound that had yet to heal.

She also had the little blue bird for that heartbreak as well. When she opened the app two months ago, the first thing she saw was pictures of her (former) fiance, James, with his tongue down some girl’s throat. At the time she had been devastated, her heart broken beyond repair.

It felt like no one else in the world could understand the way she was feeling. If she was in this position because of another person, they must get it too. The text to Harry was already sent before she had time to think it over.

I looked and I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry that I didn’t listen.

His response came only seconds later.

Don’t be sorry. It’s hard not to. Are you alright?

She had to think about his question, unsure if she knew the answer. Tears were still running down her face and she felt like she was a target the entire world had decided it was open season on. Logically, she knew these people never thought she would see these awful things, but it didn’t excuse the hurt she felt when she did.

I don’t know. I just don’t understand how people can be so cruel.

She felt like she was bothering him, even though he had offered to be there for her. He wasn’t her best friend, or a close confidant; he was her fake publicity boyfriend. He had real friends he wanted to talk to or maybe even a real girlfriend underwraps somewhere. Her body was wracked with guilt as she thought it over.

People are just mean on the internet, okay? They think they can say whatever they want without repercussions. I’m so sorry that you are being targeted because of me.

Before she got a chance to think through a proper response to him, her phone dinged with another text. It was from Jeff again.

Really good job, kiddos.

Y/N was confused. They hadn’t done anything else but be seen together today. Her sick sense of curiosity got her again before she opened Twitter again and looked up Harry’s name. He had tweeted for the first time in six months only a few moments ago.

@Harry_Styles: We treat people with kindness.

***

The next time she saw him was two days later at yet another public meet up Jeff had arranged for them. Unfortunately this time, she had become just as famous as Harry seemingly overnight, the flames of her new found fame growing even larger after he had sent that tweet.

While the fame had grown, the hate had calmed since his statement, which most had taken as an official declaration of their relationship. Now, that was not to Jeff’s plans.

She had to fight her way out of her apartment complex, wearing a pair of massive dark sunglasses with circular lenses and shielding her face with her hands the best she could. But she did have to admit that the electric orange fabric of her jumpsuit probably didn’t do much to help her blend in and avoid the attention of the paparazzi that had now found out where she lived.

Harry was sitting at the table by himself facing the back of the cafe when she arrived, two cups of coffee waiting before him to be drank together placed delicately on the table. He had his head down, buried in a book, before she startled him with a hug from behind. Her cheek connected with his warm neck where she buried her head into him and she took in his dizzying cologne.

She felt him jump beneath her as she wrapped her arms around his shoulders, pressing a dramatic and cheesy kiss to his cheek, feeling his light stubble prick her chapsticked lips. “My hero,” she joked, trying to bring at least a little humor to the man who had just about jumped out of his skin at her touch.

It felt like she was crossing a boundary, and she was pretty sure she was, but she just needed to thank him and a hug felt like the best way to do that while in a semi-crowded coffee shop. Also, playing up that they were madly in love didn’t hurt.

“Jesus Christ,” he breathed, a hand flying over his chest in surprise to feel his racing heartbeat. “You scared the shit out of me.” Once he settled for a moment, his arm moved across his chest to rest on her arm. His touch was gentle and soft, holding her there gently like he didn’t want her to release him from her grasp. She tried not to think about it too much as she slipped her arms off of him, making her way to the seat that was clearly meant for her across from him.

“I’m sorry that I scared you. A little jumpy today?” she teasingly questioned.

“Hey, watch it,” he playfully threatened. “I believe you called me your hero about thirty seconds ago.”

“I guess I did,” she quipped over the mug she was bringing to her lips. It was sweet but not too sweet, with cream but not too much, and still piping hot; just the way she liked it. “I don’t think it’s too far off,” she smiled before turning back to the coffee. “Good coffee,” she mused. “Just the way I like it.”

“Good. I texted Jeff for your order,” he informed her, the gesture being so thoughtful and sweet she could have melted into a puddle right there and then. “And I think ‘hero’ might be a bit much,” he tacked on.

“Don’t be humble, Harry.” While her voice was still light and held a jesting tone, she meant her words. “You made the entire internet leave me alone, for the most part,” she clarified as there were definitely some nasty messages still floating around Twitter, “in five words.”

“It was the least I could do,” he said while shaking his head slightly, seeming to deflect her words.

“You could have done absolutely nothing.” She reached across the table and grabbed his hand in hers like they had staged at the cafe a few days earlier; but this time, it was an honest gesture, not one for a role they were both meant to be playing. Her words were serious, punctuating each with a gentle nod of her head. “I mean it. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” His eyes held the same truthfulness and honesty she hoped she was mirroring in her own. “I know all of this,” he paused and gestured between them with his free hand, “is for publicity, but I consider you a friend. It was hard to watch it all go down like that. You’re a good person and you didn’t deserve all that. I had to do something.”

There was a warmth that flooded her chest. He called me his friend, she thought to herself, fighting back a big toothy grin. She had been under the impression that all of this was just work for him, something he was doing just to drum up publicity, with no personal connections at all. But him calling her a friend meant so much to her. It meant she was not alone in all this terrifying and overwhelming attention.

“I’m glad you think of me as a friend,” she said, still holding back her smile. “You’re my friend too.” He matched her close-lipped smile that had fought its way onto her face at her words.

They sat in silence together for a few moments. Harry returned to his book and Y/N answered emails; but their hands stayed connected across the small table. This silence was very different from the silence on the day they first met. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence that sat on your tongue, begging you to break the quiet; it was peaceful and safe.

Their silence was broken when a young woman wearing a jittery smile and nervous eyes approached their table. Her voice squeaked out a mouse-like “Hi,” towards the both of them, bringing their eyes up to meet hers and instinctively breaking their hands away from each other.

“I’m so so sorry to be a bother,” she began, cheeks red and hot. “But I’m a really big fan of both of you and I would never forgive myself if I didn’t say hello.” She rambled excitedly, mostly looking at Harry, as she held her slightly shaky hands up to her chest.

“Hello,” Harry said with one of his million dollar smiles. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Emma,” she breathed.

“Well, it’s so nice to meet you Emma.” He spoke gently with her, clearly sensing her anxiety, extending his hand for her to shake. “Thank you for all of your support.”

Y/N watched closely as he spoke with her. He spoke to her like she was the only person in the room, giving her his whole undivided attention, and repeatedly thanking her as she flooded him with compliments about how his music and message of kindness meant so much to her. She was so entranced that she nearly didn’t hear her own name being said as the girl turned towards her.

“I love your music as well,” she grinned, clearly more comfortable after her short conversation with Harry. “And your jumpsuit is just incredible.” Her nervous giggle was contagious, Y/N releasing one as well at the compliment as her cheeks heated slightly. She was shocked she even knew any of her music, clearly being the less popular of the pair.  

“Thank you so much, Emma. It means a lot.”

Emma took a few quick selfies with the both of them (that would be everywhere within a few hours), said goodbye and went to leave the two, but not before she paid them one last compliment. “You two are really cute together. I’m rooting for you.”

Both of their cheeks warmed as they looked back at each other. They were quiet for a moment, unsure how to respond, before Harry turned his attention back to the girl with a coy smile. “I am too,” was all he said.

***

The next three weeks passed in a blur of tour rehearsals, fittings, and public meetings with Harry. And then all of a sudden, it was the night of the first show.

Y/N had never been so nervous in her entire life. She would be the first face seen by just over 19,000 people, tasked to warm up the crowd and prepare them for Harry, which was enough pressure. And then there was the chance that they all hated her guts.

She stood behind the curtain, listening to the loud and inpatient crowd as she paced back and forth. She white-knuckeld her guitar, trying to keep her violently shaking hands from being too visible to the crew around her. Her stomach swirled and her palms were clammy, constantly having to rub them on the pants of her icey blue jumpsuit. It fit her like a glove, the wide legged pants and slight shoulder pads, creating a perfect hourglass silhouette; the only thing she was confident in at the moment was how good she looked in it.

Her heart leapt out of her chest and she almost hit the ceiling when a small voice appeared over her shoulder, whispering “You’re going to do great,” in her ear. If her heart wasn’t about to give out before, it was now. She swung around to face him, almost hitting Harry with her guitar, letting out a small breath of relief when her eyes met his own. They always seemed to calm her down a bit.

