#except the being in love w a cop part

[buckvalentina]

leverage au when

[tastesousweet]

⭒ the girl with the tattoo (iii) - pt 1 pt 2

matt sturniolo x fem!oc / reader

summary : no one frustrates and confuses y/n more than matt

warnings : smoking weed, alcohol/drinking (i headcannon everyone 21+!), tension, sexually suggestive

mickey speaks : THIS IS LONG AS SHIT!!!! ngl im not obsessed w this part but u guys r the sweetest thank u for loving this story so far and for ur patience. part 4 definitely won't have as long of a wait.

THIS IS PART THREE GO READ THE FIRST TWO PARTS NEOWW

MATT hates hosting parties.

now that he and his brothers have hosted three of these "get together"s to promote the warehouse, he’s realized just how much attendees dont give a shit about respecting the space they're in. he found it to be a cool concept for sure: give out free tiny tats along with food and drinks for more exposure and networking. nick came up with it and it sounded perfectly easy way to build their brand and get to know people in LA.

except the first one was a complete mess, with chris constantly promoting the party (he mentioned it to almost everyone he talked to, encouraging them to bring friends along), frequent instagram posts dedicated to the event, and natural word of mouth the warehouse was suddenly overcrowded and trashed within the first hour of being open. matt barely got through that night without losing his temper or calling the cops to shut down his own party.

that’s not to say matt hates attending parties as severely as he hates to have his own. he’s more than willing to go out when he has a set time to leave and good enough company. he’s trained his anxiety to behave within those spaces so that he's not ruining his or anyone else's time. now it seems his anxiety only spikes when it comes to (what feels like) hundreds of people surrounding him in his space with no intentions of leaving until well into the morning. at that point he’d prefer to be at home, completely alone.

just as he does now that nick has dragged him out to a nearby liquor store to buy “goodies” for the event later today.

matt’s face carries his typical dry expression as nick stands next to him, hands resting on his hips, eyeing the various vodka bottles.

“nick, it’s alcohol not the fucking newspaper,” matt grumbles.

“i know that! i just don’t wanna choose the wrong one.” he defends.

“if they don’t like something i think we have more than enough to choose from at this point,” matt sarcastically nudges his arms that hold onto a wide selection of alcohol that nick has impetuously given him with quips of ‘okay, hold this one.’

“matt, i wouldn’t have brought you if i knew you’d be such a buzzkill, jesus.” nicks tsks.

“alright, don't say that like i was begging to come here, nick. i had no choice and-"

nick cuts him off swiftly, noticing a few girls have joined them in the aisle, “matt, move." nick guides him backwards with his hand, "you’re like, in the way.”

matt turns his head to see what exactly he was blocking, before turning back to nick and scowling, “‘m literally not in the way at all.”

“they might need to see all the options,” nick shrugs, going back to narrowing his options down while matt stands in slight annoyance, zoning out.

until he overhears the two girls call, “yeah it’s over here, y/n! come!”

and matt can’t help but turn and look (at an embarrassingly quick pace that he’d blame on his brain's pristine sound recognition and not that he wanted to see you, necessarily).

and sure enough your frame comes into view (clad in a sweatshirt and small pair of shorts), confirming that he did not mishear and you unfortunately were in fact the y/n called for. not wanting to deal with small talk, he immediately turns to nick, “the second one is best, nick. alright, let’s go.”

nick looks over to him, throwing his hands up loosely, “ohh, now you wanna be helpful whe-" he closes his mouth when he sees you over matt's shoulder, "did you know y/n's here?” his eyebrows draw together and he swiftly grabs a tall bottle of Absolut and places it in matt’s arms before walking around him (ignoring his hand’s poor attempt to hold nick back).

you’re too busy discussing which vodka tastes best with a few of your friends to notice nick walking up to you guys. you only look over once you hear a snap followed by a hushed “matt!”

you host a tender smile when you recognize the two tattooed boys, “nick? what are you doing here?” you glance from nick to matt who seems to be holding a full bar's worth of liquor while nick holds nothing but a tote bag and sunglasses he enjoys fidgeting with.

“y/n, i have a party i’m hosting tonight why would i not be here? now the real question is why are you here at 11:30 AM?” he jokes, squinting his eyes at you.

“same reason as you,” you shrug then realize you haven’t introduced your friends properly. “oh! and these are my friends; i texted you about bringing along, remi, erin, and andrea.” they each wave slightly as you gesture to them.

after an exchange of greetings and smiles (though you could tell matt’s was so phoney), nick backtracks, “okay but actually why are you here?”

“did you think i was joking? i’m getting drinks for your party!”

“i mean this in the kindest way possible: why?”

“i wasn’t gonna show up empty handed! it’s common courtesy to bring you guys something whether or not you ask.” you insist and matt fights the urge to roll his eyes.

he knows you have no mal-intent but god damn do you make yourself look so fucking pretentious.

“yeah, we’re trying to figure out what would be the best kind to bring right now,” erin chimes in.

nick immediately agrees, “oh my god, tell me about it. i was just struggling with that too!” and he turns to matt to validate, see! it’s not stupid to care about possibly buying the wrong thing!

matt just rolls his lips into his mouth, trying to give anyone a fucking clue that the conversation should be wrapping up by now.

“we’ll probably just end up getting pink whitney,” andrea reaches for the bottle on a nearby shelf.

matt can feel your eyes on him but he chooses to keep looking down at nick's ugg boots as if they’re the most interesting thing he’s seen.

you shift your eyes back to nick who’s still talking to andrea before you begin to speak, “well, i’m sure you guys are busy, you know, party planning.”

suprisingly, matt speaks up to agree with you, "yeah, you’re right actually. we are pretty busy."

nick cuts in with a shake of his head, “well, we’re actually not doing much before the party starts, honestly. we’ll probably just drop this off at the warehouse and set up a little, then go home, right matt?” nick shrugs to his brother who's eyes only widen with a look of question, “oh that's so true, matt!" he turns back to the girls with a smirk, "if you guys want you should come hang out with us now!”

matt wishes he currently had a free hand so that he could slap it over nicks mouth and drag him away before he sells his own kidney next.

"oh that's okay, we still have some stuff at home to do before we even think to get ready, but we'll be there tonight," you smile and look over to the girls who each agree.

"okay, we'll see you around then." matt tilts his head to the side encouraging nick to follow as he walks away.

"you have my insta so just dm me if you need anything. okay, bye! don’t forget swimsuits!" nick smiles and waves before rushing to catch up to matt who has already left the aisle.

౨ৎ

“i still can’t believe y/n was there, like what are the odds?!” nick giddily sighs and looks over to matt as the two walk out of the store.

“yeah, how fuckin’ weird," he murmurs, adjusting the brown bags in his hands to reach for the keys hanging from his belt loop. "small world, i guess.”

౨ৎ

“how the fuck are you so calm?” you ask in shock from behind the bat squishmellow you hold while sitting on nick’s baby pink couch, legs crossed.

“y/n, it’s like the teeniest, babiest tattoo ever,” andrea almost laughs as she takes another bite of a miniature rice krispy treat.

this “get together” at the warehouse has been a hit as far as you can tell. when you and your friends arrived it was already rowdy with people everywhere, music pounding, and bottles of alcohol scattered on the counters of a kitchenette (where you placed your own bottle of pink whitney, tied with a dainty white ribbon). you all found nick early on dancing in a crowd of people. he gave out hugs and easily convinced andrea and remi to let him tattoo them. after looking over the flash sheet nick made specifically for tonight, the girls decided to get matching cherry tattoos.

nick’s work area was so soft. he had bright hues of berry hugging his walls in the form of posters and paintings and faint creamsicle colored pillows to keep his couch company. when you all first walked in he explained how much he enjoys when clients bring in a friend so he had to make sure they had a comfy place to sit. you found nick so endearing in that since, he’s very caring and thoughtful despite his attitude at times (a far more understandable attitude than matt’s).

“it’s soo small,” nick adds, “i still think you two should get one,” he smirks looking over to you and erin huddled on the couch.

“hell no, i think i'm good for like another year," you shake your head and look over to erin while you gently run your fingers over your tattooed lower hip.

"yeah, absolutely not. i'm not even close to drunk enough to do that shit right now." she laughs.

౨ৎ

matt finds joint rolling to be the most satisfying part of smoking. the precision needed to perfectly fill, wrap, and burn makes him giddy in his own matt-kind-of-way.

after working on his last client (who wanted a somewhat abstract piece for the lowkey means of a “free tiny tats event”) and successfully sneaking through the crowd to grab a snack then sneaking back into his work area, he wanted nothing more than to get high alone.

he begins to gather his spare weed, grinder, and rolling papers from a spot tucked away in a drawer. he stops by his desk to turn his speaker back on, playing hushed kendrick lamar thorughout the space.

he taps his fingers along to the beat before sitting in a chair and displaying the items in front of him. he begins to grind the weed while humming, only to be interrupted fairly quickly.

"matttt!" chris peeks his grinning face through the curtain before taking it upon himself to walk in, "what are you doin' all alone in here?" matt pauses his movements with a sigh.

"no way you were rolling up and not planning to share? what the fuck?" chris pries in jest, rolling a chair over to sit in front of matt.

"dude, 'm so over this fuckin' party. i was planning to just smoke this and go nap on nick's couch or something." matt explains as he carefully lays the weed in the paper.

"you were barely even out there! got all your clients to text you whenever they got here." chris mumbles a scoff. "that is not the fuckin' point of this by the way, supposed to be meeting new people." chris rolls his eyes leaning himself so far into the chair that his back has practically met the seat.

"at least i'm doing something, you've only given like a tat or two all night," matt mumbles, slowly filling the white paper with weed.

because chris knows he's right he deflects the conversation to the reason he even came searching for matt in the first place. he clears his throat, playing with his fingers, "nick wants to take the girls up to the hot tub."

"thought we weren't allowing randoms up there anymore?" matt smirks at the memory of nick just hours before lecturing the both of them on what ground rules needed to be set so people don't demolish their shop for the fourth time now.

"obviously if they're with nick they're not just randoms." chris shakes his head, "pretty sure it's y/n and some friends she brought along. you remember that girl, right? she was-"

matt stops sealing the blunt to respond, "uh huh, i remember her."

chris lets out a breath, causing matt to finally look up and make eye contact with his brother (after spending their entire conversation too focused on rolling) in surprise at his pause in speaking.

"yeah, she's cool." chris yawns.

"i guess." matt says while finishing off the joint.

matt then lifts his hand up to give chris a view of his rolled joint. "stellar." chris smiles and matt hands it him, "swear you have a gift for this shit or somethin'." chris holds it in different angles near his face.

matt just shrugs and reaches for the tiny red lighter in his back pocket, "light that bitch up," he encourages chris.

"wait, no, let's save it for hot-tubbing."

"no? let's not? i didn't roll it for anyone but myself, let alone a group of barbies."

"be nice, matt."

"give me it, chris," matt rolls his eyes and signals with his fingers for chris to hand it over. “also who says i’m joining you guys in there?”

chris hands the joint back over to matt who’s immediately putting it in his mouth and bringing it towards the lighter’s flame, “nick wants the both of us up there, he thinks it’ll be fun.”

matt’s words come out quieter now that he’s speaking with smoke held in his lungs, “is he shit faced?” matt exhales the smoke as he speaks, “you know he thinks anything is ‘fun’ when he’s drunk.”

he takes another hit while chris explains, “no he’s actually really fuckin’ coherent, hasn’t had anything compared to me.” he smirks knowingly.

“not too much of this for you then,” matt exhales and passes the blunt over to chris. “so who’s gonna be hosting this party if we’re all on the roof?” matt asks squinting at him while playing with the soft edge of his graphic tee shirt.

chris’ face hides behind the smoke he releases, “we have dontae and claire working tonight too, they know how to deal with shit. i’m not too worried.”

“cool, so nick has contradicted himself twice already tonight, what happened to ‘one of us three should always be keeping an eye out’?” matt questions.

chris shakes his head, handing matt the smoked down joint, “literally how am i supposed to know why that kid thinks the way he does?”

matt licks his lips with a smile at his brothers comment then goes to hit the blunt once more.

“but i do know you need trunks on asap, brother.” chris lifts himself up, feeling a little looser now that he’s quite faded, and begins to dig through matt’s backpack in the corner of the room.

“why the fuck are my trunks just casually in my bag?”

“i put ‘em in there knowing you wouldn’t listen when we told you to pack them.”

“because i’m never getting in the pool at a party, that sounds terrible.”

“you think everything sounds terrible,” chris rolls his eyes throwing the plain black swimming trunks at matt’s chest.

౨ৎ

“‘kay so the game is just called, “i dare you…” but we’re gonna play it like drink or dare,” chris explains before taking another sip of his pepsi (he’s attempting to ‘sober up’ before playing a drinking game). “assuming the crowd knows what drink or dare is..?” chris looks around to everyone to confirm. there’s quite a lot of people in the spacious hot tub: you and your friends, the triplets, asha, and two of the triplets’ friends nathan and cameron.

when everyone nods in understanding chris explains something about the order to follow and how to discard any used cards, but you only loosely pay attention. instead, your eyes keep an unfaltering stare on matt who sits across from you with the shadows of his face highlighted light blue from the water below and a warm amber from the outdoor lighting above.

he wears his hair messy and his signature silver chain that reflects in the water harshly. you find yourself focusing on his tattooed hands (large in proportion to the joint he’s just finished rolling), and his pink tongue that has slipped out a number of times to lick at the joint and secure its shape.

he’s so into his own task he hasn’t even acknowledged your presence really. somehow that bothers you and attracts you to him at the same time. his face is so neutral as well, it’s not easy to find matt without a resting bitch face and an foul mood to match.

you feel andrea’s hand guide up your back, carrying water in its trail. you still continue in your curious trance until she leans down to your ear, “don’t start drooling now.”

you immediately look up towards her (as she’s sat on the ledge of the hot tub, cautious of her new arm tattoo). she barks out a laugh and you try not to laugh as well, punching the side of her leg instead.

“what did i miss? what are we giggling aboutt?!” nick excitedly asks as he climbs into the hot tub and sits in the empty spot to the left of you. you turn and greet him with a smile and he immediately hands you one of the many beer bottles he holds, “here, take one, pass it down.”

“oh it was nothing, thank you.” you reply when handed the final bottle.

nick nods before swatting at chris who still stands in the middle of the hot tub, “kid, you can sit down now, i think we all got it.”

chris looks over to nick, “you go first then, nick. i’ll queue up a few songs.” he shifts a floaty that holds a set of cards in it towards nick before taking a seat next to erin (you can overhear him introducing himself even though your attention is on nick as he draws).

“who’s the bright one who chose a game with cards to be done in water?” nick jokes finally looking at the card.

“i’m sure you can guess,” asha laughs next to him.

you watch as nick’s face welcomes a large grin upon reading his dare. “okay…i’m reading this out loud, right?”

“i thought ‘we all got it’?” chris jokes and watches nick deadpan, “yes, nick just say it.”

“this one’s easy, ‘i dare you to make one of the group members crack a smile in less than a minute.’” nick adjusts himself to face nathan, “nate look at me.”

“oh come on nick, nate laughs at everything when he’s drunk.” matt talks despite his lips closing over the joint he’s just about to light.

“i don’t!” nate says before looking over to cameron, who elbows his side, making nathan giggle and cover his face. “no! for real, try me nick.” he adjusts his expression to be serious but just as nick opens his mouth to speak nathan explodes in sudden laughter causing the rest of the group to laugh as well.

even matt laughs into his arm as he passes the joint to remi, next to him.

౨ৎ

as the group continued playing the dares leveled in dirty extremity. asha nibbled on cameron’s ear like a hamster, nathan texted a friend asking to have a threesome, cameron licked sugar off of andrea (who very much enjoyed it), until finally it was matt’s turn.

matt’s been far more sociable and charismatic this entire time spent in the hot tub than you’ve seen him before. but you can’t tell if it’s the weed and alcohol or even just the fact that he’s surrounded by a group with some of his close friends that’s bringing this out of him. you’re shocked the only nagging he’s done was to break up a small argument between his brothers and of course make fun of you, mouthing “you scared?” after you denied hitting the joint for a second time. you mouthed back “no” and rolled your eyes at him but his playful smirk never left.

matt hangs his head and stifles laughter after reading his card, “i dare you to bend over backwards and let the rest of the group spank you, chose who’s best.”

“oh my god!” chris’ laugh is higher in pitch now that he’s extremely high.

“guys i really don’t wanna,” he sighs.

“matt, don’t be lame! you’ll be the first one who’s drinking,” asha encourages.

“fuck this game,” he mumbles under his breath before adjusting himself to lean over the hot tub, everyone laughing at the sight. it was fun to see matt so unserious for once.

after taking turns to hit matt’s ass, he decided the fourth person’s was the best, per his dare’s request, and nathan celebrates with a throw of his hands in the air.

remi then performs a trust fall with the person she trusts least in the group, cameron (who she told there was no hard feelings since they’d only met today), making it now erin’s turn.

she blushes at her card before reading aloud, “i dare you to give a lap dance to the hottest person in the group.” she bites her lip in embarrassment but nonetheless leans over to chris and requests a song in his ear.

chris smiles and taps his phone as erin adjust herself to standing. “this is gonna be hard to do in water,” she messes with her hair.

“you’ll be fine!” you encourage with a smile.

“alright, you ready?” chris looks up to erin and she nods in response.

body party by ciara begins to play sensually through the nearby speaker gaining a few “oouuu”s from the group.

what you don’t expect is for erin to lean herself in front of matt. and matt definitely doesn’t expect this either, but he’s not too mad about it.

“oh shitttt,” cameron grins, he and nathan occupied in their own awkward-laughing fit while watching with wide eyes.

she moves slowly and hovers matt in a straddling position to “grind” on him. you take a heavy sip of your drink while watching in an attempt to hide your odd feeling about this. it was like watching a car crash. you watch as matt’s eyes gaze up and down her body, not daring to touch her but unashamed of his attraction.

asha laughs and whistles in support when erin turns around to give matt a view of her ass. nick dramatically ducks behind you yelling, “i actually can’t watch this! oh my god!”

you laugh and to mess with him whisper, “don't worry, it’s over now.”

nick looks back and immediately goes back to covering his eyes and laughing with you, “you bitch!”

you look back to matt who tilts his head back with wide eyes and lips puffing out in humor. and finally, after it feels like the two have dry humped for hours, erin stands back up and bows. matt claps with a wide smile, everyone else joining in.

when erin sits down you look up to andrea who just stifles a laugh with a sip of her drink. “well how the fuck am i gonna top that shit?!” chris exclaims while grabbing a card.

“real question is how the fuck will matt recover from that?” you joke causing matt to look over to you.

“oh don’t worry about me, sweetheart. i’m sure i’ll recover fine. chris,” he lifts his head gesturing for chris to begin his dare.

your tongue travels along your teeth to stop yourself from ruining a good time with your confusing feelings.

“i dare you to give a hickey to the person to your left.” chris bites his bottom lip and blinks slowly before looking over to andrea who just smiles and playfully flutters her fingers at him.

“you’re cool with this right, ‘m not tryna make you uncomfortable or any-”

“chris, shh.” andrea says.

“'kay, where do you want it?” he smiles.

“let’s make this fun,” she adjusts her bikini top and presses her manicured fingers along her right breast, “right here.”

nick is extra dramatic when it comes to watching chris suck harshly on his new friend’s tit, “okay, why the fuck did we choose this game?!” he turns away.

when chris is finished andrea shows it off to the group as proof and pushes chris’ cocky face away with a laugh, “nice job, stupid.”

afterwards, andrea gets a dare to expose her search history with the group, which she does without a problem.

it’s finally your turn to pick a card. “i dare you to lick whipped cream off a person of your choice.”

“oouu who’s it gonna beee?” nick nudges into your side.

you look around the hot tub, wanting to pick someone unpredictable, “ashaaa, you haven’t had much to do yet?” you look over to the girl who now has wide eyes and a growing smile.

“okay, yeah let’s do it,” she shrugs. “nate could you go get whipped cream, please?”

once nathan’s back you move closer to asha and decide to put whipped cream on her shoulder. “it tickles,” she giggles when you lick the entire dollop off of her easily.

you both laugh and you lick your lips as you head back to your seat.

