#from the game My Talking Angela 2

[glorioustragedykid]

The (cat)girl I've been obsessed with

[pixielle-hrrngrv]

this might be niche and too sad to even consider but... Harringrove Silent Hill 2 AU where Steve is James and Billy is Mary.

Steve being drawn to Silent Hill when Billy writes him a letter "three years" after Billy's death.

Billy's ideal "Maria" form that Silent Hill presents to Steve being Billy of 10 years ago when they first fell in love, who was all fire and youth and vigor, and that makes him ashamed to think of Billy in the end, rotting away in the hospital bed from the disease and the medications, terminal.

Plus Billy's grieving of HIMSELF (one of the most complex emotions imaginable) brings out his anger, pushing Steve away, and fear, wanting Steve to comfort him as the end approaches, mood swinging even worse than when he was young.

Steve being confronted by monsters that encompass that guilt and shame, like Pyramid Head taking on a similar muscular physicality to young, healthy Billy, or the scantily clad nurses representing the guilt of the thought of a wandering eye (even though it never happened, it was almost expected of him in this patriarchal society due to his partner being hospitalized for months on end).

(and on the lighter side, Max as Laura, the orphan who spent months healing in the hospital and bonding with Billy as he wore down the clock, and now is running around Silent Hill angry at Steve for how he treated Billy in his last days. But Steve still wants her to be okay and is constantly nervous for her wellbeing "surrounded by monsters", despite the fact that she's completely safe in Silent Hill in her innocence, it's just a normal, empty town to her, one that she wanted to see why Billy loved it so much. Also like in the Good - Leave Ending, Steve adopts Max like Billy wanted to, dreamed of, as he laid there dying.)

& imagining Billy reading Mary's letter is killing me ;_;

[pedropascallme]

After The After Party

Pairing: Damien Haas x f!Reader

Summary: “‘Have you ever noticed,’ Courtney popped her lips together, spreading the gloss, ‘That Damien only ever offers to host when he knows you’re going to come?’ She turned to you again, leaning back, elbows on the sink. ‘Almost like he just wants an excuse to have you over.’”

Warnings: SMUT (18+ MINORS DNI) p in v sex, oral (f & m receiving), fingering, dom/sub dynamics, praise, creampie, soft!dom Damien who is also incredibly needy, mentions of drinking/alcohol, brief mention of gambling. If I missed anything please let me know!

AN: This is so dialogue heavy and I won't even apologize for it. Dedicated to the idiots to lovers mfs out there <3 part 2 here!!

Long shoot blocks, you’d learned, usually devolved into long nights out. The cast and crew—or, at least, those of whom had the time and the desire to let loose—often found themselves in bars with high ceilings, with music playing too loud, and drinks that were just strong enough. There were nights when you lost Arasha and Amanda to the grimy dancefloor as soon as you passed the threshold, and nights when you watched from afar as Chanse cozied up to a beautiful stranger.

You liked listening to your friends talk and laugh as if you weren’t all exhausted after the grueling work week.

You liked feeling like part of something.

Some nights, though, when Shayne and Spencer got tired of hugging the wall, and when you’d all realized how expensive it was to go out as often as you did, someone would offer their house as a respite from the outside world. It was a chance to avoid prying eyes and the same top 40 hits that seemed to play at every bar.

Now, you found yourself at Damien’s house; someone had dimmed the lights, and from your spot on the couch you could hear glasses clinking in the kitchen as Tommy poured various liquids into a makeshift mixer. Your friends held mugs of alcohol, pretending to be above the culture of red solo cups.

You watched Amanda and Angela play a card game you didn’t know on the coffee table in front of you.

“Your pile is huge—your pile is huge, oh my god!” Amanda’s voice carried over the other noises around you. You leaned against Angela’s shoulder.

“Because you’re playing wrong! You’re cheating! You’re literally cheating and it’s so uncool.” Angela tried to grab Amanda’s cards, and you smiled at their back and forth. You were admittedly distracted, but trying to play it cool, pretending your mind wasn’t elsewhere as Angela jostled your head.

You watched Damien out of the corner of your eye. He stood across the room, toying with one of his rings, nodding along to something Alex was saying.

You tried not to stare, but there was something so attractive about the way he looked in a space all his own; he didn’t command attention—Damien hated being the center of attention, especially when it was easily avoidable—but he had a way about him tonight that just seemed so relaxed, and it was hard to ignore. Especially when he was already taking up most of your thoughts as it was.

For as long as you’d worked with Damien, he was someone you looked forward to seeing. He wasn’t the only reason you got out of bed, but he was certainly up there on the list. Thoughtful, considerate; he was a generally good-natured person. He made the days go faster, making jokes and ensuring you felt included as a newer member of the cast.

And you liked his laugh, and the way he listened, and the soft color of his hazel eyes that looked somewhere close to green in the light.

It was no secret that you found him alluring, but you felt that it was better to keep those thoughts out of his orbit. If not for your sake, for his. It just seemed unfair to come onto him after you’d spent so much time together as friends, especially when he had given you no reason to think that he felt anything for you beyond camraderie.

You sat up from your position on Angela's shoulder, moving your head to get a better look at Damien. He noticed, shooting you a smile. You reciprocated it, offering a small wave, keeping your elbow low and fingers folded near your palm. He waved back, and you both quickly returned to your respective conversations.

Amanda and Angela had gone back to playing their game, light-hearted fighting words replaced by laughs as they smacked cards down.

There was a tap on your shoulder, and Courtney pulled you up from the couch.

“Come to the bathroom with me.” She set a cup of something that smelled strong on the table.

The rules of the bar still applied to house parties, and you had no problem tagging along on trips to the bathroom, sitting pretty while your friends fixed whatever makeup was still left of that morning’s full beat. You followed Courtney down the hallway and into the bathroom.

“You’re bright red, you know,” They wasted no time in grilling you, running the water and dabbing it under their eyes to wipe away streaks of mascara that had rubbed off.

“I had a Tommy special.” You sat on the edge of the bathtub.

“That’s not—you can handle your liquor.” Courtney turned, combing through their hair with her fingers, “You’re not blushing just because Tommy gave you one vodka cran.”

“It wasn’t a vodka cran. It was a vodka soda.” You could tell where the conversation was headed, and you tried to veer it off track.

“You’re not as slick as you think you are.” Courtney raised a brow.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. He hasn’t even spoken to me tonight.” You contradicted yourself, markedly aware of what she was referring to and feeding into the topic, but disputing what you could.

“You’re oblivious.” Courtney laughed, fishing lip gloss from her pocket and turning back to the mirror.

“What do you mean?” You stood behind them, watching her reapply the color to their lips.

“Have you ever noticed,” Courtney popped her lips together, spreading the gloss, “That Damien only ever offers to host when he knows you’re going to come?” She turned to you again, leaning back, elbows on the sink. “Almost like he just wants an excuse to have you over.”

“He doesn’t do that. Damien is always offering to host. Doesn’t matter if I’m here or not.” You retorted.

“Not true,” they shook their head, “On days that you're not around and we don’t feel like going to the bar, Tommy always hosts. Or Amanda. Or Ian.”

“Tommy has more alcohol at his place.” You ignored the rest of the list, still trying to change the subject.

“Dude,” Courtney was laughing now, “It’s like you don’t want to see it.”

“See what?” Your ears began to feel hot.

“That he likes you as much as you like him.” The words had a tone of finality. “Why are you so nervous?”

“Bec—are you serious? Why wouldn’t I be nervous? Why would I run the risk of ruining a perfectly good friendship? Or, you know, whatever it is—however you might describe what it is!” You started to ramble, digging yourself into a hole, “What happens if something happens and then—it could ruin work, Court. It could ruin everything!” You suddenly became aware that you were whisper-yelling. You cleared your throat, returning to a normal tone of voice. “It could ruin everything. That’s why people don’t fuck their coworkers.”

Courtney said nothing, just held up their hand and made a point of showing you the wedding band around their ring finger. She cleared her throat.

“That’s different.” You tried to backpedal.

“How?” Courtney looked amused, eager to hear your half-baked reasoning.

“Cause of course that worked out. Look at how Shayne looks at you. Look at how obvious of a pairing you two are.”

“Same way Damien looks at you.” Courtney smirked.

“You’re reading into this more than I am.” You shook your head at them. “He would’ve made a point to do something by now.”

“Are we…talking about the same Damien?” Courtney laughed, and you responded with a tight-lipped scowl. “In what world would he ever make a first move?”

“The ideal one. Where everything goes my way.” You scoffed, folding your arms.

“Right,” Courtney put a hand on your waist, and you looked at each other. “Approach this with more confidence, is all I’m saying. Give yourself—give him—the opportunity to make something happen.”

“Yeah,” you sighed, unfolding your arms and rubbing the bridge of your nose. “Yeah, no, you’re right.” She gave you a cocky look, and you slapped their arm gently, “Don’t rub it in.”

“You’re hot,” Courtney rubbed her thumb over the exposed skin of your waist, “And sweet. You deserve the world. And I love the both of you more than words, but you act like you’ve never had a crush before.”

“Not like this.” You admitted, and they smiled.

“I know. But you have nothing to lose.” They looked around as if they were afraid someone might be listening from behind the shower curtain, “I have it on good authority that he feels just as strongly about this thing—” she gesticulated vaguely, “as you do.” She smiled, turning to open the door. You grabbed her by the arm.

“What did Shayne tell you—what did Damien tell Shayne?” You tried to pull them back as they turned the door handle, but she wiggled from your grasp.

