#four sugars at 3am

[deadhands69]

Ramen & Rain

Katsuki Bakugo x gn Reader

Ramen Date

just a weird fluff Bakugo fic mostly written at 3am. not quite the direction it was intended to go but it still ends ish as planned. mentions of angst, turns into fluff.

“Sorry for your breakup,” you say to the messy haired blonde seated next to you at the hero rankings after-party, “are you doing okay?”

“Huh?” he grumbled before remembering the bullshit his PR team spun earlier that week. 

“Oh, that.” He sits uncomfortably, staring down the tablecloth at the tiny high top the two of you were perched at. “Um, that was fake.”

“Wait, really?”

“Yeah, my PR team thinks it’ll humanize me to date likable people so they have me take models and whatever on dates.” He pauses, considering if he’d like to tell you the next part, “and a few times they also did this when I was photographed with one night stands. I guess that’s not so likable either or something,” he mumbles down at his lap.  

Your thoughts flash back to every headline you’d read about pro-hero Dynamite’s intriguing love life. Much to his team’s credit, you did fall for it.

“So, you haven’t actually dated any of those girls in the pictures?” 

“Nope,” his finishes his drink, hoping the glass blocked at least some of his blushing face.

“Have you dated anyone?”

“Have you?” he retorts, barely able to make eye contact.

Please say no, he hopes. 

He tried to ask you out once, in your second year of high school together. But he was going through some things. And you are you. He couldn’t imagine you being interested in anything but perfect when it’s what you deserve. One day, he figured, he could give you that. So he waited.

And of course you had no idea he liked you. Not when his way of showing it was hitting you harder while sparing, having higher expectations of you than everyone else, and exploding at you every time you so much as glanced at him (because he thought you caught him staring.)

“Well, there was Shouto in high school,” you begin.

Of course Bakugo knows about this, he hated it. 

You and Shouto had been best friends since halfway through your first year. So, it didn't surprise too many people in your third year when he asked you to go out with him. Of course you had a massive crush on him for years at that point. He's beautiful, who in your class hadn't been into him?

And it was… Cute. 

While it lasted. 

You held hands. He walked you to class. The two of you always had meals together, but it felt different once you were officially together. You never kissed or anything but that's okay, it was new. 

Exactly nine days and four hours is when it all came crashing down. 

Feeling worked after training, you went to bed early. You'd meet up with your boyfriend in the morning. No big deal. 

Little did you know, your puppy love relationship was falling apart before your head even hit the pillow. 

“Hey, Icy Hot! What are you doing checking out Ponytail when you're already dating the hottest person in our class?” Bakugo berated Todoroki. 

Confused, he responded as bluntly as he ever did, “but y/n isn't the hottest one in our class. Momo is.”

Katsuki’s red eyes pierced through him, clearly he was missing something. 

“Wait, are you not dating y/n??”

“No, I am.”

“...then what the fuck.”

After much back and forth, it came out that Iida told Todoroki everyone should aspire to date their best friend. He took that to heart and asked you out without considering if he like liked you. 

He didn't. 

And he told you that the next morning.

It’s not Shouto’s fault his comprehension of human emotion is so limited. This didn’t make being broken up with by him any easier though. Everything was matter of fact, no sugar coating. 

“Thanks for letting me know,” you mumbled to your feet, trying to think of any excuse to leave and save yourself the embarrassment of bursting into tears in front of your classmates. His mismatched eyes stared at you, still confused about the whole situation. 

“I have to go finish some homework now, see ya later.” Turning away, you hope you played it off well enough. No one seemed to notice as you walked heavily through the common space with a face made of stone until you reached the elevator. 

Bakugo did though, and he was pissed at Todoroki for fumbling so hard that you got hurt. Their already unstable friendship took a massive hit after that. Eventually, after a lot of adjusting, Katsuki reasoned he could be okay with you dating someone else if it meant you were happy (and they were perfect and checked every single box he decided someone would need to in order to be worthy of you.) This wasn’t it though.

“I don't mean high school. That one didn't count, ” he says, remembering how helpless he felt watching you being heartbroken when you never did anything to deserve it. 

“Okay, well there was…”

The girl you were with for a whole month before discovering she was a villain, just using you because she thought she could get top secret information. She didn’t.

Then there was the guy you met at a coffee shop who stuck around for a while. He thought you were attractive but didn’t want more than sex and wasn’t sure how to bring that up. You being a hero was terrifying to him and he thought you’d stop sleeping with him when you realized that’s all he was there for. You did. 

And Shinsou, who had the most amicable breakup with. He’s nocturnal and you’re well, not quite. After not seeing each other for three weeks, you decided your schedules just weren’t compatible and called it. No media outlets picked up on it since there was nothing to pick up on. 

Bakugo shifts uncomfortably in front of you. Brows furrowed and face unreadable to most. A twinge of jealousy overtakes him. Sure, the two of you haven’t talked much since graduation, but he still has feelings for you. And hearing about all the losers who had a chance when he never did didn’t sit right with him.

On top of that, admittedly, he also feels guilty. Maybe if he'd asked you out all those years ago he could have saved you from this pain. His assumption you’d settle for nothing but perfect had been shattered, leaving him to accept that he shouldn’t have left you craving closeness from anyone but him. He should have been there. 

He’s here now though. At this point in life, he knows he isn’t perfect but he could at least do better than everyone else you mentioned. If you let him.

“You wanna get out of here?” he asks abruptly.

“What?”

“Wanna go somewhere else? The food sucks here, there’s a good ramen shop that’s open late down the street.” 

“You asking me on a date, Dynamite?” you joke.

“Yeah,” he replies dead serious, “I am.”

 Suddenly you’re the one feeling flustered. A date with Katsuki Bakugo? 

After a quick stop at coat check, the two of you are out the door. Running down the marble stairs to the rough sidewalk, his hand lightly around your wrist to guide you. A rain storm earlier left the streets glimmering, neon reflections from the surrounding shops. A few people trickle in and out of businesses in the typically bustling area, but tonight it feels like a ghost town. 

Then you’re there.

He pulls you through an unassuming door. With a quick wave to the person behind the counter, they informally gesture the two of you towards the small seating area. 

Sit wherever.

You slide over the cracked upholstery at a table in the corner. The pink sign lighting up the window casts a glow over his face, the warm color suits him.

When you left your place earlier, you never expected to end up on a date. Especially not here. The location being as much of a surprise as his sudden interest. 

Sure, you always thought he was cute, but you never knew him. He spent all of high school keeping you at arm’s length. Then after, you’ve spent years basing your assumptions about Bakugo off the headlines you’d read. The dates he went on. Always models and idols. Fancy restaurants, valets, and expensive cars.

But this is real.

Across the table, you watch as he slides his suit jacket off. You hadn’t realized how stuffy the atmosphere was earlier until you see him relax, top buttons of his shirt undone and sleeves rolled up. You forgot about the scars.

The woman running the shop approaches to take your order, not bothering to ask him - it appears he gets the same thing every time he comes in. Having been distracted, you quickly pick the first menu item that jumps out to you. She disappears into the kitchen.

“So, what do you want,” he asks, sitting too casually for the depth of the conversation he’s bringing up. He needs to ask though, otherwise how will he know what to do? “You told me what didn’t work but not what you actually wanted in any of that.”

“I guess I haven’t thought about it. I’ve just been working and-”

“Bullshit,” direct, but his tone is playful as he flashes a slightly crooked smile at you.

Two bowls of ramen float through the air to your table - likely the quirk of the woman before. You’re glad for the momentary distraction, giving you time to consider your answer. The food arrived suspiciously fast but with one sip from the oversized spoon, you know it’s amazing. 

“Holy shit,” you exclaim. 

“Like I’d take you somewhere shitty,” he laughs, “still dodging my question?”

“No,” you pause, pulling a piece of bok choy from the bowl while you consider, “not a villain would be nice.”

“Bar’s that low, huh?”

“...and being able to spend time together at least once a week would be good.”

“Only once a week?” he scoffs, “too easy.”

“What about you?”

He says nothing for a while, chasing a green onion around his spicy ramen with his chopsticks.

“This is good,” he mumbles suddenly uncharacteristically shy, “like a real, actual date.”

Looks like you aren’t the only one with lowered standards.

“Too easy,” you smile.

If he told you how serious of a relationship he actually wants with you, he might scare you off. This is a great start though.

Abruptly, he changes the topic to hero work. You compare stories, scars. 

He tells you how he got the small mark on his neck from a villain with a slashing quirk. How he took out a small area of buildings before Bakugo arrived to apprehend him.

You show him a similar scar on your wrist after the same villain escaped prison. 

The evening passes far too quickly.

As he approaches the counter to pay, you don’t miss the exchange between him and the older woman working. She looks overjoyed, saying something while glancing at you in the booth. He smiles awkwardly, his flushed face apparent even in the dim neon lighting.

“Alright, let’s get outta here,” he asserts while grabbing both of your hands to pull you to your feet.

“Can I take you out again?” he asks, as your feet have barely hit the pavement.

“Yeah.”

“Tomorrow night?”

“Perfect.”

more Bakugo: masterlist

[marsbutterfly]

Need domestic Hanji x reader type sht. Does reader cut hanji’s hair??? Does Hanji bring home every stray?? Hanji never gave a crap about interior decorating until Y/N??? Slay??

Headcanons: Domestic Life With Hanji Zoe

a/n: i love them, your honor. i want to give them the entire world and stars and everything else this universe has to offer and then some more.

warnings: none, just fluff. you know the drill: not beta read, we die like men ♡

/ hanji never really cared about the way that they look. Sometimes, they would wear the most atrocious outfits known to men and not brush their hair for days. It wasn't until they met you that they decided to put in the effort to look their best.

/ though, they never really got the hang on how to do their hair. eventually, they just let it grow. it was nearly down to their hips and it became too hard to manage when they sheepishly ask you to cut it for them.

/ by the blush on their face and a couple of tears in their eyes, you could tell that this whole thing was just too overwhelming for them and a sensory overload. your heart was aching so badly from seeing them in such a state, you didn't even hesitate.

/ so, at 3am, you grabbed a pair of scissors and began snipping away. one inch turned to two, turned to three... turned to eleven. by the time you were done and looked down at the ground, a wave of fear washing over you as you pull away.

/ your fingers shake their hair, making sure there aren't any uneven strands and that all the loose hair would fall from their head. the first thing they say when you are done? "wow, my head feels so much lighter."

/ they look at themselves in the mirror and fall silent. you can feel the pit in your stomach forming, your breath begins to tremble as you look at them, helplessly preparing to mumble a long apology. that is until they turn around, arms wrapping around you, "I LOVE IT!!!!"

/ after that, you start trimming their hair every so often, just to make sure it would always be at this manageable length. and even then you started learning new styles, buying small clips and headbands, anything to make them look even more adorable than they already are.

/ hanji is a very hard person to wake up. opening the blinds, countless alarms, pulling the covers, not even water will work. but do you wanna know what will? the smell of freshly brewed coffee and the promise of kisses.

/ "haaaaanjiiiii" you call out every morning and, immediately, you can hear rushed footsteps coming down the stairs, their feet tripping over one another as they desperately throw on a pair of sweatpants and a tank top.

/ they drink their coffee black with AT LEAST four spoons full of sugar. do they eat in the morning? a piece of toast and then they go about their day, not drinking a single sip of water until you DEMAND that they do. they only agree because the energy drink is making their kidneys hurt, which is why you have so many variations of cranberry juice: crangrape, cranapple, just plain cranberry.

/ they don't like going to the grocery store. it's too crowded, too loud and too bright. so you are used to doing the shopping by yourself most of time, but sometimes, every so often, hanji finds themselves feeling a bit too clingy to let you go by yourself.

/ so you offer to hold their hand the entire time. and you have to keep the promise, otherwise you'll find them a sobbing mess, like a lost child almost. usually, when you get to the store, you can see how much the environment is already affecting them, so you wrap your arm around theirs as the two of you work together to push the cart.

/ when you need something from a tall shelf, hanji will hold your hand with one hand and reach up with the other. they are relatively tall so it doesn't take much but their hand must be touching yours at all times.

/ you will often try to make up fun games, like "who can pick out the most veggies in a minute?" or "how many cans can you stack in the cart before they fall" or "$1 dvd hunt and snack baskets." silly things to take hanji's mind away from the anxiety and it works like a charm every time, as long as your hands are still linked together.

/ it is a constant struggle having to keep hanji from bringing home every stray they find. the two of you already have two cats and a dog, but they insist on feeding every neighborhood animal, always building warm outside houses for them during the winter, leaving clean water outside for them every day.

/ one time, they tried to bring a racoon inside, pretending it was a cat and hoping you wouldn't notice. you screamed so loudly that both of them ran outside.

/ in past relationships, hanji was never allowed to decorate anything, or even leave a single toothbrush at their ex's house. so when you asked about colors for the walls and the curtains, they were a little shocked, maybe even a little scared.

/ at first, they try to go along with things you like or what they think you might choose if it was up to you. they do it until you get annoyed and give them only options they might like. it turns them into a blushing mess when they realize but the simple knowledge that you are so determined to make them know that this is your home TOGETHER makes them even more sure that you are the one.

/ hanji is a heavy sleeper but they roll around in bed so much that it was actually hard for you to get asleep when the two of you first started dating. at the point where you move in together, you aren't even bothered by it anymore.

/ they have a little compartment for their glasses on their bedside table, but they never use it. instead, they just throw the pair anywhere before jumping into bed with you, their eyes fixated on you, even if they can't actually see you other than the shape of your body.

/ hanji has a massive garden in the back of your house. every time the two of you travel somewhere, they gather seeds to bring home and figure out what will grow and what won't.

/ the two of you travel a lot. when it's by car, hanji is usually the one to drive while you are the one to pack the bags and snacks for the road. you are also in charge of the songs but you make sure to choose songs both of you enjoy. unless hanji pisses you off, in that case you always choose that one band they can't stand.

/ if it's by plane, you are the one who has to wake hanji up, make sure the two of you have everything, that their passport is in their hand, that there is nothing missing, that they have medicines, chargers and everything else.

/ hanji is fascinated by planes but also scared of them. they can't quite explain why, but a simple look at it causes them to freeze in place, almost like.. it's a memory. a bad one. so you make sure to hold their hand the entire time, nuzzle your head on their shoulder and just shower them with love.

/ the two of you always cuddle. even when it's burning hot, you just ditch the covers and clothes, the need to be touching each other is much higher than anything else.

/ you and hanji are always together. and when they propose, there was no other answer you could give. it was an immediate "yes ♡"

[mj0702]

For the mean woman. ...

“Bubs…. What are you doing at 3AM in the kitchen?” Lucy asked sleeping as she stumbled into the kitchen

“Couldn’t sleep” you mumbled concentrating on your task at hand measuring some sugar and flower

“Bubs come on” your sister tried to coax you out of the kitchen back to bed

“I need to finish this” you push Lucy to the side grabbing some Lemons and eggs

“It’s 3 in the morning Bubs… you can finish it later” Lucy tried again taking the eggs from your hands

“Gimme that” you snapped at her trying to get back said eggs “I’m in a flow”

“Flow back to bed” your sister said trying to push you out of the kitchen

“Why don’t you go back to bed and stop annoying me” you rolled your eyes

“Don’t come crying to me if you’re tired later… you have gym time with Alexia” Lucy held her hands up in surrender retreating back into her bedroom

“Why doesn’t she get it?” you mumbled to yourself starting to mix ingredients

“What on earth happened in here??” Ona exclaimed shocked seeing the state of her kitchen Lucy looking around the corner smirking

“Bubs couldn’t sleep” your sister said smirking

“And she decided to… wait… is this Coca de San Juan??” the spaniard pointed at a cake that was placed on the kitchen island

“Coca what?” your sister asked confused

“Coca de San Juan… it’s a Catalonian pastry… you had it ah one of our first dates in Barcelona… wait… are these.. Catànies?? What is going on? Where’s y/n??” Ona looked at all the pastry dishes scattered throughout the kitchen between dirty cups, mugs and bowls.