౨ৎ

after another round it’s finally matt’s turn again, he draws a card that reads: give a kiss anywhere, on the person you’d “take home to mama.”

matt slowly stands and rubs his chin with a devious smile. “ummm,” he draws out, giving multiple looks at everyone before he walks over and hovers over you. you’re shocked by your body’s ease when his wet hand lifts to hold your face and his lips connect to yours. the kiss isn’t sloppy, but rather needy. you were just getting used to the taste of the bitter beer he’d just been drinking when he pulls away and steps back, unfazed.

you blink and wipe your fingers around your lips as matt wipes a hand over his eyes while laughing to himself.

“mom, would love y/n,” chris adds, calling back to the initial dare that led to that stomach turning kiss.

“'course she would, she’s a fucking saint.” matt sighs.

you squint your eyes and tilt your head, “i wouldn’t say that…”

“yeah, shit, my bad.” matt spreads his legs across from you, “forgot you have that little tattoo. i’m sure you’re not such a good girl anymore.”

you’re fucking annoyed now. you hate that he thinks you're inferior to him in any way. “hey where’s that ashtray, chris?” you ask, adjusting your seated position.

“uh, here,” he reaches behind him and places it on the same floaty as the cards, along with the lighter.

“you guys are cool to keep going,” you say and take the abandoned joint in your hand to relight it.

matt watches in spiteful anticipation.

“take it slow, and hold it” andrea explains to you in a whisper, knowing you’d never smoked in your life.

erin begins her dare to prank call a customer service line and dirty talk them when you take a hit of the joint.

matt eyes never leave your bothered figure as you inhale and cause the tip of the joint to light a bright red. he can tell you’re trying to prove a point which makes it more amusing to him when your eyes begin to water after you shakily exhale and attempt to hold back a cough.

“don’t hurt yourself.” matt quips under his breath.

౨ৎ

the group hadn’t realized just how long they’d been in the hot tub nor how drunk they all are until they struggled to get out and back to the main floor of the warehouse.

though, lots of giggles and piggyback rides helped them all stay together as they traveled back, cold and still damp. all partygoers were gone at that point, leaving the warehouse empty yet a mess.

nick (being the self-proclaimed good host he is) led the mass of drunk people to the bathrooms and brought extra graphic tee shirts and sweatpants to change into from the many boxes of merch sold in their tattoo shop. the boys had insisted that everyone just sleep at the warehouse due to their abundance of couches and chairs and their fear in sending anyone home in an uber at close to 3 AM.

matt is throwing pieces of trash in a large black trash bag when you step out from the bathroom near the colorful kitchenette of the warehouse.

he glances up when you approach slowly, feeling yourself sobered up quite a bit after peeing and washing your face.

“hey,” his voice is rough in tiredness.

“hey, do you have any water over here?” you ask politely, your lips taste salty when you lick over them.

“in the fridge,” he replies, crumbling wrappers and adding to his bag.

you notice how red and puffy his eyes truly are now that you’re this close to him and in better lighting. you walk past him to get to the fridge, almost completely empty after a long-lasting and full party.

“are you sleeping any time soon?” you ask, opening the water bottle.

“i don’t know.”

“i can always help you clean this if you need me to.”

“‘m good.” he analyzes a glass bottle to decide whether it’s worth keeping.

you nod your head, “cool.”

“you should probably sleep.” matt suggests looking over to you.

“i think i can decide that for myself, thanks.” you drink more of your water.

“you’re right i can only suggest. i’m suggesting you to go to sleep. and if you do stay up i'd suggest you don’t spend your time talking to me.”

you finish off your water and move closer to matt, placing it in the bag. “you truly know how to piss a girl off.”

“it’s my specialty.” he whispers and looks over your face now that you’re so close.

he’s so fucking hot that it genuinely upsets you at this point. you just back up and turn to go find the couch andrea’s decided to sleep on.

“goodnight, sunshine.” he calls after you, going back to his cleaning.

you're not too far away when you hear the bathroom door open and once again matt is greeting someone, only when you look over your shoulder you see erin approaching and matt leaning on the island counter with a smile.

you turn the corner with irritation. and you find yourself in the unfortunate position of having a problematic crush on matt while wanting nothing to do with him at all.

꩜⋆ ˚｡⋆🎱˚

[sturniolosiphone]

Mrs. Officer

⋆౨ৎ˚⟡˖ ࣪ MDNI, angst, smut, use of Daddy౨ৎ˚⟡˖ ࣪

This is the first fanfic I have written about the triplets, and I am CRINGING reading it back, but I made it for my best friend, so I'll keep it up

y/n’s POV

It’s been five months since Nate ended things with me, and by this point, I thought I would be healed from everything he put me through, but I still find myself missing parts of him. I miss the status it gave me, I miss the chaos, I miss the holidays back in Boston and being surrounded by his family and friends. Well, except Chris, I do not miss Chris. Chris has been in Nate’s life since they were small and was always around throughout our two-year relationship - I tried so hard to gain a connection with my ex's best friend, but no matter what, Chris was standoffish and cold. We all go to the same small university in Pennsylvania, and my sorority and their fraternity always have events together, so keeping away from them has been challenging. Lately, I have kept to myself and tried to avoid any mixers or events because I can not face them, and honestly, it’s not even Nate who gets under my skin the most; it’s Chris. When he sees me around campus, he acts like he has never met me, rolls his eyes at me, or makes some snide comment about what I am wearing. I am sure Nate has told him that I do not care for him, but he is the one who was a dick to me first, and at this point he needs to grow up. Tonight is Halloween, and I have decided that I am finally going out. I am known as the party girl in my sorority, and my absence has not gone unnoticed. I can not give Chris Sturniolo the satisfaction of thinking he is controlling me, and I will make sure to wear a costume that will piss Chris off.

Chris’ POV

“Do you think y/n is coming tonight?” I asked while mindlessly scrolling on my phone. 

“For the tenth time, Chris, I have no fucking clue if she is coming tonight. Why do you keep asking me? If you care so much, text her,” Nate rants. 

“Assuming I care about that bitch is bold, kid,” I mutter, still not looking up from my phone.

 “I mean, you were the one who was interested first until I slid in and stole her from you,” Nate teases. 

“That was almost two years ago, " I rolled my eyes. I am just happy you are the one who got stuck with her,” I smirked at Nate.

I can't grasp what exactly makes me tick about y/n. Was it the fact Nate purposefully went after her once I showed interest? Was it the slutty outfits she paraded around on campus? Her smart mouth? I can’t figure it out, but all I knew was she drove me crazy and made my dick twitch.

“Let’s get ready for the party. People will probably start arriving soon,” Nate says, startling me out of my train of thought.

“Yeah, okay,” I nod, getting up from the couch. 

y/n’s POV

“Are you sure this looks okay?” I say while staring at the full-length mirror and looking at myself from every angle possible. It’s not that I’m not confident; I just want my comeback to be memorable. I decided to be a sexy cop wearing a crop top, a badge, short shorts, a hat, and functional handcuffs. 

“Yes, y/n, you are slaying! Nate is going to be so pissed.” Madi beams back at me in the mirror. I shake my head and stifle a smile. As much as I don’t want to see him, it would be fun to remind him of what he had. 

“I don’t want this night to be about him,” I say, turning to Madi and looking into her eyes. Madi is dressed as the corpse bride. “I am honestly going to do my best to steer clear from him and his douchebag of a friend.” 

“No, no, I agree, you just look perfect,” she squeezes my hand. " I wish Chris weren’t such a douche; I mean, he is pretty hot.” Madi giggles.

“I would never.”

As we near the Fraternity house, my nerves get the best of me, and my stomach turns. I slow down, trying to catch my breath and Madi notices. 

“Y/n, I love you, but I am not letting you talk your way out of this one. You can not let them control your life. After a few drinks, I am sure you will relax, and this house will be packed. You might not even see them,” Madi assured me. I nodded, ran my hands over my face, and breathed deeply.

“Okay..fuck..okay, let’s go,” I say while grabbing her hand, and we take off towards the house. 

Chris’ POV

The music is so loud, and my head is swimming. I think I may have pre-gamed too hard. My nerves are shot at the thought I may see y/n tonight after what feels like months without properly seeing her. She hasn’t been around much, and I would know because I scope out every event looking for her, but I know Halloween is her favorite. She would always make Nate carve pumpkins and bring her to haunted houses. He complained to me the whole time, but I would have done anything to be in position. Watch how scared she would get, hold her, and make her feel safe. No matter how hard I tried, I was always a dick to her while she dated my best friend. I was just so fucking jealous and couldn’t stand the way he treated her, and she just let him. Fuck, I need to get some fresh air. I start leaving the house when some girl I am sure I hooked up with last semester stops me.

“Oh my god, are you supposed to be Steve Harrington from Stranger Things?” she slurs.

“Yeah, and I am guessing you’re supposed to be Eleven?” I ask flatly. 

“How did you know?! Yes! Can we please take a picture together?” she smiles.

“Yeah, whatever.” I put my sunglasses on my head and bring my bat up.

“Thaaaank you, Chrisss,” she says, hardly able to stand. I just nod and try to find the nearest exit to the house. I step out onto the porch and close my eyes. Maybe y/n won’t come tonight. 

“Madi, please stop walking so fast. These shoes are not meant to do fucking track and field,” I hear y/n yell, and my eyes fly open. 

“Sooorrry, y/n,” I hear Madi sing while skipping.  

Before I can retreat into the house, y/n spots me. Madi grabs her hand, and they go up the stairs to the front door.

“Christopher,” Madi snaps.

“Madi,” I snap back. 

Y/n walks past me without looking in my direction. Of course, she would be wearing some slutty costume. I absent-mindedly adjust myself before saying, “Come y/n, it’s been so long, haven’t you missed me? No hello?” I smirk.

“Fuck you, Chris,” y/n spits. 

y/n’s POV

“Okay, I hate to laugh, but the fact that Chris was the first person we saw is kind of crazy,” Madi laughs once we enter the packed living room. I laugh and roll my eyes.

“I need a drink after that. Do you want one, Madi?”

“Yes, please.”

 I walk towards the keg and wait in line. I’m not as shaken up as I thought after seeing Chris. I will never understand his issue with me, but I am not letting myself meditate on it. I fill Madi and my cups up, and as I turn around, I feel the liquid spill down the front of me. 

“Oh shit, sorry…wait, y/n! A little birdy told me you were here. I guess I didn’t believe them,” Nate says.

“Hello, Nate. Yeah, I’m here, and now my costume is ruined, thanks to you.” I grumble as I grab napkins to wipe myself off. 

“How are you?” Nate slurs. “I am sorry for all the like shit I put you through, y/n really I am,” he pouts while putting his hand over his heart.

“All the shit? Do you mean cheating on me for two years with multiple girls? Do you mean humiliating me in front of everyone? Is that the ‘shit’ you are referring to?” I snarl.

“Chris always told me you were just some dumb girl, and I really should have listened to him. You can't even take a sincere apology from the man who made you who you are.” Nate boasts.

“Made me who I am?” I laugh. “Nate, you are a president of a Fraternity. Get the fuck over yourself, my god.” I yell. I make my way back to Madi with two half-filled cups.

“Umm..what happened to you?” Madi asks, scanning my face while grabbing her cup.

“I don’t even know it’s so packed in here. I just kept getting bumped into! I am going to go to the bathroom and clean myself up!.” I can’t tell Madi what happened between Nate and I. I don’t want to ruin her night, but I need some time.

“I can come with you if you want! Maybe help you with your costume?” Madi offers.

“I’m okay, thank you,” I offer her a smile.

“Keep your phone with you, y/n; I mean it,” she says sternly. I salute her, and she rolls her eyes. 

Chris’ POV

“Wait, did you spill a drink on y/n? Purposefully?” I ask Nate while standing in the kitchen.

“Not purposefully, but whatever, she deserved it,” Nate states. “You should’ve seen the look on her face once she realized it was me.” Nate laughs.

“You do realize that you are the one who cheated on her and made her life a living hell?” I ask, feeling my face get hot.

“What? Now you suddenly care about y/n’s feelings? It didn’t seem like you cared too much when you were trying to convince me to break up with her for two years,” Nate responds, putting his hand to his chin and pretending to think hard. But you know I could always tell you wanted her,” he wags his finger at me. You wanted to feel her mouth around you, didn’t you? You wanted to hear her moaning your name, right?” Nate taunts.

“You better fucking watch it, kid,” I say while shoving Nate. 

“Okay, enough, let’s break it up,” some random guy yells while getting in between Nate and me. I decide to head to the bathroom to try to cool off. I don’t know why I have been such a prick to her when Nate is the issue. Great, there's no line to the bathroom. I try the door, and it's locked. Of course. I knock loudly on the door.

“Yo, is anyone there?” There was no response. “Hello? Come on, bro. I have to go,” I yelled over the loud music. I put my ear to the door, hearing running water and sniffing. 

y/n’s POV

I feel like such an idiot while I stand in front of the mirror, trying to desperately get this sticky beer off of me and fix my makeup. Why am I even crying? This is such a pathetic state to be in at a party.

“Yo, is anyone there?” someone yells. “Hello? Come on, bro, I have to go.” 

I freeze. It’s Chris. Of course, it’s Chris, why wouldn’t it be Chris? Please, god, get me out of here. The excessive knocking is making my head hurt.

“WHAT?!” I yell, throwing the door open to meet Chris, who is startled.

“Were you crying in there? Chris asked with his eyebrow slightly raised.

“Nothing gets past you, huh?” I say while trying to get past him.

“Oh no, you are going nowhere,” he says, pushing me back into the bathroom and locking the door behind him.

“What is your fucking issue with me, Chris?” I snap.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, y/n '' he starts.

“Spare me the bullshit. You haven’t liked me since we met, and I haven’t done anything to you!”

“Haven’t liked you, that's rich,” Chris mocks. “Haven’t liked you y/n? You have been all I thought about for two fucking years, but you chose Nate.”

“What? What are you talking about?” I ask, wondering if I heard him right. Chris sits on the side of the bathtub and puts his face in his hands. Chris sighs.

“I don’t know what I am saying,” he mumbles through his hands.

“I mean, you can start with a sorry, perhaps,” I say while prying his hands away from his face. He looks up at me, smiles, and rolls his eyes. 

“I am sorry, y/n. I am. I don’t know why I have treated you the way I have for so long. I may have been jealous of you, like your relationship or whatever,” Chris confesses.

“What? Did you think I was trying to get in between you and Nate? I never wanted that,” I say defensively, putting my hands up. Chris giggles.

“You are dense, aren’t you?” he stands up, towering over me. “I wanted you, y/n..just you,” he stares down at me. I feel like I am being pranked. Is there a camera in this bathroom? Is Nate outside listening? 

“Don’t fuck with me, Chris,” I whisper and shove his chest. “This isn’t funny at all. You act like you don’t even know me anymore. It’s been five months, and this is the first time we’ve held a conversation. Do you want me to trust you? I can’t.” I say, holding back tears. I have felt so alone after the breakup and can’t handle being taunted.

“No, I get that,” he says while tucking a hair behind my ear “I have been shitty towards you, and I guess if I were you, I wouldn’t trust me either, but I am serious, “ he tips my chin up forcing me to look into his eyes “I have wanted you for so long, Ma” he licks his lips. I involuntarily squeeze my thighs together, looking for any type of friction.

“Chris,” I whisper.

“And that fucking outfit, jesus christ, y/n,” he smirks down at me. “Turn around for me, baby..bend down in front of the sink,” he whispers. I’m fucked. I turn around slowly, see my flushed face in the mirror, and bend down. Chris tuts.

“No, don’t get all shy on me, y/n. I have heard you in Nate’s dorm. Look in the mirror.” Chris demands. 

Chris’ POV

I look in the mirror and see y/n’s flushed face. I can tell she’s breathing heavily, and her breath is fogging up the mirror. I press my clothed hard-on against her, and she bucks her hips back. “You’re such a needy girl, aren’t you? I have been waiting for this for so long, Ma, you have no idea. We are going to take our time. Can you be a good girl for Daddy?” Y/n nods her head. “Words, baby”

“I’m going to be a good girl, Chris,” Y/n says breathlessly. I back away from her, and she whimpers. My hand meets her ass with a loud crack which makes her jolt. “Who are you going to be a good girl for?” I tease. 

“I'm a good girl for you, Daddy. I'm always a good girl for you,” she whimpers. I can tell she’s embarrassed by her constant attempts to hide her face. 

“And I want you to watch y/n. I want you to watch yourself while I touch you, okay? I want you to see all the pretty faces you make,” I lean over and whisper in her ear. She nods again. “Words y/n. I’m not going to tell you again.”

“Yes, Daddy,” she moans. 

“Pull your shorts down.” I watch as she pulls her shorts down as I palm myself through my jeans. No underwear. I lock eyes with her in the mirror. “No underwear, y/n? You’re such a slut, huh? Look at you clenching around nothing,” I tut. “I bet you wanted me to find you like this with your shorts off, bent over the sink with your pussy soaked,” I laugh. 

“Please,” she whines. 

“Please, what, baby?” I taunt. 

“Please, Daddy, please touch me. I need you so bad.”

y/n’s POV

I never would have thought I would be begging Chris Sturniolo to touch me, but here I am bent over a sink with my pussy on full display for him. I have never experienced anything like this before. Sure, Nate and I had sex, but never like this, and I’m almost scared I won’t be able to take it. Chris gets on his knees and starts kissing up the back of the thighs, and I can feel myself dripping down my legs. 

“God, look at you, Ma, you look so pretty,” Chris says while wiping up my slick and putting his fingers in his mouth, letting out a satisfied moan. I clenched, begging for something, anything at this point. “And look at how you respond to me; you're such a good girl.” Chris spreads my legs and buries his face in my pussy, and focuses on my clit. 

“Fuuck Chr…Daddy.” I moan out. He swirls his tongue around my entrance before plunging it fully in, making me buck my hips against his face. “S-Sorry, Daddy, I didn’t mean to move.” I plead. 

“No, baby, it’s okay. I want you to fuck my face like the little slut you are,” Chris says while grabbing my ass. I start fucking myself against his tongue, and I can feel my legs begin to shake. 

“I’m close. I’m so close” I pant, and Chris snakes his arm through my legs and starts drawing lazy circles around my clit. “Yes, please, just like that…nghhh..fuck fuck I am going to cum” I scream out, and I see stars while I ride out my orgasm all over Chris’ face. 

Chris’ POV 

Y/n turns her head to face me and giggles. 

“What?” I smirk. 

“You still have all of your clothes on,” she laughs. I stand up, and she turns to face me and grabs the back of my neck. Our lips smash together, and I let out a moan as she bites my lip and runs her hands through my hair. She grabs my sunglasses off my head and places them on her eyes, breaking the kiss. 

“Against the wall, Daddy,” she barks at me, trying not to laugh. 

“Oh, are you giving orders now?” I smirk. I can feel a wet spot sticking to the tip of my cock. 

“Well, I am the cop, you know? So..against the wall,” she stands on her toes and whispers in my ear. I back up against the wall and watch her unbuckle my belt. 

“Shirt off,” I whisper while taking her police hat off her head and running my hands through her hair. Surprisingly, she listens, taking her shirt off. “Bra, too,” I say. I watch in awe as her tits bounce. “Fuck y/n. You are stunning.” She pulls my boxers down, and my cock springs out, hitting her face. I hiss at the cool air. 

“You’re so big, daddy.” She looks at me through my sunglasses. I just nod and lick my lips. I don’t know how long I will last if she keeps looking at me like that. She kitten licks the tip of my cock, and I can’t help but buck my hips forward, burying my cock in her throat. She hums around my cock, making me throw my head back. 

“You’re taking me so well fuck. I want you to get yourself ready for me, okay, baby? Stretch yourself out for Daddy,” I instruct her while I watch her finger her pussy. I grab her hair fucking her throat, and watch her gag and spit on my cock. She grabs my balls and gives them a firm squeeze. “Fuck yeah, Ma, just like that. You going to swallow all of me, y/n?” I moan out. She nods and looks up at me through her wet eyelashes. My hips stutter as I squeeze my eyes shut and cum down her throat. 

y/n’s POV

I make sure to lap any cum with my tongue as Chris winces at the sensitivity. 

“You are fucking unreal, y/n,” Chris laughs. 

“Oh, I know,” I wink back at him. 

