#heap womens clothing online | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

angelisverba · 4 years ago

Text

thinkin’ bout you

in which harry owns a flower shop and has a major crush on a girl who comes in to buy flowers every once in a while (and he’s too shy to ask for her number)

word count: 17.3k

paring: florist!h and y/n

warnings: just some pinning and lustful yearning. m for mature...

author’s note: i’ve been working on this forever. not to pick fav’s but i think florist!h comes second to sl23... hes just so.......well, you’ll see!!

* * * * * *

When Harry was given the option to go on a playdate with his car-loving and dirty-nailed schoolmates or spending the weekend at his nan’s house, he would often pick the latter.

He preferred to spend his afternoons frolicking with her Siamese kitty in her wild-flower filled garden, sunbathing in the open grass, or napping on a quilted blanket under the large, round oak tree, with the kitty nestled into his tummy, keeping him warm. When he woke in the arms of his nan as she carried him inside the house for a glass of cool lemonade, he bore a band of pink sunburn over his button nose, and the blue and white striped Mickey shirt was sticking to the areas where his furry friend had provided an extra heat.

So, it was safe to say that from the start, Harry’s tastes weren’t what could be considered ‘average’ or ‘normal’ or ‘straight’ for a heterosexual male of his age in current society.

Not that he ever valued those opinions, but their impressions rang in the back of his loving head when the women who he brought to the comfort of his home made hurtful ‘joking’ comments on how ‘peculiar’ his choice of decor was or giving him prolonged strange looks before shaking their heads and yanking their clothes off so that they landed in a forgotten heap in some unimportant corner of his room.

Granted, he still got a good shag, but it wasn’t enough to fulfill his desires regarding any actions associated with relationships. He wanted someone warm and soft and kind. Someone who wouldn’t judge his home, his music choices, his clothing, or anything else about him. A girlfriend, not a fuck.

Long ago, he’d stopped caring about what others said about him. Adopting this mindset had given him some of the happiest and healthiest moments of his life (albeit occasionally, doubts merged with the ghastly shadows of his loneliness). Business at his flower shop increased as his charm increased with positivity, and a new life within him bloomed like a baby rose bud when he accepted that being single was okay. The ribbons of his bouquets bouncing with an added umf and the mist that landed on his skin when he changed the water in the flower buckets only enhanced the golden hue of his skin.

Harry even took to renovating his home a bit.

Coincidentally, his apartment was located on the floor above his flower stop, and contained a significant amount of singular flowers in vases or bouquets in empty corners to prove it. An array of pastel colors smeared on the once blank walls. Bambi pink in his bedroom, sage green in his kitchen, and a French blue in his living room. The couch was a suede papaya three-seater with black and white checkered pillows, and the coffee table was an emerald-tiled piece standing on top of a geometric lavender carpet, a soft contrast against the dark oak of his floorboards. Harry’s taste in pop-culture, art, and literature was displayed on the frames hanging off his walls. Pictures and posters of his favorite pieces like Matisse’s Blue Nudes and Goldfish and The Dance II. An enhanced, enlarged photo of maraschino cherries and a raven haired pin-up girl. Another glass table by the end of the couch held a silver candlestick and a small statue.

Sometimes, the miniature Greek statue he bought at a thrift store of a man with his nakedness pure and unobscured to the viewers' eyes made his dick bloat against the seams of his pants. If he stared at it for too long, his eyes drawn to the softened cock between thighs that looked so flesh-like even though it was carved out of some clay or ceramic material, his mind would travel to sensual, honey-red places that he hadn’t been in so long. Harry’s imagination explored- as cheesy as it sounds- the sexual aspects of the male genitalia, and therefore his own sexual expeditions and how much he missed giving or receiving a good fuck. More often than not, he ended up with himself in his fist, forehead sparkling with perspiration under the candle lights in his room as his thighs and abdomen clenched with every buck of his yearning hips.

The doorknob of his room was in the shape of an eye, the iris colored a brilliant blue. His king bed- no, frame, just a minimalist white base, pushed up against the wall with two tables on either side, both of them loaded articulately with vintage trinkets and ceramic ring trays shaped like seashells to hold his jewelry. His bedsheets were a stylish combination of pastel colors; lilac comforter, mint and sky pillows. Previously, they had been snow white sheets with strawberry print, but a woman he brought over said they looked like the sheets her five-year-old niece had.

He changed them the week after that.

