#for the record i also do many things badly and i like to think you get a nicely balanced account on this tumblr blog lmao

[ms-demeanor]

You posted about adhd and I was hoping to follow up to clarify something. I’ve explained to my partner a million times about how the borderline-hoarding mess of his space is very mentally draining to me, and he understands but we’ve both essentially accepted he won’t clean his mess because he can’t because of his adhd. You’re saying he’s actually being a shit head?

This isn't necessarily an issue of him being a shithead, but it also isn't a sustainable situation. It's not good for you and there's a level of clutter that's probably not good for him either.

Large bastard is a lot more clutter-y than I am. The solution we've come to is trying to keep our messes at least isolated from one another; he can have his messes and I can have mine, but he can have those messes in his spaces, not all over the place. Sometimes those messes migrate, and that's when it's important for him to make the effort to rein them in rather than trying and failing to make a daily effort to keep our entire shared space tidy.

I think when you say "we've both essentially accepted he won't clean his mess" what I'm hearing is resignation; you're not happy about this but you don't know what to do so you've thrown up your hands and he feels helpless and unsure of what to do to improve the situation. This is the kind of "it's fine" that isn't really fine.

I think it would be worthwhile for you to each separately think about the mess and talk about it together. Are there areas that YOU *need* to have not-messy? Both for utility and your mental health? Are there areas where you can tolerate more mess than otherwise? Are there areas that are going to be harder for him to keep the mess out of than others? Are there things he doesn't *know* about cleaning up the mess?

I'm obviously a big "communication communication communication" person so I'm going to recommend a lot of talking about stuff, which is probably going to mean a lot of thinking about and interrogating stuff. I'm going to say "talk to him about why the mess bothers you" which means you also have to really articulate to yourself why the mess bothers you (for instance I'm not actually *bothered* by a messy kitchen, but I know it's going to reflect badly on us - and me specifically b/c of presumed gender roles - if someone pops by and the kitchen is a disaster, AND a messy kitchen is going to be harder to use). Genuinely, sometimes knowing *why* something is a problem might make it easier for someone with ADHD to do something. And it's not that he doesn't care that it upsets you, it's just that "Oh if I don't wash my breakfast dishes Anon won't have clear counterspace to make lunch" might be stickier in his brain (and less hard to look at emotionally) than "this thing I forget to do upsets my partner so I should do it."

For the record, I think that people with ADHD should read up on Demand Avoidance and see if it might explain some of the issues that they have in their day-to-day life; I've seen some really unfortunate situations with friends where trying to do things that their partner needed became the subject of demand avoidance. *I* have experienced negative outcomes of demand avoidance. The solution to that, however, isn't to stop making attempts to do the thing OR to simply try harder to do as they're asked/told (which reinforces the demand), it's to work on setting up a situation where the partners' needs are not interpreted as a demand. This is fuck-off difficult and requires a lot of patience and care and many attempts to succeed and will be different for each person and relationship.

(Also for the record demand avoidance isn't *super* strongly linked to ADHD and it's not a definitive symptom; like Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, it is something that occurs in some number of people with ADHD and can be a useful lens through which to examine various behaviors; you don't need to have DA or RSD to have ADHD, and having DA or RSD also doesn't invalidate your diagnosis; they're symptoms. For me, DA often feels like "if I don't look at it, it can't get me" - If I ignore all the messages I've got they aren't real and don't have real consequences so I'll just ignore my texts. If I don't look at the vendor email about the order, the problem with the order isn't real and it won't get added to my task list. If I don't look at the requests in my inbox I can't let people down when I don't do them. It's a self-protective coping mechanism but it's *maladaptive* and I can't just ignore the vendor email or all my texts. I need to work on a way of doing the stuff that I'm avoiding in a way that makes it less stressful and doesn't hurt the people relying on me. That takes a lot of effort, personal insight, trial and error, and )

But before I dive into specifics I want to be really really clear about one thing: sometimes people are simply incompatible. Sometimes one person has such a low tolerance for "mess" and the other person has such a high threshold for "mess" that it can't be reconciled. It sucks that this can end up being a thing that people break up over, but it is MUCH better to acknowledge incompatibility as early as possible instead of spending years and years building resentment.

There used to be a great forum called MiL's Anonymous that I spent a lot of time on. It had a lot of people in a lot of difficult situations struggling to get by and hold their relationships together. The question that was used as a litmus test to approach each situation was simple: If you knew today that everything about living with this person would be the same in five years, would you stay?

Because you can't control your partner. You can't control the future. You can only control yourself and your proximity to situations that are harmful to you. If you knew, 100%, that things wouldn't get better in five years, would you be okay with staying in this relationship? If the answer is "no," then that's that. Don't worry about questions of whether or not your boyfriend is a shithead, start the process of ending the relationship because there's a good chance the situation is going to be exactly the same in five years.

If the answer is "yes," and you'd stay in the relationship regardless of whether or not things changed, then it's time to take actions to improve your life within the context of the relationship.

(No judgement on that yes or no, btw. If you would hate living like this for another five years, and you would feel like you'd wasted your time and hadn't done the things you wanted to with your life, get out. Bail. Go. It will be better for you and better for your partner if you split instead of spending half a decade building resentments and and problems that you'll have to spend another half a decade healing from.)

Also, a note: you describe your boyfriend's mess as borderline hoarding - is the issue *mess* or is the issue *clutter*? I have friends who are very tidy, but whose homes are very cluttered. They like things, they have many things, they keep many things around, but their houses are always clean and well-dusted and orderly, just with a tremendous amount of *stuff.* I am addressing all of this as though the issue is mess, not clutter. If your boyfriend's situation is clutter (the space is busy and packed with things but it is functional and clean) and your issue isn't with *mess* (things out of place, things not having a place, things that need to be cleaned up gathering in stacks, falling behind on regular chores like laundry and dishes and taking out the trash) then you definitely need to assess whether or not you are compatible.

For instance here's a room that is messy but not cluttered compared to a room that is cluttered but not messy:

That first room is a *mess* but it would be very easy to clean up in under an hour. The second room is fairly tidy, but would take significant effort to pare down and declutter. BOTH of these can be difficult to live with but the second one is not dangerous or threatening to anyone's health. (The second one is QUITE cluttered and if every room in a house looks like this it can be overwhelming to live with; this is actually harder to deal with in a relationship than the first one in a lot of ways. I don't have a lot of advice for what to do if your partner is a high degree of tidy-but-cluttered because I don't actually think it's a problem or wrong to have thousands of books or bins full of lego or a million kitchen appliances as long as you have the space and can keep it safe and well-maintained; this is a really significant compatibility issue)

Okay, all that out of the way, here's the hard work.

Talk about this shit

Talk to your partner and define "mess." Make sure you are on the same page about what you mean when you're talking about what a messy room looks like versus what a tidy room looks like. Gather reference pictures. DRAW reference pictures.

Explain not just that the mess upsets you, but *why* and *how* it upsets you. In this context don't think of it as your boyfriend's mess, think of it as an unpleasant roommate. Discuss this using "I-statements". "When I have to pick up laundry all over the apartment, I feel like a parent more than a partner." "When there are piles of miniatures all over the table, I feel like I don't have anywhere to do things I'm interested in." "When there are dishes in the sink, I feel frustrated because I have to clean before I can feed myself."

Discuss, frankly and openly, whether he knows how to clean. I'm not trying to make excuses for him here but a lot of people with ADHD have a lot of stress and avoidance around cleaning because they spent a lot of time getting yelled at for not knowing how to clean properly.

Discuss your needs, be firm about what you require but willing to compromise. You *need* some spaces to be clean, and some spaces may be harder for him to keep clean than others. It may be MUCH harder for him to keep a bedroom tidy than it is to keep a kitchen tidy; if you need a clean and empty bedroom with everything put away and he simply cannot do that, that is a compatibility issue. But perhaps you need *your* side of the bedroom to be very orderly and can tolerate a moderate level of mess and clutter on his side. Maybe you're really really bothered by a messy kitchen, but it doesn't bug you if the dining table is covered with projects and papers. Figure out something more workable than "his mess goes everywhere and i live with it because he's incapable of cleaning" because he probably is not incapable of cleaning and you deserve to have places in your home that are comfortable for you.

Reduce friction for cleaning

Sometimes the problem isn't cleaning, the problem is the many many steps before cleaning, or not knowing where something should go when you are done cleaning. One of the absolute best things I've done for myself for cleaning my space is getting a broom holder and mounting the broom to the wall. Sweeping is now essentially thoughtless. I don't have to find the broom or pull it out from a pile of fans or go scrounging around for a dustpan it's right there on the wall, frictionless. So here are some ways to reduce the barriers to cleaning:

Make sure you and your partner both know how to use your cleaning supplies and know where those supplies are. When I switched dishwasher soap I had to re-show Large Bastard where I was storing it and how it was used, because to him what happened was the dishwasher tabs just vanished one day and he didn't know what I was putting in the machine or the process I used. He sometimes puts tools away in places that I can't see (he's more than a foot taller than me) so sometimes I can't get started on a maintenance project until he shows me where he put the battery pack for the drill.

Consider making a how-to chart to or having him make a how-to chart to keep someplace accessible so he can reference it while cleaning. Goblin.Tools Magic ToDo is great for this. Basically a lot of the time people with ADHD have trouble knowing what to do from step to step even if they've done something before, so having a step by step guide can make it easier (I have notebooks full of step-by-step guides for everything from paying for my tuition to removing licenses for my customers to weeding my yard)

Remove obstacles; don't keep cleaning chemicals in the garage in a box that's behind a stack of parts, keep them in the room you'll be cleaning. Don't keep the cleaning supplies that you use to clean the bathroom in the kitchen. Sometimes this means buying two bottles of bleach solution and two scrubbers and two sets of cleaning gloves but having fewer steps (fetch the windex, fetch the paper towels, fetch the gloves) is often the key to getting things done (open under-sink cabinet and grab windex, gloves, and paper towels that are there instead of in the kitchen).

This sort of overlaps with the next category, which is:

Create Dump Zones

One thing that I've found that seems very different between people with ADHD cleaning and neurotypical people cleaning is that neurotypical people are good at getting to a point where the cleaning is "done." They have checked off their tasks and they have finished and it is over. There are *SOME* chores that are like this (taking out the trash is a binary state, the trash has been taken out or it has not) and some chores are perpetual (horrid cursed dishes) but I think with people with ADHD, some chores that are binary for neurotypicals are actually perpetual chores. For instance "clean off the counter" is not a one and done for me. "Clean off the counter" may involve a three day reorganization project. "Clean off the counter" does not mean "wipe down the tile and put dishes away" it means assessing whether or not I need to make vegetable stock and bleaching three tea containers and reconsidering whether or not the sharps container should live somewhere else and going through the mail and figuring out what needs to be responded to and taking out the recycling and on and on and on.

We have had company at the house for the last two weeks, so I asked large bastard to clean off the dining room table, which is largely a project zone for him. Cleaning off the dining room table meant putting away his meds (and since he's a transplant patient that involves a 30 gallon rubbermade tote), throwing away some trash, and totally reorganizing his workshop. It also incidentally involved picking up a table from facebook marketplace and moving my plants, which has now involved moving my former plant rack outside (moving buckets, finding and organizing planters and gardening tools) and taking the former table to the thrift store (not done yet) and cleaning the rug that was under the former table. So "either the table is clean, or it isn't" isn't really true for us.

HOWEVER "hang on we can't eat until the table is clear so let's drive to Pico Rivera to get that console table right now" isn't a workable plan, so you create dumpzones as areas of holding between the start and the finish of the chore.

A dump zone can be a laundry basket. It can be a craft bin. It can be a back room or under your bed. It is a place to put things that you are going to deal with later because if you deal with them now it is going to derail the thing you are actually trying to do, which is set the table for dinner.

Dump zones are vital to cleaning with ADHD and I recommend them for day-to-day cleaning as well. The day-to-day dump zones might be more for you than for your boyfriend. For instance, Large Bastard works with bullets and he sheds bullets all over the house. I used to get stressed when I found bullets when I was cleaning because are these work bullets? Are these recreational bullets? Are they in testing? Do they need to be pulled? Do they go in the workshop or the office or the garage or does he need these today so they have to stay on the counter? And the answer now is "that's not my problem naughty bullets go in the jar." Which is perfectly sensible because he gets to say "mystery yarn goes in the bin" and "art supplies go in the bucket."

I feel helpless when cleaning a lot of the time. I'm frustrated and lost and I don't know where stuff goes and everything I pick up spins off into three projects in my head and every step feels like a wall to scale. Dump zones help me with that when there's pressure or a reason for cleaning beyond day to day home maintenance. People are coming over? The bedroom is a dump zone, I'll deal with that later. I'm just cleaning up because I need to? Okay I can find a permanent home for this new dish soap.

AS A VERY IMPORTANT COROLLARY TO THIS:

Active projects do not go in dump zones while you or your partner are cleaning. This may mean designating a project sanctuary area like a corner of the table or one particular chair in your main room where a project can be placed so as not to be disturbed. (if my current crochet project ends up in the yarn bin, that may mean that I don't pick the project up for another three months, it lives on the windowsill behind the couch because that's where it'll get worked on)

Do not put things away for your partner, put them in the dump zone for your partner. Your partner has to be the one to put their own stuff away in a way that works for them. I tend to find that this naturally puts a limit on the time stuff sits in the dump zone, because eventually you'll go "hey where's my thing?" and will put stuff away. If that doesn't happen, it's still generally better to have stuff in a dump zone than all over the home.

Do not decide you know what things go together from your partner's stuff and try to "put like things together." The neurotypical urge to put like things together is the mindkiller(j/k). You do not know which things are "similar" in your partner's organization schema and attempting to organize things on your own is going to end up with all of the things "organized" being functionally lost forever from your partner's perspective. Large Bastard's mom would do this and it was infuriating, she'd say "oh I put all the electronics stuff in one box" and she would mean soldering irons, transistors, ham radios, HDMI cables, and cellphone chargers. We are *still* going through boxes of stuff that she "tidied up" when he was hospitalized in 2020 and 2021.

To prevent the need for quite so many dump zones over time, you can work on setting up landing zones and "homes" for projects and tools.

Landing Zones

Landing zones are places where things go when you come inside from doing various things. Sometimes your landing zone only needs to be a tray for your wallet and keys, sometimes your landing zone needs to be a place to take off muddy boots and put a trowel and gloves down before you shower.

To make an effective landing zone, consider what behaviors you're trying to minimize and whether the people using it are ACTUALLY going to use it. For instance I was tired of the corner of my hearth getting cluttered with random junk so I hung up some hooks and put a shelf and a basket there and it became a really effective landing zone for my bag and keys and the mail, but it was VERY ineffective for Large Bastard because it's by a door that isn't the primary door he uses to enter the house. As a result I always know where my keys and bag are but he has trouble finding his keys and wallet. He tends to enter the house through our bedroom and has an overloaded valet next to the door and that's usually where his wallet ends up. Mounting a shelf to the wall above the valet and putting a basket and a hook on it will be a better place for his stuff to land. It's not that he's not using the first zone because he doesn't know that it's there, or because he doesn't care about lost time when I'm searching for my car keys after he borrows them, he's not using it because it's not by the door he uses. That's all.

I have a landing space for when I come in for gardening that's different than the one when I come in from grocery shopping. I have a landing space for when I walk into the dining room instead of the kitchen when I get home.

Landing spaces prevent stuff from piling up all over the place because they are a limited functional space that should be used frequently. Mail ONLY goes in the landing zone. If you have mystery mail or if you're not sure it's safe to toss, you put it in the landing zone. You can't let the mail get piled up too high or you won't have a space for your keys. You can't let the change in your wallet tray get too deep or your wallet is going to slide off, etc., but you also don't just put change on the coffee table or your nightstand because the landing zone is right there.

Homes for items are just what they sound like. They're the place the item goes. It lives there. My meds live on my nightstand. You would not believe how poorly I did with taking my meds on my vacation because they weren't on my nightstand. A while back large bastard lost one of his sets of sorted meds and we tore the house up looking for them because he couldn't find them in his nightstand, which is where they live. *I* found them in his nightstand because I emptied out the entire top drawer (he had only looked on the top layer) and found them underneath a radio and a hammock. Even though they were *hidden* they were in their home, so they were findable. I recently needed ink for an art class. Art supplies live in a dresser by my desk. Ink lives in the art bin or the top left drawer. The ink was not in either of these places (it was on a cabinet in the dining room behind a teacup) so it took me weeks to find it.

Sometimes the reason that ADHD spaces are so messy is because objects have been assigned homes in places that are visible and if they get moved they get lost. This is a genuinely difficult problem that requires a lot of effort to solve and can involve a lot of trial and error for creating a tidy living space. For some people, open shelving and visible storage might be a good solution. For some people, assigning a VERY clear home and inculcating that location by habit is the only way to clean up a space. For some people one very cluttered corner to at least isolate the chaos does the trick (for me and large bastard open shelving doesn't work because anything in one place for too long becomes invisible; that means that I rely on assigning things homes and large bastard relies on having contained chaos and a general idea of where to search but what that DOES NOT mean is that he is clean or tidy. His spaces look like an explosion. But he can mostly find his stuff and do what he needs to do and as long as that's limited to specific places in shared spaces I can live with it; the dining room table can be a disaster, the kitchen cannot).

People organize things differently. It often takes a while for neurotypical adults to settle into an organizational style that works for them and ADHD adults may need to settle into a new system every few months for it to continue working. The cleanup and declutter is most likely going to be a permanent project that is always going to demand some level of attention from everyone in a shared space, but "my ADHD means I can't do it" is not really going to fly. Maybe his ADHD means that he can't keep his space tidy, but it doesn't mean you can't move stuff from shared spaces into dump zones or that he can't do stuff around the house.

If he's insisting that his ADHD means that he can't clean it is possible that he's not being a shithead, he just feels helpless and doesn't know where to start and has adopted the belief that he's a useless piece of shit who can't even keep a tidy space like a grownup because he's internalized a lot of shitty attitudes (hello, my internal monologue about keeping a clean house). But it's also possible that he's just being a shithead.

It's something that's worthwhile to investigate with him. If he's unwilling to make an attempt, then he's being a shithead.

It is also not your responsibility to rehabilitate another person. If he wants to clean and it's something he feels bad about and needs some help and support with the way that someone might need help or support for learning to use a mobility aid, that is fine but you don't have to be the one who gives him that support if it's detrimental to your health, and you don't have to be the one to teach him that stuff if it's not something you're capable of. And if he is NOT interested in working on making your shared living space more accessible for you, that is not your suitcase to unpack and you just have to ask yourself the question from the start: would I stay with this person if I knew the situation was never going to change?

IDK, I'm sure a lot of this reads like "anon you must take on the emotional labor of training your partner to be an adult" but it's really meant to be more of a way of assessing yourself and your relationship. If you created landing zones do you think he'd use them? Would he get angry if you assigned a laundry basket as a dump zone for his stuff while you tidy the living room? Is living with him long-term going to be comfortable for you if nothing changes? Do you have enough of a shared definition of "mess" that you're at least in the ballpark for what counts as a clean house?

anyway good luck, and a reminder to folks that I'm compiling a bunch of adhd resources and other information on my personal website, ms-demeanor.com. It's coming along slowly but it will eventually include stuff like ADHD cleaning tips and how to tackle a hoard, so maybe keep your eye on that space.

[sugaimhome]

next door - jjk

pairing: yandere jungkook x female reader

minors dni !!

genre: smut, fluff, fluff, fluff... mostly pwp

warnings: soft yandere, dom jungkook, sub reader, voyeurism, obsession, stalking?, sex against a wall, mentions of sexual harrasment (? its very very brief), reader has a praise kink, masturbation, videos of jungkook's dick, jungkook likes to please reader. 

word count: 4.8k

summary: Jungkook is obsessed with you. All because of some badly designed architecture and house planning, he’d do anything for you, and when he sees you struggling to orgasm, he takes matters into his own hands... or camera. 

a/n: i have more ideas for this couple and i’ll think i’ll end up writing them as a mini collection. also i think about Jungkook's tattoos 24/7.

drabble

not proof read

Jungkook couldn’t help it. He had tried so many times to put a halt to his weird behaviors. But you had made it so difficult. Too difficult. 