“Are those handcuffs real?” Chris nods at the handcuffs left on the top of the toilet, already getting hard again. 

“Yeah,” I smile shyly back at Chris. “They’re real.” 

“Stand up, turn around, and hands behind your back,” Chris demands, and I do as I’m told. I know he had me stretch myself out, but I can’t help being nervous, considering he is way larger than Nate. Chris walks over, grabs the handcuffs, and cuffs my hands behind my back. 

“Bend”

I bend over the sink and glance up at Chris, who is staring at me. 

“What?” I ask nervously, looking at his reflection in the mirror. 

“You just look so good I can’t even believe my eyes, bro,” Chris says dumbfounded. 

“Calling me bro right now is crazy,” I say, rolling my eyes.

“Right..sorry, officer,” Chris winks at me, lines up with my entrance, and grabs my hips. He slides into me slowly without breaking eye contact. He is so fucking huge. 

“Jesus, y/n, your pussy was fucking made for me,” Chris moans and bottoms out. I can feel him in my stomach. “You tell me when to move, baby…you’re taking me so well; such a good girl for me,” he soothes me while rubbing my back. 

“S..slow, please move slow,” I whine out. Chris starts moving slowly, and I rock my hips back, starting fuck myself back on his cock.

“Yeah, baby, you're doing so good. You look so pretty fucking yourself on my cock for me. Can I go faster?” Chris breathes out. 

“Please, Daddy,” I moan. Chris wastes no time and starts to pound into my pussy. 

“Deep breaths, baby, you can take me, fuck you’re so wet,” Chris mumbles and lifts my leg until my knee is on the sink. “Fucking look at you, Ma, so fucking good for me,” he pants. I just nod my head. “Have I fucked you, dumb baby? Too tired to talk to your daddy?” Chris laughs.

“Gonna cum” I mumble out, hardly able to talk.

“Go ahead, baby cum all over my cock. Make a mess all over me, y/n,” Chris grunts. I scream out cumming all over him while babbling. Chris continues to pound into me.

“Dad..dy too sensitive,” I whimper.

“I know, baby, I’m almost there, so good for me,” Chris huffs. “Can I cum in you, baby?” he questions.

“Please, Daddy, please come in me,” I beg.

“Yeah, want me to fuck my baby into you? Want everyone to know you’re mine, you dirty slut” Chris’ hips stutter, filling me with his hot cum. We both hiss while he pulls out of me. 

“Here, let me get those cuffs off of you. Do your arms hurt?” he says, looking concerned.

“Just a little, but I’m okay though.” I smile at him. Chris helps me clean myself up and presses a kiss on my forehead.

“I hope this isn’t it. I’d like to hang out more, you know? I have a lot to make up for you,” Chris says.

“I don’t think this will be the last time, Chris, but I have to go find Madi,” I laugh. 

“She’s going to kill you,” he says while shaking his head.

“I know I have 40 missed calls.”

[imaginespazzi]

Part 4: The Art of Letting Go

Masterlist - Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7

Only know you love her when (she lets you) go

(In which a still very sadistic writer make things a lot worse but only so they can get a little bit better)

Pairing: Paige Bueckers X Azzi Fudd

Themes: Angst, Pining, Hurt with very little comfort

Words: 7.9K

TW: Car Accidents, Panic Attacks, Swearing

A/N: Hello my lovelies <3 I know I'm very, very late with this and I love you all for being so patient. I don't really know how I feel about this chapter but it is what it is. Logistical details are probably a little off but I need things to work for the plot, so try and ignore that. Per usual I did edit (very loosely and I'll probably go back over it later), there are probably typos anyways. And as always, let me know what you liked, what you didn't, and what you'd like to see in the future. Happy reading lovelies and let's get a W this weekend. <3

December 2023

A week or so after they get back from the Cayman Islands, Azzi feels like she’s been sleep-walking through life, everything around her hazy and dull. She religiously sticks to a routine of eat-study-practice-sleep. Except well, sleep isn’t really sleeping. It’s her brain conjuring images of blonde hair and blue eyes and Azzi forcing herself to wake-up from a nightmare that used to be her favourite dream. 

She doesn’t tell anyone what happened, lying to herself it’s because it would be embarrassing and not because it would mean having to face the truth. Still, it doesn’t mean that her teammates can’t piece together little bits. There must be something quite sinister about the air around her, because none of her normally nosy and eager-to-help sisters try to weasel any information out of Azzi. They act like they always have, only sharing worried looks behind her back when the façade of i’m doing fine slips momentarily when she thinks no one’s watching. 

And then that façade goes to hell over the span of a couple of hours. 

It starts with the inevitable breakup with Zoe. At first Azzi avoids it, making up excuses as to why she can’t see her girlfriend. Selfishly, there’s a part of her that wants to keep Zoe, keep a girl who would never leave, never make her feel anything less than (or more than) just content. But it’s not fair, Azzi knows that, and it’s why she practises her it’s not you, it’s me speech to perfection in front of the mirror. When she goes to message Zoe that she's coming over, the text chain causes a pinch of guilt in her heart at the contrast between her girlfriend’s hopeful tone versus her own nonchalant one. And Azzi thinks that Zoe will never really understand just how similar the two of them are, stuck at wanting someone who would always let them down. Only, Azzi will let Zoe free but when it comes to her herself, she’s pretty sure she’s destined to be trapped forever. 

It’s embarrassing to admit that Azzi remembers the apartment in Storrs that she’d visited barely a handful of times a lot more than she remembers the apartment she’s currently in, the one that belongs to her girlfriend. Zoe sits rigidly on the couch with the same reserved, guarded expression she’s had since she’d opened the door, clearly aware of what was about to happen. Her foot taps incessantly as the silence between them drags on.

“You deserve better,” Azzi says finally, keeping her eyes firmly locked on the floor. 

“No,” Zoe’s voice is cold, “don’t say shit like that. It’s a cop out. It’s the shit people say to make themselves feel better-”

“Zoe-”

“Don’t be a fucking coward Azzi. Look me in the eye and say it, say exactly what you’re here to.”

Azzi doesn’t want to do any of that. She wants to crumble to the ground and let it swallow her until she’s buried so far away from the mess she’s created. But she owes Zoe this. When she does look at Zoe, there’s this look in the other girl’s eyes that Azzi had never thought herself capable of evoking in anyone and she has to swallow away the bile that rises in her throat, disgusted by her own self. 

“I’m breaking up with you,” Azzi whispers. Her words linger in the air, like shrapnel after an explosion. Zoe flinches, a single tear trickling down her face. 

“There it is,” the Californian says quietly, the ghost of an ironic smile playing on her lips, “I knew it was coming but damn- there it is.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“For what-” Zoe cuts herself, “no actually don’t- don’t answer that. I think I know.”

Azzi draws in a deep breath, ready to confess, “I need to tell-”

“Please-”

“Z-”

“Please,” Zoe sobs, “please don’t tell me. I don’t wanna hear it okay? I don’t- I don’t want to hate you Azzi. It’s too much and I don’t- I just- I’m so tired of feeling so much for you when you don’t- when you feel so little for me.”

“That’s not true,” Azzi counters helplessly, her words ringing hollow to her own ears. 

“Fucking hell you just ended it Azzi, you don’t have to pretend anymore. And it’s okay because I get it. You can’t feel any more than what little you do for me because- because you’ve already given the rest of it away. And it’s not- it’s not like I didn’t know you know? I only ever met you because you were crying over her. You only let me into your life because you missed her. And now you have her,” Zoe says wistfully. 

It’s terrible the way everything else becomes white noise as Azzi’s ear latches on the last sentence, a sentence that couldn’t be any further away from the truth. She was prepared for the accusations, for Zoe to hurl every curse word in the book at her, but this, the unintended reminder that she was giving up on soft, sweet, gentle Zoe for something that she didn’t have, hurts far more than any words could. 

“This isn’t about-” 

Zoe’s quick to cut Azzi off, pushing herself off the couch they had been sharing, trying to put even more space in between them, “please do not insult my intelligence by finishing that sentence. I deserve that much at least.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I know you are because I know- I know who you are Azzi and I know you’re a good person and that’s why- that’s why I don’t wanna know okay? Whatever you did- whatever happened- just let me- just let me have this. Let me remember you as someone good- someone great,” Zoe pleads.

“If that’s what you want Zo,” Azzi answers weakly, the guilty clawing at her heart. She doesn’t think she deserves to be remembered like that, doesn’t think she’s worthy of being thought of with fondness, not anymore. 

Zoe doesn’t make any acknowledgement of Azzi having spoken as she starts to pace, “I should have known. You know the day I met her this summer, I got it- the appeal- I got it immediately. She has this aura, this charm. She just- she just fucking glows you know? And she’s just- she’s this huge entity and so are you and I’m just,” she lets out a hollow laugh as she shrugs,  “I’m just a girl from Stockton, California.”

“And you’re amazing,” Azzi puts up a hand when Zoe tries to cut her off again, “you are. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to thank you for what you did for me last year. You could have walked away that day and maybe- maybe one day you’ll think you should have. And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry Zoe. You do deserve better. It’s not a cop out. It’s the truth.”

Since she was younger, Azzi’s always hated endings. This time is no different. The bitter truth is that she probably won’t miss her girlfriend, but she will miss the friend that had gotten her through one of the toughest years of her life. Slowly, Azzi picks herself off of the couch and walks over to a still Zoe, squeezing her left hand once before heading towards the door. 

“Azzi,” Zoe calls out, just as Azzi has one foot out the door, “I hope it works out for the two of you. You and Paige always did just seem inevitable.”

***

She blames the fact she’s currently stuck in the terrible LA traffic, with the word inevitable ringing in her ears, for the way her fingers continuously flicker over the green call button under Paige’s name. Zoe saying her name had been the first time in a week that Azzi had even let herself, in consciousness at least, think of the blonde properly. And now that it had been unleashed, whispers of Paige, Paige, Paige echo through every crevice of skull. The pain and anger that she’d been trying to shield herself from, come barraging into her heart as she’s held captive once again by thoughts of her best friend. 

It would be a lie to say that Azzi hadn’t been hoping for a call or a text to come through. She’d waited two days with bated breath for a friendly quip that would lead them back to their safe haven of just pretend. Instead it was as if they were back to being who they had been before summer of 2022 all over again. Back to being nothing. But this time Azzi had been adamant that if Paige was going to cut her off again, she wouldn’t fight it, not this time. Apparently that resolve was never meant to last and Azzi feels a little pathetic with how desperately she needs to hear Paige’s voice, how desperately she wants to try again. 

The traffic clears just as she presses call and maybe that should have been a sign. Azzi’s not a bad driver per say, but as her dad always said, no one’s a good driver when they’re distracted. The phone rings for too long and she should take that as her next sign and accept it as Paige not wanting to talk, but she lets it continue to ring anyway, as she turns onto a more secluded road. And then-

“Hello,” the voice is unfamiliar and Azzi doesn’t really know Paige’s teammates, beyond Caroline, that well but she’s pretty certain this one doesn’t belong to any of them. 

“Hi uh- who is this?” she manages to get out as her grip tightens on the steering wheel.

“Oh um- this is Rose, Paige’s friend” comes the reply, the word friend said with a sultry lilt and Azzi feels her skin prickle. Hang up. 

“Why are you answering Paige’s phone?” her tone is far more accusatory than she’d like it to be. 

“She’s in the bathroom but she told me to,” Rose answers defensively. 

Azzi hesitates, she doesn’t need to know more except, “does she know who called?”

Because surely if she did, if Paige knew it was Azzi on the other line, she wouldn’t let one of her likely random hookups answer the phone, surely Paige would know what it would do, how it would make her feel. 

“Uh yeah- I told her Azzi called and she seemed pretty sure she wanted me to pick up.”

Maybe Paige does know what it would do, does know how it would make Azzi feel, maybe that’s the whole fucking point. Through the phone she can hear quiet footsteps walking closer, towards Rose. When Paige is close enough that Azzi can make out the sound of her breathing, can almost picture the way her chest is heaving, that’s when the tears finally fall, blurring her vision. 

She doesn’t see the blinking headlights rushing towards her until it’s too late and then she’s swerving. The world around her erupts in motion and light and noise, everything spinning and spinning and spinning. For one moment, as she loses complete control of her car, Azzi thinks maybe this is it. And the most terrifying part of it, is that for a second, she’s not all that opposed to the idea of this being the end. It’s a singular image of her parents in her brain that has her regaining her senses and hitting the brakes as hard as she can. Her tires screech as her car barrels into a tree and her entire body jerks around in her car, her seatbelt leaving burn scars against her neck. Azzi feels her heartbeat going haywire, as everything comes to a halt. 

“Oh my god, oh my god,” Rose’s panicked voice echoes. 

“What?” and there’s Paige and even in this wreckage, Azzi’s heart stutters at the sound of her best friend. 

“I think she crashed-”

“WHAT?” there’s frantic shuffling until, “Azzi? Azzi? Hello? Are you there? Fuck. Azzi are you okay? Please say something. C’mon Az. I know you’re there. Can you hear me? Please be okay. Azzi? Fuck, fuck, fuck. Azzi?”

Azzi opens and closes her mouth, trying to answer to the call of her name, but nothing comes out. She feels hot and cold all over at the same and she swears there’s a hand curled around her neck because she can’t fucking breathe. 

“Azzi,” Paige says again desperately, “please say something.”

“P-Paige,” Azzi finally manages to stutter, her chest heaving as she gasps for air. There’s blood rushing to her ears and everything around her feels hazy. 

“Azzi,” and that one syllable is wrapped in so much emotion, “I’m here okay, are you okay?”

No, Azzi thinks, I don’t know if I’ll ever be okay. 

“I c-can’t breathe. I think” she grasps at her neck, “I th-think I’m having a panic attack.”

Paige curses under her breath, “okay, okay alright listen to me breathe okay? And try to match it okay?”

“O-okay,” Azzi whispers, pressing her head to her steering wheel as she tries to mimic Paige’s exaggerated deep breaths on the other end of the line. 

“Good girl, you’re doing so well for me Azzi, just keep breathing okay,” Paige’s voice is far calmer than she probably is in reality, “just keep breathing with me okay.”

Azzi closes her eyes as she feels her chest slowly start to loosen up and lets herself be immersed by Paige’s soothing words of comfort. And for a second, it almost feels as if her best friend is right there with her. For a second, Azzi imagines that they’re on a whole other planet, just them in their little world, like it always should have been, like she’d once been so sure it would be. It’s a beautiful dream that reality is quick to gatecrash. 

“Babe, is she okay?” Rose asks, and Azzi’s eyes fly open at the term of endearment. She’s not on a different planet. She’s alone. And Paige isn’t. 

“I’m fine,” Azzi breathes out and then more firmly, “I’m fine.”

“Thank God,” Paige lets out a sigh of relief before her tone turns sour “what the actual fuck Azzi?”

Azzi winces at the loudness, pretty sure she might have a concussion from the way her head had crashed back into her headrest as she’d crashed into the tree in front of her. 

“I’m fine,” she repeats assertedly, as everything around her slowly starts to make sense again. It’s not a lie really, at least not physically. There’s the potential concussion, and the litany of bruises she’s starting to feel all over her body but she’s pretty sure there’s nothing wrong internally. Well except for her stupid fucking heart but it wasn’t the accident that had fucked that organ up. 

“You just crashed your fucking car, no you’re not fucking fine,” Paige yells, voice thick with tears. 

“What the fuck do you care?” Azzi bites back, “sorry I interrupted your fucking night Paige. I swear it won’t happen again.”

She hangs up before Paige can say anything else, sitting deathly still for a second. And then she lets herself completely break apart. 

***

74 missed calls from Paige

did u go to the hospital 

pick up ur fucking phone 

dude

azzi

this is not the time for this stubborn bullshit 

PICK UP UR FUCKING PHONE 

AZZI 

just say ur ok at least

please 

called ur mom 

said u had a concussion and some bruising 

thats not too bad 

ur so fucking stupid 

it could be so much worse 

please pick up 

AZZI FUCKING FUDD PICK UP UR PHONE 

so u can call carol and not me ok 

thats just fucking perfect

dude i feel like an accident > stupid fights 

so maybe just pick up 

or call me back

u wanna play this stupid game fine 

ignore me for now

but i’mma be in dc for christmas

ur gonna have to talk to me 

i know where u live 

***

The box in Azzi’s arm feels freakishly heavy, like she’s holding the whole world inside of it. In a way, maybe she is. The walk up Paige’s dad’s driveway feels longer than it ever has and she’s fighting the urge to turn back with every step. As soon as she’d seen the vaguely threatening text message, Azzi had decided she would beat Paige to it. The night of the accident had put several things into perspective and Azzi was determined to finally grasp control of her own life. 

It hasn’t been that long since the Cayman Island and so it hasn’t been that long since Azzi’s seen Paige. But when the door opens and she’s face to face with her best friend, despite the dread and anxiety that’s drowning her heart, Azzi still feels that beat of it’s cold but you always make me feel warm flutter in her chest. Paige smiles and Azzi’s arms wobble, drawing the blonde’s attention to the box in her arms. 

“Still a couple of days till Christmas Az, a little early to give me my present,” Paige smirks lightly and Azzi feels a river of hot anger slide around her veins. After everything she’d put her through in the last couple of weeks, the fact that Paige could act so frivolous, as if they were still fine, makes Azzi see red. 

Her voice is icier than the sheet of frost on the ground when she replies, “it’s not a Christmas present.”

Paige’s eyebrows knit together questioningly, “then-”

“It’s all your stuff I had lying around,” Azzi cuts in, trying to keep her voice confident and stable. 

The smile disappears from Paige’s face as she studies Azzi's face, looking for some semblance of emotion beyond the blank stare. 

“What?”

“All the things you’ve left at my house over the years, a couple of t-shirts, a hat, a book and a couple other things, they’re in this box,” Azzi says pointedly. She tries to hand it over but Paige is quick to move away from it, staring at the offending object as if it’s a ticking time bomb. 

“What the actual fuck is going on Azzi?”

“I might have missed some things. Let me know if I have and I’ll mail them to you in the future,” Azzi recites clinically, keeping her demeanour stoic as possible “and of course I would like my things back as well. Not right now of course. You can mail them to me whenever it suits you.”

“Mail back your things? What? What the fuck are you going on about?” Paige asks, a bewildered expression taking on her face. She reaches out as if she wants to shake Azzi but seems to think better of it. 

Azzi doesn’t say anything, as she sidesteps Paige into the house, putting in the utmost effort to make sure no part of herself brushes up against the older girl, knowing the inevitable burst of electricity when they touch would be enough to break her resolve. She places the box of Paige’s stuff on the coffee table in the living room, before turning back to Paige. 

“I’m giving you your stuff back,” Azzi repeats, “I’m giving you what you want.”

“What I want? When did I ask for my stuff back?”

Azzi draws in a deep breath, fighting desperately against the screams of you don’t want this in her own head, “I’m giving you a clean break Paige. I’m letting you go.”

Saying those words feels a lot like free-falling. Her stomach lurches at the way Paige’s features scrunch up in pain and she’d never meant to do that, but Azzi’s so tired. She’s so tired of this push and pull, the way they seem to hurt each other every fucking time, the way things get so close to going right and then go wrong any way. The bitter truth of life, Azzi has forced herself to admit, is that it doesn’t matter how hard you fight, sometimes the darkness wins out anyway. 

“You think-,” Paige stutters, clutching at her chest, “you think this is what I want?”

“Well isn’t it?” 

“Of course n-”

“If I hadn’t called you that night would you have called me first Paige?  If I hadn’t gotten into that stupid accident, would you even have texted me ever again?”

Paige’s silence is an answer in itself . And although Azzi had known it, she can’t deny that there’s a part of her that had posed the question hoping against hope that Paige would have answered it with a resounding yes of course. She thinks maybe she should be used to the singe of disappointment that burns her skin by now but she’s never been immune to Paige’s fire. 

“That’s what I thought,” Azzi says quietly, “I’m tired of running after you Paige. I thought I was done after the Cayman Islands but then I- I don’t know- I don’t know why I called you that night when you- you clearly didn’t want that.”