“I’m kinda freaking out, H,” she anxiously babbled, using the nickname he had told her to call him. “This is the biggest crowd I’ve ever played in front of, and they probably all hate me because they think I’m dating you, and I have to make sure I do a good job so they start listening to my music; and I just…” she trailed off for a second, uncomfortably scratching the back of her neck, “I just can’t let you down.”

His face softened at her words, seeming to take pity on her. “Y/N,” he began, resting his hands on her shoulders and looking so deep into her eyes she felt like he could probably see her soul. “We picked you to open because people love your music and the way that you perform. You just have to go out there and do what you do best: sing your heart out and put on a good show. It’s only 25 minutes. I know you can do it.”

Every word that left his lips was laced with honesty and encouragement; just enough for Y/N to relax her furrowed brow and give her lip a break from her constant chewing. “I can do it,” she softly repeated back to him, still not breaking contact with his striking green eyes.

A stage manager passed by them, running to some other important task, but not before tapping her shoulder. “You’re on in 30 seconds,” he spoke, just as she heard the roar of the crowd begin, signalling the dimming of the lights in the arena.

“Go kick some ass,” he winked, stepping backwards from her and releasing her from his grasp. “I’ll be watching.”

Walking on stage, she wasn’t met with ‘boo’s that had plagued her nightmares, or mean looks from the audience, or rotten tomatoes thrown from the crowd.

They were screaming in excitement, screaming for her.

From the second she started playing, the crowd had her back; the ones that knew the words to her songs sang them along with her, and the ones that didn’t, happily danced to her voice. Before long, the smile she had forced onto her face was genuine, and her set passed by with ease. When her 25 minutes were up, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to get off the stage.

She took her final bow as the crowd roared, running off of the stage into the wings, looking for one person in particular. And when she found him, she threw herself into Harry’s open and waiting arms. “I told you that you were going to do great!” He spoke excitedly into her ear and he held her close to his body, his arms wrapped around her waist tight.

She liked the way it felt to be in his arms.

Pulling away from him, she saw the massive grin that he wore for her, noting how adorable his dimples were and how the excited look in his eyes made him look like a little kid. But there was more to his face than excitement, he looked proud.

“They were so nice to me, and they knew my songs, and they were screaming so loud for me, and it just went so well. I can’t believe it!” Her previous anxious chatter had become an exhilarated rambling and she felt on top of the world.

“I can,” he grinned, looking down at his watch quickly. “I have to go get changed.” If she wasn’t so amped up, she might have noticed the disappointment that flashed over his features. “Promise me you’ll watch the show?”

“Pinky swear?” She stuck up her little finger in the air.

“Pinky swear.” He kept their pinkies locked for a moment too long, then released her hand and ran backstage to get dressed.

She kept her promise and watched with excitement as the building shook when Harry took the stage.

She had never heard something quite so loud, sure her ears would be ringing when she snuggled into her bunk on the tour bus that night. Watching him perform was mesmerizing; he knew how to work a stage in every way and make every person in the arena feel like he was singing just for them. He was larger than life while performing and his little dances and mannerisms only got more pronounced the more comfortable he got on stage. He messed with Mitch, who she had only met a few hours ago (he was very nice), and constantly praised Sarah on the drums behind him, while he looked over to Adam and sent him smiles often.

Everyone in the building came for a show, and boy, did he give them one. It was amazing to watch. There was a reason she was a fan.

Bouncing off the stage, full of adrenaline and in a post-show high, he came to find her. It wasn’t hard, as she had never left her spot on the side of the stage, unable to rip her eyes away from the man before her.

“Oh my god, Harry! That was incredible!” she said with delighted amazement.

“I’m glad you liked it.” He was smiling down at her with a big toothy grin, a hand running through his sweaty hair and pushing it off his forehead. “They only get better from here.”

***

He was telling the truth. The shows only got crazier and more exciting as the tour went on, and so did their “relationship.”

About five shows in, Jeff had Harry given her his “H” ring to start wearing. Harry didn’t seem too phased by it all even though she thought it might be too much, saying “it’s like a friendship bracelet.” But it was too big for her fingers, not because she had small hands, but because Harry’s were absolutely massive. She wore it on a chain around her neck from then on and made sure to always be seen playing with it.

Fans took notice and loved it.

A little after that, Jeff sent them off to get matching manicures. Both had a melting rainbow of oranges, pinks, and browns on their fingertips, which looked amazing in the paparazzi photos of them walking around with their fingers intertwined.

The fans loved that too.

But when she “accidentally” posted a photo of Harry on her story, the entire world lost it’s shit. In the photo, he laid sprawled across a bed in only a white hotel robe that was creeping dangerously high up his thigh. He looked sleepy and slightly sweaty, in a post-fuck haze, and clothes that looked very similar to ones she had been seen wearing in public only days before were strewn across the floor. The caption read “I love getting to love you.”

The photo had strategically only been up for about 30 seconds, but by the time it was deleted thousands of people had seen it and screenshots had been taken. They quickly circulated the internet, creating a bit of scandal. But more than anything, people began to love the two of them together even more. Harry looked genuinely happy in the photo, and for most of his fans, that was all that mattered.  

They were creating a fairytale love story for an audience, but she would be lying if she said she wasn’t enjoying her role. She quite liked being his “girlfriend.”

Harry and Y/N had a way of clicking as they grew closer–quite literally as they were crammed together on a tour bus most of the time. They seemed to be able to finish each other’s sentences and always beat the other to the punchline of a joke. The pair had begun to pick up on the other’s mannerisms and habits; Y/N always teasing that Harry was going to rub his nose off one day if he kept rubbing it while he was thinking and Harry always knowing when she got enough sleep by whether or not she had put on eyeliner that morning. They swapped playlists back and forth in their bunks as they tried to doze off and always grabbed a cup of coffee for whoever had decided to sleep in the next day, now knowing the other’s order by heart.

There was only one thing she didn’t know about him that she longed to discover: what his lips felt like against her own. She could never think too hard about it though, or she may just explode.

He had become a calming presence and was currently helping her keep her cool, even though she knew the pair of interviewers across the table were getting ready to grill the pair for every detail they could get. His hand had settled on top of her knee to quell it’s nervous bouncing, but remained after she had stopped, even though no one could see his touch under the table. She watched as his thumb ran itself back and forth along the leg of her flashy orange and yellow patterned overalls and she had a hard time pulling her gaze away when the radio host across the large table began to speak.

“So Harry,” the bald man began. “Fine Line has been one of the biggest albums of the year and I just have to say I love it. It’s truly incredible.” She listened as the man continued on to sing Harry’s praises, going on to list his grammy nominations, sold out world tour, and other accolades. She couldn’t help but smile as she watched his cheeks tinge pink with the praise. She knew anyone watching would pick up on her adoring look and people fawn over it, but she knew her gaze was nothing but truthful.

“Thank you very much,” he said shyly, shaking his head slightly as he spoke into the microphone suspended in front of his face. “You’re too kind.”

“Stop being humble,” she teased him, playfully tapping him on the arm. “All of his music is fantastic,” she said turning her attention back to the man across from them, “especially Fine Line.”

“And there’s Y/N, being the supportive girlfriend,” the man chuckled.

“I support him in everything he does,” she smiled back, not having to embellish the truth at all. “He is an amazing talent and I think Fine Line shows that.”

It wasn’t hard for her to gush about him. It was actually quite easy. She absolutely adored him, as an artist, a friend, and the focus of her affection. She felt an equal warmth in her cheeks as she watched his get even pinker with her compliments.

“That’s actually something we wanted to ask you about,” the blonde woman sitting next to him piped up, a mischievous glint in her eyes that sent nervous butterflies flying around Y/N’s stomach. “One of the songs on Fine Line, Cherry to be specific, actually features the voice of Harry’s ex, Camille. How does that make you feel as his new girl?”

Y/N did her best not to gag at the woman’s question, gritting her teeth as she plastered on a polite smile. “Well, I think Cherry is a really great song and her voice at the end adds a lot,” she spoke as smoothly as she could, refusing to let on that the question rattled her. Harry’s light squeeze on her knee signalled to her that she had answered the question well.

“It’s also been three years since the song was written,” Harry cut in. “Things are obviously a lot different now.” He connected their eyes for a second while he was leaning back into his seat, sending her a short smile, but she knew him well enough to know it was genuine.