He no longer feels guilt, running his hand up and down his dick as he watches you get changed. From his window, he could see everything that happened inside your room. He witnessed everything from you waking up early in the morning, naked, getting ready, sitting in your makeup chair with your tits out, you had to know you were teasing him. But of course, you didn’t know, because there is no way you’d let that happen. In the evenings when you climbed into bed, sometimes lying there for a while so he could get a good view of your body before you shuffled into the sheets. 

The thing was, he always waited until you’d covered yourself before he came, cum flying onto his stomach and chest, it made him feel less… dedicated? Perverted? He wasn’t sure but this obsession of his was getting out of hand. He called in sick to work on the days you did, just to make sure you were okay, he’d even followed you out on his motorbike before, because it was late and he didn’t want you to get hurt. He'd punched someone for you, and would do it again. His obsession would never put you in danger and that was what prompted him to make his bold move. 

It happened two nights ago, when you pulled up porn on your laptop, trying to get off to it. He had counted 15 videos until you’d found the thing you had wanted to watch, it was a man jerking off. That was it. No woman. No excessive screaming. He respected that about you, you knew what you wanted. Anyways, it was watching you for half an hour, all worked up trying to orgasm that made him make his own video for you. It was him, jerking off, nothing special. Apart from, it was, because, him slipping a small USB stick into your letterbox this morning while you were at work, with the only thing on it being his dick and moans did seem a little more than nothing special. At first, he had thought you weren’t going to play it, and he wouldn’t blame you because he certainly wouldn’t plug a possibly virus-infected USB into his computer, but you had.

He had witnessed your eyes go wide as you saw what was on the stick, he assumed you had the courage to very quickly click onto the file as his dick appeared in full glory on the screen. Was it too much? But you didn’t turn it off, in fact, you reached to play with one of your nipples with your fingers. Jungkook had watched his video enough times to know that when you threw your head back, reaching past the band of your knickers to play with yourself, was the part where he moaned your name. Was it possible that the next time he saw you in your garden, you’d recognise his voice? Hopefully. He watches you, absentmindedly stroking his cock as you get off to his body. You were getting off to him. He was bringing you pleasure. It drove him mad, he was so proud.

When you came, your head was thrown back in ecstasy, the Jungkook on the screen did the same. Though you couldn't see his face, he knew he had looked spent out after ending the recording, it was one of the best orgasms he'd ever had, knowing it was for you.

Though he still wished he could fill your cunt with his seed, really make you his with his smell and his taste, no other man would ever touch you again. You'd be his for eternity.

He was patient as he waited for you to open your eyes from your orgasm, to look at the screen, and hopefully write down the number he was displaying. You do, grabbing your phone from your bedside table and typing something in. A few seconds later, Jungkook gets a notification.

you: your dick is huge 

Jungkook mulls it over for a moment, not wanting to say the wrong thing.

jungkook: imagine it stretching your tight cunt. 

you: please…

He doesn't reply, he wants nothing more than to comply with your wishes. But it would be weird, wouldn't it.

you: how do you know me? Who are you? how do you know that's what I like?

Ah, the question Jungkook knew was coming, the one he had prepared for. 

jungkook: I'm close to you.

Of course, he wasn't emotionally close to you, but physically he was, your houses couldn't have been more than 10 feet apart. He sat there, watching you with a smug smile on his face, for he had cheated the system. That night, he slept happily knowing you were satisfied.

---

Would you have played the USB stick, orgasming on your fingers, if you hadn't known that it had belonged to your next-door neighbor? No you wouldn't have. But you're damn glad your mum brought you that ring doorbell as a housewarming present. You didn't know his name, but you knew who he was the second your phone sent you the notification, you watched him take the USB stick out of his pocket and place it gently through your letterbox, standing there for a second as if waiting for it to fly back at him. What you hadn't expected was his dick. Well you assumed it was his dick, unless it wasn't… but that would have been even weirder, especially after the text messages. You'd saved his name in your phone to "neighbor" the few messages on the chat highly concerning.

The best part was, you weren't going to touch yourself to the video, but after your failed attempt at an orgasm a few days you figured it wouldn't hurt. Your neighbor obviously didn't know you knew, and he wouldn't know you touched yourself to this, there was no way he could. 

One question remained. Why had he put this though your door in the first place? Maybe two questions. How had he known you were desperate for exactly that? Okay, third question. How did he know your name?

That was the thing about Porn, why you couldn't get off to it, it was so vague, any girl could get off on that but him moaning your name, it was personal, made for you, and it was so hot. 

For the past few days, you've hung around outside, taking ages to pile up all your bags from the car. Gardening. Loitering. You hadn't seen him once. 

It hadn't left your mind, that was clear. But when your car broke down one morning, and the garage, probably hearing that you were a woman, just told you to check your oil, the neighbor situation had nearly left your mind. Watching YouTube videos on how to check your car's oil had been the peak of embarrassment for you, at the age of 25, surely you should know this by now. But despite the clear instructions on YouTube, you were too scared to actually mess with your car.

You had two options here.

1.  Call your Dad

2.  Call your non - existent boyfriend

So it had to be your Dad. This was not something you were looking forward to, so when you have his number (unsaved) dialed into your phone, your finger fights your brain against pressing the dial button.

"Hey, can I help?" someone asks from behind you. Your phone goes straight into your pocket, and you turn on your heels to see -

"I'm Jungkook, I live next door." He's smiling, completely innocent.

For days, you'd been spending time out here just to see him, but now he was here you felt so embarrassed and awkward. This man, all floppy haired, arm tucked around a bike helmet, had sent you a video that seemed to boarder on some kind of sexual assault or a form of public indecency. A video that you had enjoyed, got off to, and watched two times since.

"Hi" you manage to force out. Trying to ignore the very attractive ripple of his muscles as he placed his helmet onto the floor. "um, yeah, um-"

You curse yourself, why did you have to be so anxious? He tilts his head at you, oblivious to the fact you knew. "Think my oil is low, but I can't pull the stick out, its stuck"

You cringe at the choice of words, but he only smirks. Tongue darting out to play with his lip ring. Fuck me. You'd have found him attractive on a normal day, anyone would, but with the memory of his dick, him moaning your name-

You stop. Thinking wasn't going to help. He's next to you now, you can hear his breathing. "Do you mind if I have a look?"

You stutter, struggling to find the words but move aside anyway. "Pl-please if you don't mind." 

Heat rushes to your core, your cheeks feeling like they're on fire. As he leans over your car, his hips pressed flush against the metal. "So you know it's this little pully thingy, right?"

You nod, trying to act indifferent as he points towards the yellow ring sticking out of your engine. Gripping the side of your car you watch as he hooks one finger around the loop, using his strength to pull the rod from the tank. His finger-  "Geez, you were right, it was proper jammed in there" 

All you can do is nod. He frowns. "Do you have a tissue?" He looks at you, holding the metal stick between the two of you. Of course you had a tissue, you worked with children, it was compulsory in this line of work. Pulling one from your pocket you hand it to him "Hopefully it doesn't have snot on it" you laugh, only realising your mistake once you've finished your sentence. "Not my snot!" you exclaim. "I work in a primary school!"

He chuckles, slowly running the tissue up the stick. The amount of effort he puts into it has your pussy clenching around the air. Damn. This man had given you one orgasm, without knowing, and you were a mess around him. "No worries, I'm probably immune to kid snot by now anyways"

Your mouth drops open, and he smirks again. "I don't have kids, I babysit for my friend, Namjoon."

Something about him sharing his personal life with you had your stomach erupting into butterflies, you were so grateful he didn't have children. Though picturing him with children had you- 

What was wrong with you? He puts the stick back into the engine, he pulls it out and it's clean. His mouth drops to a frown. "Not a drop." 

He points to a line on the stick "The oil should be up to there at all times" 

"Oh-" is all you can say.

It would take you nearly an hour on the bus to get to work and, after checking your phone, you were only 20 minutes away from starting time. "Shit."

Jungkook, as you had learned his name was, looks upset with himself as he says "I don't have any oil that would be compatible with your car but-" he glances at his bike. "I can give you a lift, if you need one."

A lift. A lift with your dick sharing - moaning your name - neighbor, whilst you were apparently in heat. Nothing could go wrong… right?

"If you have nowhere to be, I'd really appreciate it." You manage to tell him, and his eyes seem to light up in response.

"No problem, I'll go grab my spare helmet" and he's running off into his house whilst you organise all the stuff you'll need for classes today. There's not much and you manage to fit it all into a small tote that you will hope will fit into his bike. Of course it would, that thing was huge, it wasn't the only thing that he owned that was huge. You fidget at the thought of it. Damn this. Jungkook appears from his doorway with another helmet under his arm. "Here put this on" he says, taking the tote from you and chucking it into the small compartment in the back. With the helmet on, you fidget with the straps to make it tighter, watching Jungkook climb onto the front of the bike, he was hot. There was certainly no denying that. 

"Just climb on behind me!" he practically shouts through the helmet. As you climb onto the bike, you read the model name "2022 Harley Davidson sportster s" 

You want to mutter "oh my god" as you climb on, trying to get as far away as possible from Jungkook without falling off the back. "I've never ridden-" you begin, but you're cut off when he reaches a hand behind him, pulling you by the waist so your body is flush against his. Your nipples harden at the contact and you're glad he's got a leather jacket on. 

"Obviously, you'll need to hold me around my waist or you'll fall off the back, where's your work?" 

You relay the address to him, then he starts up the engine. It roars to life and you can feel the vibrations of the massive bike against your core. You want to clench your legs but seeing as Jungkook was currently between them you figured it would be a little too obvious. As the bike pulls off, your arms quickly wrap around his waist, you bury your head into his back as well. You spend the rest of your 15 minute ride like this, though this motorbike was made for speed, Jungkook doesn't seem to be using it and you respect that a lot, as if he was trying to keep you safe.

When you pull up to your school, all the kids in your class have their face up to the window, pointing at the motorcycle as you climb off it. You open the small compartment your tote was in before handing the helmet back to Jungkook.

"Thank you," you tell him, smiling. 

"No worries, I'll grab you some oil today and I'll meet you back here at three?"

"You really don't have to, I've been a burden to you already-"

He cuts you off "I want to, I'll see you then."

He flips his visor down, kicks the metal stick that holds the bike up and starts up the engine. He drives off. You clench around the air and turn on your feet to walk towards the entrance of your school. The children pointing and staring wide eyed at you from your window.

You sprint down the corridor, fearful of being late, but also typing something into your phone as you go. Perhaps it was time to live life on the edge.

You change the name of the contact from "Neighbor" to "Jungkook" and type...

You: thanks for the ride this morning. x

You smile as you enter your classroom, the kids bombarding you with questions to which you didn't know any of the answers. 

---

It's lunch before you hear your phone buzz and as you're sitting alone in your classroom it seems like the perfect timing. 

Jungkook: damn, I should have known you were being too fidgety, do I make you nervous?

You: I was thinking about your cock.

Jungkook: Still want me to stretch your cunt?

you: maybe…

Your door opens and your boss pokes his head around the door. 

Great. Here we go. 

"Good afternoon Y/N" he smiles.

"Good afternoon Taehyung." You try to smile back, sometimes his presence was reassuring, especially after a long day when you'd talk about a student or an upcoming school trip, but right now you wanted him to leave you alone. It was blatant to half the staff here, and to you, that this man would hit on you 24/7 but you tended to brush it off, you weren't interested in workplace shenanigans. 

"So… There's this conference tomorrow-" he begins but your phone cuts him off by buzzing. 

He continues. "I was wondering-" 

Your phone buzzes again.

"If you'd-" 

Buzz. 

"Sorry Taehyung but my car broke down and I won't be able to come, plus I have tons of assessments to mark."

You in fact, had none. He didn't need to know that.

"Ah, no worries." 

And this is where you make your mistake, because in the hopes of getting him to leave by seeming uninterested in his conversation, you pick up your phone and open the messages from Jungkook. It's him jerking off, and it starts up instantly, luckily your phone is on silent but there's something so so unprofessional about sitting here, watching your neighbor jerk off in front of your boss. Something so exhilarating. 

You: my boss is right in front of me.

Jungkook: you like that?

You: he asked me out. I said I would be busy tomorrow.

Jungkook: if you intend to spend it around my dick then you will be.

You clench your legs together, wishing you could appreciate the video without Taehyung's presence. When you look up, he's gone. Guilt overwhelmed your body, you didn't mean to be rude. 

---

Jungkook felt nothing but butterflies watching you wave goodbye to your students before catching the helmet he threw to you and putting it onto your head. Your body so flush to his was honestly a dream and all he wanted to do was either fuck you over the back of the bike right now or wrap you in bubble wrapper so nothing could hurt you on the journey home. His dramatic difference in emotions was slightly overwhelming. What had shocked him most, was that you had known, you would have known from the second you saw him this morning, and you still trusted him enough to get on a motorcycle with him. Trusted him enough to bring you home too. He would do everything in his power to maintain that trust you'd gifted him. When he pulls up outside your houses, he jumps off the bike first, helping you off and somewhat shyly, whilst taking the helmet from your hands, asks "Would you like to come in? Get a take out?" He nearly screams when you nod a yes in response. Exposing his house to you felt very personal, even if its layout was the complete same as yours. 

"I wish I could change mine up like you've done with yours" you comment. 

"You rent?" He asks, and you sigh, which he takes to be a begrudging yes. 

He leads you into his living room then runs into his kitchen to grab you a cold can of diet coke. It was what you were always drinking at home. Your eyes widen at the beverage, he reminds himself that although you know he was the one who sent the video you didn't know he'd been watching you since you moved in. He gulps.

"Thanks." You smile, so sweet, so pretty, Jungkook wants to touch you. "Jungkook, I have some questions."

He nods, knowing that this would have been brought up, he's about to slump down onto his seat before he says. "If it's about the video, I have something that might explain it" 

He nods to his upstairs, where you follow his line of sight. You're hesitant, and he can see why.

"I would never lay a finger on you." he tells you, filling his eyes with sincerity. "Unless you wanted me to." 

You must see the intensity in his eyes as you plop the can down on his table before following behind him up the stairs. "This better not be some massive murder plan." You say. 

"You've been watching too much true crime." 

This pulls a laugh from your throat that has Jungkook relaxing. Two minutes later, he's sat on his bed, watching you stare though his window into your bedroom. 

"Oh my god" you exclaim, shocked. "You watch me?" 

He promised himself he wouldn't lie to you. "It started like a year ago. In covid, when I was alone all day and you were working from home. Sometimes I'd just sit here and watch you tutor your kids, almost as something to do, I was so bored."

You turn to look at him, understanding on your features. He blushes as he says the next thing "The next thing I knew I was starting to care about you, a woman who didn't know my name nor that I shared this connection of loneliness with."

He looks you in the eye. "I told myself I'd go wherever you were, I'd follow you late at night when I was worried you'd get hurt. I punched a guy in a bar once, the one that grabbed your breast"

Your eyes go wide, you remembered that. "Then I got sexualy frustrated and I'd jerk off to you getting changed or you lying in bed. It's so weird, I know. I tried to stop."

Looking up at you, he sees that he is not yet expected to stop talking, so he keeps going. "The other night, when you spent hours watching porn, to have the most amateur orgasm of your life, I felt I knew what you needed, I'd watched it all."

He put his head into his hands. Speaking it out loud made it sound so much worse. He was so embarrassed, so perverted.

"I understand," you whisper to him. "You knew what I needed"

"Look, Y/N I'm so sorry, I understand if you need to report me to the pol-"

You cut him off by kissing him. Your lips are so soft against his own he moans into your mouth. His hands are on you instantly, pulling you closer to him so you're between his legs, your legs pressing against his crotch. 

You pull away from him, holding his face in yours and saying something Jungkook would never forget "For some reason, I trust you Jungkook" you sigh, turning away from him with a blush covering your whole upper body. "Want you to do what you said on messages" 

He smirks, pulling his lip ring between two teeth. "Want my cock to stretch your pussy?" He asks. You fidget and he knows that's good. "Wanna go dumb from the pleasure?" He's standing over you now, walking the two of you backwards so your back is against the wall. He kisses your neck, feels your pulse under his lips. "You know I can bring you that orgasm you've been needing" 

The words just keep falling from his mouth, pure filth but it seems to have you turned on as you throw your head back, gripping onto his bicep as he reaches up though your cute little teachers blouse to play with one of your tits, squeezing your nipple between two of his fingers. "What do you want first, Y/N. My cock or my fingers."

"Your cock, please Jungkook"

He nearly nuts then, hearing his name fall from your lips like it was supposed to, it was so clear in that moment you were meant to moan his name. "Gonna make you moan my name so much it's the only one you remember" 

He'd wanted to take this slow. Wanted to savour you and never forget your sounds but you were making that hard. "If you're so desperate for my cock first, where do you want me to fuck you?"

"Here" you sigh as he unbuttons your blouse, pulling it over your head, unstrapping your bra and attaching his lip to one of your nipples. 

"Want it against the wall? What a slut."

You moan. It's so guttural and from so deep in your throat that Jungkook's already hard cock twitches in response to it. 

"Take off your pants" he demands of you, worried he's bossing you about too much but you do as you're told reaching down to unbutton your trousers. He flings his jumper to the other side of the room and pulls his joggers down in record speed. When you turn back to him, you're pressed against the wall again, your body naked between him. You're going to drive him mad. 

Your hands are running up and down his chest, tracing over his muscles. "Really want your cock Jungkook" 

He groans. Looking down between the two of you to watch his cock rest against your lower stomach. It's a good job he'd masturbated earlier or he would have busted at the sight of it. "Are you ready for me?" He asks you. Pushing your legs apart with his thighs and swiping a finger through your folds and applying pressure to your clit to test how wet you were. 

"Been dripping since you sent me that video earlier" you admit to him. 

"I'll go slow, I don't want to hurt you." He grips the base of his cock, using his hand to guide himself through your folds, beginning to push up into you gently. You collapse forward, using Jungkook's body to support you, biting onto his shoulder trying to keep from shouting out. "I'm stretching your cunt so well, told you I would"  

You felt exquisite around his cock, so warm and tight and wet. "Tell me I feel good," Jungkook urges you. Wanting to hear some praise. 

"You fit so well. Feel so good. You're so big" you tell him all at once, he'd fully bottomed out now, his hip bones touching your stomach. 

"Does it hurt?" He asks you and you shake your head. "Let me see your face" you fall back against the wall, detaching your mouth from Jungkook's shoulder and appreciating the mark you'd left there.

"Gonna move now" he warns you, pulling all the way out before pushing back in again, only watching your face contort into pleasure, your eyebrows pulling together. "You're so beautiful, Y/N" he peppers kisses across your face and nose. 

He could hardly believe you were wrapped around his cock right now. This had been everything he had wanted and more. There was one problem, now that Jungkook had you once, he would never know how to let go of you again. He couldn’t see anything beyond you in his future. He’s pulled back to reality with your hand gripping his bicep. You’re moaning his name “My gosh Jungkook please don’t stop” you tell him, he was never going to stop, he’d do whatever you wanted him to do if you just asked. Fuck you forever if you needed him too. 

"Fuck, Jungkook I'm so close" his name falling from your lips was like a promise, his name was meant for your lips.

"Where do you want me?" He asks you, worry in his features, he'd forgotten about a condom. 

"Don't worry" you tell him, caressing his face in your hands. "I'm on the pill and clean"

For a moment, Jungkook was disappointed, he wanted to fill you with his seed, you'd be all his then, if you were full of his child, everyone would know he had planted it there. God, he needed to sort his thoughts out. "I'm clean too" he tells you, his last check up had been years ago but he hadn't had sex since. "I'm close" he groans. "Cum with me Y/N"

"Can't hold it Jungkook" you whine, your hands leaving his face and scratching down his chest, you place your hand over his abs, feeling them twitch under your hands as he thrusts into you. 

"Be a good girl Y/N, hold it." He demands of you. He's so proud when you do as you're told, gripping onto his shoulders as a distraction. "We cum together on one okay?"

You nod, but Jungkook sees your eyes widen in panic. "Five" 

He reaches down, playing with your clit and smiling when you try to squirm away.

"Four"

Jungkook moves a hand away from your waist, using it to pull roughly at one of your tits. Your eyes watering.

"Three"

"Jungkook, please." You beg, he ignores you.

"Two" he smirks. It was so good having you in his control.

"One"

He watches as your eyes roll back, his cock being sucked into your pussy as it twitches and squeezes around him. His cum shooting into you and hitting your cervix makes you shake. You can hardly hold yourself up anymore. Legs shaking, hands gripping onto Jungkook's ass, holding him deep inside of you, you're completely spent out. 

