#feel free to ask me questions about this verse

[invizigothx]

a couple paragraphs of my cheeky take on omega/alpha wizards that hypothetical leads to a smutty scenario where sirius and snape hook up in 199x but in reality just became an excuse for me to discuss european policy and wizards

By the mid-20th century, 'omega' and 'alpha' carried the same pseudo-scientific Victorian connotation as 'invert' or 'melancholia.' The general consensus in the medical community held that certain people had certain attractions and rhythms of arousal which could be construed as a sexuality secondary, a broad set of experiences additional to their same- or different- sex attraction, but these patterns were hardly sufficient to support the 'alpha' and 'omega' as diagnostic categories. Furthermore, extensive literature reviews had turned up no proof of male-bodied omegas spontaneously growing female reproductive organs, much less bearing a child; likely, this myth of omega biology had grown out of early society's need to explain transsexual or intersex conditions. And although the omega and alpha categories still held cultural sway, a 1962 amendment to the European Convention on Human Rights ensured that the terms could at least bear no legal weight.

The 1962 Amendment on the Legitimacy and Legal Rights Concerning Secondary Sexualities was notable not just because it formally denied the legitimacy of these categories while also prohibiting discrimination based on assumed omega or alpha status (protections for homosexuals, unfortunately, were still a step too far), but because it represented the first on-the-record instance of a wizarding government working alongside a non-wizarding government to draft legislation, possible the first since the Great Schism in 1510: West Germany formally submitted the '62 Amendment to the Convention, with the Wizarding Federation of East and West Germany noted as co-researchers. In fact, because the WFEWG had possession of the books magically-recovered from the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft library in 1933, wizards represented over half of the amendements working group. Ironically, 1962 was also the same year that the WFEWG Steering Committee voted for a fifth time against joining the European Convention; despite the (necessarily) increased partnership over the decades, the question of nation, land, and resources still loomed large; both sides were still hesitant to legally commit themselves to any more than a memorandum of shared understanding.

None of these developments in international affairs mattered in Wizarding England, where the hidebound caste-and-class systems still held sway and the 1489 Shrewsbury Accords on Wizarding Separation from the English Crown and Polity were alive and well-enforced. These developments especially did not matter in the mansion at 12 Grimmauld Place, home to the Most Ancient and Noble House of Black.

[hellsitegenetics]

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banned from BLAST for being too sexy

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homestuck

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thank you for reading! as a treat, enjoy this Trichosanthes cucumerina, or Snake Gourd flower.

[ozzgin]

Yandere!School Q&A 2

Answering some of the questions involving the Yandere School universe. Gender neutral reader, mildly NSFW/suggestive in parts.

Just curious, is there a difference between men and women in the yandere/darling academy?

Not at all. In theory, there could be a difference in uniforms, as seen from the occasional depiction of skirts, but that's really up to the student. As in, they can wear either, regardless of gender.

When it comes to you, on the other hand...I feel like they'd either ask you to wear pants, or heavily reinforced skirts. Too many creepshots and perverted attempts otherwise.

I know the yandere school verse is meant to be silly but I’m genuinely invested in the lore and worldbuilding now. What classes are taught in both schools? Do the darlings resent the yanderes? WOULD THEY BEAT THE YANDERE STUDENT’S ASS IF THEY GOT FOUND OUT??? SO MANY QUESTIONS SMFKEDKK

To be honest, I still haven't considered all the logistics!

I'm imagining a mix of both when it comes to classes: you have yandere-specific courses, and then general subjects with some practical applications. Obviously you can't do without mathematics, for example. If you don't understand double integrals, how will you determine the area you need to cover to reach your Darling who's running for the hills?

Also, I don't think the Darlings would be too upset. After all, they are studying solely to find themselves a yandere one day. What is a little baffling is that out of all the damn darlings in school, this guy ends up chasing after a ‘yandere’ student.

One of the Yanderes at Yandere Academy is bound to be a Platonic, and they're probably going insane watching every student and teacher going after the school Darling. Do you think they'd be on the staff or a fellow student?

There's plenty of platonic yanderes, both among the students and teaching staff. They make up the security brigade, ensuring your safety and keeping dangers away. If other students let their infatuation go overboard, they will be quick to correct it.

In fact, this is where their yandere skills shine most. Taking care of you.

Ohh what about yan art teacher using reader as the model for nude portraits in class?

That'd be like opening Pandora's box. What's to guarantee that the students won't go feral? Even as a regular model, removing any article of clothing within the artistic depictions is strictly forbidden. The other teachers already have to sort through stacks of confiscated fanart involving you, they don't need a boost in lewd creations.

Unless you mean a private encounter with Yan!Art Teacher for some extra credit. That's a whole different story. 👀

for your yandere school au if I was in readers situation, and I got a free full?? scholarship?/ to a fancy school?/? I no longer need to go along with family tradition I’m getting that free scholarship it’s not like I particularly needed a bunch of people to stalk me 🤷

I'm kind of hoping that Yandere School comes with a full scholarship, too. Bonus points if they offer legacy benefits. Reader comes from several generations of graduates, after all.

Not to mention, you already have a bunch of people stalking you, if we are to count the yandere family members. You'll feel right at home.

The darling is christian in some other scenarios right? What if in sex ed class, she said that she would only do that if she got married? Imagine every single yanderes trying to be a good husband material but the darling is so damn clueless about it

I don't think the religion was ever specified, but you're free to imagine it however you'd like, anon. I can definitely picture the yandere students perking their ears at such statement and taking it as a challenge. You want to wait until marriage? Then they’ll bring the marriage over right now. You have to wonder if there’s some current fashion trend you’re unaware of, as every student has asked for your opinion in rings. You’d assumed it’s a question involving their own, personal acquisitions, so now there’s a bunch of classmates fighting outside because they all got different answers and clearly only one of them holds truth.

That one teacher who got all those accidental smut submissions about Y/N is gonna be feasting tonight

I suspect most teachers have a neatly organized storage full of content involving you. Whether it's accidental submissions, confiscated doodles, illegal photos and so on. Hell, they probably trade the stuff like collectibles.

"You got the fic I asked for?" one teacher asks lowly, resting against the wall.

"Uh huh."

Another teacher swipes through a thick folder with the efficacy of someone who does this too often.

Imagine yandere school y/n slips up and accidently calls a teacher mom/dad. Or worse (or perhaps better depending on who it is), mommy/daddy. y/n is embarrassed, yandere students are jealous, and teacher is now horny.

Terrifying affair. The teacher will have to evade weeks, maybe even months of assassination attempts coming from the students and parents. Reader probably joked about it at the dinner table once, and the mom/dad has been spiraling ever since. How could such a mistake happen? Have they neglected their darling child?

“I-It’s not what it looks like!” one student will stutter, terrified to find Reader’s parent behind them.

“I’d say it’s pretty obvious, you’re doing a terrible job. Hand me the binoculars”, they demand in a whisper, glaring at the object of their envious stalking: the teacher.

How would the readers parents/fam react if the reader complained about the school staff or a student? [Gym teacher dress coding reader] With this as personally speaking I would be really annoyed. The yan family could also take it as an insult because I know for a fact they make sure the reader has all the best stuff. As well how they're bothering or unfairly treating the reader. And if the yan fam connects that the school is yan (students and staff) they would FLIP OUT. But that's out of the point

I’d say it depends on their relationship. Remember, Reader’s parents are graduates of Yandere School, so it’s entirely possible they were taught by the very same teachers and staff. Thus, they might be reluctant to question their authority.

“You have to understand, I had my best intentions in mind”, gym teacher will explain to the parents with a solemn face.

“No, you’re right. We’ve seen the way those kids look at our (Y/N). Who knows what perverted thoughts linger in their mind?”

The grey-haired man dabs a handkerchief across his forehead, visibly paler.

“E-exactly. It was all to protect (Y/N) from any indecent, uh, risks.”

Gym teacher prob got a forest downstairs

Only one way to find out. Better put on your adventurer's hat! 👅

Okay but like, the poor principal having to deal with the entire Yan!academy

He probably stares in the mirror every morning, noticing yet another grey hair, or that his eyebags have gotten worse. He's going to need an early retirement. "I tried my best", he mumbles to the portraits of the previous principals.

How would the yandere school react to reader being hypersexual? P.s can I be raccoon 🦝 anon? [I'm afraid you'll have to pick a different emoji, anon, as raccoon is already taken]

I mean, I can totally picture a playboy/playgirl kind of Reader who skips class to smooch one of the students in a storage room. Or Reader getting too flustered and excited and begging one of the teachers for "help" after school. I'm sure most would comply without hesitation.

Though you may have to deal with a horde of jealous partners who don't like to share. Next thing you know, you have to compile a sexy time chart and schedule the smooching to fit everyone in.

hai ! this is related to yandere school, i’m curious to know what if reader decided to accept the scholarship to darling academy? like i can imagine readers parents worried and proud while clumsy yandere is absolutely celebrating abt it :D

Knowing Reader’s luck and Clumsy!Yandere’s misfortune, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s more yandere students lurking the Darling Academy grounds. Or even worse, some darlings begin to develop intense feelings for Reader. Worry not, your clumsy best friend will always come to your rescue.

[officialundertakersmoocher]

may i pls request a scenario with violet and afab reader where he’s drawing them nude and then smut ensues?

An Artistic Craving

yall i am so sorry for the extended break, and I hope this meets your expectations 😭

Warnings: NSFW, Nudity, +18, Slightly OOC

• • •

"Stay still, okay?"

"But, Vi, it's so embarrassing..." You attempt to cover your assets which have been shamefully exposed to his eyes in the dimly lit study room.

"Don't think of it that way... It's just a study." You tried not to ask many questions, after all, he was more versed in the arts than you were.

It was lucky that you two happened to catch this moment alone, unchaperoned. Vi, actually very uncharacteristically, was the one to insist that he needed you as a model to finish this study to complete a project he was working on for his upcoming art exam.

After all, you two had been seeing each other for a long time now and were not only comfortable enough to do such a thing, but you also just happened to owe him a favor.

This is how you ended up in such a position for your lover, spewn on a dark purple couch in a private study room near the Purple House dorms. You knew that Gregory was too shy to say so, but there are many books on campus filled with similar references free for his use. He just wanted to spend time with you in an intimate setting such as this one.

You caught him stealing glances at you every once in a while, and he could sense your growing discomfort from staying still for so long.

He left his sketchbook behind momentarily to kneel down beside you and suddenly the room felt more quiet. Your eyes locked as he gently adjusts the position of your hand, placing it under your head in a graceful fashion.

He tilts his head and he brushes a strand of hair away from your face as if to get a better view.

He tried to back away to retreat to his seat, but was caught by your hand pulling him back. He sat confused for a moment but could tell your eyes were asking him to stay.

You move yourself upwards to face him and pull him into a kiss. His lips are soft and welcoming and he eventually moves to grab your waist.

You slowly move him onto the couch with you, straddling his waist. He begins to become shy from this now suddenly risqué moment and pulls away from your lips.

"Love, I don't know if we should..." You could feel the deep heat resonating from his cheeks, so you asked him softly, "Would you like me to stop...?"

"Please no..."

You just barely hear him mutter this, but his hot breath on your neck shows you how desperate he has become.

Before you know it, there are clothes being dragged away and thrown about the room, never finding the motivation to tear your lips apart from one another. You both are stuck in an agonizing dance, waiting for the moment that you both can be as close as you desire.

The room has reached a stillness as the dim candlelight bounces off of skin, and hot breath stills in the air. You are both frozen in time, taking in the moment for the first time now, and as you do, you notice that you've never really seen your lover in such a passionate way as this.

In this position, he's kneeling his body over yours and bowing his head in a shy manor. From the silence you hear him speak softly, asking, "Is this what you want, for sure?" And you have seemingly been too caught up in your own thoughts to notice the lingering question prodding in-between your thighs. You suddenly feel a harsh flush invading your cheeks and a needy wetness in the very same place that he finds his attention.

You turn your head to avoid the embarrassment of facing him as you answer his looming question.

Your voice shakes more than you intended it to, more out of anticipation than anything else. "Yes, of course, p-please keep going, my love-"

However, he catches you off guard by lowing his head down to your thighs. His proximity meant you could feel his breath tickle your skin and it invigorated you.

He softly grazed your folds with his fingers, and slowly exploring your body until he reached the most sensitive parts of you. The moment he grazed your clit, you couldn't help but let out a soft moan, which is exactly what pushed him to continue despite feeling his own uncertainty.

He follows the sounds of your sweet moans, touching you and exploring your body in ways that neither of you have experienced before. Before long you find yourself growing more in need of his touch, pulling his hands and guiding him to kiss you. You both are grasping for each others touch and cursing into the silence of this empty room when the tension reaches an all-time high. You find yourself guiding his cock lower as a sign that you are ready (or maybe as a sign that you can't wait much longer now).

He follows your lead, pushing himself slowly across your folds, letting out a sigh as he feels the warmth of your pussy against his skin. He has one hand behind your head as a comforting act as he slowly guides himself between your thighs. He watches your expression change to a grimace of pain, almost stopping himself, but instead he caresses your face in an attempt to sooth your pain. You start to adjust yourself and whisper for him to keep going, and after a few moments the pain starts to replace itself with great pleasure.

You can't help the moans that escape your lips as you grasp onto him, likely leaving scratch marks on his upper back.

However, he doesn't mind this one bit. He can only focus on this heavenly feeling that seemed to blur his vision and tingle at his senses. The pleasure became overwhelming before you could comprehend it and it feels like heaven.

The sounds that filled the room should have alerted the others of the acts you both were sharing tonight, and maybe, just maybe, you should have been more worried, but neither of you could have the gut to care. Not tonight, not when it just feels so good and your vision had started bleeding white as your bodies worked in tandem with one another. 

It felt like hours before you had found yourselves cuddling under a stray blanket, skin-to-skin and feeling on top of the world. There was peace settled in the air and you held each other and shared this perfect moment.

"Did you enjoy it?" Violet asked timidly while he stroked stray pieces of hair out of your face.

"Oh course, Darling. I've never felt closer to you than how we were tonight." You looked at him so softly and left a soft peck on his lips.

"Well, thats good, because... I didn't really get to finish my painting. We may have to do this again tomorrow night..." He wouldn't meet your eyes, but you knew that if you could see them, they would have a glint of excitement in them that you only see when he looks at you.

"Well, I suppose we would have to then- For your studies, of course."

• Epilogue • Tea Time •

"So, It couldn't have been just me who heard some oddly bizarre noises coming from the art studio on the west end last night..." Edgar mused to the other prefects as he took a mischievous sip.

"Oh, how I wonder what that could have possibly been coming from..." The sound of a breaking pencil could be heard only if he listened so intently.

"Oh, I heard it, alright." Greenhill pipped in, sounding more than mildly annoyed as he completed his afternoon stretch. "Some people really need to be more considerate of the fact that some of us need to study at such late hours."

"Well, maybe some people should consider that not everyone wants to hear the sound of your 2 hour long training routine at 12am either..." Bluewer rolled his eyes, obviously not knowing what the others were exactly referring to.

"Well, In just thinking that maybe when the professors discover a certain pair of undergarments left in said art studio on the west end, they may have to cancel class this morning. If you know what I mean..." Edgar takes an extended sip of his tea and watched as Gregory excuses himself, dropping his sketchbook and seemingly headed towards the west end.

"Well, that answers that." Edgar mutters with a smirk.

[paimonial-rage]

talks of the past - zhongli

ship: zhongli x reader

synopsis: in which the wangsheng funeral parlor’s consultant tries to restore your faith in rex lapis

notes: 1.7k words, chapter 7 of bookkeeping!verse; with ties to various chapters in the series

It was yet another day you found yourself traveling with Zhongli to Qingce Village. Objectively speaking, it was a beautiful morning. The sun was high in the sky without a cloud in sight, the birds were chirping, and the temperature was nice. Really, there shouldn’t have been anything there to get you down. And yet…

There you were walking with your head down and a faraway look in your eyes. Had you been more aware, you would’ve noticed your companion speaking a few times. You would’ve seen the concerned look in his eyes as he peered down at you. But you were lost in your thoughts, uncharacteristically troubled and insecure.

If you had noticed, you would’ve felt a bit of pity for your companion. It was not often that you were seen in such a depressed state. Really, despite your temperament, you were generally alert and sociable. He often enjoyed the banter that would come about between you two. Truly, you were a dear friend to him. That being said, it wasn’t often you shared your concerns with him. He wasn’t sure if you even would if asked.

He cleared his throat.

“First, is… there anything that’s bothering you?”

It took a few moments for you to respond, almost prompting him to ask again before you let out a long sigh.

“Zhongli,” you began, looking up to him imploringly, “Can I talk to you about something?”

He couldn’t deny the slight start of his heart that came with your question. You’ve brought up your concerns to him before, but those were often accompanied with glares and opinions regarding his financial decisions. This time, however, exhaustion was evident in your voice with dark bags under your eyes. He could not recall doing anything that’d result in your loss of sleep.

“Sure,” he began, careful to keep his wariness absent.

“It’s not a big deal,” you began in a way that implied the opposite. “I’m sure you know how much I revere Rex Lapis. Even though he passed, I still greatly respect the legacy he left behind.”

“Yes,” he replied with a nod. “You’ve mentioned this to me a few times in the past.”

A bit too many, he would add. And with your way with words, it never exactly was… pleasant. At the very least, he was relieved your lack of sleep wasn’t with anything he did as Zhongli.

“It’s just… Lately, I’ve been talking to Madam Ping in my free time, and… I feel like my faith is beginning to be shaken…”

He frowned.

“‘Shaken?’ In what way?”

“I…” You bit your lip as tears welled in your eyes. “Don’t hate me for saying this, but I…”

You hesitated.

“I’m beginning to think he was actually a complete weirdo.”

A… A weirdo?

He cleared his throat, feeling if not just a little attacked.

“In what way?”

You sighed, glancing away with your guilt-ridden eyes.

“In… in every way.”

‘Every way?’

“For instance, take into account Mora…”

Of course, it had to do with Mora.

“Well, I once heard a story that Rex Lapis created the first home out of Mora. I always thought it was metaphorical or just a silly children’s tale, but… Madame Ping confirmed it to be true. When I asked her why he chose Mora, she said it simply was because it was available. He didn’t have any deeper meaning to it.”

He frowned. Ignoring the sense of déjà vu he felt regarding this specific topic, he didn’t see any problem with his actions.

“Yes, it only makes sense. To the God of Wealth and Commerce, what material is easier to get than Mora?”

“Exactly!” You exclaimed suddenly, nearly causing him to flinch. “Only a simple-minded man would come up with such a simple-minded conclusion.”

“S-Simple-minded…”

You nodded.

“Just because he had all the access in the world to Mora didn’t mean the common folk did. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to make the first model home out of materials available to everyone?”

He coughed.

“Perhaps.”

You sniffled.

“It’d be fine if that was the only thing, but Shitou from the Jade Mystery told me that once Rex Lapis stopped by his family’s shop in the past and purchased a spoon made of fine Noctilucus Jade to sample the culinary delights of Liyue Harbor.” You buried your face in your hands. “Why would he spend that much Mora just for a simple spoon?”

“W-Well…”

“I know, I know. As the God of Wealth and Commerce, he had easy access to Mora. And I’m sure it made him happy to contribute to the wealth of Liyue Harbor’s commonfolk, but for someone who spent so much time around his people, it’s like he had no concept of his own creation’s worth! It’s shamelessly extravagant! I didn’t think he was such a wasteful person…”

In the back of his mind, Zhongli had the urge to disagree, to stand up for the good name of Rex Lapis. Really, he wasn’t so shameless as you made him out to be, at least he didn’t think he was. But before he could respond, you continued.

“That’s not all though…” you started again.

Oh no.

“A while ago, I told Meng and the Ferrylady that Rex Lapis wasn’t a self-absorbed narcissist, but…”

Oh no…

“I was talking to Sir Yun the other day of the Yun-Han Opera Troupe? I always knew that Rex Lapis enjoyed the troupe’s shows, but did you know he starred in a few of them? As a warrior, she said. And as you know, Rex Lapis is known as the Warrior God. So that means he basically played himself in operas singing songs about… himself. Can you imagine doing that? How…”

Tears came to your eyes.

“Cringe.”

He resisted the urge to clear his throat.

“Though records say he may have taken part in those operas, I can’t recall Miss Yun stating he starred as himself,” he began. “The assumption he did so is mere conjecture at best.”

That last part slipped from his tongue before he could rein it back in. You never took kindly when his opinions differed from yours, and yet… Well, perhaps he was feeling if not a little attacked. The Yun-Han Opera Troupe had a long history, after all. They certainly would not be more the wiser if some tales became embellished over the years. He thought out of all people you would be more aware of that than most.

Thankfully, much to his relief, you were. Instead of taking to anger like you usually did, you nodded obediently.

“That’s true. I hope you’re right,” you replied with a hopeful smile. “Madame Ping said that not even the great Cloud Retainer watches operas about herself. It’s too embarrassing.”

He did clear his throat that time.

“I suppose not everyone enjoys hearing tales of their past,” he finally let out.

You nodded.

“I’m glad at least she agrees with me that only weird and abnormal people do things like that,” you let out with a bit of relief. “I was getting worried I’m the only person that feels that way…”

He only smiled in response, ignoring the fact that Cloud Retainer only said that it was “embarrassing,” not “weird” or “abnormal.” You really did not hesitate to deal your blows, did you?

“You know what the worst thing is, though?” You asked, looking up at him imploringly. “Legend has it that the gods are able to change their physical forms. There are even tales of Rex Lapis taking a female form. But… out of all the records, there are no depictions of his female form, only that she had amber eyes.”

Zhongli frowned in thought. Though he heard and understood your words well, he didn’t know what was the wrong in what you said. The tales of Rex Lapis were often embellished, especially in the way they painted him as the type to change his form often. The truth of the matter was far from that. Not that he could tell you that, of course. But before he could respond in any way, your eyes became filled with tears.

“I mean, he obviously didn’t mind leaving evidence of his male visage. And as I told you before, he made sure he looked good in every one of them. So if he was narcissistic enough to do that, why not leave anything behind of his female form? You… You don’t think… she was UGLY, do you?” You cried in pain.

If his brain didn’t shut down before, it definitely did then. But not noticing, you continued on.

“That’s the only reason I can come up with. Rex Lapis shares his beauty with everyone, after all, so she must have been so ugly that a narcissist like him couldn’t bear for others to see!” You sobbed.

Every word that left your mouth felt like a blow to his ego. Was this truly what you thought about him?

“So do you see why my faith has been shaken? If we try to view him as a person, Rex Lapis was a simple-minded conceited weirdo that was so ashamed of his female form he wiped any and all traces of her depiction out of existence.”

He couldn’t do this anymore.

“While the tales of the past may be rooted in truth, it’s important to realize they are only that. Tales. Nothing more. As it is, we simply do not know how much we can take as fact. So I would not let it bother you too much, First,” he stated in a matter-of-fact manner.

Though you looked as if you had more to say, you slowly nodded once, then once again with more surety.

“You’re right. I guess I’m looking far too into this. Surely if the great Rex Lapis was revered by so many, even the adepti, he must have been worthy of the respect. I just need to remember that,” you replied bashfully. “I’m sorry to have piled this all on you, Zhongli.”

He shook his head with a chuckle.

“It is alright. I am glad to be your voice of reason.”

Laughing in return, you nodded.

“Yes, thank you. And well, I guess it could be worse, I suppose. Madame Ping was always respectful to Rex Lapis in her stories. She could’ve said that he was the kind of person with… I don’t know. No common sense or something. Like could you imagine if he was the type of person that thought it was a smart idea to bring square cups instead of circle to a party?” You asked with a laugh. “Now that would be horrifying.”

……

Yes, you certainly had a way with words.