“Dunno… I tried to get her into bed at three…. Wouldn’t come with me” your sister said as she popped one of the small chocolate ball into her mouth “Shit these are good”

“Let me try” your sisters girlfriend said eagerly grabbed one of the small deserts “Ay dios… these are so good…. I can’t believe it”

“She tries to fish for brownie points… be aware… she might want something” Lucy pointed out chewing another Catànie.

“We need to find…” Ona said as you stumbled into the kitchen “… Bebita… bon dia”

You grumbled something inaudible and went straight for the coffee machine groaning even louder when it didn’t do what you wanted. You even went as far as slapping the metal container a few times before Lucy stepped in guiding your whining self away from it while Ona took the task of making coffee for you. When the blonde spaniard came into the living room a few minutes later a steaming cup of coffee in her hand you already where asleep again sitting in your sisters lap koala hugging her.

“What’s up with her?” Ona asked a little confused holding out the Mug to her girlfriend who took it gladly taking a sip before answering

“Don’t really know… but I THINK she’s still working on the aftermath of what happened in Munich” Lucy said lowly not wanting to wake you up

“That was nearly four weeks ago” the blonde spaniard said as she sat down on next to Lucy and you carefully tracing your face with her finger

“And it was nearly four YEARS of bottled up hurt and pain… Izzy on Grey’s Anatomy always baked when she was struggling… maybe Bubs is a real life Izzy” Lucy answered as you sagged even more against her a content sigh leaving your lips

“True… but honestly Luce… what she made is even better than what you get in Cafés here… I wonder where she got the recipes from” Ona mused

“Probably Google” your sister shrugged as she carefully peeled you off her laying you down on the couch so she could get ready for the day

“I swear Alexia… her Catànies are sooooo good” Ona raved and Lucy nodded along for good measure

“I believe you Ona… question is… where is she? We had an appointment in the gym” Alexia said

“Here… taste one” Ona said shoving a container under her captains nose

“Ona…” Alexia said carefully pushing the blondes hand back a little “… we’re in the middle of trai…”

“Uh… Catànies!!!” Mapí exclaimed excited grabbing a handful of the small pralines

“María León” Alexia scolded “Don’t you dare eat them in the middle of training”

“Ay dios… these are GOOD… where did you get then?” Mapí moaned happily after she shoved the whole hand into her mouth ignoring Alexia completely

“Bebita made them” Ona said happily a wide proud smile on her face

“NO WAAAAAY” the tattooed spaniard exclaimed

“WHERE IS THE CARIÑO?!!!” Alexia boomed interrupting the chit chat of her teammates

“On the couch” Lucy said as she walked passed playing upsies with a stray ball

“Why?!” the blonde captain asked

“I tried to get her into bed at 3 but she didn’t want to… so I let her be and this morning she was so dead we left her at home” your sister explained passing the ball to Keira who was on the other side of the field

“We had a gym appointment” Alexia said raising her eyebrow while she aggressively ripped the container with the Catànies out of Onas hands much to Maps disappointment

“Hey” the tattooed spaniard exclaimed trying to get the sweets back

“No… you were eating the whole time…. You’re going to be sick and then you’ll whine how bad you’re feeling and whine even more when I tell you it’s your own fault “ Alexia snapped at her friend

“Because you never have any sympathy for anyone” Mapí huffed but decided to go and find her girlfriend so she could complain about how mean Alexia was

“She was dead on her feet Ale…” Lucy said softly “… she’s still a kid who’s hurting a lot… a day off won’t change anything”

“I’m worried she’ll do something stupid if we don’t keep her occupied “ Alexia said

“I know… and I feel the same Ale… but we can’t keep an eye on her 24/7… she’s a wild one” your sister said smiling a little

“Oh I noticed” Alexia smiled back “… she yelled “Stranger Danger” at Olga the first time they met”

“Yeah… sounds like Bubs” Lucy laughed as she spotted you stumbling through the tunnel “… your date is here Capi”

Alexia turned around to see you stumbling out of the tunnel trying to get your cleat over your foot while hooping on your Jersey inside out a big Bayern Munich logo printed on the shorts you were wearing

“I’m sorry I’m late… they left me behind” you said panting hard as you reached Alexia “As soon as I get my stupid cleat on I’ll run me laps”

“Calm down Cariño…” the blonde answered grabbing your shoulders to ground you “Breath for me… good… again”

You took a few deep breaths before Alexia released her grip on you

“There we are… everything is good okay… no laps… you can go warm up and stretch – properly I might add since you like to keep that task as short as possible and then you can come in for a little kick around okay” Alexia said softly seeing how much it actually stressed you out

“I… I… I… okay” you said a little defeated walking away thinking you disappointed Alexia

“Cariño…” the blonde spaniard called after you “… back”

You immediately turned on your heels slowly walking back to her

“Yeah?” you asked carefully

“I’m not disappointed… I’m not mad… nor am I punishing you… I want you to warm up properly and then come join us at training… if you feel the need for a little gym session afterwards we can do that” Alexia said soft but firm immediately knowing where your head went

“And we’ll get you some different shorts… supporting the enemy…” she winked at you and you looked down noticing the logo

“Yeah well… I was way behind the enemy lines… had to take a trophy piece” you smirked as Alexia lightly slapped your ass signaling you to go warm up

“Come on Lucy” you yelled laughing “Even blind Grandma T would’ve made that goal… Carata Kid was WAY off her line”

“Excuse me??!!!!” your sister exclaimed shocked but everyone heard she was just playing along

“You’re shit… I don’t know why they pay you so much money” you laughed but then squealed as you saw your sister running at you

“Come here you semen demon” Lucy yelled as she was chasing after you

You where cutting through the players and staff laughing loudly even going so far playing catch around Aitana who stood there frozen in place. Everyone was laughing until Jona whistled loudly putting a halt on your little game.

“So Bebita… where did you get the recipe for the Catànies from?” Ona asked you in the locker room where you currently were changing for gym time with Alexia

“Which what where?” you looked at her confused

“The Catànies” the blonde spaniard answered

“Huh?!” you asked even more confused by the second

“The chocolate thingies you made last night” Lucy clarified huffing

“Oh… no recipe… Luce brought them Home one night and I just tried to recreate the flavor and texture” you shrugged nonchalantly pulling on your shoes before standing up and leaving

“What did she mean “no recipe”??” Ona looked at Lucy confused

“Don’t ask me… I don’t know what she’s talking about half the time” your sister shrugged

“Keira?” the blonde spaniard turned to her friend

“Bitsy is good like that… just accept it” Keira waved off

“But these are SO good… how can she make them without a recipe???” Ona tried to understand how you made something this tasty without any help

“Don’t question it Ona… Bitsy does a lot of things nobody understands” Keira said

“Buenos Aitanas!!!” you yelled happily pushing open the gym doors

“Didn’t I tell you over and over and OVER again to not call it “Buenos Aitanas also…” Alexia rolled her eyes “… inside voice”

“Someone is short of an orgasm” you mumbled to yourself pulling a face at Alexia

“Mind to repeat that so I understand it as well??” the spanish captain asked raising an eyebrow

“I said let’s get started… I have a pool and a nice bottle of red waiting for me” you smiled sweetly

“I know you haven’t said that… I also know you won’t touch a bottle of red until you’re 18 at least… I’ll make sure of it” Alexia said but pointed to the pull up bar

“Yeah well Lucy wanted me to die a virgin… didn’t work out…” you said before jumping a little bit to get to the bar

“I’m not interested in your virginity… now come on… concentrate on your breathing…. 3 sets of 10… take your time… I want you to at least take 2 seconds between each pull up… 3 minutes between every set” Alexia said firmly and saw how your energy changed immediately as you started to focus on your task

“Good Cariño… that was very good” Alexia said proudly crouching next to your head “… you want to continue?”

“Give me a minute” you panted out hard sweat covering your body “I can do more”

“Okay and we’re going to stop right here” Alexia said immediately recognizing your competitiveness

“What why??” you sat up your breathing still fast and Alexia pushed you back into a laying position

“Because your statement is acted on competitiveness and not on your health… we’re here to stabilize and strengthen your knee… not to set you back” the blonde captain said firmly her hand on your chest and with the little pressure she provided you immediately felt calmer

“Gracias mamá” you closed your eyes while your breathing calmed down – you knew Alexia was right

“I’m too young to be your mother… also… you’re an impossible task … that wouldn’t happen if you were mi niña… you would be so well behaved” Alexia chuckled

“Lucy tried her best… like with that own goal at… wherever you guys were” you waved off your eyes still closed and Alexia started laughing

[voxsmistress]

Mama Didn't Raise No Bimbo - Part 14

Right my gorgeous little demons here is part 14 and at the end you finally get a little bit of action that you've all been asking for - and trust me there is moreeee to come!!! Part One / Part Two / Part Three / Part Four / Part Five / Part Six / Part Seven / Part Eight / Part Nine / Part Ten / Part Eleven / Part Twelve / Part Thirteen / Part Fourteen / Part Fifteen / Part Sixteen

Life carried on as normal. Or well, as normal as you now living with the Vee’s could get. Moving most of your possessions into the tower wasn’t the issue – you keeping your old apartment just in case anything goes wrong had been a small issue with the Vee’s. After a few little arguments, some flirting and a lot of promises you were allowed to keep it. Just in case you needed somewhere to blow off steam of course. Another little argument happened as you had been continuing singing at the old clubs and creating new contracts – the Vee’s had been included in all of this but still liked to make a scene every now and then. After the first few explosions off Valentino and small grumbles from Velvette and Vox you just brush them off. They were possessive assholes. But they were your possessive assholes.

Though currently everything was calm. Velvette and yourself had taken over the living room with pieces of paper, clothing samples, song lyrics and glasses/bottles of drink as you both discussed her upcoming Catwalk that you were going to be starring in. Not that you were worried. Not in the slightest. Vox was no where to be found, you guessed he was still in his office working despite the late hour. Valentino, however, had settled on the sofa behind you both scrolling on his phone and giving his opinion on certain clothing choices and dresses.

After a few hours you leaned your head back on the sofa, moaning softly when Val started massaging your scalp through your hair while making sure all the tangles were gently removed. For someone who had such an aggressive reputation you found he was always gentle with you. Or rather, he was only aggressive when you asked. Not once had he asked you to star in his ‘work’ since you had agreed to be theirs though. When you mentioned it to Angel he had laughed and patted you on the head before explaining how possessive Valentino is and that he wouldn’t want anyone else seeing you like he would in private. Another plus was that Val was leaving Angel alone now, thankful that Val had taken what you said to heart and that Angel had a little bit more breathing room and freedom now.

Through your mussing, you somehow must have fallen asleep. Stretching you realise that you were no longer on the floor but are now on the sofa with one of the plush blankets wrapped around you like a burrito. You struggle a little trying to wiggle your way out of it, throwing a glance at Vox’s door to see that it was still in the same position as earlier with no lights or movement from inside, so you just knew he was still working away. A quick look at your phone informed you that it was now 3am. Knowing you wouldn’t be able to sleep aware he was still up you traipse into the kitchen and start the coffee machine up, making his usual black coffee. That Demon just lived off caffeine and sugar, if you opened him up you are sure you would only find wires, electricity and coffee.

Making sure his favourite mug, ‘Fuck Alastor’, was full to the brim you make your way up to his office via the elevator. It was way too late to be using the stairs. When you finally make it to his office you can see blue lights flickering underneath it with the sounds of grumbling and tapping reaching your ears. Yep, still hard at work.

You give a harsh knock to the door before you open it, peeking round you see Vox typing away on his masses of screens. Bow tie now abandoned on the desk and a tired look on his face you frown. Hmm that wouldn’t do. Stepping into the room, shutting the door with your hip you catch Vox’s attention. That devilish (albeit tired) smirk spreads across his face.

“Sweetheart, what are you doing up and about at this time?” His eyes flicker to one of his screens and flinches when he sees the time. As you walk towards him his eyes now focus on the mug as you place it in front of him and slide yourself onto the corner of his desk. The pyjama shorts riding up your legs showing more of your thighs than he probably had seen before.

“Just sustaining your caffeine addiction is all, plus I haven’t seen you today – wanna make sure you are still alive and kicking” you tease him with a smile as he sips on the coffee. Humming in happiness at the caffeine kick he leans back in his chair, observing you from over the rim of the mug. His stare always had you squirming if he held it long enough. Biting your bottom lip as his gaze travelled down the pink pyjamas and robe you had on, you clear your throat: “so what are you up to so late? Anything fun?”

“Nothing as fun as what I am staring at right now”, rolling your eyes you try to hide how your cheeks start to flush as he chuckles at your reaction. He leans forwards to put his mug back on the table when you spy that his charging cable wasn’t properly plugged in. Can’t have that now can we.

“Hang on V, looks like you’re not fully plugged in”, sliding back off the table so you were now standing between his open legs, you lean over him to get to the wire. His cold fingers rest on your waist, gasping slightly as you finger the wire to make sure it’s the right one. Amused, glancing down at him as he squeezes your waist, “hold on if you need to big boy”. You can’t help but tease before getting back to the task at hand. He must have pulled himself together you gathered from the cheeky chuckle and tightened hold he had on you. However, you were not expecting the sudden pull from him which meant you ended up squeaking as you landed straddling his lap with your knees resting either side: “if you insist my little songbird”.

From the fall, one of your hands was now resting on his shoulder as the other held onto the back of his screen. Pushing back the blush from your cheeks of being in this position you instead attempt to raise yourself up so you could see what you were doing behind his screen. Or you tried until two very strong hands pushed you back down where you were now firmly seated on his lap.

“You’re gonna have to let me up a bit so I can make sure the plug is in properly Vox”, trying to explain what you were doing and getting a handle on the situation, you throw him a glare as you glance down at him. His devilish grin just grew. One of his hands left your waist and positioned itself in front of your face. A snap of his fingers and the wire that you finally had hold of snapped into place by itself. “Are you telling me you could have done that all along?”

Shrugging, he places the hand back on your waist and settles comfortably in the chair. A darkened expression spread across his face as he gazed up at you: “there’s a lot I can do that you don’t know about yet Y/n and I cannot wait to show you”. Gulping, you slip both your hands to now rest on his shoulders. This was a situation you had gotten yourself into now wasn’t it. His eyes made a path down from your own, down your throat and to where your pyjama top gapped quite a lot at the front showing off the pink lacey bra you wore underneath it. Under your hands you felt him groan under his breath, those fingers on your hips tightened again.

“You should be a siren instead of a songbird, you know that sweetheart?” He mumbled up to you as you rest your weight now more on his lap – your legs had grown tired of holding yourself up off him. Another restrained groan came from his chest. A smirk grew on your face. Who wouldn’t feel a little bit powerful by having an Overlord moaning under them?

“Really? I think I’m far too innocent and sweet to be a Siren, don’t you Vox?” You lean down so your face was just above his, his breath on your chin you try to suppress a shiver when that dangerous smile spreads across his face as he looks back up at you.   