On the windowsill, a pot in the shape of a white, blue-eyed kitty with vines of string of hearts kissing the floor. A mirror in the shape of a heart with a pink trim besides the lightswitch, above his brown dresser. In the corner, a bookshelf stuffed with books that spilled over the seams, and perpendicular to it, the home of his pet chameleon, Owen (he wanted a cat, but when he went to the pet store and saw the dehydrated creature, he couldn’t leave him there). A 16 x 16 x 30 inch tank filled with a branch that cut across halfway. It was full of all the things he might need, maybe even too much of it, but it didn’t matter because when Harry was home Owen spent most of his time hanging off the collars of his shirts or snuggled in the ruffles of his hooded sweatshirt on his shoulder. The small, color changing friend adored his owner, and only morphed into a mild red color when Harry didn’t feed him more mango.

The renovations occurred in his bathroom; a cherry-red covering the walls because it looked boring before (at least in his opinion). The gold piping of the sink accentuated nicely with the darker color, and the sun seemed brighter when it streamed in through the window above his ceramic claw-footed tub. Owen particularly liked the misty showerhead stall in the corner, and as long as he kept his eyes to himself, Harry didn’t mind it if his green friend wrapped around the showerhead and enjoyed the mimicked tropical atmosphere.

For awhile now, it had been just him and his chameleon (and maybe his mum’s cat if she was going out of town and needed a sitter) but he didn’t mind it.

He got to meet new people everyday within the parameters of H’s Garden, and they all tended to overshare when it came to buying a bouquet. ‘My wife just had our son, want to see a picture?’ or ‘my boyfriend and I have our anniversary on Saturday’ and even ‘my sister had plastic surgery so me and my dad need something that says ‘congrats you look like Kim Kardashain now’ how ‘bout it?’

Stories ranged from sweet, to grotesque, to sad, to funny, and sometimes even evil- Harry didn’t like customers that gave flowers as a ‘fuck you’. He thought it was a waste of beauty and sacrifice. Flowers were living things that had their lives cut short in order to provide momentary satisfaction and life long memories to the receiver, not bitter feelings of revenge. Although it was still business, it pained him that such a pretty arrangement be misused. It was one of the cons of his work. He created what he considered to be masterpieces, and had no control over where they would end up, whether it be as a centerpiece for a candlelit dinner, or in the trash after the apology for a strong argument hadn’t been enough.

However, Harry couldn’t deny that he didn’t love his job, because he did.

When he turned 16, he’d determined that he wanted a peaceful life with a job that wouldn’t bore him. He wanted to be as stress free as possible, with his spirituality as a prominent highlight in his lifestyle. When he turned 18, he had determined that he wanted to be a florist, and began to save up to open his own shop with the occasional help of his friends and sister. He refused to take anything from his mother because he wanted to be the one giving her gifts and money and everything good after all of her sacrifices in raising him. Call him a momma’s boy. Harry loved his mother.

Online seminars and college classes became his best friend, teaching him everything he needed to know about accounting, stocks, and how to keep his business going. He was a businessman first, florist second. During the slow seasons (the start of winter and an awkward half-week between summer and spring) he relied on his investments to triple-ensure that he had enough money to stay afloat.

On his 22nd birthday, as a gift to himself, he signed the lease to the building that housed all of the pretty plants in temporary buckets full of flower food and water, and hired a graphic designer to design the cursive, golden letters that spelled out the name of his shop above the front door.

Now, three years later, he lived as happy as can be.

And he wasn’t lonely anymore.

Well, if you wanted to be technical, his relationship status was still a checkmark over the box labeled ‘single’, but his heart couldn’t be fluttering any harder at the sight of one of his regular customers, and she was there, creeping around in his brain to keep him company.

She was the complete opposite of every girl he’d ever been with. She was sweet, kind, funny, and didn’t judge him for the way he dressed, or his profession. In fact, they bonded over things that previous women had… slyly berated him for. The color of his nails, the lace of his collar, the pattern of his flared pants, and even the sheep on his baby blue sweater vest.

She stole his heart the moment she walked through his door with a soft smile on her face, a sparkling gleam in her warm eyes, and placed it in her pocket the moment she said, “it smells lovely in here!”

Harry, awestruck and blushing because well, she was pretty and wore a shade of purple that somehow made her hair look so soft. Two strands of hair were pinned at the back of her head, essentially keeping the rest of it away from her face save for the few baby wisps that rested gently against her cheeks like a lover’s caress. The stuttering, stumbling cupid’s-bow-struck fool replied with, “thank you. It would be my pleasure to help you with anything you’d like,” and that had been his name, signed on the dotted line of a soul contract. Only she was not the devil. She was an angel.

But even then, it wouldn’t matter. If she was the devil, if she was an angel, something in between or something new entirely he wouldn’t care because he was half gone for her already.

“In that case,” she smiled, and Harry’s heart sang a melody it never had before. It was like the sun beamed from the spaces between her teeth and tickled the fuzzy spot beneath his earlobe. She had the most amazing voice, tranquil and clear and ethereal. “I just moved into a new apartment and wanted the place to feel like home. I thought maybe flowers would give it a little life.”