[drawnfamiliarfaces]

Would Jenny allow Danny to tinker with her? I know robotics isn’t exactly the same as aerospace engineering (and I do be headcanoning that my boy chose this as his major since he wants to be an astronaut), but with all the experience he had from handling his parents inventions I believe he can be trusted with fixing something as complex as a robot. I like to think that Danny was really impressed with how Jenny was made and secretly wanted to take a look at how she works, but was too shy to ask because he knows how it’s like to be treated like an object and not a person (with the whole “ghosts are non-sentient globs of ectoplasm with post-human consciousness” spiel he heard so many times) and didn’t want to make Jenny uncomfortable. I believe it took Jenny some time and getting to know Danny and his engineering skills before she let him fix her when she got something badly broken. It was like a show of ultimate trust from Jenny’s side and Danny was flattered, humbled and very respectful. And super careful of course, constantly asking how Jenny’s doing or feeling while he tinkered, mindful of her. I bet she was touched.

Not gonna lie, this is one of the more fascinating asks I got - if only because its incredibly interesting to read about your take/interpretation of Danny & Jenny's relationship! I hope you don't mind me saying, but it feels like you adore both characters and it's very cute!

Well, now, in HoM AU, both Danny and Jenny are close friends and indeed Danny is one of the few people who Jenny trusts with - well, herself - her mechanical self. Like you, I headcanon Danny as quite mechanicaly gifted - in HoM AU he actually graduated college/uni with engineering degree, so he got education to polish his raw skills! He is one of the first people who would help Jenny in and out of the field, if there is a minor malfunction or an injury of some sort!

But even for that to happen it took a couple of years and a few adventures together.

So to answer the original question, I would have to say that in HoM AU specifically, neither Danny would ask to 'tinker' with her, nor Jenny would probably be totally comfortable with that question if asked. 'Tinkering' would imply a degree of casual poking around, and in this case, both Danny and Jenny have certain life experiences that gave them... boundaries when it comes to their own and others' autonomy. Jenny especially.

(a bit of random background info dump here to explain the reasoning, but feel free to ignore it, since i basically answered the ask xD i just got bitten by a writing bunny, so its gotten a bit long - be warned!)

When Jenny was younger and only just acclimatizing herself with human world and amongst teenagers, she was rather blaze at times with how much access to her body she gave to her human friends and acquaintances.

After all, her mother was rather frank about it - often poking around in Jenny's mechanics and code. But it was her mother, who created her (sort of 'why are you covering yourself, i made you i already know what you have' mother attitude, which is a bit over-controlling and invasive to other's autonomy, but well, Jenny is a robot after all) and it a completely different deal from others.

So, despite her mother's warnings there are instances when Jenny was not very careful. Like when she allowed Brad, Tuck and Sheldon to literally remove and rip out her stuff in pursuit of fashion goals. Or when she dropped her guard around Todd Sweeney and got reprogrammed for her good deed.

And during the events of the last episode, she was once again controlled, by Dr Locus. While not exactly her fault, it still left a lasting impression that any mechanically gifted person could be dangerous to her.

Now, this is where we venture into my personal headcanons for MLAATR that are tied into HoM-verse:

Another aspect of Jenny's developed caution to giving access to her body - is the fact that she is not considered as a real person in the eye of the government/world. She is a thing, a weapon created by Dr. Walkman. She does not have the same rights as a human, and on paper she does not even have rights to her own body. It's all patented Nora Wakeman technology, (secretly) founded by the government.

And she has been fighting it ever since she was a teenager and refused to be called an IT - XJ-9 - and became a HER, a teenage girl Jenny, who also just happens to be a robot.

At first it started as a simple teenage rebellion and she went to school and started to hang out with other kids, but what about later after she graduates? Will she be even allowed to? Sure, maybe her school will give her a diploma, but how legal will it be to give something like that to someone who is legally not a real person? After all, its not like when other kids will turn 18 and can be their own people, not under the legal control of their parents. Jenny is her mother's property, intellectual and physical. For her to be considered a real person in the eye of government, it would require a law being passed about recognizing sentience of Artificial Intelligence.

And sure, she could probably be made an exception, being a hero robot and all, but the problem is, she is not the only human-made robot in existence! What about her sisters, who are prototypes and are not as developed as her? Her brother, who seemed to develop sentiency to the point of turning on humans?? Melody and Killgore?? And its not only in her world (cartoon), but in others (since its a crossover). So the question about AI/Robot sentience, no matter if they are good or bad or how developed they are, would not concern only her, it would be a global debate.

And we all know how the governments of the world would feel about passing laws about sentience of artificial beings that were created to serve the human race. It would be a struggle one way or another.

So, as she grows up and sees the world refusing to aknowledge her as a person, she doesnt have legal rights to finish school and go to college, to get a job, to get married, heck she cant even have a legal documentation that doesnt says 'Dr. Wakeman's creation'. The government says: your body belongs to us, because we paid for Dr. Wakeman to make you - you belong to us, we control you.

That, on top of several unpleasant experiences with other people disregarding her autonomy, will equal to Jenny trying to get some sense of that control back. So she starts to be more cautious about how much access others have to her physical self; she starts to build and reinforce boundaries with other people, starting with her family and friends.

It was one of the darkest days in Sheldon's life, when Jenny started to firmly say 'no' to whenever he asked her about her inner workings and casual access for poking around. xD Tuck was not a happy camper either, that his favorite robot friend became very stingy with all the cool stuff. But Brad got it. And after gentle (and sometimes not) reminders, others became more understanding.

It was a little harder with her mother. Dr. Wakeman truly loved her daughter, but she was a scientist first and mother second. She was so used to casual access to Jenny, in order to keep maitanance that it was hard for her to break the habits. Its still a constant struggle, but she has gotten so much better.

Now, when it came to her new friends amongst HoMies, she already has built a set of boundaries that allowed her to feel more secure as a person, despite how the world sees her, but she is much more reserved to opening herself up to others, at least compared to how she first approached people when she was younger.

It took a few missions and getting to know them better, for her to start trusting with them with her mechanical self. But now a few years later, she feels comfortable enough with most of them to give her a helping hand when needed!

Of course not everyone are capable of helping her though: Danny, Kim and Zak are three of more mechanically oriented people who can help. Though Danny is the one with actual education in that field, while Kim and Zak learned more by necessity, from Kim's various jobs and Zak to operate the Saturday's equipments.

When Rex joined them, he actually became the second best person for her to come to if she needed help. Not only because he has unprecedent skills in mechanics, but also because of his nanites. (but thats info dump for another time, lol)

Jun has some basic knowledge in mechanics, but nowhere near enough for her to feel comfortable poking in Jenny's insides. Jake is perhaps the least capable of helping, when it comes to engineering, followed by newbie Randy (tho we really aint counting him tbh xD).

Ben is a complicated situation - he has some training and knowledge in engineering and robotics because of his Plumber training, but Jenny has heard horror tales from Gwen about how he treats his stuff (the whole hacking/playing with Omnitrix settings), so she flat out refuses for Ben to touch her. However in emergency/battle situation she would allow Ben to use one of his aliens to do so (like, Grey Matter or Upgrade).

So, we talked about Jenny's experiences and why they would contribute to her feeling uncomfortable if someone asked to 'tinker' with her.

Now, let's talk about why Danny would not ask to 'tinker' with her in the first place.

Like you said, Danny is all to familiar with the struggle of being part of something tat is hardly recognized as a sentient species - he had to listen to his parents dismiss ghost sentience most of his younger life. Of course, they have gotten much better since the... 'finale' of DP, but this sort of racism? xenophobia? (im not rally sure which term to use tbh) prejudice against ghosts would have left a lasting impression on Danny.

So I dont remember if I ever implied it, but in HoM AU - events of DP finale happened very differently and the resulting consequences of it diverged a lot from Mr ButtHurtman's 'canon'.

(Also, I had ideas about it, before a Glitch In Time came out, so events from there were not taken into consideration. )

I don't want to reveal much, because it is kinda one of my planned flashback for HoM, but the events that happened reinforced Danny's ... well lets say regard of people's autonomy? It's kind of hard to put into words.

Ok, let's explain it like this: Danny would not ask Jenny if he could look at how she worked and if he could tinker with her, because it would be like if his Mom and Dad casually asked if they could perform a vivisection on him to see how different he is from a full human.

And while sure, the comparison might sound a bit extreme, since there is a difference when it comes to robots and humans about 'poking around' in their innards. But to Danny - it would be too close of a comparison - because of the whole 'recognition of sentience' thing.

After all, wasn't it just some years ago, his parents cried that ghost are nothing more than lump of malicious energy that have no feelings? They changed their mind after Danny's reveal, which allowed them to actually listen and look into evidence proving otherwise and learn. And here is Jenny, struggling to be recognized as a person, since she is considered nothing more than a lump of metal with no feelings - just a weapon to be pointed in a certain direction.

And Danny would feel like asking Jenny if he could casually poke inside her, is a bit... hypocritical? And not to mention insenstitive. After all, he knows how she feels - she is basically still living his worst imagined life in some ways.

So, I don't think he will ever ask to study how she works by casually poking inside her.

HOWEVER -

At some point, after they became friends, Danny would feel like he should know at least some basics on how Jenny works, just so he could help her in an emergency.

I imagine it happened after a particularly rough mission, and Danny had to help Jenny back home since she was unable to do so herself, so Dr. Wakeman could fix her. After some time thinking, he would sit in front of both Nora and Jenny and ask them for permission if he could learn how Jenny works - from Nora.

After all, Danny does not need to poke inside Jenny to learn how she functions, when there is her mother right there - the creator, the maintanance and doctor all in one package, with access to blueprints and all intricate knowledge, who can evaluate what Danny needs to know in accordance to his passable engineering skills. She could teach him the basics - but of course not without Jenny's permission.

So he asks her, if he could learn, because he is tired of looking how she gets hurt along with them, but unlike most of them she can not be easily fixed with bandages and some time. And Danny, since he is one of the few of them who has the skills, would like to be actually able to help her with those skills. But it is her body - it is her choice, to trust him or not.

And Jenny would be speechless. It would be the first time someone asked her like that. Not even Kim, who is one of her closest friends, asked before (but mostly because Kim was perfectly aware that she is nowhere skilled enough to even think about it).

And you would be right. It would be a show of ultimate trust from Jenny, to agree for Danny to learn. And maybe at some point, simply learning, turned into more on hands learning in some small ways. And Jenny's trust was never betrayed, and Danny always stayed humbled and aware of that.

so, i hope the answer was satisfying, or at least entertaining for you! thank you again, your ask was delightful to read and allowed me to explore some of my own backstory parts for HoM a little bit more!

[pedge-page]

omg imagine PK x Plushies i love you so much girl you are amazing

Plushies x Piss Kink Crossover - Joel Miller x F!Reader

Notes: The crossover that was bound to happen and its HEREREEEEEEEE. This is more Plushies!verse setting and they discover a lil piss kink.

Warnings: PissKink, Plushies humping, yes we are peeing on the plush, premature ejaculation, assisted male masturbation, crying, jealous!Joel, and a HINT (just a bit) of sub!Joel at the end

18+ ONLY

- - - -

“What’s this one? Benny the Buffalo?” Joel asks, staring down at the brown fuzzy stuffed animal in his hands.

“No, dummy, that’s Biscuit, the Bison,” you retort, not even looking at him as you continue reading.

The two of you are lying down on your new “shared” bed, and Joel has decided its time he get to know his roommates on first name basis.

“Course. And this?” He snatches the white rabbit next. “BunBun?”

“Carrot.”

“Appropriate. How about Ghosty over here?”

“Casper.”

“How original. Aaaannnddd....?” He shoves the next one in your face to get your attention: a fat baby chick with an enormous orange bill.

“Mr Quakers,” you answer matter-of-factly.

“I bet he’s loads of fun on that little nub of yours,” he snickers. He tosses the poor chick like a free-throw basketball across the room.

He grabs the next one, buried waaaay in the back of your bed under all the rest. “Alright, Let me guess… Hammy the Hamster.”

“No that’s—“ you take one look at the one currently in his palms: a medium sized hamster with bitty hands and a large head as big as his squat body. Quickly hiding your shocked expressions, you go back to your book and say very casually, “Um…that’s… Frank.”

“Frank?”

“Mhm.”

“Just Frank.”

“Yup.”

“Frank the Hamster. How does that make sense?”

“Well I didn’t name him.”

“And who did?"

You swallow, wondering why Joel’s got so many goddamn questions about the naming conventions of your stuffed animals. “Um … Frank did…”

“Stuck up fella, naming the thing after him. Who was this “Frank” then. Your uncle? Was he as perverted as me?”

“No. Frank’s… my ex.”

Your face feels hot, avoiding his gaze and trying to look anywhere but at him. 

Joel stares at you with an unreadable expression, then back to the fisted squishy hamster plush. He contemplates for what feels like an eternity. There’s an uneasy silence hanging in the air, and your heart is beating out of your chest, wondering what he may be thinking about those word resonating in his ears.

He clenches his jaw, gritting his teeth into diamonds while looking at something so extremely soft and huggable. You hope maybe he’ll just dropkick it out the window at worst, but instead: 

“Hands and knees on the floor. We’re fucking Frankie the Hamster tonight.”

-

There was no “we”. What he really meant was YOU are fucking Frank the Hamster tonight, and he is pinning you down and forcing you to grind on it harder.

“Joel—that—feels… uncomfortable.”

He’s not rubbing his cock along your ass, or nudging your clit or kissing you. Instead, he’s caged you between the thick mass of his sold body and the hamster on the floor, your legs spread out with his knees along the inside of your calves to keep them open.

He keeps rubbing along your pelvis, palm digging into the squishy part right below your belly, pressing hard against your bladder.

“Joel,” you warn again. Your legs quiver with the rapid build, too afraid to push him off entirely. He’s steaming, that’s for sure, but why torture you above the little helpless guy?

“S’matter? You don’t like rubbing your slutty pussy over your ex’s face?”

“It’s just a stuffed animal—ow!” You cry as Joel pinches your nipple through your shirt.

“You grind on Frankie’s face before?”

“N-no. Never,” you swear. 

“Mmm. Not sure I believe you, sweet pea. Kept him all these years, didn’t ya?”

You shake your head, too afraid to face him. You really hadn’t been grinding on the hamster ever. In fact, you nearly forgetting of his existence until Joel fished him up while asking everyone’s name. 

He forces your back to arch even more drastically, putting more pressure between your naked cunt and the soft squish bellow you. You furrow your brows, fear creeping between your spread legs, unable to clench against something to brush off the mounting pressure in you.

“Joel please—I really need to go...” you didn't want to finish the sentences. He wasn't pleasuring with his hands you in the right places so much as building pressure in the wrong one.

“Go where? I’m all you need. Right. Here.” His fingers dig possessively into your side while his other hand pushes into your lower belly.

You shake your head again. Heart racing now that you no longer care about your pleasure and are more concerned with the mess of forbidden bodily fluids you’re about to rain all over your poor Frankie—

It hits you with burning desire mixed with an irksome bile. You gasp out angrily. 

This. Mother. Fucking. Asshole.

Joel smirks into your neck behind you, as if reading your mind figuring out his evil little plan. 

“S’wrong, angel? Would you rather be doing this with any of MY plushies I’ve spoiled you with?”

“I—you—“ you grit your teeth, eyes closing as a wave of panic washes deep through your core. You’re desperate not to make a mess, a fool of yourself to tame his sadistic need to own every inch of control over you.

He hears the little staggered pants from your lips. “Do it,” he commands softly but with finality, laced with a sadistic “win” for him.

A tear slips down your cheek as you moan sadly, your stomach giving up and unclenching as the walls of your bladder breaks, and hot urine spills into the stuffed animal’s face currently wedged so tightly against your entrance. 

“Shhhhhh,” he coos, finally grinding himself against your ass. He can hear the feint rushing liquid of your piss splatting into the cotton. 

He presses you further into its plush softness, suffocating every inch of your crotch so that it absorbs all the nasty warm juice squeezing out of you like a lemon. Your legs quiver violently as you can’t help but release more and more, flowing out as if by his demand and feeling the poor plush get heavy with the rush filling its cotton innards up.

"Naughty girl, am I making you piss all over your ex's face? Little Frankie doesn't deserve that does he?" He taunts, fully well intending for this to exactly happen as he wanred.

There’s so much, and another tear slips passed you, but this one because it feels so—relieving. It’s gross and nasty, embarrassing and heartbreaking all at once, and it makes you hump against him and the dampened hamster even more. 

Joel feel the quickened breaths coming out desperately from your nose as you grind down on the defiled thing all soaked up with your own piss. Your hips are frantic, smothering your cunt with the piss-logged plush desperately, as if you were trying to...

“Shit—are you…?”

You cry out in response, mouth agape with satisfied groans when you clit catches along the wet seams just right and you find yourself cumming on the sad wet thing drowned below you.

Joel clears his throat in surprise. His cock pulses on its own and floods the inside of his pants in white strings of his seed.

Did he think you would probably cry? Yes.

Did he want you to pee and destroy your ex’s little gift to you? Yes.

Did he expect you to fucking cum from it? Um.

Did he know HE would cum from it??? No. Definitely not. 

His teeth grind against one another trying not to think about how perverted he is, pulling away from you so you can’t feel his sticky spent through his trousers and on to your back. 

The squishy lump below you begins seeping the now cooled piss into the floor boards. You sigh deeply, not sure what to do now that your little punishment has turned into—something wilder.

You feel a gentle kiss along your cheek, his thumb caressing away your tears.

“That was hot,” He admits plainly.

You cover your face to hide your smile. It’s gross. It really is. Should be embarrassing. You don’t even want to think about the hamster on the floor, the memories you’ve just soddened with your own fucking piss. 

He helps you off the floor. Your thighs still shake, the uncomfortable feeling hanging there in disgust now that you’re mentally sober again.

He guides you to the shower where you both wash up quietly.

“Um—listen I didn’t… I don’t know why you would keep your ex’s stuff but…I mean I’m reasonably… it doesn’t make me feel great, so ya can’t blame me, for getting jealous—“

You shut him up but tugging against his half hard cock.

“First of all,” you say, the sudden boldness in your voice blanking his mind into submission under your touch.

“That plush, was from my first boyfriend—in high school. We dated for 2 months,” you continued, your fingers gripping his base with a gentle squeeze, feeling him swell to full mass, “and then he realized he liked boys. That was it. We laughed about it and stayed good friends. He gave me the stuffed animal as a parting gift to college for helping him through it all.”

You stop rubbing his cock and Joel opens his eyes. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“So…Frank’s just… a friend…”

You kiss his collarbone. “Just a friend,” you repeat.

The water coats his back soothingly. An ache that had formed in his muscles, the strain of aggression tickling his brain from the minute he heard you had a stuffed animal named after your ex, still in your bed after years, had suddenly vanished. 

“Why—why would you say hes your ex and not just your old friend? Why'd ya let me make you do that to it?” He asks, concerned now that he’s ruined something sentimental to you over his quickness to jealousy.

“Because—“ you nip along the swell of his chest, both hands working along his hardened cock. “You wanted it.” Your thumb swipes along his tip, the precum feeling sticky despite the shower water drenching you. 

He moans, head falling into your shoulder as he thrusts his length into your palm. 

As your wrist continues to jerk him off, your lips ghost the shell of his ear with a deadly, lascivious whisper: 

“And I’m too crazy for you to say no.”

- - - -

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[crepesuzette2023]

Hi! Because someone just asked me, I'd love you hear your Top 5 favourite McLennon fics!

You made my day! Nothing could have made me happier than this ask.

I'm not going to evade your question. I will post my top-five, even though it hurts to choose. But you inspired me to finally write a longer (okay: very long) post about some (not nearly all!) of my favorites, which will be under the cut.

(Sorry for not knowing every writer's tumblr, by the way. Please feel free to let me know, so I can tag authors where appropriate. Thank you!)

My Top 5:

MIRACLE WORKER by @scurator. What can I say. Every time I need my heart broken and to feel an inkling of what grace truly means, I go to this masterpiece about Paul and Robert Fraser finding each other again at Cavendish in 1981.

COAST STARLIGHT by bookofapril is "Miracle Worker's" cosmic twin. The sun to its night. Paul and Robert Fraser on Fire Island in 1974. Nothing I can say will do it justice, so I won't try. This is the "other world" conjured in "Tug of War," so powerfully and joyfully imagined, it's real. (I'm always thinking of this story, but I did so extra hard when I came across a prompt recently: 'They aren't each other's first love, but they're each other's true love'.)

SAME AS IT EVER WAS by RedheadAmongWolves. My favorite Outsider's POV. An ageing newsstand owner from Liverpool remembers John and Paul as boys and young men. There's something magical about the relationship coming alive in these glimpses. A story filled with tenderness that reminds me to always look closely.

AN ORGASM OF SOUND by @pauls1967moustache. The insanity of John and Paul in 1967 got the tribute it deserves. I sleep easier since I read this story. It feels cosmically right that it exists.

PLANT A SEED by @eveepe. Paul in his slutty sailor outfit in Miami. He and John are into each other, and happy, and fuck slowly. Afterwards, Paul has an idea for a new song. That's it. Tender, glorious, hot perfection. Apply at least once a week for best results.

For more thoughts about some of my favorite stories, sorted into very much defined-ad-hoc categories, read under the cut.

Young Love:

I love the myth of their first meeting, and stories that speculate about the sexually loaded creative fireworks/gritty jealousies/tentative hand-holding/topping and tailing during the first years. Here are some faves:

Paul finds music, and John, and his life is changing. In STREETS OF OUR TOWN (@with-eyes-closed) you can taste the upheaval and promise of first love and growing up. Deeply sensual, even without on-page sex. The shaky, sweet, and all-consuming fire of John and Paul’s first kiss is immortalized in ALL I KNOW SINCE YESTERDAY (RedheadAmongWolves). In NON NOBIS SOLUM (@downtothe-lastdrop), art student John simply has to know how far grammar school boy Paul will go to please him. But Paul matches him play-by-play. In THE CAST IRON SHORE (@m1ssunderstanding) Paul earns extra money through music and sex. John finds out. They fall in love, and hide their mutual pining behind transactions—but in the end, they man up to pair up, and get their band back on track. (The first part is finished; I can’t wait for part 2.) John and Paul’s ’61 trip to Paris has been honored in fiction many times; WHEN YOU ARE YOUNG THEY ASSUME YOU KNOW NOTHING (@lilypadd23) is a slow-burning, blessedly long story that blossoms sweetly. DON’T THINK ABOUT IT is the concept by which Paul measures both his pining for John and their deeply satisfying (but surely not really queer?!) sex life. Perfectly realized Paul POV by @merseydreams. Finally: I NEED YOU DARLIN’ (verse) (by @beatlessideblog) would have fit many categories, but I put it here, because in the end, it’s about young John and Paul becoming friends, making music, having sex, and falling in love. No more, no less. Embedded in a late 50’s/early 60's Liverpool omegaverse in which there's a place for their bond. But, surprise (?!): It’s still complicated. I can’t overstate how charming and satisfying and funny and hot this work is.

Old John and Paul:

Is there anything as lovely as imagining John and Paul growing old together?

In HERE TODAY (@herspecialagent), John and Paul found happiness with each other in Scotland. On 8th December 1980, they invite friends for a party, and fight an inexplicable sense of doom. A reminder that our other lives can be closer than we think, and to keep our loved ones even closer.

GROW OLD WITH ME (@inherownwr1te): Old farmers and husbands John and Paul enjoy domestic bliss, deal with a broken arm, and make sweet love.

HAVING COFFEE (@feathersandblue): John Lennon and Paul McCartney, “one of the most iconic gay couples in history,” look back on their early love, the Beatles, and being outed in the 80’s, in this oh-so-glamourous, well-written 2020 portrait…

Magical re-tellings of J/P and/or the Beatles Story:

No matter where you come down on the blessed vs. cursed continuum—they were living through something magical.

In KISSING THE BLARNEY (@zilabee) the Beatles draw love and music from kissing Paul, and each other, until the stupid world interferes. But fear not, all ends well. How to tell the truth through whimsy: this story demonstrates it.

In WE ARE ALL TOGETHER (also by @zilabee), John and Paul switch bodies. It helps.

I WAS A YOUNGER MAN NOW (THEN) (POST HOC) BY @fingersfallingupwards: Paul is a time traveler and braids his life together with John’s, out of order, through the years. And yes, they do grow old together—but not without losing each other first. I’m in awe of this story.