“Innocent and sweet aren’t the two words I would choose for you right now, Y/n” he challenges. His hands started moving softly up and down your waist, goosebumps raise where his fingers touch bare skin making little shocks of electricity run up your spine. A sudden little shove from those hands had your chest pressing against his and his face only a few inches away from your own. Heart thumping in your chest. Well Y/n … it’s now or never girl! Flushing under his smug gaze you reply by cheekily roll your eyes and wrap your hands in his jacket labels managing to pull his face even closer to your own. Eyes closing as his screen was blinding, you feel rather than see him place one cold hand on your jawline pushing it up. A puff of his breath on your lips was all the warning you had before-

“BOSS, there’s a crisis on the store floor there’s su-“the crash of Vox’s door makes you both jump in shock as your eyes snap open. Together you glance over to see one of his receptionists sheepishly hiding behind their tablet possibly realising they had royally messed up.

“OUT!” Another jump but this time from the loudness of Vox voice warbling in static, you could only sigh as the receptionist scampered out the room leaving you both now in silence. What a cockblock. A peek at a pouting Vox had the sides of your lips start twisting into a smile.

“Are you seriously pouting right now?” You ask, highly amused at the pissy Overlord. Huffing he rolls his own eyes and takes his hands off your waist. Well. That would never do. Rapidly you grab the labels of his jacket again and yank him forwards and slam your mouth against his. Smirking into the kiss, proud that you had finally one upped him in his little flirting game you release his jacket to swiftly place your arms around his shoulders instead.

After a moment or two of Vox remaining stoic, finally he responded wholeheartedly. His own hands wrap around your back and hold you firmly to his chest, a soft groan coming from his throat when your nails scratch into his shoulders.

Now you thought it would be weird kissing him – the whole TV screen as a head did slightly put you off from trying to kiss him but it wasn’t like you thought it would be. His face wasn’t flat and hard like a screen but instead was soft and you’d say almost 3D like. His tongue slipped into your own mouth as his fingers dug into your sides. Yep. Definitely not flat like a screen. Rubbing yourself up against him and bathing in the groan he released, you couldn’t help but wonder.

You wondered what else wasn’t flat like a screen on the rest of him and how you couldn’t wait to find out.

TagList:

@tasha-1994 @azullynxx @reath-solia @leathesimp @klorinda @rosiethevoxobesser

@the-maladaptivedaydreamer @songbrita @midge7838 @joumi13 @wonderlandangelsposts @th3rizzler

@ace-spades-1 @iamferalfordilfs

@justgiulia @kittycatkrissa @qu1cks1lversb1tch @martinys-world @superwholatacohunters @mysticvoide

@rosiethevoxobesser

@skullhorn59 @sarcastic-sourwolf

[dreams-of-yunho]

birthday present

yunho x female reader

rating: m

genre: birthday smut

w.c.: 1.7k

warnings: sex, sex in the bathroom, mentions of alcohol and being drunk

summary: this is for a beautiful anon who mentioned an idea like this back in MARCH lol. I switched it around a bit which I hope is okay. yunho gives y/n some sweet sweet morning sex for her birthday <3

Neon lights, sugared liquor and the raging heat of euphoric bodies. The music was god awful and the drinks tasted as cheap as they were, but your friends were celebrating your birthday. How could you complain? Stumbling home at 3am, your broken left heel in hand, you were missing four red press-on nails, and the walls of the apartment seemed to be melting around you. Swaying and crashing into every obstacle in your path, you found the bedroom dark. The gentle sound of Yunho’s deep breaths filling the otherwise quiet space. Oh boy, were you wasted! But your subconscious reminded you to be quiet while the love of your life was sleeping so angelically. Removing your heels and stepping out of a dress two sizes too small, you crawled into the bed as cautiously as you could before immediately passing out. 

Traffic and that dreadful chirping of birds invaded your dreams. Your eyes fluttered open only to be shocked by the morning sun’s orange light. You groaned, stretching your body and stuffing your face under the pillow; it was like one of those symbols playing monkeys was pounding against your skull. The mattress around you shifted and you skunk deeper into it as the weight of a 185cm man fell upon your legs. 

His hands grabbed your bare breasts, pushing them together and then watching them bounce back into place. “Late night, huh?” His voice was still heavy with sleep.

Bare boobs, you thought, the images of the night before flooding back in a tsunami of vodka and vomit. “Am I at least wearing panties?” You asked, disappointed in your life choices up to this point. 

His hands ran down your thighs to your hips, patting them with amusement. “Nope.”

“Well that’s unfortunate,” you pulled your head out from under the pillow. 

He was staring down at you in all his morning glory; messy, curly hair and puffy eyes. “Wow, babe, you look beautiful.”

“Oh god,” you pushed him off you, raising on your knees to look into the mirror on the wall across from the bed. Mascara was everywhere but your lashes. Your lipstick was gone, only your lip liner remained making you look like a clown. And someone had written your new age on your cheeks in Sharpie. “Oh god!” You jumped off the bed and ran to the bathroom with lightning speed, smearing cleanser all over your face and scrubbing. He watched you butt jiggle as you ran. 

He came into the bathroom after you, wrapping his arms around your waist, looking at you in the mirror. You splashed cold water on your face. A faint outline of sharpie remained and you knew you wouldn’t be able to rid yourself of it without ripping off your skin. “I like it,” he said over your shoulder. “Now, I won’t forget how old you are.”

You laughed sarcastically. “Sharpie cannot be good for your skin,” you dabbed your face with a washcloth. 

“I seriously doubt it,” he rested his chin on your shoulder, angling his face to press lips against your neck. 

“Hm,” you put the cloth down and turned in his arms. “What’s this?”

“I have a present for you,” he smiled, kissing up your neck.

You raised a lazy brow. “Oh really?”

“Oh, yes, I’ve been working on it for twenty-three years.”

“God, please don’t tell me it’s you-”

“It’s me!” He gripped your waist, lifting you to sit on the cold, granite countertop. 

His lips were on your jaw now, sucking to leave little red marks. “At least let me brush my teeth,” you offered. “I can’t promise you that I didn’t puke last night.” 

But he was relentless against your jaw, moving to the corner of your mouth, like he couldn’t hear the words you were saying. Fine, you relaxed into his touch, placing your hands on the soft skin of his waist. 

Hands dragged down your thighs, resting on your knees, spreading them apart. You pulled him in, eager to feel his warmth. His lips were now on your cheek and one of his hands moved up to press against your folds. He hadn’t even started yet and already you were putty in his hands. Your headache pushed to the back of your mind. 

“I’m liking this present,” your hands gripped his hair, urging his lips to yours. 

His tongue ran against your bottom teeth and he was now holding your ass so firmly that you were fully pushed against him, barely touching the counter. You wrapped your legs around him and grazed your teeth against his neck. 

His dick was pressed firmly against your ass and you needed it inside you. You reached a hand down, angling him. “Kinda needy for this present, huh?”

“Baby,” your brow pressed against his. “You have no idea.”

He chuckled, warm breath against your face. “Anything for you, birthday girl.” 

Your ass cheeks met the cold stone again but your legs remained crossed behind his back. Six press-on nails gripped the edge of the counter as you felt his tip brush against your clit. Your hips jolted slightly. “I feel like this is my birthday present,” he joked. 

You bit your bottom lip and looked up at him through thick lashes. You couldn’t help yourself! This man had you wrapped around his little finger, desperate for his every touch. He was just so perfect in every way. Compassionate, funny, and generous, Yunho was everything a birthday girl could ask for. 

He rocked his shaft against your clit and your head lulled back against the mirror. He continued to rock against you, collecting your sticky slick as he moved. 

Your legs were flexed from the pressure building up in your stomach and the sheer amount of effort you were putting into gripping the counter. The veins in your flushed neck pressed against your skin. His cock wasn’t even in you and you were going to come. 

Your walls began to flutter, desperate for something to clench around. “Put it in,” you whined, but he just continued to rock against you. 

You were so warm and fuzzy, the violent wave of your orgasm crashed down upon your senses. Her rubbed his thumbs against the supple skin of your inner thighs as you shivered through your climax. “Fuck,” you breathed, nodding for him to actually start fucking you.

You had grown to love the burn of his thick cock pushing into you. It hurt in a pleasurable way that brought tears to your eyes. He pulled on your legs, pulling one to rest up on his shoulder and pushing the other to your side. “Hold this?” He asked.

If you weren’t so desperate for his dick, you would have mocked him for that dumb line but you didn’t have time for that. You just wanted him to fuck your brains out and then do it again. So, you held your own leg back for him. 

Gripping your hips, he could push deeper at this angle, hit that spongy bit that had you seeing stars. He moved slowly, teasing you, his pelvis fully flush with yours. 

Even these gentle strokes had you breathing heavily, your chest rising and falling dramatically. Picking up the pace, his balls slapped against your ass. The drag, that delicious drag of his cock against your aching walls. The sounds in that small bathroom were vile and hot. 

You were just moaning constantly. Your breaths leaving your mouth in a constant, deep moan. 

“Shit.” He pushed his body down on yours, deepening the angle even more. “You have the best pussy, baby.” 

You couldn’t even respond, totally focused on the sensations he was making your body feel. 

He moved even faster now, ramming into the same spot inside of you over and over. The tears were rolling down your cheeks now. It just felt so good. His hands fell to circle your clit and you were spiraling. A complete mess, you couldn’t even grip the counter anymore, your free hand moving to his wrist. Your head was knocking against the mirror with every thrust but you didn’t notice. 

“Fuck, Yunho, right there!” He had found the spot that had you clamping your eyes shut and bucking your hips into his. Your moans had become short and high pitched; needy, needy, needy. 

He was grunting now, slamming into your hips at a terribly fast and deep rate. His dick twitched inside of you and you knew he was holding back his own climax. 

His fingers applied more pressure to your clit and the world faded away. White danced behind your eyelids. Your legs trembled and your body lurched as you were still being rammed into the counter. He was completely flat against you, lips on your neck as he came in you, thrusting a few final times. 

“God, present, that was amazing,” you breathed. He was still twitching inside you. 

“It was twenty-three years in the making,” he spoke against your sweaty neck.

You wanted to laugh but you were still catching your breath. 

He pulled back to place a sweet peck on your lips. Silly, how innocent that kiss could be as his cum was dripping out of you. When he did pull out, the thick, white stick dripped to the floor. 

“I don’t think I can walk,” you pulled your legs together, feeling a tight burn. 

He smiled. “I got you.” His arms wrapped under your legs and around your back, lifting you from the, now, wet counter.  

You sighed with content as your back met the plushness of your mattress and quilt. He bent down and kissed your forehead. “Yum,” he smiled. “Sweaty.” 

“Whatever,” you pulled him back down, kissing him again. “Best birthday present ever, Yunho, thank you.” 

“I’m glad you think so,” he moved to grab a damp washcloth from the bathroom. “Cause you're getting it every year.” 

You chuckled lightly. “Fine by me.” 

“Fuck,” Yunho cried out from the bathroom.

“You okay,” you asked from the bed.

“No,” he walked up to the bed, a piece of red plastic in his hand. “I stepped on one of your damn nails.”

You looked down on your hands to find all the press-ons missing. You smiled sheepishly, “sorry, baby.” 

[vinelark]

hello hi, i had never read anything for timkon before ever in my life until i stumbled across art for bbts that intrigued me and then i promptly read the whole thing in a night (and ruined my sleep schedule). you are a genius and your writing is masterful. take your time with the next update because i know a story like this takes a lot of effort and dedication and it will most certainly be worth a wait <3 but meanwhile, i wanted to ask if you have any timkon fic recs since i am now incredibly invested in these two (when/if you have a spare moment :)

hello! absolutely love to hear this, welcome to timkon 😌🙏

i do have some timkon recs!! here’s a previous list of some of my favs, and i’ll also add a few recent reads on top of that:

🗞️ The Plan by Hayleythewriter

in which conner kent fake-dates superboy, and ends up real-dating tim in the process. like all of @hearteyeshayley’s fics, the plot is snappy and fun with the best kind of mad genius weirdo tim characterization. the timkon dynamic is sweet and hilarious, and i especially love kon’s relationship with the kents here (there’s a line of dialogue from jon that made me laugh out loud at 3am). alsoooo the restaurant scene is, to me, peak timkon. go forth and enjoy the good food here.

💸 call me cute and feed me sugar by suzukiblu (wip)

last month an anon with very good taste recommended another one of this author’s fics to me, and in the process of looking for it i ended up reading this first and it is a delight. in superboy’s early-ish days, tim notices that kon doesn’t have a real support system yet/is still dependent on cadmus for room and board, and tim sets out to fix that in the most convoluted tim way possible. premise is hilarious and so is the fic, and it’s also sweet and emotional and has enough subtle angst to keep me on the hook too. fav line so far: “Tim thinks taking care of someone for the entire rest of their life is perfectly romantic, actually, but fine, he'll buy some damn aquarium tickets and then do the bank fraud.”

🧟 Young Justice: A Little Help From My Friends by Hayleythewriter (wip)

this one is weighted more evenly on the tim & kon & cassie & bart ensemble, and it’s incredibly fun so far. it’s a retake on young justice’s rocky road toward being a functional team—and, more importantly, friends—with some very compelling slow-burn timkon in which kon does not like robin at first (for some understandable reasons from his pov) and tim’s dreams of having instant superhero bffs like nightwing are crashing and burning around him. there are some tim pangs scattered throughout that are 🤌 very much to my taste 🤌 and i adore how messy and real all four characters are in this. (the emoji choice will make sense after reading, i swear.)

[ramblingoak]

The Quiet Times

Mushy May in Lucifer's Hollow: Day 10 - Quiet Nights

Mist x Aurora

This fic is set in an alternate universe in a town called Lucifer's Hollow. For Mushy May I'll be using the prompts to post little snippets of life for the humans and ghouls that live there 💙 Thank you to @forlorn-crows for putting Mushy May together!

~ In Lucifer's Hollow Mist owns an antique store called The Reliquary and Aurora owns Little Sunshine Tattoos ~

Warnings: none, sfw, 740 words (thank you to @ghuleh-recs for the dividers!)

This was Mist’s favorite time of the day.

It was that lovely quiet moment between dinner and when she usually went to bed.  Mornings could be chaotic, especially considering sometimes Aurora was just going to bed when Mist was getting up.  She would get so absorbed in designing something for a client or just sketching something on her own that she barely got up to eat let alone remember she needed sleep.  Although Mist could be the same sometimes, especially if she got caught up with an interesting book.

Thank Lucifer The Den was nearby.

The little coffee shop was where they had met and Mist smiled to herself thinking about that day.  She had been rushing in during her lunch break, needing a serious amount of caffeine to get her through the afternoon.  Mary Goore had brought in a box of their grandma’s books to see if Mist wanted any for her antique store.  One of the books had immediately caught her eye and the next thing she knew it was 3am and she was supposed to be up in four hours. 

So here she was trying to hurry in for something with lots of sugar and caffeine but all her plans went to shit when she had opened the door on Aurora.  The ghoulette’s iced coffee ended up all over her and the floor.  Mist had been horrified, thinking about the moment even now still made her wince.  She had been prepared to get yelled at because who wouldn’t yell in this scenario?  But instead all that happened was Aurora had started laughing and honestly, that was all it really took.

Mist had been a goner ever since.