“Azzi c’mon-”

“It’s my fault really. Because you've always been clear about it and I- for some reason- I just don’t listen. You were clear with it when you told me to go to UCLA and get out of your life. You were clear when you didn’t want me to come into your air BnB. You were clear when you told me to get out of the bathroom last summer. And when you left that night-,” Azzi pauses as Paige’s eyes widen, the words catching in her throat, “when you were gone that morning- every time you didn’t call- every time you didn’t text- you were always clear about it Paige and I- I’m sorry I didn’t listen.”

“You’re being really fucking unfair right now,” Paige accuses, “you’re mad because I didn’t want to be your fucking side whore? I’m so sorry I had more self-respect than that Azzi.”

Azzi blinks rapidly, her face still completely neutral, “excuse me?”

“You wanna blame me for those first two things, fine. But you have a whole ass girlfriend and you wanted me to be what? Just a girl you can fuck occasionally because you feel like it? Who the fuck do you think I am? I deserve so much better than that.”

“I don’t-”

“You wanna know why I left that morning?” Paige asks icily, “I woke up and the first thing I saw is your girlfriend’s fucking i miss you text. All that shit you said to me when I kissed you in LA about not wanting to be one of my groupies or whatever but what did you want me to be Azzi?”

When they were young and naive, the largest fight they’d ever had was about whether or not one of them had cheated in a game of horse. The allegations of cheater from a 15 year old Paige had seemed massive back then, but they pale in front of the accusations of cheater from a 22 year old Paige. It’s not that Azzi thinks she’s some prime example of a good samaritan and she can deal with people thinking she’s not all that, but it’s different when it’s Paige, it’s different to know that Paige could ever think so low of her. 

“You really think I’d do that you? That I’d make you my sidepiece or whatever?”

“What else am I supposed to think about you fucking me while you have a girlfriend?” Paige asks exasperatedly and Azzi flinches at the repeated use of the profanity. 

“Had.”

“What?”

Azzi grips the hem of her shirt, trying to focus her eyes anywhere but Paige, “I had a girlfriend. Past tense.”

“You- you broke up with Zoe?” Paige’s expression morphs from anger to confusion before finally settling on realisation. 

“I never wanted you to be a side piece. You think I don’t know you deserve better than that?” Azzi rubs her temple, as she tries to keep herself steady on her feet, “I know seeing that text hurt you but it’s not like you didn’t know I had a girlfriend. But- but if you’d just waited for me to wake up, god if you’d just talked to me once instead of jumping to conclusions then-”

“Then what?” Paige breathes out and Azzi doesn’t miss the little spurt of hope that’s taken birth on the older girl's face. 

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Azzi shakes her head, “that’s also past tense now.”

The thing with Paige is that anger is her protective mechanism. When she gets a little close to losing control of her emotions, or feeling too much, it’s what she falls back on so it’s not surprising that her tone is harsh when she speaks again. 

“How the fuck was I supposed to guess you were gonna break up with your girlfriend Az c’mon,” Paige takes a step towards her, “I’m not a fucking mind reader.”

“I never asked you to read my mind. I just- all I’ve ever wanted- is for you to just have a little faith in me- in us,” Azzi’s voice breaks on the last word. 

“That’s not fair. I was really fucking  hurt Azzi-” Paige begins, her voice pleading.

“And then you tried to hurt me back on purpose,” Azzi spits out as the façade of neutrality completely slips off, “you knew it was me calling and you had that girl pick up any way knowing exactly how it would make me feel.”

“Azzi,” baby blue eyes sparkle with tears and Azzi has to force herself to look away, because no matter how much she’s convinced that this is what needs to happen, seeing Paige break, will drown Azzi and she’s barely floating as it is. 

“I don’t enjoy hurting you Paige,” Azzi says softly, “and I don’t think you enjoy hurting me but for the last couple of years, I feel like that’s all we’ve been doing and I- I can’t do it anymore.”

It’s not something she’d ever admitted out loud, or even to herself, but once upon a time Azzi used to think her and Paige would have one of those stories, one of those soft, sappy fairytale-esque stories that had no chance of an ending that wasn’t happily ever after. And she hopes that maybe in another universe, maybe they did have that. Maybe in a universe where she chose UConn and things never went wrong in the first place. Maybe in that universe, they’re happy. But in this universe, they seem to be destined for misery. And Azzi thinks the saddest tragedy of it all, is that it feels like she’s ending a story that never even really got the chance to start. 

“So that’s it then, you’re walking away- you’re just- you’re fucking giving up?” Paige says bitterly, crossing her arms protectively over her chest and Azzi feels a flicker of annoyance light up against her ribcage. 

“Isn’t that what you did?” she accuses, “Is that not what you do? You walk away every. single. time. because you can’t deal with things getting just a little too fucking hard. And what? I’m just supposed to wait until you come back? Or chase after you like a pathetic little puppy?”

Paige flinches at the hardness in Azzi’s tone, mouth opening and closing but nothing escaping. 

“I’m so fucking tired of always being the one calling, the one showing up, the one trying. I’m so fucking tired of fighting for us when it feels like you’re fighting against me,” Azzi pauses,trying to blink away the tears she’d tried so hard to keep locked behind her eyelids, “if you wanna call that me giving up then okay, but I don’t think you realize just how fucking hard I want to hold on.”

Azzi’s not sure if it’s the way her voice cracks, or the absolute misery behind every word she says, but Paige's hard and cold expression is gone so fast it gives her whiplash. And then her Paige, the girl with the warm eyes and soft heart is back, looking at Azzi in a way that makes her want to believe in them all over again. Arms outstretched, Paige takes a step forwards and there’s nothing more Azzi wants then melt into them. It takes everything in her to step away instead. For a moment there’s nothing but them staring at each other in silence, a moment where Azzi tries to memorise everything about Paige just in case this is the last time. And then-

“What if,” Paige begins softly, “what if I entered the draft?”

Azzi looks at her in confusion, “what does that have to do with anything?”

“The Sparks have the second pick, it’s where I’m projected to go,” Paige bites at her lips, peering at Azzi through her eyelashes. 

The Sparks. The Los Angeles Sparks. 

“Is that what you want?” Azzi asks quietly, trying to prevent her brain from already coming up with dreams of stupid picnic dates at the park during sunset. 

Paige hesitates. And it’s enough for those dreams to crumble, because Azzi knows Paige just a little too well, knows exactly what that little bit of hesitation means. 

“I haven’t decided yet but if- if there was a reason that I should-”

“There isn’t,” Azzi says firmly, “it’s not what you want.”

“I don’t even fucking know what I want,” Paige argues and that doesn’t make it any better. 

“Then figure it out,” Azzi yells, frustratedly rubbing her hands over her face, “I won’t deal with you fucking resenting me and running away again in a couple of years- hell in a couple of months- because you regret your fucking decision.”

“I wouldn’t-”

“Please just stop. It's done. I’ve made up my mind” Azzi begs, exhaustion flooding into her body, “just- just let this go please.”

Paige meets her eyes with a stubborn fire, “I don’t fucking want to.”

“Well tough luck because I do.”

“Azzi,” Paige pleads desperately, trying to block Azzi as she beelines for the door, but the younger girl is quick to push past her. 

“Goodbye Paige.”

***

December 2024 

azzi please just let me in 

ur parent are saying u dont wanna see me 

and i get it 

but i can fix this i swear 

i know u know im here

please fucking let me in 

i fucked up 

i know 

im so fucking sorry

but dude we can fix this

just 

can u just fucking let me in

i really wanna see u 

i really wanna talk 

can we just fucking talk 

please 

merry christmas az

u know what fuck u actually 

didnt mean that sorry 

i was just mad 

u make me really fucking mad 

christmas breaks almost over 

i have to go back soon and ik u do too

we should talk before that 

ur so fucking stubborn 

but so am i

im not giving up 

i won’t 

January 2024

hi 

i miss you

ur really fucking annoying

not texting me back

but its fine

i’ll just fucking spam 

i had an ok day today 

practice was kinda ass 

not me tho

i was great

as always 

bet i made more threes than you did 

bro im watching ur game

and

what the fuck kinda airball did u just throw up 

get in the gym az jfc 

oh that was a good pullup

not better than mine

but decent 

been a fucking month azzi 

just fucking call me back 

or text me idk 

i miss u 

sooooooooooo

hows ur day

good? good.

hows mine?

oh kinda shit 

lets see

we lost in front of all these uconn legends

to their fucking rival 

everyones saying uconn fucking sucks 

some people are saying i suck

they might not be completely wrong 

now would be a good time to reply az 

like maybe make me feel better

fuck u actually 

what the fuck am i doing 

idk if u even read these 

February 2024

idk maybe i should stop 

like maybe only fucking psychos do this 

but idk bro 

i feel like ur gonna text me back eventually 

well sc was a shit show 

i mean we knew it but holy shit 

i really wanna talk to you about it

it’d mainly just be me fucking yelling 

and u giggling 

fuck i miss ur laugh

i miss you

idk if u just ignore these

so idk if ur gonna even see this 

but 

i wanted to tell you first 

before u saw it from somewhere else 

im staying at uconn 

u were right

i didnt want to leave yet 

i want my 4 years

but 

just dont think it means i didnt mean what i said

that i dont wanna be in la with u

i do

its not about that

i just need to do whats best for me

and thats staying here 

fuck

i get what u meant now

u didnt pick ucla over me

fuck fuck fuck 

im sorry az

is this how u felt 

when i didn’t text u back 

because it’s actually fucking hell 

i miss you so fucking much dude

i’m so sorry 

i’m really fucking sorry azzi 

for all of it

please just call me back

March 2024

last pac-12 tournament mvp!!

dude i’m so proud of you

we also won 

idk if u heard 

it wasnt easy either 

everything just always fucking goes wrong 

fucking pisses me off 

but oh well 

u know i dont even like texting 

idk how many messages ive sent u 

its gotta be hundreds atp 

insane shit on my part 

tf is wrong with me 

did u see the bracket

see u in the final 4 azzi 

April 2024 

i fucking told u 

i told you id see u in the final four

fucking meant it

fuck 

gonna kick yalls ass

revenge szn

we’re built different in march

cleveland here we fucking go 

but also

cant avoid me anymore 

i cant fucking wait to see you az  

***

UConn 87     UCLA 84 

There’s six seconds left to go and UCLA has control of the ball. The game today had been completely different from the on down in the Cayman Islands. That one had featured a UCLA team that had dominated from start to finish versus a UConn team still reeling from multiple injuries. This time around, UCLA seemed to have lost some of their shine and UConn had been on a tear. She would never give Paige the satisfaction of knowing it but her stupid goading, her incessant smirking because UConn seemed poised to win handedly, had gotten in Azzi’s head for most of the game. The fourth quarter had seen UConn enter with a 11 point lead that had held study until the last two and a half minutes when something had finally clicked for Azzi. 

“Told you, you should have fucking come to UConn,” Paige had sneered while casually dribbling the ball and that had been enough to break Azzi out of whatever funk she’d been in. All of her anger and frustration at Paige seemed to culminate into that one moment as she’d swiped the ball straight from Paige’s hands, narrowly avoiding a foul. An easy steal-and-score layup was followed by two signature three pointers, created by her team’s defence, and suddenly the lead had been cut down to three. On the other side, Muhl had been called for an offensive foul and immediately Coach Close had called for a timeout to advance the ball. 

When both teams get back on the court, Azzi, with her competitive streak in full control of her emotions, relishes in the way Paige’s face is contorted up in frustration. But it isn’t just this game that has Azzi irritated. Paige had been relentless since both teams had landed in Cleveland in trying to corner Azzi. She’d known it was gonna happen since she’d read the text but still Azzi had hoped that maybe the blonde would just let it go, would understand just how much Azzi didn’t want to have to deal with this. Because seeing Paige hurts. All the missing and yearning of the past few months seemed to have blended into this ball of tight hot pain that had burst the minute Paige had smiled at Azzi. She knows Paige means well, and it’s taking everything in her to ignore the part of her that’s secretly enamoured by how hard the point guard is trying finally, but Azzi just can’t do it again. She can’t let Paige in again and then spend every other second scared that Paige will run away again. 

The whistle blows and Charisma gets ready to inbound the ball. The play call had been to just get it to Azzi but it’s clearly one that UConn had anticipated, because she finds herself swarmed with Paige and Muhl both trying to make sure she doesn’t get the ball. Instead, it’s Kiki who gets the ball and the countdown starts, as Azzi fights to get herself free, running off of screens, to get herself open on the three point line. It takes too much time and they don’t have any more timeouts left. Kiki throws it inside to Lauren who misses the layup but gets her own rebound and somehow the ball finally finds its way into Azzi’s hands. And with barely a second left to go, and Paige’s hand firmly in her face, Azzi throws up a prayer. The arena goes deathly silent as the ball hits the back and then circles every inch of the rim before spilling over the edge and falling straight into Edwards’ hands. 

The crowd erupts in deafening cheers as the UConn bench rushes to the court, jubilantly hugging each other with Paige in the middle. Azzi blinks rapidly, refusing to be caught shedding a single tear on camera. Her teammates look distraught and Azzi feels disappointment curling into every crevice of her skin she’d almost had it. In the grand scheme of things she knows that, that shot would have only guaranteed overtime and not a win but still, it wouldn’t have meant a loss. And she knows this one isn’t completely on her either but it doesn’t mean that she doesn’t feel the burden of it on her shoulders any way. 

But despite it all, seeing Paige’s bright smile stretch all over her beaming face as she celebrates with her team, soothes the sting of the loss just a little bit. Azzi still remembers late night calls and Paige’s broken voice too well, her brain imprinted with the misery of a girl who had just wanted to play the sport she loved and couldn’t. And even if everything between them resembles the remnants of an earthquake, Azzi can’t help but be just a little bit happy for Paige. 

The handshake line is better this time around with no one being unnecessarily hostile. One team is too happy to care and when Muhl briefly hugs her, Azzi can’t help but be a little shocked by the affection. Her team is too despondent to be mad, and Angela briefly nods at Paige when shaking her hand, and gets a reassuring grin in return. Azzi has to force herself not to run away, if only for decorum’s sake, once she and Paige finally get to each other. Trying to keep herself steady, she reaches out her hand to counter Paige’s outstretched arms. The smile falls a little bit from Paige’s face as a more resigned expression takes its place. 

“Good game Bueckers,” Azzi manages to muster out. 

The last name stings but Paige does her best to not let it show, “good game Az.”

***

When there’s a knock on the door to her hotel room a little bit after 10pm, Azzi knows exactly who it is. The look that Charisma gives her as she goes to open it, suggests that she does too. 

“Oh thank fucking god, I thought maybe y’all left already,” and there it is, Paige voice echoing through her room and from where she’s perched on the edge of bed, her feet dangling over the side, Azzi catches a brief glimpse of the UConn point guard. 

“Had a little bit of a transportation issue. We’re not leaving til tomorrow morning,” Charisma explains, “what are you doing here Paige?”

Paige shuffles her feet nervously at the doorway, peering over Charisma’s frame in the doorway to catch sight of Azzi, “can I talk to Azzi?”

“First you kick my ass in the final four, and now you wanna kick me out of my own room?” Charisma asks, voice light but there’s an edge of seriousness to it. 

“I-uh-” 

“Az,” Charisma turns to Azzi with a questioning look, and Azzi sighs at having all the attention on her, “you wanna talk to her?”

Say no. Say yes. Her head fights with itself. And for the last few months, Azzi’s done well with listening to the logical part of her brain, diligently sticking to letting go. But that had only been easy to do because Paige hadn’t actually been there. Now that she is, with bright hopeful eyes fixed on Azzi, well, this time the emotional side wins out. She nods her head in yes at Charisma and Paige seems to glow all over. 

“You’re lucky it’s me and not Angela or Kiki or any of the other girls,” Charisma warns, “but I swear to god Bueckers if I come back and there’s a single tear-”

“Then you have my permission to fucking murder me,” Paige vows, her face a paragon of sincerity. 

Charisma nods once, stepping aside to let Paige in. The Bruin’s point guard looks at Azzi once more for confirmation and then, satisfied by the small smile Azzi shoots at her, she leaves the room, letting the door shut behind her. And then it’s just Paige and Azzi and the myriad of unspoken thoughts that seem to always linger between them. 

“Hi,” Paige says softly. 

Azzi stares up at her with tired eyes, “shouldn’t you be celebrating or something?”

“Still one more game to go. Gotta lock in for that first.”

“Then go do that. What are you doing here?”

Paige flinches at the harsh tone and Azzi feels a wave of guilt come over her. She doesn’t mean to be so hostile but she’s scared that if she gives in just a little, all of her will go tumbling down. 

“Sunday is the most important game of my life,” Paige says quietly. 

“I know- I know it means a lot to you.”

“It does,” Paige nods, as she takes a step forward, hesitating for a second, before she drags a foot stool over, so she can sit right in front of Azzi, “will you stay for it?”

“That’s not-,” Azzi sucks in a deep breath, her senses muddle by having Paige so close to her again, “I thought I was clear about- about us.’

“You were but I thought I was clear with my texts,” Paige counters. 

“Paige please.”

“I just-,” Paige pauses, leaning forward and staring intently at Azzi, “I don’t know how the national championship is gonna go. I don’t know if we’re gonna win or lose but I just- I know that no matter what happens, I want you there. Because if I’m gonna end up fucking crying, then I want it to be on your shoulder. And if I’m gonna end up celebrating, I want it to be in your arms. I just- I just want you there. With me. Always.”

Everything else floats away and for a moment, all Azzi knows is Paige, and the warmth that reverberates through her body at the earnestness in those words. If she could, she’d capture that feeling in a bottle and keep it forever. Because moments are fleeting. And when her brain catches up to her heart, and that voice in her head is back to echoing it won’t last, Azzi feels cold all over again. 

“You don’t believe me,” disappointment echoes in Paige’s voice; she’s always been a little too perceptive of Azzi’s emotions, “you think I don’t mean it?”

“I think you mean it now. I don’t think you’ll mean it forever,” Azzi shrugs. 

Paige is quiet, nerves on full display, as she cautiously reaches for Azzi’s hands with both of her own, an audible sigh of relief floating out of her lips when Azzi lets her. 

“I know I fucked up,” she begins quietly, thumb caressing Azzi’s palms, each trace sending jolts of electricy through the younger girl’s body, “like really fucked up and I get why you think that. I get why- why you’re so scared to believe me. And I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”

A teardrop rolls down Paige’s cheek, falling onto their intertwined hands, and Azzi feels herself flinch, her own eyes beginning to glisten. 

“If I could go back in time, I’d change so many fucking things. I’d go back to the beginning- back to your room the night before you went to LA and- and I’d tell myself to shut the fuck up. I’d tell you that I supported you- that I understood that you weren’t choosing UCLA over me- and I’d- I’d tell you that it didn’t matter how many fucking miles away from me you were- we’d survive it. But I can’t- I can’t change the past. I can’t change that we fought. I can’t change that- that I was a fucking idiot for ignoring you for a year. I can’t change that I was a dumbass for leaving that morning.”

Tears are freely streaming from both of their eyes now as they grip each other’s hands tightly. There’s something cathartic about finally being able to cry, about finally being able to mourn the loss of what could have been together.And it feels a little bit like healing. 

Paige looks up at Azzi through watery eyelashes as she continues to speak, her voice wrecked with emotion, “and I’m not gonna make promises about how I’ll never do shit to hurt you again because god knows I can be really fucking stupid.”

They let out simultaneous giggles at that and Azzi can feel something in herself unravelling. 

“But what I can promise is that if you let me, every day- every fucking day that I live- I will try. To not hurt you. To make it up to you. To fix this. To fix us. And I can promise, that I will never ever fucking run away from you again. I know- I know it’s gonna be hard but I swear- I fucking swear- that I will stay right here and face it with you.”

“Paige,” Azzi whispers helplessly. It’s everything she’s wanted to hear and it’s too much. The voices in her head are too loud again, screams of she’ll hurt you, she always does, let her go colliding with shouts of it’s Paige, it’s your Paige, hold on to her. 

“You said- you said you were tired of fighting alone but you never- you never have to do that again because- because I’m here now. Fuck- Azzi I’m here. And I know- I know there’s so much we have to talk about and so much we still have to fucking deal with. But we can do that- we can- we can deal with anything. Because it’s us. Paige and Azzi. We can do anything. Together.”

Paige presses her forehead to Azzi’s, pulling their interlocked hands to her chest. They’re breathing in sync and Azzi can feel the thrum of Paige’s heart beat against her fingertips. Azzi’s eyes close of their own accord, as Paige’s lips brush over hers, her next words coming out in a breathless whisper. 