"Shit" you mumble, still twitching. Jungkook uses his thumb against your neck to feel your pulse, he wasn't sure why he needed to feel the pace of it, how it was running, all because of him. 

"I did this" he reminds you, in case you'd already forgotten. "I made you cum"

"Mmh, all you Jungkook" He's holding you up as you slump against him, his cock going soft inside of you. "Never had a vaginal orgasm before" you admit, your cheeks burning, you'd always assumed it was a fault you had, you'd faked so many times.

"I'll always make you cum" he said. "It's my main priority." he runs a thumb over your cheek, smiling softly when he says  "You're my main priority now, i'll make sure you're always comfortable, and cumming"

[tink27]

Steddie ficlet (might do a follow up to show Eddie's reaction)

"He likes a boy"

after years of friendship, and being joined at the proverbial hip, Robin liked to think she could read Steve pretty well, however, his love of being just vague enough to confuse her made this difficult.

"who likes a what now?" still trying to get a read on Steve's feelings, but as of right now he just seemed, disconnected. Since showing up unexpectedly at her house, he had maintained that far-away sort of look that showed that even Steve didn't know what he was feeling.

"Eddie... he... we were hanging out and he" finally he fully met Robin's gaze, and the heartbroken edge to his vacant stare became evident "he was implying, heavily, that he likes me"

"... likes likes you?"

Steve's expression briefly switched to mocking disbelief at her childish choice of words, but he didn't have the energy for any kind of clever retort

"Yes Robin! like likes me!" throwing up his hands before allowing them to smack down against their Jeans ("their" because they fit them both and had been making the rotation between both Steve and Robin's wardrobe for months, she wasn't entirely sure who they belonged to to begin with, not that it mattered)

"And you're... upset?" This was baffling because in the months since Eddie returned for the upside-down, the two had never been closer. Far too many shifts consisted of Steve waxing poetic about Eddie while Robin vaguely tried to relate and be supportive. Although why Steve seemed so utterly smitten as he talked about Eddie's hair or musical elitism would never really make sense to Robin. But still, she saw how they were together.

Steve had a bad track record for love, pouring every part of himself into another person in a way that was truly heartbreaking to watch. However, it became significantly less heartbreaking when it was accompanied by Eddie's eyes following Steve around every room, and always looking to him in conversations no matter who was there because it was Steve's opinion and thoughts that mattered to him most. They truly were obsessed with each other, and honestly, Robin had been waiting for the other shoe to drop.

So Steve's stricken expression made no sense, nor did his frustration that Robin - despite being his platonic soulmate - didn't magically understand the issue he was having.

"I dont know Robs, its just he likes... Steve Harrington" his voice was defeated as he said it, but it still explained nothing

"....you're Steve Harrington" The confusion in her voice was evident "Am I missing something here, this isn't a 'King Steve' thing is it, because Eddie has made it pretty clear that he thought you were a jerk back then"

the noise of frustration from Steve showed she clearly had missed the point and never had she wished so badly to read her best friend's mind as when the tears began to well up in his eyes. She wanted to hug him, but knew from experience that Steve needed to get the thoughts out first.

There was a minute of silence that Robin had to try desperately to not break, every instinct wanting to spit out an awkward and unhelpful comment to lighten the mood, but she knew she just had to wait.

"I'm not..." the words seemed to get lodged in his throat, even those two words came out scratchy and uncomfortable

He squeezed his eyes shut "I'm not a boy"

Steve opened their eyes, with a desperate expression "I'm not a boy"

It was a statement but also a plea. Begging for Robin to know exactly what to say. She didnt.

"you're not a boy." Robin made sure to sound confident, at least she could pretend to know what she was doing. It seemed okay because they gave an awkward nod, head moving slightly too much for it to seem natural

"you're.... a girl?"

the tears seemed to spill the second she said it, and a choked noise lodged itself in their (her?) throat, but after a moment of panicked pause their eyes screwed shut and they nodded but also shrugged. Clearly just as confused by their discomfort as Robin is.

"Okay, thats okay Ste-" shit, stupid "that's okay babe, you're still you, and hey I might be... severely romantically challenged but even I know Eddie is obsessed with you"

there's a brief watery smile before the corners of her lips are pulled down "He likes Steve, he wouldn't like me"

"Horse shit" Robin wasn't as confident as she was trying to sound, but she knew that her best friend was still her best friend and that anyone who didn't adore her was an idiot (as all best friends know)

she moved to sit next to her friend who had ended up on the floor with her knees pulled to her chest, and once again the silence was allowed to stretch out before them, only broken up by heartbroken sniffles and shakey breaths

"so..." Robin wished more than any other moment that she wasn't so awkward "Not Steve?"

"I-" the thought gets broken off " It doesn't feel right, doesn't feel like it's me"

"whats you?" two words encapsulating a question that was near impossible to answer, but it still felt right to ask, to show that Robin wanted to know the answer.

the expression on her face showed that her friend also thought the question unanswerable, and a frustrated shrug fell from her

Robin hated that defeated expression, so she tried "Michelle?"

Clearly, the scrunched-up expression implied it wasn't a fit

"Hannah?" no not that

"Sarah?" seemed less disgusted but still no

"Becky?" okay back to disgust, moving on

"OH! Punch me if this sucks, but... Stevie?" Robin felt the need to justify her choice, showing that she wasn't just trying to make her keep her old name "Like Stevie Nicks! I could see that, dye your hair blonde, get some bangs"

the comment about changing her hair was obviously met with a scowl, but after a soft smile found its way onto her face "Stevie feels better"

Robin had never felt so smart, she was a fucking genius "Stevie is it babe"

Stevie spent moments looking at her, seemingly deep in thought before softly speaking "Thank you Robin"

it seemed too formal for them, to say it so directly with her name like that, but she could tell that Stevie was really grateful so Robin held back the tears (one of them had to be the butch one in this relationship)

"no problem babe" it was spoken just as softly as the thanks, and for now it seemed enough

"Now, tell me what happened with Eddie"

[abbyfmc]

Yandere Emperor! x Female! Reader #3:

Continuation of the previous part.

-"I like to see those wounds, because I know that I was the one who caused them to you."- In the event that the yandere emperor is a sadist, and there is a chance that you disobey him or catches you in an escape attempt, of course the emperor himself would punish you and then heal your wounds and perhaps caress them in a moment, kiss or something like that.

-"What's wrong? Do your wounds hurt? Well I'm glad and I hope this reminds you of what will happen if you dare to run away."- It would be the same as the previous case. The emperor would punish you physically and then heal you himself.

-"I wait for you tonight / Wait for me here tonight."- If we see possible historical records of the emperors and their harems, there were what were "night services in bed" for both the concubines and consorts, as well as for the empress (legal wife of the emperor) in which the emperor could have fun with them or just sleep. You would not be the exception; so the yandere emperor would summon you to his room, he would take you by force, or he himself would go to your room and close the doors behind him.

-"Take off your clothes, I want to see that beautiful body. Do it for me; I want to see and touch every area of ​​your body, as well as lick every fold of your skin."- During night services in bed, he will like to have you at his complete mercy. There is no further explanation for this.

-"I will allow your parents to visit you, only if you behave well to me."- In the past, they rarely let the empress or concubines be visited in the palace by their relatives. The yandere emperor would use this to his advantage, as well as keeping a close eye on every visitor you receive.

-"There's only one thing I'd like you to do, and that is have our children."- Many emperors used their empress or concubines to expand the imperial family. There were emperors who expressed love for their empress and the occasional consort or concubine, and children were born from these unions, but then there were women from the harem who were simply used to have babies. Here the emperor loves you madly, and obviously he will want you to get pregnant probably not once, but several times perhaps.

-"Anyone who dares to attack her will be severely punished publicly as a warning not to mess with what I love."- The yandere emperor obviously won't let even his own empress (if you're just a consort or concubine) or any of his other imperial women touch you or insult you. The thing is worse if the person who trates you badly is a guard or servant, but whoever it is, the emperor could punish him with: slaps, whippings, forced labor, capital punishment, capital punishment to his family or clan of origin, etc.

-"How dare you slap my beloved? Who do you think you are?."- Well, that's what the yandere emperor would say when he sees how the imperial women or some other servant hurt you.

-"I want to surrender to your majesty, but only if it ensures the well-being, safety and happiness of my children. You must also promise not to harm my babies or the children of the other women in the imperial harem."- If you have seen a few historical records, as well as some historical palace dramas (especially those that come from China), you will know that there have always been fights and palace intrigues between the harem women and their children to reach the top; for reasons such as favor, family pressure, safety and well-being of their children, etc.; leading to things like: accidents, poisonings, attempted murders, attempted abortions, and more terrible things.

Well, although I cannot manipulate the thoughts of the dear reader, I imagine that if you live in an environment of this style, in which you have children who could be in danger, you will want to take advantage of the loving obsession that the yandere emperor has with you to protect your children and ensure them a happy future, right?

10. -"Try to kill me? You are very naive."- There isn't much explanation. You tried to kill the yandere emperor and he stopped you in time, teaching you a lesson in the process.

11. -"If you have a child with another man, I will have no shame in sending the brat away and killing the idiot."- Just another stern warning.

12. -"Like, what am I doing here? Did I scare you? I think I did because those eyes of yours looking at me with fear… I love it."- It is likely that the yandere emperor is capable of sneaking into your room at night while you sleep, and that on one of those nights you woke up when you felt him lay down next to you and gave you a tremendous scare.

-The End.

[andvys]

I knew you'd linger like a tattoo kiss | part 16

Warnings: slight angst, fluff, mentions of drugs and alcohol, a painful flashback, mean!Steve

Pairings: Steve Harrington x fem!cheerleader!reader , Steve Harrington x Nancy Wheeler, Eddie Munson x fem!reader

Summary: As you get closer and closer to your birthday, you are taken back to a painful day.

Word count: 6k+

A/N: @mysticmunson & @hellfire--cult thank you for listening to my rambles and helping me with ideas and inspiring me more and more to write this fic 🤍

series masterlist

-

In the months after Steve had left you, you had never felt as miserable as you do now, which is surprising, considering how happy you were in the past few weeks before you had gone on that stupid date with Ray. Not only did that night trigger every bad memory, every negative feeling that you have pushed away for months, you had also made it worse by calling him. 

You shouldn’t have called him, you wouldn’t be dealing with all these messed up feelings now if you had just stayed at Rick’s place and waited for Eddie to come back out of the house instead of running off and calling your ex boyfriend.

You shouldn’t have gone to see him on Sunday when you finished your shift at the record store, you should have just gone home but your stupid heart led you there to make it hurt even more when you saw him with her, how gentle he was with her, how happy he looked with her. 

You feel as though you are back to square one. 

Seeing them together shouldn’t be this hurtful, you should be used to it by now but your feelings are just so hard to ignore. Seeing the way he treated her reminded you of the way he never treated you – only in the first few weeks of your relationship was he this gentle and sweet with you.  

When his gentle touches turned into rough ones and the softness in his eyes disappeared, you knew that something had changed, but you were so in love with him, you didn’t care how badly he treated you when he stopped being the Steve you once knew.

You stare at the pages in your book with a blank expression on your face. You are not reading, you are not taking notes, you are not focusing the way you should be. No, your mind is too busy recalling every painful moment that you have had with him. 

Heather puts her notebook down, throwing her pencil on the bed, she lets out a groan as she stretches her arms out. Chrissy glances at her as she tears her eyes away from her book. While you and Heather study for finals, she is catching up on her favorite novel, her finals aren’t until next year as she had to repeat second grade after she had gotten sick and missed too many school days. 

Heather looks at you, a frown appears on her face when she notices the expression on your face. 

“Y/n?”

You blink, furrowing your brows as you look up at your friend, “yeah?”

“Are you okay?”

No. 

You shrug and close your book, “yeah, why?”

Heather isn’t convinced and neither is Chrissy who watches you with worried eyes. She had noticed that something is off with you, after spring break, something had changed and you are now more distant than before and it’s not just that, you are also very quiet. Just like you were after your breakup with Steve. 

“Doesn’t seem like it,” Heather says. 

You feel bad for lying to them, for not telling them things that you would have told them a few months back, but you still aren’t the only one who keeps secrets.

Without thinking, you push your sleeves up, accidentally revealing the fading bruises around your wrists. Heather notices them right away, her eyes widen and a gasp falls from her lips. Chrissy furrows her brows at her friend before she notices what she is looking at, she places the book down and straightens up to see what had shocked her friend so much. 

When you see the confused and shocked look on Chrissy’s face, you realize your mistake and quickly push your sleeves back down, as though it will reverse your mistake. 

“What the fuck?” 

“W-What is that, what happened?” Chrissy asks, worriedly. 

You close your eyes and pinch the bridge of your nose, sighing, you shake your head. 

“Nothing happened,” you mumble and get up from your bed after pushing the books off of your lap. You leave your room, desperately wanting to escape this situation but of course they follow you, calling out your name bewildered. 

“That’s not nothing, y/n!” Heather says angrily as she follows you downstairs.

“I fell,” you mumble, coming up with the weakest lie ever. 

Heather snorts in disbelief, “and I’m supposed to believe that?” She asks, almost yelling. You don’t take her anger to heart, you know that she is worried. 

Chrissy rolls her eyes, “Heather,” she mumbles, trying to calm her down. 

You turn on the lights in the kitchen, blinking rapidly as you feel tears of frustration building up. You try to distract yourself by reaching for the newspaper on the counter, a flyer from some pizza place at the new mall is laying on top of it. 

“A-Are you guys hungry?” You ask, without looking up, “I haven’t eaten all day, I’m starving. We could order a pizza, there’s a new place, Surfer Boy–”

“Y/n,” Chrissy says, quietly as she walks towards you with a look of concern in her eyes. 

“We could order different kinds,” you say, still hoping to be able to change the subject of the conversation despite knowing that it’s a lost cause. 

Heather crosses her arms over her chest, her brows are knitted as she looks you up and down. 

“What happened?” She asks again. 

Chrissy turns around to send her a warning look, shaking her head. 

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You don’t have to,” Chrissy says as she places her hand on top of yours, trying to give you reassurance. 

You narrow your eyes, trying to hide your tears as you give her a small smile. 

“You always tell us everything, y/n,” Heather says and for the first time you hear sadness in her voice, sadness and concern. “Since when do you keep secrets?”

Her question irritates you and it sparks the anger inside of you. You snap your head up and look at her with raised brows, “I don’t know, you tell me.” 

She looks a little taken aback at your words, surprised even. Though, her eyes flash with guilt. She doesn’t say anything this time, neither does Chrissy and when you look back at her to see her avoiding your eyes, you can’t even help but scoff. 

“What are you guys not telling me?” You finally ask the question that’s been on your mind for months now, “what are you hiding?” 

Chrissy mumbles your name with a pleading voice, her cheeks glow red, she looks embarrassed. 

“You do know that you’re doing the same shit that Steve did to me, right?” 

Heather can’t even look into your eyes anymore, she looks down.

“He did that too, he kept secrets, he didn’t talk to me, he didn’t tell me anything, he kept lying to me a-and then it all got too much and he spilled everything to me the moment he had one too many drinks – is that what it takes for you to be honest with me? D-Drinks? Do you need to get drunk too to tell me that you don’t want to be my friend anymore?” 

Both of them raise their heads to look at you, shocked and confused as though they can’t believe that you would think that of them. 

“What!?” Heather asks, raising her voice, “you think we don’t want to be your friends anymore? What the hell, y/n? You are the one who pushed us away!” 

“Because you are both keeping secrets! You whisper behind my back! You don’t tell me shit anymore! What do you expect me to do? To sit there and wait for you to leave the way everyone else does?” Your voice breaks and once again, your tears spill. You can only huff in annoyance when you feel your wet cheeks, “for fucks sake,” you whisper as you wipe away the tears in anger. 

Chrissy looks down, she had never felt this guilty before. She knows it’s because of her. The secrets and the whispers. It’s her fault that you feel like they don’t want you but she is scared, so scared to lose you if you find out the truth but right here is where she realizes that she will lose you either way. 

Heather’s eyes soften and she looks at you with a frown. 

You step away from Chrissy and turn away from them, you place your hands on the counter and look out the window. 

“We are not leaving you, y/n,” Heather says, walking towards you, “we would never leave you, you’re our best friend.”

You try not to show how bitter you are, how angry and hurt you still are. 

“Doesn’t feel like it, Heather.”

“But she’s right,” Chrissy says with a shaky voice, “we would never leave you.”

You are so sick of the tears, of the pain, of all of this. 

Heather and Chrissy share a look and you watch them with narrowed eyes.

You wipe the fresh tears with your sleeves and turn around, leaning against the counter as you look at the blonde, who stares at you with nothing but fear in her eyes and suddenly, you feel guilty for the outburst you just had.

“I’m sorry,” Heather whispers as she reaches for your hand, “I’m sorry we made you feel that way but you are still our best friend, even when we’re not yours anymore.”

“Yeah, Eddie stole that title,” Chrissy mumbles, rolling her eyes when she says his name. She leans against the counter beside you and looks at you with an apologetic look in her eyes and the guilt. The guilt is not very hard to miss. 

You know that she is hiding something, something that Heather knows about, something that she doesn’t want you to know. It hurts, she used to tell you everything, now Heather is the only one she confides in and as hurtful as it is, you have to respect that. 

“You are still my best friends too,” you murmur and lower your head to hide the pain, “I’m sorry for getting so mad.”

Heather sighs, she rolls her eyes at her own outburst, “I’m sorry too, you don’t have to tell us what happened but just know that we are here for you.”

“Yeah,” Chrissy whispers as she once again reaches for your hand, this time, you squeeze her hand back.

You know that they want to know what happened or better yet, who happened. You don’t want to talk about Ray or the date and the awful things that happened, least of all what happened afterwards when you decided to call him. 

“I went on a date with Ray.” You say after a beat of silence. 

Their eyes widen with both shock and confusion. 

Chrissy opens and closes her mouth, no words come out. 

“Ray Parker?” Heather asks, still confused. She saw you with him, at the bonfire party but she didn’t think anything of it. 

You nod, clenching your jaw. 

“Yeah.” 

You feel a shiver running down your spine when you think about that night. 

“Turned out that he never wanted to go on a date with me, he just wanted to fuck. I-I didn’t want to, I didn’t even want to go on a date with him, I don’t know what I was thinking,” you ramble as you quickly want to close the subject again, “H-He was very persistent and he kept trying but I pushed him away, nothing happened, luckily.”

Chrissy holds her hand in front of her mouth and Heather looks at you in disbelief. 

They see the fear in your eyes and how shaken up you still are.

“What the fuck,” she mumbles, angrily. “He did that to you?” She asks, pointing to your wrists. 

“Yeah but it’s okay, it’s–”

“It’s not okay! I’m gonna cut his dick off!” She says, throwing her hands up, “and his balls too!”

“Count me in,” Chrissy says with an angry frown in her soft features. “I hate men!”

You can’t help but snort as you bury your face in your hands. 

“This is not funny, y/n!” Heather says, nudging your shoulder, “why do you always go for the worst guys?”

“I don’t know,” you mumble. 

Heather is seething and so is Chrissy, that’s why you didn’t want them to know. It’s bad enough that the others know that Eddie and Steve went after him, that they risked getting in trouble with the cops. 

Heather keeps mumbling curse words under her breath, while Chrissy tries to make sure  that you are feeling okay. 

“Do you know where he lives?” Heather asks, “did you go to the cops?”

You shake your head. You don’t want to know where he lives, you don’t want to go to the cops. His wealthy parents won’t let anything happen to their precious son besides, you hope that he learned his lesson after what Eddie and Steve did to him. 

Heather and Chrissy might think that it’s Ray who causes you to feel this way, it’s not. It’s Steve, it’s always Steve who is on your mind. It's him who is making you feel like you are not okay because he is once again, haunting you in your memories, in your dreams, in everything. 

He is haunting you.

Heather keeps asking questions and it’s starting to make you feel sick. 

You close your eyes when you suddenly feel lightheaded, you pinch the bridge of your nose and take deep breaths. 

“Can we please just not talk about this?” You ask, interrupting Heather’s ramble, “I-I don’t want to think about it anymore. Besides, it’s been taken care of,” you mumble the last part. 

“Wait what?” 

“What do you mean?” Chrissy asks, “what’s been taken care of?”

“Eddie and Steve, t-they went after him.”