Aurora’s cursing brought her out of her thoughts and she looked over to see her girlfriend crumpling up a design she had been working on since dinner.  She was able to catch it when it was chucked to the side, carefully smoothing it out and tucking it into her book to save.  Mist did this with any bits of sketches or whatever else Aurora felt wasn’t good enough.  She had an entire scrap book full of all the napkin doodles Aurora had given her.  Each one was special in its own way, even if the artist didn’t feel the same.

“Please tell me you’re not keeping that.”  Mist just smiled primly and looked back down at her book.  Aurora groaned and crawled over to rest her hands on Mist’s knees.  “You keep the ugliest ones.”

“None of them are ugly, how many times do I need to remind you?”  Aurora dropped her head into Mist’s lap instead of answering but Mist caught her pleased little smile.  She rescued her book and tea just in time, setting it on the side table before burying her fingers in Aurora’s hair.  “They all belong on the fridge.”

Aurora snorted, turning her head to the side so she could peer up at Mist.

“We ran out of room there months ago.”

“Then I’ll buy another fridge.  And another, as many as it takes.”  She scratched her claws into the ghoulette’s scalp, smiling when Aurora’s chest started rumbling quietly.  “So stop talking down about your work.”

“Ugh, fine.”  Aurora scooted closer, wrapping her arms around Mist’s legs and settling more comfortably against her.  “I’m done drawing for tonight, my head hurts.”

“Do you want some medicine?  Let me at least get you some water.”

“No, no, stay here.”  Mist stopped trying to get up when the arms around her legs tightened.  Aurora was looking at her once more so Mist pulled a hand out of her hair and trailed a finger across the ghoulette’s forehead.  As if the light touch alone could take the discomfort away.  “Will you read to me?”

“Whatever you want.”  She picked up her book again, gently opening it up and finding her place.  “Do you want me to start from the beginning?”

“It doesn’t matter,”  Aurora gave her legs another squeeze but otherwise stayed still.  “I just want to hear your voice.”

The quiet of the room settled over them both, only the hum of their furnace kicking on making noise.  Mist took a moment to whisper a prayer to the Olde One, ever thankful for Aurora being in her life.  For the chance to explore the world with the feisty ghoulette at her side.  

And especially for quiet nights like this, where nothing else existed but the two of them.

If you'd like to be added/removed from the tag list (or if I accidentally left your name off) of this fic or any of my others please leave a comment or send me a dm! Thank you 💙

My Masterlist ~ My Archive of our Own ~ My Ko-Fi Tip Jar

More fics in the Tales From Lucifer's Hollow masterpost

[theforcast068]

The Forecast Volume 1-Issue 3

Wednesday October 23, 2024

Link to the PDF Copy

Where Is Sandman - And Why Isn’t He Bringing Cloud Rest?

Background

Cloud Rimer describes herself as a “chronically sleepy guy” and someone who, “could fall asleep anywhere but her bed.” These issues started in early childhood and were never resolved. When she was in high school Rimer claims that she continuously got as little as four hours of sleep a night, but now that she is a Junior in college, she points out the ill effects. “I am having troubles going to classes, and when I do, I’m falling asleep in them. I sleep for a significant amount of the day but can’t fall asleep at night. It is a horrible cycle.” Once Rimer realized she could no longer maintain, she sought help to solve the issues. Rimer met with multiple medical professionals and got advice.

Keep reading below the line for more!

Feeling Rested Throughout the Day

When she was in therapy it was suggested Rimer work on her “sleep hygiene”. Cleveland Clinic defines sleep hygiene as, “healthy habits, behaviors, and environmental changes that you can take charge of to get a good night’s sleep.” For Rimer, the biggest issue was going to sleep and waking up at a good time. “I couldn’t fall asleep until 2 or 3am and then of course I didn’t want to wake up at 7am. Who does?” Rimer joked.

Cloud, however, realized that sleep was most important. “It’s not healthy what I’m doing.” Some habits Rimer adopted to feel rested are going to bed early, waking at the same time every day, avoiding sugar, staying warm, developing a sleep routine, putting her phone away, and clearing her mind of concerns at bedtime. If you’re struggling, try some of the sleeping tips from the advice column on page 3!

Finch - Self Care App

For the past 18 days I have logged into my Finch Self Care App and reported my feelings,

played with Rose, my Finch, sent “good vibes” to my friends, shopped for clothes and furniture (for my Finch), and completed my goals. 

This app has been instrumental in my productivity lately. I can write down all the tasks I want to do, and I get rewards for doing them. If there is ever a reason I don’t do a task, Finch allows me to reflect on it and either delete the task or snooze it until tomorrow. Seeing what I have left to do for the day and getting rewards for completing tasks has been amazing. 

Finch has also helped me express my feelings directly. It allows me to “send good vibes” from a category of my choosing. This helps me signal to my friends that I am thinking of them, and I can send them a virtual hug, gratitude, a reminder to stretch or drink water, or many more things I might want to share with them. This means that I don’t have to be pushed out of my comfort zone or risk being misunderstood, I just send sweet things to my friends. 

Overall, this app is a 10/10 and I totally recommend it. If you download it ask for my friend code!!

Rollerblading for Relaxion

Cloud Rimer has been seen by our team of Cloud-Watchers multiple times this week rollerblading. She seemed to be working on specific skills. When asked to comment, Rimer

explained, “My mood is much improved by exercise and being in the sun. Rollerblading helps me with both. I’ve loved rollerblading since I was little, so I work on skills to engage my brain while I workout and play in the sun.” Cloud reportedly has only fallen once this semester. We are not sure whether we believe this because of Rimer’s inclination towards being an especially clumsy individual. More soon.

Sleep Tips from an Insomniac

Advice from Cloud Rimer

Make a schedule. Going to bed and waking up at the same time everyday can be difficult when your schedule differs but is really worth it. It helps your brain settle down for bed and you won’t be so tired throughout the day because it’s not time to be tired yet!

Make a routine. Making a routine that you do before bed is a great way to signal to your brain that it is time to start winding down.

Put distractions away. As tempting as it is to scroll on TikTok or Instagram until you fall asleep, it is not good for you. So put away your phone, books, and (politely_ tell your roommate that you are ending the conversation and going to sleep.

Clear your mind. It can be difficult to try to sleep when you have a lot of thoughts and issues running through your mind looking for solutions. Remember that you can deal with all of that in the morning, but only if you get sleep now. Try to remind yourself that it is time to be sleeping and relaxing, not problem solving.

Get into bed. As tempting as it might be to wait get into bed until you get tired, getting into bed is another signal to your brain that it is time for bed. For the same reason, make sure to stay out of your bed during the daytime so that way your strongest association with your bed is going to sleep.

The Games

Word Search 10/23/2024 and Quotes of the Week 10/23/24

[darklydeliciousdesires]

Lost & Found - Chapter Nineteen.

Another chapter and wishes of a very happy Friday to my beautiful audience! :D

Previous chapters - One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine Ten Eleven Twelve Thirteen Fourteen Fifteen Sixteen Seventeen Eighteen

Words - 3,763

Warnings - 18+ content throughout, Minors DNI. Recounts of kidnap, child trafficking, physical/verbal/sexual abuse.

4am. It was not a time Emma was used to seeing, unless she was up late being railed into a new shape by Guero, or enjoying the pleasures of partying. She knew Lee would be even less impressed, with how much she thrived upon a good night’s sleep. 

The very lady was waiting outside as they came out, Gilly yawning in the passenger seat. With their bags dumped in the back of her Escalade and Axl dropped next door for a stay with his uncle Tyrone (who proclaimed ‘imma spoil the dude to death, man!’) they climbed in, still half asleep. Since Emma had no passport or ID yet, Lee, Gilly and Guero were sharing the driving, just over three hours each to make the ten-and-a-half-hour journey rather than flying. 

“I feel bad, that we can’t fly and it’s because of me,” she huffed, Lee hitting the freeway, the engine roaring as the six hundred and eighty-two horses beneath the hood all charged to gallop. 

“How come you ain’t got that sorted yet?” Gilly asked, Emma sipping from her bottle of cherry Coke, burping quietly.  

“Because of a point Guero made,” she began, tightening the lid and placing it in her lap. “Since I’ve been a missing person, there’s obviously still a file open on me, one which will be closed when I show up. I’d likely have to be interviewed by the police over where I’ve been and who with for so long as well, too many questions would be asked.  

“If I ratted on Rocco, my worry about being snatched would turn into a worry about being shot in the head. I was going to go down the new identity route and buy fake documents, but depending on how all of this goes, I may not need to.” 

Lee looked at her in the rearview mirror, winking with a smile. “Here’s hoping, sugar.” She then paused before noting something glaring in similarity about the way all four had chosen to dress. “I can’t help but fuckin’ notice, I love the way all four of us try to look a little less like the tattooed reprobates that we are and instead, end up looking like the goddamned Addam’s Family.” 

Every single person within the car was donned in black, all of them beginning to laugh when they noticed that their attempt at semi-smartness had them appearing as if they were attending a funeral. 

“Goths R Us, man,” Gilly snorted with amusement, beginning to whistle the theme tune to the aforementioned family movie, Emma giving the double finger click at the required point, too.   

“Well, I gotta say it, sunshine. You suit being a redhead,” Lee then spoke, turning to look at her, thinking how pretty her bestie looked in the long, red wig with tumbling waves.  

“Doesn’t she, though?” Guero chimed, winking at Emma. “Maybe a little too much. Goddamn women, pulling some Jessica fucking Rabbit magic on a man." 

"What is it about you guys and that woman?" Lee cried, moving her car to the middle lane to overtake a slow-moving vehicle ahead. "She's a fuckin’ drawing!" 

"Yeah, and I'd nail her until I erased her, I swear to god," he chirped, Gilly busting into hysterics. 

"Same, bro. I'd fuck her until her colours ran!" Everyone fell apart in fits of laughter, Lee thinking that already it was more than worth her 3am start and missing her precious sleep for the sheer entertainment value alone. She wasn’t the only one glad of it, the comic relief provided by her boyfriend and Gilly just the thing Emma needed to take her mind off the fact that with every mile that passed, she was nearing the man she feared most.  

By the seven-hour point, Guero returned to her side in the back while Gilly took his turn behind the wheel, her nerves were palpable. Looking out of the window while gnawing on the side of her thumb, she saw a hand reach for hers in her peripherals, turning to watch Guero softly shake his head with a faint smile.  

“You’re stressing.” Pulling her hand away from her mouth, he grasped it in his, shifting over a little closer and wrapping his arm around her. “You gotta stop. Nothing bad is gonna happen.”  

“Easy to say that,” she muttered, leaning into him. 

“Yeah, it fucking is,” he snorted, kissing her head. “Cuz’ I’ll fucking finish him if he lays a finger on you, and you know this.” His hand tightened its grip on hers, his nostrils flaring a little. The rage towards Rocco still swirled just as tempestuously as ever, along with his already short fuse.  

He softened a little then, realising she likely didn’t need to hear it, or worry about him being able to hang onto his fiery temper. “I get it, you feeling nervous. It’ll be alright, though.”  

Nervous was somewhat of an understatement, Emma feeling like she wanted to throw up as Gilly parked outside the hotel just over three hours later.  

“So, what I’m thinking is that after talking to Obispo, these guys seemed to be enjoying everything the resort had to offer. Squash, golfing, casino, etc,” Lee began, after the guys had gone to check in. “Which means that I can hang around in the bar, keep an eye on the comings and goings of ‘em. Except, fuck. I don’t know what he fuckin’ looks like.”  

Emma pulled out her phone, calling up Google. As with a lot of notable members of the mafia, Vincent’s face was very easily accessible. Clicking on his mugshot from an arrest after a large shoot out he’d been arrested for his part in around a decade ago, she turned the screen. “Like that, but a little aged. He’s very distinctive.”  

Lee had already taken a good look at the hotel layout, scanning the pictures and seeing that from the large bar and restaurant area, the front desk and entrance was visible. She was entirely happy to play barfly with Gilly while Emma hid in her room. “Alright, and there’s my visual. He looks... intense.” 

That was one way to describe a man who had once chopped off someone’s feet and fed them to Diavolo, his Akita. “He is, he’s very formidable.” Her voice was small, the quietness of her tone reminding Lee of her demeanour back when they’d first met, minus the shaking and the stuttered words.  

Reaching for Emma’s hand, she cocked her head. “It’s fuckin’ gonna be fine. You forget I’m ex-military. I know how to run a fuckin’ smooth operation, sunshine.” She winked, Emma feeling at ease, squeezing her hand back before the arrival of Gilly and Guero parted them, hopping out of the car.  

“Lobby is all clear from anyone of the Italian American persuasion,” Gilly spoke, swinging his rucksack over his shoulder. “Let’s go.” Taking Guero’s hand, she gripped it tightly, adjusting her sunglasses before beginning to walk. She felt as if she had a serpent writhing around in her guts, some cold, spiny creature that thrashed angrily, her heartbeat escalating, expecting him to pop up at any moment and snatch her again. 

Heading in through the glass doors that slid open with a silky glide, her eyes were everywhere beneath her oversized aviators, Guero pulling her to the right, past the front desk and through to the safety of the ground floor hallway. Immediately, she felt herself unravel a little.  

“Okay, we’ll see you guys at some point, I guess. I will call with details from my little stakeout,” Lee spoke, she and Gilly continuing down the hall as Guero opened the door to their room. 

As soon as she was inside, she felt the creeping sensation at her back abate, yet she was a nervous mess, riddled with anxiety, wanting to go straight into her medication bottle and swallow back a couple of doses to calm herself. Taking more than her standard dose tended to have the opposite effect, though.  

Reaching for Guero, she wrapped herself around him, burying her face against the side of his neck. Safe person. Safe person scent. It transported her back to a time where he was the only person she’d trusted while in the thick of her anxious duress, but for that moment her body refused to comply with the logic her brain was desperately trying to convey.  

“Breathe, baby. It’s okay.” he told her, hands stroking her back, feeling her chest rising and falling rapidly against his, her heart pounding hard. He closed his eyes, arms tightening around her, a tide of anger rising within him. She’d worked so hard in the last near eleven months to recover, and now there she was again, trembling and frightened.  

The urge to go and wait outside of Rocco’s room and bypass the plan completely, to shoot him in the head as soon as he laid eyes on the vile, abusive, child trafficking, raping sack of shit who’d once again reduced his sweetheart to a nervous wreck was almost all encompassing. He knew though that would land them in the kind of trouble none of them would survive, taking out a mafia boss without the agreement of those who served under him.  

He couldn’t even imagine an alternative to Calabrese condoning the hit, or being told that the Romano family would handle it internally, should he be in complete agreement with the proposal they were bringing to him. None of them could live unless he died, and Emma? She’d be returned to Staten Island, with nobody to save her.  

The thought of being dead and her alone in the world had been on his mind so much, he’d even considered fleeing with her to Mexico, should things not go in the favour of the Mayans. He loved his club, but he wouldn’t be a sitting duck, waiting for the weight of the mafia to crush them.  

He believed in standing to fight, and his loyalty to the club tugged strongly at him, but he was smart enough not to remain on a sinking ship if he saw water beginning to pour in. He had not come to such a conclusion easily, either. His simple desire to survive outweighed anything else, now that it potentially could come down to that.   

Realising he was spiralling into his own thoughts, he shook himself from it all, being present for her, as he needed to be before anything else. Holding her close had begun to calm her, Emma finally straightening to kiss him, resting her forehead to his.  

“And I’m calmer now.” Her thumbs stroked over the flecks of stubble dotting his cheeks. “Thanks for always been so steadying when I need you to be.” 