“You didn’t hear it from me!” She called back to you, leaving you alone in the bathroom to ruminate on the conversation. 

~~~

It was still early when people started to trickle out. You knew when Shayne and Courtney left that the party was over.

“Do you guys need a ride?” You sidled up to Courtney where she stood in the foyer with Shayne, “I don’t mind driving you home. I’m sober. Stone cold.”

“Oh my god—Steve Austin, I love your work!” Spencer called over to you while he herded a cheerfully inebriated Tommy through the door. Shayne let out a quick, barking laugh.

“No, don’t worry about it. We’re ubering.” Courtney moved hair from your face, and you saw something dubious hidden in her smile. She leaned further into your space, lowering their voice, “And you’re not going anywhere.”

“What?” You made a face.

“Give yourself,” they pressed a finger to your chest, “an opportunity.”

You grasped her hand, squeezing her fingers. Shayne looked on, and if he knew what you were talking about, he kept it to himself.

“I’m leaving. I’ll be gone—out the door right after you.” You argued, and Courtney raised her eyebrows, waving you off before exiting. Shayne followed close behind her.

You didn’t leave right after them. As it turned out, you didn’t really want to leave at all.

You liked Damien’s house. It was spooky year-round, warm in both temperature and color palette, and his couch was cozy.

It wasn’t just the furniture; Damien’s presence was equally as, if not more, comforting. He walked around picking up whatever had been misplaced during the night, trying to find the right spot for it all. He hummed quietly to himself, shooing the cats away with his feet.

“I’m sorry for not helping,” you shifted on the couch, lying on your side.

“Don’t be sorry,” he smiled, “It’s fun to organize.”

“That is such a you thing to say, you know that?”

“What is?”

“That organizing is fun.”

“It is. Especially when I have company while I do it.” He looked pointedly at you. You held eye contact.

“You can tell me to leave. If you’re done for the night.”

“Why would I want you to leave?” He looked genuinely curious as to why you would think he’d want you gone.

“If you’re tired, or something. I get it.”

“No,” he shook his head, grabbing a cup that had been left half-full on a bookshelf, “I like having you around.”

“Can I get that as a written statement? Signed, dated…” You sat up a bit, positioning your head on the armrest of the sofa.

“Absolutely not. Nobody can ever know.” He laughed, and you couldn’t help but laugh along with him.

“Come sit with me.” You leaned over to pat a cushion before returning to your reclined position.

It could’ve just been the liquid courage you’d ingested, but you’d only had one drink. It was hardly enough to make you feel a buzz, let alone get you drunk. Maybe you were just thinking too much about what Courtney had said, about giving yourself a chance, finding an opening to let him in. Or maybe you were just really, really comfortable where you were spread out on the couch. For once, though, the confidence seemed to be your own doing.

Damien put down the cup in his hand and settled on the couch. You rested your feet on his thigh, and he placed a hand on your shin.

You’d always felt that any one-on-one time you got with him had a deadline, like you were on a time crunch based off of when the next video needed to be filmed or when your friends would join the conversation. It made the moments alone with him all the more enjoyable.

You liked being here, alone with him.

You liked it a lot.

“You wanna do something?” Damien leaned his head back on the couch, stretching his arms out beside him. You tried not to pay too much attention to the way the fabric of his t-shirt hugged his arms and the broad expanse of his chest.

“Like what?” You quirked a brow.

"Something low energy that makes us feel like we’re doing something…” He mulled over the possibilities, “Smash Bros?”

You nodded. “Wanna make it interesting?”

“I’m not putting money down.”

“Because you’re scared?”

“Yeah,” he smiled, “Scared you’ll lose. Wouldn’t wanna take a chunk out of your day rate.”

“You fucking wish,” you kicked at him gently. “I wasn’t thinking the gambling route.”

“So what were you thinking?”

“You ever played strip poker?”

Damien looked taken aback, and you regretted your proposal almost instantly. “Are you suggesting we play strip Smash?” He broke into a fit of laughter.

“We don’t—it was just a thought.” You tried to retract your suggestion.

“I didn’t say no.” He held your gaze, and you felt a tug in your stomach. “But if you get cold, tell me.”

“You say that like I’m going to lose.”

“Oh, is that what that sounded like?” He tossed you a controller, “Good. Cause that’s what I meant.”

You kicked at him again.

You lost your socks first. Then your shirt. You didn’t know whether or not to thank or chastise yourself for remembering to wear a bra. Your pants quickly followed, and though it was far from a matching set, you were relieved that your undergarments were at least presentable.

You were acutely aware of your own body now; the rise and fall of your chest and the way you moved your legs when you got caught up in the game. You didn’t notice Damien: how he bit the inside of his cheek so hard when you took off your shirt that he flinched; how he nearly lost his grip on the controller when your jeans came off; how he kept shifting in his seat.

You especially didn’t notice the way he looked at you. His eyes flicked over your face with a combination of pride and adoration, and they darkened significantly when his gaze dropped below your collar and took in your half-naked form.

“How far are you gonna take this?” Damien was grinning, his voice the only other sound against the backdrop of in-game blasts and the click of thumbs on controllers.

“Down to my skin.” You shot him a glance and he cleared his throat.

“Won’t be long, then.”

“Yeah?” You bumped your shoulder against his lightly.

“You’re oh-for-three.” He pointed out, and you pushed against him again, harder this time, in an attempt to throw him off his rhythm.

“Let me choose a different character.” You tried to reach for his hands to grab at the controller. He held it up and away from his body.

“I don’t think the character is the problem,” he laughed, face lighting up at the way you sneered in frustration. “I’m not pausing just so you can be Kirby.”

“Who said I wanted to be Kirby?” You chastised him.

“Did you want to be Kirby?” He looked smug when he turned to face you, his hands still out of reach. You realized how close you’d gotten to him over the course of your teasing exchange, and suddenly recognized that the opportunity Courtney had been alluding to was right in front of you.

You moved to straddle his waist, legs framing his body and tits inches from his face as you stretched out to grab his hands, removing the controller from his grasp. You tossed it to the side and Damien was frozen as you shifted to look behind you at the screen, your victory now swift thanks to the lack of any opponent.

You turned back to him with a smile. “Did you want to be Kirby,” you imitated him, echoing his taunt. “Lose the shirt, Dames.”

Damien looked up at you, frozen. The tension was almost visible, like fogged glass, and you had no idea how to clear the air. You were nearly certain that you had made a terrible mistake, that everything about tonight was about to go wrong.

You were unable to make eye contact with him—afraid that by looking at him you would completely fall apart and lose the edge you’d only just found. Throughout your mental battle with yourself, Damien still hadn't moved, his gaze fixed on your face.

You tried to make your fear dissipate by breaking the silence.

“What?” You laughed, a little awkwardly.

Damien swallowed. “I...sorry,” His eyes were wide as he spoke, “I just got…very nervous and—and really turned on.”

Oh.

He let out a small, huffed laugh, smiling up at you in a moment of awe. He blinked hard a few times before moving his arm to rest behind his head.

“That…that makes two of us, then,” you stayed where you were, placing your hands on your thighs. You licked your lips, exhaling, before finding the nerve to continue. “You still have to take your shirt off, though. You lost. Rules are rules.”

“Didn't you get to take your socks off first?” He narrowed his eyes playfully.

“You can take them off," your words were coy. "You want me to move?”

“I never said that.” He shook his head, leaning forward just enough to grant him the space to remove his t-shirt. He tossed it to the side, and you felt your whole body flood with nerves and anticipation when he leaned back against the couch on full display for you.

“Are you cold?” Damien brought his hand up to cup your elbow, and it was only then that you became aware of the goosebumps that had broken out over your flesh.

“No…No. Just…” You swallowed, moving slightly on his lap. “Just nervous.”

He let out a small laugh. “Do you—I mean…” He was entranced, unable to remove his eyes from your face for the fear that if he looked at any more of you, you’d be able to feel his reaction. You reached out to trace a hand over his chest, admiring him and letting the heat of his skin warm your palm. “Would you mind if…” He bit his lip, closing his eyes while your fingers grazed his flesh. He took a deep breath. “Can I kiss you?”

You stopped your hand, letting it linger on the center of his chest, just above his stomach. Damien gingerly placed a hand on your waist, and for just a moment you wondered if he could feel the desperation seeping through your skin.

“Yeah. Yeah, you can kiss me.” you nodded, maybe a little overzealous, “Please.”

You leaned forward into him. You could feel the weight of his hand on your body and the thrum of your own heartbeat in your chest as it threatened to break through your ribcage. You watched him suck in a sharp, deep breath before his other hand cupped your face. You closed your eyes, letting him guide you into the kiss.

It was tender. You moved slowly, in tandem with him. You wrapped your arms around his neck, letting yourself settle into him as you got lost in the way his mouth felt on yours. You let your lips part, making space for his tongue to dip between them and explore you further. You let out a quiet moan when he licked into you, and you let your own tongue delve beyond his lips to take a taste of what you’d been craving so urgently. His grip on your waist tightened in response to your sounds, and you took it upon yourself to test the waters, rolling your hips against him. You were rewarded with the feeling of his stiffening cock between your legs, and a gruff sound that caught in his throat. His hand moved from your face to the back of your head, applying light pressure to keep you steady as the kiss became hungrier, and he bit at your bottom lip.

When you parted, both of you pausing to catch your breath, he looked up at you, quietly chuckling to himself.

“What?” You let your hands wander over his shoulders, “Was it that bad?”

“What? No—god, no. No, I’ve just…I’ve always wanted to do that.” Damien smiled, moving his thumb in a soothing pattern over your hip, “I’ve always wanted to do that…” He trailed off, raking his eyes over you and letting both hands move up and down your sides.

“Really?” You posed the question with your eyes closed, lost in his touch. You let yourself fall forward on his chest.

“Really.” He sighed dreamily, “I can’t begin to explain to you how much space you take up in my head. The real thing is a lot better than the imaginary version.” 

“But you can do whatever you want in your imagination.” You pointed out, pressed against him and tracing lines over his collar with one finger.

“Yeah. Sure. But nothing I think up could ever beat this.” His fingers grazed the clasp of your bra, “And, full transparency, I’ve thought up a lot.”

You laughed, pushing yourself up with both hands on his chest to really look at him; his hair was messy, and his cheeks were flushed pink.

He looked flawless. You felt flawless.

“Damien,” your tone was saccharine, still tinged with a shy edge but steadily coming into your own with help from Damien’s clear reciprocation of your feelings, “Do you wanna show me all the thoughts you’ve had?” You watched his face go stern at your words, still hinting his amusement with a small, nearly hidden smile. “Do you wanna act on them?”

He wrapped his arms around you, pulling you flush against him; somehow the feeling of your tits pressed against his bare chest was almost more intimate than the kiss you’d just shared. You squealed, tossing your head back, which he took as an opportunity to leave dainty kisses on your throat, muttering against your skin.

“I don’t think you’ve ever seen my room.” His voice was gravelly, parched from the kisses he left on your skin as he picked you up. You gasped, suddenly off the ground and in his arms as he carried you down the hall; one of his hands trailed down your body, and you felt his fingers dig into the flesh of your upper thigh to keep his hold on you. You hid your face in the crook of his neck, letting him overwhelm your senses.

You got lost momentarily, like time had paused or sped up or stopped completely, but then you were in his room. The lights were dim, just as they were in the rest of the house, and the shelves stacked with various tchotchkes and books that you were too distracted to care about in the moment.

You realized that a person could look like their home, in a way, and you recalled the moment earlier in the evening when you had found yourself so attracted to how Damien carried himself in his own space. It’s because the space was just as welcoming, just as comforting and soothing as he was.

He let his grip on you loosen, and you landed on his bed, hands still wrapped around him and tentative of letting go. But you didn’t have to; he lay next to you, rolling onto his side and pulling you against him in a swift maneuver that placed you comfortably on his chest.

He didn’t kiss you, maybe out of anxiety that he was moving too fast for your taste, or just because he felt the moment didn’t call for it, but he brushed his nose against yours and let his hands linger on your waist.

“Is this what you thought about?” You whispered, letting him continue his quiet ministrations, “Taking me to bed and touching me like this?”

“And so much more,” he breathed, hands moving up your back, trying to commit your entire body to memory. “I hope you—I didn’t mean for it to come off like I’ve only ever thought about fucking you.”

You moved to rub your thumb over his cheek. “What did you mean?”

“That I don’t want you to be my friend,” he smiled, and your heart dropped for a second before he continued, “That I think about you all the time in ways that friends don’t think about each other. And I…” He searched for the right words, “Even after a night like this, even after, you know, seeing everybody and having everybody over—even when a place is full of people, and noise…You’re still the only person I can pay attention to. Or think about.”

You couldn’t help but let out a laugh, and he pulled away from you to meet your gaze.

“Does that sound really stupid?”

“No,” you reassured him, pulling him back towards you, “No, it’s…you put it into words, Damien.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I get it. I’ve been trying to figure out how to describe what you mean to me, and you just,” you laughed again, trying to collect yourself, “You did the work for me.” You smiled, tilting your head back with your chest still pressed against him, making sure he paid attention to what you were saying. “I love you.”

You watched his face change, something in his eyes and the curl of his lips looked different in a way you couldn’t pinpoint. You couldn’t look for long, because he was on you again in a flash, arms wrapping around you, engulfing you with his body and tugging you into him. His lips crashed against yours, and it was hungry, and messy, and passionate, so much so that you couldn’t be bothered to care about the clack of teeth or the small bead of spit that fell from the corner of your lip.

“I love you,” Damien’s voice sounded tight, higher than it had been all night, “I love you.” He freely explored your body now, big hands reaching over your ass and offering soft squeezes before grazing your sides and the swell of your breasts.

“You know how,” you managed to get a few words in between heated kisses, “you said you didn’t want it to come off as if you only wanted to fuck me?” You let out a small moan when he licked a stripe up your neck and to your earlobe, mumbling quiet curses to yourself at the feel of his tongue on your body.

“Mhm,” Damien acknowledged your words without breaking away from you, still nipping at your neck while you let your breathing mellow so that you could continue speaking.

“Want you to fuck me,” you put a hand in his hair, forming a fist in the silver strands and pulling him up to make eye contact. “Damien, I want you to fuck me.”

He looked almost surprised, like he had forgotten physical intimacy beyond kissing you was even an option. The look of mild shock was replaced with clear enthusiasm as he moved to get off of the bed. “I’d hate to make you ask twice.”

He shed his jeans, and you realized this was more of him than you had ever seen before; standing next to you was the man that took up all your thoughts, ready and willing to give you what you wanted, his eyes like pools of reverence as they trailed over your form.

You couldn’t help but feel excited, uncaring if you came off as desperate. You sat up and moved to the edge of the bed, situating yourself on your knees. Your hands found purchase on his chest and slowly moved down his stomach until you reached the waistband of his boxers.

“Eager,” he let your hands wander, watching on as you explored. You paused, looking up at him to wordlessly ask if you were allowed to go further. “Don’t be shy, baby,” something about his tone had changed, and the cheerful voice you’d come to know and love was replaced with a deeper, rasping sound that you thought you might like even more. “You can touch. Take what you need.”

The words reached your core before they fully hit your ears, and you shifted on your knees, pressing your thighs together to give yourself some relief. Sliding your hand under his waistband, you were met with the solid, smooth skin of his cock. He helped you pull his boxers down and over his length, letting it spring free, and you felt your mouth water.

He was big, thick, and while not surprising in the slightest, you couldn’t help but whine at the sight before you. You looked up at him, your hand wrapped around his cock, thumb brushing the reddened tip; you expected him to look smug, proud of himself, maybe, but he looked dumbstruck, in awe of the way your hand looked wrapped around him—in awe of the fact that it was you.

“Damien,” you prompted, and it broke him out of his haze. He nodded. “Can I…”

“Please,” he took a deep breath, “God, yes, please.”

You smiled. “Well, I’d hate to make you ask twice.” He laughed at your mimicry before quickly silencing himself with a shaky moan when you licked an experimental stripe up the bottom of his cock. He tilted his head to the side, unable to decide whether to get lost in the pleasure or to enjoy the view he had of you, bent over yourself on your knees and using your mouth in a way he’d only ever dreamed of.

You spit in your hand, gliding it over him and appreciating the way he felt in your hands; the warmth, the pliant weight. You made sure he was looking when you finally took his tip in your mouth, circling your tongue over him. You moved your hand in sync with the way you bobbed your head. He groaned, hand flying to rake his fingers through your hair, and the way he sighed out your name spurred you on more.

His other hand caressed your back, tugging cautiously at the straps of your bra.

“Take it off,” you pumped him in your hand, letting your tongue flick out to deliver barely-there licks to the tip of his cock. “Take it off for me.”

“Fuck.” He huffed, hypnotized by the way you used your mouth on him. He undid the clasp with one hand, and you let the straps hang off your body. You didn’t want to pause your movements, didn’t even want to slow down at the risk of having to go for even a second without hearing him moan your name; you shook the constricting material from yourself, taking him deeper in your mouth until tears pricked your eyes so that you could slip your bra off your arms. Damien let out a low groan, tightening the grip he still had on your hair. 

You took him deeper still, hand working what you couldn’t fit down your throat. When you gagged on him, he let out an absolutely filthy sound.

“You like that?” He was smiling with his mouth open, chest heaving with every breath, “You like choking on me?” You answered with a garbled “yes,” his cock still pressed against the back of your throat, one hand on his hip to keep yourself stable as your other hand stroked the base of him. He moaned. “You look so pretty. Always knew you’d look so good with my cock down your throat, baby.”

You couldn’t help the noise that you let out, something between a gasp and a moan that sent vibrations up Damien’s spine. You continued to move up and down over his cock before removing your mouth from him, spit dripping down your chin and a dopey smile on your lips.

Damien grabbed your face in one hand, fingers pressing hard against your cheeks as he pulled you up to his level. “You really are just so fucking perfect.” He kissed you, letting the drool that coated your chin drip onto his face. “Can I taste you? Can I taste how sweet you are?”

You nodded, the hand he still had on your face moving with you.

“Yeah? Say it.” He demanded, and you whimpered, enjoying the look of dominance on him.

“Want you to taste me, Damien.” When you spoke, his fingers pressed the inside of your cheeks against your teeth. “Want you to taste how sweet I am.”

He growled, moving his jaw in a circle as if to stretch the muscles in preparation for what he planned on doing to you. “How do you ask nicely?”

You felt an adrenaline rush deep in your stomach. It was one thing to be here with your pleasure in his hands, but to hear Damien say the things you’d fantasized about for so long made your head swim.

“Please…” One of your hands grabbed impatiently at his arm, “Please, Damien…want…want you to fuck me with your tongue. Please.”

He kissed you again, smiling against your mouth and removing his hand from your face to push softly against your chest so that you fell back onto the bed. He knelt on the mattress, holding your calves and pulling your legs open. You sank into the pillows at the head of the bed, letting them cradle and support you at an angle that allowed you to look down at Damien, whose face hovered over your core. His fingers danced over the waistband of your panties, and you wondered if he had felt the same tingly sensation when you toyed with his boxers as you did right now with his hands running over your hips and stomach.

He pressed his face against your clothed cunt, impatient and greedy for you. You moaned, one hand fisting the sheets under you while the other came to rest on your thigh, holding your legs open for him when your muscles threatened to snap them closed following the sudden contact.

“Fuck, Damien, that feels—that’s so good.” You squirmed under him as he licked over your panties, tongue brushing your clit through the fabric. You tried to push the material down, wiggling your hips to ease your panties off your body, but Damien caught your hands in his.

“Let me play, baby.” His doe eyes stared up at you from between your legs with a devious glint. You didn't listen, and instead continued to move your hips in an attempt to wriggle out of the fabric that kept his mouth from making direct contact with you. He pressed down on your hips, forcing you to cease your fidgeting. “Be patient.”

He licked a stripe from where your panties threatened to reveal your hole and up to your clit, and you arched your back in an attempt to encourage him further.