He vividly remembers that the color of her cheeks changed to that of what is called a ‘blush’, but he didn’t know if it was a trick under the light, or a product of his wistful imagination. Her fingers gently skimmed the petals of a rose from it’s bucket near her hip, and one of the straps of the tote bag on her shoulder disrespectfully dropped away from her shoulder. He wanted to simultaneously rush over and fix it for her, and yell at the inanimate object for not being grateful of the fact that it had the opportunity to cling to her shoulder.

But, before either of these inner-conflicts met a sound resolve, her delicate fingers righted what was once wrong, and Harry cleared his throat, embarrassed because he’d stared for a little too long. He wanted so badly to ask for her name and how she liked her eggs in the morning, but instead he said, “there’s nothing like a bit of something pretty to brighten your day. Did you have something specific in mind?”

He hoped that the meaning of his words wasn’t caught on her, or that would be totally embarrassing and ‘loser’-like.

When she walked out the door with a content smile on her lips, his own heart was beating faster than the flapping of a hummingbird’s tender wings. He was sure that he had never laid eyes on a pair of lips like hers, neither the feeling that blossomed in his chest at the thought that she might be smiling just for him to see and enjoy.

Of course, it was a silly crush. One that clawed and gripped onto his sweaty palms with no sign of letting go. Maybe, Harry thought, it was because he hadn’t wet his wick in so long, and the interaction he’d had with her had sparked irrational, poem-inspiring feelings within the love cavern of his ribs. Because how could he fall head over heels with someone he didn’t even know? Surely, the swarm of hormone-pumped butterflies in his stomach was the beginning of a dead-end infatuation.

Right?

Harry went that entire day, appalled at the apparent angel he had the fortune of being in the presence of in her short fall from the tender heavens. He wondered where she placed the flowers she bought (an arrangement he was particularly proud of, full of lilac, delicate stems of lavender, and puffs of baby’s breath wrapped with a white bow) and where that tiny extension of him was. At the entrance of her home, right below the place she rested her hand against as she tugged her shoes off? At the center of her table? Maybe besides her bed? Where she would see the purple petals and white of him as he wrapped it every time she woke up or went to bed? He hoped- as much as it was a romantic thought- that it wasn’t the last one. He’s been so awkward, so pink. A blush on his cheeks he hadn’t remembered being there since the time he yelped, startled, at the unexpected pain of a tattoo needle, the artist pointedly peeved. Acting like such a boy.

Right before crawling up the steps of his apartment, heart still bleeding with love-blood from the deadly tip of Cupid’s arrows, he made himself a mini version of the bouquet he’d made her, and placed it at the center of his tiled coffee table.

*********

A few days trickled by, and the memory of her face drifted in and out of his mind like a giant sway of fabric slowly billowing in the wind. He was just so… struck by a slab of awe, stunned by her kind of beauty. Natural, the kind that hooks you in it’s purity, like the golden beams streaming in through transparent curtains on a warm spring afternoon.

Her strawberry lips curved elegantly under her nose, and displayed a smile that leaked some sort of heady drug into the air because the air was sweet when he breathed it in. And when he handed the bundle of flowers over to her, the pads of her delicate fingers skimmed the rough ridges of his knuckles. He wondered immediately what kind of moisturizer she used, and if it smelled like honey or lavender or peaches. She smelled sweet. Sweeter than all of the flowers in his colorful soul shop put together. The colors that belong to her, on her person and worn by her, were more captivating than any of the tones that painted the petals on his plants.

Owen got a kick out of this whole ordeal, though. Harry’s passionate mood had him divulging in munching and nibbling on things that tasted the way he felt; ambrosial, fresh and pure. It resulted in the purchasing of endless amounts of fruit, with many bites given to the tiny chameleon. Mangoes, strawberries, oranges, grapes, pears (Asian pears, if the store carried them, they were Harry’s favorite), peaches and guavas. The sudden craving for fruit might be explained as just a casual craving, but deep deep down inside, Harry knew that it was because he wanted to replicate the feeling that coursed through his golden veins when she giggled at something she happened to find funny.

He wished that he had caught her name. The girl had paid in cash (and left a five dollar tip Harry fawned over), so he couldn’t have read it on her card, and he was halfway between charming and awkward that he didn’t even think of asking for it until the minute the door closed behind her, bells tinkling in announcement of her exit. He wished for a hundred different things, but he was not the type to live in regret. Not anymore. So after about a week of floundering in her memory, he meditated for an hour, tropical incense on one of his bedside tables, and cleared his mind as best he could.