Smiling, he kissed her again. “You’re welcome, and good. I fucking hate seeing you like that, all cuz’ of him.”  

Sucking in a breath over her teeth, she drew her shoulders up, the weight of her sigh tugging them down again. She hated feeling like that, too, everything rushing to the surface once more. “Let’s pray he isn’t going to be around much longer to do it, huh?”  

It went without saying, he thought. 

They hung around in the room for a few hours, Lee calling at just before seven, informing Emma that the mob guys had all just arrived in the bar for a drink, before being told by one of the staff that their cars were ready. With it looking like they were heading out elsewhere for the night, she was safe to go and eat dinner in the restaurant, a prospect that made her feel nervous, but that she participated in all the same. She changed into a long, tight grey dress, having to fend off Guero before they left. 

“What’s the matter with you?” she laughed upon sitting at the table, Lee virtually vibrating in her seat opposite. “You look a little jazzed, buddy.” 

“Been on the fuckin’ coffee all afternoon! Changed to sparkly water about halfway through, but I didn’t wanna get loaded propping up the bar and I think choosing to be caffeinated might’ve been a little bit of a fuckin’ mistake!” 

Gilly snorted with laughter, shaking his head. “Dude, I told you to get decaf.” 

“Can’t ever do that, fuckin’ decaf is bullshit! I’ll be fine, they gotta pool here and I brought my swimsuit. I’ll go swim it off, do some lengths, get all the energy out, y’know?”  

Her very wide-eyed demeanour had them in soft fits, Lee’s hand shaking upon her beer glass, making her food order at a hundred miles an hour to the entertained looking waiter.  

“And I gotta deal with this all night.” Gilly laughed, receiving an elbow from the hopped-up lady herself. She seemed to calm a little for eating, a firm but polite no given when the waiter asked them if they wanted coffee once they’d finished, calling it an evening at 10pm. Well, Lee and Gilly stayed up to see if Vincent returned back at a decent hour, but Emma and Guero headed straight back to their room. 

Opening the door for her, he gestured that she should enter first. “There, you get me being a gentleman just once, before I turn straight animal.” He smacked her ass, kicking the door shut, Emma removing her boots and socks. 

“Love, you’re always straight animal,” she purred, winking at him. He snaked his arms around her, moving her hair, softly biting the side of her neck with a playful growl. Those nibbles turned to kisses, hands pawing at her. Grasping his hoodie, she pulled it over his head, her nails gently raking down his chest as his mouth met hers, manoeuvring to the bed, pushing him onto it.  

“I have to take this off, my head is like a furnace.” Pulling off the wig, she unclipped her hair and let it tumble loose, messy waves framing her face, Guero sitting up to watch keenly as she began to lower her dress. The way his eyebrows rose significantly at the reveal of her black, diamond mesh underwear tugged at the corners of her mouth. 

“Wow. Get the fuck on me, right now.”  

Ahh, the desired effect.  

“Is that what you want, hmm?” 

His eyes swept her with desire, his cock beginning to harden at just the sight of her, nodding in response to her words. 

“Yeah, I know what you want,” she spoke, coming to sit astride him, pushing her fingers into his mouth, her nipples hard against his chest through the thin mesh of her bra. “You want to pin me down and fuck my tight little pussy until I gush all over your cock, don’t you? Mmm, I love it when you get me so wet that it starts running over my thighs, when you hold me down and pound me so hard, I get dizzy. Yeah, I love it like that.” She ran her tongue up the side of his neck, her hips beginning to gyrate, grinding herself against the big erection she felt tenting his jeans.  

He groaned barbarously around the suck upon her fingers, his teeth clamping in a hard bite, Emma pulling them from between his gorgeous lips before her mouth locked to his. Their kisses rained sensuality and steamy heat, Guero lying back on the bed, the feel of pristine hotel linens sumptuous against his bare back, hands travelling all over her as he moaned against her tongue.  

If there was a sweeter way to kill time, he was yet to experience it.  

Moving beneath her, his body topped hers, pressing her into the bed as his hands slid to make short work of her underwear, sitting up only to shed the remainder of his clothes before his mouth was on hers once more. He kissed her with all the love and heated desire he felt for her, hand trailing down her thigh as he shifted his weight a little, fingers skimming over the sumptuously dewy petals of her cunt. 

That first touch had her arching off the bed, her back bending like a crescent moon, her moan rich and full bodied, his thick, clever fingers spreading her wetness around, settling upon her clit and beginning to circle. His touch was so perfect, Emma mewling softly as she felt her core ache, his breaths heavy against her neck as he moved to kiss her elegant throat, a soft groan rumbling his as he pushed two fingers into her.   

“Oh god, you’re so fucking wet for me already.” He rumbled, his mouth finding hers, kissing her with all the heat of a furnace, those keen fingers seeking out her sweet spots. Focused rotations forced soft little exclamations from her, Guero drinking them down like wine as his lips locked with hers. “Yeah, that feel good, baby?” 

She couldn’t even form words, delight tumbling through her, merely uttering a soft little moan as her head fell back on the bed, his fingers entering, rotating, dragging back, moving his thumb to her clit to stroke it in perfect rhythm. It always boosted his ego a little, seeing how easily he could make her sail into bliss with just two fingers. 

It didn’t take long for him to kiss a sizzling path down her body, his mouth craving to be quenched with what drenched his fingers, removing them, sucking her wetness from them with a hungry grunt. He pushed her legs wider so she splayed for him, delving his tongue right into her folds, the syrupy wet of her pussy drenching his mouth.   

His tongue dragged her eagerly, long licks from her glossy opening to her clit making her very bones shudder in ecstasy, Guero groaning, watching her body undulate before him. The rolling heat of his tongue pressed flat as it circled her clit, sending waves of bliss through her, her little whimpers filling the air, his hands gripped at her waist as he felt her puddling against his tongue.  

She looked down, watching him do it, gasping, her fingers raking through his hair. “You look so fucking hot with a mouthful of my pussy.” 

He grinned against her, sucking on her clit. “And you look the same while you’re getting it ate, mamas.” He winked, closing his eyes, groaning as he took a mouthful of her, loving the feeling of her thighs skimming against his face as she writhed. 

He sucked upon her like ripe fruit, his groans deep, like boulders rolling over one another, the heat radiating up her spine as she panted, watching him tipping her further into mindlessness before her eyes closed and her head fell back. The flickers of the very tip of his tongue working in speed over her clit were too much, but not enough, her body shaking in response of being so lit up. It felt like an ice storm meeting magma, her body gleaming for him, Guero pushing his fingers back within her heat, burrowing deep. 

Placing a suck upon her clit, his cheeks hollowed, the pressure gentle at first, fingers circling her walls, entering her then with rapidity, that suck intensifying until he had her crying out softly. His hunger to devour had him tearing his fingers from her, covering her entire slit in the thirsty suck of his mouth, grunting against her folds as his tongue laved her incessantly.   

Reaching for his jeans, he undid them, sliding them and his boxers down, kicking himself out of them with impatience, the need to be within her rocketing through him. His heart thundered in his chest as anticipation skittered over him, kissing his way back to her mouth, lips meeting hers in a hot mesh of filthy indulgence, his words matching.   

“Wanna spread those gorgeous legs and let me fuck you, huh? Is that what you want, for me to bury my big dick right up deep in this pretty little pussy, huh blue eyes?” Those words fuelled the epicentre of her bonfire, Emma nodding, their kisses scorching as he moved between her legs and glided into her, her walls tensing on his shaft, dragging a groan from the depths of him. He sat back on his heels, taking root in her, his eyes watching the sight of it, his cock sinking in and out, her wetness bathing him thickly. 

He fell to her then, the blinding need to chase the fire roaring through his veins consuming him, his flames catching at her edges as she wrapped her legs around him, their mouths meeting messily.   

“Oh god,” she gasped, clasping his face, seduced further by the look of dark lust pooling his near black eyes. “Fuck me, yeah, that’s it. Oh, fuck me!”   

And he did, pounding into her relentlessly, hitting her so deep, shocks skittered through her. He slowed then, wanting to make it last longer than the rampant charge his arousal was dictating, pulling himself back, thrusting a little shallower, almost retreating, slipping back deeply. His head dipped, sucking her nipples in turn, tongue circling them with a hungry grunt, his hands stroking paths of blissful heat up and down her thighs as his cock hit her deep, deep, deep.   

“Mmmm, fuck. You look so goddamn pretty, spread all around my dick. Got me so fucking drenched, beautiful.” he groaned, sitting back up again, the sight so steeped in erotic heat, he had to close his eyes for a moment, those tingles pulsing too rapidly, the desire to chase his release held fast, slowing, long lashes parting again as he stared down at her. “That feel good, huh?” 

“Oh, you’re fucking amazing!” she cried out, her body jolting when he brought his thumb to her clit, tight circles spreading glimmers through her, pleasure melting down her spine and puddling at her cunt, covering him further in her dew. She raised herself up on her elbows, her hips shunting against each of his thrusts, fucking him back with purpose as she let her gaze fall to watch it.  

He reached beneath her chin, making her focus on him, his forehead resting to hers as he stared at her with so much love, her heart felt full to burst. Stroking his face, she felt like she could see her entire future in the dark sparkle of his lust blown pupils, nuzzling him, whispering her love, sharing kisses steeped in sweet, yet burning heat.  

Her heart jolted suddenly with the weight of it, the realisation of exactly what she would lose if Vincent didn’t agree. He had to, because there was no way she would willingly or easily part from Guero now she’d finally found him. 

[owl127]

Do fire forest Clexa and their pups celebrate Christmas?

Holidays was at Triku that year. The wooden lodge was a quieter affair compared to the teasel explosion that had become The Ark Clan’s pack home.

Lexa didn’t have to argue much for a simpler, intimate celebration with just the four of them.

The kids had their noses white with milk as they ran around the small, sparkling tree. Their girl was fast, loud, and brilliant, just like her shining red coat. Larger than her brother, she used her size to tease him endlessly. But that was barely an advantage; the younger of the twins was silent and precise, tricking his sister into taking the blame in most of their shenanigans. But Lexa caught up to it early, being the source of the sagaciousness of the kid, and his reign as the innocent younger child was short-lived.

Clarke, however, was soft-hearted for the young boy.

“You gave them another hot cocoa, didn’t you?” Lexa’s voice lacked the strain of a reprimand, but Clarke flinched nonetheless. 

“He said they hadn’t had it yet.”

“They had whipped cream on their noses,” Lexa said, sitting on her mate’s lap on the couch by the fireplace. The kids continued their sugar-fueled loops around the tree. Their tails wiggled high in the air, their sharp canines reflected in the silver and golden baubles. Clarke laughed, planting a kiss on the warm spot under Lexa’s chin, peeking from her scarf. “You’re too soft on them,” Lexa said, joining her mate while watching their kids. Their gas slowed down, and the pups tripped and remained on the floor in a heap of gray and red. Their giggles slowed, and their breaths eased as they dove into slumber.

“It worked out,” Clarke said, reaching for another kiss. Lexa’s skin prickled under her lips.

“You celebrate as if they won’t wake up at 3am demanding presents.”

“It means we have six hours to do whatever we want.” Another kiss, wet and lingering.

“Six?” Lexa challenged, one eyebrow up. Clarke cleared her throat.

“There’s foreplay,” Clarke argued, heat rising to her cheeks.

“Do you want hot cocoa for a sugar rush?” Lexa teased, earning a light bite on her shoulder. She clamped her mouth, so her surprised laughter wouldn’t wake up the pups.

“I want a different sweetness,” Clarke whispered under a small ear. Biting her lips, Lexa stood up, offering her hand to her mate.

“Six hours and counting,” she whispered, and ran to the stairs on silent feet. Clarke licked her lips and followed.

[keirametzbrassknuckles]

So I saw this video of a beefy guy making a cake and thought he looked like Letho and then the thought of Letho making cakes refused to leave me alone so in typical me fashion I wrote almost 4k words about it.

Ships: Letho/Gaetan

Modern AU

Rating: T

Warnings: grief, candid discussions of murder, mild allusions to gore, PTSD, Gaetan, OOC bullshit, drug addiction, discussions of prison and incarceration.

Letho is 30 when he’s granted freedom. 

Reasonably, many government officials and gossip rags will claim, he shouldn’t have gotten his freedom at all; too violent, too sick in the head, too volatile. But they’d promised as part of his plea deal, as part of the kickback for turning himself in after he’d killed the man that killed his brothers: parole in ten years with good behaviour. And he has been, good that is. He even got a degree, worked in the prison kitchens, read all the classics. Model prisoner. 

But now he wants to make something with his hands. 

They ask him, at his parole hearing, what he plans to do with his life after prison, what he’s gonna do with this gift they’re giving him. 

“I think I’ll make cakes” he says. 

They laugh like he just told the funniest joke in the world.

He starts small; just baking for himself at first. The kitchen in his studio apartment is cramped and the oven is inconsistent but he makes it work. He’s a felon, now, and people don’t like renting to felons so he has to take what he can get. There, in the harsh light of the bare bulb in that apartment with the peeling wallpaper and the smell of damp, life gets a little sweeter. 

Once he’s mastered the texture of the sponge he moves on to frosting. An ancient stand mixer is procured from a secondhand shop and put to rigorous work crafting buttercream and meringue and ganache until he’s happy with it, until it makes his taste buds sing when he sticks a fingerfull of it in his mouth. He’s scientific with it, exacting, adding more or less of different ingredients and taking detailed notes. It passes the time, fills the lonely empty stretches of his day when he’s not at work or lying awake staring at the ceiling and wrestling with sleep. 

He reads, in one of the self-help books he brings with him on his commute to and from the hospital where he works doing laundry, that drawing is sometimes helpful, therapeutic, that to give an image to the problem is sometimes easier than trying to describe it with words. He picks up decorating tips and piping bags on his way home, digging through the bins of baking supplies at the only twenty-four-hour shop in his neighborhood while the baffled cashier watches him, ghostly and exhausted in the 3am fluorescent light. 

He gets fired from the hospital. 

They don’t tell him why but the implication is that he’s scaring people. He wonders if these people have ever been actually scared in their life. If he was trying to frighten them they’d know it. 

He doesn’t draw the horrors or the anger or the injustice, doesn’t draw Serrit and Auckes and their cold, dead, faces or the way their killer had looked with his brain on the pavement Letho standing over him with the smoking gun. No he doesn’t draw any of that. He draws the nice things, things that make him smile, decorating his cakes with painstakingly copied flowers, little fondant frogs in a little buttercream pond, the fanciful design of the dishes his mom used when he was a boy. Life Affirming. He just learned that term and is trying to apply it everywhere he can. Even though he can’t afford to keep his lights on, even though he hasn’t slept in weeks. 

He gets work doing night security for a warehouse. It’s boring, mostly, but the hours line up with his insomniac schedule and the pay is enough to keep him in flour and icing sugar to his heart's content. After a few months he starts bringing his extra baked goods around and leaving them in the breakroom. No one mentions it but the cupcakes are always gone when he goes to retrieve the tray at the end of his shift which he takes as a good sign. 

That is until one night he goes to take his four-am break and finds someone else there, mid-bite. It’s one of the truckers that bring in the night deliveries, big guy, almost as big as Letho is, wearing a patched red flannel and a baseball hat. When he turns Letho nearly recoils at the sight of the massive scar marring the left side of his otherwise handsome face.