“God, Damien, please!” You pleaded, begging for him to touch you without the obstacle of the fabric that remained on your body. “Want it—said you wanted to taste me, you can taste me—you can taste me, I need it. Please, let me feel your tongue, please—”

Damien snapped your waistband and you yelped, effectively ending your rambling.

“You’re pretty when you beg," he kissed your stomach, and you let out a whimper. "But if you don’t shut your mouth, I’ll fuck it.” Damien’s words weren’t harsh, you could hear the joviality buried under the severity in his voice, and somehow that made it even sexier.

Your arousal was heightened when, as you moaned at his words, you felt two thick fingers plunge into your cunt. Your breath caught in your throat, and you choked out his name.

“Oh my god!” You cried out, looking down to see that he had moved your panties to the side to give himself access to your entrance. His fingers pumped in and out of you, curling to hit your more delicate spots, and the sound was utterly indecent.

“You’re soaked,” Damien was smiling with his top teeth, watching his fingers as they disappeared inside of you. “What got you so wet, baby?”

“Because…s’cause…” You didn’t have the energy to talk, too focused on the way his fingers pushed against the walls of your cunt, forcing your body to make space for him.

“Because why?” He goaded, thumb rubbing circles on your clit as he pushed his fingers deeper, “Because you like the way I touch you? Hm? Because you’ve been thinking about this as much as I have? For as long as I have?”

You nodded, mouth agape and eyes threatening to roll back; maybe you looked pathetic, but you couldn’t bring yourself to care, completely content with his fingers thrusting into you.

“Aw, come on. If you still want my mouth, you’re gonna have to do better than that.” He removed his fingers from inside of you, using the slick that coated them as lubricant to massage your clit.

“Wanted this for so long—so fucking long, Damien.” Your words came out rushed and breathy, “Thought about you like this all the time. Thought about—about you when I came, every time I came.” You couldn’t stop yourself from telling him the truth, the words tumbled from your lips as easily as taking a breath.

Your admission made him pause his movements, and for a moment the dominance in his face faded into something more tender. But he gathered himself, finally pulling off your panties in one fell swoop, then taking one of your legs and hooking your knee over his shoulder while you continued to babble to him.

“Keep talking, princess,” the nickname made you dizzy with desire, and you whined out for him, your eyes wide and watery when his breath fanned over your now bare, slick coated center. “Keep talking. Tell me all about it while I taste you.”

The first swipe of his tongue against your clit sent shockwaves through you, and you whimpered before recollecting your train of thought.

“Th—oh!” You quickly lost your words again when Damien began to ease his tongue into your entrance, toying with your hole before plunging into you with a purpose. He squeezed your thigh, and you took it as encouragement to continue. “Thought about this all the time—about your mouth against me. Using your mouth on me until my legs got sore from the way you’d hold me open.” He groaned against your cunt, and you extended a hand to comb your fingers through his hair. “Thought about all the ways you could use me. All the ways I would let you use me—fuck, like that, please!”

He had his face buried in you, your slick dripping down his chin and his nose pressed against your clit. You could feel the movement of his tongue inside of you, and you tugged on his hair as the sensation spread over your body.

“Thought about getting on my knees for you. I would let you have me whenever you wanted—wherever you wanted.”

Damien growled. “Yeah?” His brow quirked and he looked up at you momentarily before diving back into your heat, “Have to take you up on that.”

You whimpered, the muscles in your thighs and abdomen tensing from the onslaught of pleasure, and the feeling let you know that you were approaching your peak.

“Knew you would make me feel so amazing, Damien, knew you’d make me cum like nobody else ever could.” You were stringing words together faster than your brain could think them up. But even if they came out jumbled, every last word was true.

“Want you to cum on my mouth,” Damien was grinding his hips against the mattress, the relief he got from the fabric of the sheets dulled his intense arousal only momentarily, but he chased the feeling. “Please, baby, give it to me.”

You pulled his hair, admittedly harder than you had intended, but with the moan he let out, it seemed he didn’t mind. His tongue worked wonders as he extended it over and into you. Right when you thought you were already done for, limbs going slack and the pleasant tingle in your core reaching a fever pitch, Damien wrapped his lips around your clit and sucked hard, letting his tongue flick against the sensitive bud.

It felt good to scream out for him, to let his name fall repeatedly from your lips as you yanked on his hair, but it felt better to hear his voice and the words that rang out from between your legs.

“Beautiful,” he was mumbling, still licking into you, trying to savor the tangy flavor of your cum. “So fucking beautiful, baby. Look at the pretty fucking mess you made. Did such a good job.”

You tugged again on his hair and he let you guide him up to face level. When he leaned in to kiss you, you opened your mouth instantly, and he slid his tongue between your lips. You sucked on it happily, eager to taste yourself on him, eager to experience everything you'd always imagined being able to do with him.

In turn, he held you close, so you wouldn’t slip away like you did when he woke up from his dreams.

You let the kiss linger, leisurely grasping at each other and appreciating the newfound lack of constraint. You curled yourself into him, lying on your side and tangling your legs with his in an effort to get as close to him as you could.

“You look so pretty when you cum,” Damien mumbled, lips grazing your pulse point, dipping down and sucking faint bruises onto your collar. “I want to see it again.”

“You can see it whenever you want,” you closed your eyes, relishing the gentle pressure he was putting on your skin so that the marks would form in small spots across your chest. You cupped his cheek in your hand, and he reluctantly stopped licking the bruises that had begun to pop up. Your thumb stroked the skin under his eye. “I want you to see it again now.”

Damien leaned into you, trailing kisses over your jaw. “You want me to fuck you?” He licked a stripe up your neck and over your chin. When his tongue reached your mouth, you opened for him, letting him lick between your lips, kissing him fervidly and moaning softly. “Yeah? You want me to fuck you? Want me to fuck you even though I just made you cum?" He growled into your mouth. "You need more already?"

“Yeah,” you smiled shyly, rubbing your face against the stubble on his cheek.

“Needy thing.” He removed his hands from you, then snaked his arms through the gap in your bodies and put his hands on your shoulders, pushing you against the mattress and onto your back.

He straddled your legs, keeping you immobile on the bed and kissing down your chest. He nipped at the plush flesh of your breasts, unable to contain himself, unable to hide the obvious pleasure he took in seeing you this way.

“Damien—” You sighed when he circled his tongue around one of your nipples, your fingers wrapping around his bicep.

“I know. I know. Sorry, I just—God, you’re beautiful.” He smiled, more to himself than to you, but the joy on his face was palpable, and you were sure he could detect the pride you felt at being the one to make him feel this way.

He used his knee to spread your legs, opening you up for him, moving his own legs to situate himself between your thighs. One of his hands ran up and down your leg as he stroked himself, lining his cock up with your entrance. When the tip of him rubbed between your folds, you whimpered, moving your hands down his arm and squeezing his forearm.

“Is this what you want?” Damien was looking down, examining how perfectly his body meshed with yours. “You want me to fuck you?”

“Yeah,” your words were barely above a whisper, “Want you to fuck me.”

He moved his hand further up your body and squeezed your hip. “Where are your manners, princess?” He smirked, “Say please.”

“Please, Damien,” you stared up at him wide-eyed, captivated. “Please.”

“There you go.” He squeezed your hip again in recognition of your obedience. Slowly, as if he was worried he’d break you, he pushed into you, watching your eager, waiting cunt swallow every inch he offered you. You moaned, squeezing his arm and leaving small, curved marks where your nails dug into his skin. You watched his eyelids flutter, head tilting back with his mouth ajar, letting out a deep groan as he squeezed his eyes shut before opening them again to meet your heavy-lidded gaze.

“Big.” It was all you said, stretched and full of him in a way nobody had ever filled you up before.

Damien swallowed a laugh, flashing a domineering smile. “Big?”

“Too big.” You clarified, not entirely meaning it; you were thrilled to be this packed with him, but it had been so long since you’d felt a satisfying sting like this that it would take you a moment to get accustomed to it.

“You can take it, baby. I know you can.” He pressed his palm over your stomach, brushing his thumb across your skin soothingly. “You tell me if it’s too much, ok? Use your words, say it’s too much, and I’ll stop.”

“Don’t want you to stop.” Your voice came out strong momentarily, so eager for him that the possibility of him leaving you empty made you tense. “Waited so long…” You said, mellowing slightly, “Want you. Want you to…to use me.”

Damien made a throaty noise, something between a laugh and a moan that both relaxed and lit a fire inside you. Unhurried, he pulled out of you, his hands on your hips to give himself proper leverage. You exhaled slowly, mind set adrift by the feeling of his cock dragging against your walls; his rounded tip, every vein that ran up his length—you were certain you could feel it all.

You whimpered when he had pulled out enough so that nothing but the head of his cock penetrated you. You swayed your hips, trying to spur him on, but even with just the tip you felt you had ample stimulation.

He didn’t stop you, just watched on as you tried to fuck yourself with the tip of his cock just barely inside of you.

“You need some help?” He raised an eyebrow at.

“Please—fuck me, please.” You nodded excitedly, aching for him.

He smiled, eyes fixed on your face as he rammed back into you, watching your mouth contort and your tits bounce as your body absorbed the force. You screamed out for him, arching your back, which gave him the ability to push the remainder of his cock as far into you as he could.

“Fuck Damien! So—feel…so full!” You felt a tear fall over your cheek, overwhelmed by the bliss of having his cock buried inside of you and the rough way in which he made it happen. He leaned over you, supporting himself on his forearms as he caged you between them, and met you at face level. He thrust in and out of you shallowly, bringing his lips to your cheek and kissing the path of the delighted tears you had shed.

“Yeah? Feel full?” He whispered, still moving his hips, his cheek pressed against yours so he could speak directly into your ear.

“Yes, Damien—God, yes!” You wrapped your arms around his neck, trying to immerse yourself in all of him. You searched for any part of him that you could reach with your mouth, planting sloppy kisses on his collar, his shoulder, the crook of his neck.

“Good.” He kissed your cheek again, before licking the wet, salty trail that your tears had left behind. “Want you to feel me for days after this.” He found your lips and kissed you, the pace and intensity of his thrusts increasing. “And when you can finally walk straight, I’m gonna do it to you all over again.”

You scraped your nails up his back, moaning for him and desperate to have him follow through on his threat. He buried his face in your neck, and you could feel the tug of his stubble on your skin as he panted against you, fucking into you aggressively in a way you’d always dreamed he would.

Each thrust felt deeper, and there came a point where you felt a pleasant pain in your side as his cock brushed your cervix.

“Damien—Christ, you’re so fucking deep,” Your nails jabbed harder into the skin of his back and he let out a hiss. “Please, like that. Just like that, don’t stop. B-bruise me, please, please!”

“I won’t stop, princess,” Damien’s words were snarled, gruff in your ear as his lips grazed just below your earlobe. “I promise. Wanna leave this pretty pussy so nice and sore.” He sucked a mark under your jawline, "Wanna ruin you."

You moved one hand, fingers lacing through his silver hair and yanking at the brown roots to pull him from his spot in the crook of your neck. He took the hint, rising up to meet you, his mouth finding yours and biting at your bottom lip.

“I love you,” you couldn’t bite back the words, not even if you tried; not when his cock was hitting spots you didn’t even know were there, not when he was using all his upper body strength to stay above you just so he could gaze down upon your tear-streaked, fucked out face, not when it was something you’d been dying to tell him in this capacity for as long as you could remember. “I love you, Damien—I love you.”

“I love you,” he echoed your words, voice softening and face relaxing. “I love you so much. I do, I love you so much.”

You raised your hips to meet his thrusts, and Damien moaned out your name, muscle in his jaw tensing before he let his mouth fall slack. He paused momentarily, sitting up while still buried inside you, to take your legs in his hands and press your knees back to your chest. You were bent in half, completely at his mercy and loving it. You yelped, the new angle giving him the ability to drive harder and deeper into you; the control he had over your body made your head swim and your cunt squeeze around him. He leaned over you, smiling through the pleasure that clouded his mind to jeer at you affectionately as he continued to escalate the manner in which he fucked you.

“What’s wrong, baby?” He watched you, your head lolling to the side and practically drooling as you looked back up at him, pitiful moans and gibberish the only way you could communicate. “Lose your voice?”

You swallowed hard, gasping for air and overcome with the feeling of him. You searched for the right words.

“Make me—oh!—feel so good,” you panted, “so fucking good.”

“Who makes you feel so good?” Damien pressed, plunging his cock as deep as he could, his hips firm against the back of your thighs.

“You do!” You felt all of him, and still, somehow, you craved more. “You do—you, you!”

“Yeah? Say it princess. Say Damien you make me feel so good.” He grabbed your chin, forcing you to stare up at him with your lust-blown eyes. “Say it.”

“Da—Damien,” you whimpered as he fucked you in quick bursts while waiting for you to speak. “Damien, you—you make m-me feel so good.”

He pressed his lips to yours, further enhancing the way your body was already contorted, and you moaned into his mouth at the feeling of being used like a toy by him.

“That’s right,” Damien licked into your mouth, “You make me feel so good, princess.”

He pulled back from your face, straightening once more; he grabbed your legs and threw them over his shoulders, gripping your thighs close to his body and using them to pull you onto his cock. The sounds you made were high pitched and pathetic, eyes rolling back while he placed kisses on your calves where they were slung over his shoulders; he nipped at you, teeth just barely grazing the flesh of your legs as his lips did a bulk of the work. The tickle of his five o’clock shadow was a welcome match to the gentle pressure you felt in your abdomen brought on by the way his cock stretched you.

He wrapped one arm around your legs, leaving you powerless to his movements as your head pushed back into the pillows from the sheer delight of feeling him inside of you, heightened by the depth and momentum with which he fucked you. He let his other hand drop to hold your hips, thumb caressing your skin with unidentifiable shapes.

You couldn’t remember getting fucked like this before—if you ever even had been fucked like this before. Somehow Damien knew you inside and out better than anybody else did, maybe even better than you knew yourself. This was proven by the way he drove his hips into you, hauling you over his cock and making you feel the delicious drag of his length in a way that made you feel full to the point of near discomfort. The electrified jolts of satisfaction when the tip of his cock pressed up against your more delicate, hidden spots, were eased by the soft way he touched you. The feeling wasn’t confined to your walls; his fingers brushed your clit, the ghost of a touch sending shockwaves through your system. You wriggled your body, unable to contain yourself and responding physically to the way his digits teased you while he ruined you with his cock.

He was rough, wild, and everything you needed. When you looked up at him, you could still see the kindness in his features, hear the compassion with which he moaned your name, feel the romantic way he squeezed at your body even while he was fucking you stupid. His groaned words of praise, of affirmation, when he managed to gasp your name between panting thrusts brought you to the edge just as much as his physical prowess did, and you let it be known how you were feeling.

“Damien—” You reached out, grasping at his arm where it wrapped around your legs, his other hand kneading your clit in slow circles. You felt your cunt tighten around him, walls fluttering in preparation for your oncoming orgasm, hips bucking on their own accord as you chased the ecstasy he brought you.

“Give me another, princess,” he grunted, pounding into you, his fingers deftly tracing over your clit. “Doing so good, give me one more.”

You turned your face to the side and buried it into the pillow under you, biting into the cloth to silence your increasingly loud screams. He reached down to grab your face, once again pushing your knees to your chest and earning a loud gasp of his name as you wiggled your hips against him, relishing the feel of his cock throbbing deep inside of you.

“Show me that pretty face,” he cooed, sweat lining his temples from exertion, “Let me hear those pretty sounds.” He pressed hard against your clit, and your body responded explosively; you screamed for him, reaching for his shoulders to pull him to your chest and kiss him as a warm feeling spread from your center and out to your limbs. You could feel it in your chest, the fulfillment traveling over every inch of your body, muscles responding in kind with small twitches as your cunt squeezed him tight.

Your legs squirmed free from underneath him, and you wrapped them around his waist, keeping him close to you while you rode out your high, circling your hips over his cock. He moaned into your mouth, the kiss devolving into a messy exchange of spit and sweat and teeth, lips chapped and swollen with passion. You bit his lip and he growled, leisurely swaying his hips and punctuating his thrusts with eager whines.

“Where,” he was breathing heavily, once again finding solace in the crook of your neck. “Where do you want it, baby. Tell me. Please.” He was practically whimpering, begging you for permission to finish by communicating where it was you wanted his cum.

“Inside,” you moaned, the aftershocks of your orgasm lulling you into a sleepy heap of oversensitivity and devotion.

Damien growled as he took in your request. “You’re—fucking christ, you’re sure?”

“Please,” it was all you could say, desperate to feel the culmination of his pleasure inside of you. “Pill. Need it, Damien. Cum inside me. Let me feel it, please.”

Damien groaned at your words, brow knit and mouth open. He sped up his pace, pushing himself up from you and supporting himself on his hands. You whined, content and aching for him.

“Fuck, I'm gonna fill this pussy up so deep.” Damien squeezed his eyes shut momentarily before opening them and looking down at you, “Fuck—gonna cum, baby, I'm—fuck!” His hips stuttered, and you wrapped your legs around him tighter, keeping him secure against you. He dropped down onto you, still providing shallow thrusts, though much gentler than before. “I love you,” he whispered, lips pressing against your neck as he engulfed you with his own body, cock spent and twitching inside of you, “I love you.”

“I love you,” you repeated quietly, and when he kissed you, you could feel that he meant it; the words echoed in your mind as he eased his lips against yours, taking time now to really savor the way you moved against him and enjoy how perfectly you fit together.

You focused on catching your breath, and he removed himself from atop you as he collected himself. When he slipped his cock from you, you whimpered at the new emptiness, and he kissed your temple.

You both stayed there, lying in bed together while you came down from the high-energy tryst. You still couldn't remove yourselves from each other completely, limbs tangling together and hands gliding over sweaty skin as you appreciated the tranquility together.

“Do you want water?” He asked, nose rubbing against your cheek.

“Yeah,” you gulped a breath, “Yeah. Thanks.”

He got up on shaky legs and found a pair of sweatpants, walking to the kitchen only to return seconds later with a glass of water. His face was radiant and his cheeks dusted pink as he beamed at you.

“Thank you, baby,” you guzzled the cool liquid, mouth dry from the way he'd made you scream.

“Say—” Damien looked down at you, giddy, “Will you say it again?”

You smiled, tired eyes taking in his form. “Thank you, baby.”

He sat down next to you. The mattress shifted with his weight, and you inched yourself towards him.

“I like hearing you say it.” He seemed timid, like after all that had happened, he was still worried you’d reject him.

“I like saying it,” you nuzzled your face into his stomach, resting on his thigh. His hand came down to pet your hair, thumb occasionally brushing over your temple.

“Will you stay here tonight?” He asked, “Only if you want to, I mean—but, I’d like it if you did.” He laughed to himself, “And then, you know…if you wanted to stay every night—I’d like that, too.”

“Well, good, cause the U-Haul is on its way over.” You turned your head to look up at him from your spot on his leg.

“Wow, those guys work fast,” he smirked down at you. “And then, when you, uh—when you finish moving in…could I take you out on a real date?” His face looked so gentle, “You know, away from everybody we know. Just…just us?”

“I would like that.” You smiled, turning to place a kiss on his stomach. He examined your face, still stroking your hair.

“I’m sorry if anything I said was…if you think I was moving too fast—or if I said something you want to pretend I didn’t say yet. Or at all.” He winced, nervous.

“Damien,” you sat up, shuffling to kneel in front of him and cupping his cheek, “I love you. I don’t want to pretend you never said it.” You placed a kiss on his nose, and he tackled you back onto the mattress, kissing your face.

“Thank god,” he breathed a sigh of relief, “Because I don’t think I could ever take it back.”  

“You’ve said it before,” you laughed when his head dipped under your chin to suck new marks onto your neck to match the ones that he had made prior.

“I know,” he mumbled against your skin, “But it’s—this is different. I mean it…different…” He smiled, sharp teeth on display, and you laughed again, enamored.

“Good,” you played with the hair that curled against the back of his neck, “I mean it different, too.”

Damien pulled you against his chest and rolled over, leaving you to straddle his waist and rest your head on his shoulder.

“I love you,” he sighed happily.

“I love you, too.” You left kisses on his collar bone before pressing your face against his neck.