A darker time-traveling story is A MATTER OF TIME (D12Fan), in which John and Paul love each other, over and over, and never manage to make it work—but Paul won’t give up.

FOR THOUGH THEY MAY BE PARTED (@downtothe-lastdrop): The misery of the 'Get Back' sessions and memory-stunting technology imported from “Severance” are not enough to kill off John and Paul’s attraction and longing for each other. Again, this is basically what happened, so.

John and Paul without the Beatles?

Yes, please! Sometimes, the best way to dissect and celebrate (and fix?) this mesmerizing and exasperating partnership is to lift it from its context and drop it elsewhere. Anything goes.

WHATEVER FATE DECREES by @dailyhowl: A gorgeous, finely spun, securely handled, self-contained vision of how John and Paul could have worked as artists in love, without a band to 'legitimize' and constrain their bond. I love this homage to their deep and complicated love that needed trust and breathing room.

1967 by @walkuntilthedaylight: What if John and Paul had gone to Spain together and not come back? This story not only explores their relationship layer by layer, it also dives into the the feelings of those who knew them 'before' and who now meet them again, as a couple. A fascinating alternate history. Not a fluffy one.

TOMORROW I'LL MISS YOU (@pauls1967moustache): Paul abandons John in Hamburg—or John stays behind without bothering to write, depending on who you ask. This "Before Sunset"—AU reunites them, years later. They ride a bus and write a song, and the love and tension are sweet and painful.

DOUBLE FANTASY (by @javelinbk): Modern AU in which John and Paul meet at John's flower shop and manage to ignore and creatively re-interpret their feelings for one another for a surprising amount of time, before fate has mercy. I love how their sweet, well-matched eccentricity makes the world a warmer place for both of them.

WE ARE STARDUST (Unchained_Daisychain): AU. John and Paul meet at Woodstock, fall hard and fast for each other, and have to decide what to do with it: Paul's life is back home in England...except...

Angst, darkness, and courage:

Pain, fear, grief, and other dark emotions are part of the real J/P story, so it makes sense to honor and harvest them in fiction. One of my favorite brands of McLennon angst is the one triggered by their feelings for each other, and the thing they become once they're together™. When they're scared of how much they need each other, and of what will happen next.

ONE AND ONE AND ONE IS THREE and MANAGING EXPECTATIONS (both by @pauls1967moustache), for instance. The first is a terrifying threesome with Yoko (at John's instigation, of course), in which trust is never rewarded and sex resolves nothing. The second is Paul wondering, in thoughts both messy and crystal clear, whether he exists independently of John. He turns to Brian for answers. They fuck. It feels like a human thing compared to what is going on in Paul's mind. Just astounding.

SUNDAY DRIVER (@boshemians) dives into the theme of Paul and John being afraid of themselves in the aftermath of Paul's accident (moped, sexual) with Tara Browne. This one, like "Managing Expectations," ends on a lovely grace note.

MACABRE (@dovetailjoints). Lennon and McCartney go too far.

OPEN HEART (@paisanas). Paul drinks John's blood. John lets him. But Paul starts to hate himself for how much he needs John, which John feels as rejection. I love how this story ends on Paul embracing his need. You can see the painful, bare bones of their malnourished love under the lush sensuality of the vampire sex. Raw and rich.

SILENCE (@ohjohnnysblog). Short and piercing. If there is someone you love—tell them. Don't wait.

THE LATE, GREAT JOHNNY ACE (@midchelle). Reeling with grief, Paul is recording an album in 1981. George and Ringo are there. John is not. But in the end—he is. And they touch. I've always admired Paul's resilience in the face of having to perform or "prove" his love of John in public, and this story showed me, without sugar-coating, where this resilience comes from.

Light, hope, and fixing things:

There is also much lightness and brightness in McLennon, because John and Paul were ridiculous, and horny, and weird. And also: they deserve a laugh. They deserve the fluffiest of happy endings. They deserve high-quality, life-affirming smut. They deserve silly, because silly is what they were. You know their names, look up their number.

1980. John is in BERMUDA (@scurator), Paul visits. Paul comes prepared, John just comes. Sometimes, it can be this simple. This story always leaves me in such a good mood. Paul is the (more) experienced one, and it...really works for me.

GOT TO GET DOWN (@eveepe): In praise of John's obsession with Paul's...precious. His small and perfect prick.

ADVENTURES IN TOTAL HONESTY (@merseydreams). Pithy and sexy, and, I quote from the tags: #Excessive Margarita Mixing.

ANINUT (@pauls1967moustache): The Beatles heal, together and separately, after Brian's death. Once more, I quote the writer: "The Beatles did not follow any of the Jewish mourning traditions, and frankly, they should have."

The unhinged weirdness of the Mad Day Out, with John and Paul escaping and Francie, Yoko and Mal not missing them...much, is rightfully celebrated in one of the insaner stories I read: JOHN, I'M ONLY DANCING (@skylikeaflame)

FAIR'S FAIR (@javelinbk): John and Paul are being silly during a press conference, resulting in acute arousal requiring John's skilled intervention. I love the unexpected care and tenderness in this one!

WHERE THE POETS WENT (RedheadAmongWolves): Tender and enchanted story in which Paul and John go to a bookstore, where they're not as famous as everywhere else. As delicate as the chiming doorbells and the pages murmuring around them.

TAKEN AWAY (@crumblingcookies) Extraterrestrial Intelligence intervenes to reunite John and Paul.

CAN I TAKE MY FRIEND TO BED? (manhattanvalleys). Paul fucks the band in sequence and gets off in the end, as is his due. This is a story like Prince's KISS. No filler, all effect.

THEY SAY IT'S YOUR BIRTHDAY (@ohjohnnysblog). Warm and nostalgic phone sex in the 70's.

KEEP THE LIGHT WE'RE GIVEN (@backbenttulips). Amidst the rise of Beatlemania, Paul and John expect their first child. This is Paul's 1962 diary.

More Outsider POV's:

STILL MATES (@pauls1967moustache): in 1968, Peter Asher takes the leap to act on his feelings for his sister's spiraling ex fiancé. This isn't about Paul as much as about Peter, and who he wants to be. Gutting character study. It made me love Peter.

ANOTHER GIRL (@boshemians): Astrid reunites with the Beatles during the making of AHDN and registers their words and deeds with the same stark objectivity as her camera. I love how she seeks the shelter of obscurity while they are being dragged into the limelight. But she sees them, wherever they are. J/P in this story feels incredibly real to me.

WHY BUY THE COW (RedheadAmongWolves). The milkman sees everything on his early morning rounds: the arrival of a nice new family, the McCartneys, the mother's illness, the sadness after her death...and the arrival of a new love in the older son's life. He shouldn't approve—should say something, in fact. But a small inner voice holds him back.

SLEEPLESS IN WALES (thinkpink20). Mike overhears Paul and John whisper in bed. He doesn't understand everything they say. I do. Adorable.

Not each other's first love, but each other's true love

THIS YEAR'S FOR ME AND YOU (@skylikeaflame): After a long life, after deep and loving partnerships with other people, John and Paul, encouraged by their grown-up children, finally meet their mutual love head on. A festive story about waiting the perfect amount of time.

THERE ARE ALWAYS FLOWERS (tarenas): The Beatles are in the past; John and Paul's love is in ashes. Paul, who is fragile and bereft, lives with George, who is content. The four ex-Beatles unite for the second wedding of Mike McCartney. At times, the aching grief in this story is almost unbearable. But the love between George and Paul is unusual and real. This is unfinished. I'll keep waiting for the final chapter.

Beyond J/P

WANT ME WHEN I'M NOT THERE (@backbenttulips): Linda catches Paul cheating on her with John. She divorces him. Finally: a story that puts her most likely reaction front and center, with no mercy for the messed-up geniuses.

In the Rebecca-AU LOVE LIKE GHOSTS (@backbenttulips), Yoko becomes Mrs. Lennon. Soon, she discovers that her husband is haunted by the ghost of his first love. It's pleasing how well this re-telling matches the events as they (alas) (almost) happened. The ending is chilling. Genuinely horrifying. I love seeing Yoko as the sensible one and as the focus of empathy.

THE BASS LESSON (@aquarianshift). Paul and Stu fool around without letting go of their mutual resentment for even a moment. And it works. "Let's never do this again." I don't think so.

TELL ME ALL MY LOVE'S IN VAIN (@midchelle). Forget about quote unquote platonically obsessed male rock stars: This about about Maureen and Patti through the years. The web weaving continues.

SPOTLIGHT ON JOHN AND STU (@dailyhowl) A love story in letters—too brief, like Stu's life, but sounding as if the writer transcribed their dictation. Some of the best descriptions of what it must have been like to play on stage with the Beatles during the mania are in NO I IN THREESOME (@with-eyes-closed). George finds himself in the beam of attention between John and Paul, and nearly loses his mind. But he's determined to stay and become part of them. Paul is daddy and "fucks like music" as seen through George's eyes. The whole story is vicious and hot and uncomfortable—until there's the love and quiet at the eye of the storm.

Not for the faint of heart! WHAT THE CIGGIE CARTON SAW (@waveofhand): Paul McCartney having his way with cigarettes.

This is getting out of hand...but I'll stop here. There are so many more stories I love. And I can think of many other categories that would deserve their own post.

So, who knows: To be continued?

[ju1cyfru1t]

Hiii pooks! 😙 I love❤️ ur writhing sm

I’ve been having such a spider man phase after watching the new spider verse movie and I was wondering what would the turtles think when they figured out reader being NY’s Spider women or spider person like they haven’t told thier turtle bf about it and stuff (live for the drama😵‍💫)

Always love you and def feel free to ignore!

I LOVE THIS thank you pookie 🤭 hope u like it 🫶🏻🕸️ u didn’t specify so I’m gonna assume you meant the rise turtles!

Rise! Leo, Mikey, Donnie, Raph x Spider-Woman! S/O

ROTTMNT x Reader

fluff! :D, fem! reader, contains swearing, not proofread

Leo

- He may not be the brightest mutant, but he is observant

- Probably interrogated the info out of you

- -> “Y/N, where exactly were you last night?” “Oh, uh…I was with, um, April.” “That’s funny…considering April was with us!”

- It didn’t really shock him to find out you had a big secret, what did shock him is what that secret is

- He’s also a little hurt that you didn’t tell him. Don’t you trust him??? But that wasn’t his biggest concern

- “Wait, so like…spider woman as in like, big mama kind of spider woman?” NO-

- You would have to really explain it to him

- But let’s be real, he still wouldn’t understand so you’d have to show him by like climbing up the fucking wall or something

- But he really does think your powers are super sick

- Laughs when you try to explain your spidey senses -> “wait, you’re serious?”

- ^ calls them your “tingly thing”

- maybe you can web his fucking mouth shut

- LOVES your suit, thinks you look stunning and super awesome

- “You know, I always said that was your color Y/N!”

- Invites you to patrol with them! (then he doesn’t have to do as much)

- thinks you’re so hot when you fight (NOT IN A FREAKY WAY YOU FREAKS) and hypes you up

- freaks tf out if he ever gets a web on him, including if you were to swing with him to get out of harms way

- doesn’t ask for them, but he can’t deny he likes the iconic Spider-Man kisses

Mikey

- would just straight up ask if you’re hiding something. Dr.Delicate touch DOES NOT PLAY ‼️

- Of course this would be something you’re hesitant about, but he would remind you that you can confide in him

- Def was not expecting THIS.

- He is asking you a million questions all at once, and will sit nicely and listen as you explain with starry eyes (stop lookin at me with them big ole eyes)

- You’re #1 fan and biggest hype man

- Thinks you’re the coolest person ever fr

- Wants to swing around on your webs with you. Around NYC, in the lair, in Donnie’s lab, on missions, it doesn’t matter he WANTS it.

- THE ICONIC SPIDER-MAN KISSES ALL THE TIME ITS HIS FAVORITE WAY TO KISS YOU NOW

- weirdly interested in your webs 🕸️

- Compliments your suit anytime you wear it around him; thinks your mask is so so cute

- ^ in his free time he’ll sketch and color new suit designs to show you (also just drawings and paintings of you in your suit)

Donnie

- isn’t going to pry any secrets from you; but he does secretly wish you’d come to him on your own.

- so you can imagine his gratitude and relief when you finally tell him what’s up

- Doesn’t really say anything about it, but he doesn’t get why you didn’t just tell him sooner. I mean, you do know he’s a hero too, right?

- he’s fascinated, he’s never seen anything like your powers before. especially because you’re not a mutant.

- really just asks questions about how it all works. Your webs, how you stick to surfaces, your enhanced senses, the whole deal yk?

- He did NOT like big mama’s webs, and he doesn’t really like yours either I’m so sorry.

- ^if he needs them, would ask to use some like he did with Big Mama’s

- It’s not you I swear he just can’t do it

- you could like climb all over his lab ceiling and walls and scare the shit out of him tho

- ^ “Y/N get down this instant! WE TALKED ABOUT THIS-“

- admires your enhanced senses and intuition of danger

- is absolutely gonna make gear for you, as well as offering to make upgrades to your suit

- wouldn’t really directly say it, but he really likes the design of your suit. it just fits you so well. (he IS going to make a purple one for you)

- would scream if you ever just dropped down in front of him to kiss him spider man style

- ^ traumatized; it’s not his favorite thing but he doesn’t mind terribly

Raph

- might take him a while to notice if something is off about you. Leo or Mikey would probably have to directly point it out for him to realize fully

- Isn’t going to beat around the bush and just asks why you’re acting lowkey shady

- really shocked, might take him a second to process even if he doesn’t really know exactly what you mean at first

- honestly he understands why you keep it a secret, just a little saddened that you kept it from him

- He’s gonna need you to really explain your powers

- “…where do the webs come out of tho?”

- would deepen your bond and connection. you can really relate to each other carrying a deep burden and the pressure of responsibility.

- AMAZING DUO with his strength and your agility

- very good hype man

- takes you on most missions and patrols, thinks you’re a really valuable asset to the team

- also calls your spider senses your “tingly thing”

- it’s not that he doesn’t like your webs, something about them just make him nervous. Refuses to let you swing him on them unless he’s in immediate danger.

- does NOT let you crawl around the lair walls, he’s scared you’ll hurt yourself

- ^ “Y/N! You’re gonna hurt yourself, GET DOWN!”

- really thinks you look so pretty in your special suit, he just doesn’t know how to say without feeling like he sounds dumb. He would DIE if it was red.

- “ I really…er, like your costume.”

- very supportive! he gets the struggle of protecting the city, but is happy you get to do it beside each other. :D

- he likes the spidey kisses, they just really fluster him

——————————————————————————

y’all I’m sorry if there is any misinformation in this don’t flame me but I haven’t seen atsv yet

[m-n-m-s]

Hello can you do Spider verse characters (separately) x Mute reader? please and thankyou!

ofc 🫶🏻

Spider-Squad x Mute! Reader

Includes: Miles (e1610), Gwen, Hobie, and Pavitr

miles: red

gwen: pink

pavitr: orange

hobie: blue

you: green

all signs will be italicized!!

Miles Morales:

i feel like he would already know a little sign language like insomniac miles from a school course he picked up

not enough to be fluent but he knows a decent amount

but when he meets you?

when i tell you he is scrambling.

his hands are shaky when he signs to you, he forgets signs-

you get the idea

so he does the only reasonable thing: spending his free time practicing and learning more signs

he wanted to impress you a lil :( <3

definitely had to practice his signs right before he went to find you

Miles smiled sheepishly after he nearly ran into you. His hand was shaky (but he wasn't going to admit that) as he waved to you. "hey."

You smiled at him. "hi."

"what's your name?"

You fingerspelled your name for him, slowly. You gave him your sign name as well, watching as he tried to hide the way his face lit up (it didn't work). You felt your smile grow slightly.

"i'm miles."

after that initial meeting, you two would run into each other more often

sometimes stopping for a conversation when you weren't busy

you would hold back a grin whenever miles forgot a sign, eventually supplying it for him

he liked signing with you :)

the way you would always smile at him while he switched from talking to signing made his heart flutter <3

if you guys were busy, you'd flash him a little smile that made him damn near melt into a puddle

he gradually got better at sign language, thanks to you <3

definitely takes advantage of his knowledge to talk to you when he shouldn't be

You watched as Miles made a subtle face at the man talking. He discreetly turned to you. "do you think i can leave without him seeing me?" he signed, trying to keep it subtle.

You held back a smile and shook your head. "not with your stealth," you signed, a teasing look on your face. He made a mock-offended face and you hid your smile from the man talking with your hand.

"rude!"

Gwen Stacy:

when she met you originally, she didn't know any sign language

but over time, she grew curious

she wanted to get to know you!!

so naturally, she waited until you two were in the same room and weren't supposed to be talking to each other

and she "discreetly" slipped you a little note

written in her charmingly rushed handwriting that made you smile <3

hey, how's your day going?

You smiled at the little doodle of a spider she had made after her sentence. You wrote a quick reply back, drawing a tiny heart at the end.

good, you?

The paper was slid back, and you watched as she smiled, her heart stuttering at the drawing.

you two became friends after that

she would randomly show up unannounced and just talk

you would smile and write your thoughts on a page and slide it to her

this was routine for a while

but little did you know, she was learning sign language in her free time

she wanted to surprise you <3

so after a few weeks of knowing each other (and gwen practicing in a mirror), she finally walked up to you again, asking you the same question she always did

"hey, how is your day going?"

You stood in shock for a moment before a grin stretches across your face. "you know sign language?"

Gwen nodded, her expression a little embarrassed. "i wanted to learn it, for you," she signed hesitantly, unaware of the fluttering that had begun in your stomach.

you two got even closer after that

it was easier for gwen to just pass a note back and forth, but she liked seeing how expressive you were when you signed

it made her happy to see you telling her about her day in the way you wanted to

and that made all those hours of learning worth it <3

"are you paying attention?" you signed, raising an eyebrow.

Gwen snapped out of her moment of just quietly watching you. Her hands fiddled with the edge of her sleeve before coming up with a response. "of course i'm paying attention!" she signed defensively, a little smile painted on her face.

Hobie Brown:

definitely slipped you a little note within the first five minutes of seeing you

which was super random, since you had never met him before

you had seen him around, but still

so when he took the seat next to you and slid a little note over to you, you were

confused, to say the least

but he was interesting

and the little smile of his had you drawn in :)

hi, what's your name?

You looked at the paper, then at the man beside you. You quickly wrote back, sliding the paper back toward him with a smile slowly creeping onto your face.

[name], what's yours?

hobie. i like your name, it fits you :)

if that caused a little flutter in your stomach, you weren't going to admit it

after that, you two ran into each other more often

eventually, he asked you if you could teach him sign language

he had been doing some practice on his own time (<3) but he wanted you to help him (<3)

you agreed ofc making his day in the process

he was a fast learner

especially when it came to you :)

Hobie furrowed his brow, piercings glinting in the light, as he watched you sign.

"what is your name?" you signed patiently, waiting for him to either write the answer or sign back. You watched as his face suddenly lit up and he fingerspelled his name back.

"h-o-b-i-e."

You grinned at him, unaware of how the expression made a slight heat rise to his cheeks. He smiled back, ready for the next question.

there was a lot of that ngl

but once this man gets more comfortable signing?

it's fucking over

he's never shy about voicing his opinions, but he likes the smile you try to hide when he signs them to you and only you

someone talking and hobie doesn't like them?

he's signing to you some dumb shit about the situation

wants to talk to you when he isn't supposed to?

he's nudging your shoulder with his elbow and starting a conversation, not really caring that it's obvious

"what do you think would happen if i just walked out of the door right now?" Hobie signed, sighing a long-suffering sigh.

"either nothing or something," you signed back, biting back a smile as he huffed, a little smirk curving his lips.

"helpful."

Pavitr Prabhakar:

you spotted him from across the room one day

and his energy was...infectious

he intrigued you in a good way

so you found yourself smiling when you sat next to him and slid a little slip of paper to him

hi, what's your name? i'm [name].

The boy beside you smiled at the paper and quickly wrote something back in his strangely neat handwriting. You watched as he slid it back to you, a smile playing on his lips.

i'm pavitr! :)

after that little moment, the two of you became friends

you liked his energy, his personality, his smile-

you get the idea

whenever you two hung out, you would always leave with a smile on your face :)

during one of these hangouts, you opened to door to find pavitr on the other side as usual

he grinned an adorable mischievous little grin as he walked in

the two of you sat on the floor like always

he was talking about something funny that happened while he was feeding the stray dogs

when he suddenly turned to you and started signing

"what did you think of the movie we watched last week?"

You sat there for a moment, a little grin appearing on your face. "it was good, but you know sign language?" you signed back, tilting your head slightly. Pavitr's heart fluttered, unknown to you.

yeah, turns out he was learning it in secret to surprise you (<3)

he was so proud of himself for picking it up so quickly for you :,)

and if the thought of him learning it on his own made you smile and your stomach do a little flip, well

that was no one's business

he already learned a lot, but you wanted to help him too (<3)

he gratefully accepted the help

he wanted to spend more time with you <3

"pavitr? are you even listening?" you signed with a huff, looking at the boy sitting on the couch in front of you. He snapped out of whatever daze he was in with a quick shake of the head.

"yeah, d-u-h," he signed back, nodding a few times with a convincing smile. You playfully narrowed your eyes at him before continuing, unaware of the fact that he wasn't watching what you were signing. He was watching you.

"whatever you say, spider."

sorry for taking so long!!

hope this is alright :)

[poetrysmackdown]

what makes a poem a poem? does it have to be written in a certain way? is this question a poem if i want it to be?

Fun question! This is just my personal sense as an avid reader and less-avid writer of poetry, but for me it’s useful to distinguish (roughly) between poetry as a genre and poetry as an attitude or philosophy through which language and the world can be understood. And of course these two go hand in hand. I see poetry the genre as essentially a type of literature where we as readers are signaled, somehow, to pay closer attention to language, to rhythm, to sound, to syntax, to images, and to meaning. That attentive posture is the “attitude” of broader poetic thinking, and while it’s most commonly applied to appreciate work that’s been written for that purpose, there’s nothing stopping us from applying that attentiveness elsewhere. Everywhere, even! That’s how you eventually end up writing poetry for yourself, after all. There’s a quote from Mary Ruefle floating around on here that a lot of folks have probably already seen, but it immediately comes to mind with this ask:

“And when you think about it, poets always want us to be moved by something, until in the end, you begin to suspect that a poet is someone who is moved by everything, who just stands in front of the world and weeps and laughs and laughs and weeps.”

Similarly, after adopting the attentive posture of poetics, there’s plenty of things that can feel or sound like a poem, even when they perhaps were not written with that purpose in mind. I’ve seen a couple of these “found poems” on here that are quite fun—this one, for example. The meaning and enjoyment you may derive from the language of a found poem isn’t any less real than that derived from a poem written for explicitly poetic purposes, so I don’t see why it shouldn’t be called poetry.

That said, I do think that if you’re going to go out and start looking for poetry everywhere, it’s still important to have a foundation in the actual language work of it all. Now, this doesn’t mean it has to be “written in a certain way” at all! But it does mean that in order to cultivate the attentiveness that’s vital to poetry, one needs to understand what makes language tick, down at its most basic levels. It will make you better at reading poetry, better at writing it, and better at spotting it out in the wild.

Mary Oliver’s A Poetry Handbook is an extraordinary resource to new writers and readers, and a great read for more experienced folks as well. Mary Oliver’s most popular poems are all to my knowledge in free verse, and yet you might be surprised to find her deep appreciation for metrical verse (patterns of stressed/unstressed syllables), as well as for the most minute devices of sound. In discussing the so-called poetry of the past, she writes,

“Acquaintance with the main body of English poetry is absolutely essential—it is the whole cake, while what has been written in the last hundred years or so, without meter, is no more than an icing. And, indeed, I do not really mean an acquaintanceship—I mean an engrossed and able affinity with metrical verse. To be without this felt sensitivity to a poem as a structure of lines and rhythmic energy and repetitive sound is to be forever less equipped, less deft than the poet who dreams of making a new thing can afford to be.”