The next morning, he did the same thing. Woke up with heavy limbs, plopped himself down on his blue mat and stretched in various positions, his white boxers hanging low on his hips. His lips and eyes were sticky with sleep, and the back of his nose ached with cold air that he must’ve breathed in throughout the night after forgetting to close the window (again) but the pleasurable twinge of stretching aches between his joints were the perfect way to start his day. They urged his mind to transform into the still surface of water, clear and collected from any unproductive-pinning thoughts towards a girl he would most likely never see again.

Even his clothes reflected his refreshed mindset.

Harry donned his favorite pair of flared trousers in an earthy brown color, nestled snugly on his slender hips and around his thighs. The tight fit accentuated the way his back tapered into his waist, glutes shapely and sculpted. A maroon sweater vest that had a teddy bear embroidered on the middle of his chest, the small latte-toned stuffed animal seemingly childish, but on him it only directed attention to the spotlight daze of the velvety heart sheltered underneath his breathless plate. Underneath, a mustard long-sleeve shirt with tiny cherries printed on them. Some straight, some tilted or lopsided. His shoulders and biceps were hidden in the floofy bunches of cloth, anonymity given to the true thickness of his ink slathered skin.

He looked like a corduroy dream. A thick milkshake of patterns and colors, but he managed to pull it off.

A tiny gold hoop on his right ear gleamed under the morning sun coming in through the windows and a pearl necklace rested against the downy skin of his throat. Slender fingered tipped with a coat of pure white, with his ring fingers accented in a shimmery pink. Chunky rings adorning the base of his digits; a silver rose, a band of dancing teddy bears (a running theme with him), two gold rings with his initials H and S on one hand, and a simple ruby stud from his graduating class.

He looked good, he knew that he looked good, and was ready to begin a bright, healthy, non-pretty-girl-thought-polluted day. Even the old woman had pinched his cheek whom he had been assisting- a regular-had said he looked like a proper ‘nice boy’ along with ‘when are you going to her a lovely girl to help you run this place, Harry?’. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that he had momentarily sworn off women until his broken sentiments healed, and they had a long way to go.

In the middle of wrapping a smashing set of tulips and fern stems with a cherry red bow, the bells adorning the top of the door frame dinges, announcing the entrance of another pleasant customer and giving passage to a gust of chilly air. Harry looked up to greet the customer with his usual pleasantries of ‘welcome! I’ll be with you in a moment!’, but the words died on his throat in a desperate hussle, just as the little mermaid had given up her voice to meet her gallant prince.

It was his own personal little slice of heaven presented to him on the black and white checkered floors of his shop. Hair loose against her shoulders again, eyes cast downwards to inspect a bucket of fresh daisies that tickled the space above her bare knees. How she could wear a skirt in this biting weather, he didn’t know, and it partially prevented him from continuing his pursuit of admiring her because the first thought his caring mind jumped too was, ‘is she cold? And if so, does she need a sweater? Because I will gladly give her one.’ His second thought, however, was ‘how could someone be that beautiful?’. The third was something along the lines of ‘all my yoga has gone to shit, and I’m okay with that’.

He cleared his throat, tightened the bow around the stems of the flowers in his hands and said, “I’ll be with you in a moment, love!” His head bowed, looking at his work because he wasn’t sure he could afford the medicals for the paralysis that was sure to take over his meek self if they made eye contact so soon. Harry needed a moment of homeostasis, his soul adjusting to her dulcet presence.

The woman he was assisting, Edna, spoke, drawing him out of his daze, but he had been so deeply in thought that he had not heard what she said.

“What was that?” He asked her. He grabbed Kraft paper from the roll by the register to wrap up her arrangement.

“The girl. You like her?” She was smiling at him, wagging a finger the way his nan used to do when she caught him with his hand in the cookie jar. “Don’t lie to me, I recognize that look. I’ve given and received that look many times throughout my life.”

The woman was not wrong. With age, comes wisdom, Harry thought, smiling to himself at being caught. A dimple carves itself into his cheek, nestling onto the space above the corner of his mouth as if he had no choice in the matter. The apples of his cheeks were shadowed with a dusky pink, and the tip of his nose was twitching like a rabbit when it stood on its rear and sniffed the air, only he was coy after just being caught and wanted to avoid the question as much as possible.

“I’ve got no idea what y’talking about,” he chuckled, keeping his voice low so that the intriguing stranger in the store didn’t hear that their topic of discussion was her. He moved over to the register to ring her up, and even slid in a discount he applied to customers he liked.

“Next time I come in,” Edna said, passing Harry her debit card, “I hope to hear that you got her number, dear. Don’t let these opportunities pass you up. Life is short. And who knows? She could be the one.” Harry gave her the card back after charging her, and handed her the flowers, too. All the while Edna was grinning at him, shaking her head like she knew something he didn’t.