~~~

You didn’t remember falling asleep, but when you awoke the next morning you momentarily feared that it had all been a dream; that you were back in your own bed, alone, hungover and suffering from the memories of some distant fantasy.

But you were still with Damien. His arm draped over your waist and his face pressed between your shoulder blades as he snored quietly.

You could get used to this.

You leaned back against him, eager to tell him that you loved him when he woke up.

The sun was just barely up, and the minuscule amount of light that made its way through the window illuminated tiny bits of dust that passed through the rays. Zelda had made her way into the room at some point in the night, and her soft purring sent tiny vibrations over the blanket, her body nestled into the curve of Damien’s knee behind you.

You stretched, aimlessly reaching out and inevitably grabbing hold of your phone. You dimmed the brightness, scrolling through notifications you had missed the night before; tagged pictures, drunken Instagram stories, a few Venmo requests and a few more Venmo payments.

Courtney had texted you only about 20 minutes before you had woken up.

Court: How was the rest of your night 👀

Court: Does Shayne owe me $10

Court: Or did you end up going home

You let out a silent laugh, rolling your eyes a little at the betting pool that seemed to have erupted over your love life. You twisted in bed, opening your camera and zooming in on Zelda where she sat comfortably against Damien’s knee, the backdrop of his bedroom on full display. You took a picture and sent it to Courtney with no explanation, amused by your own vague confirmation that you had spent the night with Damien—and planned to do it again. Often.

You put your phone down and it started to buzz on the nightstand, lighting up with Courtney's contact picture. You considered picking it up, but then Damien’s arm tightened around you, pulling you to him while his hand spread out over your ribcage just under your breast. He kissed your back, still half-asleep, before he resumed snoring.

You decided that you would talk to Courtney later, turning over to bury your face in Damien’s chest, letting his breathing lull you back to sleep.

[kevinsdsy]

THE TROJANS SOCIAL MEDIA AU HEADCANONS pt. 2

jean moreau & shawn anderson dynamic

jean properly likes having shawn around. although he keeps telling shawn to fuck off. and to leave him alone. and to shut up. he doesn't actually mean it (most of the time).

and shawn knows this too. and what’s so great about shawn is he knows to set boundaries even though jean has never asked him to do so, but when jean seems even more quiet than he usual is, shawn takes a step back.

shawn notices when they're in a group environment jean is keeping more to himself and staying in the background where he can watch the group instead and shawn lets him without trying to put too much attention towards jean.

ananya deshmukh

ananya is a youtuber. idek why i made this a thing. i just love girls vlogging and blogging and i want her to be an it-girl like.

haoyu liu & travis jordan

look i'm going to be really honest. i forgot they were mentioned in the books for the longest time and then i did some stalking and was like ohh they exist too so i made their accounts on the same day and now they're dating each other in my mind

shane reed

OKAYY SO hear me out shane has not yet be mentioned in the au. but i’m posting this now for his introduction in today’s upcoming part. i was going through the book and noticed i missed his appearance when starting out the au which is CRAZY because he's mentioned quite a few times when the foxes vs trojans game is happening.

BUT I DECIDED TO ADD HIM AND I HAVE A FEW THINGS IN MIND FOR HIM (i want to give him shawn anderson treatment LMAO) but his character would be connected to kevin and it might be weird to have a canon x canon ship that's build on shit and giggles

but now that i think of it, is that literally not what jerejean used to be anyways??? SO LET ME TALK MY SHIT!!!!!!!!

with the summer olympics socmed au coming and having the foxes and trojans in one place i want to have them flirting with each other

like one day they barely know each other and the next day people are like ...wait?? what's going on here.

and not many of the trojans even know about the sexuality of either one of the guys so they all have to go and be like WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN

and i just think i can have a lot of fun with that LMAOO but maybe i'll decide to not even do it we'll see

angela "angie" lewis

angie, god bless her, has to put up with shawn during media training

angie pretends to be so sick and tired of shawn but she actually absolutely adores him

i was talking about them with @amberlouigi and i told them how i think when shawn graduates she will always mention him and be like "you guys be better! you will never believe, but i had to put up with shawn and he said..."

if shawn ever becomes pro he will be an ABSOLUTE menace to society/press/social media @amberlouigi said they think angie would get a call/message from his pro team asking if she wants a job. and angie decides to take it.

shawn will not necessarily stop his behaviour, but he respects and loves angie enough to cut back a bit on his behaviour so he can prove to everyone how well of a job she's doing.

i truly wish i had added angie to the socmed au before and added more of their dynamic together :((

bonus: kevin day

KEVIN DAY IS BISEXUAL !!!!!!!!! i think in canon he would have a lot of feelings to deal with and to unpack this but in the au he knows this about himself and he doesn't really care. he keeps it hidden from the press & media tho

[smoshyourheadin]

Sunshine and Soda Cans

Part 2 - Bubbles

"hey, spencer!" angela jogs up to spencer as you walk into the office. you wander to the kitchen to grab a soda, and put your stuff down.

"(y/n) said shes struggling with editing the new try not to laugh episode, and i don't think she's going to ask for help because she's too stubborn, so can you just check on her and give her a hand?". spencer looks over at you, and back to angela

"yeah sure! i'll catch up with her later" angela gives him a big grin, and then walks over to you, striking up a conversation.

later on, you're sat at your desk, editing away. you've been stuck re-trimming the same clip for like twenty minutes, and you're becoming increasingly frustrated.

"hey, (y/n)!"

his voice catches your attention, making you look up, but not away from the screen.

"hi spence, uh- what's up?" you say, eyes still glued to your screen.

"oh nothing, just checking how you're getting on with the try not to laugh edit. everything going good?"