In another section, after devoting lots of attention to the sounds at work in Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, she writes,

“Everything transcends from the confines of its initial meaning; it is not only the transcendence in meaning but the sound of the transcendence that enables it to work. With the wrong sounds, it could not have happened.”

I hope all this helps to get across my opinion that what makes a poem a poem is not just about the author's intention, and not just about meaning (intended or attributed), but also about sound and rhythm and language and history, all coalescing into something that rises above the din of a language we would otherwise grow tired of while out in our day-to-day lives.

I'll always have more to say but I'm cutting myself off here! Thanks for the ask

[lottiecrabie]

galatea, take one – matty healy

matty produces your sophomore album. it's summer. you fall in love like you were always gonna do.

(based on the lorde and jack antonoff melodrama love affair)

warnings: 18+, unprotected sex, cheating, author doesn't know anything about music or writing music

17833 words

June 16

There’s a banging in the back of your head, cool and consistent. You’re monstrously hungover, vestiges of a blurry night in West End, but something in you knows this isn’t a vodka-lime headache. Perhaps fear, or nerves, or prophetic destiny banging at your temple, begging you to turn away. 

You pass a hand through your hair, trying to make yourself look presentable. Sweat sticks to your nape. It’s an uncharacteristically hot day of June and you feel aflamed even in your sheer tank top and cutoffs. That, too, will later feel like some higher sign you brushed away. 

Raking your throat, shaking your head, you finally ring the doorbell. 

Matty Healy opens the front door wide. His hair sprouts from his head like his ideas— without order, overeager and overflowing. His face practically breaks with a grin. You think, pretty. That is the third sign you ignore. 

“Hi,” Matty says, stepping away to free the door. “Come in.” 

Three warning bells, knocking at the back of your head. You raise your sunglasses to the top of your hair, narrowing your eyes at the sudden overwhelming sun, smiling back at him. You step through. 

That is how it all starts. 

June 18

Matty scratches the acoustic guitar mindlessly, head thrown back on the couch pillows. He frowns at the ceiling, humming along as though that would be enough to make a melody bloom out of scattered nothings. 

You play with the strands of the carpet, sitting on the ground, watching him. Something in you almost believes that it could happen— that he’d snap back to you with a grin and those wide, puppy eyes and declare the newest summer hit. You’re afraid of looking away, of missing that fatal microsecond. You want to see when the world breaks apart for Matty Healy. 

A discarded cherry coke rests beside you. It’s lukewarm now, innocent collateral damage to the hot summer air. Matty doesn’t have AC in his apartment. The air sticks to you, weighting against your skin. You leave his house and feel like he’s still lingering on you. 

“How about this?” Matty says, plucking a few chords. You hum non-committedly. “You don’t like?” 

“I don’t know,” you admit plainly. There’s already some unsaid understanding between you; truthful and tackless. You like that you don’t have to filter your thoughts. “I don’t know if it sings to me,” you finish. 

Matty smiles rakishly, digging his cheek. “If it sings to me,” he repeats. “I like that.” You smile, proud. 

June 21

Making an album is like breaking your ribcage open and bleeding on the pages. You’ve always been guarded with your lyrics, afraid of showing scattered words before they’re fully assembled. You have this beaten up sketchbook you use as a notebook, scribbling down all your incoherent wordvomit then slamming the pages close before you try taking them back. Matty finds it funny. That you write where you should draw. He calls it a meta blurring of art. You call him pretentious. 

You hold the sketchbook close to your chest, peering down at it just to recite some verses out loud. Matty nods, repeating them over with delicate care. He changes words, tweaks turns of phrases. He smiles, declares his understanding of them. He’s so precise, so careful and pointed with his words. He uncovers you under the theatrics of rhymes. 

You bleed and bleed. Shit. 

June 22

“What d’you reckon the album is about?” Matty asks, nursing a beer between his hands. It’s late in the evening, later than you should stay. You’re both on the balcony, sitting on white plastic chairs. Your red-toed feet rest on the railing, long naked legs licking up to your trusty jean shorts. 

You exhale your cigarette smoke. You cock your head, pondering over his question, still staring persistently at the sky; not quite asleep, but some darkened blanket thrown over the city. “Heartbreak,” you decide. 

Matty does a little huffing sound, mulling over that sure answer. “Anyone in particular?” He asks, throwing you a side glance, taking a sip of his beer. 

You tap the ashes over the balcony, stretching in your chair. “My ex-boyfriend,” you answer simply. 

“How long has it been?” 

You breathe in. It’s a little uncomfortable to delve into still, some unhealed bruise you feel on your ribs. It might be why the album is coming out clunky and untethered right now: something in you refuses to dive into the emotions again, afraid that maybe you’d stick in the syrup. Choke on it. 

“Five months.” 

“Shit.” Matty shakes his head. “Sorry.” 

“Nah, it was for the better.” You take a drag of your cigarette, shaking your head. “Fucking dickhead.” 

It had been five years of your life, which is the most inconceivable part of this whole affair. The thing that you can’t fully wrap your head around, can’t accept. Five years. It feels bigger than life, grander than the twenty-three years you’ve accumulated. Maybe that’s why you clung on longer than you should, claws digging in his stomach, feet dragging on the carpet: if you left now, what would those five years have been for? 

“Yeah?” Matty asks, reaching his hand out. You give the cig over to him, trying not to shiver as your fingers graze his. He sticks it in his mouth without hesitation. It feels strangely intimate, seeing his lips where yours have been. You have to look away. “What was he like?” 

Gray smoke pours out of his lips. He hands it back to you. “Just,” you gesture vaguely, groaning in distaste. “An artist.”

Matty snorts. “And we’re not?” 

“An insufferable one,” you precise, throwing him a pointed look. 

He smiles boyishly at that. “And we’re not?” 

You roll your eyes. “A different kind of insufferable. A worse one.” You tsk, “He was good, but he just— he didn’t think anyone understood him, you know? And, really, he didn’t want us to. He was smarter, and more brilliant, with grander ideas. We just couldn’t get him at all.” You laugh bitterly, shaking your head. “Now I wonder if he even had anything to say.” 

How it used to infuriate you, the way he would dangle his supposedly genius thoughts just out of reach. You’re too small, love. Too young. Too dumb. You just wouldn’t get it. He’d speak of them in hushed tones— because he just couldn’t stop referencing them, self-obsessed— but never unmasked what those phantoms haunting him, taking hold of the brush were. 

There’s no words for it, he would say. And as someone who made a career out of language, you call bullshit. 

“A lot of his paintings are of me,” you continue, because now that the faucet has been opened you can’t seem to stop thinking about it. “He wouldn’t call me pretty, he would call me raw. I thought he meant it as real, as tangible. I liked that, liked having an artsy boyfriend, kept saying that he found me more than beautiful. How naive I was, boasting to everyone that my boyfriend didn’t think I was hot.”

Your tongue feels ashy in your mouth, and it’s not because of the cigarette. There’s smoke in the air. There’s been smoke for five years. You’ve never been good at pinpointing warning signs until it slaps you in the face, until the fire has already climbed up your legs. Matty stares at your side profile, quiet. 

“I think he meant it as unfinished, actually,” you continue, eyes facing the sky pointedly, searching for hidden stars. You’re afraid your lips will tremble if you look at Matty, afraid your eyes will water. You couldn’t take the embarrassment. “When he painted me, he thought he was completing me.” You snort, sour and mean. You’ve bittered over the months, lost some sugary quality. You linger unpleasantly on tongues now, wrinkling noses. “Fuck being a muse.” 

You take a drag, shoving the cigarette between your lips and hoping it chokes the words threatening to spill out. Fuck being a muse. Fuck five years of your life wasted sitting perfectly still, flashing a smile just to have the teeth rearranged on the canvas. Fuck the man who only knew how to paint you blue. You exhale the smoke, breathing out the building frustration. Fuck watercolors. You want to be made of blood. 

You can feel Matty watch your side profile. It unnerves you. How deeply he looks, how much he seems to see. Even when you don’t let him. Even when you don’t want him to. (Is that how he walks through galleries? Lingering around paintings, analyzing lines and colors and shadows, staring them down until they reveal their secrets.) Your leg shakes. You avoid his eyes purposefully. They dig in your cheek, leaving you bloody and open, leaving you to scab.  

“I think you’re pretty,” Matty says simply with an air of finality. You can’t help but blush, even if you know he doesn’t mean it as a line. He views beauty as this neutral, overflowing thing. Everywhere around, bigger than humans, bigger than sex and romance. 

A fellow artist that appreciates but doesn’t touch. You promised yourself to steer clear from those. Your cheek burns.

“Thanks,” you nod, putting out the cig on the railing. You drop it in your empty beer bottle at the legs of the chair. You can’t lock eyes with him still. 

Matty doesn’t say you’re welcome. It’s not a compliment, it’s a statement. 

“Let’s write about it, yeah?” He says, standing up, opening the glass door. 

You should really get home. It’s late, and you’re a little tipsy, and you’ve made promises. Still, you follow him through, and you don’t know if it’s guilt or excitement pumping in your veins. 

June 24

“Mint and chocolate does not taste like toothpaste!” Matty’s eyebrows furrow in offense, lips gaped wide. 

You giggle at his theatrics, trying to handle the strawberry cone melting on your fingers. You bend down, licking at the pink drops, the stickiness still gluing to your hand. Matty was smarter, taking his green monstrosity in a bowl. “It’s like I’m brushing my teeth.” 

You’re walking down a touristy street of London, wearing cliche sunglasses to shield your eyes. Every step, your shoulders knock together. It leaves your skin burning— you feel a sunburn coming on. 

“You have the taste of a six year old,” Matty declares with a huff. He dips his spoon in his ice cream, scooping it in his mouth, visibly twirling his tongue around it. It’s because of the sun too that your cheeks redden. 

You’re glad for the specs. He doesn’t see the way your eyes follow his lips, enchanted. 

You shake your head. Your shoulders brush together. “You have no taste at all,” you tease, eyes dancing. Matty chuckles. 

June 27

You flip through Matty’s extensive collection of vinyls stored in wooden boxes. It’s almost preposterously him. Kneeling on the scratchy carpet, you awkwardly drape your skirt to not reveal a flash of your underwear. A glass of red rests on his coffee table without a coaster.

It smells smokey in the apartment; Matty is making pork chop, but you’re not entirely sure he’s doing it right. The kitchen and the living room are one open space, stretching the dwindling sunlight from the windows. His back faces you, some washed-out shirt draping nicely over him. 

You hum, running your fingers over the titles. Your hand freezes on the next album. You gasp, grinning from ear to ear. “What?” Matty calls from the kitchen.

“You’ve got The Runaways,” you declare, raising it up like some second coming of Christ. “In mint condition, too. Man, I played that album to the ground.” 

“Why am I not surprised?” 

You stand up excitedly, running to the turntable. You lay the vinyl on the platter, side B up. The needle scratches, Lovers blooming out of the connected speakers. A gleeful sound leaves your lips. 

You nod your head to the rhythm, moving your hips, twirling to your discarded glass of wine. 

I want something bad and nice - hot love

The red sloshes dangerously. You jump, hair flying around, shimmying your shoulders. Matty turns from his skillet to watch you, amused. You dance to him, rounding the island with a laugh. 

“I want a kiss wet and real - strong love,” you sing in his face. Matty shakes his head, chuckling, but it quickly becomes this sort of headbanging dance move. His feet tap to the beat. 

You take his hand, twisting him to face you, pushing and pulling him away like a ragdoll. His body follows gleefully, discombobulated. He’s boneless, running through the short space between the counter and the island, the strip of land you’ve made yours. The pork sizzles in the pan. 

“Make me scream hey what’s your name,” he sings back to you— yells, more. You throw your head back, shoulders shaking with a laugh. 

We lovers never say goodbye

We lovers never die

We stop and go quietly

Cold lovers fade away

June 28

Delilah comes back from her modeling shoot June 28. 

You come in with two iced coffees filling your hands and you’re faced first with a gorgeous, tall, leggy blonde flipping a magazine on the couch. You stop in your tracks, heart falling to your feet. Right, you think, lips thinning. You take a deep breath, soldier readying for war. 

“Hi,” you say, overly cheery. “It’s nice to finally meet you. Delilah, right?” 

The girl looks up at you, grinning wide like an old friend finding a familiar face through a crowd. Your heart rips, guilt spreading through the muscle. It’s worse that she’s nice. “Oh, hello!” Delilah says, standing up to greet you. She has a posh accent. 

“Sorry, I should have knocked. I must have given you a fright.” 

She laughs, waving your worries away easily. It’s a crystalline sound. Musical. You wonder if that’s just how Matty is like— so in love with melody he dates the closest thing to it. “Not at all. It’s nice to finally meet you. Matty talks about this album all the time.” 

Your face crisps. “Yes. Well, yes— it’s a mess.” 

Delilah’s eyebrows rise to her forehead. “That’s not what he says.” Now you wanna know what he does say when you’re not there to catch the words. What your ears have lost to Delilah Prescott. 

But you’re afraid of what your face would reveal if you do ask and she does say. You’re frenzied and electrified just at the mere possibilities. You imagine it in his accent, It’s good. No, no. He would say something more like, It’s fucking good. Mental. It’s a postmodern juxtaposition of art and heartbreak— whatever that means. It’s gonna be the fucking album of the year. It’s gonna be great.

The thoughts finally catch up to your overeager brain. You flush in embarrassment. You’re really crafting compliments from his mouth like song lyrics; tweaking words and chords until it sounds right to your ear. As though you have any rights to puppeteer his own locution and feelings. As though his girlfriend isn’t right there, in front of you, pretty and sweet and smiling so fucking wide. Your eyes pull down, avoidant. 

Your heart jumps, staring at the two coffees in your hands. “Oh, gosh, I didn’t think to buy you one.” You look around as though you would find a third iced coffee hidden under your clothes. Coming back empty, you hand one towards her. “Here, take mine. There’s milk and vanilla syrup in it.” Too sweet, Matty always says, wrinkling his nose when you order. 

Delilah takes it, smiling at you. There’s a chic gap between her front teeth. “Thanks. That’s very sweet.” Too sweet rings in your head again. “Matty will be here any second. He’s finishing up in the shower.” She falls back down on the couch, stretching her infinite legs on the coffee table. “Don’t worry,” she winks at you, smirking like you’re friends, like you’re conspirators. “I’ll make myself scarce when you’re writing. It’s not my first rodeo.” 

You nod at her, wordless. What a cruel faith for a writer. 

Something rattles in your brain at the thought, hand tingling to pull out your sketchbook and write it down. You don’t want to do it in front of Delilah. You don’t know why.

She sits on her boyfriend’s couch, in her boyfriend’s shirt, at her boyfriend’s apartment, but she’s drinking your coffee. Your lips curl. There’s an injustice there, and you can’t pinpoint where.

June 30

“Come do shots,” Bree screams at you, tugging on your glittery black dress. Her lipstick stains her teeth and there’s something awfully poetic about it: too gone to care about the mess; artfully unmade; tactfully improper. You scratch the thought on your brain, hope you remember the dents enough to note them down tomorrow. 

You laugh, brushing her hands away. “I have to make a phone call.” 

“It’s my birthday,” she pouts again, this time holding onto your ring finger. “You can’t say no on my birthday.” 

“It’s 1:24AM, bitch. It’s not your birthday anymore.” 

She gasps, letting go of you in faux-offense. “I was born at ten. My twenty-four hours aren't even up yet.” 

You roll your eyes. “I’ll do a shot after,” you promise to placate her. She smiles, leaning into you to smack your cheek. “Yeah, yeah. I’m the best.” 

“You’re okay.” You snort a laugh, shaking your head. Bree smiles, pleased. “God, it’s nice to fucking see you. You’re holed up in fucking London. I almost forgot your face.” 

“It’s only been two weeks,” you say, oddly defensive all of a sudden. The past two weeks have been spent in an idealistic dreamscape, strumming guitars and sketching ideas down and drinking sparkling wine on the balcony. A carved moment out of reality. You’re allowed, you think, to want to protect it. 

“What? And you can't Facetime?” You roll your eyes. She pouts. “I just miss you,” Bree says, poking your stomach. “Don’t forget me for Matty Healy.” 

“I’m not—” You blush. “It’s not like that.” 

“Not like what?” 

You swallow thickly, cornered. Thankfully, someone puts on a Britney Spears song. Bree, scattered and easily distracted,  screams a squeal and twirls away in her boa and slinky dress. You breathe a sigh of relief, entering the bathroom and slamming it shut behind you. 

Locking the door, you reach for your phone. His contact is the first on your most recent list. You cringe a little at that, dialing it. The ring amplifies against your ear. You sit down on the toilet seat cover. 

“Hey. Everything okay?” Matty whispers, voice low and rough, scratching against his throat, clearly pulled from the depths of sleep. 

You scrunch your face. “Shit. Time difference.” 

He laughs. The sound pianoes down your spine. “Yeah, it's 6AM here. You’re enjoying New York, I gather?” 

“Yes. It’s lovely,” you answer in habit, although you haven’t so much seen New York as Bree’s flat since you arrived. You twist your fingers around the hem of your dress, biting your lip. “I’m sorry for waking you.” 

“It’s okay. I wasn’t sleeping.”

“You’re lying.” 

“Shamelessly, too.” You snort, shaking your head. “I don’t mind. Delilah tried to bite my head off, but I think that’s more to do with my ringtone of choice than you.” 

You bite your lip. You shouldn’t. He’s just— He’s just mentionned his fucking girlfriend, for Christ’s sake. “What’s your ringtone?”

You can practically hear the shit-eating smirk. “Lovers.”

Your heart slams in your chest. At the wrinkled hem of your dress, your fingers freeze. There’s moments in life where you can tell the world spins semi-seconds slower. In the depth of your chest, you can feel time resonate off-beat. 

“Not a big The Runaways fan?” You manage out, strangled. 

“Not at 3AM, apparently.” Springs resound on his side of the line. You imagine him falling on his couch, making himself comfortable to talk to you. You’re flushed— it has to be the alcohol. “So, what’s up?” 

You rake your throat, manually blinking. “Right, yeah. I— I had this idea.” You shake your head, trying to gather your dispersed thoughts to some form of coherence. “About this song. A Galatea concept— y’know, from the myth of Pygmalion? The sculptor who fell in love with his statue and asked Aphrodite to bring it to life?”

“I know.” Your chest flutters. “Go on.” 

July 2

Matty smokes a cigarette on the balcony, glass sliding door open wide. He turns to the side to blow out the smoke, but it still smells inside. You sit on the piano bench, hitting at the keys, frowning at your sketchbook laying precariously open on your lap. 

“I think,” you say, changing notes with a huff. “I want the first verse to be messier. Like you’re not quite sure if you’re listening to the point of view of Pygmalion or Galatea as they talk about some grand masterpiece and some grander love. I want to blur them.”

Your fingers hit the same five keys, the beginning of a melody that has been haunting your mind. You can’t quite pin it down like a butterfly yet; its wings flutter away from you, cruelly evasive. 

“And when you finally get that it’s Galatea talking, you understand that by making her, Pygmalion is creating her love for him.” You twist to Matty, arching an eyebrow. “Does that make sense?” 

“He kisses it and thinks his kisses are returned,” Matty recites, making the words sound divine. He has a knack for it, for breathing musicality into common life. “How can she truthfully want him if she wasn’t made to desire anything else?” 

“Forever object,” you nod. “Metamorphosis, Ovid. You’ve done your research.” He cracks a crooked smile, throws his cigarette beyond the balcony. 

He steps through the apartment, sliding the door close behind him. “When a girl calls at 3AM to talk about Galatea, you look into it. Don’t wanna embarrass yourself.”

You like, secretly, that he says Galatea and not Pygmalion. It’s her tale for a sinful, myth-bending moment in time. More than statue, bigger than marble, she gets a story between these four walls.

“D’you have lyrics?” Matty asks, sitting on the piano bench beside you. 

His shoulder brushes yours, heat spreading down your arms. You keep it tense, frozen in place, afraid that a micromove would make him scoop away. You don’t want space to breathe. You don’t want him to leave you alone. 

“Vaguely,” you say, peering down at your sketchbook. Matty plays your melody, repeating the rhythmic beginning of a song you’ve been toying with. 

His hand reaches across the keys with ease. Long fingered, spindly and agile. You blush, looking away. 

You rake your throat. “Marble skin with paper thoughts.” Matty nods encouragingly. Your heart drips on your ribs. 

July 3

Matty lays in the golden sun, eyes blissfully closed, a hand tucked behind the wild flowers of his hair. It’s terribly hot outside, especially in the unshadowed part of the park. His shirt is off, green grass surely tickling his skin. 

You devour the sight of him greedily. The slender frame; the planes of his stomach breathing slowly; the tattoos inking his skin; the strong shoulders. You lick your lips, biting the end of your pencil. You’re burning under your flesh, fingers tingling to reach out and sink your claws into him. To bruise him up, just to make sure he’s real. 

Matty asked you to draw him in that sketchbook of yours — make a real use of it, love — but you’ve barely done anything other than self-indulgently stare. You wonder if he knows even with his eyes closed. If he feels the languid gaze on his chest. If he likes it. 

You shake your head, peering back down to your sketchbook, drawing out some more messy lines to form the mess of his mane. Biting your lip, you quickly scribble around him spinning ideas like constellations of words to his center of gravity. He lets me through like soft butter. Leaves me sticky with syrup. He bleeds on my palms. I think I’m stained with him. They overlap with his arm. You sigh, shading his chest again. 

July 6

“Carve me down to bones. I don’t need muscles to love. What is a heart if it belongs to you?” You repeat again, singing softly, frowning at the pages. “What is my heart if it belongs to you.” You mule on the change of word, but something still rings off. “Make me a heart to belong to you.”

“I like that,” Matty declares, tuning his guitar. Plucking the strings, he sings back as though to try the taste of the words on his tongue, “Make me a heart to belong to you.”

He sits on the floor while you splay lazily on his couch. Your eyes flutter, sleep calling to you. It’s technically morning now, the late hours of the night stretching dementally far. The sky lays dark above the house. Inside, the only source of light is a red lamp drenching the apartment in mood lightning. It does nothing for the exhaustion digging its claws into your already fuzzy brain. 

“It doesn’t sound right,” you shake your head. “Something’s off.” 

“It doesn’t sing to you,” Matty completes, nodding wisely. 

Your eyes flip to him, heart soaring up your throat. It’s nothing— really, there’s no need to blush, some unkillable glee spreading through your veins. You bite your smile down. So what he remembers some small phrase you’ve told him before. It’s Matty. Pretty words hook to his brain and refuse to be shaken off. It’s probably beyond him. 

You yawn, sitting up. “I should really go. Think I’ll drop on the way home if I don’t leave.” 

“You can stay here if you want,” Matty says, staring down at his strumming fingers, throwing away the sentence carelessly like it doesn’t ivy up your spine. 

“What?” 

Matty looks up to you. “We’ve got the guest bedroom all installed. Why don’t you just crash here?” He grins casually. It all comes so easy to him. “It’ll avoid being found passed out in the street.” 

You chew on your lip, hesitating. You want to. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? You want it too much. It should be easier to say yes. Less like being tempted to some dangerous sin, less like guilt spreading through your belly, less like saying yes to more. 

But you’re selfish. “Yeah, sure. Thanks.” A grin cracks your face. You can’t stop the guilt as the damning words graze your teeth. “That’s really nice.” 

A smile blooms on his mouth. It does nothing to squash down the growing feeling of doing something wrong. “It’s nothing.” He discards his guitar, standing up. “D’you want a shirt to sleep in, too?” 

Your heart drums on your ribs. You sit up, swallowing thickly, mustering a mirroring smile. “That’d be neat.” 

“Of course.” Matty leads you to the bedroom. In another world, you would allow yourself to dream. 

July 8

70s rock music booms from the speakers. Pretty, drunk people twirl in the living room, screaming out the lyrics off-key. In the kitchen, you feel a sort of daze; otherworldly and calm, tucked away from reality with Matty. 