“Take care, Edna. And don’t forget to change the water every 2 days with the flower packets I placed at the stems,” he reminded her, sweetly wiggling his red-lacquered nails at her retreating woman as butterflies awakened in his stomach in a furious flood of nerves. The girl was looking around, her hands hovering over the up-turned faces of a bundle of lively sunflowers, browsing and quietly humming to herself as she waited.

There was no backing out of this, even if he wanted to. And he didn’t! He didn’t want to back out. The girl was a customer, and he would have to approach her no matter what. But she was so pretty it was also intimidating. He doesn’t remember ever being this nervous while approaching someone, especially one he harbored feelings for. His heart was pounding so loud, he was sure it was audible.

“Hello,” he wanted so badly to add ‘love’ at the end of his greeting. “Are y’finding everything a’right?” He asked her, his hands wringing themselves, palms moist with sweat from his unyielding need to impress her. The pink tip of his tongue poked out to swipe across his full bottom lip, and soon after that his teeth sunk down into it, nibbling with uncertainty. Harry made sure that he was standing straight, body aligned to face hers because in that psychology course he took once, he learned that it was a subconscious tactic to engage interest and pleasant replies to attempts at wooing another.

At the sound of his voice, the girl jumped, startled at the sudden vibrations of Harry’s husky voice. Her delicate feet, he noticed, skittered on the floor from her tiny jump, and her doe eyes widened, shouldered rising and falling at a quicker pace than before from the new rush of light fear. When she realizes that it’s just him her hand flattered over the base of her neck and her collarbone in attempts to soothe her racing heart.

“M’s sorry,” he whispers, his hand clamping over his mouth, and then lowering to his chin when he speaks again, “didn’t mean to scare y’love.” This time he can’t restrict himself. It comes so naturally, like the endearment was meant for her, and when a flush covers the bridge of her nose his first instinct is to coo at her for looking so cute. The second is a surge of guilt for having scared her to such an extent.

“It’s okay,” she says, a little out of breath. The blush on her face was partly because she was embarrassed at her own reaction, while the other was that she had let herself act so freely and uncoordinated in front of someone that looked like him. Handsome and sweet and eyes so green they refreshed you upon first glance. Like the cool burn of water going into a mouth that had just chewed a stick of minty gum. “I want to buy these flowers.”

God help him. Her voice alone was enough to make him melt. The lilts and melodies of her voice swarming all four of the ventricles in his heart with warmth, and every blood cell that passed contained a glowing heat, buzzing with her energy.

She points to the sunflowers, her gaze lingering on them with longing. A soft smile toying on her mouth, and Harry could see the tendons in her throat stretch as she inhaled to add another thought to her sentence, “Do you sell vases by any chance?” The girl looked at him shyly, her eyelashes almost twinkling as she blinked, and his heart soared, “I had a really nice one in the shape of a big Coca-Cola bottle, and I accidentally knocked it over, so now I have nothing to put them in.”

Harry is incredibly enamoured by subconscious gestures that take over her hands as she speaks, fiddling as if the vase she spoke about was in her hands, all in one piece before it was broken. He’s quiet throughout her tiny ramble, listening and taking note of her enticing antics. She’s looking down at the floor or the flowers or her hands, and when her eyes dance over to his steady gaze, “I’m rambling aren’t I?” she murmurs bashfully.

“No, no it’s a’right. I can look in the back for something if y’like?” He suggested, arrowing a thumb to the ‘back’ he mentioned. “Did y’want anything in particular?”

“Oh, I don’t wanna be a troubling customer!” She squeaked, concerned with becoming a nuisance she didn’t want to be.

“Y’not a bother, love. M’promise. I’ll go look f’you. What color did y’have in mind?” He asked her, tone calm and soothing to reiterate his sentiment. She was not a bother. The only thing about her that bothered him was the fact that he did not know her name, and even that was his own fault for not asking her.

His hands rest on his hips, tattooed cross momentarily hidden by the bunch of his sweater vest as he waits for her to respond, his eyes locked on her mouth, her own tongue subtly licks her lips, adding a sparkly sheen to it that only drove him crazy. Ever the jilted fool, his mind jumps to what it would feel like to kiss her, or what it would feel like if she kissed him in other places. What fruits she tasted like, and what kind of kisser she was. A timid one? With a patient mouth waiting to be broken open with the force of his own? Frugal? Opening her mouth and giving him everything she had to offer.

“Something pink, please. If you have it.” That smile again. One that told a million apologies it didn’t owe, with her eyes pinching at the corners with whatever nonsense culpability she felt. Her voice was sweet, Harry thought, like wind chimes on a summer morning.

Feeling guilty for allowing such dirty thoughts to gallop through his mind when she was so… so pure. Like an angel. Even her way of presenting herself was shy and sweet, yet he was thinking about kissing her. Was that perverted? She was a customer he had seen twice, and his mind was already running wild with luscious assumptions; a sunday topped with a red cherry of sensuality. How awfully dirty of him.