“Believe in me- believe in us just one more time, please.”

[fairlyang]

Fun II 🕷️

ghostface!miguel having his way with you once again

w/c: 2.1K

pairing: ghostface!miguel x nerdyfem!reader

tags: 18+ smut. mention of murder, blood, knives. innocent reader, miguel is a perv, eating out, getting caught

part one

It took two full days for someone to find the bodies stacked on each other, given the frat house was huge and the guys only cleaned up the kitchen and living room.

But because the girls were in costumes and the guys told the police they had a Halloween party two days prior, it was physically impossible to find out who did it.

All they could really do was just have guards for them outside the frat house not knowing this was all done just for the killer to be with the one he loves.

And the cops specifically told them, no more parties. But what did the frat guys do anyway?

They threw a party on Halloween because of course they had to.

You were a hot mess and grieving terribly, two of your closest friends were murdered at the party they dragged you to, how were you suppose to feel?

Well according to your last remaining friend, why not go back to the murder scene for the Halloween party to have some fun?

You called her crazy to which she just waved you off and took you to a Halloween store to get a sexy costume.

You decided on Harley Quinn, with the "Daddy's lil monster" shirt and the half red half blue booty shorts. You decided to not go with the wig because they looked awful so you got some temporary pink and blue hair dye and prayed it'd be fine.

Meanwhile Miguel was preparing his ghostface attire for its final use while looking at his assortment of knives but keeping his buck 120 close to him.

It was finally time for the party, and you were all dressed up, hair up in two pigtails walking in with your friend who was in a Cat Woman outfit.

She immediately went off to do her own thing which bummed you out but there wasn't much you could do except go off to a quieter part of the house.

And with Miguel's luck he quickly saw her go into a room with a guy. Only makes his job easier.

He followed them and waited outside, just a good thirty seconds before opening the door and closing it shut before sneaking up on them already making out, somehow unaware of his presence.

He hopped on top of the bed pulled the man by his shirt and stabs him in the back. He spat out blood on top of your friend and right before she was about to scream, Miguel took the knife out and leaned forward, stabbing her tongue.

Her mouth made gurgling noises, still attempting to scream but just making herself choke on her own blood instead. He pulls his knife out and gets off the bed, stabbing boy toy once more for good measure before cleaning off his knife with the dude's shirt and walking towards the door.

He opens it and quickly closes it, before stuffing the knife into his robe pocket. He then walks off, moving past bodies in search for wherever you were hiding this time.

He walked all over the place, not finding you. He even checked off to the backyard with no luck.

He then stopped and walked over to the study room because surely there wouldn't be anyone in here.

He opens the door and of course there you were. He sighs and you look up with a puzzled expression prompting him to take his mask off, "Just me pretty girl." He says, waving his mask before closing the door shut.

"Hi Miguel!" You greet sweetly and give him a little wave.

His heart beat rapidly and he knew there was nothing from stopping him from being with you now. You could be all his.

"Abandoned again angel?" He pouts and you shrug as he walks close to you, admiring your costume.

How tightly the shirt fit and how those shorts were barely covering anything. Your thighs looked so gorgeous against that leather couch and there was nothing more he wanted them to be between them.

"Getting used to it by now." You joke making him chuckle as he takes a seat next to you.

"You look as gorgeous as ever." He says as he takes a seat right next to you, letting his leg barely touch yours.

"Thank you! Came as ghostface again huh?" You say turning your body to face him, crossing a leg over the other driving him insane.

"Yeah didn't feel like getting a new costume. What don't like masked killers?" He says as he looks at how those pigtails looked.

How pretty they would look in his hands while you su-

"I feel like everyone's a masked killer nowadays! Maybe Superman would've looked good on you." You answer innocently not thinking of how Miguel would take this compliment.

"Not as the joker then?" He whispers in your ear, wrapping his right arm over your shoulder.

You felt your face heat up as he grazed along your skin, memories coming back from the last time he caught you alone. How his fingers felt.

"M-maybe as the joker." You mumble, looking down at your boots to avoid his gaze, feeling suddenly shy and like wanting to hide.

"You're just so sweet." He whispers and leaves a soft kiss below your ear making your heart race.

"And so pretty." He murmurs leaving another kiss and bringing his left hand down to your thigh.

You gasp as he squeezes but quickly bite your lip, too embarrassed to say anything. "Y'know I haven't stopped thinking of you. I never do honestly." He admits, nibbling on your ear gently before pulling away and continuing, "but after last time it's been even worse."

"W-Why?" You stutter, eye fluttering as his left hand caresses your thighs gently while his right was trailing along your neck.

"Because I might be falling in love with you angel." He murmurs making you shake and almost let out a whimper.

His left hand was rubbing circles against your inner thigh as his right was nearing your right breast. "M-me? Why me?" You stutter and he sighs.

"It's always been you pretty girl, your friends just didn't want you near me for some reason." He says and leaves more kisses down your neck as you breathed heavily.

"S-Said you were p-picky." You mumble and lean your head back as his hands get closer to where you needed them.

"They lied." He spat before clearing his throat, "they didn't know me."

"But I'd love for you to get to know me." He says, now coming back up to look at you.

You bite your lip innocently thinking of what to say but for Miguel it only made his cock grow hard especially with the way your eyes were looking at him. God he needed you.

"What do ya say pretty girl?" He whispers, hoping for best case scenario if not he did all those murders for nothing.

You slowly nod making him grin, taking his left hand from your thighs and brings it up to cup your cheek. Your cheeks were rosy and your eyes had a new tint in them. Arousal?

His assumption was answered when you squeezed your thighs together and looked away from him. He looked down at your thighs and nearly groaned, you were already driving him so crazy. Unknowingly too.

He leans in, kissing you so gently as if you'd break if he were to full on make out with you. You kissed back and melted into his touch, practically fitting between his arm perfectly. Like you were made for him.

And as much as he wanted to take it slow with you and at your own pace he needed to taste you.

So he pulled away and let go of you making you pout, stinging his heart for a few seconds while he dropped down to his knees in front of you. You gasped as he reached up to undo your shorts with haste, "M-Miguel-"

You lift yourself up and he slides them off all the way down. He then spreads your legs apart making you whine while he salivated looking at your pair of red lacy panties. He looked up at you and you had such an innocent look on your face, almost needy.

He could tell you needed his mouth just as much as he needed to taste you. And he wasn't going to wait for confirmation.

He leaned in and left a soft kiss on your clit making you whimper and buck your hips up, poor girl already needing more.

So he gave it you.

He went down and licked up your clothed slit until he got to your clit and with a swift motion moves your panties to the side and starts sucking on your clit voraciously making you cry out above him.

He wrapped his arms around your thighs and went down to get a better taste and you were so soaked, he had barely touched you and you had drenched your panties. My perfect girl, he thought to himself as he lapped at your folds and brought a hand down to his hard on.

You brought your hands down to his hair as you felt new sensations you've never felt before and were deeply glad it was Miguel who was making you feel good.

Even after all your friend's wanting you somehow ended up with a little crush on him. Because of their words you didn't think it would ever be mutual and kept away. Clearly they lied with the way he was practically eating you out like a starved man.

Your hands gripped onto his curls while he moaned against your pussy, never having tasted anything so sweet and perfect. You tasted better than he remembered and he's happy his plan worked for the better.

"Miguel — feels s-so good-" you moan and buck your hips into his mouth.

He brings his hand to your pussy and goes back up to suck on your clit while he teased your hole with his finger. You whimpered and your poor cunt squeezed against thin air as he'd pull his finger away at the perfect moment.

"Miguel please- I promise I'll be your good girl again." You whimper making him groan against you.

Those dirty words coming from such a sweet innocent girl. He was falling even harder.

He slipped two fingers inside, your walls gripping them as he slowly pumped them inside you. "Fuck!" You cry out and lay your head back to the couch.

He then stops moving and let's you adjust as you pleased before he slowly started pumping them inside you, wanting to prep you because he needed to be inside you tonight.

He flicked your clit with the tip of his tongue while his digits started fucking you faster only increasing your moans and how tightly you'd hug his fingers. His good girl.

You let out more moans along with dirty words which only made his pants feel tighter and his pace increasing. He wanted to see you on your knees so fucking badly. You'd look even prettier with his cock in your mouth. Probably won't be able to take all of him given your inexperience but he wants to teach you and be your first everything.

He hadn't even realized how long he was thinking of everything he wanted to do with you until he felt you clenching against his fingers and you were crying out that you needed to cum.

He pulled away from your clit and murmured, "Cum for me pretty girl I've got you."

You nodded and whimpered as your orgasm hit you hard and left your entire body shaking as Miguel continued fucking your poor cunt until your creamy juices spilled out of you.

He stopped and pulled his fingers out of you slowly, and moved his head back to look at you, so pretty and breathing heavily. Poor girl.

He left a kiss to your thigh before fixing your panties when suddenly the door opens and he almost grabs his knife to throw it at whoever opened the door but opts against it. You gasped and tried to cover yourself but Miguel got you covered as he quickly sat on the couch, covering your body before yelling, "look at her and I'll kill you!"

Your poor body was so fucked out already but as soon as you heard the door shut you went back to reality. "M-Maybe we stop there." You say quietly and he turns around to look at you before leaning down to grab your shorts off the floor.

"That's alright with me angel." He says and kisses your cheek before turning back around to let you put on your shorts.

[yandere-wishes]

oooh so you liked Qimir and the big scary Sith lord separately at first? and then we find out they're the same character

I wonder what were you feeling that moment (except for horny excitment I guess) (0% condemnation, 100% understanding)

Anon, my babe, my darling, I was DOWN BAD for both men!! I had 99 scenarios going for them. We're talking separate fics, poly fics, a million different scenarios, and all the AUs you can imagine. I needed both of them SO BAD. Trust me when I say I DREAMED of being sandwiched between. 😫😫

I was also a very proud "Qimir is the Sith" denier. I was convinced he was the "real" acolyte. But (and this further proves my obsession) I had a whole bunch of AUs planned just in case Qimir ended up being just some guy.

One Au was that the master eventually (for lack of better options) ends up taking Qimir as his apprentice and both of them have a "good cop, bad cop" relationship with the reader. W/ Qimir being the sweet goofball puppy dog lover who will kill for the reader if she just asks. The Master would be the big scary lover who has the reader TERRIFIED but also has her feeling things.

Sorry, I'm getting off-topic! You're 100% right about the euphoric high I got during ep 6 with the reveal. I was foaming at the mouth, squealing my head off, and rolling around in bed!! I just couldn't believe that puppy dog Qimir was THE Sith (despite everyone else having already guessed😆😆). All I was thinking during the chase scene (and choke scene) was I WANT TO BE MAE SO BAD!!

I will admit one thing (albeit I deny it intensely) there was a tiny part of me that was a little bit disappointed that they were the same guy. Since that meant my dreams of cuddling TWO fearsome Sith lords were crushed. But it's okay, Qimir more than makes up for it. And I love him so much 🥰🥰 Plus there is always hope that maybe he'll have a hot master we'll meet in season 2.

[swellsha]

I saw ur Prime Defenders villain au and I’m so curious about it, it seems so interesting and fun and I wanna know everything!!! Where is it different from the what if? How did the ghostkicks & polypd happen? Tell me everything :)! Also love ur design for Kota I love his long hair 👀!

ahh tysm for asking!! SO theres a lot different, i suppose i should go character by character

(tw for some pretty dark themes)

to start with will. (in this au uses they/them) they are pretty similar to the oneshot except i made up backstory stuff because i can!! part of it is that they cant feel any pain and never have been able to, so theyve always been fascinated by the power pain has over people and what it can make them do, especially given they dont really know what it feels like. their backstory is similar to normal william wisp except theyre more power hungry and start to use their abilities to take the power from the creatures they and the unwitness protection program find. theyre ... not exactly chill w that and the group breaks up. will starts to withdraw themself more and more and listen to the voices in their head telling them they should totally just kill everyone and eventually theyre like "wow yeah i should kill everyone!!" so one day during church they use their powers we saw in the one shot which lets them make everyone have an insatiatble bloodlust and basically cause a slaughter and they run off. given they didnt exactly hide it very well theyre arrested when they arrive at rockfall and taken to the supermax

tldr: wills obsession with pain and power goes A Tad Bit Too Far and they end up in jail.

as for kota (she/her in this au) she has always been a bit feral. ill try and make this explanation shorter but basically every adult that shouldve taken care of her died and she took that as a sign that she just wasnt good enough for them, that they didnt want her. she went into the care system and saw kids who had powers always being chosen over her. she even begged ms g (who she later came to sort of blame for her parents death) to take her in and train her but ms g didnt take her seriously becuase she was only a kid with no powers and rejected her. in a kind way, but it still stung. due to this kota began to grow to hate superheroes and just the world in general, viewing herself as an outcast to the world. being about 8 years old she decided the logical thing to do is run away to the woods to be raised by wolves. however instead of wolves shes found by grandma cole (who is more evil in this au) and trains under her and master cole. being an edgy kid she calls him master kill which is where her name comes from. they treat her terribly but tell her that she needs them and they love her and noone will treat her better. when shes 18 grandma cole falls seriously ill and while kota is out getting firewood she dies. except not from the illness...(oo mystery mystery intrigue intrigue) kota runs to the nearby rockfall city and totally pushes that girl off that building on purpose. however when theyre found ppl still assume kota was trying to save her and she undergoes the same surgery. however the surgeon is also evil because everyone must be and also puts a whole demon in her as well as the heart. anyway she wakes up kills everyone leaves gets arrested and taken to Rockfall supermax.

(i said id make this one shorter but wow it really wasnt huh)

as for virion, (any prns in this au) hes the closest to canon. he alsp falls thru the portal and gets ppl in her head exvept this time doesn't just kill a theif but also a bunch of cops too and is taken to the supermax! wow that one was short and sweet

ashe (she/her) hates how powerless her upbringing has made her. she resents the world from afar and the only time shes entertained is when awful shit happens. the only time she has ever felt in control of her own life is when the trickster took her over and totally killed her mum! ironic because she wasnt even the 1 in control there lol. she loves the power the trickster gives her and begins to study it more and more. im sure that wont go badly.

when theyre in the supermax (ashe is the only one not there) they all become a sort of gang and meet tide, and they work together to escape. this is where ghostkicks starts except kota is too thick to realize she has some sort of feelings for them and william is scared of the potential feelings and pushes them down. kota basically becomes williams guard dog lol. kota doesnt like virion cuz she feels hes taking will away from her. after they escape they start to work under the lambert brothers (who are also all evil here) and also with ashe. they call themselves the "prime offenders" lol. they burn down the base of the prime defenders (who in this au is doug, cantrip and le frog) to try and capture wavelength

as for ghostknife, their dynamic is similar to in canon except william is somehow more weird about it. idk how better to explain it

pizzarat (virion and kota) is one sided (at first, anyway) because virions falls for kota after she beats him in physical combat which i feel is a very virion thing to do. kota continues to dislike them but xey keep trying to show how devoted they are to her and eventually kota starts to trust her more

WOW thats a lot huh!! i apologize for how damn much that was and i haveny even talked about the prime defenders or their siblings, xavier and alan, the lambert brothers or what wavelengths and tides whole deal is here

thanks so much for asking!!

[harlequinoccult]

ok well w that answer to my last ramble i hope you won't mind me coming back and rambling MORE-

the thing with Ariel "Vulpine" Fox (remember i said he has a Thing w foxes? his surname might have smth to do w that) is that, at his core, he is not a character that really fits into the vibes of slsq. and i love putting my ocs into Situations where they Do Not Really Fit In, because it forces me to think outside the box and go "ok, but what if they find themselves in that Situation anyway? how do i work with that while still keeping their character mostly intact?". and the mix of slsq and Vulpine is just * chefs kiss * especially delicious to me, bc Ariel always had a few screws loose, but he's always been a bit too level-headed to really lean into his innate madness, and slsq gives me the opportunity to really fuck with him and i love that-

Ariel's whole Thing is really that he's the perfect vigilante character. he would never make the profile of a serial killer. a killer, yes, oh he has no problem with killing you see, but it's usually done with some greater objective in mind. even in slsq im sure he's going to be extremely picky with his victims. the thing that really sets him off and makes him believe Murder Is Ok is injustice. because unfortunately for him, Ari has an unparalleled amount of empathy, which causes him to make some... contradictory decisions during his life. really, it all depends on who has earned his wrath. he will never kill poor people or people in need, in fact he usually goes out of his way to help them every single time, but put a cop in front of him and they're going to have the most slow, painful, cruel death possible.

there might be exceptions to the "no killing poor ppl/ppl in need" rule tho, if the person in question is an abuser who does nothing but inflict suffering on others and poison the local community with their toxicity. funnily enough, Carter fits the profile of Ariel's victims fucking perfectly, im honestly still thinking of a reason why he didn't kill Carter sooner other than "he didn't have enough time to do it". other people he'll definitely go after is the rich and corrupt politicians, which, not the best decisions for his anonymity or his safety, but if he's gonna get killing you bet your ass he'll try to cause some form of change while at it.

another thing he hates, has always hated and always will, is abuse of authority (which is why in his mind a good cop is always a dead cop). he has a general problem w authority even without the abusing part, especially hates when he's stripped of his autonomy and forced to do smth against his will (he IMMEDIATELY hates The Host on principle, and its going to get worse from here). he's always been a brat over being ordered around, even if he HAS to do what he's being told to do he's going to do it HIS way and fuck you if you have a problem w that. what matters is that he got the job done, isnt it? (i genuinely dont know how Carter managed to put up w him, those two together is a TERRIBLE mix)

most of all this does have to do w how he grew up, really. Ari is cannonically british (by which i mean, in my head he has a rlly subtle posh british accent that gets stronger the angrier he gets, which is even funnier to me bc the angrier he gets the more he swears and it usually involves a lot of FOCK and FOCKIN' and BLOODY being thrown around. like i get why OD would enjoy riling him up i rlly do-) which doesn't rlly have that much impact into his slsq story bc im not british and ik nothing abt britain but he is an immigrant and that's a lil bit important. to me. anyway-

he grew up in a very poor, very religious community somewhere in monarchy land (england), and was an extremely difficult, some would even say demonic, child. he's always had anger issues but it was MUCH worse when he was little (growing up he learns to deal w them to the point that getting him actually, truly angry without touching on what triggers him is extremely hard. good luck OD, his reaction to your annoying ass is mostly gonna be a sigh and a twitch of his fingers). his religious trauma, unlike w OD, has nothing to do w surviving catholic school (he went to a public school, somehow managed to be a massive nerd AND a delinquent at the same time, always had the highest notes of his class and was still despised by the teachers for being "disrespectful") and more w growing up surrounded by extremely religious people and realizing quite soon that praying did nothing to help w the systematic oppression they all were being crushed by. it only got worse when he started questioning the teachings of the church, growing more frustrated as he tried to get his peers to "see reason", and finally lost all hope when he went through his second exorcism (first one happened whem he was still very small, which im sure didn't fuck him up in any way whatsoever). has never entered a church since then, still knows some prayers that were burned into his brain and he can't forget no matter how hard he tries, genuinely believes that god never existed and if he did then he's fucking dead, and has a fascination w satanic symbols to this day that will probably never go away.

he had a somewhat mixed reputation growing up. in his tween years, he used the fact that he was considered "demonic" when little to scare and fuck with people who otherwise might have caused him problems. he got into constant fights in his childhood and his teen years, both because bullies would wrongly assume he'd be an easy target and then get punched and bitten and scratched until they cried, or because he was trying to protect someone else from being bullied. soon figured out that just not engaging unless someone else threw the first punch was a good way to de-escalate situations and keep him from getting in too much trouble (since he wouldn't be the one who "started it"), which was what made him begin to develop his stoic attitude. he started learning to control his anger because the people he wanted to protect were scared of him bc of his tendency to lash out, and because he realized that being in control of his emotions meant that he would fuck up less in high stress situations and make it easier to calm the people around him as well.

he got in constant trouble w the local authorities, being continuously searched and brought into the police station for a p big list of petty crimes (vandalism, theft, underage drinking, drug use, trespassing, public indecency, etc), but noticed that he was treated much more leniently than his POC friends who did much less shit than he did. which was also when his hatred for cops solidified.

life wasn't easy on him. he did a lot of questionable shit to get by, and he knows a lot of people in the same situations as him, so his morals are extremely gray as a consequence of it. he's not going to judge you for doing a bad. everyone does what they can to survive and survival is not a noble thing. he's extremely lenient w things that most ppl find unacceptable, and has a very clear understanding in his mind that everything is situational. which is why murder can be ok, and cannibalism can be ok, and any number of horrible things humans do can be justifiable and acceptable no matter what society says.

so he's not going to judge anyone on the cast of slsq for doing the things they do if they can justify it. but i can also very clearly see him killing the ones that do it just for the sake of it. with one exception: he will never murder the one he loves.

which is why i am sooooo excited to pair him up w OD, the one that kills p much without discrimination, and watch all the loopholes he forms in his mind to try and justify to himself why he's turning a blind eye to someone killing innocent people. he might try to nudge OD into having a smidge more of a standard, but if OD threatens to leave bc of it or gets too annoyed he's dropping it in a second. who knows, maybe OD is the one who might be able to convince him to drop the good guy "act" instead. who needs morals when you have love amirite?

i wouldn't say Vulpine is a yandere (there's too much effort to make sure that he and his loved one(s) are equals in every possible way for that i think), but with the borderline unhealthy, undying, nearly desperate devotion he develops for the ppl he falls for i think it's a pretty close thing tbh. he would do anything for his lover. anything. and he expects nothing in return. he just wants them to be happy, no matter what.

anyway uuuuhh there's so much more i can say abt Vulpine, i didnt even touch on his relationship w substance abuse or when he got arrested or his family, but this is already enormous, so have some specific slsq stuff instead (all of this is p much slsq specific tbh, Ari's backstory changes a lot depending on what story i decide to put him next, but some plot beats and traumas always stay the same): his mask of choice is similar to Cold's, a blank black mask, and his weapon of choice is a hunting knife. his specialty is informant (i was very tempted to make him a jack of all trades, bc one of his main characteristics is his adaptability, but i could NEVER envision him accepting doing that much for Carter. he would rather die), as mentioned previously his personality type is going to be apathetic w a side of caustic (still dont know if that's the right name but oh well), his clothing style is punk and practical and he wore ripped jeans for this bc he didn't know what he was getting himself into and he's soooo mad he didn't wear his cargo pants instead. he's actually kinda similar to Cold when it comes to superficial personality traits (stays quiet and observant most of the time, stealth killer, has a whole thing going on w shadows and anonymity and the mask, also exudes a intimidating aura that often scares people and gives him negative charisma. another reason he's not a jack of all trades is bc he'd make for an AWFUL bait)

and when in deep romance, if OD keeps trying to annoy him, he'll just kiss them to shut them up. it might just end up encouraging that kind of behavior long therm, but it works as a short therm solution so he doesn't rlly care-

(pt 1.)