He makes you an espresso martini, your favorite drink, after boasting about his masterful ability to. You stick to his side as he describes each of his steps, as though he’s not just assembling a bunch of liquid in a shaker. You giggle at his antics still, the sound burying in his shoulder. There’s the vague thrum of a dance resonating in his bones. 

For a lack of martini glasses, Matty pours his concoction in the plastic cups the host gave you with a sharpie to annotate. It makes you feel like a teenager again, makes you imagine a life in which you meet Matty several years younger, when you’re still blossoming out of your chunky glasses and braces, getting plastered on straight peach schnapps. 

(What if it was him you had met at a café in downtown New York, fresh off a summer tan and your eighteenth birthday. What if he had chatted you up about his favorite songs and you had listened, mesmerized by the depth of his thought, yearning for a similar complexity in yourself. Would the five years have ended up the same?)

“Here,” Matty says with a slack, drunk smile as he offers you up his own blue, plastic cup. MATTY is written on it in scratchy handwriting, the T and Y with an odd space between it. 

You take the cup and tip it between your cherry glossed lips, tacking the rim of the glass as you taste the rich, boozy espresso. It’s a mature café day in New York, but it’s coffee all the same. 

“How is it?” Matty asks and it seems his grin keeps stretching on excitedly. You fear his face might never snap back in its original form, that he’ll be stuck with a vodka grin forever, eyes shining bright just from looking at you. 

You blink at him shyly. You realize, now, how close he is. You hum at him. “Good.” 

“Just good?” 

You roll your eyes. “It’s great. You narcissist.” 

The playful dig doesn’t seem to register to Matty. He smirks, shrugging. “Told you.” 

You lean against the counter, but Matty doesn’t move up. He breathes in your space. Your skin feels alight, warm and tingling. What would it be if he touched it? Would it groove grossly from the fire? 

Without a word, you raise the glass to his lips, tipping it into his mouth. He swallows the espresso martini dutifully. His eyes meet yours over the rim, dark and intense, rich coffee irises digging into yours.

You release. He licks his mouth and you follow the movement, shameless. “It’s fucking tremendous,” Matty declares. You laugh, throwing your head back. 

Matty seems to get closer to you, or perhaps the room spins around you, deluding your sense of space and time. He’s there, with red, plump lips that will taste of coffee and smoke, and he’s close enough to kiss. You stand straighter. Your eyes flick to his mouth as though it was calling your name. 

When you look back, his own gaze is deeply plunged on your smeared lips. You wonder if he imagines the taste of them himself. If he licks his own like he could get the lingering aftertaste. Your heart races. You could do it. You could— He’s practically inviting you to. 

The plastic glass hangs between the two of you. You don’t kiss. 

July 9

One blue and one red Gatorade stand on the coffee table, intermittently sipped between the pained moans and groans. Matty and you lay on the couch, the world rocking nauseatingly under its feet. The hot hair sticks to your sweaty skin, but you’re too lazy to do anything about it. 

“Rough night?” Delilah asks, coming into the flat with perched sunglasses, a knowing smile and three coffees. She looks like sunshine itself, radiant and happy and definitely not morbidly hungover. 

Matty groans vaguely at her as an answer. She laughs, walking up to him, kissing his forehead as she makes a coffee appear magically in front of his eyes. A grin shines on his face as he spots it, gripping it between greedy hands and dipping his head back to thank her. 

You should have never drank as much as you did last night. Delilah brandishes your coffee next, smiling at you. You think you might throw up. 

July 11

Matty tunes his guitar, relying on your monotone piano notes. You stare at your sketchbook, frowning a little, pressing a key at his demand. You’ve put Galatea on the back burner, incapable of getting past the first few verses without cringing. Something about the song is inherently wrong, and you don’t know how to fix it without unrooting it. 

Instead, you throw yourself into new music, fresher and more palatable, easier to chew and digest. A perfectly catchy breakup song lays nearly finished in a file on Matty’s computer. Some angry lyrics you feel from faraway; you remember writing the words carpet-burnt feet from letting you drag me, but you don’t much remember the sentiment behind. 

Again, you’ve cowarded in front of Galatea, a celestial beast you don’t dare to take on after your last failings. You flip through the pages of your book instead, trying to find a lyric that sparks, something to cling onto and knit and knit from. You chew on your lip. 

“Hey,” Matty speaks, and you jump, suddenly remembering his presence. You twist around to look at him. “Are you ever gonna let me take a look at that sketchbook?”

He’s asking if you’re willing to rip your ribs open and show them off to him. If you’d accept to string your guts out like a comically long clown scarf. If you’d consider cracking your skull and letting him take a peak of your naked brain. 

You hum. “I don’t know. Maybe one day.” 

Matty grins. “I’d like to see.” There’s no rush to it. No demand. Just a fact, a wish. A thought he’s telling you. 

You blush, but you can’t tell why anymore. 

July 12

You tiptoe out of the room, navigating the cracking floorboards expertly. Your feet avoid the planks like sidewalk cracks; a childhood terror of killing your family transformed into waking up the slumbering couple. 

You dip into the kitchen. Light blooms out of the open fridge, Matty’s frame bent into the door. He looks up when he hears you, smiling. “Midnight snack?” 

He’s shirtless, fridge light illuminating him like some divine Apollo. Shadows contour his muscles, draping over his chest tattoos. Your mouth feels dry. You nod, a bit too slow. 

“Think we only have Delilah’s fancy cheese,” he sighs, digging into his fridge to find some hastily wrapped brie. 

“That’s fine.” 

Instinctively, you tiptoe to him, shoulders brushing his as he lays the cheese on the marble counter. Matty opens it up carefully, rummaging in a drawer for a knife. 

Standing side by side in a quiet kitchen, you alternately cut yourselves pieces of cheese, biting into them until there’s nothing left but crumbs, comfortably silent. 

July 15

You wipe the sweat off your forehead, opening your fridge to find some leftover beer at the back of it. It’s some pretentious microbrewed thing your friend Julian left behind when he came to visit. You’re sure Matty will like it. 

“Sorry,” you tell him as you join him on the electric blue 70s couch— you don’t even want to think of the life it’s seen. “Slim pickings. I’m not here much.” 

Matty takes the beer graciously, smiling at you. He tucks it in his mouth, opening it with his teeth, spitting the bottle cap out. Your head grows fuzzy. He reaches for your beer too, repeating the same practiced ritual. You can’t stop following his lips, red, pulled from the bottle, condensation sticking to them. You swallow, throat dry— God, you need that fucking beer. 

Matty hands it back to you with a proud grin. You nod at him, too off-quilter to manage words. “We really are always at the flat.” 

“Well, this AirBnB isn’t nearly as chic.” 

He snorts. “Oh, it’s for the decorations, is it? Not the fact that I have at least a damn guitar?” 

You shrug teasingly, settling further into the cushions of the couch. “Eh.” Your skin sticks to the velvet. It seems you can’t stop gluing to things, leaving parts of yourself everywhere you go. “It’s really the minimalist hipster shit that does it for me.” 

“I’m glad.” Matty scratches at the beer label. “You know, if you wanted, you could stay over. You already use the guest bedroom every other day. There’s no need to waste your money on all this.” All this, he says, like it’s some chateau and not a profoundly tacky, barely functional flat.

Your heart beats in your chest. It’s too good— too unreal. Living there, in his books and his vinyls and his band tees. Walking the floorboards, draping the covers, perusing the fridge. Brushing your teeth beside him, using his soap—smelling like him. Crawling in his bed, tucking yourself into his side, sneaking a hand under—

You stop your spinning mind. 

“What about Delilah?” 

Matty shrugs. “She wouldn’t mind. She’s barely home anyway.” He smiles playfully, “‘Think she’d like some female company.” 

No. That’s the correct answer. The smart one. No. No, we can’t. No, it’ll end badly. No, don’t do this to me. You know I want to. You know I want—  

“Sure.” You wash down the nausea with a mouthful of beer, some vertiginous shock from your own answer. Shit shit shit shit shit. 

His eyebrows rise, face lighting up. “Yeah?” 

You laugh, though it’s entirely constructed. You wonder if he can tell. He always seems to see everything about you.

But he looks up at you so hopefully, so giddily, so genuinely. You’re weak to your core. 

“Yes,” you smile. “Let’s do it.” 

July 16

Your whole life in three very large suitcases, and now it’s being moved to Matty Healy’s residence. You packed more hastily than when you left from New York, throwing clothes in without bothering to fold them; you’ll be unpacking in less than twenty minutes anyway, the wardrobe of the guest bedroom entirely emptied just for you. 

Matty picks you up. He stares at you struggling to direct three suitcases to his waiting car, staying perfectly seated with an amused smirk. 

You huff, hair falling in your face. “A little help?” You ask pointedly. 

Matty snorts, opening his car door. “Thought you were all about that feminism,” he says, grabbing two of your suitcases and throwing them with ease in the backseat. Your eyes follow his arms as he does so, genuinely impressed by their feat. 

You blink away before he sees, burned. 

When Matty turns back to you, his eyes have grown dark. You swallow, suddenly feeling caught, glued to the spiderweb. He walks towards you and thrill pumps in your veins with each nearing step. Your heart beats loudly in your chest. You fear he might hear it— especially if he keeps slithering closer.

He has to stop. When will he stop? 

Matty towers over you, barely inches away. Your breath hitches, entirely caught in your throat. Fuck breathing. Fuck everything but him, but the heat radiating off him. You don’t need the sun when he’s standing this close. 

Matty’s hand grazes yours. It swallows the handle of your suitcase, tugging it out of your fingers and throwing it in the backseat. Your eyes widen, cheeks heating at being so stupid. What did you think was gonna happen? 

Matty grins at you, ruffling your hair. “I’m glad you’re coming,” he says. 

You nod, swallowing hard. “Yeah. Yeah, me too. Thanks again.” 

He waves you away, opening your door. “‘S no problem. It helps me if anything.”

You sit down. His car smells like weed and a cheap car scent dangling from the rearview mirror, and him, faintly. You hate that you recognize the smell. 

Matty enters the opposite side, flicking the pine car scent, then turning the keys. He drives down the road maniacally fast. You’re not even five minutes in and already you’re thinking God, this is an awful idea. 

Wind brushes your hair. The car smells like him. He’s singing beside you, twisting the speaker higher. It’s an awful idea, and yet you’re still buzzing, hiding a gleeful smile behind the palm of your hand. 

July 17

“What are you doing?” Matty asks, leaning above your shoulder to watch your hands. 

“I’m stress-baking.” 

He laughs, sidling to rest his hip on the counter, staring at your hands as you whip your batter with perhaps too much anger. “What are you stressed about?” 

You huff, doubling in harshness of whip. “This stupid song that I can’t fucking get right that is now haunting my dreams. You know, I had a nightmare last night that I was performing it for the Grammys. There was every single one of my heroes in the room — and my childhood bullies, for some reason — and I had this whole choreography and I took the mic and I opened my mouth and— nothing. Not a single lyric out of my mouth. That’s right. I am waking up in cold sweat terrified of this fucking awful, stupid fucking song.”

“Woah,” Matty says, resting a hand on your arm. You finally stop, throwing the whip in with a sigh. He forces you to look at him, smiling reassuringly. “Hey. It’s okay. You know it can take months to finish a song. Years, even. You have your whole fucking life to write about muses.” 

Your heart skips a beat. It’s the first time either of you really acknowledges the main theme of the song. You’re almost relieved that he’s ripped the illusions, taken off your careful mask. Made it explicitly clear he saw you. 

“Maybe you‘re just not wise enough to say what you want to say yet. Maybe you need more experiences— more time to reflect. It’s been six months, darling. Give yourself time to process that shit.” 

You take a deep breath, staring at your runny batter pitifully. “You’re right.” 

Matty grins. “‘Course I am.” He dips his finger in the batter, licking it clean. 

You gasp, slapping his shoulder as he laughs mischievously; a boy licking the cream off his lips. You try not to focus too hard on the shape of them around a finger, sucking, when you mutter, “Pig. Leave my batter alone. It’ll already be a pisspoor cake.” 

“I’m sure it’ll be great.” 

This time, when he dips his finger, he flicks the batter on your nose. You wrinkle, shaking your face away as he chuckles happily. “Gross,” you lament, wiping your nose clean, but joy blooms under your chest anyway. 

You wish you could bottle his laugh up, make the sweetest song out of it. 

July 19

“Don’t buy that off-brand shit,” Matty says, taking the juice out of your hand and back on the shelf. He walks a few steps away, reaching up for the brand name and putting it in your already full cart. 

Your mouth hangs playfully open at this interaction, thoroughly amused. “You’re a snob,” you say, more like a happy realization than an accusation. 

Matty scoffs. “Nah. It’s just better.” 

“It tastes the same.” He shakes his head again, walking off a new alley as you quicken your walk to catch up with him. “You really are a rich kid.” Matty throws you an unimpressed look. “Really,” you insist again. “When I was young, we were lucky if we even had juice in the house.” 

Matty takes a box of spaghetti, which you swap behind him for penne. “Uh-huh. And you had to walk two miles to school every day.” 

“Back and forth! Without shoes!”

“I bet.” You see that he tries to bite back a smile, a failed affair when he hears your giddy giggle. His chin jerks in a faraway direction. “Go get the mint chocolate chip ice cream.”

You stare at him. “Now, you know I won’t do that.” 

He sighs. “Get an ice cream.” 

Grinning happily, you twist on your heels and head off to the frozen section. You grab a tub of neapolitan ice cream, but then your eyes linger on green horror. Sighing, you take a pint of it too. 

July 20

You stare at Matty expectantly. The guitar still rings in the room from your last note. Space holds its breath, waiting beside you. “What do you think?” 

Matty has a slight dent between his eyebrows. He takes more time to reflect, more time than he’s ever taken. Worry digs in your guts. He hates it. He hates it. Fuck, what is he gonna say to Delilah? “It’s good. It’s just—” Matty cocks his head, frowning further. “It’s a love song.” 

Your cheeks heat at his comment. You look down in your sketchbook, reading over your lyrics. “I mean— I don’t know, I guess.” 

Matty grows even more confused. “But that’s not what you wanted to say. It’s like— There’s not even a criticism of anything anymore. Galatea and Pygmalion just love each other.” 

Your heart pinches in your heart. You feel yourself grow defensive. “Is that so wrong? The myth is originally a love story. Maybe that’s all there is to say.” 

“That's not all there is to say. You’ve given me more in versions you’ve thrown away without a second glance than this. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s brilliant lyricism, but it’s empty.” The words lash at your cheeks. You feel them redden. 

Truthful and tactless, that’s what you had decided. Maybe you’d like a bit of velvet after all.  

“It’s an almost completed song, though. More than I’ve managed to say when I complicate it with all that muses shit.” 

Matty stares at you. “You struggle because you care. Because you’re mindful of your words. Because it’s raw, and it reminds you of you. ‘My man of flesh, my heart of stone.’ That doesn’t fucking say shit to you.”

You turn your face away, digging your glare into his empty wall. You don’t want to look at him. You don’t want to think of him. Your heart runs up your throat, ready to throw it up on the strings of your guitar. Your lips tremble.

Matty sighs. “I’m sorry.” 

“You don’t know what things say and don’t say to me.” 

“I know.” He walks to your corner of the couch, vaguely hitting your shoe. “Hey, I’m sorry.” 

Weakly, you meet eyes with him. He smiles down at you, sure and reassuring. You melt on your bones. “It’s fine.” You’re a weak little girl; you’ve always been. 

“But I think this song could be more. The way you talked about it— it means something to you. Don’t take the easy way out. You can write dozen fucking songs about love. Only one about Galatea.” Here he goes again, calling it Galatea, centering her. It leaves you raw this time. 

“You’re right,” you whisper. You sigh, shaking your head, righting yourself. “Yes, of course you’re right. It’s— It was silly.” 

Matty grins, satisfied. He falls on the couch beside you, stealing your guitar. “Well, let’s write a proper love song in its place, then.” 

July 21 

The café is atrociously hipster and pretentious. You’d have gouged your eyes out at the price of a single latte if Matty didn’t insist on paying for it. You pretended to struggle, rummaging your bag for your wallet, but you let the battle last long enough for him to swipe his card. 

Taking your mismatched mug, you make your way to the sugar packets, grabbing three of them. When you sit down at the table, Matty stares at you, typical playful disgust on his face. 

You grin at him mischievously, shaking then pouring the three of them in your coffee. Matty shakes his head, tsking, “Too sweet.”

July 23

Bree wipes the lipstick off her teeth, looking in the mirror. She turns her head right, left, scrutinizing her makeup. Her hair flies wildly around her shoulders. She’s got a Moscow mule sitting on the counter. 

The door knocks loudly. “Hurry up! People need to go to the bathroom!”

“Two seconds,” Bree screams back. She meets your stare in the mirror and rolls her eyes. A small smile teases your lips. 

You nurse your espresso martini quietly. You don’t linger on the taste of coffee. 

“How’s the album going?” Bree asks, scrunching her hands through her curls to achieve her perfect, flawlessly messy hair. 

“Good, good,” you nod. She seems to wait for more, but you don’t offer it. It’s halfway written, still awfully raw. Recorded, then scratched, then regurgitated. It feels like an open wound to you. 

There’s as much love songs as breakup songs, now. You don’t dwell on that fact. I wanna watch how the world breaks open for you, starts one of them. Brown eyes follow me, sings another. If my ribs rip, will you like what you see, hauntingly repeats a third one. You hope Matty dwells on them even less than you do.

“Matty’s cool?”

“Yes.”

“I should meet him sometime.” You hum non-committedly. “What is he like?” 

“I don’t know,” you laugh lightly, looking at her confused. She’s never asked for descriptions of your friends. “He’s— He’s very passionate. And open. He listens a lot, which is surprising because of how much he talks, too. But, still, he listens, and he looks at you, and he makes you feel like you’re the first person who’s ever uttered words.”

Bree stays quiet. You think, Listen to me helplessly chatter, make me the first speaker to ever speak. Another lyric you scratch into your brain and hope it sticks until you have it written down, yet pray it leaves it right after, too. 

“Cool.”

You swallow thickly. Your cheeks heat. “Yeah.”

Bree grabs her drink, reaching out aimlessly towards your hand. “Let’s go dance!”

July 25

Jazz music plays in the house. The lights are pulled low. There’s a delicious smell coming from the kitchen. Your stomach drops to your feet; you kick it when you walk further in, leaving your suitcase by the door. 

Matty cooks. Sizzling sounds ring under the moody music. Delilah drips on his side, her chin resting on his shoulder. They laugh, whisper secrets you can’t make out. 

She has smudged red lipstick. She smiles. 

“Hey,” you say. “Smells good in here.”

“Oh,” Delilah calls happily when she spots you, tearing away from Matty. “We’re making dinner. Join us!”

“Oh, I couldn’t,” you laugh, but it’s strained out of your throat. Your cheeks are sore from smiling this much. 

“Please,” Delilah insists. She walks towards you and grabs you by the hand, tugging you to the working counter. Trapping you. Your cheeks stab at you now. 

Matty nods as a greeting. You nod back. 

“Matty, tell her we’ve got enough food for three.”

He smiles at you conspiratorially, as though you were grand accomplices, making a silent joke about Delilah. “We’ve got enough food for three.”

“The rumors are true,” you try to jest, but it sounds off. 

“Come on,” Matty pokes at your side with his finger. “Eat with us. Tell us about your trip. We’ve missed you.” 

He says we, but you morph the letters around until it sounds like I to your ears. 

“Okay,” you say finally. “Because it smells so good.” 

Delilah claps near you, but it’s a faraway sound when Matty looks at you like that, digging into your soul and coming out satisfied. 

July 26

You sit on his balcony, smoking. The sun is silky, sweet and smooth as it wakes up. The birds sing, the cars drive by, the people talk; you think of recording it, hiding it in a song called Morning. 

“‘Morning,” Matty says, yawning. You snort to yourself. 

“Hello,” you say. 

When you turn to look at you, you fall on Matty’s shirtless frame, gray sweatpants hung low on his hips. You swallow, putting the cig to your lips to stop yourself from parting them pathetically. It doesn’t stop you from gawking, unfortunately. 

Matty spots it and smirks. He digs into the fridge, finds his precious brand name juice and drinks it from the carton. 

“Delilah left this morning?” 

“If you can call it that,” Matty groans. “Fucking three AM.” 

“No tearful goodbyes that early, I imagine.” 

Matty laughs. “It’s hard to cry when you’re half asleep.” 

You finish your cigarette, squashing it on the floor of the balcony. Ashes linger beside your thigh. “I hope she has a good shoot. She told me the concept; it seems pretty cool.”

“It does,” Matty nods, though he doesn’t seem that interested. He gets out his bread, rummaging in the cupboards for his jam. 

“Do you ever think—” You bite your tongue. 

Matty halts his movements, sticking out of the cupboard door to look at you. He smirks, mischievous. “What?”

“Just—” You shake your head, laughing, preparing the groundwork for how silly it will be. Matty walks closer to you, fatally curious. “I wonder how Delilah feels about being a muse. Because that’s what models are, right? A canvas. Something to add onto.” You cock your head. “D’you think she’ll like Galatea?” 

Matty shrugs. “I don’t think she’s thought much about it.”

“Maybe not all muses suffer. It’s a compliment, right? For some people?”

“I think so,” Matty nods. “But it’s different for you, isn’t it? Her photograph isn’t in love with her. He’s not her lover— he hasn’t promised to accept her as she comes. It’s fine if he wants to finetune her. If he wants to make her up. They don’t owe each other anything.”

You mull over that answer. “So it’s love, you think, that rots musedom?” 

Matty rustles a hand through his hair. It makes his arm flexed, his bicep tattoo flashing at you. “I don’t know. I think it’s complex. I think it’s why you’re writing about it.” 

You hum in vague agreement. Matty turns back to his bread and jam, but stops, staring at you. “She’ll love Galatea. Everyone will. You’re gonna write the fucking song of the year.” 

You grin. Something familiar rings in your ear. “Make me a toast, too?”

“Sure.”

July 28

You sit on the couch beside Matty. He’s making you watch some convoluted New Wave movie. You frown at the TV, not understanding the French they fall into randomly, not understanding the plot at all. 

Matty is enthralled beside you. You watch him instead. He’s better art; more entertaining, more profound, more beautiful. You smile when he does. You smile because he does. 

He flicks his eyes towards you. You look back at the TV, straightening your shoulders, wrinkling your eyes to look deeply concentrated. Matty chuckles beside you. It hides in your hair, tickling up your neck to bury in your ear. Your grin widens. 

You lean into him, joking, “This is my favorite part.” You gesture vaguely at the screen. 

Suddenly distracted by the movement near him, Matty grabs your hand from thin air. You still. 

He climbs up to your knuckles. Presses against the bones. Plays with your rings. Twists them on your fingers. Your breathing is caught in your chest. You don’t dare move. Your skin is electrified. 

He rests your hand on his thigh. His thumb rubs at your palm. His finger circles the metal, bumping on the stones. You repeat the sentences over and over, trying to wrap your mind around it. He rests your hand on his thigh. His thumb rubs at your palm. His finger circles the metal.

Tentatively, you let your head drop on his shoulder. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t even tense. You smile, settling into his body, leaving your hand slack for him to play with it. 

July 29

The toothpaste is Matty’s. There’s a part of you that is aware, somehow, that when you’re fresh off a teeth brushing, you taste like him.

You lean your hip against the bathroom sink. Matty stares into the mirror, setting a needlessly furious tempo, wrecking his gum. You laugh as white foam drips from the corner of his mouth. He makes a little embarrassed chuckle, catching it with a finger and rinsing it off. 

You bend over the sink and spit out the toothpaste. When you straighten up, Matty spits right after you. You wash it down the faucet. 

“We should bring in violins for the Circe Circus bridge,” Matty says as you sip on water, swooshing it around and spitting again. “Make more of an impact.”

“Wouldn’t it be a little convoluted? We already have a lot of noise.”