"no actually' you, look up at him and you chuckle "ive, i've been trying to edit the same clip for like ever, and it won't save properly. im losing my mind!"

he smiles at you honesty, and pulls up a chair to help you out. after about an hour, you two get a bit bored and decide to go live on the games channel, streaming some sims

"alrighty then guys, hello! welcome to the games channel, today me and spencer are going to be playing some sims 4!" you smile into the camera, adjusting your hair, and you relax into your chair.

"guys, can we hate on (y/n) in chat for drowning my sims last time" spencer says sarcastically, glaring at you sassily.

"hey!" you elbow him, playfully "you made fun of my sims' fashion choices!"

he laughs at your anger, and you talk with the chat for a little while as the game loads

"okay, my plan is to make a love triangle in my mansion. i want to see if they can handle the drama.." you say, tapping your fingertips together

"woah, okay dr. evil!" he says, laughing with you

you guys start making some characters that, suspiciously, resemble each other. as you begin to play, your sims keep chatting to eachother

"hey, (y/n), why does your sim keep flirting with mine? got a crush or something?" spencer says with a smirk

"oh, please! my sim is just being friendly! unlike yours, who keeps stealing my sim's food!!! didn't realise your name was tina.." you giggle at your own joke, napoleon dynamite is one of the first things you two bonded over, so you both have a good laugh.

you guys play for about two hours, and then decide to wrap up, finishing the stream

before getting up to leave, you guys share a lingering gaze, and you see the colours in his eyes. you give him a ride back to his apartment, and you turn of your radiohead "in rainbows' cd. weird fishes/arpeggi comes on, as you pull up infront of his apartment. you look over at him with a sweet smile.

"well, see you tomorrow spence"

"yeah. looking forward to it"

you two lock eyes, and then he gently pulls you into a sweet kiss, his hand lingering on your jaw as you melt into his touch. he tastes like mt dew, and you smile against his lips. as you break away, you already miss his lips on yours.

"see ya, (y/n)" he says with a smile and a new twinkle in his eye, exiting the car and walking into his apartment block.

you sit in your car for at least another five minutes; eyes glassy, chest heavy, and palms sweating. you pick up your phone, and open up the phone app, ringing the only person you can think of to call.

"hey jelly, do we have any icecream? i need to tell you what's just happened"

you hear angela open the freezer over the phone, and she says

"yeah, we have some vanilla and i think there's some strawberries in the fridge. everything okay?"

"yeah," you breathing staggers, fully realising what just happened "me and spencer kissed"

"I'M SORRY WHAT"

you hang up, and start driving back to your apartment.

---------------------------

a/n— hey!! thank you all so much for the love on part one omg love y’all for that ahhh 😚 my requests are open btw!! so feel free to request anything, not just smosh stuff!! i’ll write for anything (even if im not in the fandom 😚)! okay yeah hope you all enjoy pt2!! love y'all 💛

[l-in-the-light]

Facing your own abyss in Silent Hill 2

Every save point is a red square. Looking at it is painful it's like... someone's... groping around my skull. Every hole James jumps into...

...is a square. The tv at the big reveal is an old crt one with a square screen.

Even the bathroom's mirror at the very beginning of the game is a square. Who cares about a bathroom's mirror, right? But the whole game starts with James staring at himself, into that mirror. He's staring at himself. Staring into the abyss. His mind is his own abyss. We've been looking at it the whole time, from the very start of the game.

"He who is not bold enough to be stared at from across the abyss is not bold enough to stare into himself. The truth can only be learned by marching forward."

James starts the game by staring at himself. He's not afraid of death. He thinks he wants to find out the truth, because things don't make sense to him, he can't understand anything, but he feels something is wrong.

But at the last save point, James looks away from the abyss. He was not ready to find out everything. He doesn't want to look into himself even deeper. He's afraid of what he can find. Please stop staring at me, I don't want for you to look into myself. I don't want to see any more.

A hot take: there's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes it might be better not to stare too long. Heck, it takes so much courage to do that. Many, many people would rather continue their lives by holding false ideas about oneself, choosing safety over feeling uncomfortable. It's a very human thing to do. Just sometimes you don't get that choice and you can't live normally unless you not only stare back, but also jump right into that abyss. It will be terrifying, you might find things you wish you never knew, you might find out nothing of what happened to you was ever your fault, but it won't make you feel any better anyway. It's when you're at your limit that you're literally forced to face it, when you buried what made you uncomfortable so deep that you feel overwhelmed and numbed, and you don't even understand why - because you hid the reasons. Or you can just run away. Some would prefer death over the truth.

This can happen because of our mental health crashing down. Unresolved traumas, feelings, belittling our own pain, trying to fit a circle into a square hole, unbelonging.

Ultimately, it doesn't even matter what is James' personal struggle, because anyone can relate to this in some ways. You can't escape abyss for forever, we've all been there and we all will be jumping into abyss again, and again.

But this has to be said, I'm sorry not sorry:

Sometimes you will get lost in your abyss to the point you will project your own issues on other people. It's a way to make you feel more secure, safe, when you tripped over some uncomfortable truth. Because you normalize it and it can't be overwhelming anymore if everyone can relate to it, in other words: you try to belittle the problem so that the "uncomfortable feeling" goes away. It becomes normal, familiar, tamed, nothing to be afraid of as the result. But is it really fair towards the people you did the projecting on? You're not helping them or respecting them if you just throw your own issues at them like that. And this applies to Silent Hill fandom as a whole, actually, because:

Every Silent Hill game (even the bad ones, even freaking Ascension) and movie: *shows clearly that the story is about PTSD, characters suffer from symptoms and hallucinations, are triggered by sounds, suffer from victim blaming etc.*

Every second fan on reddit: James is just sexually frustrated, he doesn't have any trauma, and even if he has one it doesn't matter, what are you talking about?! You're reaching! Everything is horny and sexy in this game, my interpretation is CANON! The town is evil and it punishes James and Eddie because they're bad people! Angela did a bad thing but didn't deserve it btw.

This is mostly me venting a bit, feel free to dislike it, but I need to get it off somewhere and I decided: tumblr it is.

Like, literally, all Silent Hill series entries share a theme of PTSD, but some people will go to extreme lengths to deny it and call it "reaching" WHILE saying "sexual frustration is canon". Alessa suffers from PTSD in SH1, James, Eddie and Angela suffer from it in SH2, freaking Heather, Claudia and even Douglas suffers from it in SH3, Henry and Walter in Silent Hill 4, Travis in Origins, Alessa in the movie, Heather in the movie, Cheryl in Shattered Memories (she's even in a therapy, come on, get a clue!), Alex in Homecoming, Murphy in Downpour etc. etc. etc. They all went through a trauma, Silent Hill reflects their traumatic experiences (that they don't want to remember!), they have to face their triggers putting them through the traumatic event again and again, and then delusions attemping to lull the mind into a fake sense of comfort. Their monsters are the delusions, not their horny desires!

Btw if you see your monsters as horny creatures, then maybe you're understanding it all wrong. It's supposed to be a delusion or fear, if you're horny and just want to hump things and that's why everything you see is sexy, then it's definiely not something you actually fear, and if it is, then I think you have bigger issues to deal with than sexual frustration here.

That being said, the creature monster designer, Masahiro Ito, called those monsters "delusions". Delusion is something that isn't an accurate representation of a concept in your mind. Delusion is far removed from reality. You want to believe a lie, because you can't handle the truth.

Now, if monsters are showing your sexual frustration that you don't want to admit you have, then they should be dressed like nuns instead. You want to deceive your mind, you want to believe you're not *that* horny and are faithful to your one and only, you can't handle the possibility that you're thinking of having an affair on the side.

Let's unpack this monster (Abstract Daddy/Ideal Father), having all of the above in mind:

It's a surreal creature consisting of two people, it has two heads and two mouths. And it's not literally showing intercourse like so many in "sexual frustration is canon" camp are claiming. Because that would be *a literal representation*, not a delusion. You would literally be seeing what happened, forcing you to face it in it's full horror and that can't make you believe in a lie (remember, the idea is that: you can't handle the truth, your mind is creating a delusion to calm you down). It's a self-defense mechanism fighting back against the trauma. You need to get rid of that delusion so you can face what actually happened!

There's one more description of Abstract Daddy in Japanese that is never truly translated into english. It's おぶさったとおちゃん (obusatta tōchan), loosely it means something like "piggyback daddy"; a dad carrying a child on their shoulders/back. Now look at the creature again. It looks like a smaller person is clinging to a bigger one, if you consider that the whole frame belongs to the person on the bottom and is "their body". Perhaps the door/bedframe person is carrying the smaller one on top of itself, but since the child is heavy/older now the frame ends up bending towards the ground. It's an image of a dad carrying his child.

Kinda like this (Inu Yasha is here just to illustrate the concept). That's why the limbs are hanging loosely like that on the monster's design.

Wait a moment, but why is the frame so big under the top person? It doesn't look like part of a body at all. That's because of the subjective perspective. When you're a small child, your dad looks especially big to you. When you cling to his back, you feel like it's so broad, strong and big; so big your hands won't meet when you embrace him. And most importantly, makes you feel safe and secure, because a father should protect his child. I could swear I even read lines like that in mangas or heard them in movies before, because that's definitely not my own impression there I thought up on my very own.

In order to see the truth that your parent was an abuser, you need to get rid of that "safe and secure" feeling of delusion you're experiencing. The monster is wrapped in cloth btw to obscure the truth, what you see on the surface is incorrect, the truth is trapped underneath (and if you want to, then NOW is the moment to jump to your intercourse thoughts or draw a parallel to Mary on sickbed. Let's call it an extra layer to this monster). Literally uncovering it would be the very definition of a horror.

Extra thought: the monster attacks James like it wants to protect Angela from the possible stranger (what an Ideal Father should do, indeed). Makes the whole scene afterwards have a lot more sense too, with Angela calling James a disgusting pig who is also only after "one thing". She considered James a threat, but it wasn't a conscious fear until the defeat of the monster. Next time they will meet, Angela starts to mistake James as her mom instead, so the whole paranoid delusion of James being a threat (because he's a male and males became her PTSD trigger) got dissolved and it's the result of Abstract Daddy's defeat. Angela now knows who was the real threat.

Finally, after 10+ years I solved the mystery of Abstract Daddy. You're welcome if you enjoyed the ride. I don't even like this monster's design all that much (I find Mandarins way cooler). But this isn't the end. If Abstract Daddy is a delusion, it means all the other monsters are also delusions and HIDE the truth, not "expose" or "manifest" it in straightforward manner. Only getting rid of them by unwrapping the actual thing underneath will lead you towards truth, believing the surface level will leave you delusional. There's still a lot to unwrap about the 9 delusions of James.

Yes, Abstract Daddy is how the monster looks like for James. We never knew how it looked like for Angela. Just the name alone suggests James has some trauma related to his father as well, which is a link that connects James to Angela.

And you know what, it's fine if you thought all this time that James is just sexually frustrated. I don't know how you can explain to yourself the fact that he needs to fight the sexy creatures instead of being overjoyed he can "'get some" finally. I thought that's how touch starvation works? But even if you somehow projected your own fears onto James it's alright. You just caught a glimpse of your own abyss and maybe you're not yet ready to stare back at it. We all keep doing those mistakes. It's just human.

Yes, of course me too. Why else do you think it took me 10+ years to solve this mystery? And it's only a start of it, we barely made it under the surface of this iceberg. But I feel like most Silent Hill fans aren't even remotely interested in any interpretation that opposes "sexual frustration" angle, especially now after Masahiro Ito denied that's it's not a canon interpretation, yeeting it back to "headcanon" category where it always belonged.

Yes, sexual themes are there in the game to make you uncomfortable, but if you know the sources of inspiration (Jung), then you know the uncomfortable levels get much deeper than your post-pandemic touch starvation. Maybe you're not ready or not interested to go that far and it's alright. I'm actually not so sure I'm ready to face the deepest depths of James's abyss myself. It both fascinates and terrifies me. We might have to go full Lynch on Silent Hill 2 and realize that nothing is what it actually seems.

Link to my previous interpretation essay on Silent Hill 2, in case anyone is interested (it's about merging of Otherworlds): https://www.tumblr.com/l-in-the-light/765829615005597696.

[camillecrellin]

Video Store — Angela Giarratana

Synopsis: You owned a video store. Spencer Agnew's favourite. He constantlly mentions it to his coworkers. What happens when Angela and Chanse pay the store a visit?

A/N: The synopsis is shit, I'm soo sorry. I hate this but please request some Angela/Smosh/Starkid stuff. I need to get my hyperfixation out somehow.

Word Count: 670

Warnings: mentions of death, swearing

Owning a business wasn’t easy. Especially for a dying media, but films and music were your passion. And so, when your mum passed, she left you her old corner store, which after a year long renovation you turned into what it was now. Your very own video and film rental shop.

Instead of Streaming was the name. A simulacrum of the past where you could rent or buy films, music, and video games.

And because of the niche need for physical media anymore, you knew almost everyone that came into the store. There was no way around it. You liked it. Despite not being a very social person, you knew that the people that shopped at your store shared the same interests.

Spencer Agnew was one of these people. A self-proclaimed film and video game nerd, he would come into your store about once a week to look over your new stock. And every now and then he’d bring people in from his work. Some of them even becoming regulars as was the case with Shayne and Damien.

Humming along to the sounds of Iggy Pop over the speakers, you went about your day refilling shelves to an almost empty store when the bell rang, signalling that someone was here.

Looking up you smiled at the two customers as the entered the store with wide smiles on their face. “Holy fucking shit this is soo cool.” The brown-haired girl gushed.

“Thank you, Spencer.” The man, who came in with the girl, sang making you quietly laugh to yourself.

“You’re Spencer’s friends?” You asked.

The pair looked to each other before the boy said, “You know him?”

“Yeah, I own this place.”

“Oh my God, you’re Y/n!” The girl squealed as she held onto the guy’s arm. Composing herself, she looked to you and continued. “Sorry he’s talked about you before; this place is like his man cave.”

“Oh yeah.” You chuckled. “I know.”