“Oh, definitely,” the woman eagerly agreed. “You’re in a great new relationship with a beautiful girl on your arm.”

“Y/N,” he emphasized her name as the woman had referred to her as a possession of his for a second time, “and I are very happy. Thank you.” To an onlooker, he was calm. To her, he was visibly uncomfortable by her words.

Y/N began to notice a clear pattern as the interview went on. Harry was asked exclusively about his music and the tour, while Y/N only became relevant to their interviewers when they wanted to mention their relationship.

When the man asked Y/N if she felt uncomfortable playing to Harry’s mainly female fanbase every night that are “so obviously jealous of her,” something snapped inside of her, sending all her hours of media training out the window. “I’m not uncomfortable at all,” she said curtly. “His music is great and he puts on an awesome show. I don’t think the audience’s gender really has anything to do with the music.” She watched the man’s face fall before she decided to go on. “And I would like to think that at least a few of them are there for me too. You do know I make music too, right?”

An indignant smirk found its way to her lips as the man stammered out, “yes, of course.”

“Okay. I was just wondering since you have only asked me questions about our relationship since we got here.”

She knew Jeff wouldn’t be happy, but at the moment, she couldn’t care less. They may not have really been dating, but the interviewers didn’t know that. All of their dismissal of her and her career was 100% real.

She had been so worked up that she didn’t even realize Harry’s hand had left her knee until it found its way to rest on her back. She leaned into his touch as he rubbed her back softly while she crossed her arms in front of her.

The interviewers looked at the two of them across the table, jaws both lying on the floor. It was quiet until Harry nonchalantly spoke. “She has a point.”

The last few minutes of the interview passed in an awkward blur that felt suffocating. She felt like she could finally take in a deep breath once they were in the back of a massive SUV being driven away from the studio.

“Jeff is going to have my head,” she mumbled under her breath, nose stuck into her phone as she scrolled Twitter to see what people were saying about her outburst. But before she could read any opinions, Harry's tattooed arm blocked her view as he gently pushed her phone down onto her lap.

“Look at me,” he murmured, beckoning her attention to the other side of the back seat. When she connected her eyes with his, his usual calming aura took over her, softening the stressed crease between her brows. “It’s going to be okay.”

“Harry, I just blew my career up into smoke because I couldn’t deal with a rude interviewer,” she huffed at him.

“No,” he disagreed softly, moving the hand that rested on her arms to interlock his fingers with one of hers. “You stuck up for yourself to people who were ignoring your work and whittling you down to your relationship.”

“But it was rude.”

“It was necessary.”

The car ride to the venue for that night’s concert was quiet, but Harry never let go of her hand, brushing his thumb over her knuckles in a comforting touch. She wasn’t sure if she ever wanted him to let go.

***

It was the early hours of the morning by the time the pair returned to their tour bus and went to crawl into their bunks.

Her performance had gone well and Harry was mesmerizing (as always). He was truly hypnotizing to watch while he performed and she hadn’t missed watching him yet, even as they drew close to the end of the tour. It was the best part of her day and she would miss it dearly after the last show.

She was almost asleep, curtain drawn and cuddled under a pile of blankets, when her cell began to ring. Her heart sank, knowing only one person who would know when she had a sliver of free time (even though it’s debatable if sleeping counts as free time). She was going to get scolded like she was a little kid in the principal's office and she knew it.

“Hi Jeff,” she answered with a sigh as she pulled the curtain back and slid from the bunk, the cold air of the tour bus nipping at her legs.

Her gaze was met by a snuggled up Harry wearing a concerned face across from her in his own bed. He never closed the curtain, not even when she asked politely to muffle his snores, always saying something about how it made him claustrophobic. He sent her a tired smile and mouthed “good luck,” extending a hand for a fist bump as she passed. Knocking their knuckles together put a brief smile on her face before she buckled in for the chewing out she was about to get.

Harry watched her intently as she paced up and down the front of the tour bus as she spoke to Jeff, too far away for him to listen in. Her face gradually turned from anxious, to surprised, to something that would have probably been happiness if she wasn’t so tired.

“Alright, thank you for everything.” She spoke softly when she finally returned to be within earshot for him. “Goodnight Jeff.”

“So?” he murmured groggily at her, brows raised in question at her.

“People loved it,” she said shocked, like she didn’t fully believe it herself. “They think I’m some kind of badass for shutting down a sexist. Which is, like, a lot,” she spoke with a disbelieving chuckle, unable to find the right words in her groggy state. “I don’t really know what to make of it.”

Harry seemed to spring up from his spot in his bed, smacking his head on the top of the bunk in the process, prompting them both to dissolve into a puddle of giggles.

“Don’t get too excited for me,” she laughed. “I cannot be the reason that you hurt yourself and have to cancel a show.”

“I was just too excited to say ‘I told you so,’” he smirked, now rubbing the side of his head through his curls.

“Cocky bastard,” she sarcastically murmured under her breath while dramatically rolling her eyes.

She watched with confusion as Harry left his bed, and after a short and frantic search for his pajama pants so he wouldn’t “offend her eyes,” he moved towards the front of the bus. Her eyes trailed him as he bent down to the small mini fridge and pulled out two beers.

“We have to celebrate.”

It was 2 AM and she had been so ready for bed after a long day. But she knew she could never say no to him. She thanked god that they had a day off tomorrow.

After retrieving her massive and lovingly worn Grateful Dead sweatshirt to protect her from the chilly air, she nearly ran to the front of the bus. His painted pink fingers moved with skill as he popped the bottle caps off with one of his rings, handing it to her and gently nudging his bottle against hers.

“Cheers,” he murmured softly as he looked down at her with a kindhearted smile.

“Cheers,” she seemed to whisper back to him, a flutter in her stomach reminding her how badly she wanted to reach out and connect her lips to his. Instead she slid into the small booth across from him, taking a long sip from the bottle as she watched him do the same.

“I want you to know that I was really proud of you today,” he said as he put his beer down on the table. “Rude interviewers are never easy and you handled it like a champ.”

“Thank you, H,” she nodded, suddenly bashful and unable to make eye contact with him. Her cheeks burned hot as she put all her focus into tracing the rim of the bottle with her finger tip.

“Hey,” he called for her attention and her eyes snapped up to meet his. “I mean it, Y/N.”

“I know you do,” she gently nodded at him. “I’m just really happy they didn’t ask about my ex,” she chuckled as she took another sip. “That would have gone very poorly.”

“Oh yeah, I was a little annoyed they brought up my ex but not yours,” he teased. “Not fair if you ask me.”

“Well, then I’m glad no one asked you.”

“Can I ask you?”

“What?”

“About your ex.”

She should have been prepared to talk about it with Harry at some point. Half of this plan had been devised to get back at James anyway. She should be able to talk about it by now, especially with someone she had grown so close to.

“I guess so,” she shrugged, trying to seem casual like the mere mention of him didn’t still hurt her heart a little bit. “What do you want to know?”

“As much as you’re willing to tell me.”

He looked soft like this, eyes slightly sleepy with a tenderness in them as he looked back at her. His hair was unruly and puffy and he was wrapped in the powder blue blanket that lived on the tour bus’ couch. She would have told him anything that he ever wanted to hear if he kept looking like this.

With a deep breath, she began to recount everything that went down.

“I met James while I was still working as a waitress. I recognized him from his movies and started a conversation, and then–to my surprise–he asked me out on a date. I had been in LA for three weeks and this insanely famous actor is asking me to go out with him, so I obviously said yes.” She paused to take a swig of her beer, before mumbling under her breath, “I should have said ‘fuck no’ to that.”

A smile ghosted over her lips as she listened to Harry’s laugh across the table. She swore that laugh could cure cancer.

“But I didn’t,” she continued. “He introduced me to the right people and helped me make the right connections in the industry, which I guess made me feel indebted to him. Does that make sense?”

“Of course,” Harry nodded, eyebrows furrowed and listening intently.

“I should have broken up with him after I signed with Jeff and the label, however awful that sounds. But he just always knew the right things to say to make me feel special and like I was the most important person in the world. Even after I found out he was talking to other girls, he was somehow able to talk himself out of it.” She shook her head as she recalled it. “You wanna hear something fucked up?”

“Always,” he said with a gentle smirk.

“He proposed to me using lines from a romcom he was working on.”

Harry nearly spit out his drink. “Holy shit, you’re kidding!”