Matty shakes his head. “No, no. It’s supposed to be unnecessarily grand, isn’t it? It’s a bit of a ridiculous caricature of love.” It’s how he interprets it, at least. You’re not quite sure what you were trying to say, just knew the words sounded right and pretty on the page. “We can try it out tomorrow.”

“Sure,” you shrug. You arch an eyebrow. “After the Basquiat exhibit at the Barbican?” 

“It’s a plan,” Matty promises. You ignore the fact that he says plan and not another four lettered word that slithers around your brain. His eyes meet yours. He smiles. “Okay,” he finally breathes. “Sleep well.”

You lick your teeth. “See you tomorrow.”

July 30

Drunk off red wine and Matty’s laugh, you stumble through the hallway. His hand warms yours. You’re a collection of calluses rubbing on skin; it should hurt, but it’s silky sweet. 

Your steps are loose. You trail your free fingers on the wall, guiding you, grounding you. You stop in front of the doors.

The way forks into the master and guest bedrooms. You twist to face Matty, so does he. You grin. Your hand warms, lit up from the mere presence of his between your greedy fingers. They feel alive at your wrist. Aware of him. You wait.

“Goodnight,” he finally breathes. His eyes stare into yours.

“Yeah, goodnight.” 

He doesn’t move, neither do you. Your heart speeds terribly fast. Your lips stretch up. 

Matty looks down at them. Openly. Shamelessly. He doesn’t flicker an evermoving glance, he lingers. You feel your body light up, feel warmth descend to the tip of your toes. A surge of nerves and thrill shoots down your spine, finding home in your knitted guts.

Time hangs in the air. You hitch your breath. His hand burns in yours. 

He tugs you closer to him. A small, ghost move, and you gasp. You feel him breathe against your skin; he’s real. Matty’s eyes fly to yours. They lock meaningfully as his head cocks in defiance. It’s a challenge. It’s an invitation. 

You’re a paper girl. You fold. 

You rise onto your tiptoes, cup his cheek, and kiss him. A soft, delicate thing. A press of lips. A cursive love. Thrill loosens your head from your neck, unscrewing it. He tastes like cigarettes and red wine, and there’s no trace of bitter coffee. You’re glad. 

You pull away almost immediately. Your heart races, trying to catch up with this new world you bathe in. You breathe in his mouth, eyes closed, mind spinning deliriously. You kissed Matty Healy. You kissed Matty Healy. 

Matty makes a low sound from the back of his throat, then hooks his arm around your waist and draws you in, catching your lips with a new feverish kiss. 

He’s not soft or sweet, instead lets himself be puppeteered by the passion, by the raw fucking need. There’s a thing between you pulsing alive for weeks, and you feel it burst at the seams, imploding through your flimsy flesh. It’s fucking inevitable— It’s prophetic. 

His tongue swipes at your lips, coaxing inside your mouth. You moan, gripping his cheek until you could shatter it. Constellations of stars dance behind your eyelids; he’s the center of all of them, a flash of teeth and brown eyes as the shining sun. 

You drip in his arms, and he catches you. Takes all the wax and kisses it harder, tilting his head to better meet you. It’s a head twisting tempo. He’s everywhere around you, under you, seeping in. He exists too vividly. You feel faint at the thought, at the rush of feelings. 

His own hand digs in the curve of your back. He’s tangible, he’s alive and breathing, he’s against you. He’s real. He’s sinfully fucking real. (You wonder, secretly, if he’s finally made real because you kiss him.)

Matty is the one to break away this time. His forehead falls on yours. He pants harshly, eyes closed, as though he needs a silent moment of contemplation. He looks religious for a split moment— bartering with God. 

You don’t take the solemn pause. Don’t want to listen to any chastising, guilting above. You watch him, biting your lip at his flushed skin, at his swollen lips, at his spider lashes on his cheekbones. You kissed him. You can’t believe it. 

His eyes open all at once. You look into them and try to find the leftover scar of some permanent change. “Goodnight,” Matty repeats, this time choked. You laugh. Smacks a kiss on his lips just because you can. 

Matty parts from you difficultly. He straightens, rakes his throat. He lets you out of the trap of his arms with much inner debating, waiting until he’s feet away before dropping your hand. You clench it to feel the phantom shape of his.

“Dream of me,” you say boldly.

“It’s all I do,” Matty whispers back, and then he’s into his room. 

You let your own bedroom door close behind you. You make a stupid, pathetic little happy dance, falling on your bed afterwards. A content sigh slips past your lips.

Rolling to take your sketchbook from your bedside table, you click a pen open. You hit your lips — still burning with the feel of his, with the heat of his tongue — in concentration. 

You try to think of pretty, poetic words, but all you come up with is he loves me, he loves me, he loves me.

July 31

You walk out of your room weightlessly. Everything seems sweeter; the sun doesn’t burn, the birds don’t scream, the flowers don’t wilter. The world exists in technicolors. Shades of black and white become deep maroon, pretty pink. You step from the hallway into the kitchen with light feet, humming to yourself. 

Matty sits at the counter bar with a bowl of cereal and the papers. His eyes flick to yours as he hears you. He smiles. “There’s coffee in the pot.”

“You’re the best,” you declare, practically running to the pot and serving yourself a steaming cup of coffee. You search his cupboard for the sugar, pouring yourself a healthy dose. Finally, you take a sip and make a happy, satisfied moan. 

You approach Matty. You peer over his shoulder to read the latest music article. Your side leans into him; he doesn’t move. It’s all so natural, so domestic. Your heart sings. 

Taking a new sip from your mug, you then lean your head on Matty’s shoulder. His own rests against yours. Your lips hang from your cheek like a clothesline, your teeth scattered white shirts pinned in place. You want to kiss him again, want him to wipe it off of you with his tongue.

“I wanna write a happy song today,” you declare. 

Matty grins against your scalp. He whispers, because it’s as loud as he needs to be for you to hear, “Okay.”

August 1

Matty rolls the blunt, licking the waxy paper and wrapping it shut. You follow his tongue as it sticks out, practically blushing. He takes a blue lighter to flame the tip of it. It burns red. He inhales one hit, then blows it. Smiling at you, he hands the blunt like a precious gift. You graze his fingers purposefully when you grab it. 

It’s stronger than you usually smoke back in New York, but you’ve gotten used to the grassy taste. You don’t cough anymore, don’t even feel it scratch down your throat. The smoke pours out of your lips.

It takes one more hit for your fingers to start tingling. Your body relaxes; your mind enters some sort of daze. You sigh contently, giggling just from the inherent joy swirling in your head. Matty laughs at you, poking your cheek. “You’re already flying, lightweight.” 

“I don’t know why you expect differently.” 

Matty hums. “One day I’ll get you to three.” Your heart rushes. It spreads through your body, like the muscle was suddenly finely tuned with every limb, singing a call-and-response song.

You lay on your back, draping yourself lazily on the scratchy carpet. Your head rests on Matty’s thigh. You look up at him, trying to make sense of him from his dark, sprouting halo, falling downwards as he watches you. You grin, loose and languid, dripping down your cheeks. “Promise?” You say, teasing. 

Your head rolls on his thigh. Matty takes another hit, shaking a laugh off his teeth. “I promise, love.” You don’t even have to morph the letters of that.

August 2

You walk through the up-and-coming art exhibit Matty dragged you to. Your feet linger on small, dreamlike images dotting the white walls. They nag at you with their innate sense of time. A flash of life, captured on a canvas, made permanent against their will. 

What do they mean? It’s always the burning question now. What are you saying? Please, what are you saying? You wonder when you’ll stop feeling like a little girl. When you’ll stop staring at paintings and wish you understood them better, clearer. When you’ll get art intrinsically, when you’ll be deeper than the blank, smooth surface of watercolor papers. 

You lost Matty in the white rooms, breathing through the space at a different pace. He analyzes paintings meticulously. His feet stop with purpose, taking roots in the wooden planks, deliberately stilling. He stares at them and you wish you could know what he’s thinking about for such long moments. Wish you could know how they move him, how they strum his heartstrings. Maybe you could learn the chords on the guitar. 

You stop in front of a papier-mache sculpture. It’s bent in different shapes, an awkward and senseless movement, painted over in white. You can tell the texture through the coat, can see its unruly, unsmoothened topography. Your head cocks.  

It’s not really anything. Or, at least, if it is, you will never figure out what the artist meant it to be. But to you, it’s got a body through its shape. A leg that extends, one that curves in itself. A stomach emptied. An arm that rolls around, protective. One that sticks out. A neck, dainty and vulnerable, bared freely. Headless.

You wonder if anyone posed for this. You wonder how they felt, sucking in their stomach, pinpricks of pain stabbing at their limbs. If they tried on odd positions. If they were naked. If they kissed the artist afterwards; if they thought, it’s enough. If they saw the wet paper build up on the grotesque armature and made themselves repeat, I am made of bones. I am made of bones. 

Your lips tremble. You clench your fists. Your nails dig into your palms, crescent moons of promises. You’d tear through the skin if it meant leaving bloody, leaving human. 

That is where Matty finds you, still staring at the sculpture, robbed of words. He lingers beside you, impossibly close. It’s all he does these days, air with plausible deniability. Real and unreal, present and far, far away. He knocks his shoulder against yours. 

You don’t look at him. “What do you see?” You breathe. 

Matty takes a moment of silence. He thinks, surely. Analyzes lines, composition, materials. Takes it apart in his head to find the solution. You want to see the process, want to catch the bricks he rips as he throws them over his shoulder. 

Matty hums. “It kinda looks—” His head cocks, as though to make sure. “Human.” 

Your heart drops to your stomach. You swallow thickly. “Yeah. Yeah, I think so, too.” And you wonder how long he’d stare at it if you didn’t hook your arm around his, tugging him away. If he’d look at it enough to scream, where are my bones, where are my bones.

August 3

You tiptoe to his door. It’s always firmly closed when Delilah is over, but slightly ajar when you’re two in the flat. It’s felt like a nagging invitation for weeks. You knock on it, a soft, nonexistent noise, like leaving yourself the chance to backtrack. To not mean it. 

“Yes?” Matty calls from inside, squished and drowsy. 

You peek your head through the door. His room has gotten messier over the Delilah-less days. Clothes hang on the ground, half-finished mugs make castles on his desk, CDs tower precariously. He lays in his bed, on the right side, his face crushed in his pillow. A cover drapes over him, but naked shoulders peek through. The light is too low to make sense of them, but you can faintly tell there’s familiar inked lines drawn onto the skin. 

“Sorry,” you whisper. “I didn’t mean to wake you.” 

“I wasn’t sleeping.” He mutters. Relief spreads through you. You don’t know if he’s lying or not, but both possibilities please you. You didn’t actually wake him; he cares enough to tell you otherwise. 

“Okay, good.” You bite your lip. “I— Do you mind if I stay here tonight? I can’t get any sleep in my room.” Your heart drums on your ribs. It’s all so fucking existent, suddenly. Meaningful. 

Matty peeks one eye open. He gives you a glance, then raises his arm, opening the covers for you. You don’t even hesitate, running to the entryway like a promised oasis. You slip inside— like a fantasy, like a dream— and settle into the cocoon. It’s warm, and the sheets smell of him. You roll, getting closer. 

You don’t dare touch him, but you get as near as you can. It’s useless anyway; Matty throws an arm over you and tugs you into his side. You might choke from the heat, and the weight, and the vertiginous knowledge that Matty is ivying around you, but you finally sleep nonetheless.

August 4

You hang up on Bree after drawn out goodbyes. She’s tried to get you to play her some of the album, but you remain purposefully elusive. You wiggle out of her grasp, promising to send her some demos soon. Her pursed lips were dissatisfied, but you can trust your distracted friend to forget it before the night nears its head. 

You walk to the living room. Matty’s shirt falls on your shoulder, something you already plan to shove in your suitcase when it is time to part ways. The thought leaves you frayed, uncomfortable, and you don’t like to think about it more than this. 

Matty is scratching his guitar on the couch when you come in. He sings low, mournful words you can’t make out. You drop beside him, bouncing on the pillows. He smiles at you, stops playing. 

“How was Bree?” 

“Still alive.” 

“Good for her.” 

Your chin jerks to his fingers. “What were you playing?” 

Matty hums noncommittally. “Just this song I’m writing.” 

You sit primly on the couch. You nod at him. “Let’s hear it.” Again, he hesitates. Your mouth hangs open. “Come on! I’ve had to lay my soul bare for you plenty of times this summer. Your turn.” 

Matty sighs, readying his fingers for a chord. “It’s unfinished,” he warns. You roll your eyes at his delays, gesturing for him to go on.

He strums once, twice. It’s truly unfinished— he mutters randomly strung syllables instead of saying lyrics for half of it, just the idea of what the shape of those words could be. But there are words. Yearnful, confused, loving. He uses that dry, direct sense of style, that gloveless prose. Still, you’re once again left wondering what he’s trying to say. What thoughts haunt his mind. 

How you want to know him, brick by brick. 

“It’s beautiful,” you whisper once he rings his last note. He grins to himself, satisfied. “Sing it to me sometime when it’s done.” 

Matty flashes his teeth to you. “It’s a date.”

August 5

You flip through your sketchbook absentmindedly. It feels like you’ve already seen everything, like every word has already been used and discarded. How many times do you repeat yourself, going on and on about the mouths of lovers. You make a small noise of frustration. 

Matty eyes your book. You can tell he’s curious, can see him peer over your shoulder and scan the messy words and messier drawings before you slam it close. You look at him, at his silent plea. You sigh. 

You hand the book out to him. “There,” you say. “I can’t keep reading it. I know it too well.” 

Matty’s eyes widen. “Really?” 

“Find me some pretty words.” 

He grabs it from you without another hesitation. His eyes are hungry, skimming through the pages, flipping the spirals. You watch him as he uncovers you, one paper thin layer at a time. Your heart splashes against your ribs. Blood drips on the bones. You feel awfully like a heart attack. 

“There,” Matty says. He hands you back the book, grinning conspiratorially. “This sings to me.” But you can’t shake off the idea that it’s you that sings to him.

August 6

“Yes, Spain was lovely,” Delilah says, sipping on some Spanish white wine. She’s tanned and freckled, sunshine itself peering through the dark of the evening. She changed the room when she left, and she changes it back now, bursting through the flat again. Beside her, an arm thrown over the back of her chair, Matty drinks his usual glass of malbec. “Barcelona most of all. God, I just love the culture there. It’s so vibrant.” 

A lazy, callused finger twirls in Delilah’s hair. She leans into it subconsciously. Your teeth grind on each other. You clench your fist around your fork, biting on the chicken. “Did the shoot go well?” You manage out, but it’s bitten and bitter. 

Delilah laughs, that bright, musical sound that rings offkey to your ears. She takes a bite of her salad and her lipstick doesn’t smudge. “Fantastic. It was such an amazing concept!” She goes on some more about the visionary genius of the photograph, but it is null to you. 

Your eyes zero in on that fatal arm around Delilah, sure and protective, ownership. Your brain beats in your skull, the tune of a song humming along your cranium. You glance at Matty next. He doesn’t look back. 

You grip the white wine and take a long, heavy mouthful. It’s fruity and light. For the first time in your life, you think, too sweet. 

August 8

The house is quiet. No music hummed from the speakers. No guitars strummed. No dishes washed. No steps walked. No cigarettes smoked. The world is drenched in silence. 

It’s an uncanny feeling, sitting in Matty’s flat alone. As if it’s not supposed to exist without him. As if it should blink out of existence, evaporate out of thin air. As if you should sit in a blank room, staring at white walls, realizing you had made it all up in your head. 

Matty and Delilah are off visiting his parents up North. You play with your fingers, the silence resonating in your chest. It feels suffocating to be alone. 

You grab your phone, typing, how’s manchester? He doesn’t answer it until the next day. 

August 11

Matty’s eyes are bright red. You laugh at them, holding his cheeks between your soiled hands. You know the shape of his jaw, know where it digs and cuts into your palms, and there’s cheesy sonnets running in your mind about it. 

“I’m hungry,” you tell him, leaning into him like it’s a secret, a confession. “Make me that chocolate mugcake again?” Your flutter your eyelashes at him, attempting some innocent, pleading pout. 

Matty hums. He takes your hand by the wrist, puppeteering it to his lips. He kisses the tips of your fingers, then your palm. “What do I get?” He asks, finally looking at you. You feel dizzy. 

Your lips open, but you can’t think of a single word anymore. It doesn’t feel as cruel; it’s merciful, blissful. To finally not think like your life is being threatened, like you have five seconds to come up with a saving solution. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.  

Matty arches an eyebrow at you. He crowds your face, less than inches away, so close you feel like you breathe with him. “Nothing?”

“Mmmh,” you whisper back. Your eyes descend to his lips. “What do you want?” 

With a smirk, Matty catches your lips. He swipes his tongue in, licking into your mouth. You moan against him. Your hand moves to his hair and you grip it, holding him there, kissing him harder, faster, deeper. 

Buzzing spreads through you. You’re not hungry anymore. 

August 12

The raucous sound of low, heavy laughs resonates through the open floor. It shakes up the foundations of the flat from their grandeur, their depth. You take a glance at the three overexcited men, drinking beers and taking the piss out of each other, and they feel like boys for a split second in time. You wonder, privately, how you would have fit into their puzzle if you had met them earlier. 

Matty washes the dishes in the kitchen sink. You dry the plates, throwing secretive glances to the rest of the boys. You don’t know how it would have been years ago, but it’s near perfection now. You stare at the scene outside of your body and you can’t see the seams, can’t find where the stitches of you would be. How you want to stick around, become permanent. 

“They loved you,” Matty says conspiratorially, leaning into you. He hands you a wet plate, a bit of soap still lathered on it. 

You smile at him, gleeful and unashamed of it. Your chest brightens, shining through the skin. “I love them,” you answer.

Ross comes in with the leftover glasses, dropping them in the soapy sink. He ruffles Matty’s hair, gives you a grin. “We need to do this again soon. I haven’t seen you in forever, mate.” He moves to the fridge. 

“Bit busy,” Matty says, bashful. 

He sticks out of the fridge, two beer bottles in hand. “Making the album of the year and all, I heard,” Ross says. Again, he gives you a smile, like you’re old friends, like you’re conspirators. Your lips stretch up. “Still, don’t hide away together. I missed you.”

“‘Course. We’re almost there, anyway.” Your grin freezes on your cheeks. You hate the idea of the after, of the end. You put away the plates in the cabinet.

August 14

The wind blows your hair back. You lean your elbow onto the open window, resting your head as you watch the road blur past you. Matty drives with sunglasses on, and it makes you want to stare at his side profile and etch it into your brain. 

You’ve bickered over the radio station, eventually settling over some blues, bobbing your head quietly to the blasted music. It’s the middle of the day, and yet it seems like the hours announce themselves to stretch on forever. You can taste eternity on your tongue. 

You’re driving to the festival you’re performing at and there should be a typical wreck of nerves in your stomach, tying and knotting and squeezing, squeezing, squeezing until you want to cough your guts out. It’s usually what the idea of public singing does to you, sending you into a mess of anxiety until you’re on that stage, watching your people, and finally feeling right. 

Yet, in this car with Matty, serenaded by vaguely familiar tunes, you find yourself at peace. 

August 15

Matty engulfs you in a hug. He squeezes, as if trying to make sure you feel every particle of him, make sure you know he’s solid. The mic sits between your bodies, awkward and painful amidst the embrace. “Knock them dead,” Matty whispers in your neck. 

You laugh, brushing off your nerves. “Thanks,” you say. “I’ll try.”

“You will.” He releases you. Stares into one eye, then the other. Tucks a strand of hair behind your ear. “I’ll watch as long as I can before I have to get ready for my set.”

“Thanks.” You smile, looking down to hide your blush. “Good luck to you, too. Or break a leg. I don’t know what you believe.” 

“Eh, I don’t need either.” He grins, so fucking smug and cheeky, and you roll your eyes at him. A chuckle slips out of his lips. He mediates, “Thank you. I’ll cash in on that good luck when I need it.” He hugs you one last time, kisses your cheek, and then sends you off on stage. 

You’re off kilter when you approach the crowd, but the sight of it, of them, sunburnt and screaming and loving, makes all your worries melt away like butter. You grin, screaming into the mic, “Hello, everyone!”

August 16 

The world is distorted; colors brighter, sounds clearer, time slower. You lay on the grass and feel each strand tickling at your skin. You giggle, turning to stare at Matty. Your hands hang between the two of you, met in the middle. 

The shrooms glued a slack, happy smile on his face. He looks around the festival tent, the shadows of a tree outside drawing inky chimeras over the plastic tarp. You wonder what he sees. You wonder if it’s prettier than your own vision, the way you bend and rearrange lines until the traces of a human shape drapes over you. 

His head falls to the side, watching you in return. You squeeze his hand; he squeezes back. “I’m happy,” you tell him. “I’m really, really happy.”

“Me, too.” 

A strand of hair falls on his forehead like a lightning bolt. You tighten your grip again. “I want to kiss you,” you whisper. 

Matty inhales slowly. His eyes dig into yours, though he doesn’t move, stilled in time like a statue. You take a mental photograph. Click, you think, and now he’s forever. 

“Then do it,” he answers back, just as secretive, practically tempting you. 

You roll to your side, scooping yourself up until your face nears his. You brush your lips against him, just a graze, and still bliss coils around your brittle bones. It’s not really a kiss, but it’s enough nonetheless. 

But Matty kisses you, crashing his lips against yours and snapping this moment into the hot, burning tangible. His hand blisters your cheek as he takes it, angling you, meeting you better. Euphoria drums in your heart. Boom. Boom. Boom. 

You grip his free hand, placing it over your beating muscle, making him feel the racing tempo he brings out of you. This is you, you want to tell him. This is all for you.

Matty misunderstands your message, instead grazing his hand down your chest, gripping your breast. You moan into his open mouth, shocked by the sudden pleasure. His thumb rubs your nipple expertly. He smirks against you. 

“Matty,” you say, and it’s a plea and a warning. He pushes you to your back. “Fuck,” and it is just a wordless beg.

His hands are everywhere, greedy and eager to discover. He brushes every inch of your skin, climbing under your shirt, raising it over your head. His mouth finds your neck and leaves wet kisses in the crook of it, mapping his way down. You whine in his hair. Your breathing speeds up, quicker and quicker as he palms your tits, as he grabs your waist, as he teases the waistline of your shorts. 

You mutter his name into the air. Everything blurs around you, a happy daze existing only in this tent, only between his arms. You bury your hands in his curls. “Please, Matty,” you whisper. 

“What do you want?” He asks against your collarbone, pressing his lips on it after. You feel him hard between your thighs. The knowledge makes your mind droopy. 

You giggle like it was all silly, all unbelievable. It’s never about what you want; too much, too soon, too real. “What about you?”

Matty hums. He pushes your bra cups, revealing your breast. He parts away from you to take a good look at them. You flush, feeling shy suddenly. 

Matty kneels up. He pants, staring at the mess of you, half-naked and flustered and hot, practically vibrating out of your skin under him. He thumbs your nipple, smirking. “I want this.” 

“Yeah?” You arch an eyebrow. Matty nods, eager. You trail your fingers down his mane to the neckline of his shirt, greedily tugging on it. He obliges and lets it fall off his shoulders. 

Your stare laps at his naked chest with none of the usual shame. Take in every muscle, every tattoo, until Matty Healy himself is blushing under your carnivorous stare. You reach out to touch the ink at his hip, grabbing it between guitar-callused fingers, making sure you’re not imagining the whole thing. 

It has to be the trip. You have to be hallucinating, making sweet visions out of the grass and white. 

“Can you fuck me?” You say, bold and uncaring. If it’s a dream, you can be whoever you want. Can say whatever fancies your mind; even the scary, even the galactic. (Though you don’t, because admitting it just to yourself is already too momentous.)

Matty swallows. “Yeah. Yeah, I can definitely do that.” You laugh, at him or at you or at the sheer fucking joy. It’s contagious; soon he’s giggling too, bending back down into you to suck at your breasts, working on your jeans. The laugh reverberates on your skin. You moan, melted wax in the grass. 