Chrissy stares with wide eyes and Heather looks at you, confused. 

“I’m sorry, did you just say Eddie and Steve?” 

You nod. 

“I’ll tell you everything but can we first order some food?” 

Chrissy notices the pale look on your face, the shakiness in your hands, the tired look in your eyes. She knows. Her eyes meet Heather’s, she nudges her head, raising her brows.

“Yes, of course,” Heather says, reaching for the flyer you looked at earlier, “let me guess, you want pineapple pizza.”

“No way,” you snort, “I only eat it when I’m high.”

“Which happens like three times a week nowadays,” Chrissy jokes. 

“What can I say, my weed man is really good.”

Heather laughs, “a very bad influence,” she points out with a smile on her face, “I’ll go order the pizza,” she says before she walks out of the kitchen. 

You clear your throat and turn to Chrissy, who is already watching you. There is still concern in her eyes and you desperately want her to stop worrying. 

“Chris,” you mumble as you grip her hand tighter, “don’t worry about me.”

She frowns at your words, how can she not worry about you? 

“You thought that we don’t want to be your friends anymore.”

“It’s okay, it was a misunderstanding–”

“I will– we will always want you to be our friend,” she says, “it’s always been the three of us, y/n.”

You smile, sadly. 

“A-And, I just want you to know that it’s not about our friendship with you or anything.”

“What do you mean?”

She swallows nervously and she runs her fingers through her blonde hair, looking at anything but you, she blushes and it makes you wonder. 

“I-I just, Heather isn’t hiding anything from you. T-There’s something that I can’t tell you yet but I will,” she says, looking at the floor, “when I’m ready, okay?”

She is scared of losing you, scared of pushing you away with whatever she is dealing with. 

You nod, “of course.”

You are worried about her, about what she’s keeping from you, about what she is so nervous about. You take both of her hands in yours and step closer to her. 

“Hey,” you whisper, “can you look at me?”

She raises her head a little, looking at you through her bangs. 

“Whatever it is, you can tell me, you don’t have to be scared,” you say, rubbing your circles on her skin, “I’m here and I’ll always be here, no matter what, okay?”

She nods, a smile tugs at her lips. 

“I didn’t mean to get so angry, I’m sorry.”

“No,” she shakes her head, “I understand it.” 

“But we’re okay, right?” You ask. 

She nods, eyeing your face with a sad look in her eyes, “of course, we’re okay.”

“Good.”

“Good,” she repeats your words with a smile. 

“Hey guys, some guy named Argyle was on the phone! Never heard that name before,” Heather says, laughing from the living room, “he sounded cute.”

You and Chrissy look at each other with furrowed brows before you burst into giggles. 

-

The bruises have faded away, your skin looks healed again, you can finally wear skirts and t-shirts after weeks of hiding in sweaters and jeans. The weather is warm, the sun is shining and the flowers adorn the pretty fields of Hawkins, finally. It’s nearing the end of April and you’re getting closer and closer to exams and the final day of school. You can’t wait to get out of here. 

You are staring out the window, watching the white clouds move in the blue sky, you drown out the voices in the classroom, the laughter of Tommy and Carol as they gossip, as always. 

The past few weeks haven’t been easy on you, you have been trying to avoid him but everywhere you go, you see him, it reminds you of the way things were after he dumped you. Only this time, he tries, he really tries to sneak his way back into your life, you don’t let him – you want to but you don’t let him. Yet, you can’t help but love every little moment you have with him – passing by him in the hallway, seeing the way his eyes light up when you flash him a small smile, you don’t let it confuse you but, you can’t stop the fluttering in your stomach either.

You will forever regret the date and the call. That night changed everything. You were okay, you were okay without him. You were sure that you had moved on. You were sure that you did not want him anymore. You were so damn sure. Yet, here you are, unable to stop thinking about Steve Harrington.

Someone places their books on the table, picking the seat next to you. You don’t turn around to face whoever it is, not caring. But, when you smell his cologne, you tense up and your heart skips, you don’t need to look at him to have all these feelings rushing through you. 

You look away from the window, you lean back and finally turn to look at him. He looks good, the way he always does. He is wearing a black sweater, his sleeves are pulled up, you notice a silver bracelet around his wrist, you haven’t seen before. His knuckles are healed, no bruises litter his skin any longer but there’s a scar that hasn’t been there before. You wonder what he told her when he sported the bruises on his knuckles and on his temple. 

He doesn’t say anything, he just flashes you a small smile and looks away when the teacher walks in. 

Why does he sit here? Why next to you?

You force yourself to look away too. You hate the beating of your heart. You hate the way you feel when you smell his cologne, the stupid smell of Farrah Fawcett spray, you hate the way it feels to be so close to him. 

You try to focus on class, you try to write down notes, you try to think about anything but him beside you. 

Steve has other plans though when he slides his notebook over to you after scribbling something on the blank page. 

You turn to look at him with a questioning gaze but he is not looking at you, he is looking at the blackboard, pretending to listen to Mrs Jones.

You look down at the notebook. 

‘Hi’. He wrote with a smile next to it. 

You can’t help but snort quietly. 

He smiles to himself, narrowing his eyes to look at you. 

You take your pen, shaking your head as you write a ‘hey’ before you slide it back to him. 

He glances at the teacher before he begins writing. Mrs Jones isn’t paying attention to you, the elderly woman is too busy writing on the blackboard as she taps her heel against the ground. 

You bounce your knee, pressing your lips together as you look at anything but him. You dig your nails into your palms as you wait in anticipation. When he slides the notebook back to you, you glance at him for a moment before you look down. 

‘How are you?’

You wonder if it is a conversation starter or a genuine question but, when you find him looking at you with a soft eyes, you have your answer. 

‘I’m good, you?’

Steve knows it is a lie.

‘I’m okay. Can you believe that we’re graduating soon?’

You smile at him and shake your head.

‘No. Are you still becoming a basketball star?’ You write down. 

You watch the way he shakes his head with a blush on his cheeks. He leans down, putting his hand on the table as he writes. 

'Not good enough to be a basketball star.’

You raise your brows in question, pressing your lips together. 

What happened to his confidence? You wonder. 

‘You were always good enough, Steve.’

Steve stares at your words for a long moment, his brows knit together and for a second, he lets the sadness take over. He never felt good enough. 

‘Not for this. Are you still becoming a stripper?’ 

When you read the question, a giggle bursts from your lips before you can stop it. You always used to joke about it, telling him that you would become the best stripper in town. 

There is not a single strip club in Hawkins. 

You clasp your hand over your mouth and your eyes widen when you realize how loud your giggle was. Everyone is now looking at you. 

Steve presses his lips together, trying not to laugh. 

“Is there anything you want to share with the class?” Mrs Jones asks, raising her brows at you as she stands there with her hand on her hip.

You shake your head.

Steve snorts a little when he glances at you, you are staring wide eyed at the teacher with  a blush on your cheeks. Cute.

You kick his foot under the table and he has to hide his face behind his head when he laughs quietly. 

“Pay attention!” Mrs Jones says, pointing at you with her finger. 

You nod, “yes ma’am.”

She glares at you before she turns away. 

“Asshole,” you whisper to Steve before you reach for your pen again, ignoring the prying eyes of some of the cheerleaders and of course, Tommy and Carol, you don’t have to turn around to know that they are staring. 

‘No, I want to be a groupie now.’

Steve shakes his head, of course, you would say that. 

He changes the topic, though it’s a mistake, a very big mistake. 

Steve doesn’t know that you are haunted by memories of him. 

Your birthday is soon, any plans?’

You are already struggling. Why did he have to bring this up? Why did he have to remind you of your last birthday? Why? 

You stare at the words on the paper for what feels like forever. You hate your birthday, especially the last birthday. 

You remember the way you felt that day, you remember the way you waited for him, thinking that he would surprise you. You didn’t want a party, you didn’t even want a cake but Heather and Chrissy had still made one for you, they spent the afternoon with you, they gave you presents, ate cake with you and offered to take you out to dinner but you said no, because you knew that he would take you out for dinner and surprise you with the locket you have told him so many times about. The locket you had seen when you passed by the little jewelry store, he was with you, he saw the way your eyes lit up when you laid eyes on it for the first time, he knew you wanted it and you thought, you really thought that he would get you the necklace. You could have bought it yourself with the credit card your dad gave you before he left but you wanted it to be something special. 

Steve did not take you out for dinner that night, in fact, he didn’t spend the night with you, at all. 

You want to cry just thinking about it. 

You waited and waited, you sat by your window and looked out, waiting for him to finally arrive. You put on the pretty sundress that you had bought when you went shopping with Chrissy. You did your makeup and your hair the way he always liked it. 

With your hands in your lap and excitement still lingering on your face, you waited. 

Your eyes lit up when you saw his car pulling up to your driveway, you jumped up and rushed over to the mirror, taking one last look at yourself before you rushed down the stairs with a smile on your face. 

You opened the door just as he was about to unlock it with the keys you gave him. 

“Hi!” You said, unable to fight the smile off your face. 

Steve was holding a small box in his hands, you thought you knew what was in there.

“Hey babe,” he said but his voice did not match your excitement. 

He walked in and closed the door, handing you the box. He leaned down and pressed a kiss to your forehead, “happy birthday,” he said with a smile that could only be described as forced. 

Your own smile began to fade a little when you noticed the disinterested look on his face, you looked down at the little box. Did he give you what you wished for? You had wondered.

“What took you so long?” You asked as you looked at the clock, it was 7pm. “I’ve been waiting for you, Stevie.”

“I was getting ready for the party.”

You furrowed your brows and looked at him in confusion as you could already feel your heart dropping. 

“What party?” You mumbled, “I-I told you that I don’t want–”

“No, I know.” He said, “I know you didn’t want to throw a party, I mean Tina’s party.”

You couldn’t believe him. He knew, he knew you did not want that. He knew you wanted to spend the night alone, with him. 

“I-I thought we could do something else, it’s my birthday, Steve.”

He sighed, rolling his eyes as he ran his fingers through his hair.

“Yeah, happy birthday,” he said with fake enthusiasm in his voice, “now let’s go celebrate it.”

Your shoulders slumped, you opened your mouth to speak but quickly closed it again. You stared at him in disbelief as your eyes began to well up with tears. 

“But, I thought we could go out for dinner.”

He scrunched his face up, snorting, “what are we forty?” He said, “come on, get your stuff, we’re leaving.”

“No,” you said, shaking your head as you looked at him with sad eyes and a pout that always pulled at your lips, naturally.

He huffed. 

“Man, don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?” You said with a small voice, frowning. 

“Like that,” he mumbled, pointing at your frown, “that’s fucked up.”

You wanted to cry, you wanted to run upstairs and crawl under the sheets, you wanted to escape this. 

“W-Well, you can go to that stupid party. I’m not going.” You pushed the box back in his hands and brushed past him, walking up the stairs as you began to remove the clips in your hair. 

“Babe!” He groaned. 

“You can go, Steve. I’m not feeling well anyways,” you lied and continued your way up the stairs, still hoping that he would follow you, that he would change his mind and apologize, that he would take you in his arms and kiss you, that he would take you out to dinner, that he would kiss you under the stars and put the necklace around your neck but he never did. 

Just as you walked into your room, you heard the front door shutting and his car starting just moments later. 

Despite how he had acted before, you didn’t expect him to leave, but he did. He left and you spent the evening alone with a bottle of Whiskey your dad left behind, you drank and you cried, missing the boy who used to protect you, who used to love you. You stayed in your dress and listened to David Bowie and then, four hours later, he came back but you wish he never did.

The memory of that night still hurts, it all hurts. 

‘No, you know I don’t celebrate my birthday.’ You write down in bitterness. 

Steve looks guilty, he feels awful for what he did on your last birthday. If he could turn back time and change it, he would. 

You can’t help but look at him, and you see it, you see the guilt and the sadness and the anger he feels for himself but it does nothing to ease your pain. It still hurts so much. 

‘Can I come over, the night before?’ 

It’s a tradition you have had since you were children. He would always sneak into your room and give you his presents at midnight. He didn’t do it last year. Why now? You are no longer friends, you are no longer a couple, you are not even acquaintances at this point. 

Are you a fool for saying ‘yes’? Maybe. Do you care? No. Apparently, he still has you wrapped around his finger. 

He smiles at you and closes the notebook when the bell rings. You wonder if he will throw the page away or if he will keep it. You would. You hate how giddy he still makes you feel, you hate the butterflies that still flutter in your stomach, why won’t they die? 

You leave the classroom together but neither of you say anything, you just glance at each other before you go separate ways, he flashes you one last smile – his is certainly much brighter than yours, yours is still etched with pain. 

You make your way towards your locker to retrieve your backpack and your jacket. Out of the corner of your eye, you see someone moving towards you and when you turn your head, you see that it’s Chrissy. 

A smile tugs at your lips. 

She looks determined, her eyes are set on you, she isn’t smiling and as she gets closer, you notice how nervous she looks. 

“Hi.”

“Hey,” you smile, “what’s up?” You ask, curiously when she still refuses to smile. 

Her hands are pressed together and she looks at you with uncertainty in her eyes. She fidgets with her shaky hands. 

“I-I’m ready to talk.” 

You did not expect to hear that from her. It’s been weeks since she admitted to keeping something from you and not once did you pressure her to talk, you did try to reassure her that nothing could drive you away from her but she still needed time. 

“You are?” You ask, looking around the crowded hallways. 

She nods, licking her lips as she stares at you. 

“Yes.”

“Okay, let’s get out of here.” You reach for your backpack and pull the strap over your shoulder before you reach for her hand, “come on.”

You can feel how nervous she is, how clammy her hand is, how shaky it is as she grips yours tightly. It makes you a little anxious. What could possibly make her this nervous? 

You leave the school and walk towards your car. 

“Do you wanna go to my place?” You ask. 

She shakes her head, looking down as she lets go of your hand to walk to the passenger side. 

“Okay, uh, the lookout?” You ask. 

“Y-Yeah.”

You nod and unlock your car, you throw your backpack in the backseat and reach for the sunglasses in your glove compartment. You glance at her, noticing how nervous she still is as she bounces her knee. 

“Chris, don’t be so nervous,” you say, trying to reassure her, “if you wanna talk about your position on the cheer squad, you can absolutely have my spot as the captain,” you joke but she doesn’t laugh, she only cracks a small smile. 

You figure that nothing you will say will make her any less nervous, the only thing that will help is talk about whatever is laying heavy on her heart. So, you start the car and you turn on some music, hoping that it will calm her down. You drive to the lookout, you always used to go together. Back when you had only gotten your driver license, you, Chrissy and Heather would always come up here and have a little picnic, you would take pictures of each other with your dad’s polaroid camera. 

You miss those days. The simpler days. 

You both get out and sit on the hood of your car, looking down at the small town you live in. From up here, it looks so much smaller than it actually is. 

“I– I don’t know how to tell you,” she starts after a long few minutes of silence.

“What are you afraid of?” You ask as your take your hand in yours.

She blinks. The wind blows through her hair and she looks down to avoid your eyes. 

“That you won’t be my friend anymore.”

“Chrissy,” you whisper, holding her hand tighter, “we’ve been friends since we were little kids, what makes you think that I’d stop being your friend?”

She shrugs. 

“You and I, we're best friends for the rest of our lives.” 

She rolls her eyes, “except you got Eddie now.”

“Eddie isn’t a girl though, I still need my girl best friends – hey, are you jealous of Eddie, is that it?” You chuckle.

Her eyes widen and she tenses up, looking like a deer caught in headlights. Her cheeks take the color of your red skirt and your smile falls as you stare at her reaction in surprise. 

“I-I, no! I’m not–” She stutters and her voice gets high pitched. 

“Wait, y-you don’t like Eddie do you?” You frown. 

She almost looks taken aback by your question and she draws back, scrunching her face up as she shakes her head, “what!? No!”

Your shoulders slump in relief. 

Her reaction is almost comical, if the circumstances were different, you would probably laugh at the twisted mouth and the disapproving look in her eyes. 

“I don’t like him,” she says, shaking her head, “I don’t like people like him.” 

“Oh,” you frown. Is that it? Is that what she is keeping from you? She doesn’t like Eddie? She doesn’t like your best friend? She doesn’t like his reputation and your reputation?

“N-No!” She huffs, rolling her eyes at her choice of words, “I don’t mean it like that, I don’t mean him in general, I-I mean – fuck.” Her shoulders slump and she closes her eyes when she feels the tears welling up. “I don’t like men – I don’t, I’m not into them! I like girls,” she says, quietly. 

Oh. 

Your lips part in surprise and your eyes widen but you finally relax and the tension in your body leaves. You were so worried about all the possibilities of what she could be hiding from you, out of all of them, you did not expect this. 

She is shaking even more now and you hold her hand tighter in response. 

“Chrissy,” you whisper and scoot closer to her. 

When she hears your soft voice and feels your even softer touch, she manages to open her eyes again and looks at you through her tears. 

“You scared me to death!” You mumble before you pull her into a hug, squeezing her tightly. “I thought you were hiding something bad!” 

You hear her sniffle first and then her sigh of relief as she melts into your touch and hugs you back. 

“I-I, you’re not, you don’t think it’s weird?” 

You scrunch your face up and frown, “why would I think that it’s weird?” You mumble, still hugging her. 

“‘Cause some people think it’s weird.”

“Fuck them,” you whisper, rubbing her back and squeezing her tightly before you pull away from her. You look at her soft features and smile, “I’m sorry you were so scared to tell me but I hope you know that I would never judge you, you’re my best friend and I’m proud of you.”

Her eyes light up and she smiles, “you are?”

“Yeah,” you whisper, smiling. 

She presses her hand to her chest as she sighs in relief again, closing her eyes.

“So, who’s the lucky girl?”

And just like that, her smile fades away again and she looks at you with the same sad eyes you saw one too many times already. This time, it doesn’t take you long to put two and two together, the signs were always there but as always, you were too blind to see them, just like you had been blind to so many other things in your life. 

She was always protective of you, more so than Heather was. She was always a little giddy around you, nervous and shy. She was always more affectionate with you than anyone else. 

And then you remember Carol’s words, what she said – or tried to say about Chrissy before Heather intervened. 

God, you feel like a fool. 

Life passes by you and you don’t even notice. Where is your mind at all the time?

Chrissy’s eyes are filled with sadness and the same fear as before, she doesn’t need to say it out loud for you to know. The look on her face confirms it all. 

“Oh Chrissy.”

“I-It’s okay, y/n,” she whispers, “please don’t pity me, it’s just, it will pass.”

You tilt your head, you can’t help but look at her with the same look that lingers in her eyes. 

“I’m sorry,” you whisper and look down at her hand. 

“No, I’ll be fine, really,” she says, “just promise me that nothing will change?”

Your chest aches and it hurts to know that she is hurting because of you. 

“Because that’s all that matters to me, that you are still my friend.”

“I am,” you reassure her again, “I promise.”

She nods at you, not letting her tears spill. She smiles at you again before she scoots closer to you. 

“Thank you.” 

You shake your head and wrap your arm around her shoulder as she leans her head on your shoulder. 

“No, thank you for trusting me,” you whisper, “and for everything.”

She smiles up at you when you fix the green bow in her hair and run your fingers through her ponytail.

As the silence takes over and you both listen to birds chirping and the wind that rustles the leaves on the trees, you hold onto each other a little more tightly when she finally relaxes, knowing that she will always have you, no matter what. 

And you feel the tension leaving when you realize that you had nothing to fear when it came to her and Heather. 

“Hey, you know what?” 

“Hmm?”

“I saw Heather making out with Billy in his car.”

“No way!” You gasp, laughing. 

“Yeah! And then she acted like nothing happened!” 

You giggle, cupping your hand over your mouth.

“Apparently they were high. She bought weed from that pizza guy.”

“What was his name again?” You ask, laughing. 

“Uh, something weird–” she mumbles with a concentrated look on her face. 

“Ar– Argyle!” You exclaim. 