“I wish. I didn’t find out until I went with him to the premier a few months later and the proposal scene sounded surprisingly familiar.”

“What a dirtbag.”

“I know, right?” she laughed. “Then a few weeks after that, he got papped with his tongue down another girl’s throat. That finally knocked some sense into me and I ran for the hills.”

“Fuck,” he sighed as he finished his beer. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she breathed. “I don’t even feel hurt by him anymore, ya know? I just feel angry at myself for trusting him.”

“I understand but it’s not your fault he was a piece of shit,” he said as he rose from his seat and traveled to the mini fridge once again. “Another?” he asked, holding the bottle up about his head.

“Fuck it,” she shrugged. “Sure.”

She watched him skillfully pop off the tops again using just his rings, making a mental note to make him teach her how he did that, before he flopped back down in his seat.  

“At the risk of sounding like a Facebook mom, ‘you grow through what you go through,’” she chuckled, taking another long sip as she finished her first. He matched her high pitched giggle across the table and she nearly drooled beer down her front from smiling so wide.

“Amen, sister,” he agreed, raising his beer in the air.

“Oh, that was awful.” She shook her head as she descended into giggles. “Please never say that again.”

“Noted.”

“Anyway,” she began again after another sip of her drink, “I was well prepared to get my heartbroken by untrustworthy men after you, Styles.”

“I’m offended–tell me more,” he spoke quickly, his signature narcissistic smirk settling onto his features.

“I need you to know that Zayn leaving was my first real heartbreak.”

“Were the rest of us chopped liver?”

“You weren’t Zayn, I can tell you that.”

“Ouch!” He let out a loud belly laugh.

“Put yourself in my shoes for a minute, H. So first, the hottest-”

“Rude-”

“-I’m speaking. So the hottest one leaves, and then the rest of you are all like ‘we’ll be back in 18 months,’” she mocked him in a high pitched impersonation with a wave, “and then 6 months later you all mysteriously have solo careers.”

“I do not see you complaining about my solo career now, ya fame leetch.” He spoke with such humor and charisma, she couldn’t have even wished to be offended by his joke.

“Absolutely not, sir,” she said sternly, giving him a dramatic salute. “Deepest apologies from the fame leetch.” The two collapsed into giggles, laughing until their sides began to ache.

“Wait, I have a question for mega superstar Mr. Harry Styles of former One Direction fame,” she announced.

“I believe that’s me,” he bowed his head and raised his hand into the hair. “Shoot.”

She barely could get the question out, laughing too hard at her own joke. “Is Taylor Swift a good kisser?”

“Oh god,” he exasperatedly threw his hands in the air, chuckling while rolling his eyes dramatically before grinning wide as he thought over his answer. “I don’t kiss and tell,” he finally smirked.

“Wait, I have another!”

“Watch it, smart ass.”

“You think I’m smart?” she teased as she feigned flattery. “Have you ever heard of a song called ‘English Love Affair?’” He narrowed his eyes at her, a knowing smirk crossing his lips as he shook his head at her. “Also, when do I get to meet Gemma?”

“I’ll consider it when you stop bringing up her sex life, perv.”

“We’ve been dating for a few months now,” she teased as she continued to prod, emboldened by the liquid courage running through her veins as she was now half way through her next beer. “I think I should be allowed to meet the family soon. They seem delightful.”

“They would love how you have decided to rip into me like this,” he said with a cheeky smile, dimples on full display.

“Rockstars have to get knocked down a peg every once in a while.” She sarcastically shrugged. “Consider it a favor.”

She couldn’t help but think about how right this felt. Their back and forth flowed so smoothly, the banter falling from their lips without effort. Their laughter joined together in a delightful melody and she imagined they could go on this way all night.

Spending any amount of time with him made her so fucking happy; and time spent teasing each other over beers caused her to nearly explode with joy. How much she was enjoying herself was too hard to put into words.

He was safe and he was kind and he made her laugh no matter how bad his jokes were.

He was her best friend.

And for the first time, she was willing to admit that she was in love with him.

“Harry,” she hummed softly as their laughter died down to a comfortable silence. “Thank you for everything. You’ve changed my life forever and I can never repay you.”

“Just remember me when you get famous.”

“Oh shut up, I’m being serious,” she playfully scolded before letting her tone drop back into honesty. “You’re a very good person and I’m eternally grateful for you letting me be your opening act and then agreeing to this whole relationship charade.”

“I didn’t ‘let’ you be anything, Y/N. I picked you myself.”

Her brows furrowed in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“I listened to your album when it came out and fell in love with it,” he shrugged, his casual tone contradicting the surprised raise of her pulse. “When I found out Jeff also managed you, I knew I had to have you on the tour.”

Y/N was honestly stunned. She had always assumed that the tour was Jeff’s doing, a careful arrangement pairing Full Stop’s new up-and-comer with their most famous and established talent. Being offered the tour had been the biggest opportunity and honor she had ever been presented with; but she had never considered Harry himself being behind it.

“Oh,” was all she could manage to get out.

It was now his turn to be confused. “What’s so surprising about that?” he asked, reading the shock on her face like she was an open book.

“I just,” she stammered, trying to find the words in her slightly hazy state. “I never would have thought you knew who I was or listened to my music.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know,” she trailed off. “You’re you, and I’m just... me, I guess.”

He didn’t respond right away, just looking at her intently and slightly amused, sea glass eyes boring into her with a pink lip held between his teeth.

He scanned her frame, from the way her hair sat messily on top of her head and the way the massive sweatshirt swallowed her body enough to where she had pulled her knees up to her chest underneath it. Her shoulders were slumped slightly, making her appear smaller as she held her legs close to her torso and her eyebrows were knitted together in worry, slightly nervous under his intense gaze.

She downed the rest of her beer in an attempt to forget his intense attention. It didn’t work.

“You really don’t know how incredible you are, do you?” he finally asked, the corner of his lips twitching into a small smile.

She felt her whole body burn with his compliment, wanting to shrink into herself and disappear completely from his view. She finally shook her head slightly in an attempt to deflect his words, breathing his name under her breath as if to scold him for being too kind.

“You are,” he insisted, ignoring her objection. “You’re so talented and your music deserves all the attention that it gets. I am honored that I get to play a part in helping expose the world to you and what you have to offer.”

“Thank you.” Her words came out as a whisper.

“You’re welcome, love.”

His pet name made her stomach turn in a nervous excitement and a wide grin involuntarily came to her lips.

“I like it when I make you smile like that.” His words only made her beam further. “You look very pretty when you smile.”

“Stop it,” she said softly, cheeks burning hot and having a hard time making eye contact with him.

“Stop what?” He feigned innocence as he lightly teased her, smirk still prominent on his features.

“Are you flirting with me, Styles?”

“Just practicing.”

His words rang through her mind long after they had left the table and crawled back into their bunks for the night. She wished she could see inside his head to understand whatever thoughts were running around his brain.

But for now she could just peak at him through the gap she had purposely left in her curtain, wondering if she ever popped into his dreams as he slept.

He was always in hers.

***

There was a sadness mixed in with her usually thrilled mood as she took the stage for the last show of the tour. While there was an element of relief as she looked forward to some well needed rest, the adrenaline and joy of being in front of a crowd was something that she would miss dearly. She had grown into a real performer over the last two months as they zig-zagged across the US and this period of time would have a special place in her heart long after it had ended.

But there was another reason why she was so sad to see this chapter come to an end. As far as she knew, a staged breakup was not far away and the thought of being without Harry was heartbreaking. He had become her person and soon their feux falling out would be on the front page of every magazine. She wanted nothing more in the world than for their relationship to be real, but it would be forced to end before it had even truely started.

She got choked up as she sang her final song that night, letting a few tears escape as she took in the thousands of people singing her lyrics back to her, flashlights swaying in the air to the beat of the music. Taking a move from Harry’s own playbook, she took her mic and directed it to the crowd to sing as she cried. The vibrations of the drums and bass behind her nestled it’s way into her bones and the chorus of singing voices in the crowd surrounded her in a bittersweet melody.

The past two months she had been on top of the world, and as soon as this song finished, it was the beginning of the end.

She took her final bow, watching as the small tears fell forward onto the dusty stage below her. She waved and blew kisses to the crowd, then nearly ran off the stage looking for the only person she wanted to see.

Harry was right where he always was, just out of view behind the curtain, holding his arms out for her to fall into.