But! But those were not the only thoughts he had. He wanted to ask her what happened to cause her to drop her vase, and where she had bought it. If it was vintage, considering it was a Coca-cola bottle, and if she had any accidents while cleaning up the mess of broken glass. He wanted to hear her thoughts. No, better yet, he just wanted to hear her talk. He wanted to get to know her. To know if she was as nice as she looked.

“‘Course,” he mumbled, his eyes shamefully downcast to the floor. “Be righ’ back.”

Harry stalked off to ‘the back of the store’. Truth was, there was no back of the store containing vases. There was only a small closet with boxes of items he might need around the store, like flower food, rubber bands, and decorative paper for the bouquets. A crate of bottled water for when he got too lazy to climb up the back stairs and into his home.

His home.

Plucking the keys from his pocket, a ring that held a ceramic swan his closest friend Mitch had gifted him with a humble admission of ‘saw this at a thrift store and thought about you, H, I had to buy it’, and five keys: one to the front door of his shop, one to the cash box in the register, one to the mailbox, another to the front door of his apartment, and one to his car. The one to his front door was painted at the head with pastel pink nail polish, so it was easy for him to pick out when he was dead tired after a long day of being on his feet (spunky shoes that he liked to wear sometimes didn’t help ease the ache on his back, and neither did his posture).

The back door that led to the stairs had locks on both the inside and the outside. A deadbolt and chain on matching sides of the door to ensure comfortable sleep at night, and peaceful work time during the day. Not having to worry about curious children opening doors or nosy customers relieved him. It was a little amatuer, but the door made a loud noise when opened because it wasn’t quite level, and he had a tiny key so he could lock it from the outside, too.

A loud shucking noise resonated through the store as he pulled the door open, and then again when he closed it behind him. The delicacy of his dainty yet large hands were nearly comical around the tiny golden pin stud that hung from the chain, almost slipping from his hands with nerves as he slid it in place. Harry didn’t think that she was nosy or anything like that, bit if he was going up to give her a vase of his own personal collection, he didn’t want her to find out and feel even more intrusive that she already did.

He was a huge giver, and upon hearing her say that she broke her flower pot, his mind was already thinking about the perfect one to replace it. It just so happened to be sitting on his shelf with a bundle of dying lavender. Climbing up the stairs (the ache in his thighs was a mere twinge compared to what it was when he first moved here), Harry huffed and thought to himself all the ways he could ask for her name and number.

Listen, I really like y’and would like to have y’number?”

Do y’wanna have my number so we can go out sometime if y’feel like it?”

“Is it alright if I get y’number so we can go out sometime?”

“Hey, love. What’s y’name?”

Nothing’s making sense to him. The pick up lines he had stored in his head for the rare times he would flirt with a girl were slipping from him. None of them seemed worded right to use with her. Too abrupt or too brisk. Not sweet enough. He wanted to treat her gently and to be worthwhile of her time. Plus, it also had to be smooth enough that it made her forget she was paying him for flowers or it would be awkward. He was a twenty-six man for crying out loud, not a twenty-one year old smile at the bar looking for a good time. This wasn’t a ‘good time’. This was… a courting. An inquiry to a relationship. A rose rose in a candlelit room.

Harry opened his front door and moved in a quick jog to a table besides his hi-fi that held a translucent pale pink glass, fat at the base before twirling and widening a few inches at the lip. An image of a nude mermaid puffing out at the front like an engraving. Cuddling it into his breast, he grabbed the lavender, speed walked back to his kitchen where his toe banged against the metal of the trashcan as he pressed on the lever to open it. He hissed fuck under his breath and shucked the dead lavender into the bag before turning back to his door, closing it behind him, but not locking it because he didn’t want to keep her waiting. His feet moved quickly down the stairs, the one hand not holding onto the vase cupping a hand over the side of his hips that held his keys so they didn’t make much noise.

The button on the chain slipped from his fingers a few times from their repeated clamminess, and when he was ready to finally twist the knob, he paused to take a breath and collect himself. Harry ran a hand through his hair, fixed his collar, and dusted off his pants legs. He wanted to look perfect for her.

“Don’t be stupid,” he murmured to himself. He had a good feeling about this. About her. And if he messed this up because he looked bad or said something weird he would kick himself into a muddy ditch.

Taking a deep breath, he opened the door and calmly walked back, “I’ve got the last one,” he said, tapping the tip of the vase with his pointer finger. It was a lie, right through his teeth, but he was happy to tell it in return for the way she was looking at him in that moment. His eyes rounded out as he approached her, like the curves of hearts that made up the heart-eye emoji, or the puppy-dog face. Just another physical display of his growing affinity towards her.