He takes the shorts down your legs, then your underwear. His hungry gaze devours you, taking in every inch of you like he’s realizing you’re real. “Better than I imagined.” You like the sound of that; it hums in your heart. 

“You, next,” you say, pleading. Matty undoes his belt dutifully. It takes some time; his fingers are trembling. 

But then he’s naked in front of you. A wiry frame, inked and scarred, with a hard, leaking cock. He’s better than a Greek god. 

Your hand reaches out for his. He takes it, crosses your fingers together, rests it beside your head as he drapes over you. Dark, coffee eyes meet yours and you get the strange sensation of having your soul bared for him, too. His lips graze yours but he doesn’t kiss you, as though he wants to hear you when he finally pushes in.

You roll your eyes into your skull. Your hand tightens in his, moaning his name. There’s a fucked-out groan coming from him, too. He lays into your neck as he thrusts in and out, slowly, like he was still adjusting to the idea of it. 

“You’re perfect,” Matty whispers. Every particle of you sings his name. You clench around him. “Shit, love, do that again.”

A proud grin breaks on your face. You throb around him. He’s buried so deep you feel him in every nerve ending, yet you still need him. Your free hand digs into his back. You want him under your skin. 

“Faster,” you say. Matty nods in agreement. He bucks his hips into yours. You strangle his hand with a deadly grip, holding back screams of his name. You moan it instead, in the crook of his neck, sticking your tongue out to lick them off after.

It’s better than it’s ever been with anyone. Your body buzzes, ecstasy swooping in your belly. You’re not sure if it’s the drugs or him, and neither answer seems satisfying. 

You can’t tell where you start and he begins, but it’s not a new feeling. He can be rooms apart and you still sense the edges of him, subconsciously, deludingly. He’s there, now, fucking inside of you, bringing you to insanity. 

“Oh, God,” you say. “Fuck.” You don’t think you’ll last long if he keeps going. Matty seems to realize, feeling the way you flutter around his cock, begging and pleading for a release. 

Matty shakes your hand off, using his now free one to rub dizzyingly fast at your clit. Your face scrunches, you moan his name, your hand flexes with the phantom shape of his hand. You snap your eyes open, meeting his, when you break and fall apart. 

It’s been a long time coming, building and building since that fateful day of June 16, but it still takes you by surprise. Your mind wipes clean, relief overtaking every attuned nerve, and all you can think is finally.

Matty follows behind you soon after, shutting his face as his lips part in abandon. A grunt slips past him, his eyebrows wrinkle, his shoulders tremble under your hand, and suddenly he’s spilling into you. 

He falls on you, sighing contently. A vague hand passes through your hair soothingly. You stare at the ceiling in shock. He came inside of you.

It’s fine, you tell yourself. I’m on the pill, you reassure yourself. And he’s clean. Just me— Just me and Delilah. 

“Oh, shit, sorry,” Matty laughs, realizing. He slides out of you, his cum leaking out. Though he does sound apologetic, he still stares at it in mesmerism. Ownership.

“‘S fine,” you mumble lazily. 

Matty grabs his discarded shirt, wiping your inner thighs, cleaning you up. It’s strangely domestic, in some way. You close your eyes and imagine a world where he does this often, humming. 

Matty falls back beside you, tugging your head into his shoulder, holding you close. You grin satisfiedly, loose and relaxed, a syrup girl dripping on him, sticking to him. 

Finally, you sing. Everything feels absolute. 

Your eyes flutter shut, exhaustion seeping through your body. Your face nestles into him deeper. Squished against his shoulder, you ask him, “Do you like me?”

He laughs as if it was silly to ask. “Of course I like you.” 

And do you love me, you want to ask, but you bite your tongue and swallow it down. For now it’s enough. 

August 17

Delilah runs into Matty’s arms. He catches her slackly, a loose arm around her waist as she peppers kisses over his face. Her smile shines bright. The world spins nauseatingly around you. 

Your heart fends in the middle. You stare at the two of them like a car crash, sick to your stomach yet unable to look away. You still remember the feel of his arm around you, the way he held like he was afraid you might blow away with the wind, melt into the grass. The way he gripped.

Matty meets your eyes above Delilah’s shoulder. He seems overrun, robbed of words. You have a few you believe he should be saying, should be thinking, but he doesn’t. There’s an apology in his gentle look. You want to throw up on their shoes. 

You’re a paper girl — fragile, volatile, unsettled, dancing with the wind of feelings — and he’s a rock — sure, confident, stubborn, and staying with his fucking girlfriend. 

August 19

You sit side by side with Matty on the piano bench. You peer in your sketchbook, angled away to hide from him. In his phone’s notes app, he writes the most recent verse’s ever moving state. “D’you have anything else?” He asks, as you’ve discarded the past few editions. 

You hum, skimming through the pages. Your eyes settle on a drawing of constellations, a ghost of a boy smiling in the grass. Your heart punches. You look over the words. “How about—” You shake your head, trying to discard the doom feeling in your chest. “How about she bleeds on my palms, I think I’m stained with her?” 

“Oh, I like that,” Matty nods, quickly scribbling it on his phone. “After all the marble talk, it shows we really are talking about a real person, and that they are left bloody and scarred from being carved away to fit his fantasies.”

You swallow thickly. Your heart speeds. “Yeah— Yes. Sure.”

August 20

Matty blows out his cigarette. He looks almost theatrical in the night; standing on his balcony, leaning on the fence, pouring smoke from his lips, drenching himself in telltale gray. You sit on a plastic chair and get the nagging feeling that you should be having some sort of realization, a lesson of some kind. 

Your hand reaches out for him. Instinctively, he gives you the cigarette. The paper burns in your hand. It’s not what you wanted. 

You place it between your lips. It feels so fucking obvious when smoke lingers around you.

August 23

You pass Matty’s room on mousy feet, making your best efforts not to wake anyone up. The master bedroom door is firmly shut. A couple snores a few feet away, surely entangled in each other’s limbs, a position as known as breathing. The hallway falls into you, knocking against your frail body. You’re squeezed until your chest might burst. 

There’s a yearning in your bones you can’t unroot. It makes you wonder where the flowers of love come from; if the blooming is just weeds. 

August 24

You lay on your stomach, kicking your legs in the air. A raw feeling lingers on your skin, like it was skimmed off on cement, burning and reddening. You hold your breath. 

“I like it,” Bree exclaims, slow and lagging from Facetime. She’s a blurry image, earphones in, seemingly at some trendy New York café you would hate. “I love the chorus. It’s so— so raw, and painful, and real. It’s like— It’s like I’m sixteen again, being manic pixie dream girled by indie, older boys.” 

You smile at that, happy that it reverberates, that it hits home. “Any criticism? We’re still fine tuning it.”

Bree hums. “Maybe make the speaker clearer? It’s a bit convoluted if it’s Pygmalion or Galatea’s point of view.” 

You’re raw. An open wound, poked and prodded and salted, and you can’t seem to finally scab. You grin slackly at Bree. “I see what you mean. Thanks.”

“It’s really a great song, though. That’s just nitpicking.” 

You nod, but it’s faint and unconvinced. You’re not sure being a good song justifies all of it. Breathtaking oil paints never seemed to make you any less blistered. 

August 26

Matty’s hair flops over his forehead. His lips are red and plump, stained from the wine. He’s grinning loosely, a bit tipsy on espresso martinis and merlot. He looks like a poem. 

Your heart softens and melts like toffee, sticking to the bones as it dribbles down your ribs. It calls for him, sings, even. 

Try as you might, you can’t stop wanting him. It breathes with you. 

August 28

“I think we’ve finished,” you declare. You stare at the lyrics of Galatea, messily put down over brand new paper with a fountain pen. You go over each word in disbelief. “I think— Fuck, this is actually it.”

“Yeah?” Matty calls, looking at you all giddy, biting his lip. 

Your smile breaks your face. An addictive rush of glee spins your mind. You can’t contain the joy. “Yes.”

“Yeah?” He repeats, hyping you up. You stand from the bench. His arms open in instinct; you run into them, colliding against his bones. You’re surprised you don’t find the rubble at your feet. 

“Fucking yes,” you whisper in his neck, and you might cry from the bone-deep relief. From finishing a song that has been haunting you with a vengeance. From being in his arms. From smelling his detergent.

“You did it,” he says back, low and emotional. You squeeze him harder. 

“We did it.” Matty tries to humble-wave your words away, but you pull back enough to stare at him. “I’m serious. I couldn’t have done it without you.” And it’s true; too true. This song would have never been what it is now, never had its shape, if you had never met Matty Healy. 

He smiles at you, touched. “The song of the fucking year.” You laugh, throwing your head back. You think of kissing him and you hope he thinks of it too, though he doesn’t do it. 

August 30

You step through the glass doors. Sunglasses rest on the top of your hair. You’re sunburnt on the tip of your nose, a touch of deep color. At least the inside is cool. Faraway, the laughs of Matty’s friends track you. 

You find the fridge, sticking your head inside and sighing in relief. You grab a beer on the way. You rest it on your nose. The condensation drips on your skin, tickling; you scrunch it. 

Matty’s nursing a soft drink as he stands in front of the fan, eyes closed, shirt unbuttoned. You smile at the vision of him, sticky and sweaty, sinfully familiar. 

“Scoot over,” you demand, nudging him. Matty obliges, scooping himself to offer you half of the fan. You moan as the air hits you. Truly content, you open your bottle of beer.

“I like the sound of that,” Matty says. You arch an eyebrow, offering it to him. He snorts. “No, no. Not in that sense. Designated driver, remember?”

“Oh, right.”

“Of course, I wouldn’t have to be if you weren’t such a passenger princess.” 

“Hey,” you frown, faux-offended. “I just haven’t gotten my driver’s license yet.”

“And how old are you?”

“Very, very young still.” You up your nose. 

Matty makes a grimace. “Don’t say that.” The image of that day in the grass, moaning in his mouth, filled up so perfectly, flashes in his eyes. You smirk, sipping on your beer. 

“What did you mean, then?” You ask. You jerk your chin in the direction of the can when he cocks his head in question. 

Matty shrugs. “Just that it sounds satisfying. There’s something almost— I don’t know, rhythmic, about opening a can of beer. Tssh.” You snort at his impression. 

“We could put it in a song maybe,” you offer. “To start it. Maybe Sunburnt? It’s kinda summer-y.”

“I like that.” Matty sighs, “Though I don’t like that we’re talking work on our day off.”

“It’s never really work, isn’t it?” You scrunch your nose. “Not when it’s us, our insides.” 

“Careful,” Matty drawls, teasing. “You’re sounding like an insufferable artist.”

He leans into you. His eyes are light, dancing, and you want to catch the breathtaking sunrise. Want to catch it on camera, show it off to whoever. He’s too pretty. 

You lean into him. Your gaze zeroes in on his lips. The can of beer rests by your side, tucked away. Your breath catches in your throat. You’ve missed him. Missed his mouth.

Matty stares at your lips, offered and tempting, then pulls away. He makes an awkward laugh, shaking his drink. “Need a refill.” He’s off in a second. 

You stand in front of the fan, air blowing and blowing and blowing, and you can feel the traces of him artificially leaving with the wind. 

August 31

August 31, you drop a nuclear bomb. “When are you gonna break up with her?” 

You don’t know what takes over you. He’s vaguely organizing his bookshelf, picking up books and getting lost in the pages and putting them back just a little bit more to the right, and you’re sitting on your piano bench, haphazardly hitting the keys, when it bubbles out of you. The need to know, the need to be safe. 

Time decelerates to a near stop. Silence hangs in the room, heavy, filling up every crevice. The floorboards droop with its weight. Your heart races. 

Yesterday plays in your mind religiously. The near kiss, dodged and avoided, laughed off. How it left you raw, bleeding, how you spun and spun in that overthinking head of yours until you thought your skull might break from the pressure. 

You stare at Matty’s back, glaring into the muscles, tearing through the shirt. You wish him to turn around. You will him to smile. Fear grips your guts. Please. You beg him to answer right. 

Matty sighs. Twists to you slowly, carefully. Your breath hitches, readying. “I don’t know.” 

Shrapnel bursts into your skin. A bomb that reverberates, that obliterates. Your fingers shake; you clench them, willing yourself to be strong, to camouflage the bleeding out. 

Your lips tremble but you straighten them. “You don’t know when or—” Your blood beats in your skull. You keep giving him bullets and finding yourself surprised when it ricochets into you. You swallow thickly. “You don’t know if you will.” 

Matty sighs. There’s an apologetic look in his face and it makes you want to vomit. If only he had the mercy to be cruel, to rip your spine and throw it away. Give you a reason to hate him. “I can’t give you an answer. I just—” He makes a little frustrated noise, annoyed with himself for not having the words. “I need time to think.” 

You give him an incredulous look. “Time to think?” Anger digs into you, and it feels better. Something to latch onto, something buoyant over the currents of pain you’re battling against. Something to clench that jaw, narrow those eyes. “So you haven’t yet? At all?”

Matty makes a noise to speak, to sweeten, sounding like the saccharine letters of your name, but you cut him off. “No,” you say, and it is dry and sure, lashing. “No, I’ve been waiting for you all summer. We’ve—” You let out a laugh of disbelief, crazed and pathetic. “We’ve kissed, we’ve had sex, we’ve been on basically fucking dates, and you haven’t thought about if you wanna be with me?” You hate how your voice sounds wet when you push out, “I’ve thought about you every fucking day this summer.” 

Matty makes an offended face, crying, “Of course I’ve thought about if I wanna be with you.”

You don’t give him time to take it back, twist its meaning, already pleading, “Then what’s the issue?” 

“Because I don’t know!” Again with those three little words, never the right ones, never the ones you breathe from his mouth. He softens, and suddenly the sugary gaze looks like pity to you. “I like you. I really like you, and I care for you, and I don’t want to hurt you.” 

The words ring in the room. Though you want to bury them in your chest, let them bloom and grow until they’ve taken on a whole new face, you don’t. 

You hear the fatal word coming after, see it in his overwhelmed look. “But I care for her too.” You take it like a bullet. “We’ve been together for three years. And I’ve only known you for what? Two months? What if it shits between us? What if it’s not as great as we made it out to be?” 

He makes the worries solid, gives them a physical form, and you want to beg him to let the marble go, knock the paints from his hands. Don’t make it real. Don’t make it possible. 

Dejected, lips trembling, he begs, “Can’t I be a little confused?” 

You breathe out. “Of course you can be confused.” You frown, desperate when you add, “But you cheated on her. Physically, emotionally.” You let the words hit home. A guilty look draws on his face and it’s worse, somehow. “And you’re just gonna go back to her?”  

He sighs, rubbing his forehead. “I know I haven’t gone about this the right way.” 

You blink at him. “Are you fucking kidding me?” 

Gone about this the right way, like he didn’t take hearts and forget them on his piano keys, rotting on the ivory.

“Look, it was fucked. I didn’t think—“ Matty shakes his head. For a poet, he always has the wrong words. “I just wanted you, and I did it, and I know I shouldn’t have—” 

“You’re fucking selfish.” 

He’s selfish, you think, and you scroll back through your memories trying to find the telltale moments you missed, you ignored. If the signs waved over your head and you squinted away, slack, happy smile rising over your cheeks. 

He winces. “I’m sorry.” 

“You’re sorry?” You arch an eyebrow. “You’re apologizing now?” 

Matty huffs. “What do you want from me?” 

You make a disbelieved laugh. How does he not get it? How does he not see? You want to shake his shoulders, but you’re afraid of the marble dust that would linger on your hands. 

“I just want you to choose me,” you cry, like it was so fucking evident. You want him. You want him to want you. 

Matty opens his mouth, then closes it. He’s overrun. 

All those tiny moments; those throwaway smiles, those purposeful glances, those lingering touches, those words, understanding and uncovering and loving— how much of them are real? The curse of being a creator: you make stories in your head. 

He wants to say I don’t know. That’s all he has in his head. 

You nod faintly. Breathe in. Let go. The moment hangs in the air. “You’re not going to, are you?” 

Matty shrugs. That hopeful, sick muscle in your heart beats seconds slower; off-key with the world, with reality. “I don’t know.” 

Your eyes close. Everything snaps back all at once; gravity is heavy, oxygen is ashy, colors are dull. You purse your lips. Try not to cry. 

“God,” you laugh, “what the fuck have I done?” 

The curse of a creator: creating. 

He’s crumbled at your feet. He’s made of blood, and flesh, and he’s bruised and blue. You wonder how much of it is from chisel-martelling him. 

Watercolors, marble, words; it’s all the same. 

Matty frowns. He’s gentle, soothing. “Don’t say that.” 

You throw a hand up. “I’m gonna sleep at a hotel tonight.” Your stare is ice, leaving not a possibility to argue. “Stay with your girlfriend if you want.” 

Matty makes a frustrated sound. “I’m not saying I don’t want you. I’m saying I don’t know yet. I— I just need to figure it out.” 

“It’s not enough.” His face winces: bullets. Something in you is a little gleeful, hopes the metal bites into his skin. Maybe if he bleeds you, mourns you, it’ll all be a little easier to digest.

“Have a goodnight, Matty.” There's a world in which you say those words and then breathe out a soft I love you. He says it back, worshiping and happy. His arms are heavy around your waist. You roll over in bed and go to sweet sleep, satisfied. It’s not this one. You can’t keep trying to make it be.

When you leave his flat, all you can think is, God, I really should have seen this coming. 

September 1 

You adjust the earphones on your head, getting used to the soothing quiet. The microphone lingers near your mouth, inviting you. 

“Ready?” Matty asks from the booth. 

Your eyes snap to his. He’s tired, clearly. Dark circles digging under his eyes, lips bitten raw, stubble unshaved. There’s an air of unmadeness about him, and a yet-to-die need to write about it. Words start coagulating in your mind already, but you don’t let it stick. It’s just an instinct; it’ll be gone soon. 

You give a thumbs up. In the microphone, you whisper, refusing to break eye contact. “Galatea, take one.”

[peachesofteal]

ok i have a question- for the dead disco fics, if there was a situation where ghost had to choose between reader and soap, who would he choose? idk why im thinking abt this LOL

Hey babe, what is wrong with you? (I love this so much it scratches my angst brain just right) Why do you want to feel this pain? (I too, want to feel this pain...let’s indulge)

Ghost x Soap x female reader Dead Disco - verse AU - not canon to the actual story. Warnings-tags: Angst. Inferred character death. Darling's usual (eating issues, depression, anxiety, despair, self destructive behaviors)

The bed is too big, as it always has been. As it always was before, and during. And as it always will be for now on, too. Your legs spread across it, kicking and swishing across pristine sheets like you're swimming in them, like you're drowning. Drowning, is more apt. Drowning is more akin to these feelings that swimming, certainly. Drowning is how you feel right now, smothered in your loss, lungs full of water, burning from the salt of your own tears. You're at the bottom of the ocean, lost beneath where the sunlight doesn't reach, far beyond the swell of the waves. Drowning is what it feels like, when your heart clenches in your chest and your stomach heaves it's bile free. Drowning is how you would describe this black, bottomless hole that's developed soul, the one that pulls you deeper and deeper with every breath. Drowning. You've drowned. And no one was there to pull you to shore. To safety. No one was there to save you.

"I'm home!" Your bag falls to the floor with a thud as you toss your keys on the island, loosening your jacket and heading towards the dining area of the flat. "Holy shit, wait until I tell you about my day. My boss was on one today, she was being a crazy a-" the words die on your tongue when you finally look up and see the expression on Johnny's face. At first glance, one might call it grim, but for those who know him, who know to look closer, you see the red ting to his eye lids, the rub of drier skin around his nose. He's been crying. "What's going on?" you ask, looking from him to where Simon sits, stone faced. Immobile. Neither of them answer you at first. "Hello?" The knot that's been loosely tied in your stomach tightens. Simon nods at the free chair next to him. "Sit, darling."

There are two boxes, in your bathroom. They sit, full of things, clothing, items, trinkets, pieces of memories, pieces of love. They idle next to your bathtub, waiting, watching you, every time you drag yourself towards the toilet to vomit, or whenever you muster up the strength to look at your toothbrush. The boxes have sharpie scrawled across them, big loopy letters that almost look like mouths, almost look like they could grow teeth and talk to you, or eat you alive with what's inside of them. You supposed, they could. If you were to open them, and actually look at the things inside, they would consume you. Chew you up. Spit you out.

"I- I don't understand." You take a half step towards Johnny, who visibly flinches, face torn fractured with despair, while Simon's lips press into a hard line before he speaks. "We will make sure you're taken care of, we-" His voice is cold. So, so cold it scratches at your heart, pin pricks of icicles working their way beneath your ribs. "Stop." you shake your head, willing yourself to focus. What is he saying? What does he mean? "Simon, what... wh-what does that mean?" "Darling we're so, so sorry." Johnny's voice, is the opposite of cold. It's molten. Hot, and burning red with orange, thick with something you think is sadness. "You are sorry." You repeat it, numbly. You're not crying, which is a surprise to yourself and probably the two of them too. Your brain is really working now, hard. It's compartmentalizing and organizing and shoving little things away, burying others beneath mountains of sand and locking memories into boxes that you'll never be able to open. "You can't. You can't just leave me... you... you promised." Simon stands completely still, while Johnny shifts his weight nervously, fingers tangling with one another as he watches you like a hawk. Like a solider. "This will be better... for everyone." He tries to soothe you, tries to calm you, even from where he lurks, five feet away. Simon offers you nothing. "I don't understand, everything was fine. I thought... we were okay." Simon finally moves, shaking his head with a no while you watch, mouth ajar.

The boxes have been ripped into tatters now. They lay in shreds across the things in the bathtub, covering two t shirts of Johnny's, a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie of Simon's. Your silk bathrobe, and giant fleece blanket from the couch. There's also a book, a collection of photographs, a few pieces of jewelry. Worn index cards with recipes on them, Johnny's mum's, and a comic book, that Simon used to keep in his drawer of the bedside table. The final touch is the secret pack of cigarettes, the ones Simon used to keep in the closet, sans the one in your mouth. You inhale it slowly, breathing in the tobacco and the nicotine and the fumes of the lighter fluid, the entire contained dumped onto of the collection of things in the tub, waiting for your final flick. When it comes, you stay perched on the edge on the bath, barely interested, unmoving, as the fire rages. As it consumes.

"You fucking promised!" You scream. You scream it over and over until your throat is hoarse and Johnny looks panicked. Simon grips him roughly, sliding him half behind his body, as if to protect him from you. As if he thinks you'd hurt him. They both watch you with stricken faces, hunters tracking a wounded animal, and your breaths come in short bursts as tears track down your face. "You said you love me." It's barely a whisper, mournful and slow, and they both hear it. "We do." Johnny croaks. "We did." Simon counters, and you flinch. "But this is what's best, for all of us. It was always going to be him, darling. You've known this." It was always going to be him. It was always... going to be Johnny and Simon, over you. It was always going to be them, and not you. The truth stings, burns, bites. It twists it's wicked claws around your heart and tugs and tears until there's nothing left. You've known this. You idiot. How could you possibly believe, in the end, you'd still be in this equation? You'd still be a part of this? How could you possibly believe, that after everything, they'd still love you? Still want you? Simon's mouth moves, but you hear no sound. You hear nothing, as you turn on your heel and barricade yourself in the bedroom. You hear nothing, as they knock, and knock, you hear nothing, until the wood stops vibrating, and the front door open and closes with a final thud. It was always going to be them. You've known this.

"Bloody hell." Gaz whistles, eyes locked on the screen. Johnny wipes a towel across the back of his neck, mopping up the sheen of sweat that lingers there while Simon saunters through the rec room doors. "Christ. Didn't ya two live near there?" "Live where?" Johnny frowns, looking up. There's a heli eye view of a burning building on the news, it's entire structure engulfed in flames, firemen barely making a dent. The camera switches to a ground reporter, a pretty woman with a serious face, who's explaining that arson investigators believe the fire started on the ninth floor, where there's still a single person trapped, unable to be rescued so far by exhaustive efforts. Something glitches in Johnny's brain, something short circuiting while he blinks, and breathes, and blinks, trying to wrap his mind around what he's seeing. The ninth floor. Someone trapped. Didn't ya two live near there? The ninth- It's almost unrecognizable, but he knows. Of course he knows. The ninth floor, the ninth floor- His heart stops in his chest, and he turns frantically to Simon, who stands like a statue in the doorway, eyes wide and frozen. "No. Nonononono-" Johnny whispers. He stumbles, away from Simon, away from Gaz, eyes not leaving the television while he drops to his knees. "She- Simon." Simon doesn't answer, just stands, broken. Empty. Like a ghost. He has no words. He has nothing. And neither does Johnny.