Oh there is so much I could say that would veer into major spoilers for Overdose's route and beyond.

The Caustic personality is cynical, bitter, and sarcastic. Aggressive options will be separate and compatible with every personality type (aggressive doormats have been...interesting to write. imagine the most neurotic chihuahua-)

And concerning mc and Carter....there aren't a lot of job opportunities in Newcreed that aren't y'know, soul crushing drudgery, no matter what your relationship with Carter was, it was enough to pay rent if mc lived alone, or enough to afford necessities if they lived with the bastard.

And getting into Newcreed itself, The city is rotten. Crime rate is so high and the mayor doesn't do shit, the police don't do shit and the roads are fucked, but hey, expansive public transit and rent is low as hell. A lot of people immigrate to Newcreed (Cold and Sweetheart and his family are examples of this) because its a cheap place to live and the barriers for employment are little to none.

[sleepynegress]

On the show FOUND...

I just watched this show and I have thoughts. It's a typical procedural, -TV junk food in the same comfort space as 9-1-1 or the Equalizer (new thing to solve every ep while progressing the characters' stories), but it has some curves... The premise is this guy kidnapped the lead as a girl (no SA, but *definite* grooming) and she escapes, but now keeps him chained in the basement (unbeknownst to everyone else) to help solve her cases so she can rescue other abduction victims. Yeah. Very clearly purposefully dipping in that toxic and fucked up "darkfic" ish loosely inspired by Silence of the Lambs. Seriously... that kidnapper dude is called "Sir". That definitely raises an eyebrow in today's purity culture-heavy era and it's another anti-procedural procedural (like the Equalizer) in that it veers off and subverts the typical cops as heroes and often marginalized people as "villains"), both the pilot and the latest ep spotlight the fact of cops neglect of certain kinds of disappeared people (black girls and sex workers). It's a risk... that seems to have paid off in the short-run, as it's Peaock's biggest debut since it's launch. EVERYONE in the main cast is BIPOC (including one character w/ a mental disability and another who is also part of the alphabet crew) except for Kelli Williams (so far) from the 2000's show, The Practice, whom I've missed seeing... and Brett Dalton.

As an aside, I am fascinated by a good chunk of Mark-Paul Gosselaar's recent roles. I just wonder what kinds of things white-presenting multi-/biracial folks see, hear, and experience from people who presume they are white. -And I wonder if his earliest experiences playing Zach Morris (as a child and being required to dye his hair blonde to better pass) has influenced his adult choices to be in media with non-white leads. Seriously, The Pitch, Mixedish, The Passage, and this-, Found... He did say he almost quit acting after they canceled The Pitch, he was so attached to that show. I want some entertainment reporter of color to really talk to him about it. I also love that a dark-skinned woman gets to lead this and have the "desire" drama, and be purposefully painted as attractive while strong. That's Shanola Hampton of Shameless. Too often it's a certain kind of "SBW" box that does not allow for black women, especially of a certain age and skintone, to be seen as anything beyond respected, intelligent survivors, and leaders.

And if there's any kind of desire or attraction entangled in that (which is becoming more frequent) it gets picked apart and *she* does often too... even at times by other black women; see: the lashing Olivia Pope got and Shonda for writing her, despite that being the genre (I have my theories on why that is, i.e. some black women are stuck in internalized black church misogyny/purity...but I digress). All this to say, this Hannibal/Clarice thing with a twist is interesting... but it's a hard line to walk, especially these days and especially in this comfort food procedural space. But I'm intrigued by the gumption.

[cateyedfox36]

In this house we KNOW Jason Voorhees did nothing wrong

we watched Jason 2 last night- I'm sorry Friday the 13th part II is too long a title, they're about Jason being a very good boy so they're called Jason movies. Period.- and now I kinda want to watch all of them. Except that crappy one. Where he's Corey Feldman's character all grown up and he thinks he's Jason? And there's this really weird keystone cops vibe to the whole thing? Idk. That ones bad.

But the best one - besides Jason in Space and Jason vs Freddy- is the one where the kids are at camp and these children have hilarious glorious lines like "what did you want to grow up to be?" Bc they just accept that Jason is going to murder them too.

Without looking anything up, I'm pretty sure I can do all the Jason movies. Let's go:

Momma voorhees. Great sweater, excellent momBob, and you get to see Kevin Bacons Bits if you know when to pause the movie. 3.75 stars. Not funny, kinda off vibes

Jason in a bag. He's a very clumsy boy, falls off a whisker chair, is confused by a small dog (who does not die!), and is hit by a car like twice. He only kills like what 6 people on screen? And we get BEST final girl Ginny, who takes a chainsaw to our soft prince, and mind mojos him to think his momma is alive. 5 outta 5 stars! Some nice boobs, creep dies strung up like the perv his is and Jason is mu sweetest baby boi.

Behold, a hockey mask. Much better for peripheral and way more sensibly than a FUCKING BAG! Jason finds a house with stupid horny teens- or college kids? I'm never certain- and another with a newly divorced mom, her slightly sassy daughter and a young monster obsessed Corey Feldman. Pretty good kills, the dog laters out to go join a wolf pack (run by muffin obs), and Corey Feldman gives himself a bad haircut to bond with our big headed hero,Jason. 4.25 outta 5. Funny, more agile Jason, and I had no sympathy for the college idiots who died epically.

The fucking worst. I think they were trying for a Legacy Jason bc he definitely "died" in 3. So elder teen Corey Feldman thinks he's Jason and at the POORLY run TROUBLED TEEN camp he goes to someone starts killing folks. I vaguely remember the actual killer but... who cares. This is the worst. 1 star.

Again w all adulted Corey (reminder not thr actor but the character, but who bothers to remember their names?) Digs up Jason's body, it gets struck by lightning and He's Back! I think this is the one with the biker gang. And the sheriff's daughter has a taste for danger and breaks not-corey out to defeat Jason. 2.5 stars. I think there was an rv death? But a fun scene in a barn!

Jason's not dead, just napping and when he ends up in a morgue his heart infects a doctor who becomes... jason...? It's odd. You guys remember Nightmares on Elm st dream Child? I think it's like that. 2 stars. Fucked if I remember anything from this movie. This is where I get a little shaky

Jason back at camp baby! I think this is the one with the funny kids. And it's just a really straight forward slasher. No lore, no stupid shit just bad counselors getting what they deserve for not watching children. 3.9 stars. Best part is the kids

Jason on a boat. He was in Manhattan for like 10minutes. He kills a kid with a guitar, and the inside of boats are very dangerous. No lore. 3.75 stars

Is there a Jason 9? I don't fucking know but I do know there's...

Jason in SPAAAACEE! And it's amazing. A ship full of med students find Jason cryogenically frozen and a woman as well. They defrost both, murder hijinx ensue. Jason becomes a cyborg. And they completely miss shooting him into the sun. It's so stupid and so good and I love my son! 5 billion stars! Lore? Who needs lore when you've got a cyborg jason?!

Jason vsFreddy. The best team up full stop. With Jason's relentless desire to punish bad teens and Freddy's pervy ass? Forget about it. Nice lore, and the addition of seeing how happy Jason is in his death is perfection. 5 outta 5 stars. Look yes, Jason's gonna kill you, he'll have fun with it, but he won't sexually assault you while doing it.

conclusion: the middle ones suck. Skip them. Watch 2, 3, Jason in Space and Jason vs Freddy.

[heleizition]

u cannot just present me with gold right when i have to go to bed. i have a sleep schedule to keep to! for health! and sanity! and brain! i love them so much. ur ocs. i love twin characters, so many dynamics and all are good. the art is also just -wants to squeeze- affectionately. who were they in their past lives? is josephines 'i failwd to protec' a thing that also happened in past life? bunny person very good. love how expressive the ears can get. also cute. i think i watched the first ep of d.gray man way way back?? or the first few? i have very little memory of it but a vague plan to get back to that sometime. angel love, angel life, angel delight. the concept of god being a baby of a big species of gods is -chefs kiss- love it. sleep tiiiime, sleep well when u do byeeeee

HEHEHEHE >:3 im evil .

i looooove siblings dynamics........... so so much ........... both chronos & nath and then nell & belly weren't even twins at first it just Happened lmao... chronos & nath were almost the same character in two different stories and i couldnt decide who to keep lmao and then belly was supposed to be nell's little sister he ran from after she saw him kill their father (to protect her) (nell is an idiot) but . it jst happened. anyway

SO THEIR PAST LIVES.

The group of oc is composed of many i havent introduced yet but the major ones are here i think except my Bad Guy. so keep in mind the story is cringy and bad lmao but i still like it to this day...

post apocalyptic earth where humans live under domes bc the outside is too toxic + technology evolved so now cyborgs exist + a while back some government doctors & scientists were working in a secret lab to implants animal genes w humans to make hybrids & something about genetic preservation whatever whatever. anyway.

eve is the protagonist. she's the only daughter of head doctor of that hybrid lab. it exploded 20 years ago which cause people inside that specific dome to mutate into hybrids (people woke up to agonizing pain bc their body was breaking and morphing and it wasn't made for that. josephine was one of those people ! she was a wolf hybrid :3)

we follow eve and her then group of friends until for some reasons (<==== guy who does not remember what that plot point was) the dome had to be evacuated. something about a deadly virus ? ofc as always the rich people got away first until the dome got closed off completely <3 . eve meets several people including chronos (human guy, future bf, hes a simp) maria & arthur (yes i will draw them at some point OTL) and they stick together to survive as the inside of the dome is becoming a battleground. doesn't help that part of the reason the dome was closed off so quick was that ~mafia~ (idk how else to call it, its not rly mafia tho oTL) boss stanislas was in here and has always escaped the government's assassination attemps thus far.

SO this virus slowly contaminate everyone but its slow and rots you from inside. terrible deadly soulcrushing. + stanislas is using every means he has to try to control the city & find a way out. except ex cop and also ex girlfriend jo (josephine) is here to basically kill him lol (he broke her trust & her heart and also killed a lot of people and revenge is her whole life). josephine at first is a lone wolf (haha) until she gets very badly injuried and ends up in a small alley where eve & her friends took quarters. they get her inside and find a way to keep her alive. also at this point the group has also met gabriel ! (bunny guy! he has a tragic past and i love him. hes my mary sue) and stephan ! (his not yet boyfriend who also has a tragic past and that jo feels very guilty about). gabriel used to be a test subject in the hybrid lab. he and eve used to know each other :] they are best friends now.

at the same time nath (who was supposed to be dead) shows up like hiiiiiiiiiiiii btw im here (hes one of stan's agent but when he was supposed to die he actually survived and got turned into a cyborg with special modification in his brain which makes him obey. but he did not Forget and he will fight what stan makes him do <3)

SO um after they all meet its basically just. a fight to survive and also moments where they're like. oh we're gonna die here. lets party so hard.

stan also realises he doesn't rly have a way out and dedicates himself to ending his and jo's fight for good this time which also put eve's group in danger since jo . stuck around . there are casualties which is why she feels she failed them..................

anyway . there are more stuff but its rly all over the place soobssss im sowwyyyy

LOOOVE D.gray man . one of my first and favorite manga if u ever get the chance to pick it up for a bit longer to see if u enjoy it ... yeah .....

[firespirited]

Vague indefinable under the weather thing became a very defined half way down the head divide sinusitis mid morning.

It wasn't as easy to spot because there's just been ongoing 'ouch' of the head and face due to the neck issues but yeah you can actually see the swollen sinuses and that clear divide down the head is unmistakable. I really should have worn my mask on walks even though I don't approach anyone (except bully cops I guess) to avoid the pollen.

Then again, funny thing I went out with Sis this morning, it was cold so we were wearing masks for cold and the woodfires which give you a good lungful of nasty and we got lectured by a rando about how unnecessary it all is and how much money 'they' have made off this

and how his latest booster made him feel sick even though by his own admission he got covid the last time he went unmasked in public earlier this year.

I just cheerfully pointed out that the vaccine hurts less than the infection, masks are useful for more than just covid and thanked him profusely for doing his civic duty of masking in public transport and shops as an immunocompromised person. But like, dude, we have two really cute dogs and the weather's been interesting, half the country's protesting now that the government have shown they'd rather throw away democracy and our freedom of expression than tax a few corporations a little better (it is literally so little money that we could make buying back your own company stock from excessive profits illegal and collect double what's needed for pensions from just this year. The insistance that pensions must be funded by workers with no corporate or government help is stupid, the math indicated we won't be in the red til 2030 so tax some billionaires already, they can protest live in Monaco or Luxembourg (and get super bored and crawl back) if they insist on not leaving france's luxuries to far behind...

Oh look there so much to talk about that I got derailed (not that it takes much LOL) but mr man had to scold us for being silly gooses for wearing masks and tell us his incoherent but important thoughts on the matter. I know I'm probably contagious with a bad cold right now, didn't get to work that into the conversation though. Sis talked about how much more she's able to enjoy nature as an asthmatic since masks though so that was nice. We shot eachother a lot of subtle side eyes especially when he casually dropped that half the party he went to unmasked got horribly sick from that party.

If you feel like that dude, please do try different mask types and mask comfort aids. Everybody has to find what they can wear for long periods without pain. For me it's a China made K95, straps in the back, changed every hour so the sweat doesn't chafe my skin but I have to be really careful to not end up with an inperceptible flow of hot wet air straight into my right eye. Sis likes the fish shaped k94. Doc uses a duck shape for minimal face chafing.

I've put a few things on hold til my health gets slightly better. I really want to rework the neck on the lovely 1/6 bjd Maleficent sent and then paint her not with human blushing but like she's part of a crockery set. The one great auntie Francis left us a few years ago is a gold trimmed fruit motif and blue china is pretty but already done so I was thinking more along the lines of something with strawberries because I love her porcelain paleness and a strawberry motif would allow me to keep the face simple and stylized. (writing this down because ideas do sometimes spark during the SADS but I often completely forget them).

Jewel Richie had an 'incident' in the post and has been undeliverable since Thursday but amazon doesn't open the refund/rebuy options til tomorrow. I'll have to decide then. The vagueness of 'incident' made me think OK, maybe the roads/trains were blocked but the 'cannot be delivered' kind of implies the package got smashed up or in the same truck as idk a bottle of ink or something.

I think it's maybe why I had a doll dream, I imagined a rainbow high rolling into a roadside somewhere after someone forgot to properly shut the van doors or something.

Then again, I spent most of last night talking over (with my own brain) how the Shoah probably 'killed' Gd (mine the xian god who is supposed to have a personal relationship with people, not necessarily anyone else's - i can explain in detail if anyone is interested, the law of free will wasn't broken other xian specific things were) for me to an imaginary rabbi questioner (he was very nice, if pushing further than I dared to talk, in the daydream and had experience with christianity in the form of evangelicalism so I didn't have to explain certain concepts that are absolutely not in the Talmud and not really the new testament either.) and really felt my shame that a genocide unrelated to me shook a faith (xianity) that's a disrespectful sect of their faith. Nevertheless I was 10, and the idea that the gospels weren't the symmetrical conclusion to the Talmud was never in question and even considered blasphemy if I ever brought it up. I was such a different person by 14 then 16 facing it again. To think I thought jewish people were as brainwashed as I was into the belief that martydom is a noble death. Yeah I mentioned the nice fever dream about the dolls because many times sick musings end up in 'the roads not taken' , existential crises and lists of people who probably took years off my life. Fun stuff.

Lily is picking up this march, she is happy and well. I think she may have had a tough winter but for 14 she is very fit and still very much a mischief, she's started doing her upside-down dances, asking for fuss and thieving from my recycling bin again. I love her to bits.

Have a lovely day everyone. Stay safe and relatively sane ❤️❤️❤️

[hautsreadsmarvel]

"The Fantastic Four" (1961, issue 1)

Not every issue deserves its own post, but I think the very first one does. It's a goldmine of insight into this age of comics.

Lookit that, our very first comic book cover! I dig it, except for the part where I didn’t realize where the Human Torch was in this image immediately and so it briefly looked like the monster was speaking. And also the part where the Invisible Girl turning invisible doesn't seem like it will help her. And also also the part where the depicted scene doesn't happen in the story.

Going into this, I should probably clarify that I know next to nothing about the F4. I do know their names and powers:

Reed Richards, under the alias "Mister Fantastic", is the leader who can stretch any aspect of his body to incredible lengths. He's also a really smart inventor, to the point that the Reed Richards Is Useless trope is named after him

Sue Storm, alias "the Invisible Girl", can... turn invisible. And get captured a lot.

Ben Grimm, aka "the Thing", is super strong and super tough.

Johnny Storm, aka "the Human Torch", is Sue's brother and can burst into flame for a limited duration, gaining flight and pyrokinesis.

Also, Sue and Reed will be married and have two kids (one of whom is nigh-omnipotent?), the Thing is divinely mandated to never return to human form, in the multiverse there’s a “Council of Reeds” and also an evil Reed called the Maker who can elongate his brain to get smarter, and the F4 used to be the most popular Marvel heroes. All that out of the way, let’s dive in!

Huh, you could buy this for 10 cents. I wonder how expensive that is in today money…? $1.03. Wow. Also, does anyone know what that M C label between the CCA stamp of approval and “10c” means? Is that just an abbreviation for Marvel Comics?

Love the artwork, including the way that the mysterious guy who totally isn't Reed Richards is colored in the bottom right. That flare gun is pretty cool too, what with its ability to form words. Could you imagine having a flare gun to signal your friends like that? Damn.

On the other hand... the cops. Le sigh. I get a feeling we'll be seeing a lot of cops for a long while as symbolic shorthand for justice and goodness. Blech.