“Oh man” the trucker says, eyes closed in pleasure “I dunno who makes the damn cupcakes y’all always have around here but they’re the best damn things in the world” 

“Um” says Letho “I make ‘em” 

The trucker cocks his head to the side, embarrassed almost, like he’s trying to hide his scar away. Letho knows what he looks like, knows that he looks more like a killer than a baker, that he doesn’t look like someone who would like to make things. He’s musclebound, hulking, scarred, scary; his face makes children cry. 

The trucker seems to make a decision, suddenly, holding out one broad, calloused hand for Letho to shake. 

“The name’s Eskel. You ever think about selling these things? You’re wasted on night security” 

Turns out Eskel has a niece. Turns out Eskel’s niece is turning thirteen in a couple weeks. Turns out Eskel thinks Letho should make the birthday cake. 

“She likes unicorns” Eskel says, rubbing at the back of his neck like he’s unsure “Last I heard anyway, and swords and hunting n’ shit -- my brother takes her out hunting all the time -- No fucking clue how you’ll turn that into a cohesive cake but we’ll pay you and you can come to the party” 

It’s heady, the idea that someone likes what he does enough to pay him for it, so Letho agrees. 

He makes a multi-tiered cake, chocolate and vanilla checkerboard sponge with a vanilla buttercream decorated with scenes of running unicorns and fantastical heraldry with Happy Birthday Ciri picked out in chocolate ganache on top. There might be creme anglaise involved too, there might be raspberries.

The birthday party is being held at the family farm, nestled way up in the mountains. Eskel, on the drive up, explains that the land’s been in the family for generations and that none of Eskel’s brothers are actually related by blood but that they’re all tied to the land in the same way; some kind of bond deeper than the genetic. It’s a beautiful plot of land: wild sloping meadows, animal pens, the low-slung bulk of the main house. He can see, driving up to it, why it would be loved, why it might have been an idyllic childhood. 

He meets Lambert, Eskel’s littlest brother, who takes one shrewd-eyed look at Letho and promptly asks “what were you in for?” which Letho thankfully doesn’t have to answer because Eskel essentially tackles him to the ground shouting you can’t just ask people that! (he learns, later, that Lambert spent most of his youth in and out of Juvie and his partner has several larceny convictions under his belt. It was a question of recognition rather than spite but at the time the fact that he’d been recognized for what he was so easily chills him). There’s Geralt, the white-haired middle child who is monosyllabic in a way that speaks of shyness but whose calloused hands denote deft experience. Geralt’s wife Yennefer ( or is it ex wife? He can’t quite get a read on them), a gaggle of loud pre-teens, and several other adults who Letho is introduced to and promptly forgets. And then there’s the birthday girl herself, little Ciri who is talkative and wild to the same degree as her father is collected and resigned. 

They all gather round the long table for Letho to reveal the cake, singing the obligatory birthday song with Ciri at the head of the table pink-cheeked and slightly embarrassed by the attention.  

“Oh my god” she says at the sight of the cake, breathless, blue eyes wide as dinner plates “oh my god, oh my god oh my god holy shit” 

“Language” her father reprimands in a tone of voice that means he’s not expecting to be paid any attention whatsoever. 

“It’s like” she says, turning to beam up at Letho so brightly he thinks he might get a sunburn “too pretty to eat” 

They do eat the cake, ultimately, which leads to another round of exclamations from everyone present and Lambert swatting Eskel on the back of the head and calling him a dumbass for not ordering a larger size. 

It’s a good party, all around. Letho spends most of it on the outskirts of the festivities, feeling out of place and antsy because of it, but the night is warm and smells of dry grass and growing things, echoes with the sound of children’s laughter. He wonders what it would be like to grow up in a family like this, one where people actually cared about each other. 

Later, once most of the kids have been taken home and it’s just the adults and Ciri sitting around the dying fire in the backyard, the patriarch of the family approaches Letho, taking the seat next to him and stretching out his legs with a sigh. 

“Y’know” says the old man, not looking at Letho like he’s embarrassed “I’ve got a table at the farmers market in town on Saturdays but I don’t use the whole space anymore -- don’t have the same kind of help I used to and I sold the back half of the property a few months back so less growing room -- Wonder if you’d like to bring some of your stuff to sell. Think they’d go over well” 

They do. 

In only a matter of months Letho has to start seriously thinking about starting an actual honest to god business. Demand is high, he has commissions aplenty, and he’s starting to realize he needs a bigger space if he’s gonna make any kind of serious go at this. 

With help from the internet and Lambert (who, oddly and yet completely unsurprisingly, is a lawyer by trade) he gets a business plan drawn up and starts applying for loans. It starts small; just a rented kitchen space in a large industrial building which he gets inspected and certified. It has a big chest fridge to store the finished products in and miles of counter space; he’s happy with it. 

He quits his job at the warehouse to bake full time. 

He bakes the cake for Lambert and Keira’s wedding and then another, private, cake just for them, to celebrate the three of them and their unofficial union with Aiden as well. 

Everyone asks him when he’s opening a shop. 

He waves it off at first, laughs when asked. He’s not that kind of business owner, prefers to do everything himself. The pressure would be too much, he thinks. 

And then he thinks about it harder. 

There’s an old storefront up for lease in an up and coming part of downtown; bay windows, wood floors, it already has a pastry case up front and a full kitchen in the back, already has an industrial sized oven. It would be an easy transition and Letho finds himself wandering the neighborhood more regularly, spending hours just standing and staring at the empty shop, imagining what he would do with it. He’s never had something of his own before. The possibility terrifies him but it’s a good kind of terror. 

He takes the leap.

 He ends up doing most of the work himself, with occasional help from Eskel, redesigning and redecorating and getting everything in order. The end result is something that is very clearly not a traditional cake shop but which is Letho’s in a certain indefinable way; masculine dark leather, hardwood and steel tempered by the way the light streams in through those bay windows and colors everything in gold. 

The newspaper sends a reporter to review their opening day and Letho sits with her and answers her questions to the best of his ability, stilted and awkward and uncomfortable in the spotlight. She seems surprised by him, goes a little misty-eyed when he explains the cakes he’d made for Serrit and Auckes (pear, cream cheese and brown butter caramel for Serrit, blackcurrant, chocolate, and pistachio for Auckes; sun and moon, two halves of one being). The review is beyond glowing and the story of the muscle bound hulk of a felon turned baker captures the imagination of the public. Soon Letho finds himself swept off his feet by orders, by customers. He hires staff to take care of the front and rarely shows his face, content to stay in the back with his ovens and his piping bags, dreaming up new concoctions and decorating children’s birthday cakes with flowers and marzipan bears. 

It feels good to make something that makes people so happy.

 

By the time he’s forty Letho thinks he has everything he’d ever wanted. 

He has a thriving business, a little two-bedroom house with a garden in a quiet part of the city, he’s even considering getting a dog. He thinks of what Serrit and Auckes would say if they could see him now; they’d probably call him a sellout, would turn up their noses at his quiet existence, all teenage self-importance and identical expressions of distaste (the twins are always fifteen in his mind, never grow any older, stuck in stasis at the age they’d been when they died). The thought of their derision makes him smile, warms him through. He wonders when the thought of them stopped hurting, when he made peace with the loss. He’d been too busy living to notice.

He’s happy, he is, but, in his quiet moments he wishes he had someone to share it all with. It’s a strange desire, out of character and he blames it on getting old and sentimental. Maybe getting that dog will help. 

Then one day Lambert calls out of the blue and asks for a favor. 

“Look” Lambert says, sounding frazzled “I’m really sorry to ask, man, but Aiden’s brother just got out of rehab and he needs to be in the city for his outpatient treatment and it’s too fucking far to drive every day…” long story short they can’t drive him, he can’t stay with them (something about a fraught, though caring, relationship between the estranged half siblings) and could Letho, maybe, please, put him up for a couple weeks and keep an eye on him, just until Aiden can find him somewhere else to stay -- a sober home or a halfway house or something. Of course Letho says of course he can stay. He’s got that whole other bedroom just gathering dust anyway.

“He’s an artist” Lambert says “Maybe you could put him to work decorating for you” 

It’s only half a joke. 

Letho wasn’t sure what he was expecting when he agreed to this, someone like Aiden maybe; gregarious and hyperactive and loud. What he gets, however, is a sullen twenty-two year old with a shaved scalp and a perpetual snarl carved into the corners of his mouth. He’s clutching a worn black duffel bag like it’s going to save him. 

 Gaetan is angry, hurting, reminds Letho of himself at that age, the same kind of hardened fury worn as armor, the same hunted look in his green eyes like he’s never sure where the next blow is coming from only that it will hurt. He’s been cast aside, left to slip through the cracks by a world that couldn’t give less of a shit about him and only taught him how to be afraid. Oddly, though, he’s not afraid of Letho. 

Letho is used to it, the minute flinches as he passes by, the open horrified staring (which is better for the truth of it) the way that even other men sometimes refuse to meet his eye when they shake hands. Gaetan doesn’t flinch, doesn’t shy away, just looks at him with his piercing emerald gaze and doesn’t say anything. Letho feels like someone is rummaging around in his guts, his heart thunders loud loud loud in the cavern of his ribs. He wonders if Gaetan can hear it. 

“Gaetan” Gaetan says at last, extending one skinny, track-marked arm, one paint-stained, fine-boned hand “The fuck up” 

Something in Letho recognizes its twin, a pull at the core of him. 

“Letho” Letho responds in kind “also a fuck up” 

Gaetan doesn’t smile but some of the tension in his shoulders eases. 

It’s nice having someone else in the house, another presence, someone else to cook dinner for at night. Gaetan comes and helps around the shop most mornings, drawing the daily menu on the blackboard with his own artistic flair. He’s always fiddling with something and is prone to sudden mood swings from one extreme of human emotion to the other going from depressed to overjoyed like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. He’s whip smart, a brilliant artist, and Letho finds himself often in awe of him, distracted by watching him flit from place to place, from notebook page to notebook page, the way the frown gathers between his eyebrows when he’s concentrating hard. He’s good at decorating cakes it turns out and Letho lets him loose on the cupcakes most days, inspired by his endless well of creativity. 

 He drives Gaetan to the clinic in the afternoons, does crosswords in the waiting room while Gaetan does whatever he does there, and then they go back to the shop. Sometimes Gaetan is sullen and withdrawn after his appointments, nauseous and exhausted, but sometimes he’s wild and brilliant and alive, talking about whatever pops into his head. Letho loves those days. Gaetan tells dirty jokes to make the baristas at the shop laugh, critiques Letho’s newest recipes with his particularly acerbic wit, puts thrash metal music on the shop playlist just to scandalize the old ladies there for afternoon tea. Perhaps it's bad for his brand image but it makes Gaetan happy so Letho doesn’t mind. 

He adds a new cake to the menu about a month into Gaetan’s stay -- ginger and chili sponge with vanilla bean buttercream -- sweet and unconventional with a little smoky kick to it, the flecks of vanilla bean in the buttercream like the spray of freckles across Gaetan’s cheekbones. 

They keep similar schedules, sleeping for a mere two hours at a stretch before waking again to the clawed hands of a nightmare in the dark. Letho doesn’t ask about Gaetan’s nightmares and Gaetan never asks about his but they can hear each other, separated as they are only by the wall between their two bedrooms, hear the wild cries, the choked-on sobbing of the children that they were never allowed to be. 

At night he lies awake and listens for Gaetan’s thrashing next door, the telltale thud of him getting out of bed and retreating to the kitchen. Letho follows. 

They don’t say anything, don’t need to. Letho trials new recipes and Gaetan sketches and smokes, silent, in the gold dimness of the kitchen; keeping each other company in their restlessness. 

Somewhere along the way Letho realizes he’s fallen in love. 

It’s ludicrous really. He’s not built for love, fundamentally unlovable as he is, and the thought that Gaetan would ever want him back is laughable. It’s doomed to failure, he reasons; Gaetan deserves someone his own age, someone better than a washed up felon who sculpts animals out of marzipan and calls it work, someone who can match him, who shines just as brightly as he does. But Gaetan is… Gaetan and loving him is as easy as breathing, it's the easiest thing he’s ever done. He can’t help the machinations of his own heart.

Four months after Gaetan came to stay, Aiden calls to tell them there’s a sober home in Brugge with a bed open. 

“I know it’s far luchik” he’d said, voice tinny with distance and a poor connection “but please just consider it. It would be good for you.”

Gaetan had responded by throwing the phone across the room

. 

 It hangs over them like a blade about to drop, the threat of separation and that night, post-nightmare, Letho realizes he can’t stand it anymore. 

“You can stay” Letho says; the feelings are too big to contain, everything flickery and unreal in the predawn through the window and the gold of the kitchen light. It feels like the place for a near-confession, the time for it “here, with me” 

The slow scratching of Gaetan’s pencil against the paper stops. 

“You want me to stay?” He says it like he’s not entirely sure he can believe it, like maybe there’s another shoe that's gonna drop. 

Letho doesn’t turn around from where he’s painstakingly rolling fondant into rose petals knowing that if he does he’s going to say something else, something damning. 

“Only if you want to stay” 

Gaetan has had so many choices taken away from him throughout his life, Letho isn’t about to do the same. 

“Letho…” Gaetan says, deadly serious, quiet in the dimness, near suddenly. Letho hadn’t heard him approach. 

“Letho” 

He’s afraid to turn but he has to, has to look. 

Gaetan surges up to kiss him, hands curled possessive in the front of Letho’s shirt pulling him down so he can reach. 

Letho kisses him back, greedy with it, a wild collision of lips and tongue and the gentle nip of teeth. He cups the back of Gaetan’s shorn skull with a hand gritty with flour just to haul him closer, just because he wants to and he can. 

“No ones ever wanted to keep me before” Gaetan whispers into the space between them, like a confession, like a prayer. 

I’ll keep you forever Letho thinks, bending to kiss him again and again and then again, drunk on it. Gaetan tastes like ginger and chili and vanilla buttercream. I’ll keep you forever. 

Four years later Letho bakes their wedding cake and Gaetan decorates it.

[tempest-toss]

Aesthetic Tag

[Thank you @dcwnthercbbithcle for the tag and the explanation! Done with Four, Five, and Six (Four is boldened, Five is italicized, and Six is the blue)]

i. the fairy.

chipped nail polish. glitter highlight. tall trees with smooth bark. tangled hair. the taste of cinnamon sugar. talking too loud and too fast. overgrown flowers in your hair. crumbling buildings reclaimed by nature. flirting. walking home at 3am with no coat. platonic hand - holding. blowing smoke out of your nose . dragonfly wings. chaotic good. freckles. fairy rings. secret meetings. gender nonconformity. leather. smudged eyeliner. forbidden fruit.

ii. the reaper.

computer errors. a shiver down your spine. haunting beauty. hard liquor. crowns of thorns. shadowed alleyways. decaying plant matter. shattered mirrors and broken glass. corrupted memories. stopped clocks. the scent of stale cigarettes. tattered black hoodies. walking your friends home. the crescent moon. the sea. a graveyard on a foggy day. cold rings on cold fingers. absolution. looking out the window of an airplane. soft kisses.

iii. the witch.

graffiti. pretending to know what you’re doing. worn paperback books. growing up too fast. parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. lace and combat boots. moth wings. candles on every surface. a weathered deck of cards. turning the music up. fireflies in jars. calloused fingers. drawing on your skin. sunlight filtering through clouds. petrichor. a dying rose in a jar. wearing a crystal pendant. illusions and spells. black cats. mint gum. chapped lips. dirt under your fingernails. the cycle of life and death.

iv. the wolf.

murders of crows. frost-bitten leaves. wolves howling at midnight. knocking on your door. leaving food out for stray animals. the twang of an acoustic guitar. honey. tiny red buds on trees. claw marks on the walls. golden eyes. slightly too long stubble. sharp canines. soft, thick fur. hunger. a small cottage in the middle of the woods. knitted fingerless gloves. sleeping on the forest floor. always finding your way back home.