“Yes, Argyle!” 

next chapter

-

tagging friends & mutuals

@mysticmunson @wroteclassicaly @corrodedseraphine @corrodedcorpses @taintedcigs @hellfire--cult @screammunson @take-everything-you-can @sherrylyn628 @nemesis729 @trashmouth-richie @xxhellfiregirlxx @somethingvicked @chrissymjstan

[jadagul]

Matt Yglesias has a point he likes to make about progressive attitudes towards political platforms. Basically all the progressive activists realize that Republican candidates benefit electorally from moderating (or appearing to moderate); but they seem to resist claims that Democrats would benefit similarly. E.g. from today's post about Kamala Harris:

9. To win, Harris needs to find ways to moderate her image, and critically, she is going to have to be allowed to do that by her supporters. 10. Donald Trump is in many ways a bad politicians and a bad candidate. His numbers are terrible, his manner is off-putting, and his record is plagued with scandal. But his “be allowed to do that” score is off the charts. If it’s convenient for him to start saying nicer things about electric cars in exchange for Elon Musk’s money, he does that. If it’s convenient for him to pretend the Republican Party isn’t deeply committed to banning abortion, he does that. 11. Every progressive I know recognizes that these Trumpian stabs at moderation are good for Trump, and that it’s good for the left to try to expose them as lies. The progressives who recognize that need to see the symmetry here.

I think he's right about this, but I understand why a lot of progressives aren't convinced by this. Yglesias describes Trump's abortion position as "moderating", but you could also describe it as moving to the left.

I think a lot of progressive activists really believe that leftist progressivism is genuinely popular in the US. (It's not! But they believe it.) So they believe that Republicans would benefit electorally from shifting to the left, and that Democrats would benefit electorally from shifting to the left. This is why you get all those things about "Democrats would win if they'd just take a firm stance in favor of liberating Palestine and launching a single-payer health care system" or whatever the topics du jour are.

Like, this is badly wrong. It does not accurately describe the American political landscape. But it's an internally coherent model that (1) explains why Republicans benefit from moderating but (2) wouldn't expect Democrats to benefit from moderating.

[obae-me]

Random Sibling Headcanons

I'm a wee bit sick, which is why I've put my more serious projects on a very short pause. That being said I still feel the need to write something, so why not get some ideas out in the form of little fun ideas? Featuring colored names this time because it's fun for my brain.

These are just some little headcanons I like to think the brothers have done, since I love thinking of their sibling/ at-home relationships with each other.

In the picture of Lucifer's office, he seems to have stairs heading up to a second-story loft of some sort. I've always imagined he has a "Pride" wall somewhere up there filled with memorabilia of his brother's greatest or proudest achievements. There's some photos, art pieces, awards his siblings gave up on keeping, etc. His brothers know about it but hate it, so they all never speak of it.

Mammon and Levi once both badly injured their hands, trying to outdo each other high-fiving. You know where you try to get that perfect smack and hurt the other person's palm? Yeah, like that. They whiffed it on the first try and had to do it again and just couldn't stop after that.

Belphie usually puts small portions of his dirty clothes into his brother's hampers so they can clean his clothes for him without them realizing. It drives them all wild having to sort it out each time, and Belphie thrives off of it.

One of Satan's favorite pranks was to quickly run around the whole house and use up every hot water source he can while Lucifer was taking a shower so his water turns ice cold while the eldest is still in it. It got to the point where Lucifer is actually fine taking cold showers now.

If a bunch of them are in the same room and one of them gets a call from Lucifer, the others will suddenly try to sound like something horrible is going on, more often than not trying to incriminate the person who picked up the phone, blaming them for some false scenario that never happened.

If Belphie gets woken up too many times in the same day, he'll find ways to wake his siblings up in the middle of the night. Once he managed to get into all their phones and set annoyingly loud alarms, another night he cursed the piano in the music room to play until morning. Now the brothers have an unspoken rule not to wake their youngest sibling up more than four times a day.

Asmo likes to barge into his siblings' rooms sometimes unannounced with his D.D.D. while he's live on Devilgram or Deviltube. He loves to catch his brother's doing something stupid, it's hilarious. Sometimes he's not even live, he's just recording so he can keep videos to laugh over later.

They trade chores often, much to Lucifer's frustration, but everyone has some chores they absolutely can't stand. They've even somehow come up with a bartering system of sorts. Laundry = 1 other chore like dusting, but something like Dishes = 2 chores like taking on laundry and vacuuming.

None of them have ever missed one of Beel's games. They always show up and sit in the same spots so Beel never has to look around for them in the crowd. Lucifer brings the bag of supplies and snacks should his siblings need it. Because they always end up complaining about something by the end of the night. Mammon always brings his megaphone that almost always gets in him trouble every time. Levi gives his brothers all glowsticks. Satan always secretly has tricks up his sleeve to use against the opposing team should any of them come close to harming Beel (although that's nearly impossible, but he has them as a precaution). Asmo made everyone the most beautiful signs to hold. And Belphie brings everyone blankets since it can get chilly in the stands. He also brings a big lunchbox of snacks for Beel to eat right after the game even though they always go out to eat right after.

Lucifer, Mammon, and Levi as the three eldest are used to giving their younger siblings things they no longer need. The younger four have plenty of hand-me-downs but more often then not, they don't really mind. Lucifer gives out anything he's not overtly a fan of which can be anything from books to cologne to jewelry. Everyone has a few old things of his. Mammon gives out a bunch of clothes quite frequently. Despite his greed, his room can only hold so much, and so he usually goes through a semi-regular purge. Anything his brothers don't grab he sells. Levi gives out old electronics since he upgrades to the newest stuff as soon as he can. Because of this, Satan owns a pair of cat-ear headphones.

On a trip to the human world once, Asmo bought Belphie one of those electronic toothbrushes that play a song in your head while you brush your teeth so the youngest no longer falls asleep during brushing. Yes, it was a Brittany Spears one. (Does this date me? Maybe. Do they even make those anymore?)

Mammon and Asmo have both sat Beel down and tried to give him a basic course on recognizing flirting to keep their younger brother from being so totally oblivious, but no matter how many times they try, he never notices. However, now if Beel is ever given a random phone number, he knows to take it to either of those two to sort it out for him.

Once, for Belphie's birthday he received the ugliest quilt made from little squares from his brother's t-shirts, pillowcases, robes, etc. They all worked together to sew it up and it's very, very obvious who did what parts. Belphie says he can't stand the awful thing but sleeps with it every night.

[lizard-on-a-window-pane]

candle light with remus lupin for your eclipse event! maybe something where he's mean but also does good good aftercare? LUV UR WRITIING <3

thank youuu, and thank you for requesting! really hope you like it!!

pairing: Remus Lupin x reader tags / warnings: established relationship, smut (NSFW, MDNI), fluff word count: 3k part of my 1k celebration!

You are exhausted. You’re tense; you’re tired as you come home after what’s felt like a  week, not a day. Too much to do, too much pressure, too many decisions. You feel them in your body, weighing you down. The first thing you do as you enter your bedroom you share with Remus is strip down to your knickers. You toss your bra away with perhaps a little bit too much resentment and find your favourite of Remus’s jumpers you like to borrow. It’s too big on either of you.

You head to your kitchen, putting on a record so sad it’s somehow consoling as you do. As you start making yourself a comforting cup of tea, you hear the door behind you. 

“Hi, lovely.” 

It’s his voice that’s lovely, and just the sound of it has already begun thawing your tension. 

“Hey,” you say back as you feel him approach behind you, his arms coming around your middle. They’re warm and firm, and you sink back into his body. You feel him breathe in your hair, kiss the side of your head. “Remus,” you whine into him. He hums into your neck in response, placing a soft kiss there. His squeezes you tightly, his hands bunching up the jumper you’re wearing. “Hmm. Sad music, cosy jumper, earthy tea, whiny voice,” he lists sympathetically. “Someone’s had a long day.”

“You’ve no idea.” His large hands come to your shoulders, kneading deeply. You squirm at the intensity, pain and pleasure dancing inextricably. At a knot a bit too sensitive for his ministrations, you flinch out of his grasp and step back, turning to face him. You expect to be met by his beguiling brown eyes, but they’re look down. His head cocks to the side appreciatively. You realize he’s admiring your bare legs and chuckle. “Nothing you haven’t seen before.” “Doesn’t mean I like it any less,” he retorts, voice gruffer. He looks you up and down with an intensity that dissipates any playfulness in your mood. You realize how badly you want him to take you, to make you leave the day behind you and completely envelop you in the here and now… and the pleasure it could hold. 

Remus can’t read your mind, though, and being the doting boyfriend he is, he comes to hold you gently again, stroking your back, trying to comfort you. “Let’s get you relaxed, huh, baby?” he says, kissing your forehead. “Yeah,” you whisper.

“What do you want to do? Want to go straight to bed? Watch something? We could read together? Same book or different, you choose.” He’s already taken over preparing your tea, seemingly completely distracted away from your body. 

His suggestions and demeanour make you think maybe he’s not in the mood, Remus never being shy to tell you when he is, so you worry maybe it’s not the best moment to voice your honest desires. 

“I don’t know, whatever; you choose.” You sound a bit defeated, and he looks over at you at your tone. “No, you should. I’m happy with anything if it’s good for you, really,” he says as he turns back to the easy work of pouring the hot water. He’s always this sweet, almost always defers to doing whatever you feel like doing. 

It’s no fault of his, but your looming tiredness, your sudden heat, it all makes you snappy. “I said I don’t care, Rem. Why do I always have to be the one to choose everything? Sometimes I’m tired, okay? And I already said you can choose.” The mugs are forgotten, his attention fully on you at this. “Woah, what’s up?” He leans back on the counter, arms crossed a bit defensively, but eyes all concern. 

“Nothing,” you sigh. “Nothing, I’m sorry.” You turn away and busy yourself with anything you can find, tidying up mindlessly. “Hey, c’mon, love, what’s up?” His voice is slightly harder, and as he asks, he turns you to face him, his hands firmly holding your shoulders. His eyes look searchingly into yours, but your eyes flutter closed at the feeling of his hands on you and the sound of his deep voice. You bite your lip and whimper very very softly.

His hands immediately leave you, and it’s urgent when he rushes out, “Woah, did I hurt you? I didn’t mean to, baby; I just wanted to talk. You alright?”

You nod and whine “Remus” again, stepping toward him and looking into his eyes. You grab his hands in yours and place them back on your body. You bring one to your face and lean into it, put the other on your hip and squeeze your hand over his. 

He’s watching you closely, letting you guide him. 

His proximity and his touch, even like this, heat you up, and your body pushes you to honesty.

“I don’t want to sleep, or  read, or any of that. And I don’t want to choose anything or think about anything else. I want you, Rem. I just want you. Please.”

His eyebrows shoot up, and ever so slowly he starts moving his own hands on you, yours still hovering above them. 

His touch makes you melt, and your eyes shut. You exhale loudly as his hand grabs your face a bit harder. His thumb strokes, pushing into the skin of your cheek. You open your eyes and meet his. They’re looking at yours searchingly, but upon seeing the look you’re giving him when they connect with yours, something clicks in Remus. You register it in his eyes as they shift in what seems like one blink from keen observation to piercing intensity. 

He pulls your face to his forcefully, devouring your mouth. He’s eating up your immediate whimpers, tilting your head with his hands on either side of your face, pushing your tongue with his and licking into your mouth. You surrender completely and let him guide your ardent kiss. 

Soon, his hand juts your head back with no warning, tugging your hair, and his mouth moves from yours to your jaw, kissing sloppily until he reaches your neck, where he plants a cruel bite. You yelp, and he licks over it soothingly, but his voice is rough as he asks, “This what you want?” His mouth sucks your neck harshly, and his hands push under your jumper and grip the flesh of your hips so hard your body sways with his motions. 

“Fuuuck, Rem, yes, pleeease.” “Yes what?” he snaps. “Yes, I want this. I want you to touch me like this.” 

“Good,” he utters matter-of-factly. 

He tugs the jumper over your head and throws it aside then maneuvers your body with his strong hands on your hips. 

“Turn around,” he commands. And you do, though his hands flip you without your having much say in it. 

His arms wrap around you, and he kneads your breasts roughly. He handles you so harshly that you yelp again in pleasured pain. 

Remus presses his body up behind your now almost completely naked one. You feel his breath on your neck and shoulder, and you shiver as sensation shoots down your spine. You’re very pleasantly surprised to also feel his already hard cock on your arse even through his trousers. You push back into it and grind. He groans in reaction then chuckles gruffly into your ear. 

“Fuck, you’re desperate, huh?” He squeezes your tits and thrusts his hips. His voice low and ominously even, he tells you, “You know, baby, all you had to do was tell me you wanted me to fuck you.” You whimper; he chuckles again. “Yeah? You want to get fucked, pretty girl?” You nod wordlessly. “I wanted to fuck you as soon as I came in here and saw your gorgeous thighs.” Never breaking contact with your skin, his hands slide down your body and squeeze the outsides of your thighs. Then they cup your arse and squeeze even tighter, jiggling it in his rough grip. “You looked so fucking sexy. But I thought you were tired. Silly me, huh, not realizing how you wanted me to take care of you. This how you want me to take care of you?” 

“Yees.” “Hmm.” 

Your head is lolled back on his shoulder, but he pushes you suddenly forward. “Bend over.” You do. The kitchen counter is cold on your tits; his hand is hot on your back, pushing you down. 

His other hand yanks your knickers down and rubs roughly through your folds. You’re soaked. “Dirty girl,” he chuckles. “Wanting to get fucked this badly.”

Without ado, he pushes two fingers into you. You scream at the breach, at the first hot graze of your inner walls. He rubs them around then curves them toward your sweet spot. His pace is immediately punishing, and it’s not too many thrusts later that he adds a third finger. Your cunt is squelching as his fingers fuck you. His hand on your back moves up toward your neck and massages your shoulder as he holds you in place.

He keeps going, pushing so hard the fronts of your thighs smack the counter with each thrust, so fast that it’s hard to discern the increasing shaking of your thighs from the motions of his hand.

You whine, and turn your face into the counter to quiet it. His hand at your neck yanks your hair to lift your face. “Uh-uh, pretty thing. I’ve had enough of you being quiet tonight. If I’m going to fuck you this good, you’re going to let me hear how I make you feel.” You whimper involuntarily, doing nothing to filter your loud reaction. “Better.”

Your thighs are seriously shaking now, and you’re tightening deliciously. You’re getting close. 

His hand stops and pulls out of you, the other also releasing his grip on your hair. Your resulting whine sounds almost like you’re crying. 

“Fuck, baby, relax,” Remus laughs. You hear the zipper of his trousers, hear the soft pat of clothes falling to the floor. His foot kicks yours into a wider stance suddenly. Then you feel his hard cock prodding at your warm, wet entrance. One of his hands grips your hip harshly as he guides himself in. He’s slightly slower as he does, but he pushes all the way in without stopping. When he’s completely inside you, you whimper again at the fullness and barely hear him whisper “fuck.” 

Just a second later, he’s thrusting; a few seconds later, it’s already rocking your entire body from the intensity. His grip tightens, and you know you’ll admire a bruise there tomorrow. His other hand grabs your shoulder for better leverage as he pistons in and out of you. 

You’d already been so close that at the fucking he’s giving you, you feel close to the brink before even adjusting entirely to the position. Your hands flat on the counter, uselessly attempting to grip something, give you some stability as your body spasms jarringly. 

“Fuck, already?” Remus pants. His tone seems sincerely surprised, not teasingly so. 

He moves his hand to your other hip, vice-like grip pulling your arse onto his body in time with each fast, forward thrust of his hips. 

He’s the one to moan loudly this time as your walls clench him. His prolonged moan sounds like it’s strangled in his throat as you clench again and again, but though it’s clearly wrecking him, the only effect on his pace is its increased brutality. 

You start cumming in earnest, crying through it, shaking hard. Remus fucks you through most of it, but toward the very end, you feel him pull all the way out quickly, the absence jarring and gaping. His fingers pick up what his cock was just doing, and the sudden re-intensity gives you a second peak. He keeps going until your clenching cunt has mostly relaxed then slowly removes his fingers. 

Your body feels heavy and limp, its only movement the harsh up and down of your heavy panting. When Remus’s hands maneuver you to lift your torso and turn you around, you’re very little help. You feel unstable on your legs, but Remus safely holds you up. “Why’d you —” you start, your voice an exhausted whisper.

“Shut up,” he says, words hard, tone soft. He’s panting too, looking sweaty and spent. “Jump.” You’re confused, but your body heeds his command as his hands lift your arse up till you’re sitting on the counter. His hands grab the backs of your thighs and lift them up and out. You fall back slightly at the shift and end up resting on your forearms looking up at him. You rest your foot on the counter when his hand drops your leg so he can use it to guide himself back inside you.

He slips in easily but takes a moment to settle once he does. His eyes closed, chin lifted, chest rising and falling heavily. He looks so beautiful. 

When he’s gathered himself, he shifts as close to you as he can and guides you up toward him too. Your legs wrap around his waist, your arms support you as you hold on to the counter’s edge. His support you, too, wrapped around your waist.  

His forehead comes to yours, and he kisses you sloppily as his hips start thrusting again, more slowly this time. One arm still anchoring you, his other hand comes to your face, holding it as he keeps kissing you. His breathing picks up again as his hips do.

Face still close to yours, he confesses, “I know you wanted it rough, but I really felt like looking at you when I came this time.” “Fuck, Rem.” You kiss him hard and clench him harder. He groans and picks up his pace, clearly getting tired but chasing an approaching high. 

His hand slips between your bodies, pushing you the slightest angle away from him so he can rub at your clit. Your cunt spasms at the sensation, and you hear his breath catch. 

He presses harder, establishes a rhythm, gradually making it faster. You’re close again at his adept touch, and you chant his name desperately as you shake your hips and push over your edge. His strangled moan tells you he’s cumming before the feel of it between your legs does, his dark, aching eyes on you the whole time. Once he starts slowing down, you wrap your arms tightly around him and nestle into his neck. He kisses you everywhere he can reach: your cheek, your neck, your shoulder. 

When he pulls apart from you, you shiver. You’re covered in sweat, and as he pulls his softening cock out of you, the wetness there is even worse. You wrap your arms around yourself and clench your thighs together. 

“Here, baby,” Remus says, running for a clean towel, dampening it before standing in front of you again. Very gently, he pushes your thighs apart again, stroking one soothingly as he cleans between your legs. When he’s done, he wraps you in a hug to bring you down off the counter, supporting you while you find you balance after your legs being rendered jelly.

“C’mere.” He holds you as he walks you to your bedroom. “You want to shower?” “‘M too tired. Can I shower in the morning?” “‘Course, lovely. Whatever you want.” “Ugh.” “What is it?” “I need to pee.” Remus giggles at you as he guides you toward the bathroom instead of the bed. 

“I can’t pee with you staring at me like that,” you complain when he just leans on the sink as you try to go. “I’m not staring; I’m admiring.” “Ok, I can’t pee with you admiring me like that.” He laughs again and turns around dramatically. He takes the opportunity to clean himself up.

You do what you need to do but stay sitting on the toilet even after you’ve finished, feeling too tired to get up. Remus dampens your hand towel and squats in front of you. He dabs at your face gently, freshening it up. You close your eyes at the soothing sensations of being cleaner and of being doted on. When he’s done your whole face and neck, he pecks your nose before getting up. “You planning on sleeping here or what?” he teases. “‘M tired,” you moan. “C’mon, lovely girl,” he chuckles, yanking you up. You finish cleaning up then follow him to bed, plopping down onto it. He hasn’t stopped giggling at your antics. “Want clothes?” “Just knickers please.” He tosses you a clean pair, slips into his own pants, then falls into bed with you. He shifts your body into a reasonable position and pulls the covers over you. Resting on his side, propped up on his elbow, his other hand starts stroking your bare skin lovingly. “You okay, sweet girl?” “Hmmm.” He kisses your forehead. “I know you’re sleepy, but just tell me if you’re okay. Nothing hurts or anything?” “No, Rem, I feel great.” You smile up at him without opening your eyes. You can’t see him looking down at you like you’re the most precious person in the world. To him, you are. “’S like my whole body is sinking and floating at the same time.” He chuckles adoringly and kisses you again, cuddling up beside you. “Good.” “Hmm.” You’re sinking into sleep but whisper giddily, “Thanks for fucking me.” He barks a full laugh. As it quiets to back to his giggle, he brings his face to yours. He nuzzles your nose with his and kisses your cheek. “Always happy to take care of my girl.” He kisses you again. “It was fun. Good for you? What you wanted?” “Mmhmm,” you nod. “Just what I wanted.” You use what little energy you have left to shift closer to him. “Now I want your cuddles.” “Always happy to take care of my girl,” he says again, more softly this time, as he wraps his arms around you snugly and kisses your forehead. 

You settle into each other, and the rise and fall of his breathing, the graze of his petting fingertips are the last things you feel as you drift into sleep.