First part of this story is the F4 all heading to the flare's location while demonstrating their powers. Basically all of them cause some trouble for the unsuspecting citizens of New York - Sue bowls people over running invisibly thru a crowd, speaks and frightens someone into thinking there's a ghost, and causes a taxi driver to flee for his life after attempting to pay him while invisible; the Thing busts out of a clothing store and wrecks the door, scaring the passerby and causing the cops to shoot him (w/o resulting in harm); and the Torch slags a car on his way over... we'll talk more about the Torch's intro in a bit.

There's no way doors keep being unwieldy for the Thing. It begs the question of how he got into the shop in the first place (possibly he squeezed thru carefully or used a larger entrance, but in his haste just plowed thru the wall), and it's not a particularly interesting antic to show whenever we want to show the F4 unintentionally causing havoc. The whole Thing intro is a pretty effective introduction to his character - actually, they kind of all are. This intro sequence showcases their potential to be menaces and positions them as fantastic oddities within the hustle and bustle of New York; Sue is a little careless, the Thing is grumpy about hiding himself from the world but also doesn't enjoy his strange body drawing attention from the public, and while the Torch may love working on hot rods, he's also a hothead so excited by the prospect of the first F4 mission that he bursts into flame INSIDE the car and melts parts of it into slag before taking flight. A promising start for characterization, I suppose.

Also, again, the flare gun is SO COOL. You can pre-program it to form sequential messages? Fuck having powers, I want one of those.

Back to the Torch's intro. His appearance in the skies is so disturbing that the government sics fighter planes on the "unknown flaming object over Central City", and here begins the silliness in earnest.

You know how fighter aircraft engage their targets by swooping in like a pack of orcas, to savage their foes in melee combat? Yeah, me neither. Why are they getting close enough that he can saw straight thru them, when he wasn't even able to melt more than a torso-size hole thru a car he was in? It’s that shit in action movies where it feels like the jet pilots are trained to try and bull rush their targets, and it never ceases to irritate me*. That's just the appetizer though. The real silliness is...

You know how governments LOVE firing nuclear warheads at hostile targets? You know how they LOVE firing nuclear warheads at targets directly above ONE OF THEIR OWN CITIES? Look, I get it was the ‘60s. Of course everyone had nukes on the mind. Of course if you want to shorthand “really powerful kablooey” you just say “nuke”. But what immeasurable stupidity this is! Why, they oughta sack the officers that gave that order! Now the obvious fix would be to just... not call it a nuke. But our task is not to control, but to see, and so we bear witness to the first of many terrors running rampant in the Marvelverse - nuclear weapons getting used all the damn time.

…And then Reed stretches his arms up, catches the warhead, and flings it into the sea to explode. Thus starts the long trend of “safely” disposing of nuclear ordinance by lobbing it into the water. Thus also appears an unstated but consistent property of Reed’s super-stretchiness: he can arrest the momentum of things much stronger and faster than he by grabbing or grappling them, and then throw them the fuck away despite lacking the apparent necessary leverage to do so. Unlike my prior umbrage re: jet fighters and nuking one's own cities, I actually have no problems with this - as long as it’s internally consistent, I don’t really give a shit that a superhero-verse has different physics than ours, and I find the insistence that their physics MUST match ours to be nonsensical. If that really upsets you, I got bad news about basically every superpower.

After that follows a flashback to the origin story of the F4 - they stole aboard a rocket and piloted it to space so that AMERICA (THE BEAUTIFUL, GOD SHED HIS GRACE ON THEE) could defeat the vile commies (better DEAD than RED!) and make it to space first... but they hit some sort of radiation zone... crashland back to Earth... and discover they've all mutated in some way. After that comes their actual first adventure: Reed has discovered that nuclear powerplants across the world are being claimed by sinkholes, they fly to the mythical "Monster Isle" to track down the perpetrator, fight some random monsters that aren't really worth writing about (and Reed again demonstrates that he can lift really large objects and throw them into the sea), they fall into the center of the Earth and meet "the Moleman"... the Moleman, who I vaguely recall is going to reappear in some future Marvel comics, is apparently a hideous-looking guy who was shunned by society, fell into the Hollow Earth and became the blind leader of its monstrous creatures, and now plots to overthrow the surface world by first depriving them of their powerplants. He also has a "radar sense" that makes him an exceptional hand-to-hand combatant - basically spider-sense. Yeah, not a great villain, and not a particularly compelling adventure if you're looking for anything more than cheap thrills.

Nevertheless, the story is a fun read, and justifies its price (which is admittedly 'free', in my case...). It's pulp for kids, OJ optional. It makes for a great introduction into the Marvelverse, and if this was your first superhero story ever I think it would be pretty neat, but the actual adventure is bleh (weren't threats from the Hollow Earth already getting stale by the 60s?), and Sue and Reed don't have much character beyond "heroic do-gooders".

*What bothers me is not a lack of fidelity to actual military operations. What gets my goat is the lack of conception of distance that this particular cliché indicates. It’s why I also get pissy when fiction treats different celestial bodies as practically next door, trivializes what travel distances are like for people who don’t have cars or commercial jets at their beck and call, etc. Distance matters! It's an important factor influencing human history and our individual lives, and it can greatly enhance the texture and stakes of a story! Don’t just foo-foo it!

[rainbowgod666]

Warning: this is a massive joke based entirely on this video by Red Overlysarcasticproductions (here known as @comicaurora. Yes thats why the artstyle of Aurora is so familiar, congratulations you can recognize patterns and are on the same level as a crow) (crows are cool so its fine 🐦‍⬛)

Stranger in a strange land except yours truly wrote it

1) Micheal is SO BLATANTLY the definition of femboy he gets (IN THE DAMN BOOK) a Fuckton Of Porn Of Him (Which he *likes* for reasons unknown even for ME)

"doesnt understand lying" and then he gets it and he SWEARS UP A FUCKING CATEGORY 6 HURRICANE at the protagonists for an *entire chapter* and its something that NEVER actually happens in the book. Like _at most_ he says "golly" or "darn" and then he just grabs all co-protags by the collar and goes ƳØŲ FÜÇƘÏÑĢ ŁÎŢŤĻË ŞĤĮȚŜ-

its part of MY MULTIVERSE. Which means that around the middle of the book, it turns out that parallel universes are real and nobody wants to conquer anybody because "nobody gives a shit"

This also explains how Mandela County is the 51st state of america even tho it doesnt get a star on the flag: Gabriel (yes that one) appeared and everyone went to him like "please for the love of FUCK make a government" and now its full of transhumanist transgenders (which sounds cool AF btw but whatever)

And also why pokemon dont exist. Long story short the Infinity Energy is a pokemon-only thing and the funny critters DISINTEGRATE without it (whoops)

Micheal meets the ACTUAL angel micheal and they both read the original stranger in a strange land and theyre both disgusted by it. Like holy fuck

The SCP foundation doesnt outright "appear" but its so fucking blatantly obvious that they are there. As in- theres a chapter where the only SCP word is "epsilon 11 nine tailed fox" and its in ONE chapter and its to breach the house of a terrorist

Turns out a martians powers in this book are a mixed bag of references: limited telepathy, steven universe tier empathy (like me hahahahaha i am in pain actually ;w;) and their skin is SLIGHTLY different from a human so whats a little burn for us can become A FUCKING WILDFIRE

Yes theres 2/3 or so chapters about him trying to get pyrokinesis, then jill is like "dude. You are flammable, not pyrokinetical" and he goes home sad

Jill actually has a deep seated trauma which kinda EXPLAINS her """promiscuity""" (dont worry, its a school thing and not a family one) and she gets over it by... getting a girlfriend.

No im not doing this alone half the concepts are either fetishes or political statements and i dont have time for this shit

Also micheal turns out to like gay sex more than straight sex which is weirdly phrased at first bit the reality is that seeing Feminine Guys™ makes him lose his marbles a bit. And by a bit i mean that theres an entire sentence where he says shit that only here on tumblr would be accepted, and it would be classified as "do not tumblrize the thirsty white cishet male please. Its bad enough". Yes he starts crying about it. Micheal may or may not be a big ball of explosive emotions. Whoops!

Speaking of Brain Bullshit: every autistic person ever has a power REGARDLESS of their intellect. This is explained by me (BECAUSE IM NOT PUTTING A STUPID SELF INSERT. IM GETTING IN THERE MYSELF BOY/GIRL/WHATEVERIDONTCAREIJUSTHOPEYOUGOTACOOLFLAGWITHIT) and the explaination chapter ends with a sentient mass of fuel-bleeding something going like "my iq is the same as a borzoi and these people are the dumbest idiots ive ever seen" and me agreeing (because hes right)

Also apotheosis is a thing but its so fucking stupid only the non rich can do it without going insane (obviously) (no they do not lose their sense of mortality/humanity. Thats a cop-out the size of the perseus supercluster)

The only reason he gets an autism diagnosis is because of that whole soup of "being an alien + not understanding society + op bullshit". He doesnt learn what autism IS until the last chapter.

And what happens then? He goes back to mars with a bunch of earth games and films. Mostly to share them with other martians to figure out wtf is a compooter. The epilogue is the release of "stranger in a strange land". An 8-bit styled RPG where youre an alien trying to save humans and

Oh who the fuck am I kidding. In my version of stranger in a strange land, Micheal invents fucking UNDERTALE

[feuqueerfire]

I Hear Your Voice Live Blogging

When I added this show to my watchlist, I didn't know anything except it's an age-gap noona romance and has a mystery plot. Also it's over a decade old, came out in 2013 lol, so we'll see how it goes. I've only watched Ai no Kotodama (j-BL movie, 2008) and Just Friends? (k-BL movie, 2009) released before 2014.

I just read the synopsis and seems like the younger guy can even read minds?! Unfortunately there's a love triangle with an older guy but he's played by the 40-year-old Hong Dayoung (?idk the name rip) actor from 18 Again. Just watched Lee Dohyun in Good Bad Mother and ig now I'll watch this; 18 Again is truly just The Show to me.

Ep 1 (Apr 3)

oh, it starts off in high school?

had to mute why were they showing pissing stream + with audio ew

ah, those thoughts were what he's hearing. okay, Edward. though he has to touch people or no? seems like he can hear it without touching

the car crash murder is the reason he can hear thoughts seems like

so the thoughts are like literal noise and he can tune it out by putting on headphones?

ah, FL is shameless and bitchy <3 a bit irritating but fun

oof, Hye Seong getting teamed up by these kids

Aw, my poor girl who is like I'm cold and my personality sticks but not to the extent that I'd target a girl like this

don't be too prideful to not accept money lol they're kicking you out and wrongfully severing her job, they should at least pay smh but i guess pride is a thing

Also, I thought like 3 different times that the girl's father is gonna end up seeing that his daughter is lying or believing Hye Seong but ig not ? and he's a judge too

ah, burning money lol gotta make a statement ig

ah, Hye Seong and the other girl both saw the car crash murder happen

Also, I thought the age gap was like 20 years for some reason but it's just like 10

oh naurrr the kid saying he can read other people's minds but it's gonna only convince people more that he's not doing well and his version of events can't be trusted

oof, not Hye Seong being threatened like this in front of the whole court... is the man gonna come out of jail around now?

Soo Ha has been searching for her, ah

A female lead who is kinda bitchy, kinda shameless but has a sense of justice and is stubborn along with a younger male lead who's obsessed with (the idea of) her and is searching for her, ahh

Ep 2 (Apr 4)

Seong Bin? Who is that?

ohh it's the girl who likes Soo Ha

I just realized maybe he's 19 Korean age, so he's underage and in high school yaas off-putting illegal age gap noona romance <3

augh murderer Joon Kook is getting released next week

this Gwan Woo guy... no. He was fine last time but right now as he keeps calling her beautiful and such out loud in front of people as she's not responding... no

oh, the Seong Bin case insisting she didn't do it while others point at her parallels Hye Seong's own case

She admitted it... hm

Gwan Woo dumb as rocks wtf does he mean his defendants won't lie and he just knows if people are lying by looking at them, how can you be so naive

Hah, he's in love with such an idealized version of her

her having Real Thoughts and Conflicts while mans is just cheesing at finally having her

he's following her home though lmfao chill

Ah, him fixing the lamp that was broken lol reminds me of hmmm I think Love Class S2 BL? Main couple maybe?

ah, he saved Seong Bin

Soo ha getting a reality check about Hye Seong and refusing to believe

ofc he's a rich kid lolol

lol they were hinting his defendant was gonna lie

annoying segment insinuating that female cops can’t sexually harass a woman but maybe the alternative would’ve been making it about scary lesbians which is agh

Bo yeon or whoever bitch from childhood is the prosecutor now

majorly icked out by him picking her up on his shoulder to get her to come w him

woah the mind reading part came so fast, even before his name

ah he’s using banmal w her?

oh he threw the book that hye seong dropped that he’s been keeping for 10 years in the trash but couldn’t let it go

Ep 3 (Apr 4)

would the witness lie and say Seong Bin did it? paralleling Hye Seong's situation even more?

dying at the misunderstanding of you have something on your cheek vs her giving him a finger kiss on his cheek

augh, Sooha's dad's murderer is back

bruh as expected she lied but seems like not necessarily out of maliciousness but rather bc she can't say the truth about why she fell...?

oh also I don't get the way his powers work, sometimes he can hear anybody and everybody (that's how he heard the murderer) vs sometimes he has to look into people's eyes to hear their thoughts?

getting yelled at by her mother because of how callously she's taking all this, including being more worried about how she appears instead of Beo Yeon or whoever instead of her defendant. i mean deserved but having the yelling happen in front of everybody on the team + Sooha is humiliating

who is this man in jail? Ga Yeon's father who has died and would have been around Hye Seong's age?

no girl, that's not Sooha's phone number, that's a murderer hunting you down lmfao

not these grown lawyers sneaking into high school T.T lmfao

agh it doesn't say what the internet search history is

ah, cigarette stuff

interesting confrontation between the two girls tbh

why are the Viki subs like... bad? they don't sub the writing on screen and also instead of saying the witness under 16 won't face perjury, says that the testimony "is invalid"

fuckass Do yeon is so irritating, and seems like she's billed as a main character in MDL

i should not be losing my shit already at every interaction between Soo Ha and Hye Seong lmfao but him finding a seat on the bus for her but then when she starts boasting about the trial he makes a face and moves to a different seat like it's just so good man

and her giving him a little lecture like i don't have time to deal with feelings from a high school junior, so get over me vs him being like i don't like you though (meanwhile... hah.)

and him teasing her with the "total and utter humiliation" hehe

oh true she doesn't even know his name

not Joon Kook's phone literally ringing in the next room, bye. reminds me of Beyond Evil with the shower curtain bathroom killing situation though this isn't as dire since we're legit on ep 4 lol

Ep 4 (Apr 4/5)

why doesn't Soo Ha tell Hye Seong about Joon Kook :< ik it'll make things complicated for him but she's gotta know there's a murderer texting and breaking and entering and stalking her c'mon

damn, not Soo Ha's uncle guardian mans leaving him at some park (what other show does this remind me of... To My Star?? idk or actually maybe it's BTS J-Hope lore lol)

so who does he live with now, seems like he has a big/spacious place

Doyeon isn't their biological daughter or what?

idk why I find it soooo cute that Hye Seong wakes up a mess, makes some weird/bad-tasting concoction for breakfast, and her house is a fucking mess (enough that Sooha literally thought the guy wreaked havoc in there) and Sooha's just getting reality check after reality check after having idolized her for a decade lmfaooo

and him getting mad at this loll but it's not like it's gonna make him stop liking her

ah, Sooha volunteering at same place as Joonkook

ig we’re gonna have a new case every 1-2 eps and fuckass doyeon is gonna be there for them all

o no joonkook knows sooha’s identity but sooha doesn’t know he’s been found out

asdf nahh he told her her only talent is her eyes that see whether the defendant is saying the truth or not lmfao

need Gwanwoo to fuck off ngl i am sooo not into their potential and am not looking forward to the love triangle

Ep 5 (Apr 5)

pls not them pretending to be close and as if she sees him as her real younger brother

ahh noona ik in this case it’s supposed to be to show like familial relations but i want him to call her noona all the time

lol her clocking that she was his first love and him being like no

wound tending 2.0 and his smile is so like indulgent idek

I guess they'd make Hye Seong's client who seems to be caring and innocent to actually be the perpetrator while the older twin who seems more callous and with a previous record to be the one who is telling the truth?

hate to see her think of Lawyer Cha as attractive or be into him like stoppppp

damn not Seong Bin taking one for the team

ah parallels of Seongbin -> Sooha -> Hye Seong -> fuckass Cha Gwanwoo

bruh, didn't Hyeseong's mother see Gwanwoo when she went to the office though? or ig she knows it's him lol

he's throwing a fit ahh as expected of a 17 year old hehe

useless cops as expected

Ep 6 (Apr 5)

Ah, not that her person was the murderer but that they both co-conspirited

she thinks that he's a chain holding her back and he has flashbacks to his uncle thinking the same thing, ouch

Sooha staring at fish in their little aquarium reminds me that Good Bad Mother also had that

ah Dayeon and Hyeseong teaming up and maybe playing mind games with Hyeseong's guy

Prisoner's Dilemma

her getting caught every which way, first Sooha saying that she shouldn't be a public defender lawyer when she was fine with not making the twins confess but now it's the boss after she has indeed made them confess

is the fuckass murderer touched by Hyeseong's mother giving him food for his bday?

that 1 cop seemed to be suspicious of Hyeseong and Sooha being close and apparently living together and now he's like it does kind of sound like a threat so... will he come in clutch in the end

resisting the urge to not just skip through fuckass Gwanwoo's scenes

yaas the date didn't happen ! i mean terrible bc Sooha is being thought of as having stolen the cop's gun but yay

nvm Joonkook is flushing everything down the toilet rip

so has Sooha is gonna find and knife Joonkook?

Ep 7 (Apr 5)

me and Sooha both sending hateful and awful vibes to Gwanwoo's moments with Hyeseong

equal opportunity opening lids for the other!

i love you table with spinny section on top

hug and now a hand kiss? Cha Gwanwoo count your days aghhh

plsplspls don't be dating maybe Sooha just walked away too soon

awooga sad Sooha

naurrrr not Hyeseong's mom, fuckass Joonkook

Ep 8 (Apr 6)

ahhh she's dead dead

it would actually be insane if Dayeon who kept requesting hard sentences for everybody suddenly was like nah

it'd be especially funny because Joonkook is saying he also didn't kill the father back then meanwhile Dayeon literally witness him killing that man (though she didn't testify against him)

okay at least it seems like she's not gonna believe him whew

trying not to be hateful towards Gwanwoo even though him saying he's her boyfriend now is actually terrible

bruh what is Joonkook playing at, he fakes attempting suicide? so is Cha Gwanwoo gonna start believing that he didn't mean to do it?

ohh committing perjury (ig that means falsifying testimony? since they're making the cellmate give a false witness testimony)

awooga they're gonna get caught lying. is Joonkook really gonna walk away free after all this? ig we're only on ep 8... aughhh

Gwanwoo is just doing his job but like fuck him. and most of all, fuckkkkkkkk Joonkook the most. also is the prosecutor gonna get fucked over fr fr for the perjury

awooga not Sooha being like yeah Hyeseong really likes you Gwanwoo, which is why this is hard for her. so give her time, wait for her and protect her

like okay mature response despite loving her but akldfas i need Gwanwoo and Hyeseong to fucking break up bc I'm already biased against him but he's also defended the murderer of her mother, so like... no

okayyyy lmfaooo i was like this is a weirdly mature response but indeed he's like heheh Gwanwoo fucked up and isn't coming back, so I get a chance

oh yeah the aquarium talk when he and his father were in the car

this dumbass is gonna kill Joonkook or what? i just realized he wasn't saying thanks for the chance with Hyeseong because he's prlly gonna be in fucking jail, thanks for the chance to kill Joonkook with his own hands ig?