[tagging @o5oflies and @earth-b0y!]

[umichenginabroad]

Week 5: Holiday Travel Part 1 at Qingdao

On the Friday night before an early flight to Qingdao, I stayed up filled with excitement for the many things we can do there, worried about what to wear for the crazy 90 degrees Fahrenheit at Yantai, anxious for the upcoming EECS216 midterm, and busied myself in an ongoing battle with an unyielding mosquito. There is no way I'm letting the mosquito get to me when my left eye is still swelling from its previous bite. Being so occupied, I didn't sleep all the way to 3AM, when the alarm finally sounded and signaled me to get ready. Half an hour later, I was waiting at the east gate outside of the dorm with Ramona and my cousin Christine. We were waiting for one last person in our traveling group— my uncle Kelvin, who I need to emphasize is very young and having just graduated, this summer in China is his last vacation before he begins working. Imagine setting up countless 5 minute interval alarms on 3 different devices and oversleeping all of them. Thankfully, he did not mute WeChat text notifications. Cutting close, Kelvin arrived at the same time as the car did and the four of us took off.

The weekend's theme places are two coastal cities in the Shandong province north of Shanghai. The plan was to spend Saturday at Qingdao and save Yantai on Sunday and come back on Monday, which we have off because of the Dragon Boat Festival. I will cover the full day at Qingdao in this blog and save Yantai for next week as there's a lot of content.

After flying for one and a half hour, we arrived at Qingdao's airport at 8:30 AM and spent another hour on the metro, where I got really excited to finally see the city. Qingdao is a super popular tourist vacation city, and there have been many shows filmed there, including a Chinese pop idol show that got me into c-pop back then. Following Plan A of Ramona's detailed itinerary, (she was up at 1AM crafting three potential itineraries, respect), we dropped off our stuff at an airbnb conveniently located at the city center and headed out for lunch.

Qingdao looks like an anime world— there's the uniformly painted peach and orange colored apartments on the main road, cute street decorations and cartoon graphics along clean alleys, and big comic fonts on the restaurants' signs. Our hotel is a walkable distance to the anime street so after lunch, we trudged uphill and I found myself marveling again at the cute aesthetics. The anime street is a popular place to take pictures and with each block of stores we passed, I would see people claiming a spot at both sides of the streets giving their best poses. We had to line up a bit for the popular Totoro wall and there's us roasting under Qingdao's welcoming sun.

And of course, nothing's more exciting than trying out new food. For lunch, we had dumplings color coded with different fillings inside and underneath the dumpling picture is a simple dessert made out of yam coated with blueberry sauce (tasted minimal in sugar like most sweets in China) . The restaurant also kindly served us free Zongzi, which is the holiday food for the Dragon Boat Festival. Zongzi is glutinous rice that can have sweet or salty fillings tightly wrapped in leaves. They are in the picture at the top right of this mini food album. After lunch, we visited a coffee shop at the anime street where I got a rose flavored latte, and it was good good.

Next up on our itinerary is the beer museum, where we were about to have a sip of the local Tsingtao Beer. I should mention that the legal drinking age in China is 18. Although I'm not an alcoholic, I'm willing to give Qingdao's local specialty a try. We bought the tickets in advance in the museum's official mini program available on WeChat and off we went.

Taking shelter at the museum during the hottest time in the afternoon, we scanned over the beer's history, watched the assembly line factory where bottles and caps move around at fast speed and came out as packaged products on the conveyor belt, and experienced the loss of balance inside a drunk house designed for recreating the feel of getting drunk. When I finally get to try the beer, I have to say it did not taste very appealing. I'm better off drinking my mixed drink that is half fruit mix, half sprite, and a few droplets of alcohol. None of us had the courage to finish the drink, so we all dumped it and returned our glasses.

After we got done with the museum, we lost some time taking the metro to Laoshan, only to be dropped off at some ticket gate far away from the mountain trails and eventually decided we're not up for hiking so we took an hour subway to May Fourth Square instead.

Quoted from wikipedia, May Fourth Square is a public square in Qingdao's central business district that borders the Yellow Sea. The red spiral sculpture is called May Wind. Its color being Chinese red, the sculpture commemorates the patriotic spirit of the May Fourth Movement during World War One. One of the proposals in the Treaty of Versailles had involved transferring German concessions of the Shandong province including Qingdao to Japan. In response, mass student organizations gathered in Beijing on May 4th, 1919 and protested against the treaty. Their determination influenced the Chinese delegation to refuse to sign. Hence, a separate treaty was signed to return Shandong back to China. That's the history of the May Fourth Square. The May Wind stood as proof of the people's collaborative effort in a patriotic movement to get back the coastal province.

Credits to Ramona for taking the beautiful picture of the tall straight rose at the right.

After May Fourth Square, we headed back to our hotel and I fell asleep soon after settling into the comfy bed. The mattress was softer than my dorm's bed and the pillow was plumper. Most of all, I need to make up for the lack of sleep last night and replenish my energy for Yantai the next day. I needed rest so much I managed to block off the sound of the speaker down the street that repeatedly called out soufflé for sale. Goodnight to Qingdao.

That's it for Qingdao.

See you all next week for the upcoming Yantai, which embraced us with 90 degrees Fahrenheit but the fun of pedaling across the beach, the view of the glowing sun settling in the beautiful dusk, and the food patrol is so worth it.

Vivien Lin

Computer Engineering

UM - Shanghai Jiaotong University Joint Institute

[xellandria]

Yesterday, I had my appointment with the new oral surgeon about my wisdom teeth. Unfortunately, it was up in Portland and that's not where I live, so it was kind of a lot: went to bed at around 11pm so I could wake up at ~8:30am so we could leave no later than 10am to get there for an appointment at 2pm.

Anxiety woke me up at 3am and kept me up until about 6:30; got a little bit of an extra nap in and woke up at 8:45 (I'd moved my alarm time back at that point). Got all my usual Thursday chores in and we left around 9:30 to start the 3.5hr drive up, which went fine until we actually got near/into Portland, at which point the fucked up roadways that every major city seems to come with got to us and we started getting lost and rerouted onto tiny back roads and nightmare one-way streets.

The hospital itself was, as I should have expected, not straightforward, and we spent five minutes just looking for a place near the place I was supposed to go to be able to park (there wasn't one). Ended up in a parking garage four buildings over from where I needed to be because of construction, and ended up calling and letting them know I was going to be late. I think we actually made it to the maxillofacial area at like 2:20 or later.

Mom had left her phone (and wallet) in the car so she left to go that at some point, which ended up being a good thing because it turns out that I was fucking lied to over the phone and they didn't end up looking into my mouth ONCE. They did NOT need me to come up there, like, at ALL, and it could ABSOLUTELY have been handled via telehealth. I have not and will not be telling her this, and will stew in my aggravation by myself.

Anyway their ORs are booked out a full year at this point; I'm on a waitlist but will potentially not hear about when this dental problem will be resolved until next August, fifteen months from when my recent emergency dental problem started (: On the plus side at least, if I haven't managed to get my cavity situation fixed by whenever it happens, they'll do that at the same time, so there's that.

Got lost again on the way back out of Portland (plus by then it was rush hour so it was even more nightmarish), stopped at a McDonald's for my first meal of the day (I'd had like 8oz of apple juice to keep my blood sugar up at 9am but that was p much it). That's the first time I've eaten out (and been in public without a mask) since probably mid-December 2019 (my family stopped going out to eat earlier than official lockdown). Thankfully the place was pretty empty so hopefully nothing bad will come of it.

[simply-flesh-and-golden-blood]

My writing experience during the day: eloquent. incredible. there's birds out the window and a smoothie in my hand. writer's block is a distant memory. the force is strong with this one.

My writing experience at 3AM: delirious. i'm running on boredom and sugar. i giggle like a madman as my fingers pound out objectively awful attempts at humor so fiercely that they're about to no-clip straight to hell. i haven't blinked in four hours. i may have gone insane. j.r.r. tolkien himself rolls in his grave

[always-another-story-blog]