“Oh my god!” She said, “It's so pretty!” The trapped crystals in her irises twinkled with bewilderment at the treasure Harry’s presented her with. She’s got a smile on her face, and he can’t help but think, ‘wow, she looks like a freshly bloomed white lily’.

There’s a vintage print hanging in his corridor, a ‘flower language chart’ with different types of flowers and a sentence beneath them describing the messages they send. For example, red carnations= my heart aches for you. The description beneath white lilies reads ‘my love is pure’.

She asked him if it wasn’t too pricey, and he made up some fake sale he had going on about a hybrid BOGO in which if she bought an arrangement she would get a vase included in her purchase (he added “I’ve got a shipment of new ones coming in an I need the space cleared out before they get here” just to make sure his fib is believable.) And he explains this so shyly. Harry can’t keep his eyes locked on hers because she’s staring at him with an intensity that lets him know she's really listening, and it makes him squirm. The tips of his fingers tap against the vase, and he’s tripping over his tongue, which is ridiculous because he already talks so slow.

“I guess I was right in waiting then,” she said casually, waiting for Harry to finish ringing her up.

His finger froze over the touch screen of the sleek, modern device (he wanted nothing but the best for his store) and listened to the exciting roar of blood through his eardrums at her words. I guess I was right in waiting then? What did that mean? That she was planning on coming back to see him and didn’t? Of course, it could also mean that she was going to buy something else somewhere else, but he couldn’t stop the vine of ripe hope that swelled around his chest. And she looked so apprehensive while saying it. As if she was walking on glass and was looking for cracks as she stepped. As if she was waiting on him to catch on to something.

Harry cleared his throat and looked at her through the corner of his eye, trying to be as discreet as possible as his fingers continued their deliberate work on the screen, “What d’you mean, love?”

“I was going to stop by sooner, but I just got in my head about it,” the girl shrugged, and adjusted the ends of her cardigan so they wrapped around her torso. She had a different bag this time, one of those reusable market bags that was made up of holes, and it was filled with two books and a can of green tea from the vegan store down the street. Harry thinks he can make out one of the titles on one of the spines, which looks suspiciously similar to something that he has on his own shelf.

“Why would y’get in y’own head about coming to m’flower shop, hmm? It’s hardly that intimidating,” he chuckles to play off the dashes of pink and red that are painting themselves across the bridge of his twitching nose, “I don’t bite, either.”

And he hopes that his wistfulness isn’t meddling with his vision because he swears that he can see a matching reaction on her own doll face. “I know! I know, it’s just that I can’t help it sometimes. Talking to other people makes me nervous.”

Harry could coo at her right now. He doesn’t, though. He nods and smiles at her before reading her total out to her, “That I get, too. But y’doing just fine with me, love.”

Waiting patiently as she digs through her bag for cash, he tries to not stare. However, it’s impossible. His eyes had a mind of their own dragging against the forces of his will to feast on her image again. Her hands and the tip of her nose. The base of her neck and gentle swell of her clavicles. The swoops of hair that hung in a curtain from her shoulder as her head tilted in search, and the how her teeth bit down into her lip in concentration. Harry counted the amount of times her eyelashes met her waterline in those few seconds of comfortable silence. Three.

“I thought I had cash on me today,” something in her bag clicks, and she pulls out the rectangular card Harry’s become familiar with, holding it out to him between two deft fingers, painted with red hearts on a white base. “I guess I used my last twenty at the organic food store down the street,” she said.

“It is pretty easy to get lost in there, isn’t it?” He took her card from her, and tried not to make it obvious that he was eager to read her name off of it as he inserted it into the machine. The embossed letters into the plastic read y/n y/l/n, and when he turns back to look at her, he can’t help the smile that spreads across his boyish features.

Y/n.

Y/n, y/n, y/n.

This is what it must feel to be let in on a secret that’s worth millions of dollars. It must, because Harry’s heart is soaring with a closure he didn’t know he needed. Y/n, y/n. Her name tickled him. Stroked him. Lathered him with the honey smoothness of the beeswax shampoo he bought at that fateful organic store. It was a fitting name. Sometimes, one could tell a person ‘you know, I actually thought you were a Amy or a Jessica’, because their looks and style just didn’t match the strength or modesty of their name. But not y/n. It fit her like a glove. There was no other way to make sense of the way Harry’s brain was thinking. The name was her.

“What?” Her lips quirk up into a smile and her eyebrows dip in confusion. Why was he looking at her like that? Did she have something on her face? Here she was, opening up to a cute stranger and she had something on her face? This, she thought to herself, is humiliating. Her finger dusted off non-existent crumbs from the corners of her mouth, “do I have something on my face?”