"last goodbyes" girl

woahhh one startled kiss before leaving (forever, apparently is his plan dumbass)

I barel watched today, so got through 1 ep the whole day and that was like 20 mins over 12 hours and then 40 mins over 1h lol

Ep 9 (Apr 7/8)

is this another dream?

ah, future scene first

omg wait... Hwang Dal Joong's daughter went missing 25 years ago when he got put in jail... the person who put him in jail is Doyeon's father fuckass judge man... there are rumours that Doyeon was "found under the bridge" ummmm

bruh, Gwanwoo's just now getting to know about everything that happened at the court room when Hyeseong testified 10 years ago? Also, how come she was never a witness for this because I feel like their phone call which was about her mother telling her to not take revenge etc would've been helpful a bit at least ??

bruh why'd I barely watch it today also

Ah, Sooha doing the smoke bomb thing

19 year old's bravado and confidence

aough, Hyeseong running in front of blade

damn, why Sooha take the blade out bruh

Sooha disappeared Again?!

hmmm would Min Joonkook be killed offscreen like this? we have a severed hand but no body means not dead

and Sooha told her he wouldn't kill Joonkook

A whole year later?!

well that means Sooha is an adult now btw

omgggg now it's her turn to see Sooha at every turn and run after him, the way Sooha did at the beginning

awooga, is this real or fake amnesia? goddammit

can't download this aghhh i wanted to watch some on the train smhh

Ep 10 (Apr 8)

omg real amnesia?

oh interesting Hwang Dal Joong presumably also didn't kill his wife? but where does Doyeon's father fit into this because like he was the judge for that case but he wasn't normal about it. is Doyeon indeed Dal Joong's daughter? Would the judge guy be the murdered wife's other man? No, right?

lkajd Sooha's nemesis/frenemy having to read his diary to him

If I have to watch any romantic moments between Gwanwoo and Hyeseong while my boy Sooha is now an adult who is in prison without his memories, I might lose my shit

why aren't they talking to the man who housed Sooha, what do you mean he just told Sooha that he's his nephew's son and that's that

oh he's crazy, first "am I special to you?" and then "Are you special to me?" meanwhile he literally kissed her before he left for a year and became known as a murder suspect lol

awooga and her saying that he disliked her

oh? memories are coming back? they won't all come back during the trial would it lol

Also, how are we fully assuming Joonkook is dead when we haven't even found the body except for a hand? In Beyond Evil, wasn't it like it's not a murder case/charge if the body hasn't been found or was that smth diff?

They're straight up naming a different suspect, the fishman? Scary what if things go wrong... fisherman: Ji Cheol Su, housed Sooha: Kim Gi Ho

yaas finally it has come into their heads that maybe... the guy who is a murderer 2x at least... and whose body we haven't found... might not actually be dead lol

Ep 11 (Apr 9)

ohhh the witness who reported Sooha never saw him

Well, did the guy tell them that the woman never actually saw Sooha or no?

bruh why is Doyeon soooo wrong at every turn like get a gripp

leave and give her some fucking privacy bro why is fuckass gwanwoo standing in front of the bathroom listening to her cry

awooga

ohhh Sooha tried to run away and got in a car crash hmm

yaas she rejected Gwanwoo again and... did she say she likes Sooha... anything like that? maybe?

Is that Joonkook in a disguise and threatening the woman or what?

ahhh she's so cold and cutting Sooha off just like this, she must be going crazy inside

awooga my ship !!

Ep 12 (Apr 9)

pls Sooha seeing Hyeseong eating food straight from the fridge late at night in the dark

Gwanwoo is... not incorrect in his assessment of Sooha and how he's a "burden" to Hyeseong but he's also immature to say it that way to throw it in Sooha's face because Hyeseong likes Sooha but not him. like okay talking about being an adult, sure

ohhh wait firstly, Hyeseong didn't actually have a photo in the phone but just said that it shows Min Joonkook with the steel pipe :0 but ig Joonkook gave himself away with his reaction to Hyeseong

and secondly, I hadn't realized that the judge was actually Doyeon's father and he'd known that she lied, which was expected cuz it really seemed like he knew. he just took it as a lawyer in court though lol

omg so indeed Hwang Dal Joong's supposedly murdered wife is still alive and doesn't have her left hand either

lolol Hyseong and Doyeon both regretting spilling their guts the night before. kinda should make out when Doyeon becomes more tolerable

Oof, witness womans really dug her own grave with the "go till the end" talk. hope same thing doesn't happen to the guy who hit Sooha with the truck and was told to not say anything by Joonkook

ah, memory returns

Sooha's dad killed Joonkook's wife?

back hug !

Ep 13 (Apr 9)

oh did Sooha's mind-reading abilities come back with the memories?

who did Hwang Dal Joong stab? his ex wife?

why be a fucking cop bro Sooha pls do something else

i so incredibly do not give a fuck about Gwanwoo

the wife said the daughter is living in a rich house, it's literally Doyeon bruh

ahhh cheek kiss,can't believe i'm having to live on this same shit from like ep 3 (other way around this time tho)

anyway sooha should just tell her the truth cuz she'll get more mad the longer it goes on, esp since he can read her mind

Ep 14 (Apr 10)

awooga what are we gonna do when she finds out about dad killing first

my ship T.T avoiding eye contact and walking side by side T.T

alk;sdjf Sooha falling into Hyeseong's lap on the bus

oh my godddddd laksdfjlk;asdjf lk;sdfj lk;j Hyeseong confession

parallel between Hyeseong being like maybe it's fine/better that Doyeon doesn't know the truth about her adoptive and biological parents while Gwanwoo is like it's better that Hyeseong doesn't know about Joonkook and Sooha's father's ordeal

but Lawyer Shin talking about how telling the truth is the right thing to o

Wait actually... this is a good line of thought that I could use maybe? at ~48mins they start talking about if there are 2 decisions where you have regrets choosing either, better to choose the one that will make you regret 1% less ig

Hyeseong throwing the words that Doyeon's fuckass dad told her that day at the hospital like 12 years ago back in his face

Ep 15 (Apr 10)

Is this article about Joonkook's wife being killed by Sooha's father or smth?

and Sooha & Doyeon parallels about betrayals in trust of their fathers

omg accomplice

aksdfjklajdsf was hyeseong just having horny thoughts or what

hm the Park Joonhyuk guy is Sooha's father? And he wrote about people in car accidents or what?

omg Doyeon...

Ep 16 (Apr 10)

girl the way I'd barely been watching 1 ep a day the last few days but today I keep watching it?

awooga Doyeon

how the tables turn because in ep 1, I thought maybe the father would take Hyseong's side since clearly Doyeon was lying and her mother believed her without question

not this fucking father-daughter strained yet touching relationship with Dal Joong and Doyeon omg

not Joonkook having kidnapped Hyeseong

Ep 17 (Apr 11)

Awooga, not the trick working

hyeseong stupidity making me annoyed

and it's frustrating for it to be contrasted with Sooha who is also doing a dumb thing (going to Joonkook alone without confirming he's actually there and with a taser but not realizing that Joonkook is right behind her and also in like a mid skirt and heels too like tf) but 1) he confirmed that she was actually there 2) he called Gwanwoo and explained the situation. frustrating for the FL to fall into a trap this stupidly in the penultimate episode at least have Joonkook outsmart her rather than just her being stupid

sooo annoying that Hyeseong is just tied up and duct taped like this fr and also why is the SWAT team useless why are they in different rooftops aiming at Sooha possibly like ?? dumbasses

bro these cops are so useless why are they just standing there with their armoud and weapons, just grab him?!

This is so silly like okay fine Gwanwoo comes and frees Hyeseong from her bind but then... she gets up to the roof and immediately faints as Min Joonkook drags Sooha over the edge

I'll be honest, the fact that they made Hyeseong make stupid decisions here and then kinda made her presence inconsequential (beyond the don't kill Joonkook thing but that's been going on for A While already) really soured me because there was no reason for that. maybe she'll do something cool in the last ep and bring it back up

Ep 18 (Apr 11)

actually I don't fully get the problem with Sooha stabbing Hyeseong thing either because like ig it's a case that Joonkook was Sooha's target? And Hyeseong ran into it but otherwise Sooha would've stabbed/possibly killed Joonkook?

and if Gwanwoo is Joonkook's lawyer again I'd be so fucking irritated bro

but why is this literally attempted murder bruh, she ran into the knife and he didn't successfully even knick Joonkook with the knife so some legal questioning maybe but attempted murder? be serious

Sooha and Hyseong are sooooo cute

no way Sooha's talking about Gwanwoo being his role model who made him into a man agh

oh he's mentioning other ppl but Gwanwoo first? be fr

ah Doyeon

Fine final episode

Overall:

Noona romance + mystery + courtroom + sliiight supernatural with mind-reading, it has a bunch of things I liked. It's from over a decade ago but enjoyable nonetheless. I liked it, though Hyeseong and Sooha were quite cute but I wish 1) the episodes were a bit more condensed to be 14-16 episodes and 2) the fucking love triangle wasn't so prominent (though I get that they probably did it because Sooha was underage at first).

Not life-changing and kind of overstayed its welcome for me, esp because I was barely watching 1 ep a day in the middle there.

Rating: 6.5/10 [May 12, 2024 Update: Decreased by 0.5 stars when rerating shows I've watched in 2024: 7 -> 6.5]

[c-is-for-circinate]

For a long, large part of my life, being queer in a media landscape--finding queerness in a media landscape--has meant theft.

I'm a Fandom Old, somehow, these days, older than most and younger than some, in that way that's grown associated with grumpy crotchetyness and shotguns on porches and back in my day, we had to wade through our Yahoo Groups mailing lists uphill both ways, boring and irrelevant anecdotes from Back In Those Days when homophobia clearly worked differently than it does now, probably because we weren't trying hard enough. I've seen a lot of stories through the years. I've read a lot of fanfic. (More days than not, for the past twenty years. I've read a lot of fanfic.)

When people my age start groaning and sighing at conversations about representation and queerbaiting, when we roll our eyes and drag all the old war stories out again in the face of AO3 is terrible and Not Good Enough, so often what we say is: you Young Folks Today have no idea how hard, how scary, how limiting it was to be queer anywhere Back In Those Days. Including online, maybe especially online, including in a media landscape that hated us so much more than any one you've ever known. And that is true. Always and everywhere, again and again, it's true, we remember, it's true.

We don't talk so much about the joy of it.

Online fan spaces were my very first queer communities, ever. I was thirteen, I was fourteen, I was fifteen--I was a lonely, over-precocious "gifted kid" two years too young for my grade level in an all-girls' Catholic school in the suburbs--I lived in a world where gay people were a rumor and an insult and a news story about murder. I was straight, of course, obviously, because real people were straight and anyway I was weird enough already--I couldn't be two things strange, couldn't be gay too, but--well, I could read the stories. I could feel things about that. I would have those stories to help me, a few years later, when I knew I couldn't call myself straight any more.

And those stories were theft. There was never any doubt about that. We wrote disclaimers at the top of every fic, with the specter of Anne Rice's lawyers around every corner. We hid in back-corners of the internet, places you could only find through a link from a link from a link on somebody else's recs page, being grateful for the tiny single-fandom archives when you found them, grateful for the webrings where they existed. It was theft, all of it, the stories about characters we did not own, the videotaped episodes on your best friend's VHS player, one single episode pulled off of Limewire over the course of three days.

It was theft, we knew, to even try and find ourselves in these stories to begin with. How many fics did I read in those days about two men who'd always been straight, except for each other, in this one case, when love was stronger than sexual orientation? We stole our characters away from the heterosexual lives they were destined to have. We stole them away from writers and producers and TV networks who work overtime to shower them in Babes of the Week, to pretend that queerness was never even an option. This wasn't given to us. This wasn't meant for us. This wasn't ours to have, ever, ever in the first place. But we took it anyway.

And oh, my friends, it was glorious.

We took it. We stole. And again and again, for years and years and years, we turned that theft into an art. We looked for every opening, every crack in every sidewalk where a little sprout of queerness might grow, and we claimed it for our own and we grew whole gardens. We grew so sly and so skilled with it, learning to spot the hints of oh, this could be slashy in every new show and movie to come our way. Do you see how they left these character dynamics here, unattended on the table? How ripe they are for the pocketing. Here, I'll help you carry them. We'll make off with these so-called straight boys, and we only have to look back if somebody sets out another scene we want for our own.

We were thieves, all of us, and that was fine and that was fair, because to exist as queer in the world was theft to begin with. Stolen time, stolen moments--grand larceny of the institution of marriage, breaking and entering to rob my mother's hopes for grandchildren. Every shoplifted glance at the wrong person in the locker room (and it didn't matter if we never peeked, never dared, they called us out on it anyway). Every character in every fic whose queerness became a crime against this ex-wife, that new love interest. Every time we dared steal ourselves away from the good straight partners we didn't want to date.

And: we built ourselves a den, we thieves, wallpapered in stolen images and filled to the brim with all the words we'd written ourselves. We built ourselves a home, and we filled it with joy. Every vid and art and fic, every ship, every squee. Over and over, every straight boy protagonist who abandoned all womankind for just this one exception with his straight boy protagonist partner found gay orgasms and true love at the end.

Over and over, we said: this isn't ours, this isn't meant to be ours, you did not give this to us--but we are taking it anyway. We will burglarize you for building blocks and build ourselves a palace. These stories and this place in the world is not for us, but we exist, and you can't stop us. It's ours now, full of color and noise, a thousand peoples' ideas mosaic'ed together in celebration. We made this, and it will never be just yours again. You won't ever truly get it back, no matter how many lawyers you send, not completely. We keep what we steal.

.

Things shifted over time, of course. That's good. That's to be celebrated. Nobody should have to steal to survive. It should not be a crime, should not feel like a crime, to find yourself and your space in the world.

There were always content creators who could slip a little wink in when they laid out their wares, oh what's this over here, silly me leaving this unattended where anybody could grab it, of course there might be more over by the side door if you come around the alleyway (but if anybody asks, you didn't get this from ME). We all watched Xena marry Gabrielle, in body language and between the lines. We sat around and traded theories and rumors about whether the people writing Due South knew what they were doing when they sent their buddy cops off into the frozen north alone together at the end of the show, if they'd done it on purpose, if they knew. But over the years, slowly, thankfully, the winks became less sly.

A teenage boy put his hand on another teenage boy's hand and said, you move me, and they kissed on network TV, in a prime-time show, on FOX, and the world didn't burn down. Here and there, where they wanted to, where they could without getting caught by their bosses and managers, content creators stopped subtly nudging people around the back door and started saying, "Here. This is on offer here too, on purpose. You get to have this, too."

And of course, of course that came with a whole host of problems too. Slide around to the back door but you didn't get this from me turned into it's an item on our special menu, totally legit, you've just got to ask because the boss throws a fit if we put it out front. Shopkeepers and content creators started advertising on the sly, come buy your fix here!, hiding the fine print that says you still have to take what you've purchased home and rebuild it with your semi-legal IKEA hacks. Maybe they'll consider listing that Destiel or Sterek as a full-service menu item next year. Is that Crowley/Aziraphale the real thing or is it lite?

And those problems are real and the conversations are worth having, and it's absolutely fair to be frustrated that you can't find the ship you want on sale in anything like your color and size in a vast media landscape packed full of discount hetships and fast-fashion m/f. It's fair to be angry. It's fair to be frustrated. Queerbait is a word that exists for a reason.

There's a part of me that hurts, though, every time the topic comes up. It's a confusing, bad-mannered part of me, but it's still very real. And it's not because I'm fawning for crumbs, trying to be the Good, Non-Threatening Gay. It's not that I'm scared and traumatized by the thought of what might happen if we dare raise our voices and ask for attention. (Well. Not mostly. I'll always remember being quiet and scared and fifteen, but it's been a long two decades since then. I know how to ask for a hell of a lot more now.)

It's because I remember that cozy, plush-wallpapered den of joyful thieves. I remember you keep what you steal.

Every single time--every time--when a story I love sets a couple of characters out on a low, unguarded table, perfectly placed to be pilfered on the sly and taken home and smushed together like a couple of dolls, my very first thought is always, always joy. Always, that instinct says, yay! Says, this is ours now. As soon as I go home and crawl into that pillow-fort den, my instincts say, I will surely find people already at work combing through spoils and finding new ways to combine them, new ways to make them our own. I know there's fic for that. I've already seen fic for that, and I wasn't really interested last time, but the new store display's got my brain churning, and I can't wait to see what the crew back at the hideout does with this.

Every time, that's where my brain goes. And oh, when I realize the display's put out on purpose, that somebody snuck in a legitimate special menu item, when the proprietor gives me the nod and wink and says, you don't have to come around the side, I know it's not much but here--there is so much joy and relief and hope in me from that! Oh, what we can make with these beautiful building blocks. Oh what a story we can craft from the pieces. Oh, the things we can cobble together. Look at that, this one's a little skimpy on parts but we can supplement it, this one's got a whole outline we can fill in however we want. This one technically comes semi-preassembled, and that's boring as shit and a pain to take back apart, but that's fine, we'll manage. We're artists and thieves. I bet someone's pulling out the AU saw to cut it to pieces already.

And then I get back to our den, which has moved addresses a dozen times over the years and mostly hangs out on Tumblr now (and the roof leaks and the landlord's sketchy as fuck but at least they don't charge rent, and we've made worse places our own). And I show up, ready for joy--ready for a dozen other people who saw that low-hanging fruit on that unguarded table, who got the nod and wink about the special menu item, who're ready to get so excited about this newest haul. Did you see what we picked up? The theft was so easy, practically begging to be stolen. The last owner was an idiot with no idea what to do with it. The last owner knew exactly what it could become, bless their heart, under a craftsman with more time on their hands, so they looked away on purpose at just the right time to let me take it home. I show up every time ready for our space, the place that fed me on joy and self-confidence when I was fifteen and starving. The place that taught me, yes, we are thieves, because it is RIGHT to take what we need, and the beautiful things we create are their own justification. We are thieves, and that's wonderful, because nothing is handed to us and that means we get to build our own palaces. We get to keep everything we steal.

I go home, and even knowing the world is different, my instincts and heart are waiting for that. And I walk in the door, and I look at my dash, and I glance over at twitter, and--

And people are angry, again. Angry at the slim pickings from the hidden special menu. So, so tired and angry, at once again having to steal.

And they're right to be! Sometimes (often, maybe) I think they're angry at the wrong people--more angry with the shopkeeper who offers the bite-sized sampler platter of side characters or sneaks their queer content in on the special menu than the ones who don't include it at all. But it's not wrong to be mad that Disney's once again advertising their First Gay Character only to find out it's a tiny sprinkle of a one-line extra on an otherwise straight sundae. It's not wrong to be furious at the world because you've spent your whole life needing to be a thief to survive. It's far from wrong. I'm angry about it too.

But this was my den of thieves, my chop shop, my makerspace. Growing up in fandom, I learned to pick the locks on stories and crack the safes of subtext at the very same time I learned to create. They were the same thing, the same art. We are thieves, my heart says, we are thieves, and that's what makes us better than the people we steal from. We deconstruct every time we create. We build better things out of the pieces.

And people are angry that the pre-fab materials are too hard to find, the pickings too slim, the items on sale too limited? Yes, of course they are, of course they should be--but my heart. Oh, my heart. Every single time, just a little bit, it breaks.

Of course the stories are terrible (they have always been terrible). Of course they are, but we are thieves. We steal the best parts and cobble them back together and what we make is better than it was before. The craftsman's eye that cases a story for weak points, for blank spaces, for anywhere we can fit a crowbar and pry apart this casing--that's skill and art and joy. Of course we shouldn't have to, of course we shouldn't have to, but I still love it. I still want it, crave it. I still thrill every time I see it, a story with hairline cracks that we can work open with clever hands to let the queer in.

That used to be cause for celebration, around here. I ask him to go back to the ruins of Aeor with me, two men together alone on an expedition in the frozen north, it feels like a gift. And I understand why some people take it as an insult. I understand not good enough. I understand how something can feel like a few drops of water to someone dying of thirst, like a slap in the face. If it was so easy to sneak it hidden onto the special menu, to place it on the unguarded side table for someone else to run off to, why not let it sit out front and center in the first place? I know it's frustrating. It should be. We should fight. We should always fight. I know why.

But my heart, oh, my heart. My heart only knows what it's been taught. My heart sees, this thing right here, the proprietor left it there for you with a nod and a wink because they Get It. It's not put together yet, but it's better that way anyway. It's so full of pieces to pull apart and reassemble. I bet they've got a whole mosaic wall going up at home already. We can bring it home and make it OURS, more than it was ever theirs, forget half of what it came from and grow a new garden in what remains.

And I go home to find anger, and my heart breaks instead.