[jisatsuwaifu]

Life is incredibly frustrating, stressful, and exhausting. Everyday I think “it’s okay, it’ll get better, try again tomorrow” but it just keeps proving me wrong. When I think things are getting better and I can finally relax, something else comes along and puts me right back into panic mode. It’s always something, there’s never a break. I never feel safe. All I do is complain about how sad or frustrated I am and I’m sure everyone around me is sick of hearing it. Which is fine, I wouldn’t want to be surrounded by misery when my life is good either or listen to a broken record when there’s much better music to be heard. I am my own responsibility, I shouldn’t rely on others.

My thoughts consume me. Not in a cutesy I’m just a girl cringe kind of way but in a “I need to go to sleep as soon as possible to prevent an accident” because I cannot trust my own head to comfort me but to only make scenarios worse or feed into my paranoia. I am not built to be left alone. I constantly feel like I’m too much and not enough. I’ve never felt more loved but also so alone in all my life. Everything is black and white there is no grey areas with my mind.

I just don’t think anyone knows or understands how thin I’m being stretched and how badly I’d just love for everything to stop and to be able to catch my breath. Just for a day. I’ve cried for help but I don’t think the one person I need help from genuinely hears me. I dont trust many people to begin with. There’s only so much a single person can take before it starts to cripple them. And I know I can be over dramatic and too emotional at times but this genuinely feels like the end, I can’t see past this point in my life. And the sad part is I do not know how I got here. Or this far to begin with. But I am so tired. It’s times like these I wish I had my mom back or even just a family to lean on and seek advice from, but I can’t even entertain my own sister long enough to talk on the phone with me. I don’t understand why I exist or what my purpose is if all I’ve ever been exposed to is pain and abandonment. There’s some aspects of my life that I know I serve a purpose for and want to make proud, I’m trying my hardest for that one thing. I just don’t want to cause anymore damage than I already have. I can’t be like my mother.

I just needed somewhere to vent, some outlet. It won’t change anything. I feel hopeless and empty again. I might just delete everything. I don’t know.

The best I can do right now is try again tomorrow.

( if you read all of this thanks for listening to my rant and I’m sorry I wasted your time when you could have been scrolling onto something cooler like tiddies or anime idk but ty anyways <3 )

[toxintouch]

yk how in veres likes on his character sheet it says he like cooking (badly)…… WHY HAS NO ONE DONE A FIC ABOUT THAT YET‼️⁉️⁉️ THAT SHOULD NOTTT BE A WASTED OPPORTUNITY. i’m not even joking im ab to send this to so many people because i can’t let this go to waste 😞

Here u are anon!  For the record, you are completely free to send this prompt around wherever you’d like!  It was such a fun idea, I’d love to see more takes on it. ^^

Warnings: Vere talking Innuendos? Innuendos.  So many, and I don’t guarantee that they are funny lol.  Just a general silly vibe and imo: absolutely  tooth rotting fluff.

‧₊˚ ⋅ 𓐐𓎩 ‧₊˚ ⋅SOUS CHEF ‧₊˚♡₊˚

You find yourself wandering through Lowtown during the lunch hour, trying to decide what sounds like a good meal.

Your mouth waters at the scents being carried on the breeze, a plethora of pleasant aromas wafting out of the eateries nestled inside the Amaryllis District, so fragrant that you can smell them all the way down on the bustling streets of Lowtown as long as you stay downwind.

However, if there’s one nice thing about knowing Leander it's that you also know you don’t have to go that far (or spend that much) for a delicious lunch. 

Near enough to the Wet Wick, there’s a series of side streets that make up an eclectic amalgamation of Lowtown and the Amaryllis District, and in it: a small and inconspicuous eatery.  The menu changes often, though you aren’t sure if that’s out of innovation or necessity, but the food is always filling and reasonably priced.

You follow the winding streets, getting lost for a brief moment before correcting your course, traveling until you see colorful chipped girih tiles and wide, clean windows.  You let yourself into the shop, the now familiar sound of hinges in need of an oiling welcoming you.  

There’s an assortment of goods on display–jars of honey and spiced fruit and loaves of braided bread with seeds–all kept safely locked away beneath an enchanted pane of glass.

Looking around, though, you don’t see anyone selling said fantastic wares.

You call out, expecting the shop keep or her wife to come running but instead you hear…silence.

Followed by a loud metallic clatter.

You freeze, unsure what to do, what the threat is–if there’s even a threat?–but before you can make up your mind, you’re greeted by a most unexpected sight.

Vere comes out of the kitchen area, his hair swept into an artfully stunning up-do that reveals the long line of his neck and clavicle, blemished only by the heavy collar locked around his throat. 

He’s wearing a weighty linen apron over his clothing, presumably to protect his outfit, though–his long gossamer sleeves are completely discordant with the notion, making you think that maybe the apron is more of an aesthetic choice.

“What’s this–?  A mouse?  In my kitchen?” Vere asks playfully as you continue to stare, dumbfounded.  He wields a spatula in his hand like a weapon–swatching it into his off-hand like a riding crop with a decisive snap.

“Where is–?”

“–The shop keep?  Wherever she pleases–the shop’s closed on Mondays.”

(You really don’t like the way he’s watching you…  Or the way he keeps inching closer…)

You take a step backwards, your eyes never leaving his.  “Oh,” you say, bandaged hands reaching blindly behind you.  “I didn’t realize.  The door was unlocked, so…”  You trail off.

You find the doorknob at last.  You attempt to turn it only to find that it won’t budge.

“Was it?”

Vere saunters up to you, tail swaying behind him.  You manage to tear your eyes away from his predator stare to search for possible exits, though you know for a fact you won’t be fast enough.   You look back and he’s already in your space, crowding you against the entryway.

(He smells really good, actually.  Like leather and spice and the subtle cling of perfume and incense.  And beneath that, something–earthy–animalistic, but in a way that’s intoxicating as opposed to unpleasant.)

“I was just about to make myself a snack–how nice that a snack came to me.”

“Stop playing around.” You try to steel yourself and inject the perfect amount of scolding into your voice while combating his heated stare.  “I know you’re just fucking with me to try and get a reaction; you and I both know you’re not going to eat me.” 

If he was, he would have done it by now.  Sometime within the weeks you’ve known him.  …Probably. 

Unless he just likes to play with his food.

“I didn’t realize you knew me so well,”  he says, looking amused.  “Perhaps I didn’t plan to, but now I simply can’t resist.  You look so absolutely delectable, how could I possibly contain myself?”

You don’t get the chance to reply.  Vere’s countenance changes suddenly–you watch his ears flatten a second before you hear the screaming whistle of a teapot.  His ears twitch in annoyance at the sound, his perfectly sculpted face showing a sour sneer.  He gives you a sideways glance, calculating.

“Then again.  I find myself in need of a sous chef.  Congratulations on your promotion.  Come along now.”  He hooks a finger into your cloak and pulls you easily into the kitchen.  (To be fair, you don’t struggle.  Anyone would want to see where this is going, right?)

He releases you once you’ve crossed over the threshold, waving his fingers uncaringly towards a second apron affixed to a hook on the wall as he beelines to remove a glass teapot from the stove and stifle the noise.  He moves quickly as you watch, casually throwing aside the spatula in his hand in favor of an ornate silver teaspoon.  He measures a vibrantly colored tea into the inlaid steeping container of the equally ornate teapot and takes a pleased inhale as the tea’s fragrance blooms, humming as he flips over a delicate hourglass to keep track of the steeping time.

There’s silence for a moment–

Him watching the teapot and you watching him.

“Well?”  He asks, without looking up.  You’ve seen this look before, you think – this pensive, almost lonesome look that makes your heart ache against all better judgment.  “Staying or going?”

He grins when you put on the apron.  You search his face for some sincerity, but he’s all sharp teeth and tall ears, covering any glimpses of deeper emotion with a sheen of smugness.  He circles you once you have the apron on, taking in the image.

“Mm, don’t you just look adorable.  Very domesticated.”

You’re pretty sure that the word he’s looking for is domestic. But of course, he knows what he said and he meant to say it.  You decide that he’s probably betting on your correction, already armed with a witty retort.  You smooth the apron down while pointedly looking away, deciding that you won’t give him the satisfaction.  You hear him chuckle.

Since you’re avoiding looking at Vere, you look around the kitchen for the first time.

It’s a spacious workspace–moreso than the storefront, even.  There’s a large iron stove unlike anything you’ve ever seen, covered with magical runes and dials, with a large hearth built into the belly of it.  A plethora of pots and pans have been placed on the burners, left to sizzle and pop in the red hot heat.  

Oil is singing from the heated, shallow basins but you don’t see anything cooking inside.  

There’s a slab of meat diced into neat squares and a heaping bowl of lumpy batter set to the side of the stove top.

“What are you making?”  You ask, trying to make sense of the scene.

“Panko crusted fish filet.  And there’s a pasta in the oven.  For dessert, I was thinking–” he gives you a sly look, one that makes your ears feel warm, “hmm, well.  I just had a much better idea in regards to dessert.”  He makes a show of licking his fangs, the movements of his tongue slow and sensual.

You think you tied your apron too tight; your airway is feeling a little constricted.  It seems to be getting worse the longer you watch.

You clear your throat, tearing your eyes away.  More ingredients, most partially prepared, and a host of dirtied pots and pans greet you.  You turn your back to him as you explore, fully engrossed in all of the views that the mess of a kitchen has to offer.  You’re almost afraid to ask: “So, what am I here to help with?”

“Oh?”  You don’t hear Vere come up next to you, but you feel him brushing up against you.  “Does my darling sous chef require…instruction?  A guiding hand, so to speak?”  You freeze, feeling his breath against your ear, shivers running down your spine at his light and teasing chuckle.

But then he’s breezing past you, making a wide dramatic gesture toward the large tome perched surreptitiously on the counter.  “Lucky for you, I’ve a recipe.”  His tail wags swishes elegantly behind him as he beams with pride.

His tail knocks the whisk out of the mystery batter beside the fish filet but he takes no notice.

Vere hops gracefully up onto the counter, reaching for the batter.  He does an impressive twist in order to grab hold of another whisk and you take the time to appreciate that.  Then, with Vere occupied and seemingly ignoring you, you take a look at the recipe book.  

The text is old and withered with the occasional dash of sprawling spidery script painting the margins.  (Said writing is utterly illegible–you’re actually not sure if it’s in a language you can read, though if you squint you think you can see something that looks like the word ‘cake’.)  The page it’s opened to is ripped in half, rendering precious steps of the recipe lost to time.  You spot a mysterious bite mark piercing through the corner of the leather cover.

And can’t stop yourself from surreptitiously glancing over at Vere.  He’s moved on from the batter (which looks as lumpy as it did a minute ago) and is now eating skewers of raw fish with his nails.

“You’re not supposed to eat while you cook,” you say, the time worn words out of your mouth before you can examine your personal stance on them.

“Says who?  Some limp dick?  No shame in indulging, pet.”

“You’re not even gonna have anything left to cook,” you warn.

“Hum, sounds like my sous chef should get to work covering them in batter instead of just standing there before I eat them all.”

You roll your eyes, but follow through with instructions.  The space is unfamiliar and your movements are slow and unsure with Vere looming over you from his perch on high, watching.

One of the pans of oil gives an ominous pop.  “Hmm, sounds like it’s hot enough,” says Vere.  “Move over.”

“Is that safe?”

“For me,” Vere says simply.  “And it’s faster.  Now stand further back or you'll get splattered–and not in the fun way.”  Idly, he tosses a batter covered filet into the shallow pan.  The resulting hiss makes you both cringe.

As if on queue, the hourglass for the tea gives a gentle chime, lighting up with a golden glow.  (You’re beginning to wonder how this humble shop can afford all these magical items, but then again this is the city of secrets.  You’re probably better off not knowing.)  Vere’s ears perk up, pleased.  He tosses the remaining fillets in the pan without a fuss, setting lids on top of each to contain the oil, acting as if doing so is going to stop any potential disaster.

Main course forgotten, he moves on to digging something out from inside one of the many cupboards.  “Be a dear and cut this for me, will you?”  He hands you a delicate peach before heading to the tea pot, stirring the contents and adding what must be a priceless amount of honey.

The peach in your hand is overripe but still vibrant–amazing, as you haven’t seen fresh fruit at all since you came to Eridia.  Your mouth waters anew as you remember what led you here in the first place–your quest for a meal–and you’re almost tempted to take a bite, follow Vere’s advice and sink your teeth in.

“My, my.  I’m almost jealous.  I thought you only looked at me like that.”

Vere shushes the denial from your lips, bossing you around regarding how he wants the peach sliced before shooing you out of his way and finishing his remaining tea preparations,with the look of an artist at work.  The tea is a warm oolong color, made only more alluring once the infusion of peach is complete.

It’s refreshing, too, once Vere serves it to you over ice.

You can almost ignore the great plumes of smoke coming from the oven.

Vere cooks how others might enjoy a leisurely stroll. 

Which is to say, he seems to be having fun, but you’re not convinced he intends on really going anywhere.  Still, there’s a rhythm to it–a dance, though he leads you in expected loops and turns, changes the tune at a moment's notice.  He’ll get bored of the task at hand and find some new spice to peruse, demand you taste test an ingredient or give your opinion on a dizzying new flavor he’s concocted.

(He manages to convince you to sample a bit of cucumber soup from the cold box.  You retch, proclaiming it salty, downing another glass of delicious peach oolong–

“I can still taste it in the back of my throat…!”–and he cackles wildly.)

Thick locks of hair are falling out of his up-do by the time he’s satisfied, framing his face and bringing your attention, again to the inviting line of his clavicle.  He tosses his loose hair over his shoulder, preening.

The recipe book is basically ruined, and the pasta is null and void, but some of the fillets look mildly edible.  The artful garnish is beautiful, at least.  The kale and orange slices really bring out the crispy burnt bits.  Vere seems to enjoy plating the food a great deal, humming and rearranging and circling the display until he deems it arranged to perfection.

He’s elegant when he takes a bite, biting down with a crunch.  His tail goes very still for a moment, then shivers microscopically as he chews.  He swallows in a manner that you can only describe as dignified, dabbing his lips with a napkin.  You wait in anticipation, but Vere says nothing for a long time.  Then, he quietly takes the old recipe book and throws it away.

Thankfully, he doesn’t insist on you trying it too.

You end up snacking on some of the pre-made goods, drinking the remaining tea and lounging at one of the shop’s cozy little tables.  The mood is light and easy, and the view is magnificent.  Outside, there’s nothing but trash littered streets and urchins, but inside…the afternoon glow coming from the window illuminates Vere like a sunset, painting him in dazzling shades of gold and red and bronze.

Vere hums, peering at you pointedly through his sooty lashes.  “So, dessert?”

You can’t imagine the look that comes across your face–whatever it is, it makes Vere laugh.

“What are you giving me that look for?  My intentions are pure.” His voice is a masterclass in syrupy false-innocence.  “As clean as Leander’s bed sheets after–”

“Please don’t finish that sentence and give me any mental images,” you beg.  “I have to sleep there tonight, I’d rather not know.”

“Ignorance is bliss.”  Vere agrees, closing his eyes and appearing to bask in the sun for a moment.  His face does something that you don’t quite catch–some hidden expression–but then, he’s smiling easily.  He must really be relaxed if he can still smile seconds after thinking about Leander.  You’re still admiring him when the shadows against the walls flicker, and suddenly he isn’t sitting next to you any more.

Instead, he’s returning from the kitchen, a tray in hand.

He sets it down in front of you, revealing an assortment of strawberries and an ornate silver porringer of what appears to be melted chocolate.  Vere sets it down on the table, plucking the small dessert spoon from the chocolate once he’s seated across from you again.

“Occasionally, life does offer up something sweet to savor–only for those willing to go out and take it.”  His tongue darts out to lick the chocolate off the spoon in his hand.  He maintains eye contact as his tongue laves across the basin and–embarrassingly–you think you get a little lightheaded from the intensity with which your blood rushes to your face.  The crinkles at the corners of his eyes tell you that he know exactly where your mind has gone.

Setting the spoon down, Vere instead picks up a bare strawberry, leaning in closer to press it gently to your mouth.

The chocolate is overly bitter–a little burnt, perhaps, but you can’t find it in yourself to care when you’re tasting the remnants of it on Vere’s lips.

(Before leaving, you plop a few coins down on the counter as payment.  You brought enough to cover your food…but definitely not enough to cover the mess in the kitchen.  There’s really nothing you can do about that.  

You hope you don’t get blacklisted.  You’d like to come back next Monday.)

Hope you enjoyed if you made it this far! ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡

[starzgaze]

ARCHIVED: annoyance [unfinished]

pairing: sjw/archivist!reader

unreliable synopsis: [y.name] tries to discreetly follow jinwoo but they fail so badly that jinwoo played them lmao

a/n: [y.name] whole job is from an oc so if you need a bit of context on how they work you can check my oc ophion because this is a self indulgent piece huhuhu.. also shit english and its unfinished so yeah erm

[y.name] stared down the intricately detailed paper in front of them. It honestly looked like something straight out of some fairytale but [y.name] knew better. It was a personal announcement stating where there's a bit of information that's incorrect or not processed correctly in their archives.

They sighed in irritation.

The archivist crumpled the piece of paper and then threw it aggressively to some wall, letting out an annoyed groan.

"AGH! This rarely happened before even in past timelines?? It only happened when he—" [y.name] ranted before shoving their face into their hands and let out an irritated groan again. They genuinely started to hate this job that was forcibly imposed on them.

And that job was being an archivist to archive everything that happened in this world for the purpose that their now dead boss, the absolute being, could look through the records [y.name] made if they got bored of the monarchs and rulers fighting and went off somewhere else. [y.name]'s job was supposed to made easier because information from the future and past would be forcibly injected into their head like some sort of epiphany because the movements of everything that the absolute being made was predictable. Which means they don't have to manually archive it.

That is until Sung Jin-woo came in.

That... man... almost drove [y.name] into insanity. Right after the dungeon incident, [y.name] ordinarily archived whatever happened to Sung Jin-woo in the dungeon and assumed he would have an average 'Second Awakening' and nothing more.

But when [y.name] archived it they were immediately greeted with an announcement that the information they archived was incorrect. [y.name] rose a brow at this.

They were rarely wrong so how can this be? The last time they archived something wrong was the time where Antares did something so out of character or Ashborn constantly doing decisions that even the existing predictions couldn't match his choices. [y.name] was definitely confused at this but they didn't pay that much mind to it.

They simply adjusted it and tweaked around until it approved the information [y.name] archived then after this [y.name] thought they'll never encounter this ever again for a while.

Until it repeated.

and repeated

repeated

repeated......

....aaanndd repeated......

...

"oh my god I think I'm gonna bald from stress" [y.name] whined as they gripped the folder in their hands and narrowed their eyes at the profile in the folder. The archivist gritted their teeth at the sight of the hunter.

S-rank hunter, Sung Jin-woo.

"Just how the hell did you become this strong?!!?"

The folder flew into the air as [y.name] threw it as they covered their face exasperatedly. The only thing that was haunting [y.name]'s days was Sung Jin-woo, the very reason of why they stay up at night and grovel at the thought of.

Ever since his sudden rise in the rankings in Korea, [y.name]'s work as an archivist doubled. They had to manually archive every little decision Jin-woo made in his life that'll affect the world or even the universe with how powerful he's getting. It was difficult for sure, especially when they're trying to not seem like a creep discreetly following the hunter around trying to jot down whatever Jin-woo is doing because now this magical force that helped them archive doesn't work on him.

"Eugghhh. How many days left before this guy is gonna figure out I've been following him for the past few months" [y.name] sighed as they turned their head over to where the folder fell. Their eyes hardened at thr sight of the folder, annoyance bubbling inside of them. Sung Jinwoo is seriously making their job harder than it should be.

Jin-woo can't miss how a figure would tail him whenever he was in public and most definitely whenever he's in a high ranking dungeon for some reason.

He would occasionally catch them at his peripheral vision but when he actually turn his head and try to see who it was they would magically disappear. Jin-woo could easily of course appear in their shadow but this figure hasn't posed a threat to him or to anyone he loved.

"My leige, they're tailing your trail again. Do you wish for me to dispose them?" Beru reported as he materialized behind Jin-woo. He raised his hand and waved it dismissively. "No need. Let them be"

In truth, Jin-woo recognized the figure. He was sure that the elusive stalker he has doesn't recognize them anymore but Jin-woo does.