[ellethespaceunicorn]

Touch and Go: A Detective's Romance

Rating: Explicit, 18+, Minors - DNI 

Pairing: Walter Marshall x Detective!Female!Reader 

Fandom: Night Hunter 

Word Count: 3.3K 

Summary: What happens when a touch-starved detective who isn’t well-versed in human interaction meets their match?  

Warnings: touch starvation, awkward conversation, unprotected p-in-v sex, creampie, crying during sex 

A/N: It’s apparently winter in this story, damn Minnesota weather. Honestly, I was watching the movie while writing so it ended up being snowy. Unbeta’d, we die like people who tried their best.  

Dividers by: @firefly-graphics 

Support/Reblog banner by me 

Cover Art by me 

My Masterlist 

It’s not like you never noticed your fellow officer. Of course, your attention has been pulled to Detective Walter Marshall once or twice, or several times throughout your time working together. Damn, ok the man was a presence. His very existence should have a warning label on it. 

Not that he’s a bad person. Far from it, in fact. You thought the world of him. Not that you’d admit it, but you found his grumpiness endearing. His monosyllabic responses to questions made it a bit hard to get to know him. You weren’t exactly an open book yourself. But you forced yourself to try and get to know him. 

You didn’t make it a habit to get to know people very often. You had trust issues, and rightfully so after what your ex-partner left you with. A broken heart and a fractured view of your self-worth. You hadn’t even let anyone touch you in so long. A handshake here or there, maybe a pat on the shoulder but nothing more. 

And now here you were, a touch-starved mess who had grown to be a bit more than interested in another detective. You wanted to make him smile and that was a foreign feeling to you. So, you started with an olive branch. 

Asking if he wanted a coffee on your way to the break room. After the fifth time, he relents, requesting a cup of black coffee with three sugars. While you’re there, you pick up a granola bar from the cabinet. Handing him the paper cup of coffee, you also pull the treat from your back pocket and toss it on his desk. 

He tilts his head like a giant puppy at the snack. 

“Humor me and eat something. I’m curious if you’re eating enough if I’m being honest.” You bite your bottom lip unconsciously, and the beginnings of a smile appear on his face as he rips open the bar and takes a bite. 

Chewing slowly and staring at you, he seems to look right through to your soul. You look down at your feet to break eye contact and he clears his throat, getting your attention back.  

“You know, I actually love food. I love to cook almost every night.” As the words come out of his mouth, it’s like they’re fighting their way out. As if each syllable is a punch to the gut. 

“I love food, too. But I hate cooking,” You suddenly had a very dry throat, so you sip a bit of coffee before speaking again, “I’m not inviting myself over or anything, but if you’d be up for it sometime...I, uh...yeah.” You look everywhere but him as you trail off. 

“Yeah, that’d be nice. I normally eat alone. Be nice to have someone...there...to eat with.” It’s like speaking makes him physically nauseous, the way his jaw tenses like that. 

“Well, I’m free most nights, so...just let me know.” You move to turn and leave his office, but he stops you with an offering. 

“You wouldn’t happen to be free tonight?” He’s even surprised by his question but plays it off by folding his hands on his desk and maintaining eye contact. 

“Yes. I’m free.” You know you sound desperate but at this point, this is the most contact you’ve had with the man since you’ve been here so who cares? Well, you do, but you can worry about that later. 

“Good. Yeah. So, uh, I guess come and grab me when you’re ready to go. You can follow me to my place. Sound good?”  

“Yeah, that sounds great. Um, I’m gonna leave so I don’t say something embarrassing. I didn’t mean to say that out loud. I just—” 

Walter cuts you off, saving you from yourself. “Don’t do this a lot?” 

“No, I don’t. Been a long time and I don’t want to fuck this up, ya know? Not that playing it cool was ever my style. Why start now, right?” You surprise Walter by laughing at your self-deprecating joke and he follows suit. 

The little duck of his head doesn’t stop you from seeing the way his eyes crinkle at the corners. When he picks his head up again, a broad smile is painted on that normally glum face. If you had 1% less control over your face, you would have drooled. 

This man should smile more. 

And you know you hate being told to put on a smile but fuck, his face was made for it. You realize you’re still looking at him and a faint rose-tinted blush dusts across his cheeks and the tips of his ears. 

You should not be allowed to be that adorable. 

“What?” Walter’s question brings you back to where you just said that sentence out loud. 

“I think I just called you adorable. So, I’m gonna see myself out and try not to throw myself into traffic on the way to my desk. I’ll be back when I’ve calmed my brain down a bit.” You wave awkwardly and exit his office before you can notice the smile inching back over his features. 

You spend the next two and a half hours hoping you didn’t make a complete ass out of yourself in front of the only man you’ve talked to in the last few months that wasn’t a delivery driver or your boss. The only person who you’ve talked to for more than a few minutes about something other than work.  

When 5:30 p.m. comes around, you gather your things and drag your feet to Walter’s office. He’s already standing, putting away some files in his desk drawer, looking up when he hears your polite throat clearing. 

“How do you feel about Spaghetti Bolognese? I have a recipe from Jamie Oliver that I’ve been meaning to try out.” He says, putting on his parka and moving toward you where you stand in his doorway. 

“Um, pasta is life. Pasta with meat sauce? Even better.” You brighten at the mention of a familiar dish, your previous nerves all but forgotten. 

“Great. Shall I help you with your coat?” He hinted once he realized you weren’t moving toward the exit. 

“Uh, yeah. Thank you.” You set down your purse and handed over your fluffy overcoat.  

Walter holds it out for you as you back your arms into the sleeves. As it comes to rest on your shoulders comfortably, his hands smooth over the fabric that covers your forearms, your hands ending up in his for a moment. 

You freeze at the sudden contact but if Walter notices, he doesn't make a big deal out of it. He just squeezes your hand quickly and hands you your purse so you can walk out together. You are grateful to be among the stragglers leaving the office so that you don’t draw too much attention. 

Walter walks you to your car and has you put in his address to your GPS, ‘just in case you get lost’ he jests before heading to his truck. As you watch him walk away, one thought comes to your mind. 

Is this a date? 

You park behind Walter’s truck in his driveway, climb out of your car, and crunch through the snow behind him. In your clumsy state, your foot slips, and strong arms catch you so that you don’t completely bust your ass on the unforgiving ice below.  

This time when he touches your arms, you are beyond grateful to be able to pull yourself upright again. Once you’re stable, Walter keeps one of your hands in his until you make it to his front door. He lets you walk in first, turning on the light to the short hallway after you chuckle in the darkness. 

Walter takes your coat and hangs it up with his, your wet boots left by the door. Walking into the kitchen, he pulls out a bottle of red wine and two glasses. Opening the wine, he pours each glass and brings them out to where you are standing in the living room. Handing you a glass, he raises his own.  

“Shall we toast to something?” Walter smiles softly, expectantly waiting for you to suggest what to salute. 

“To...being pleasantly surprised that you still wanted to cook for me despite every awkward moment I’ve had since earlier today. You are a gentleman and a scholar and I'm gonna shut my mouth and drink this wine before I just...keep talking.” You cringe inwardly before looking back up at Walter. 

He is watching you with rapt fascination, a slow smile forming. “Let’s toast to practicing human interaction. I’d say we could both use some assistance in that area. We’ll help each other, deal?”  

“Deal.” You tap your glass to his and take a sip of the now-aerated wine. Your cheeks warm at the blackberry finish of the cabernet sauvignon.  

Maybe there is something to the whole liquid courage thing. 

Dinner turned out lovely. You were pleasantly surprised that Walter could cook. There were moments watching him cook where he didn’t have to measure things, or he added a little extra of this or that. He didn’t use a recipe while making the garlic toast like it’s a staple of his repertoire or something. 

Sitting on his couch with your feet tucked up under you, you look around the living room at the lack of family photos or little touches that scream Walter Marshall. Not that you would have any idea of what those little touches would be. It just doesn’t feel like a home. It feels like a house, just a house that someone lives in. 

When he comes back to the couch with freshly poured wine, you accept your glass with a smile, and he returns it.  

“It is a Friday night. We are enjoying our second bottle of wine. You made me a delicious dinner. And I still can’t figure out if this is a date, Walter.” You fiddled with the glass in your hand, looking into it as if the answer was inside the wine. 

Walter’s thumb and forefinger on your chin have you looking up at his face. “I’ve used almost every excuse to touch you tonight. I kept talking to you earlier when you thought you’d lost me. I feed off your awkwardness because you say what’s on your mind without a filter. I’m not exactly one to speak a lot but I enjoy talking to you. Because you make me feel like I’m not alone.” 

Unshed tears gather at the corner of your eyes. You swallow the lump in your throat, clearing it loudly before you speak. “Can you tell I’m touch-starved because you are too?” 

At his quiet nod, you take his wine glass and set both of your glasses on the coffee table. You lean forward, your elbows on your knees. He watches as you have a silent moment with yourself, going over different scenarios before you reach a consensus with yourself. You look back up to him and your face softens. 

Reaching out your hand, you intertwine your fingers in his curls. As he turns his head to push it further into your hand, his breathing picks up. He grabs your fingers as they migrate to his jawline.  

“I want...I need more than this. I'd like to say I could wait, but all I can think about is kissing you until you can barely breathe.” Walter forces the words out, his breathing in time with yours. Erratic. 

You climb into his lap, one hand still in his, the other hand fisting his wool jumper. “Then kiss me until I can barely breathe. Fuck breathing. I just need you.” 

No sooner are the words out of your mouth, than Walter’s lips are on yours. It’s like he was starving and the breath from your lungs was the only meal he’d had in weeks. You could feel his hunger as he licked the seam of your lips, letting him in was the only option.  

As your tongues fought for dominance, he took the lead in a way you couldn’t ignore. His arms wrapped around you, pulling your torso flush to his. You felt so small yet so special as he held you. So new yet so treasured as you broke the kiss and rested your forehead against his to calm your nerves and catch your breath. 

A moment passes between you where you both just breathe. Until you lean your head back, locking eyes with Walter again, and you nod. He understands your non-verbal request, picking you up and walking toward his bedroom. Kicking the door behind him, he lays you down in bed and gets to work undressing you. 

You lift your hips as he pulls your jeans and underwear down your legs. You remove your top and bra, and he watches as your body is exposed to him. He stands to make quick work of his jumper, and you salivate at the sight of his hardness through his boxers when his jeans are pushed down his legs. His hefty dick springs up against his abdomen as his boxers are removed. 

Your hands roam over his hairy chest as he climbs onto the bed. With a hand under each knee, he pushes your legs back as far as they will go. He admires the shiny wetness that your pussy leaks. Shifting closer, he pushes the head of his dick through your folds and groans. 

He looks up into your eyes and asks silently if he can continue. When you nod, he enters you and your body accepts him fully. Allowing you to get adjusted to his size, he wraps your legs around his waist and pulls out until just the tip remains inside you before he slams back into you. This time you both groan, you at the fullness, him at the tight squeeze. 

“Fuck, you feel amazing. But please, keep moving.” Your words are all he needed to begin an all-out assault on your cunt. 

If it had been a while for him, you’d be none the wiser with the stamina this man possessed. He held your legs open while he fucked into you. He allowed you to just take it as he did most of the work. You could hardly keep up with his thrusts as you melted beneath him. 

“You’re so fucking close, just let go for me. I can feel you squeezing my fucking cock. Be a good girl and come for me.” While he whispered in your ear, he ground his pelvis into you to stimulate your clit and G-spot at the same time. 

When your resolve finally breaks, you try and hide your face in Walter’s neck to no avail. He tangles a hand in your hair and pulls you back so he can watch your orgasm play out on your face. 

“Don’t hide from me when I’m making you come. I want to watch you fall apart under my hands. You are so fucking gorgeous when you come for me, girl.” He talks as you come down from your orgasm and the warmth that spreads over your body is palpable. 

“Thank you,” You blurt out before you can stop yourself. 

Walter all but runs with it. “Fuck yes, you fucking thank me for your orgasm. That’s my good girl.” He pulls out, turning you on your side and sliding in behind you. Entering you again, he reaches a hand around to play with your clit. Circling your nub, then flicking it to keep you stimulated enough to come all over his fingers. 

You come for a second time within a few minutes, and he fucks you through it. Your words are clipped while you try to thank him once more and it just comes out as breathy whispers. 

Your moans are music to his ears and he pistons in and out of you. As your walls massage his cock, he starts to falter in his movements. You reach back to grab his hand, lacing your fingers together before pulling your hands to your chest. 

Getting the message, Walter wraps his other arm around you to pull you even more impossibly close to him. He slows down his pace, dragging out your moans as he unhurriedly moves inside you. He leans into your ear and speaks softly. 

“You have no idea how much I needed this. How much I wanted you. I didn’t know how to talk to you. Fuck, you feel amazing. Need you every day, girl. Just like this, wrapped up in you. I won’t last much longer. So perfect.” He babbles near the end, whimpering your name. He latches onto your neck as he stills inside you. 

His teeth nip at you and his tongue soothes your skin as you feel his cock twitch and paint your walls with his spend. You can hear him groan in your ear as his arms hold you tight. You haven’t felt this safe in someone’s arms since you were little. You don’t notice you’re crying until Walter wipes away the tears that fall down your face. 

“I’m sorry, I—” 

“If you’re about to apologize for crying in front of me, please don’t. You deserve to express your emotions no matter who is around. Least of all, me.” He places a kiss on your neck, attempting to soothe you. 

“Fair. I haven’t been held or even touched in so long and it’s a little embarrassing that my first reaction is to cry.” You sniff, rolling your eyes at yourself. 

“Don’t be embarrassed. I know that’s easier said than done. But trust me, we just experienced some intense sex. And it was emotional for both of us. Trust me. Can’t you feel how fucking hard I am still inside you?” He moves his hips just slightly and is rewarded with a shiver going down your spine. 

“Walter...please.” You let your whimpers be heard and you get what you want.  

He moves to his knees while keeping you on your side. He pushes your leg up to a 90-degree angle and leans forward to fuck into you. The sound of slapping flesh fills the room as well as Walter’s grunts as he buries himself deeper inside you than before. 

“I’m gonna...please, don’t stop!” You reach up to hold his cheek in one hand and he shuts his eyes at the contact. When they open again, his pupils are blown wide. 

“Not stopping until you come again for me, girl.” The hand on his cheek migrates to his forehead to wipe away sweat-slick curls from his brow. 

“Come with me, Walter!”  

“Ugh, fuck!” 

The hold you have on your orgasm falters and your walls flutter around him, his hands curl around your thigh as his hips pound into you one last time. As his cock spurts inside you, your cunt continues to milk him until he softens and is released from your hold on him. 

He collapses next to you, wrapping an arm around you and pulling you close. You reach an arm across his chest and settle in to catch your breath. Looking up one last time to Walter’s face, you’re pleasantly surprised to see a smile on his normally grumpy face. His eyes are closed, and you feel at peace knowing you are the cause of that serene expression. 

“Stay with me tonight.” You’re startled by his words, but you can’t deny the smile that crosses your face.  

Leaning up to kiss his stubbled neck, you revel in the grunt that follows. “Good night, Walter.” 

You feel him kiss the top of your head, nosing at your hair. “Night.” 

You fall asleep with your hand in his chest hair, your legs tangled together. You are held, you are safe, and you couldn’t be happier. Talking about what all this means could wait until the morning. For now, you bask in the feeling of warmth that this man and this moment give you. 

Touch and Go: The Morning After

A/N: Shout out to @sillyrabbit81 for her Detective Grumpypants Spotify playlist which helped me so much in writing this. 

**Tag List** 

@brattymum96 @ambinxe @avengersfan25 @kebabgirl67 @thabiddie23 @astheskycries @enchantedbytomandhenry @rebelangel1102 @peyton-warren @geralts-yenn @raccoon-eyed-rebel 

Let me know if you wanna be added (or removed) 😁 

[desceros]

me: [looks at calendar, gets a wicked idea, looks into the camera] happy springtime, turtle fam! who's ready to celebrate the season?

...mating season, that is. hehe. [dodges the tomatoes]

so! i had the idea that it would be super fun to have a community-wide event where we all have a prompt and then everyone fills it in their own way.

...i then decided all the prompts i came up with were too good not to use, but also none of them were Good Enough to use exclusively, so i changed my mind and the prompt is now just MATING SEASON. with a few suggestions at the bottom of this post if you're looking for some.

since spring is coming upon us, i hereby invite everyone to join in the vernal festivities... which in turtle parlance, of course, means only one thing: write, draw, whatever your version of "mating season", then join me on march 1 to post it with the tag #TMNTSpringShellebration. we then shall browse the fine selection of our mutual artistic efforts, and basically just have a good time as a community.

here are the prompts i came up with as starters-slash-things-to-include if you're looking for a place to get started. feel free to use these at will, or use them to come up with something of your own:

“Please don’t make me explain this. It’s humiliating as is.”

Oops, Looks Like Mating Season Came A Week Early This Year

“…In all of my mating seasons, this has never happened before.”

“I told you not to come by! It’s mating season!”

Probably should have expected it to be different now that he’s not going through it alone.

Because of Shenanigans, you have to wait. Wait… Wait… ok now.

They’re not the right person for mating season… but they’re the one who’s here, so…

“Show me where it hurts."

so yeah! see you all on march 1 for the, uh, spring shellebration. party popper emoji

questions i imagine will be popping up and i hope will clear up here before my askbox swells beyond capacity under the cut to keep this post from being Way Too Long. also it's really not that serious it's just an excuse to write slash draw for everyone Please Don't Take This Thing Too Seriously It's Not That Serious:

"can i participate?" yes! it's literally just an invitation to do something. nothing fancier than that. no need to be following me or in my friend group or whatever.

"can i write (insert fic idea here)?" yep! so long as it's related to the idea of mating seasons, it flies. reader insert? hell yea. oc? hell yeah. solo turtle and his favorite pillow? go for it.

"can i draw (insert art idea here)?" yep! uh. i know tumblr has the cops watching for sin bin material, but you art people know how to deal with that. and if you don't, uh, ask the other art people. im just a feral cat in a trench coat

"how do i participate?" write/draw/collect songs for/whatever. then, on march 1, post it and tag it #TMNTSpringShellebration. also, for funsies, keep it hush hush what you're working on so we can all be super shocked when the day comes! except, y'know, that you're planning on joining in. totally do that.

"when do i post it?" march 1. whenever on that day. waves hands around in a vague gesture at time zones not mattering. seriously don't take this so seriously it's just me wanting to create cool shit with my friends with a little more structure to it

"does it have to be horny?" i mean. it's an event about mating season. so by definition it's going to be at least a little horny. but however you interpret it is cool. even if it's just. idk. leo sitting sweatily in a chair looking longingly at a glass of water bc he's thirstier than usual. be smart about things, people. i'm not your dad.

"which tmnt verse is this for?" whichever one you want it to be for!! rise! bayverse! 2007! your fan iteration! your friend's fan iteration! your mortal enemy's fan iteration! yes!

"will you be reblogging everything?" absolutely not, but this isn't an event About Me. i am incidental to the thing. it's about Us. coming together as a community. for horny turtles. puts my hands on your shoulders. do it for you. for your friends. for the community.

[zerokurokawa]

I absolutely love your writing so I'm back for more!

I really like the whole song prompt idea since I usually listen to music while scrolling through here so I wanna keep that going.

This one is gonna be based on I'd Rather Go Blind by Etta James (or by Beyoncé up to you)

Im think cheater!bonten!Ran x singer!reader, where reader has known for a long time about ran's cheating but decides to not leave him. Reader would eventually have to perform the song (the one above) infront of bonten. I feel like when Ran finally realizes the song is about him he would try his hardest to push through the rest of the performance, he's ofc infront of Mikey and the others so he would try to stay and act nonchalant but wouldn't be able to due to all the staring coming from Mikey. (I also feel like the entirety of bonten would see reader as a sweetheart who's just trying to make it through) I feel like they wouldn't be fazed by his cheating but more so surprised about him cheating on reader of all things yk?

Omg that's a lot but I truly believe you can bring it too life!

(also please feel better soon!!!)

I'd Rather Go Blind | Bonten!Ran x Reader (Cheating) </3

You were talented, exquisite, poise, and perfect all around. How could this have happened to you? Finding out through the great vine of people and connections you had that Ran, your long time boyfriend, had been fooling around on you was not supposed to be apart of your life's story. Being a club owner had its perks, you supposed as you thought about the copious amount of women he came across while partying and running the damn thing. 

You often performed at this very club. You sang like an angel sent down straight from heaven and Ran often paid you extra on the nights that you took over to perform. People from all over the city would come and see you and they knew you by name, asking if you were the that was going to be putting on a show tonight. You were practically famous in Roppongi. 

Yet here you were, begging yourself to get it together after reading the messages that were sent to you anonymously through text about Ran messing around. You had a show to put on tonight, everybody was going to be there as well. As you gathered yourself together and looked in the mirror, a small tear fell from your left eye and landed on your cheek. You dabbed it off with a napkin and whispered to yourself, "Showtime". 

______________________________________________________________

There, on stage in an elegant evening gown, you stood. Smiling and greeting everyone while the thoughts of him being with another woman ran through your mind. You had told the backstage crew already which song you were going to sing, and it was a ballad towards your lost love. 

The music began and you saw Ran sitting in the crowd, smile glistening at you as you were his pride and joy. Disgust came across your face, as you noticed he had not a single clue that you knew. 

Something told me it was over When I saw you and her talkin' Something deep down in my soul said, 'Cry, girl' When I saw you and that girl walkin' around...

You continued to sing, watching as Ran was starting to shift uncomfortably in his seat. His face remained nonchalant as you reached the chorus of the song. Mikey and Rindou, who were sitting next to him, noticed his behavior and began to stare, questioning his nervous antics. 

I would rather, I would rather go blind boy Than to see you walk away from me child, and all...

Ran would finally get the hint, the song was directed towards him as he saw the anger begin to spread across your face. The lyrics, the body language, everything... he knew that you knew. 

So you see, I love you so much That I don't want to watch you leave me baby Most of all, I just don't, I just don't want to be free no...

It was this verse alone that made Ran stand up to leave. He had enough of the guilt, the embarrassment. He knew that Mikey and the others knew. He knew that you normally only performed upbeat pop songs, yet, you had chosen a ballad of lost love to call him out on his bullshit. 

And baby, baby, I would rather, I would rather be blind boy Than to see you walk away, see you walk away from me, yeah Baby, baby, baby, I'd rather be blind now...

As you reached the end of the song, Ran was left standing at the corner of the club. By the door, he waited until the last line. Once he heard it, he slammed open the door and walked out, leaving you on stage with a large crowd cheering for you. You had conveyed the message of your broken heart.

______________________________________________________________

Ran had snuck up behind you in the back of the club in your dressing room. He had tears in hi eyes but strangely enough, a blank look on his face. 

"It's over, isn't it?" He finally spoke as you looked at him through your mirror. 

"I'm afraid it is, Ran." 

"Would you ever let me explain myself? Would you ever let me redeem myself?" He begged. 

You couldn't speak. You were at complete loss for words as he tried to wrap his arms around you. Three years were down the drain. 

"No..." You said quietly. He unwrapped his arms and stood back. You looked up, eyes watering and makeup starting to run. You looked so beautiful when you cried, like a weeping angel with the voice of a siren. 

"Please... Y/n..." He begged once more. 

"Leave, Ran." He did as you said, but not without turning around once more to look at you; taking in all of your beauty. 

(A/N: I'm feeling a lot better, hope you enjoy this! It broke my heart just to write it.)