“Awe, babe,” he hummed sympathetically when she settled her head onto his chest, surely ruining his crisp white t-shirt with her now wet makeup. “It’s okay. Final shows are always tough.” He rubbed her back gently, in a soothing rhythm.

He smelled so good. He smelled like home.

She tilted her head up to connect her glassy eyes with his. “I just don’t want this all to end.” She knew she wasn’t just talking about the tour.

“Neither do I,” he said as his lips curved into a devilish smirk that sent her heart into palpitations. “That’s why I have one last surprise for you.”

“Oh, Harry,” she sighed while wiping the remaining tears off her cheeks. “What have you done?”

“You said you liked surprises!” he defended.

“Not surprises in front of 20,000 people!”

“I promise you’re going to love this one, okay?” His voice was softer now, encouraging and supportive. “You’re going to come out and sing an extra song with me during my set,” he revealed.

“Sing what?”

“That’s the surprise.”

“Do I even know the words?”

“You definitely know the words,” he chuckled.

“I just finished sobbing. I can’t go out there like this.”

“You can fix your makeup. I believe in you.”

“What am I going to wear?” she asked, grasping at straws at this point, doing anything she could to get out of this.

“I had Lambert put something together for you.”

“Of course you did.”

She peppered him with a few more questions, but he had a smooth and charming answer to every single one. He had thought every detail out, and as always, she couldn’t say no to him.

“Fine,” she finally exasperatedly agreed, immediately met with his excited and dimpled smile that she had fallen head over heels for.

“Perfect,” he breathed. “I have to go get ready and so do you. I already put everything you need in your dressing room, okay?” She nodded, still biting her lip anxiously. He held her by her shoulders, lowering his head to match their eye level as he leaned in close, before he spoke. “You’re going to have fun. I promise.”

“Pinky swear?”

“Pinky swear.”

Seconds after they locked their little fingers together, he pressed a quick and protective kiss to her forehead that set her whole body ablaze before running off in the direction of his dressing room. She remained stunned and frozen in her spot for a few moments trying to process what it felt like to have his lips on her for the first time since that very first day they had met.

There was no audience to perform it for or an act to keep up behind the curtain. He kissed her because he wanted to.

She was finally snapped out of her daze when a stagehand bumped into her by accident, prompting her to begin the short walk back to her dressing room. But the ghost of his lips remained on her forehead, an incessant tingle placed there by his touch.

The dress she found waiting for her was one of the most beautiful gowns she had ever set her eyes on. Made of a light purple chiffon, the wrap dress’ long sleeves and floor length skirt flowed freely. A belt cinched the wispy fabric close to her waist and a deep-v exposed her neck and chest. But the most dazzling part of the dress were the red sequined hearts that dotted the fabric and reflected the light of the dressing room like a million little mirrors.

Slipping into it, the light fabric was soft against her skin, opaque enough but still slightly sheer to let light through and show off her legs and the bright red shiny pumps Lambert had left for her. She felt the most beautiful she had ever felt in this dress, boosting her confidence and quelling her nerves about whatever the hell Harry was planning.

“One minute to curtain,” was announced in an ominous voice over the arena’s backstage speakers as she finished fixing her makeup and she all but ran to make it back to the stage in time. She only had one more chance to watch him perform and she refused to miss a second of it.

Harry dazzled as the lights focused in on him, his deep blue and fully sequined suit reflecting the light and turning him into a human disco ball. He stood close to the edge of the stage as the beginning notes of the first song began being played by the band, but he made no move towards his mic stand to sing. His eyes were closed and his arms were outstretched to the audience, taking in every scream, every tear, and the thunderous shake of the building; but also giving himself to them.

Then the show began. As usual, he was electric, but tonight was like he had turned himself up to eleven. Every note he sang was full of his heart and every dance move was done with his entire body, even his bad jokes seemed funnier tonight.

She was so mesmerized she almost forgot about his ‘surprise.’ Almost.

“Since tonight is unfortunately our last show,” he pouted. “I thought I would do something special,” he spoke to the crowd as they roared, but quickly connected his eyes with her’s in the wings. By the smirk plastered on his face, she knew she was in for it.

“I recently found out that someone very close to me was a very big fan of…” he trailed off as he dramatically pretended to search for the right words, “my previous work.” He finished with a smirk and his words prompted the loudest reaction since he had been on stage.

“Now, I told her that she would be coming on stage to join me tonight, but I didn’t exactly tell her what we would be singing and I haven’t performed this song in a very long time, so cut us some slack if we mess up. This is very unrehearsed.” He kept sneaking glances back to her, as her eyes grew wider at the stunt he was currently pulling. “But I know for a fact that she knows all the words. I listen to her sing them in the shower quite often.” He wore a cheeky dimpled grin as he looked back at her once again.

The building was shaking due to the suspense he was creating, and looking down at her hands, she realized she was to. She gripped hard onto the mic a stagehand had just shoved at her, pleading with her hands to stop their tremors.

“Now, I would love it if you could all give another warm welcome to one of my favorite people on the planet, Y/N Y/L/N!” He turned his body to her for a final time, extending his hand out for her to take. Her legs felt like jello as she walked out into the bright lights towards him, interlocking her fingers with his as a way to keep her on her feet.

The audience’s screams were deafening at seeing the two of them together and she thanked god she had her earpieces in to protect her ear drums or they would have surely burst. She could only imagine the articles that would be written about this and the thousands of tweets that were probably already being sent.

“I’m gonna kick your ass,” she mouthed at him threateningly, but she couldn’t even get through the sentence before his dazzling smile began to quell her anxiety.

“The look on your face is 100% worth getting my ass kicked,” he answered smoothly before turning his attention back to the audience. “Everyone, sing along if you know the words,” he commanded their attention. “This is Ready to Run.”

Her jaw dropped and the crowd roared as the band behind her began to play the first few chords of the song she loved and knew so well. She had admitted it a few days ago that it was one of her favorites of his ‘previous work,’ but apparently he already knew that from the few showers she had taken on the tour bus.

“There’s a lightning in your eyes I can’t deny,” he began by himself, her brain still too shocked to jump in yet. He sang the first few lines to her with a giant grin plastered on his face, hand still holding tight to hers. His eyes had a playful glint in them that seemed to say ‘just have fun.’

“There’s a devil in your smile, it’s chasing me,” she finally began to sing, Harry fading his voice out so she could take the next few lines by herself as he admired her.

He did have a devilish smile, but it was one she loved with her entire heart. As she began to sing, she felt her muscles begin to relax into the song she had sung to herself so many times before, letting her body begin to bounce to the growing rhythm as her dress flowed around her.

The stage vibrated as Sarah beat her drums to introduce the chorus. “This time I’m ready to run, escape from the city and follow the sun,” the pair sang together, eyes still locked as their voices combined into the most perfect tune. “Cause I wanna be yours, don’t you wanna be mine?” they continued the lyrics. She felt herself meaning the words leaving her mouth more and more as they went on. She did want to be his, she couldn’t deny that. “I don’t wanna get lost in the dark of the night.”

Her apprehensiveness eased further as the music picked up and the hook went on, finally allowing herself to have a bit of fun. “Wherever you are is the place I belong,” they insisted towards each other, leaning in close before Harry grabbed her hand to dramatically spin her, the beautiful shining fabric of her dress splaying out around her. The next line was mumbled through giggles by both of them, but their laughter only added to the perfect moment they were having.

They danced across the stage together like there weren’t 20,ooo pairs of eyes watching them, both singing their hearts out to each other. It began to feel like they weren’t even there. It was just Y/N and Harry, serenading each other to one of her favorite songs.

“There’s a future in my eyes I can’t foresee,” she sang to him to start the second verse.

“Unless, of course, I stay on course and keep you next to me.” Harry grabbed her by her waist and pulled her into his side as he sang the words, prompting more giggles from her. She loved the way he smiled so wide as he sang, never breaking his eye contact with her and emitting pure joy. His eyes looked honest as he sang, like he meant every word just as much as she did.

The pair made their way through the rest of the verse and second chorus, flawlessly moving around the stage like they owned it. Y/N selfishly decided to let him have the bridge all to himself, needing to hear the way his beautiful voice hit the high notes. “This time I’m ready to run,” he sang passionately, executing the downward moving riff perfectly. “I’d give everything that I got for your love,” he pointed across the stage towards her, beckoning her back close to him. She quickly skipped to him at his request.