“If you need any help, just ask me.” You said, turning back to replenish the stock. “It’s 2 for 1 on the VHS’ but we rent VCR players assuming you don’t have one still.”

“Do you have any musicals?” The girl asked, making you whip back around to face the pair.

“Musical movies are just here, and the cast recordings are up the stairs with all the other music. We have them on vinyl, cassettes, and CDs.” You pointed to the locations.

“You really know your stuff.” The girl chuckled in an almost awe like way.

“Yeah, I love movies and I got a film degree so I guess I should do something with it.” You smiled at the girl, who nodded and walked over to the musical section of the DVDs.

It was around 10 minutes before the pair retreated, the guy having obviously embarrassed his friend as she seemed more on edge and nervous than before.

Carrying the MTV Legally Blonde proshot and the musical Nine, the girl came up to the counter.

Walking up to the checkout, you smiled. “Just those?”

“Yeah.” She nodded.

“Good choice.” You said, scanning the DVDs your hand reaching for a paper bag. “Well actually I haven’t seen Nine, but it looks decent.”

“Neither have I but it says it’s Italian so…”

You raised your eyebrows, making her friend speak up, “She’s Italian.”

Laughing, you looked down in embarrassment, “I should’ve guessed.”

Bagging up the items, you set up the card machine, telling the girl the price before she paid. As you went to hand her the bagged DVDs, your hands brushed, a blush creeping onto your face.

Gaining a small confidence, the girl spoke. “I’m Angela by the way.”

“Nice to meet you, Angela.” You smiled as you gazed into her eyes before quickly realising that she came with a friend. “Both of you…”

“Chanse.” He introduced himself.

You thanked Chanse with a nod before turning back to Angela, “You should come here more often. I can give you some recommendations.”

Angela agreed, biting her lip. “I will.”

[skaruresonic]

Silent Hill 2 critically examines and challenges many of our presupposed notions of gender roles, marriage, and the nuclear family unit. The game would not resonate as hard as it does if James and Mary were not married, because marriage carries with it a heavy emotional and cultural baggage.

In this post, I'm going to talk about cultural misogyny, how it's woven into the narrative. Apologies if it's not very well-structured, since I'll be offering my thoughts on an off-the-cuff basis.

The misogyny SH2 explores is a lot subtler and more structural in nature than is portrayed in the remake. While the remake is more blatant and not nearly critical enough of its portrayal of James as a more stereotypical hero, the original attacks the very premise that it's necessarily "wrong" for a woman to lose her worth via a loss of physical beauty, and that a man needs to perform the role of "protector" at the cost of being considered a failure.

To that end, I think some vital nuance is lost when the remake recharacterizes James as a more typical rugged Stronk Man, stoic and impatient, egotistical, and way more prone to violence than his original counterpart.

Original!James runs from his problems whenever possible. What's more, his cowardice serves a thematic purpose of showing us that even well-intentioned "nice guys" can be misogynistic. Because, again, the misogynistic framework that upholds Western constructs of marriage and family is structural, not individual.

James cannot meet any of the girls or women he meets in the eye whenever they castigate him. This in and of itself challenges the notion that James ought to be "in charge" of any of them.

Maria's emasculation starts early, and it doesn't really let up, resulting in James' mixed feelings of arousal and repulsion.

Angela, likewise, rejects being considered an object of pity, for pity implies condescension. James cannot save her by white-knighting her problems.

James initially feels compelled to "protect" Laura as a presumed damsel in distress when, ironically enough, she's the safest of anyone in Silent Hill. In fact, she places James in the position of "damsel in distress" by locking him in a room full of monsters.

This is a game where the women lead and James follows: a gendered frustration embodied by Pyramid Head, who cannot be placated, only fled.

It's no coincidence that most of the monsters you encounter are feminine in nature - rather helpless, sickly, and pathetic at that - while the one monster you cannot beat into submission is an intense expression of hypermasculinity.

Unlike James, whose emotions render him "less than" in the eyes of a patriarchal culture, Pyramid Head is stoic and never speaks. Pyramid Head is powerful and virile. Pyramid Head does not succumb to grief or suffer feelings of guilt for his misdeeds. Pyramid Head is a lone wolf that relies on no one else. Pyramid Head is "strong" enough to carry the psychological burden represented by the Great Knife with ease.

Although some degree of sexual frustration does factor in here, it's not the only message Team Silent were trying to impart via the monster dynamics. Pyramid Head is repeatedly seen dominating and subjugating the more "feminine" monsters. It doesn't take much onion-peeling here to see that James is harboring some subconscious grudges over his "failings" to meet society's standards of what a man is supposed to be like.

He isn't strong: he can't open a fridge without Maria's help. He isn't powerful: reading all the medical textbooks he could didn't save Mary. He isn't courageous: he can hardly look Maria or Angela in the eye when they force him to confront uncomfortable truths. He isn't, even, particularly respected at times: Laura locks him in a room just to laugh at him. The only person he has a leg up on is Eddie, but after a brutal shootout in a literal meat locker: one of the many implications being that this kind of pressure to be considered "real men" can potentially turn human beings into butchers for a sliver of domination.

For all intents and purposes, James is a "failed" man, just as Mary is a "failed" woman. By falling ill and losing her sexual allure, she failed to meet the culturally-ingrained expectations of a wife.

It's worth noting that both Mary and James hold these expectations and biases without realizing it. It's simply more obvious in James' psyche because we see the manifestations firsthand.

But Mary holds these values to be self-evident, too, when she laments that between the disease and the drugs, she looks "like a monster." Because patriarchy has taught her that a woman's worth lies in her looks, she laments the loss of her beauty to disease; she becomes worthless, "undeserving" of flowers (that is to say, basic decency on her husband's part).

She even laments being "ugly" and "disgusting" James in her last letter to him, as if she's failed him somehow through contracting an illness she never asked for.

Although the statistic that men divorce their wives if their wives fall ill is not necessarily true, it is true that women, as the presumed caretakers of the family, tend to survive at rates less than men if they do fall terminally ill due to a lack of support system.

We further see the mother's failure when Angela admits that her own mother said she (Angela) deserved her rape at her father's hands.

Furthermore, these gendered themes are expressed through the game's treatment of Maria. As a sentient entity born from James' selfish wishes, Maria lies trapped in an existentially horrifying state: objectification.

It's interesting that Maria professes interests and dislikes in Born from a Wish and early in Letter From Silent Heaven - in the former, she confesses that she's not much for literature, and in the latter, she opines "I hate bowling" - but slowly loses her individuality as time goes on. In addition, Maria stops insisting she's "real" and starts insisting that she can be whatever James wants her to be.

Eventually, she assumes Mary's voice and face (despite James having already noted that she bears an uncanny resemblance to Mary because of her face and voice) out of a false hope that doing so will ingratiate her to a man who doesn't want her.

Maria does not live for herself but owes her existence to a man. She becomes anything James needs her to be: a lesson taught when she dies; bait on a hook when she attempts to seduce him; even a version of his dead wife that will "never yell at [him] or make [him] feel bad." She bears Mary's face and voice, but not much else. Her thoughts and feelings ultimately do not matter because she is "not Mary."

Maria is treated like an object, despite being flesh and blood, and she has internalized this, displaying an unnerving willingness to contort herself in whatever shape necessary to keep James, for, again, without James she would not exist. When James states that he no longer needs her, she cries, "How can you throw me away?"

All of these things form the overarching reason why the renewed prioritization of combat disturbs me. It's almost like the remake is saying that violence is justified, but more specifically, the kind of gendered violence that culminated in James smothering his terminally-ill wife. Making combat "satisfying" defeats the point that combat shouldn't be a reward for violence.

Making the monsters extra aggressive so that combat is "provoked" and therefore justified, in fact, hits uncomfortably close to the nerve of "she brought it on herself." The idea that Mannequins now bumrush you when in the original, they only moved once perceived, allows the player to ignore how James must go out of his way to commit violence.

James, likewise, going "You're not here anymore" in the In Water ending does not bode well for his respect for Mary as a person, if he thinks his duty to her memory stops the moment her heart does.

In addition, Remake!James is more egotistical and entitled than Original!James.

While this may not inherently be a problem, I feel this has the potential to have audiences let James off the hook in a sort of Calvinist way. By dismissing his poor judgment and misdeeds as a result of his gender. "Oh, he was always an asshole, he deserves whatever he gets," rather than the more salient question, "What would we do in his situation? How could we restructure the ways we think about marriage, family, and gender roles so that the vulnerable don't slip through the cracks?"

As I've noted in previous posts, Remake!James' speech patterns reflect a more self-centered nature. When he tells Angela that his goal is to find Mary following Angela's emotional breakdown, he frames it as though Mary is his possession:

Notice how his priority is protecting his self-image as a good person and not in comforting Angela or trying to defuse the situation, like in the original.

Remake!James be like "Listen here, you audacious bitch, I don't know who you think I am, but I'm #notlikeallmen. I just want to get my wife back. 😤"

[miseta]

Chapter 2 ➺ Clearly on a bad slope 

Starting over In Madrid

Misa Rodriguez x Reader (Nicky/first person)

After moving to Madrid as the new Real Madrid photographer, Nicky's eyes can't look away from the pretty face of Misa Rodriguez. But how is she going to handle her growing desire for the Canarian goalkeeper when her working contract's strictly forbidding her to date players?

Chapter 1 ➺ A harder job than I thought 

2K words

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Next day went slowly. I had a very long call with my best friend Angela during lunch break. We caught up with each other’s life. I missed her deeply but it was nice to be able to talk to her. We laughed a lot about how gayism was spreading crazy in football Spanish teams. Angela was very angry with the special "you’re not allowed to date the players" clause and I didn’t mentioned my growing attraction toward Misa. I was working hard to convince myself it actually wasn’t even a thing. Though, as the afternoon came, the thought of Misa awaiting her first photo lesson kept bumping in my mind. 

 "Holà, Nicky !" The tall and tanned women came in sweat toward me after her training session. She was followed by Hayley Raso. "Hayley wants to learn photography too ! Is it okay ?"

"Sure ! Let’s go in that pitch corner. I’ll show you the basic setups and you can do a few shots to get how it works." 

"Looks like Nicky’s a real teacher !" said Hayley. 

"She knows a lot, you’ll see" added Misa.

We went to the shadowy corner. I showed Misa and Hayley my camera, explained the different buttons and functions. Hayley went for the first shot. Misa proved herself much more willing to be photographed when she was having fun. She made a few faces that made us laugh. I was surprised to see her putting on a show. She actually could be quite extraverted. When her turn came to use the camera, she didn’t remember much of my technical explanations so I had to go all over again. 

"No Misa, it’s not that button, it’s that one !"

"Mierda ! Perdón, err sorry !"

"And put the camera straps around your neck, please !" 

"Yes sorry". She put the straps on while looking at the screen and took a picture of Hayley laughing hard. 

"Misa, I told you to look through the lens, not the screen." She stuck her eye to the lens. "How do I zoom in Raso estùpida face ?" she asked. Hayley was mocking Misa. She mimicked her struggle with the presets and buttons. I was finding hard not to laugh myself. 

"Use your left hand on the lens. There is a wheel, you’ll feel it." She moved her face away from the camera to look at the lens. Her grumpy face was everything. "Don’t move away from it, let me show you. Look through the lens again." Misa put the camera back in front of her face. I took her left hand and moved it to the right position. "Like this. Do you feel the wheel ? It’s there." I put her fingers on the thin wheel.  "Es bueno ! it's working !” She said happily. "Hayley look up, this is your new profil picture ! " 

She started to take many photos. Hayley did more too. We chatted a little about their time at Real Madrid. They seemed frustrated about something without telling me precisely what it was. Misa’s face shut down when Hayley came to talk about the "El Clasico" games between to two eternal rival Spanish teams. She quickly changed the subject to her career in the Australia national team. They gave me back the camera and I took photos of the two girls sitting in the grass. It was the best shots since I started working here. The setting sun was sending red lights onto the pitch, giving the pictures a pinky glow. The footballers were more relaxed than I’d ever seen. I took a shot at Misa’s peaceful face, her eyes closed as she let the sun soaked her skin. 

 "You’re never tired of shooting us, Nicky ?" She asked. 

"The scene’s actually very pretty." 

"It’s because we are pretty" said Hayley and I felt my cheeks growing hot again. 

"You surely are" I admitted as I pressed my eye against the camera, mostly to hide my face. 

"Oh Nicky’s feeling us !" she joked. "What’s up to you ? Do you have anyone ? She asked."

I felt a bit embarrassed but in the same time, I didn’t have any friend in Madrid yet and it was nice to just casually chat with them.  "I don’t. But it’s ok for now. Besides, I just came to Madrid. It’s not that easy to make friends, and harder to find a girlfriend." I realized I just outed myself without even thinking about it. They caught that and looked up at me at the same time. "And one more at the Ciudad Real Madrid" laughed Hayley. 

Misa was smiling too, her intense gaze resting on me, then she looked down at the grass she was stroking with her fingers. Hayley spoke again, "Actually we should hang out together in Chueca. We’ll find a girl for Nicky !" she said to Misa. Misa kept smiling but didn’t respond anything, her hands still smoothering the grass. 

"I’m really ok with being single" I paused a moment. Suddenly my loneliness weighed down on me. "But I wouldn’t mind getting out in town." 

"Great, give us your number, we’ll arrange that in no time !"

***

I stared at my phone and smiled beatably for nearly 2 entire minutes that evening.

***

I was coming out of the train station, clearly not feeling confident. I had looked forward this night for an entire week but now my hands were sweaty and my heart was beating far too fast for a casual night out at the club with friends. I climbed the stairs and came out at the plaza de Chueca. I headed to the side of the metro exit to wait. 

It did not take long for Misa and Hayley to appear. I was so used to see them dressed in sportswear I almost did not recognized the two girls heading in my direction. Hayley was wearing flowing white pants and a bright blue shirt under her bombers jacket. Misa had the same kind of flowing pants but black with a matching jacket but the cutest part of her was the mischievous look on her face. 