Short Story: Four Sugars at 3AM

FOUR SUGARS AT THREE AM? The night was peaceful, not dead, not silent; peaceful. The usual kind of city noise and typical dormitory disturbances seemed to be taking a holiday. For London it might as well be dead. There was no traffic, no drunken businessmen loudly lamenting their pitiful jobs, no barely legal club hoppers singing off key power ballads as they staggered home. There wasn’t even the usual noise inside the building. The seven story student hall was co-ed and lax on rules, most likely having given up on enforcing them if the usual ruckus was anything to go by. Normally someone would be cooking something unnecessarily abstract and breaking plates in the process, or having a passionate, and probably tipsy, philosophical debate over something they probably had no view on but thought they should. Nobody’s TV was turned up too high, no one was blasting music from their iPod decks, having impossibly loud sex or a pointless lover’s quarrel. There wasn’t even anyone making a late night trip to the bathroom after one too many beers. It was the most peaceful night since the beginning of the semester and was probably worthy of being noted as some kind of world record. So, Lexi thought dully, why am I still awake? It was the perfect night to fall into a deep, undisturbed sleep, and yet here she was, lying on her back, arms folded over her chest, hair spread out over her pillow, staring at the ceiling, probably, she thought, looking like a grumpy vampire from a seventies horror movie. She had class at ten, and work from five in the evening, she needed the sleep or she’d price gun some hapless customer of the Tesco Express she worked in to death. That would be an interesting cause of death. With a defeated sigh she shook away all thoughts of price gun related fatalities and sat up in the dark, irritably throwing aside the duvet and swinging her legs to the floor. She shuddered as she did so. Wall to wall carpeting, or rather carpet tiling. Its only separation from kitchen tiles being that it had the kind of scratchy-fuzzy quality that dermatologists probably had nightmares about. Or wet dreams depending on their perspective. And their sense of ethics. Why don’t I own a pair of slippers? She thought aimlessly as she leant down and groped in the dark for a pair of pumps to wear instead. It was March, shivering weather, and unusually brisk this year, so why she even had these rubber soled canvas things outside her closet was anyone’s guess, but in a pinch they made okay slipper replacements. Sliding them onto her feet she then sat back up and reached for the knee length cardigan she’d thrown over the back of her desk chair before going to bed and stood up, pulling it on clumsily as she made her way to the door, which she then walked into, having completely misjudged the distance between it and her bed. Taking a deep breath she turned and edged back to her bed. From the table beside it she retrieved her glasses and re-attempted the trip to the door, this time without blunt force trauma to the nose. The light in the hallway was still on for some reason so at the very least she knew she wouldn’t walk into someone else’s door or anything. In the building Lexi lived in each floor shared a large kitchen and shower rooms between ten residents. The rooms included a toilet and sink so at the very least people could brush their teeth in the morning without having to awkwardly avoid making eye contact with someone’s towel covered crotch in the mirror. At this time of night sometimes Lexi would hear someone taking advantage of the late hour to use the shower rooms while no one else was around. Since it was the second semester they were all at the very least accustomed to each others’ routines. Sort of. In the kitchen Lexi groped for the light switch and squinted as the fluorescent tube on the ceiling flickered to life. Somehow the only thing that seemed like a reasonable solution to insomnia right now, in Lexi’s mind anyway, was a hot beverage. Hot chocolate usually did the trick, while pleasantly and warmly reminding her of childhood nights when her mother would make her hot chocolate in a mug with cartoon red and white mushrooms all over it, and sit beside her on the couch, stroking her hair while she drank it. The two of them would watch whatever Discovery Channel special her mother was currently engrossed in until Lexi fell asleep against her mother’s side. Obviously right now, recreating the scene exactly was out of the question. The freeview box in the flat didn’t receive the Discovery Channel. Opening the drinks cupboard Lexi sighed again. She rummaged for a moment, even searching other cupboards before being forced to come to the conclusion that there was no hot chocolate in the kitchen. She could have sworn she had bought two new tubs of Options Caribbean Coconut just the week before. Then again, five of the other nine members of her flat were female and all stereotypically addicted to anything even remotely chocolate related. Even a couple of the guys couldn’t say no to a mug of Options if she offered. Lexi closed the cupboard, trying extra hard not to slam it in frustration. It was a rare quiet night after all, no need to mar it just because she wasn’t reaping all the benefits. It became much harder not to slam doors when she decided to compromise with tea instead – after all a hot beverage is a hot beverage – when she realised that they were also completely out of teabags. Although some saintly soul had decided to leave the empty packet in there just to taunt her anyway. She glanced only very briefly at the jar of coffee, the type of cheap, over-roasted swill that might make a barista cry. She was sleep deprived already; she wasn’t nearly masochistic enough to drink coffee at…what time was it anyway? She pushed back the sleeve of her cardigan to look at her watch. 2:56 Of course. Goodbye healthy eight hours, I’ll remember you fondly, she thought bitterly. She could feel herself getting irritated, that prickly feeling that made her hands clench of their own accord. Taking a deep breath she closed the cupboard door, carefully, and turned to lean on the kitchen counter. No hot chocolate, no tea, and she refused to drink warm milk, it had always turned her stomach when someone gave it to her in her childhood, and so she’d steered clear of the stuff for the past thirteen years or so. The only option left was to go down to the basement and get something from the hot drink vending machine. She was pretty sure that had hot chocolate. It wasn’t Options but it was warm and vaguely chocolate flavoured. It was settled then, to the common room she would go. The building had a set of rooms and facilities on each floor, including the ground floor, so the common room and laundry room were in the basement. The common room consisted of uncomfortable and ugly chairs that were asymmetrically shaped and fit together to form a makeshift couch if you put them together in the right technicolour order. Along with that there was a TV mounted on the wall with a DVD player, outlets for laptop plugs, presumably, and three vending machines; one for snacks, and two for drinks; one hot and one cold. Taking another deep breath Lexi returned to her room to fish some change out of her purse and headed first for the lift, then, deciding the stairs might make her more tired, made a beeline for the stairwell. From the sixth floor she descended twelve half flights, feeling mildly dizzy at the slightly spiral-like motion required to use the stairs. On the ground floor she ignored the security guard’s desk, seeing as there was no security guard to ignore. Where he was she neither knew nor cared. The ground floor of the building had the same setup as the rest of the floor except for a reception desk that doubled as a guard station at night and another set of stairs, carpeted in the same scratchy tile, behind a door to the right that led down to the common room and laundry rooms. At the bottom of the stairs Lexi turned right, away from the humid laundry room and down a short corridor to the common room door, the long window in which was completely plastered over with posters and fliers for various events and live shows. Pushing open the heavy door Lexi’s eyes went straight to the right hand wall that ran adjacent to the door. Directly opposite the door, at the other end of the wall that ran roughly the length of a badminton court was the room’s only window. Being in a basement room it wasn’t a real window, but a backlit panel with a blown up photograph of some miscellaneous countryside pasted over it. During the day the light was turned on and it almost looked like a view from a real window. Almost. If you ignored the peeling edges of the ‘view’. Sometime in the evening heavy curtains were drawn over it. Usually by one of the receptionists, the students sure as hell didn’t care. On the right hand wall between the door and the fake window were the three vending machines that most likely kept some people in the building alive until their next pay check or ‘care package’ from home. Lexi would be lying if she said she’d never experienced the vending machine diet for a week or so at least once in the time she had been living in this building. The high number of people using the machines probably accounted for their faded, weathered appearance. The whole room had kind of a ‘brown’ feel to it. The carpet, at one time or another, had clearly been some kind of purple, if the tiny areas in the corners and beneath the vending machines were any indication. But years of heavy traffic flow and less than clean trainers had turned the thin carpet pile a wet sandy brown colour. The walls were probably cream once too, but now they too were brown, a yellowish brown that reminded Lexi of ageing parchment. She suspected a disregard for the ‘no smoking’ rule was at least partially to blame for the change in hue. The ceiling had had a similar fate to the wallpaper, and even the ‘colourful’ asymmetric chairs had a brown tinge to them, laid over their bright reds and greens and blues and yellows like tracing paper. Wanting to waste no more time Lexi made a beeline for the hot drinks machine, her eyes set on the button the size of a business card with a mug of hot chocolate on it. This was probably why she was so startled when a voice penetrated the dusty air, a hand landing on her shoulder at the same time. With a hoarse squeak she flinched away from the hand and spun to meet her assailant. If she weren’t in such a downtrodden mood she could have howled with laughter at herself for even beginning to think of the word ‘assailant’. Instead of some buff body builder type with a scraggly beard and beer stained wife beater she was met with the sight of a guy maybe a few inches taller than her, skinnier than his t-shirt seemed to think, wearing faded jeans and a black and white hoodie with worn out sneakers, his dark hair falling over his head in the kind of haphazard way that made Lexi suspect it actually took a surprising amount of effort. In the same moment she realised two things. First, the guy was one of her flatmates. He was one of the guys who would always happily accept if she offered hot chocolate to anyone who happened to be in the kitchen at the time. If she remembered correctly he was an exchange student from somewhere in Asia, either Japan or Korea, but had spent part of his childhood in America, so she had no idea why his parents had sent him to England to study English since he could already speak it. Second, he was holding a guitar. She did recall him mentioning something before about also studying music. The guy blinked at her for a second, and realising she was still cowering slightly Lexi relaxed her stance and ran a hand through her bedraggled hair. Her hand froze suddenly and she glanced briefly down at herself. From toe to top, slip on canvas pumps that were a weird shade of pale dirty yellow. They had once been a pretty cream or something, but getting caught in summer rain while wearing them had messed them up quite badly. A pair of faded navy drawstring pyjama bottoms that were actually just this side of too small and ended at her knee. If memory served she’d had them since she was seventeen, apparently nowhere in the last three years had she seen fit to get rid of or replace them. A baby blue t-shirt with the words ‘sleep on it’ in faded and peeling black letters, under which she now realised, was no bra. A hooded cardigan that came almost to the backs of her knees. Messy wavy auburn hair, with random strands sticking up around her head. No makeup and nothing to hide the dark circles under her eyes besides her glasses. After a moment of wondering whether she should be agonising over her appearance in front of an attractive guy she decided she was too tired, and in no mood, to care. The guy cocked his head to one side, studying her face with intense black eyes. No way, Lexi thought, people can’t have black eyes, they must be brown…but they’re so dark. “Lexi, right?” he said suddenly. She blinked in mild surprise. “Uh, right, um…” she thought for a second, she knew he had a name he used in England as it was easier to remember , and spell for that matter…what was it again. Ah! “Alex, right?” by his wide smile she gather she had remembered correctly. “Yeah,” she smiled back, wondering what he was doing down here, but before she could ask he beat her to it. “What brings you down here so late?” he asked, in English so perfect she wondered once again why his parents thought he needed to study more. It actually took her a moment to think of a response. To her tired mind her reason for being down here was obvious. “Oh,” she gestured vaguely to the vending machines “drink,” Alex raised one eyebrow, one hand resting on the body of his guitar, close to his hip, the other resting in his front pocket. Lexi had a brief, slightly bitter thought that he shouldn’t be allowed to look so together and awake and presentable at three am, when she herself looked exactly how she felt; tired, rumpled and slightly irritable. “There’s nothing in the kitchen?” Alex asked incredulously. Now it was Lexi’s turn to raise her eyebrow. She folded her arms across her chest and gave him a pointed look. “Well, since I couldn’t sleep I decided to get some hot chocolate, but someone used it all up, all that’s left is coffee,” Alex had the good grace to look a little apologetic, or was that just sympathetic? “Ah, I see,” “What are you doing down here so late?” Lexi asked, moving toward the vending machine. “We practice down here at night sometimes,” he replied. We? Lexi stopped and turned and finally realised that all the way across the room three other guys, along with a drum kit, a bass and another guitar. Wow, she really must have been sleep deprived not to have noticed them already. Noticing her gaze they looked up and waved to her with pleasant smiles. Lexi looked back at Alex. “You guys practice down here? How often?” he shrugged. “A few times a week, usually whenever we don’t have morning classes the next day,” Lexi frowned and resumed her journey to the vending machine. “I wonder why I’ve never heard you,” she muttered. Alex leaned against the front panel of the cold drinks machine, watching her fish in her cardigan pocket for change and folded his arms, resting them lightly on his guitar. “We don’t use amps very often or we’d probably get yelled at, and I doubt you could hear us all the way up on the sixth floor, this room is surprisingly soundproof,” Lexi nodded absent-mindedly as she slotted in her money and jabbed the hot chocolate button with her index finger. A little red light flashed beside the button and a scrolling message on the little screen told her it was all out of a hot chocolate. A quick scan of the rest of the buttons revealed that this was the one and only option for hot chocolate. With a shaky sigh Lexi leaned her head against the machine, it was slightly warm. She concentrated on this while she tried not to get annoyed. She took a deep breath and leaned back. Alex peered at the screen. “Wow, no hot chocolate here either, it must be a conspiracy or something,” he said with a playful smirk. Lexi gave a small defeated half-laugh and scanned the buttons for black tea and conceded to the compromise, jabbing at that button instead. While she waited for the cardboard cup to fill she turned back to Alex. “Okay, so you guys practice down here, do you ever give performances anywhere?” Alex averted his eyes, raising a hand sheepishly to the back of his head. “Not…not yet, we want to build up a good collection of our own songs first, we’ve only been practicing together since the end of last semester so we’re hoping to start performing this summer,” Lexi nodded understandingly. A small insistent beep sounded from the machine, informing her that her tea was ready. Sliding the cup carefully out of the machine she set it on the table to her left and grabbed four of the small sugar packets sitting in a small green plastic tray and ripped them all open at one before tipping them into her drink and taking a wooden stirrer from another cardboard cup beside the sugars. Alex watched all this was a slightly surprised expression. “Four?” he asked. She glanced up at him. “Huh?” “Four sugars? At 3am?” She smiled ruefully. “These packets are so small you have to use twice as many as you normally would, and even then it’s not quite the same,” Alex nodded slowly, like she was teaching him quantum physics and he still couldn’t get his head around it. Gingerly picking up the hot cup and cradling it in her hands, which she pulled her cardigan sleeves over, she turned and looked at the rest of the band, who seemed to just be getting done tuning their instruments. “You guys any good?” she asked, glancing at Alex with a playful smirk of her own. What are you doing, she asked herself, why are you striking up a conversation instead of going back to bed? Alex caught her smirk and grinned, pushing off the vending machine and lacing his fingers together behind his head, putting on a disinterested expression. “Pretty good if I do say so myself,” Lexi had to laugh a little at his command of English colloquialisms. She gave him a mock nonchalant expression of her own. “Oh? You think so?” “I know so,” he shot back. The other guitarist glanced up from the strings he was tuning and smirked across at his friend. “Really? How can you be sure if you’ve never performed for anyone before?” Alex shrugged nonchalantly and began to slowly wend his way back towards the rest of the band. Lexi was saved from making the decision of whether or not to follow him when the bassist currently perched on a faded and coffee stained yellow chair looked up properly from his instrument and addressed her directly. “Alex has such a good ear for music he can’t possibly be wrong,” he said, shooting his friend a teasing look. Alex rolled his eyes. Lexi shrugged and raised her cardboard cup, encased in both cardigan sleeve covered hands, to her mouth. Feeling on the brink of being scolded just by the steam alone she simply blew on the tea and lowered the cup again. “I guess if you practice in here all the time people must hear you then. If you were terrible they’d probably say something, or at least give you dirty looks,” she said. Alex, to her mild surprise, stuck his tongue out at her briefly, before returning to checking his strings. The other guitarist glanced up with a confused frown. “Huh, what’s dirty?” he asked. Lexi blinked for a second, and then giggled. “Nothing, sorry,” she said, waving it off. The bassist leaned over and lightly shoved his friend’s shoulder. “We covered colloquialisms months ago Tom,” he said. Lexi couldn’t stop being impressed by the command of English these guys had. Seriously, how much time had they really spent over seas? She knew Alex had spent a good chunk of his childhood in America, there was a very slight New York accent to his English. “I don’t get it though, you said dirty right?” “Dirty look,” Lexi explained “like, looking at someone in a bad way or something, if people didn’t like the way you sounded they’d look at you funny,” the guitarist nodded slowly. “Except no-one ever comes in here when we’re practicing, not usually anyway,” the bass player said. Lexi averted her eyes, all of a sudden feeling mighty superfluous. Noticing her look the bassist turned to her and smiled again. “I’m Zeke by the way, kid on the drums is Seb,” Lexi grinned and gave the drummer a wave. “Lexi,” Lexi wondered absently why she had never really talked to these guys before. At some time or another she was sure she must have seen them on her floor with Alex, and she thought she recalled hearing that Alex and his friends took some kind of Applied Music course. Glancing down at her steaming drink and then back up she realised Alex seemed to have fallen into thought. Suddenly he smiled like he’d figured out the solution to unemployment in East London and held his guitar out to Tom. “Here, hold this a sec,” Tom barely looked up. “Huh?” Zeke sniggered. “Your listening skills are terrible after midnight,” he muttered, provoking Tom to glare at him from beneath his fringe. Alex rolled his eyes again and nudged Tom with his guitar. “Yah, Igeol gajigo itge,” Lexi blinked at the sudden language change. She was just wondering aimlessly what he had said when, once Tom had sheepishly taken the guitar, Alex leant down, bracing his hands on the edge of a green chair that was oval shaped and dipped slightly in the middle from years of people dropping heavily onto it, probably while laden with books. Before Lexi could ask what he thought he was doing he had pushed the chair over from where it had been sitting to a point maybe five feet in front of the band’s setup. Lexi blinked owlishly behind her glasses, completely confused. Glancing at the other three didn’t help, Zeke looked like he was slowly catching on, Seb had his head cocked to one side, his expression unreadable and Tom was barely paying attention. Settling the chair into position Alex then straightened up and turned to Lexi, planting his hands on her shoulders and guiding her to sit. She stared up at him blankly. “What are you doing?” “You can be our first audience!” he replied with a truly cheerful smile, leaving her slightly dazed and confused while he took his guitar back from Tom and sat on the once-blue chair beside him. Zeke settled back onto his yellow chair while Seb, an enthusiastic smile on his face, re-settled himself on the orange chair, the smallest in the room, behind his drum kit, re-gripping his drum sticks while he waited for the okay from the other three. Alex shot Lexi a grin and nodded to Tom and Zeke, who turned and nodded to Seb who twirled his drum sticks between his fingers before tapping out four beats and beginning to play, joined a split second later by the other three. For some reason, it had not previously occurred to Lexi that one of them would sing, so when Alex, his gaze soft on his guitar, began singing in a gentle, melodious voice she was taken aback. Not so much because he had started singing, but because his voice sounded so good, so perfect, it felt like taking a deep breath of fresh spring air, like feeling a cool breeze on your skin after a heat wave, it was such a refreshing sound, gentle, soft, yet strong and clear and undeniably beautiful. With the group’s flawless playing, their effortless harmony, the song they were playing couldn’t have sounded more perfect. A smile crept over Lexi’s features as she listened, the music seeping into her chest and warming her along with the tea, which she clasped, in its paper cup, near her throat in her sleeve-covered hands. As she song progressed Lexi felt herself begin to rock slightly from side to side with the beat, her head nodding slightly as she let herself be immersed in and carried away by the music, by Alex’s voice and the strangely picturesque view of the four of them, young foreign exchange students in a dingy cigarette stained basement common room of their university accommodation, playing their instruments as though they were merely extensions of their own bodies. As the song drew to a close and their playing tapered off and Alex let his voice dwindle into silence the four of them looked up at Lexi and smiled. Lexi was powerless to do anything but grin back, her cheeks almost aching from the width of her smile. Zeke raised one eyebrow cheekily at her. “So? Pretty perfect right?” he said, laughter dancing in his eyes. Lexi chuckled and rolled her eyes. “Not bad,” she quipped and it was Zeke’s turn to laugh. Alex rested his guitar against his chair and stood to approach her, hands in his pockets, attempting and failing to appear nonchalant. “D-Did you like it?” he asked slightly haltingly. His stutters could have passed for lack of confidence in the language, if not for the slight rose colour dusting his cheeks and the fact that Lexi could tell he was actually quite nervous to hear her response. She smiled and decided not to tease him. “I loved it!” the look of delight on Alex’s face at her response was indescribable. The other three grinned at each other in a mixture of delight and victory. Lexi suddenly looked at her watch and made a face. She’d forgotten how late - or early - it was, she’d forgotten about her lecture the next day, she’d forgotten sleep, it had all be replaced with the four boys’ music, but now it came rushing back and she sighed. Alex noticed her look and looked at his own watch and winced. “You have to get back to bed right?” he said, she nodded and looked up at him apologetically. Standing, she smiled at the other three again. “You guys are amazing, you have to let me know when you start performing, I’ll be there to cheer you on,” Zeke grinned and nudged Tom’s shoulder. “Hear that? We have our very first fan!” Tom laughed. “She can start a fan-club for us!” Zeke and Seb laughed from behind their instruments as Lexi rolled her eyes. She waved and bid them all goodnight before making a beeline for the door. After only a few steps she looked back and realised Alex was coming after her. He met her questioning gaze and averted his eyes. “I’ll walk you to the elevator,” he said. She smiled and nodded. Together they walked up the corridor, ascended the stairs and crossed the reception area, still devoid of a security guard, but Lexi no longer had room in her mind for that, it was full to the brim with music. She smiled at the memory as she pressed the button to call the lift, it was there within seconds and Lexi got in and pressed the button for the sixth floor. She looked up at Alex and held the ‘open’ button down with her right thumb for a moment as she looked out at him. He looked back at her and smiled, his hands still in his pockets. “Thank you,” she said. Alex blinked in surprise. “Eh? W-What for?” What indeed? Lexi wasn’t even sure herself. Improving her mood? Making her feel better? Entertaining her with such beautiful music? Playing for her when they’d never played for anyone before? “The song,” she said finally “I really enjoyed listening to you,” Alex smiled again, taking one hand out of his pocket to run through his hair. “Y-You’re welcome,” he said quietly. Lexi waved awkwardly to him with the hand still holding her tea. “See you,” she said, he waved back, repeating her words. “See you,” Lexi finally let go of the button and leaned back against the wall of the lift as the doors closed, sighing happily as the machine ascended. On the sixth floor there was no sound at all, nothing from any of the rooms or the kitchen, and the streets outside were still devoid of noise. The night held a quiet now permeated with the memory of the music in the basement. She would certainly sleep well now.