Like she had blinked, the song was already nearing its end.

“Cause I wanna be free and I wanna be young, I’ll never look back now I’m ready to run,” they belted the last lines out to each other. The band fell quiet on their last chord and the crowd exploded, but their noise fell on deaf ears as the pair stood so close their heaving chests were almost pressed up against each other. His eyes stared down into hers and she watched as his eyes flickered quickly down to her lips.

The world ceased to exist when he pressed his mouth to hers, even if it only lasted a second. It was nothing more than a peck, but it was everything to her. Her body igniting with heat and eyes full of shock, she looked back at him in simultaneous confusion and adoration, before realizing they had been staring at each other for too long. She needed to get off the stage so he could continue with his show. She walked back slowly towards the wings, letting the hand he had still been holding fall to her side. She waved and smiled to the crowd the best she could in her clouded mind.

“Thank you everyone!” she shouted into her mic as she moved out of their view. She shoved her mic into the first set of hands that would take it as she wobbled her way over to a table with water bottles. She nearly choked as she tried to suck one down, hoping it would ease the dizzy feeling he had created with his lips. Her lips burned just as her forehead had earlier in the night.

He had kissed her. He had sang a love song with her and then he had kissed her. She couldn’t decipher if that kiss was a confirmation that he shared the same feelings for her or if it was just another act for the cameras. But his mouth felt so right against hers. They fit together like a pair of puzzle pieces. She tried to suppress the optimistic hope that rose in her chest, but it began to swallow her whole.

When she heard his next song begin, she made her way back to the spot that had become hers at the side of the stage. She watched him perform the rest of the show in a loving haze, doe eyed and hypnotized, lips still buzzing from his contact.

He gave it his all. By the last song he was out of breath, drenched in sweat, and looked like he was about to pass out at any second. The crowd applauded for minutes after he left the stage and they were still cheering when she finally caught sight of him again. His curls were stuck to his forehead and his skin was shiny and flushed. He was panting, still trying to recover from his workout of a finale show; but he was beaming. His smile seemed to turn him into a beacon, emitting a light and positive energy that drew everyone backstage towards him.

She was so transfixed on Harry as he thanked the crew and accepted congratulations from all around that she just about jumped out of her skin when Jeff slinked up behind her and whispered ‘boo’ in her ear.

“What the fuck, Jeff,” she chuckled as she caught her breath, resting her hand on her chest and feeling her racing heartbeat.

“I just wanted to congratulate you on being half of the best fake couple out there,” he teased. “That kiss was perfect. People are losing their minds over it.”

“Oh,” she said softly, feeling every emotion she was distracted from while watching Harry rush back into her. Her heart sank as she remembered all the questions that continued to haunt her since she got off stage. “Thanks,” she murmured, plastering a smile onto her face. “I’m glad we could make you proud.”

“If you two could convince me, you can convince anyone.” Jeff walked off moments later, leaving her to sit in her confused thoughts as he disappeared into the hoards of bodies waiting for their minute with Harry.

She knew that she didn’t ‘convince’ Jeff of anything on her part. Everything she did with Harry was authentic and truthful. Including the thrilled grin that appeared on her face when she finally made eye contact with the exhausted man across the room. She gave him a shy wave that he sheepishly returned, biting back a shy smile. He pointed in the direction of his dressing room and mouthed “meet me in 15.”

She could never say no to him.

Fifteen minutes later, she was knocking on the large wooden door that had a single piece of paper that read STYLES haphazardly taped onto it. When it finally flew open, she was met by a soaking wet Harry with a towel hanging dangerously low on his hips. Her eyes trailed down his body without permission, taking in the toned torso that was decorated with his beautiful tattoos. Her eyes hovered over the two ferns that sat on his pelvis, too fascinated with the dark ink to pull her eyes away just yet.

She had obviously seen him in various states of undress before. They lived together on a tour bus without much space to exist with privacy, but this was different. He wasn’t rushing to get dressed or quickly changing his outfit. And he wasn’t moving away from her gaze at all.

If she hadn’t been so entranced by him, she would have noticed he was looking her up and down in the exact same manner.

She had changed since she had seen him last. The skin-tight black velvet romper she had brought along for the afterparty now fit her snuggly and held her every curve. The dark fabric was tight and appeared almost painted on, a rainbow racing stripe making its way down either side of her chest. The short shorts of the outfit exposed nearly all of her legs and the deep neckline put much of her chest on display as well. It’s long sleeves were her favorite part, as a strip of fringe dangled from below her arms any time she moved.

“You look great,” Harry finally choked out, his voice pulling their eyes back up to the other’s face.

“Oh, thanks,” she said, slightly awkwardly. “You too.”

“Well, I’m hopefully not going to the after party dressed like this,” he chuckled before stepping aside and ushering her into the room.

His dressing room was much larger than hers and she settled herself on the brown leather couch in the corner as she waited for him to get ready, sneaking glances up from her phone often. She chuckled as she watched him spend far too long fussing with his curls in the mirror, but was quickly distracted by the way his back and arms flexed when he reached up to muse his hair. Once he was satisfied with the way it fell, he disappeared into the bathroom at the back of the room. When he emerged, he was finally dressed, allowing her to take a deep breath and to focus on something other than his bare skin for the first time since he had opened the door.

The black satin suit was simple for him, but the tight white tank top that sat underneath hugged every muscle in his torso. She knew as soon as he got in the hot club, he would lose the jacket, and she would be devastatingly distracted once again.

The narcissist took one final look at himself in the mirror before turning to her and extending a hand. “Ready, darling?”

“You just spent 15 minutes exclusively on your hair and you’re asking me if I’m ready?” she teased as she took his hand, weaving her fingers between his as they exited the room together.

He leaned down close to her ear as they walked down the now mostly empty hallway, lips brushing over the hollow of her ear as he spoke. “I could have done it faster, but you were so obviously enjoying the show.”

“Relax yourself, Magic Mike,” she muttered indignantly, but hung her head in a way she hoped he couldn’t see how flustered he made her. Was she really that obvious?

They walked hand in hand out to the parking garage, now caught in a back and forth about whether or not Harry could be a male stripper. He said yes. She said no, although she did admit at one point that he worked his mic stand like a pole.

“Hey Jeff,” he called when they finally reached the parking garage where Jeff and Glenne had been waiting for them to head to the club. “Do you think I could be a stripper?”

“I think people would pay a lot to see it, but they may be disappointed in your dancing skills.”

“Come on,” he playfully whined. “I have some moves.”

“You have one move,” Y/N cut in with a chuckle, “and it’s the wiggle.” She brought her hands up near her chest, tilted her head back while dramatically biting her lip, and swayed her arms by her sides, earning a chorus of laughter from the people around her.

She hadn’t even realized she had done the move without releasing Harry’s hand first, dragging his arm into her dance as well, until their manager commented on it. “You know, you two don’t have to be holding hands all the time and keeping the show up back here,” he said with a slightly suspicious quirk in his eyebrows.

Her smile had been in the process of fading, like they had been caught doing something wrong, before Harry answered smoothly. “We know. Just practicing.”

There were those words again. Just practicing, she thought over to herself. But was he practicing anymore? How many flirty comments, heartfelt compliments, and warm touches did it take to cross the line of practicing to the real thing?

She wasn’t sure about Harry, but she knew that she wasn’t just practicing anymore.

She knew that the way they sat nearly on top of each other in the large SUV on the way to the club felt more than friendly. And the way he hadn’t stopped touching her in some way since they left his dressing room insinuated far more than something with business-like intentions. And the way he looked at her everytime he caught her eye the entire way to the club, always with a bright smile and adoring gaze that she always returned, pulled at her heartstrings far more than they should have if this was all an act.

A sloppy and cheeky grin settled almost permanently on his features after he had a few drinks in him, his arms moving in a lazy and fluid manner as she took in his many tattoos that he had exposed when he ditched his jacket (just like she knew he would). His butterfly was visible through the tight ribbed fabric of the white tank top and the little birds that peaked out from underneath seemed to be inviting her even closer to him in her now inebriated state.

All she wanted to do was to connect her lips with his as she watched him make conversation with someone from his management, entranced by the way his perfect mouth moved as he spoke. She once again craved the shocks of electricity that were created between them at the contact and could not stop thinking about it no matter how hard she tried. The protective hand that had settled onto her hip and continued to hold her close to his body just wasn’t enough anymore.