[y.name], one of the few who didn't laughed behind Jin-woo's back but instead encouraged him and served as someone of inspiration for Jin-woo.

To be fair, Jin-woo used to have a small crush on [y.name] before but he forgotten about it when he was going through his grueling training of the system. This mostly became the reason why his feelings for [y.name] dwindled but it quickly resurfaced when they started trailing him around.

[hooked-on-elvis]

JERRY SCHEFF ON ELVIS

"There was just something about the way he sang, and also the way he'd interact, that was really really good. It was the musical communication and personal communication. He was just really nice to us. It was fun to play, you know." — Jerry Scheff, bass player.

Scene from "Elvis On Tour" (MGM, 1972): Elvis and his bass player Jerry Scheff. Jerry played bass for the singer from July 31, 1969, to February 23, 1973, and again from April 24, 1975, until Presley’s final show on June 26, 1977, at the Market Square Arena in Indianapolis.

The admiration in Jerry's eyes when he looks at Elvis... it was earned. 🥹 Jerry said in an interview he didn't like Elvis' work until 1969, when he was invited to play in Elvis' band in Las Vegas for the first time.

Jerry 'thought that jazz and classical was what was happening at that time' and, although he had played some pop and rock 'n roll songs before working with the King, he never played rock "Elvis' way". The funny thing is: Jerry was a recording studio musician and played in several artists' records, including two records by Elvis himself, but from that moment as a musician working in studios with Elvis prior to work in his live concerts, Jerry has no memories. There's records showing that Jerry Scheff was one of the professional musicians playing in Elvis' soundtrack recording sessions in two occasions prior to the invitation to join in Elvis' TCB Band, but he doesn't remember such moments or ever seeing Elvis at that period. Jerry was asked about it and his first answer was negative, saying that he never played in any of Elvis' soundtrack albums, so the Union contracts were presented to him and there it was. Jerry played bass on the soundtrack albums for the films 'Double Trouble' and 'Easy Come, Easy Go' (both times in 1966).

Below, another picture of Jerry looking at El with that same shine in his eyes (this is 1970 - and that admiration in his eyes means a deep respect, as you'll notice further on):

1970. Jerry Scheff is at the far left in the picture above.

This information above comes from an 1999 interview with Jerry Scheff. Following, a few excerpts that I found very interesting.

Do you remember what songs you rehearsed [in 1969, getting ready for the 'comeback' at the International Hotel in Vegas]? J: Oh, I can't remember. Blues songs, and 'Trying To Get To You', 'My Baby' - things like that. I read somewhere that you rehearsed about 150 songs. J: Oh yeah, we went over a LOT of songs, and then later we never rehearsed at all, so it's a good thing we rehearsed then! (laughs). It surprises me a little that you rehearsed so many songs, and yet stuck to the same 12 - 15 songs the entire engagement. J: Well, that wasn't up to us. It does after a while when you play the same songs, you know, get a little - But the saving grace was that Elvis never did anything the same way twice. We always had to keep our eye on him. You never could just, you know, relax (laughs), you had to pay attention. You never knew what he was gonna do. Never.

Elvis on stage in late 1969 and then early 1972 (with Jerry Scheff).

One interesting point in this interview is what Jerry said about Elvis and his political views:

Did you ever discuss political issues with Elvis? J: No, I never discussed politics with him. But in some ways Elvis was more conservative, and in other ways he was very liberal. He wasn't someone that was following some political line, you know. He'd figure out for himself what he thought was right.

Elvis with Jerry Scheff onstage in the 70s.

Here it is: The most heartwarming moment in this whole interview (I recommend you reading the full article that I'll link at the end), is when Jerry Scheff stands up for his friend:

Towards the end of his life, Elvis was criticized badly for his appearance, his weight gain and so forth. J: You know, I've always been the kind of person that - I don't judge people on what they look like or on their faces. Period. I think that it very well could be that Elvis thought that he was a normal American man approaching middle age, and let himself go a little bit: 'It wasn't anybody's business'.

March 1977: Elvis and his musicians (TCB Band) on stage. Jerry Scheff is at the far up left corner, Ronnie Tutt hides behind his drums and James Burton is at the far right corner.

"The idea that it was Elvis' duty to keep himself pristine looking is ludicrous. It makes me angry to think that people think that. Why, what does he owe them? He doesn't owe them anything."

— Jerry Scheff

The press really went after him for it. J: The press was just horrible. But then again, I don't remember a good review, even in the early years. The press was always horrible. I discounted what they said. There were jokes about him on television shows and stuff, and people were really really cruel. They don't say that about, let's say Neil Diamond. They don't say: 'Neil Diamond is bald now, why doesn't he get a toupet?' or 'He's got a paunch'. Or David Crosby of Crosby, Stills and Nash. They don't go on about him, and he's overweight. But it was Elvis, you know. It makes me angry, it really does. People wanna make money, and if they need to be nasty about it, they'll do that. They'll crack jokes - Saturday Night Live will have a parody of Elvis, some fat guy with a jumpsuit on, and everybody goes Ha, Ha, Ha. They're like grave-robbers, you know. I don't have any respect for them. That part of human nature is not a very positive part of our make-up. A lot of the troubles between human beings are the lack of compassion of one another, and a lack of tolerance between human beings. How many of these same people that are saying this about Elvis and putting these parodies on the screen, how many of them have potbellies, how many of them have let themselves go, how many of them have other faults that are far worse than than the 'sin' of letting yourself get a little overweight? Or being so unhappy that you're - Because I have been there. I had a really bad bout of clinical depression some years ago. I was in that syndrome, that whole thing - drugs, alcohol and stuff. I understand that, you get caught in that. It's not a nice thing. Elvis was obviously in a depression in his last years. Feel some compassion for him, you know. He's a human being, for crying out loud - no worse, and no better. But he was certainly not as bad as some people. He always treated me with respect. We had an extremely good relationship. He was NEVER disrespectful to me. He was always there if I wanted to see him.

Another very interesting thing Jerry Scheff said concerns Elvis' Memphis Mafia guys. It caught my attention because linked that recollection to one of Elvis' old times army buddies' book (Johnny Lang's "My Army Days with Elvis: Friendship, Football, & Follies"). Johnny mentioned attending Elvis concerts in 1975 and 1976. In one of those occasions, Johnny talked to Charlie Hodge backstage and asked him if he could see Elvis and talk to him up close again, after many years without seeing each other after the army service. As Johnny shared, Charlie behaved overprotective and, without even checking, said Elvis was too tired to see anybody, but that he would say Johnny said 'hi' to him. It makes me sad to know not only friends like Johnny were hurt by what they probably assumed were strict orders by Elvis to those men working for him, and that they were only following them, but to think that Elvis many times didn't even was aware there were old friends that still cared for him so much to travel far distances with their families just to watch him perform live on stage, but also hoping that maybe they could be with him for a moment just to catch up a bit, and he never even heard about it... never. We know more about some of those cases than Elvis knew. That's so sad and it makes my blood boil, to be honest. How could they? Jerry Scheff, however, trusts they had their reasons to do such thing as to block people to get too near to Elvis, even old friends:

J: During the last years, these people in the so-called Memphis Mafia got into this Howard Hughes thing, where they could pick and choose who could see him. One night Charlie Hodge came down in the dressing-room, and said: 'You know, Elvis is really bumped out because you guys don't wanna see him'. And Ronnie and I said: 'Charlie, we have been down there to see him, but these guys always say: 'Oh, Elvis is busy'. So Charlie went back and told Elvis that, and Elvis hit the ceiling. Charlie came back and told us that Elvis just blew a stack. So there was that kind of stuff. I'm sure that all these people fulfilled some need that Elvis had, and I don't mean to question their motives. They just did what they thought would be best for him. So I don't try to judge that. But I do know that Elvis was always there for me.

Interview conducted in Denmark 1999 by Arjan Deelen. All rights on the excerpts published here goes to elvis.com.au. There's many other interesting information to learn on this interview. READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE.

[oneatlatime]

The Painted Lady

Air Bison, Sea Bison, and now Sludge Bison.

I have no idea how Aang is swimming through a solid. Must be an Avatar thing.

I bet there would be time for more potty breaks if Sokka hadn't spent 100+ hours of their time drawing up the schedule. A very Sokka thing to do though.

Because hills often have horns. Great disguise.

You can't tell me that a factory that close to their town wouldn't also become the town's primary employer.

That is a lot of town.

I sense a return of preachy Katara. This episode is going to suck.

I'm with Sokka on this one. Buy fish, move on, defeat Firelord, return to help with environmental remediation if time permits.

I like Doc. And Shu. Nice people.

Writers: if you have to make one of your characters an entirely different person to set up the episode's lesson of the week, maybe the lesson doesn't fit your chosen characters. This is the Warriors of Kyoshi all over again. Funny how that's happened to Sokka twice.

We are all Sokka.

And where exactly did this mysterious painted lady get the food to deliver to the village, if the reason the Gaang stopped in the village in the first place was because they needed food?

Let the record show: I lost the last of my patience with this episode 8 minutes and 9 seconds in.

Waterbending healing has never thrown off that much light before. Even the spirit oasis water wasn't that bright.

Also where is the water she's healing with? Usually she has a big bubble of it.

Impersonating a religious figure. That won't end badly.

"Well I hope she returns every night otherwise this place would go right back to the way it was." YES!!!!!! THAT'S THE POINT!!!!!

What was Katara's plan? Forget about the eclipse, forget about fighting the Fire Lord, we're going to stay here for the rest of our lives so that the painted lady can put in a nightly appearance. THIS IS WHY SOKKA DOES THE PLANNING.

Spirit magic is more doing the worm than doing the wave. Good to know.

Bold of a kids' show to advocate for ecoterrorism.

Aang's like "Hey spirit lady! Here's my resume! Here's my connections on LinkedIn!" Why did Katara think that faking being a spirit within two feet of the bridge to the spirit world would be consequence free? Actually that presupposes that Katara thought. Which she didn't. Sokka does her thinking.

"I don't get to meet many spirits. But the ones I do meet, not very attractive." I am OFFENDED on Yue's behalf. And Sokka's. I guess Aang doesn't like Water Tribe girls after all.

"I guess I just became her." No. That's an excuse and a deflection. I don't want to hear it.

What was I saying about Aang and Katara enabling each others' bad tendencies?

Sokka is horribly out of character this episode, but Aang is as well. In what universe would Aang be so unbothered by Appa being sick, and then so unbothered by the reveal that Katara had been faking Appa being sick? Like, this is Appa. He nearly skinned a bunch of sandbenders over the guy. And he finds out Katara's been messing with him and calls her 'great' and 'a secret hero.'

So this factory, despite being operational 24/7, has no night staff, not even a night guard? Because if it does (which it absolutely does - automation is a problem for factories in our world, not the ATLA one), Katara and Aang just killed A LOT of people.

And so she follows up one short term solution with another short term solution, which causes a third problem she will no doubt solve with a short term solution. You think there won't be reprisals for the only obvious suspects to this industrial sabotage? You think they won't rebuild the factory?

Sokka was kidding when he said that the Spirit Lady had better blow up the factory, but not in the way Katara thought he was kidding. Katara thought he wasn't being serious. But Sokka was serious, in that blowing up the factory is as short term a solution as appearing every night. He thought the joke - exchanging one bad solution for another - was obvious.

Somebody's enjoying himself a little too much.

Unfortunately, serving as Exhibit A is the most Toph has had to do all episode.

It is cathartic to see someone finally call Katara on her nonsense. But I'll bet everything I own that the narrative is going to side with her anyway.

Welp. I won that bet.

"You need me." Correct! Katara unsupervised needs bailing out after five minutes. "And I will never turn my back on you." A much more realistic goal than never turning your back on anyone who needs you, and also Sokka summarised in one sentence. Impressive for an episode where they had to Flanderise him beyond recognition to make Katara somehow the good guy.

Oh for fuck's sake. It's not about having a heart. This late in the game it's pure damage control.

So that's where the Painted Lady's food came from. I guess Fire Nation factories count as pirates?

I like the jetskis. The seem far more stable than actual jetskis.

It never occurred to Katara to obscure the evidence even a little bit? At least rub some dirt on the emblem. Look at me assuming Katara has thoughts.

Actual reprisals for once. About time.

This kid is annoying.

Toph gets to be a haunted house sound effects machine.

That's awfully waterbendery for a Fire Nation spirit.

I don't buy for a minute that anyone would be able to stay perfectly upright and balanced after an air blast from below without extensive trampoline training.

This won't work. His superiors, or the next shift change, or the first recruit wanting to climb the ranks quickly, will rise to the challenge presented here by the "painted lady." And as soon as one FN attack goes unchallenged by the "painted lady," the village is toast. I give them a week, tops.

Kudos to some clever in-universe bending special effects. Doesn't save the episode though.

Katara's preachy speech here makes absolutely no sense in light of the rest of the episode. Scolding them for not saving themselves, when waiting around for someone to save them appears to have worked perfectly? And having little miss I-must-save-the-whole-world-on-a-weekly-basis-otherwise-my-sense-of-self-implodes deliver that scold?

Who are these people wearing the Gaang's skin?

Yeah, nothing screams undercover in enemy territory like an entire village knowing that you're a waterbender. Good thing the only competent tracker in the Fire Nation is Zuko, otherwise these kids will absolutely be dead long before the eclipse.

Hi Bushi! You're about the only part of this episode that doesn't drive me nuts!

At least the animators had fun with this one.

Is this guy mopping the river?

Exactly how many days did they take out of Sokka's schedule to restore the ecosystem? I don't care how overlevelled these kids are at bending, you cannot mechanically separate an entire river's worth of dirt from water in an afternoon.

Well that's just he piss icing on the shit cake, isn't it? It wasn't enough for Sokka to lose all reason and come around to Katara's very flawed way of thinking, it wasn't enough for Aang to call her a hero, it wasn't enough to have a village worshipping at her feet, Katara needs affirmations of how right and special and correct and perfect and morally justified she is from the spirit world itself. This is Mary Sue stuff.

Final Thoughts

This is the first time an episode of Avatar has felt like a waste of my time.

It's also the first time I've felt like an episode has gone out of its way to insult the audience.

Katara talking about how she knows what she's doing is wrong is worth absolutely nothing when a) she goes right back to doing it; and b) literally every other part of this episode trips over itself to assure Katara that she's in the right.

Katara is downright punchable this episode. Sokka is Flanderised; Toph is non-existent; Aang is just there; poor Appa is an unwitting accessory to crime; and Momo has as much impact as a housefly.

So the execs forgot about the existence of The Spirit World Part One and demanded a save the environment special episode. The writers responded by forgetting that they'd already established that Katara was ride or die for literally anyone with a pulse in Imprisoned, and gave us this to remind us of that fact. They also forgot that they'd already established that Katara has no moral code whatsoever the minute her personal interest is involved in The Waterbending Scroll, so they decided to recycle the "narrative sides with Katara endangering them all over Sokka being reasonable" plot from that episode and hope we wouldn't notice. We did.

At least with Imprisoned, Katara kind of sort of caused the problem that she fixed. She was super tangentially involved in that kid's arrest. Here, she causes problems by trying to fix problems that she didn't really have any business getting involved in.

The more of this I watched, the more I wanted someone to slap Katara. What I wouldn't give for an episode where she is wrong (has happened a lot) and the episode doesn't pretend otherwise (has never happened). For god's sake, LET HER BE WRONG AND FEEL IT. How else is she going to progress past being self-righteously fourteen? Why is she being so consistently insulated from consequences? Aang chooses power over family at the end of season two and gets actually murdered for it. Katara steals, lies, skirts dangerously close to being a false prophet and does a nifty little ecoterrorism (with Aang's help), and she gets villagers being a bit shouty before big brother comes in and fixes it. Then she gets divine sanction for her actions so even the shouty bit is negated.

There's an interesting contrast in Katara's "I will never turn my back on people who need me" and Sokka's "I will never turn my back on you." It shows which of the two doesn't have their head in the clouds, and has actually formulated realistic expectations of how much a single person can do. It also speaks to the fundamental difference in how they operate. Katara acts; Sokka mitigates. Sokka does Katara's thinking for her; Katara outsources her thinking and then gets pissed when rational thoughts don't conform to her emotions' view of the world.

Why haven't the villagers moved away? If the water was poisoning them this much, why are they still here? Was the early 2000s too early to have a theme of climate refugees? Or the pollution equivalent? That would have been more interesting than this.

I hated this. Why isn't this the episode that gets hated on like the Great Divide? Its sins are nothing compared to this.

Doc, Shu, and Bushi were the only good thing in this episode, but they weren't enough to make this one remotely rewatchable.

One out of Three so far on season three episode quality. No other season has had this bad a ratio this early. This does not bode well for the rest of this season.

[recreationalfanfics]

RECORD OF RAGNAROK x READER BUT THE READER IS A JEDI:

- NO BRO BECAUSE BRUNHILDE WOULD BE ALL: "YOU SAID I COULD CHOOSE HUMANS, YOU NEVER SPECIFIED THEY HAD TO BE ON EARTH!!"

- Obviously the usual Jedi mind tricks aren't gonna work on Gods but like, the Force telekinesis is great for throwing them around like ragdolls.

- You're gonna be a pretty experienced Jedi, okay. For plot reasons and bc those Gods need to be humbled fr.

- YOU AND SASAKI KOJIRO ARE DEFINETLY BEST FRIENDS ON THE HUMAN'S SIDE, you teach him the sword ways of your fellow Jedi and he teaches you about some of his own sword fighting techniques as well.

- Soji absolutely adoring you and wanting to train with you constantly. Kondo also has great respect for you and while you are concerned with their thirst for violence and laugh rather nervously at it. However, you admire their sense of justice and they admire yours and your virtues as well.

- Raiden also 100% begs you to let him try out your lightsaber, LIKE P L E A S E IT IS ALL HE WANTS. LET HIM. LET HIM. PLEASE. You eventually have to use Force Illusion to make him forget because you're trying to meditate.

- SPEAKING OF MEDITAITION, YOU AND BUDDHA ARE ALSO GOOD BUDDIES. Your beliefs align with his so well and you applaud him for standing up what he believes in and he shrugs and just says the other gods are petty fools.

- ALSO, YOU JUST HAVING TO CALM DOWN BRUNHILDE WHEN SHE LOSES OR COMFORTING HER. Like the loss of Hercules was devastating and Göll didn't help, although you understood why she was upset, so you just went to check in on her and found her crying and ran over to comfort her and assure her battle is not easy for anyone.

- I also love the idea of you just having Göll meditate with you and and bringing her peace, she is so young and honestly, if things were different and you were able to train her just a little, you'd think she'd make a wonderful Palawan.

- Then there's Jack the Ripper, a terrible and tragic man whose heart has been mislead and misguided far too many times. You knew he wasn't the real Jack the Ripper and you just sense that his soul was capable of heinous crimes, he was just lonely. Meanwhile, DO YOU THINK JACK COULD SEE LIKE THE FORCE AROUND YOUR AURA?? LIKE, MIGHT THAT BE A THING?? AND HE LOVES YOUR COLOR THE WAY IT IS.

- I'd write the Gods but I'm too impatient but Thor wants to fight you so badly and also, like, IMAGINE THEM SEEING YOU FORCE HEAL YOURSELF IN BATTLE AND MEANWHILE, YOU'RE JUST ATTACKING THEM AND THEY'RE ALL: THAT IS SO NOT FAIR, WHAT-"

- Also u have platonic relationships with all of them bc you live by the "Jedi aren't supposed to fall in love" rule but like, if anyone wanna makes a request when they're open, I am not opposed-

[lyssala]

I was trying to figure out They are stuck in my mind at all times and when I was thinking, I realized oh OH they're the same picture. So really I apparently just have a trope hierarchy to which if you resemble Roy/Riza in anyway you skyrocket to the top of my list.

Some ramblings about Clorinde/Wriothesley under the cut because I have no where else to do it. I'm sorry to all the people who've been my followers for years and I literally just come here once a year to drop a ship fixation LOL Here's my big dose of copium I guess 🤣

(For the record, I have nothing against the popular pairings for either of them; I multiship just fine. There isn't an ounce of ship bashing in this because 1. that's rude lol 2. discrediting canonical relationships because they threaten the chances of my pair being on top defeats the purpose of analyzing characters)

(Updated: 8/25 just to acknowledge a few other various things before the end of the Fontaine era)

Roy & Wriothesley: fight using their hands (in different ways but still; fire and ice though); masks their true goals behind a facade (whether staged like Roy or Wriothesley just letting people believe what they want about him); most people don't know their true personality/history; hold a position of power in what most people assume is ambition but really they just want to do good to those who need it.