Hayley hugged me as a greeting, she complimented me on my outfit, a simple forest green trousers and a short sleeve shirt. I turned to Misa and she hugged me too. The warmth of her body filled me. The smell of her perfume went all around. My heart beat faster. 

We entered the club. It wasn’t crowed yet but according to the girls it was going to be. A few people were already dancing. Misa and Hayley had dropped their jackets at the locker room. Misa was now wearing a very short black cropped top that wasn’t going to make the night easy for me. 

 "Let’s get drinks" Hayley said and we followed her to the bar. 

Cocktails in our hands, we stayed in a corner, warming up by chatting and drinking. Misa was getting impatient to dance but something else seemed to bother her.  

"What’s up Misa ?" I asked her. She pursed her lips. 

"There is a girl over there that keeps looking at me. I bet she has recognized me…"

"Does this happen often ?"

"Yes…" she sighted. 

"Celebrity drawback… you’re a star !" I teased her. 

"Sometimes it’s very annoying" said Hayley. "Hum, in fact all the time. Wait, but this is Lola ! Not the girl scrutinizing you Misa. Hey ! Lola !" Hayley walked away to a tall brunette woman near the bar.

"She’s the Atletico de Madrid goalkeeper" Misa whispered in my ear, waving to Lola. She took a zip of her cocktail and froze. "Oh no por favor !" She turned her back to the now crowded room. "The girl, she’s coming for me !" She stared at me with a pleading look. A blond girl was indeed walking in our direction. She held her phone, looking ready to take a picture. "Come on, let’s dance" I took Misa’s hand and led her, passing right under the nose of the annoying girl, in the middle of the dancing crowd. I saw the girl stop where she was, clearly not knowing how to approach Misa anymore.

Misa and I started dancing. She did a few funny dance steps. Her crazy side was showing out again and I liked it. "Thanks !" she said.

"You’re welcome" I responded almost screaming to be heard over the loud music. "Besides, you look as happy on the dance floor as on the pitch." 

"I love to party. I even mix sometimes." She smiled, dancing in a very endearing all over the top way. 

"You’re kidding me! You? DJ Misa !?"

She pointed at herself and nodded. "That girl is from Canary Islands!" She laughed and kept on moving more loosely. 

The music changed to a slow raggaton one. We set down our empty glasses on the bar, planning to join Hayley and Lola. I suddenly felt Misa s’hands on my back. Quickly, she pulled me close to her as she started a very sensual dance. I was so taken aback I walked on her foot and sweared. My shocked face made her grin. She spoke softly in my ear. "Sorry, spooky fan girl was coming again".

"Oh !" was all I managed to say.

"Nicky, you have to relax or we won’t be able to dance". My body started to unfroze. Misa’s hands were lightening a fire on my back. She moved slowly against me as she conducted our dance. Her hips, pressed against mine, followed the slow rhythm of the music.

It felt like Misa’s first intentions were now heading somewhere else. Without really thinking, I wrapped my arms around her neck and they rested on her soft hair. My fingers brushed her muscular naked shoulders. Our cheeks touched. Her scent enveloped me again. She lowered her hands to my waist. Remember the fucking clause ! I told myself as Misa pressed her hands firmly on my waist to pulled me closer. Remember it Nicky ! She slowly detached her cheek and her eyes bored into mine. My heart was beating so fast. Her almond-shaped eyes had the sweetest gaze. The clause Nicky ! I couldn’t bring myself to part with her. Her lips were just centimeters away… I closed my eyes, so ready for it to happen when another hand gently tapped my shoulder. We instantly moved away from each other.

"Here you are chicas ! We bought you new drinks !" Hayley handed us the glasses. She looked at us suspiciously. I was personally feeling like I had been pulled out a very hot bath straight into the freezing outside. I wanted to say something but Misa scratched her cheek and spoke first. "The fan girl, she was coming to me, so we tried to avoid her." She was taking faster than usual. "And it worked, right? I can’t see her anymore." She looked around nervously. Hayley frowned, still eying Misa suspiciously. I handed her my drink "Can you hold that? I have to go to the restroom." I really needed a break right now.

Alone in the cubicle, my mind was running fast. What was I doing? I had started my job only a month ago. My trial period wasn’t even finished and I was already on good way to fuck it all. My thought came back to Misa. I relived our dance and felt a burning sensation rise again. I had been so completely incapable of resisting her. And yet I had to. 

We came home as the early daylights started to appear. We had stayed for hours but I had managed to keep a good distance between Misa and me. I had danced with Hayley and Lola and Misa hadn’t come close to me again. She had seemed to enjoy the night like nothing particular happened. Had I imagined she was about to kiss me? Had I upset her? Was I going to loose the only two friends I finally had? 

Clearly, I was on a bad slope. 

✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩

Hope you liked it !

Chapter 3 ➤ Calmly panicking

[glennquackmire]

My hunger games au lore that im acting so odd over because I keep getting flashbacks to the other post

Ik i said I would make this into a video but it was getting to like 10 minutes long 😭 so here's a really shortened version of some of it OK SO

-The curtis brothers live in DISTRICT 7 instead because I like the idea of them being lumberjacks it's funny and also because the Curtises knowing alot about plants and trees and stuff is kind of relevant

-Their parents died in an altercation with some peacekeepers. Is that still lazy?? Yea but hopefully not as lazy

-Ponyboy still genuinely believes Darry sees him as a burden and despises him so he is under the impression that Darry is going to try and kill him the second they get into that arena so naturally he tries to get as far away from him as possible for most of the games.

-instead dally and johnny are from district 12 which I THINK fits better for them??? Johnny still has the same kind of schtick as in the original post where he believe he doesn't have a shot at winning which he's not really coping well with, but dally I kind of changed its not that he thinks he can or can't win its more that he doesn't want to. He's super mad the two of them have been put into this situation and doesn't want to conform to the opressive system the capitol has put in place to keep the district peoples lives being used as entertainment I guess. But I don't really know if it's in a "i want to start a revolution" way or not I guess.

-Tim I mostly added because I like him.I'm a tim stan. He's from district 8 for the same reason the curtis brothers are from district 7, I like the idea of him being really good at sewing. I'm still on the fence on whether I wanna add Angela or Curly as tributes too but as it stands tim is the only one that has been reaped out if the three of them. He's really desperate to get back for this reason because he knows without him his siblings would be left on their own. He's also really really smart in this au so he makes it super far into the games.

-The socs respectively are from Districts 1, 2 and 4 because them being the careers makes sense to me. Like the advantages that the careers have in the games just kind of aligns with the advantages the socs have in LIFE. Does that make sense????? Idk I might be talking out of my ass here 😭. The combinations of the socs have changed around alot but I keep going back to Randy and Marcia in 1, Cherry and Bob in 2 and Paul and Beverly (from the musical !! Its so good go listen to it) in 4.

-Steve and Twobit I added because I think they're a funny duo and they're from district 6 (get it cause it's the transportation district). I really don't have much to say about them honestly I have a little bit so if u wanna hear about them let me know !! Originally it was gonna be sodapop and Steve but I couldn't find a way for it to make sense. Maybe I'll add him in and say he's not related to darry and ponyboy or something I don't know. I hate leaving him out though ily soda.

-Scout is still here (hi scout) but she's used as a bit of a plot device now lol

-the arena is a huge forest, but its also got some really mountainous areas

-there IS mutts now but they're let loose about 2 thirds of the way through and aren't around for very long. The fire is still there as well because mostly i just enjoy drawing fire.

-I think (?) That's everything, I'll keep the deaths and the other stuff that happens in the arena for another post because this is already kind of long I think

-if you want to hear more you can totally message me !! I love talking to people or u can use the ask box I would literally love either of these but obviously no pressure 😭

-I have a BUNCH of drawings done for this au like so many

Anyway I think the moral of the story is not being a good writer and 3 days of being awake are not a good combo lol

[dankest-of-lies]

y'all I'm not kidding, so y'know the new scene between James and Angela in the sh2r where they're talking in rosewater park?

well I was watching some chick on YouTube react to "spooky video game music" when a certain song started playing and she said smth like "does these 2 songs sound like they'd be from a ______ game?"

and my initial reaction was: "hey that first song is from the silent hill 2 remake not _______"

but then i looked up the original song itself, and saw the upload was from 2016 and it blew my mind because I've been looking for the song that plays during the rosewater park scene because it's not on the official OST and I found it

It's this 😭

(the one in the sh2r is slightly altered ofc but OH MY GAWDDDDD. and people have been saying it sounds like silent hill music for years so i guess akira had the opportunity to do the funniest thing ever and he did it 😭)

[bettercallslur]

been making my brother play the silent hill 2 remake while I watch (he's like my own personal streamer bc I love game but game scary). so we've been talking about the themes and James as a character of course and I wanna explore something that i haven't seen in the discourse but something we discussed a couple nights ago. spoilers under the cut.

so the scene just before labyrinth where Maria is talking to James from the locked room. she says "It doesn't matter who I am." and we both kind of ran with that. I took it to mean that James didn't really love Mary. or, at least, Silent Hill believes he didn't. now we could say it's just the thoughts James has about himself echoing back to him. we got the leave ending first playthrough without even trying and in that he tells Mary that he killed her because he hated her. she responds by saying that's okay and it's played in a way that's I think was supposed to convey that he didn't REALLY hate her. he hated the illness. hated his life being limited. I think all of those complicated emotions can still exist even if you love someone.

but is there an argument to be made that James didn't love Mary at all? he loved who he remembered her as. he "loved" her as "woman". as "wife". but was she ever her own person in his eyes? we never hear about her hobbies. her interests. her personal quirks. she is just Mary. wife of James. even her name lends itself to banality.

that's what we took Maria to mean when she said "it doesn't matter who i am". because in the eyes of James, "his Mary" could be any woman. a cookie cutter wife for him to latch onto. this links hand in hand with his sexual frustration and the way some of the monsters are portrayed. the mannequins beings two pairs of legs glued together with no face. simplifying a woman down to what he considers to be the most important part of them. the nurses, also with no facial expression, being dressed so provocatively and shaped almost pornographically feminine.

idk i guess I see a lot of people addressing the general sexual frustration symbolism but not really digging into why his sexual frustration haunts him so much. again it could all be just a personification of how he sees HIMSELF. and we know that's not always the reality based on Angela... anyway I'm rambling!!! anyone else have this thought?

[wienersmosh]

some thoughts on "getting bored" of smosh

i obviously can't speak for anyone else on why we're getting bored of smosh or why it seems like the fandom (both smoshblr and smoshtwt, strangely enough) is "dying out". for me personally, the main channel hiatus got to me, especially bc it meant that it wasn't just the main channel taking a break, but ian and anthony in general as well. i thought we'd at least get them on pit and games but no, they were taking an actual, proper break from being in all content.

i feel like that's most of the reason why i'm currently bored and unenthusiastic about this fandom. i deactivated my public smoshtwt account bc i didn't see the point of keeping it when there's no ianthony content to talk about (and also bc i am starting to *deeply* resent that side of the fandom). i guess that's understandable enough. if your faves aren't in videos for extended periods of time, you eventually get bored.

but i think part of the reason why i'm bored and detached is bc the lineup that made me love smosh - 2019-2021 smosh, when jackie and kimmy were still there - doesn't exist anymore. noah is a zionist, olivia is mostly AWOL and when she *is* there you can tell she doesn't care enough to put in effort, i don't love damien anymore. i like and appreciate them but i don't watch smosh for amanda, chanse, angela, and trevor, so smosh pushing them so much in videos *on top* of the fact that ian and anthony have been in zero content for the past 2 months exacerbated that boredom.

i think this is just the natural life cycle of being a smosh fan. that company constantly undergoes big changes, including cast lineups, dynamics change and cast members move on with their lives. i really hope they do something soon that would re-spark my love for them.

(hoping this doesn't turn into some sort of "debate" or discourse or people accusing me of hating on smosh. please treat this like a diary entry that happens to be public. i am simply writing about my own feelings and opinions and i'm not trying to vilify anyone at smosh or the smosh fandom.)