The pair had been drinking far too much; martinis turning into vodka sodas that had turned into straight tequila shots. She believed it was tequila shot four that did her in. The last thing she remembered was licking the line of salt off the back of her hand, downing the shot, and being entranced by Harry’s eyes as she bit down on the slice of lime he held carefully with his jeweled fingers.  

***

The next morning, Y/N woke up in a hotel room that she didn’t recognize with a pounding headache and a swirling gut. It felt like she had been hit with a truck and she could barely pick her head up off the pillow.

She had so many questions about what had happened the night before. Where was she? Who let her drink that much? Whose clothes was she wearing? But most of all, what the hell happened after that fourth shot?

But she realized the worst was yet to come when she heard soft snoring coming from beside her. She knew that snoring well. It was the snoring that kept her up half the night for the last two months and the one that had almost driven her to suffocating her bus-mate in his sleep; the snoring that matched the crumbled black suit she just noticed in a ball on the floor.

It took every ounce of strength in her body to pull herself from the pillow and turn around in the bed to have her suspicions confirmed.

There he was.

His dark long eyelashes were fluttered down across the tops of his cheeks and his hair was going in every direction, skin clammy like his body was trying to rid itself of all the poison he had ingested the night before. The crumpled comforter was pushed down his stomach, his bare skin holding a sheen that helped define every dip or curve of his muscles and the tiniest bit of the band of his boxers peaked out to assure her that he at least wasn’t fully naked next to her.

Why were they in bed together? And why did he look so good? Oh my god, she thought as a possibility dawned on her. Did we sleep together?

“Harry,” she murmured softer than she intended, voice scratchy and mouth dry. The soreness at the back of her throat clued her into the copious amounts of screaming she must have done last night. He didn’t stir at her gentle coaxing, the light streaming through the windows making him look angelic as it covered him in a blanket of soft light while he continued to sleep.

It was a hard nudge to his chest that finally made him open his eyes, immediately releasing a groan she was sure she made when she regained consciousness too. He looked at her puzzled, still rubbing sleep out of his eyes as he propped himself up on his elbows. He took an equally confused look around the hotel room before looking back at her. She watched as the gears slowly turned in his head until his eyes opened wide and he spring up into a sitting position to mirror hers.

“We didn’t,” he whispered hopefully. “Oh my god, did we?” he asked, a look of horror crossing his face that matched her own.

“I have no idea,” she anxiously replied. “I was hoping you would know!”

“You don’t remember anything?”

“The last thing I remember was doing tequila shots with you.”

“I remember those.” He rubbed his eyes hard like it would somehow jog his memory. His eyebrows knit together, buried in thought as he searched his brain for a timeline. “I can follow the night up until we did karaoke.”

“We did karaoke?” she repeated incredulously and was met with a somber nod. “Do I even want to know what we sang?”

He shook his head slowly, shame clear on his face, before he finally mumbled. “We did ‘It’s Raining Men.’”

“Oh my god, no,” she whined, holding her head in her hands and rubbing her temples. There were surely videos of them sloppily singing on top of a bar circulating online and she wasn’t sure how Jeff would be able to spin that one in a positive light.

“Where’s your phone?” he asked, a hopeful glint in his eye as he reached for his own. “Maybe there’s something on there that can clue us in.” It took her a moment but she finally spotted it on the ground in the corner of the room. She said a silent prayer that it wasn’t dead or broken.

Forcing her heavy limbs out from under the covers she made her way towards the device, but not before she heard a confused sound coming from Harry. “How did you get my clothes?”

Looking down at herself and taking in the red lettering that read But Daddy I Love Him across her chest, it clicked that the t-shirt and baggy basketball shorts were his. But how they hell did she get into them?

“I think we’ve established at this point that I don’t know anything that happened after about midnight, Harry.” Her words came out laced with slight frustration. She hoped he knew she wasn’t annoyed with him, just their situation.

“Just a question, princess.”

She ignored his quip and began to search through her texts, call history, and photos, hoping to find anything at all that could help trace their steps through the night. She found nothing but a few selfies of them still at the club. One was the pair casually smiling, the next was one of him kissing her on the cheek that made her skin warm, but the final one made her snort out a laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

“I have a picture on my phone of you with two martini olives shoved up your nose,” she spoke through hysterical laughter. “Definitely birthday post material if you ask me.”

“Let me see,” he demanded with an adorable scowl.

She passed her phone over to him, still letting a few chuckles fall past her lips. “I’m gonna change your name in my phone to ‘Olive Nose Styles.”

“You're cruel.”

“You’re the one that put olives up his nose and then posed for a picture!”

“Whatever,” he grumbled, turning attention back to his own screen to continue his investigation. “There’s nothing of use on my phone either.”

The two flopped back on the bed, staring at the ceiling in the frustrated confusion. There was so much of their night that had gone up into smoke, completely unaccounted for with no clues as to what they did. Each traced their steps over and over again in their heads as they hoped desperately for a single detail that would lead them down a path to bigger memories, but it never came.

“Are we going to have to call Jeff and ask him what happened?” she finally murmured.

“I think so.”

“He’s going to put us both in client timeout, isn’t he?”

“We’re probably already there,” he groaned as he picked up his phone and hit Jefe Jeff-e in his contact list, putting the call on speaker and resting it on his still bare chest. The man on the other end picked up almost immediately.

“Morning Sleeping Beauty, I was wondering when I was going to hear from you.”

“Hi Jeff,” he groggily started then stopped, searching for the words that would make this all less uncomfortable. “Y/N and I have some questions about last night.”

Jeff let out a strained chuckle. “Yeah, that doesn’t really surprise me after last night’s bar bill.”

“Um,” Harry hummed, stammering but unable to form any real words.

“You sing about sex for a living,” she hissed at the man next to her before yanking the phone off his chest. “Jeff,” she started, taking over the conversation for them both. “Do you know if we slept together?”

“Probably not. You both were pretty unconscious when I put you in the hotel room.” His words prompted a massive sigh from both of them, looking to each other to share a relieved smile.

“Oh thank god,” they mumbled in unison.

“Jinx,” he smirked under his breath, prompting a ‘shut up’ from her.

“How did I get into Harry’s clothes?”

“I stopped by the tour bus when I realized you two probably shouldn’t be trusted not to roll out of your top bunks. I got you some clothes to sleep in before we took you guys to the hotel.”

“But why Harry’s?”

It was Jeff’s term to get squirmy. “I felt weird going through your things.”

“But you were perfectly fine with going through mine?” Harry asked, only half joking.

“Absolutely,” he deadpanned. They were all quiet for a moment before Jeff began again. “You two really don’t remember anything else that happened?”

“Everything after about two is unaccounted for,” she confessed.

“Oh,” Jeff chuckled. “So, you don’t remember when you stuck your tongues down each other’s throats on the ride home?”

Fuck.

Her eyes raced up to Harry’s from the phone she had been staring at like it held all the secrets of the night before. His easily readable features displayed all his emotions that surely matched hers. His pupils had grown in surprise, taking over nearly all the green in his wide eyes, and an embarrassed blush tinted his cheeks in a red hot flush that had reached the tips of his ears. His eyes flashed to the blank wall in front of them, running a stressed hand through his curls, like if he wasn’t looking at her, he would be able to focus better on the newly revealed information.

She couldn’t say that she didn’t relate. Her mind often went blank when she looked at him too. But right now, it was racing, occupied by anxious thoughts and intense emotions she couldn’t quite place, but felt with her entire being.

Her inevitable downward spiral was interrupted when Harry stiffly cleared his throat. “Uh,” he started, scratching the back of his neck uncomfortably. “We’ll see you later.”

“Sounds good, love birds,” Jeff replied, a clear snark apparent in his voice. Neither of the pair dignified his teasing with a response, Y/N quickly ending the call.

Silence hung heavy in the air and she let her eyes hover over the phone for too long when she settled it down on the bed, unwilling to connect her eyes with his just yet. Harry always had a way of staring into her and revealing all her cards to him before she even knew them herself. She wanted to hold them close to her chest for a moment, protecting the heart that longed for him more than anything else in the world.

There were no words exchanged between the two for a while as they silently took turns in the bathroom and occupied their hands and thoughts by their phones. They walked on eggshells anytime one neared the other. A tension like this hadn’t existed since the very first day they met, the first day they had begun to pretend.