Riza & Clorinde: observant/quiet personality; the world's best shot; the best poker face; straight faced humor; tough as nails; sass and teasing is a love language; recognized as the top of their respective fields and respected by many.

It's uncanny right??

1. Familiar With One Another

It's so clear they have history together. This is not their first mission, first interaction. They can read the lines between what is being said to understand something more, that is the definition of knowing and understanding how someone operates. It means some kind of history.

Between her greeting upon walking in the room (Clorinde: What's that look on your face? I thought I made good time on the way back.) and her knowing how he is about tea (Wriothesley: Want some tea? Clorinde: Not particularly. If you want to drink some that badly, just say so.) Those are not things you would know/say if you don't know a person. She knows he's giving her a weird look, or a look she wasn't expecting. He offers tea, and instead of saying no thank you, she's just no, but I know you do and you don't need me as an excuse 🤣

Even when he clarifies for her that he does want tea, he asks her again, maybe knowing she does actually like it but only if he's already making it - which I do all the time to Ren LOL (Wriothesley: Fine, I'd like to get some tea. Want me to get you a cup too, since I've already made it?) and that time she agrees (Clorinde: Eh, might as well then, I suppose.)

Idk like these are people who know each other. They know their quirks and their mannerisms. They talk to each other as equals (he doesn't question when she's telling the Duke wtf are you looking at me like that I'm right on time, and he's just like I know you're right on time you always are) I just think that's a big deal??

During the wrap-up of the main story quest, when talking to Charlotte when Clorinde is dodging interview attempts and Charlotte guesses how Clorinde knew Charlotte had an interview at Meropide (Clorinde: In truth, all Monsieur Neuvillette asked me was "When did the Fortress become so friendly towards the media?" I told him that it was best not to speak too soon — there's no guarantee that Wriothesley will make a personal appearance). It's likely that Clorinde was in the room when Neuvillette spoke the question aloud, but I also like him going up to her just to ask her like she'd know the answer to what Wriothesley was doing. I mean, she did still know the answer: that just because Charlotte had an interview, Wriothesley probably wouldn't show up. She knows he hates publicity as much as Clorinde does - I do have to imagine its because they've talked about it, they're friends.

In that same scene, Clorinde says to Navia that she seems interested in the Fortress, and Navia says duh, but that man gave me a headache (Navia: Of course! Ugh, that Wriothesley... I still remember going down to the Fortress to grill him for information on my father's case. Boy, did he take me for a ride... without telling me anything, of course). Clorinde then is like, yeah, but he invited you to tea, and it was good, right? (Clorinde: But he did invite you to tea, didn't he? Navia: Two large pots of it, in fact — it was good tea, though. Clorinde: I have to agree. The tea there is very good). My girl, how much time do you spend down there to know he'll habitually ask and that it's always good. Also, lol, the fact that she gave him such a hard time saying no, I don't want any tea, but if you want it, I'll have it, but then to Navia, Clorinde is much more straightforward about how good his tea is because she isn't teasing Navia.

Then of course their bets. (Wriothesley: I win this bet. You owe me a present. Clorinde: Very well, it was indeed just as you said.) This is a thing they do and apparently have done before. She literally talks about how much he gets into it, implying she's learned to go along with it because she knows he enjoys it.

My girl MY GIRL how do you know what kind of gifts he likes, or that he enjoys it all if you haven't done this a million times (Clorinde: Wriothesley gets really invested in that sort of thing. But he couldn't care less about what he wins in the end. Clorinde: You could give him mint plants that you plucked from the side of the road, and he wouldn't even mind). I also have to wonder if the reason he doesn't set a stipulation on what he wants, is because he likes to see what she comes up with, what reminds her of him and that's why he's so happy with anything - that's a little too me with the ship colored glasses on but still (the only other time we see him given a gift he's appreciative, but poor sweet Neuvillette has to explain it first so I can't judge Wriothesley's reaction in comparison).

A smaller thing is Navia always complaining about how hard it is to talk to Wriothesley while Clorinde just bubbles about calling the Duke by his first name and how he likes making bet and loves gifts 🤣 (Navia: If only he was that easygoing when it came to talking business...) I know it's because Wriothesley intentionally avoids Navia due to whatever promise he made with her father. Still, the image of Navia's best friend being super chill with the Duke of Meropide while Navia is exhausted by the thought of talking to him is so superb. Chefs kiss on that dynamic, Hoyo (also can we talk about how the trio of Wrio, Clorinde, and Navia doesn't get nearly enough love and I'm genuinely saddened over that).

I guess one last thing for this section because I don't know where else to fit it, with Wriothesley, to everyone else Clorinde is Miss Clorinde, including to her when they're in public but when Wriothesley is talking to Neuvillette when he's delivering all the gifts, she's just Clorinde (Wriothesley: I have to hand it to Clorinde. Just a simple gift delivery, and she has the great and mighty Iudex at her beck and call.) possibly because Neuvillette would be one of the few people to know they have a relationship outside of work? Though Clorinde is just like oh yeah Wriothesley is just like that in front of a whole slew of people LOL so maybe it's an on work time/off work time thing 🤣 I don't necessarily have a clear analysis but I 💯 noticed it still.

2. Familiar With The Fortress

Moreso for Clorinde since obviously Wriothesley is familiar with it. I think the most clear indication there is for Clorinde spending time down there is through Sigewinne. The official livestream announcement image being a lovely example.

Okay, I know it's because her and Sigewinne were the two new characters and like I said Sigewinne doesn't leave Meropide all too often. Still there were plenty ways to promote them: in the infirmary, in Neuvillette's office (like they did later for her demo/trailer), at the dining hall in Meropide, streets of Fontaine, even no place at all. A choice was made to have them sitting in Wriothesley's office.

I mean Clorinde has to spend a decent amount of time down there??Sigewinne has her drink meaning either Clorinde was comfortable enough to brew Wriothesley's tea or he brewed it for her/them. It's his teas set that sits in his office in game. Again these were choices that were made LOL Clorinde is reading so she's clearly not there for business, just hanging out in his office with Sigewinne.

Also, Clorinde's little smile 🥹 Another is the dolphin (whale? looks dolphin to me) sticker on her book, meaning that Sigewinne made a sticker of Clorinde (like she did with Wriothesley and Neuvillette). Most of all implying that Clorinde is close enough to Sigewinne to get that honor and the fact it's on Clorinde's book, that she spends enough time in Meropide that Sigewinne also likes to stick stickers on Clorinde's things like Sigewinne does to Wriothesley.

Another small thing, was Clorinde in Sigewinne's character trailer. Navia was about to guzzle that tea when Clorinde stopped her like, no, girl, wait. She's 100% had Sigewinne's drink creations before there would be no reason for Clorinde to otherwise stop Navia. And even Clorinde's little cough compare to Navia's big wide eyes of shock lol Clorinde has been through it.

One last thing with Sigewinne is her voiceline about Clorinde and that she's been around Clorinde enough to try to learn how to read her (Sigewinne: Miss Clorinde doesn't make a lot of facial expressions when she talks. It's pretty difficult to tell what mood she's in from what her face is doing...She used the lipstick I gave her? Really? Hee-hee, I'm so glad she likes it! I knew that color would go great on her!). But, Sigewinne also knows her enough to give her gifts - and vice versa (Clorinde: And some tea-flavored hard candies. They're for Sigewinne) - because they're also friends. That can literally only happen if Clorinde has spent time there longer than what we've seen/were told.

Another thing I found so cute about Clorinde's connection to Meropide, was in Clorinde's story quest, when they went to the Meropide set (Clorinde: I admire the work put into the set. Still, it's obvious the script writer has never paid a visit to the Fortress of Meropide). Yes, yes, we know, you're apparently so familiar with it you can tell when details are missing, okay, girl.

A little more of a stretch with some ship goggles on but I can't help but laugh at the image of Clorinde smiling at the prospect of getting to throw her players in Meropide and as GM getting to play Wriothesley's job (Furina: So this set... is going to be a part of the script? Clorinde: Unfortunately, that is something I can neither confirm nor deny. Paimon: Um, anyone think Clorinde's smile is starting to look kinda scary...?). Still sort of unrelated but also Paimon's line in that scene was adorable too - if only there were snacks in prison...oh, there are if the Duke likes you LOL (Paimon: If only there were desserts and tea in real prison... Oh, wait, guess that's kind of how the Fortress of Meropide works if you're lucky.)

3. Same Sense of Humor

Their humor too omg they have like the same brand of humor and it's fantastic and because it's so dry; poor Neuvillette is always just like and you what now? LOL (Clorinde: He already has tons of tea in his office. I'm thinking about a set of legal codices. Wriothesley: That wouldn't happen to be a dig at my lack of legal awareness, would it... Clorinde: I'm sure His Grace doesn't consider the Fortress to be outside the law.)

Which she brings up again in her voiceline (Clorinde: I highly suspect that he keeps quiet about some of the methods he uses, but there's no way we can know) teasing again that he operates outside the law. The other thing about this line (though I don't put it very high, it could be a translation thing) but that she switches from I highly suspect to no way we can know. Why she didn't just say no way I can know, is probably because she does know or she knows she could know if she asked LOL

One of my favorite examples is from his character stories because omg I feel like it's the definition of their humor and it makes me laugh so much ("Why does it feel like you have even more free time than me? Your title wasn’t bought, was it?"

"One moment, please."

So saying, Wriothesley rifled through three drawers before producing several thick documents with a flourish. "Now, let me see... 'excellent management'... 'leading tax contributor'... 'specially granted this title...' Well, what do you know? Good guess, that's pretty much what happened after all.") I just feel like she's not afraid to challenge him with jabs as jokes and he's perfectly fine to take it. But I also think that's saying something because who else knows that they can poke fun at him like that, she knows because she knows him.

4. Work Life Together

I just wish Hoyo would tell us more about it 😩 like is it just because he hires her to do stuff for him? How did that start? Why? Even in the character story above, it's said it was over a business transaction what does that meaaaan? There's no way he, woke up one way and went, you know what time to hire this one Champion Duelist (she's the best but she's still not the only one) to do some secret missions.

When asked, he said it's because she's an independent party (Wriothesley: As a Champion Duelist, Miss Clorinde can be considered to be an independent party. I needed to find an exceptionally capable person to help me get through the impending crisis) but I mean she works for the court idk how that makes her independent? He does say "crisis" so it's likely she knew about a lot of the things going on ahead of time but I don't think he would have ever just hired someone just because of their station. Mainly because in doing so, he trusted her to be in his inner circle of the plan with Sigewinne - who Clorinde also has a relationship with as I went through already - and Neuvillette, two people we know Wriothesley does have canonical history with.

I saw someone say that Clorinde was already staying down there at the time already working with Wriothesley on the mission, so it was easy for her to get Freminet, but I couldn't ever find what in canon pointed to that. She was staying after at least, she was eating dinner there but they weren't expecting the gate to blow that night. You'd assume she'd leave after she told him everything he needed to know. But no it's like middle of the night/early morning and she's right down there with him. So part of the crisis he referred to is letting her in on one of the biggest secrets of Meropide because she knew exactly what to do and was ready and willing to do it.

I also really love Navia's voice line about him because it says that Clorinde knows what the arraignment he had with Callas was otherwise she wouldn't have told Navia it was okay (Navia: Trying to discuss anything with that guy is an exhausting process. Clorinde says I needn't have any reservations about collaborating with him in the scope of our preexisting agreement, but I still shouldn't trust everything that comes out of his mouth.) I imagine Clorinde bullying it out of him to make sure if was a safe arraignment for Navia (and maybe upon learning what it was and how it came about could've been the early steps in how Clorinde learned to trust him too because it's mutual - she's not a mercenary, she takes jobs with him because she also trusts him and what he does). But I also imagine that bit about not trusting a word that comes from his mouth (since Wriothesley hasn't ever lied that I recall, he hides things very well and doesn't clarify to make things appear certain ways, but I don't recall him flat out being deceitful) is either 1. Clorinde teasing him to Navia without her even knowing but it gives Clorinde a little amusement 2. She knows that man is gonna run his mouth one day to tease her and she's laying the foundations now so Navia won't listen to him 🤣

Or Clorinde is helping him keep his mysterious and bad boy persona because she knows he's actually a big softie - all wins to me lol because I genuinely can't see her believing he's untrustworthy; she literally risked her life to stay with him while they waited for Neuvillette, that doesn't sound like a person you didn't trust. Because again as far as I know a Champion Duelist is still not a mercenary.

5. Battle Couple

Which leads me back into my original Roy and Riza comparison, the way they fight together (Wriothesley: Clorinde is the best Champion Duelist you can find. Her combat prowess is already the stuff of legend. I've never fought her myself, but that's because there's never been a need for it.) I saw someone point out how does he know this when he'd likely have to make a special trip just to see her fight. I imagine some is word of mouth considering the phrasing of stuff of legend. Regardless of how he knew initially, he knows now because they've fought together before. He's never fought her, like he said, but they're fought side by side.

They had to. I'm sorry, this is not the delulu brain worms, you cannot tell me they didn't.

They likely had some sort of plan otherwise idk how she would know to shoot the door controls, but she's watching him from a distance, sees his signal of a simple nod and proceeds (she nods back to him but I couldn't find a gif that included it). I say because they didn't know what was going to happen; the plan was probably if it looks bad, shoot the controls I don't care where I am. I don't think it was as specific as I'll just give you a nod it's fine. He could've shouted, made a bigger motion, lots of things really - he didn't because he was literally running for his life and he knew she was watching, she'd see him and know what to do that's why I bring it up. That's why I refuse to believe they've never fought/worked side by side before, you don't just read people like that; you don't just trust people like that, especially two people who it's in their job description to be sus and careful with who you trust. You read faces, eyes, subtle signals from people you know and trust.

It reminded me so much of Roy and Riza in this scene when she can't speak from her injury and he is about to lose his mind and all she needs to do is move her eyes and he gets it.

(I mean, Roy and Riza have literally a lifetime of history, experience, and love for one another, I don't think Wriothesley and Clorinde have known each other as long or have that rich a history, but all I'm saying is I keep seeing them in each other, okay? Okay).

6. Similarities in Story and Interests

I threw this one down at the bottom because I’m not sure if they’re aware of their own similarities. It’s more meta in the sense I see the similarities without having canon to tell me that they know how similar they are. The first being the most obvious in that they were both orphaned as babies, and then were raised with foster parents/guardians until Clorinde was 10 and Wriothesley was a teen (Clorinde at least getting the better deal in that her Master who took her in was unconventional but seemingly cared for Clorinde unlike Wriothesley who had the rug ripped out from under him to see the truth of his family). Clorinde then presumably was looked after by Callas and Wriothesley grew up in Meropide. Both don’t talk about their personal lives often, but in both they’re story quests, they talk about their past pretty openly. So its possible they know, but because Hoyo is too afraid to put them in the same room again, I can’t say.

They also both hate newspapers and paparazzi. Clorinde talks about why she likes Charlotte by alluding to what other journalists put Clorinde through (Clorinde: Unlike some, [Charlotte] doesn't ambush me with her Kamera on my way to work, or follow me to the coffee shop to report on what I'm drinking today... And most commendably of all, she is well aware that I do not do interviews and doesn't nag me about it continuously). Wriothesley we know also turns down interviews frequently (Charlotte: And that's exactly why I'd like you to come conduct interviews with me. You're the best incubators of news, if you haven't noticed — and also, with you around, I'm sure I'll get to see that Duke. Paimon: Are you sure? Hasn't he turned you down several times already?). I imagine its because both have been victims of the journalists turning on them for a front page story (I’m sure everything with Callas was sensationalized, same with Wriothesley when he was a teen and also probably just how criminals are depicted in journalism to begin with).

The last bit comes from the Fontaine Tour Group video since so far the only two playable characters who have displayed knowledge on Remuria. Wriothesley both in the Archon Quests and his Friendship stories (Wriothesley: Then maybe you haven't heard of the story of ancient Remuria. To give you a quick rundown, Fontaine used to be ruled by the Remurian Dynasty) and Clorinde in the Fontaine Tour Group video (Clorinde: …oh, they have a Conch Harp here? Navia: Something wrong? Clorinde: It’s nothing. Probably dates back to the days of Remuria, that’s all). In the video, Navia clearly had listened to Clorinde talk about it because she remembered the connection but she also couldn’t even remember the name after Clorinde just said it, so it’s clearly not common knowledge. I imagine Clorinde was taught about it with her Master due to the ties to the Marechaussee Hunters and Clorinde’s clear love of history. But I also can’t imagine that Clorinde and Wriothesley never discussed both having interests/knowledge in the same niche era of Fontaine’s history. We know that she knew about the splice gate, so I also imagine she knew about the Winglet and therefore they absolutely would’ve talked about Fontaine history and folklore together.

And So

One thing I've seen a lot in this fandom, when others are trying to discredit a ship they try to give proof of pairs that are "more canon" and I didn't do this to try and say they have more canon standing. They aren't seen together all that often, and sometimes we just have to pull the crumbs out of our own analysis and that's okay. I don't like the phrase "more canon" because its canon or its not lol Being in more scenes together doesn't make a pairing more canon unless they're in the scene confessing their love verbally or physically. It just means they have a relationship, whether that's friendship, familial or romantic. How you see a relationship is up to you and you aren't wrong (because there is no right answer - n o s h i p i s c a n o n).

When it comes to Clorinde and Wriothesley, I don't know if Hoyo will ever put them in the same room together again (though they gave me enough crumbs that I need to now clarify pictured/interacting in the same room lol). They're just gonna give us a Character like Wriothesley and just leave him down there to never interact with people 😭 Clorinde's story quest didn't even touch on her being a Champion Duelist. I still have so many questions.

I’m a little peeved with Hoyo to be honest which is a whole other conversation I’ll have on how we went from some of the best storytelling and some of the best characters into some of the blandest storytelling and complete wasted potential. Nothing will make me stop loving what I loved about Fontaine, but it’s incredibly frustrating also feeling like I was lied to my face only because Hoyo caved to fanservice (which is how it looks), completely erasing character stories and relationships they established in the first place.

ALAS, with the new region on the horizon, maybe we’ll finally see some peace as the fandom moves on to a new region. We’ll just have to speculate and answer the questions for ourselves <3

In any regard, I wrote up all this to (cope because I adore them and I run out of content to satisfy my intake on a daily basis) hopefully make someone else also feel better that no, no one was crazy for thinking these two had that good fucking chemistry, because it radiated off the goddamn screen. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise 💙 Also, oh my fucking god I thought that after being in with Genshin since version 1.3 I already had my hyperfixation period back in Liyue nope the fucking prison warden and trial by combat champion decided to ruin my life.

[dropoutconfessions]

I feel uncomfortable with the way people talk about Evan Kemlp. All of the sad shit that people get horny over is stuff that hurt him. I sometimes want to say "You'll masterbate over him but you won't accept him."

Maybe I'm strawmanning a little but the same people who will deride manic pixie dream girls (rightfully) will turn around and do the same with a traumatised boy just instead going "I can fix him."

The thing that sticks out to me is the butt discussion. Of course he has a long back. Do you all know how much work it takes nutrition and exercise wise to look a certain way? Evan is neither interested nor doing that.

And no shade to Aabria or Erika. They're both just playing the game and having fun. Seriously nobody get mad at them. The words "didn't sign up for an assless man" just stuck in my head. Like of course. K had no idea what Evan actually was. It worries me that a lot of the people who are big Evan Kelmp stans are like this. Just because there are people in the real world who have been through trauma and are not hot and sexy. They still deserve love, empathy, and acceptance and I worry all they're gonna get from you is horniness.

It's fine if you're horny. Just ask yourself if you're accepting.

And for the record, you can want people to heal and to improve but you also should be accepting. Will you look at a badly healed elbow and just comfort someone when it hurts. Will you look at calloused feet that he would have regularly gotten athletes foot on because he had no shoes and not judge him now. Will you see roughed up skin on his knees from them being grazed one too many times after a fight at the gas station and think he shouldn't have had to go through that but he did and he survived and then appreciate his presence. Will you see random bruises on his torso or scars from emergency surgeries because as a kid he didn't get healthcare until he was dying and be empathetic. Or will everything you have just be pity and horniness?

-