[pumpkinsy0]

outsiders characters as events from my silly ahh summer camp. i don't know how i survived for a month at a time there tbh

ponyboy: me going gollum mode over the hunger games book. it wasnt even a joke at that point i was struggling. also the pivotal turn my life took when i read hatchet. like i was reflecting and allat

darry: the DELECTABLE ahh lunches. idk what they did but they were so tasty. like i would have the best nap of my life after muching down on that

johnny: me crying myself to sleep that one time, some girl was like "erm miss counselor!!! i think insert name here is crying under her sleeping bag!!" and my bitch ass counselor who i HATED like she was my arch nemesis started trying to calm me down which made me even more upset. and earlier that day i was trying to feel included in a conversation w a semi friend and some cunt went like "no ones talking to u" when i was Literally just sitting there.

dally: that horse they assigned me that would not do anything asked of him. also one time he like broke out of his stall and was just walking around?? he was an interesting fellow. he was silly tho

soda: me getting sick from eating 2 much cereal. i was writhing around bc tummy ache 2 much later in the day. to be fair i did eat more than 10 servings of cereal.

steve: us having no air conditioning in the cabins. we had to bring our own fans. i had to shower multiple times a day bc I was sweating so much.

twobit: some girl mixing chicken and jello together. also me falling out of a bunk.

cherry: that time during horse and tack when we watched a movie bc it was too hot outside so we went in. but the movie was rlly sad and I cried

that was then… this now… ones

bryon: me almost drowning during one of the swimming performances. like I was lowk choking on water while under the sea was playing in the background.

mark: again that one damn counselor i hated so so much. like i was planning her downfall. why on God's green earth was she singing riptide while we were trying to sleep stfu

m&m: i would start randomly crying so often. i would miss lots of classes bc i would just be in the bathroom bawling for various reasons

angela: girls being so so mean to me. like it was a problem.

curly: me throwing hiking boots at a girl I didn't like

tim: them having to ban making slip n slides in the bathrooms. i didn't ask and i didn't want to know

most of these things aren't too relevant anymor but they kinda funny so here. i mean expand on these if u want. i can't put them on my blog bc it's not a TO blog but they need to be put somewhere

u made me remember this time where i just woke up weak as hell and my aunt had to literally spoonfeed me multiple bowls of cereal, to this day idk exactly HOW i got that weak, that has never happened to me before and it hasnt happened since

BUT ALSO i remember going to this summer camp and somehow someway we got into this gender prank war and im just pushing that onto all of em

and THEN there was this other time i was in this summer?????christian????school camp thing????? and look im an atheist idk what i was doing there i showed zero interest but my cousins and sister was also there, and for lunch we were going out which i dont think anyone else was doing bc my teacher asked “r u SURE u wanna go???” and i rhink she was pushing me to stay but i said yea and left immediately and i giggle at that and i think pony wluldve done the same, i wanted OUT🗣️

[hayleythesugarbowl]

oooh a oneshot of angela where everyone thinks angela is the golden retriever and reader is the black cat, but behind close doors reader is basically a golden retriever and just so energetic and cuddly

orrrr

reader is usually very independent and strong, but she gets sick on a game night with angela and angela takes care of her and she's (r) actually just a baby and angela loves this side of reader ect ect

Princess || Angela Giarratana x reader

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚ masterlist • smosh masterlist ⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧⋆

summary: when you start to feel sick during a game night with angela, you let her take care of you for once and she gets to see a different side of you

word count: 2k

warnings: mild sick fic

a/n: ok I kinda went with option 2 so I hope that’s ok and I hope you like what i did with it! enjoy!! 🎀🍒

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~°~❦~°~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

     “Angela, your move,” you said, nudging your girlfriend who was talking to Amanda on her other side.

     “Right sorry,” Angela said laughing and nudging you back. She rolled the dice and cheered when she got what must have been a good number.

     You still didn’t completely understand the rules of this game. You and your coworkers at Smosh were having a game night and Angela had dragged you along. You massaged your temples as you felt the start of a headache coming on. It wasn’t that you didn’t want to be there, it was just that you were feeling tired and didn’t have the energy for this right now. 

     In truth, you didn’t feel all that great. You could feel the beginning of a cold ravaging your body and you ached all over. But you didn’t want to mention anything to Angela, not when she was so excited about this game night. Because for a woman who never understood how to play games, she sure loved playing them. 

     “(Y/n), did you hear me?” Angela was practically bouncing in her seat. “I won!”

     You shook off your haze and drew your eyes to Angela’s. 

     “That’s great sweetie,” you said, mustering all the enthusiasm you could. You didn’t want anyone to know you felt less than perfect. Because then they’d just try to tell you to lie down and ask if they could get you anything and you could handle yourself darn it! 

     Although truth be told, some hot soup actually sounded amazing right now. You brought yourself back to the present and turned to Shayne, who was sitting across the table from you and Angela.

     “So, what are we playing next?” You asked.

     “Well, the next game we have picked out is called The Best Friend Game,” he said, reading the rules, “Players team up and see which pair knows the most about each other.”

     Angela grabbed your wrist, shouting,  “(Y/n)’s on my team!”

     “Good luck, Angela,” Arasha said as she began to examine a few of the cards, “I’m pretty sure (Y/n)’s never had a partner in the history of games.”

     She was exaggerating. But only a little. You preferred to be your own teammate. Was there anything wrong with that?

     “That’s not true,” you crossed your arms, “I have had partners before.”

     “And stop looking at the cards, Arash,” Chanse grabbed them from her and placed them under the pile. 

     Angela looked at you with her best puppy dog eyes and you caved.

    “Alright. Teammates.”

     Angela pumped her fist in the air and everyone laughed. You laughed with them until you felt a sharp pain in your chest as you held back a cough. You put a hand over your chest and winced before you could stop yourself. 

    Angela turned to you and furrowed her brow. She tried to reach out and get your board for you but you quickly grabbed it before she could, smiling. 

     “Who’s going to read the first card?” you prompted, covering up your moment of pain.

     “I will!” Courtney said, picking up the one on the top of the pile. “What was your teammate’s most horrific memory?” 

     They began to write their answer down while their partner, Damien, guessed at their answer. 

     The other teams followed suit and you, having to guess Angela’s, knew exactly what to write. 

     Once you finished writing your answer, you let yourself rest your chin in your hand. You felt a bit dizzy, but other than that your headache was manageable and the aches you felt had to go away soon, right?

     “Alright,” Amanda said, turning to her partner, Shayne, “I said your most horrific memory was when you went on a date with that girl and she told you she already had a boyfriend in the middle of it.”

     You pulled at your sweater. Did they have the heat blaring in here?”

     “Amanda!” Shayne turned his board over revealing his answer, “I almost died when I was a baby. Is that not horrific enough for you?”

     You heard what they were saying but you let your ears unfocus as you placed a shaking hand to your forehead. Nope, it was definitely you that was hot. And not in the good way.

     “Shayne, you were a baby, you can’t remember that, so it’s not a memory!” 

     As you listened to them laugh and argue about it your ears began to ring and you realized you had spaced out.

     You didn’t want anyone to worry or to ruin anyone’s night, but you had to get home soon before you got worse. 

     Maybe you could make an excuse? You couldn’t think of what right now with your head pounding, due to the headache that was definitely not manageable. 

     “(Y/n), are you ok?” Angela asked you.

     “What? Why wouldn’t I be! I’m perfectly fine,” you whispered back to her.

     But you could feel yourself getting sicker by the minute. Darn your lousy immune system! 

     You let yourself think about how easy it would be to just tell Angela that you didn’t feel good so that you wouldn’t have to do this. But you didn’t want to be taken care of. You could deal with it yourself if you could just get through this night without complaining. 

    That all changed when you felt a wave of nausea roll over you. You bit your lip to keep your lunch from ending up on this table and you wiped your hair away from your face.

     “(Y/n), it’s our turn, what did you write?” Angela said.

     “Oh,” you hadn’t even been paying attention to where the game was going, “I um—”

     You looked around you at the table and made your decision then. You would just make an excuse that was believable but not too concerning. Maybe your non-existent dog did need to be fed. 

     “I think I’m just going to head home,” you blurted, “If that’s ok with all of you.” 

     The room felt hotter and as you stood up you felt wobbly so you quickly sat back down again to regain your balance. 

     Angela stood up and put a hand on your back, which you shook off. “I’m fine, Ange.”

     “(Y/n) you are clearly not fine and we’re going home right now.”

     “No,” you protested, “you should stay and have fun I just have some things to take care of so I’ll just—”

      You stood up again and this time you stayed standing but you put a hand to your head as the blood rushed there and made your vision blurry.

     “Ok, so maybe I have a tiny cold,” you admitted and Angela rolled her eyes, “But I’m fine, really, I’ll just go home and rest for a little.”

     “Nope. Not gonna happen,” Angela said firmly, “You’re coming home with me whether you like it or not.”

     “But—”

     “No buts, come on,” she wrapped an arm around you and began to walk away with you.

     “Bye guys,” you called behind you and a chorus of ‘bye’ and ‘get well soon’ followed you as Angela guided you to her car. 

     You let yourself lean into her touch even though you knew you shouldn’t be. 

     So much for handling this yourself. 

₊˚ ✧ ‿︵‿୨୧‿︵‿ ✧ ₊˚

     When you got to Angela’s house, she led you upstairs and into her bedroom. 

     “Now lie down here and I’ll be right back,” she told you.

     “Angela, I can go home,” you said, “I don’t need to be taken care of.” 

     “Maybe I want to take care of you,” she turned to look at you as she walked out the door and back sown the stairs.

     You sighed. You supposed lying down in Angela’s bed just for a minute wouldn’t be the end of the world. Since standing felt like torture it wasn’t hard to convince yourself. Besides, it wasn’t like you hadn’t been in Angela’s bed before, just in very different circumstances. 

     You climbed in, feeling the cool sheets on your arms and legs. As you lay your head back on the pillow you let your eyes close for a moment until your head stopped spinning. You felt like you had just run a mile and now you could finally rest your muscles. What would be the harm in closing your eyes for just a few minutes?

     You opened them abruptly when you heard Angela coming back in the room. You must have fallen asleep for a moment. Angela carried a bowl of what looked like soup and a glass of water. 

     “Drink this,” she said, handing you the glass.

     “Angela,” you started and she gave you a look that said not to argue with her.

     “(Y/n), you’re taking this water or so help me—”

     “No, I was just going to say thank you,” you said as you took the water. You didn’t have the energy to fight her anymore, you realized, and now you were just glad Angela was here with you. The water felt amazingly refreshing on your throat.

     “Oh,” Angela said, smiling. You took the soup from her as well. 

     What would be the harm in letting her take care of you this once? Isn’t that what people who cared about each other were supposed to do? 

     And it felt good to let her pamper you, you thought, as she began fluffing your pillows. 

      “Angela? It is kind of cold in here,” you said, pulling up the blankets around your arms, a sharp contrast from the warmth you had felt earlier at Smosh. 

     “Blanket, coming right up,”  Angela said, moving around the room to grab an extra blanket for you. She came back and laid it over you before feeling your forehead and shaking her head.

     “You’re burning up, (Y/n),” she said. “Try to get some rest.”

    She brushed a few strands of hair away from your face. Her touch felt good on your face. 

    “Ok, I’m going to let you try to get some sleep,” she said quietly, “but I’ll be right outside if you need me or anything.”

     She started to move away from you but you grabbed her wrist.

     “Wait, Angela—” you pushed and she waited for you to finish, “Stay?” 

     Angela smiled at you, “Of course, love. I was hoping you would say that.”

     She pulled up a chair from across the room next to your—her—bed and you set the soup on the bedside table, letting your eyes close, feeling comforted by her presence.

     Your head still pounded and you felt crummy overall, but you were beginning to feel less awful now that you allowed yourself to lay down.

     You turned on your side so you faced Angela. 

     “Are you feeling any better?” She asked you. You attempted a nod but you were finding it harder and harder to lift your eyelids.

“No,” you pouted, and Angela kissed your forehead as she rolled her eyes at you fondly.

     “Sing for me?” You mumbled.

      She shifted in her seat, looking like she was contemplating saying something.

     “What?” You asked, still not opening your eyes.

     “Nothing,” she said and you could feel her smiling, “I just love seeing this side of you.”

     “Sick and achy?” 

     “Of course not dummy,” she said. “You just don’t let me do things for you…ever.”

     “Not true,” you said into the pillow. 

     “(Y/n), you know it’s ok to need help, right?” She said it so sincerely it was alarming and you opened your eyes. 

    “I know that,” you said. 

     “Do you?” She said, “Because you never let me take care of you.”

     You supposed you didn’t. You just didn’t want to be a burden and you didn’t want Angela to think you were incapable of doing things for yourself.

     “I’m your girlfriend, (Y/n),” Angela continued, “You don’t have to put up a front for me.”

     You looked down, “You’re right. I just—you were having so much fun at the game night earlier and I didn’t want to ruin that.”

     Angela laughed, “You have to know you’re more important than a game night.”

     You thought you did, but it was nice to hear it anyways. You reached out a hand to Angela and she took it, smiling.

     “Now I believe I requested a song,” you teased, moving the pillows before laying your head back down again.

     “Right sorry,” Angela mumbled, “princess.”

     But she was smiling as she began singing you to sleep. And as you listened to the beautiful notes that she sang, you began to drift off.

     Feeling comfortable at last.  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~°~❦~°~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ˋ°•*⁀➷ hope you enjoyed love!! have a great day <3🍓🪩

[eddiestightywhities]

WIP WEDNESDAY (ON A THURSDAY)

tagged by @inell! thanks, lovely 🩷 my tags are beneath the cut at the bottom of the excerpt.

this is from one of my many wips—all of which i hope to see the light of day one day, but my currently unmedicated adhd arse is in charge at the moment so i guess we'll just have to see who makes it out alive lol

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“It'll always be you, Eds.”

Buck beams across the table at him and Eddie thinks of Texas sunshine in late July and of violet fire and Supernovas.

He feels his best friend's words and that blinding smile in his gut like a constant, gnawing hunger, but Eddie's an old hand at starving himself of his desires and doesn't know how to answer anyway so just winks and smiles back, and it's a dim little effort peeking out from the cover of the shady place Eddie's been cowering in for a while—ever since the violent incandescence of the lightning strike, since Buck fucking died—while he tries his utmost not to freak out two-fold: 1) at the non-stop panic attack-inducing possibility of something as completely fucked-up as those three minutes and seventeen seconds happening al over again and 2) self-abasing distress over whether or not here is just where Eddie lives, now.     

In the shadows.

He breathes in deeply, yet silently and as motionless as he possibly can, and prays that his hopefully not too wild-eyed expression isn't giving away his hard-won hiding place.

Buck shouldn't be able to just say stuff like that to him. It's torture. And while Eddie may very well be a masochist, he does have his limits. Sure, right now his partner is actually only talking about them teaming up for Pictionary and whatever other games the group will undoubtedly end up threatening each other over this evening, but still. Eddie can't help hearing some things in the way he's desperate to hear them.

Those things he wishes Buck meant for real.

Whether Eddie is capable of admitting it or not (maybe he has some kind of defect when it comes to this shit?), he now knows inherently that it'll always be Buck for him from here on out.

Buck is then merciless, adding, “You're my ride or die, Diaz! It's you and me forever, right?” just to murder Eddie in cold blood right here in the middle of Hen and Karen's living room in front of all their friends.

And ¡Dios mio!, Eddie is so totally fucking fucked.

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@woodchoc-magnum @sortasirius @angela-feelstoomuch @rosieposiepuddingnpie @colonoscopys