Maybe that's why Harry was being so quiet. Maybe he never wanted to cross that line of pretending like she did. Maybe she had been blinded by his generally friendly personality and tricked herself into thinking there was anything more than a charade between them. Maybe last night really was just a drunken mistake, no matter how much she wanted it to be more.

“Maybe it’s a good thing that we don’t remember what happened last night,” she finally murmured from the opposite end of the room. She rested the side of her still heavy head and muscles against the wall, arms crossed in front of her as if they could keep her safe from the tension they had created. Her fingers nervously played with the hem of his t-shirt she was still dressed in.

“Why is it a good thing?” he almost immediately responded from the chair on the other side of the room he had settled himself into, running his hands along the satin pants of last night’s outfit he had put back on during their awkward shuffling around the room. He had even put physical space between them since they found out what happened, causing her heart to feel as if it was teetering on the edge of disintegrating.

“Well,” she stuttered, refusing to look at him and continuing to pick at her nail polish. “We’re just pretending so it would be weird if we really remembered it.”

“I don’t think it would be weird.”

“I don’t know,” she tried to maneuver her way around his response. “It might just be embarrassing to think about it.”

He let out a long and frustrated sigh, running his hands down his face. There was so much going on behind his eyes and she wished he would say something, anything, to break down the wall that hadn’t existed between them in months that was slowly reappearing.

“Do you regret it?” he asked bluntly, the abrupt question shocking her body to attention. “Do you regret any of this? Any of us?”

Did she regret drinking too much? Yes. Did she regret making out with him in front of their manager? Yes. Did she regret denying her feelings and pretending they didn’t exist for so long? Of course. But, did she regret falling in love with him? Never, not even for a second.

“No, I don’t,” she let out with a gentle shake of her head, no louder than a whisper.

“Neither do I.”

The words had barely left his lips before he crossed the room and crashed them into hers. The same fire she had felt on stage returned ten times over as his lips moved smoothly over hers, every neuron in her body lighting up like a switchboard. Her fingers reached up to curl into his hair and pull his lips impossibly closer to hers as her heart hammered in her chest with a passionate love she had kept under wraps for so long.

He tasted like the spicy peppermint toothpaste the hotel stocked in the bathroom and smelled like the tiny bottles of shampoo that rested on the side of the bathtub; but there was so much else about him that was completely unique–wholly irreplaceable and indescribable. He was just Harry.

Teeth clashed, lips were bitten, and hair was pulled as they took in every sensation the other created. His lips had been the only thought that captivated her mind since they were on stage the night before and her return to them did not disappoint. If her head wasn’t dizzy and her lungs not screaming at her for air, she would have stayed in that moment forever

When they finally disconnected, they stood against each other in a heaving and disheveled mess of heavy breathing and adoringly dazed smiles. She swore she could feel the pounding of his heart under her fingertips that rested on his chest.

“That was nice,” he eventually murmured down at her through heavy breaths, a love drunk grin finding its way onto his swollen lips.

“Yeah, I agree,” she hummed breathlessly, her anxious thoughts quiet and calm for the first time she could remember since she met him.

“I’m kind of disappointed I don’t remember doing that the first time,” he chuckled softly at her, shaking his head lightly in embarrassment with his pink tinged cheeks on full display.

“That’s okay. We were ‘just practicing’ then, right?” A giggle left her lips as she used the words against him. The same words he had used every time they let a glimpse of their true affections for each other slip past their guarded and friendly facade.

His dimples were exposed when he smiled a giant grin and let out a knowing huff, piecing together that she had caught onto his trail of excuses. “Yeah, just practicing,” he repeated softly, before his tone turned sincere and genuine. “I don’t want us to pretend anymore.”

“Good,” she said softly as her fingers slid up his neck to beckon his lips back down to hers. “I never was.”

“Neither was I.” She watched a soft smirk appear on his lips as they hovered over hers. “Do you want to keep not practicing?”

“Depends,” she quipped, lips brushing over his as she spoke. “Am I better kisser than Taylor Swift?

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING!! REBLOGS AND FEEDBACK MEAN THE WORLD!!! 

An extra for our babies can be found here!

[wolvesbaned]

Hello! I just wanted to ask what your favorite piece of werewolf media is, and if there's any werewolf book/movie/comic/etc. that influenced you in particular? Hope you're having a lovely day, take care!

hey! thank you so much for asking this question omg

this is actually a somewhat difficult question to answer bc a lot of my love of werewolves isn't derived from media i've seen them in, but moreso a deep resonance that i feel with them allegorically. it's like; i've always thought if i were to be a monster, it would have to be a werewolf, because it gives me personhood. there are so many different tenants of my identity and experience that i can apply that lens to, to better accept and understand myself, to experiment with, to find comfort in. idk. i love this type of monster so much it aches and i can't for the life of me explain it like a normal person. it is also a possibility that i have some cocktail of undiagnosed nuerodivergence and i'm simply obsessed/attached to them in that way?? like it's all so silly but werewolves helped me be queer and i am not even joking abt it. i also say this as somebody who has never kinned them or been or furry or anything like no it's all the metaphors. they are a way in which i view myself.

so tldr: yes hi i love monsters a Normal Amount <--is lying

BUT i love how Mike Ploog draws werewolves, I love this particular art piece by Johnny Dombrowski that I want to get a tattoo of someday, I love comic lycans (there's this issue I have of Jughead with an incredible werewolf illustration on it), I love An American Werewolf in London because they get the sad comic morbidity of it right and I hate Van Helsing 2004 but I have an 'I can fix her' version in my head where Van Helsing is a butch woman and that's the version that I love. But most importantly I love cultural mythos around werewolves, and how they're everywhere and have represented different things across different places and generations, stories abt unconditional love and rage and religion and irreparable mistakes and taboo and primality and mental illness and animal fear and family and girlhood and acceptance; every single werewolf story has something powerful and yet so intimate and human to it it literally makes me insane. i am not the right person to ask for recommendations because i'm just going to spill my guts all over your front doormat and ask to be let in

hope you also have a lovely day!! so sorry as i'm sure this was not the answer you expected lol. and if anyone has any good werewolf media recs please give them, bc , and not to sound vain, i actually don't have a lot that i find personally super intriguing outside my own interpretation and connection <3

[vkelleyart]

Top 5 of 2020

I can just get this in under the wire. Thank you so much to @palimpsessed, @thehoneyedhufflepuff, @super-duper-twelve, @angelsfalling16, @parijpg, @carry-on-snowbazzing, @bazzybelle, @caitybuglove23, and @foolofabookwyrm for tagging me on this. You’re all such stellar creators, and I’m so chuffed you thought of me. 🥰

My top 5 artworks were selected for being milestones where I was able to push past varied artistic brick walls, whether it was a challenging environment, tricky lighting, layouts, an unruly medium, or specific effects.

1. Río: The concept for one of the stars of WTTHTM (the novel version) has already evolved since I drew this, but I love this image because it was the first time I felt like I’d managed to convincingly render a character partially submerged in water.

2. RWRB Santa Chiara Chapel Scene: This one was a wonderful exercise in rendering a real-life location in the V&A Museum. I loved experimenting with bringing some intimacy into this public space.

3. Margaret: The entire inktober series was so helpful for teaching me how to render an ink illustration at breakneck speed, but I love this one the best because it was the most accurate translation of mental image to paper I’d accomplished all October.

4. Achilles and Patroclus: No one paid attention to this but me, I think, but this marked a small jump in environment rendering for me. Between the waterfall and the landscape and the light through the trees, there was a lot happening in this pic that sort of magically came together at the end.

5. New Year’s Eve: This one made it onto the list even through it’s only a day old. I love drawing special effects and seeing if I can achieve a certain mood with a picture, and this image incorporated both in a way that felt, I dunno, powerful to me. It feels like an upgrade somehow.

Honorable Mentions (L to R): a) When the Tides Held the Moon. The whole set of artwork related to the fic just made me really happy. It combined my loves of fairytales and bygone age old-timey illustrations, and it’s one of the reasons I’m building illustrations into the novel version of the story. b) Blue from Wayward Son completely redefined the way I draw water. C) The Golden Days Zine comic exercised all my skill sets in a single project and just generally made me extremely happy 😊 .

I have no idea who hasn’t been tagged at this point, as I’ve seen this circulating all week long here and there. But if you are a content creator and you haven’t had a chance to do your own review of 2020, consider yourself tagged!