“No! No, no.” Harry’s careful beam simmered down from it’s previous brightness, and his hand nervously filed through the swoop of chocolate curls sitting on his head like a cinnamon roll. “I just think y’name is pretty thas’ all.”

He murmured the last part so that it was practically incoherent, and lowered his gaze as a searing heat stretching like saran wrap around his head and the divot on the nape of his neck. Oh, God. He was fucking blushing. Great Harry. A normally favorite among the ladies had been reduced to murmurs and thick, uncoordinated movements.

Like dropping her card when she piped up again.

Voice as small and quaint as his had been, "you think my name is pretty?” Her fingers are wrapped around the frail straps of her bag, tight enough that her knuckles were white and Harry was scared that she’d bury her fingernails into her palm.

“I think y’very pretty.” He whispered back. He can’t even bear to look at her in fear that he’s totally fucked himself over once and for all. His logic was this: what girl wants to be told by the guy they’re buying flowers that they’re pretty after he reads her name from her debit card? Especially one who (if outside female sources are to be believed) dresses “the way my mother did when she was a girl in the seventies”? Jesus, fuck. He must’ve looked ridiculous.

Harry opened his mouth to backtrack and apologize for being so unorthodox in his workspace, a breath sitting on his tongue with words ready to spew out, but the bell began to chime and it yanks his head from the register to the front and instead he said, “welcome! I’ll be with you in a moment.”

Flustered and full of regret, the flower connoisseur returned his wired gaze back to y/n, who… was smiling at him? The kind of smile that said ‘oh my god, I can’t believe you just said that. Now please say it again’? Was he… dreaming? Did he have to pinch himself in order to verify that he wasn-

“Thank you... what’s your name?” Y/n looked at the card from his hands and sunk her hand- carefully, as to not get her fingers stuck in any of the tiny holes- and there was another clicking noise before she took her hand back out. That angel-like smear of girlish happiness was still on her, decadently radiating positivity and secret affection. Goodness leaked from the seams of her bones; through the cracks of her breastplate, radiating from her chest to Harry’s. He could feel it now. He could feel that his previous assumptions about her nature were true. She was altruistic and tender, like the inside of a bird’s wing.

“Harry. M’name’s Harry.” This time, he didn’t hide his happiness. Even his eyes shone with a heightened, clear and sparkly shade of liquid evergreen. The joy that bounced inside of him like ricocheting metal balls in a pin game machine. His slender hand, fawn-skinned and graceful like the legs of a deer, stretched out between them. His mother had taught him that along with the first introduction of his name, a handshake must be present, always. Dipping his head slightly, and his words spongy with love-ditz, Harry rumbled, “Nice to meet you, y/n.”

She placed her hand in his, and was practically swallowed by only his palm. He curled his fingers around her, thumb and middle finger overlapping around the clammy center of hers. So she was nervous, just as he was. Y/n was trained on their embracing limbs, and he could feel a spot on his neck where the skin palpated from the rush of blood as she observed their entwined digits. Their hands moved up and down, up and down between them for longer than necessary until her chin twitched back up to meet his, and she blinked mawkishly, slowly, like the videos of rehabilitated barn owls Harry sees on his Instagram.

Then, suddenly, as if she remembered she was not the only one present, y/n jolts upright and shakes her head dazedly. “It’s nice to meet you, too, Harry. I like your nail color,” she added.

He’s cheesing. A shit-eating grin too big for his face and it carves dimples into the flesh of his cheeks. His name on her tongue had never sounded so appealing, like it was made for her and only her to say. Not even the turtle-doves that cooed outside his window in the mornings sounded as beautiful as she did saying his name. And she complimented her nails! She hadn’t scrutinized him like others had, instead, she displayed her admiration for them. No one- well, actually he can’t say that without offending Mitch- no female of his age had ever received him with such open-mindedness as hers. If he didn’t have any self-restraint, he would giggle. Instead, Harry pulled his hand back so that their perfect moment wasn’t sullied with bouts of bad timing, “thank y’love. I like yours, too. You’ll have t’come over sometime and paint mine, yeah?”

Y/n laughed, and he breathed a sigh of relief that he hadn’t been too bold, “I’d love too!” With glee frozen on her, she turned to look over her shoulder at the customer who was browsing the flowers Harry had in buckets, “I don’t want to hold you back from a customer for so long. I’ll stop by again soon, Harry. Thank you so much for your help.”

The moment her hands reached for the wrapped bundle of sunflowers and the mermaid vase, a metaphorical grey cloud of rain and thunder manifested in the space above his head, and blocked all of the sunshine from spanning across his toned, lithe body. Did she really have to go? He wanted to whine. Maybe even wrap himself around her ankles like a child that refused to leave the park. They were only just getting to a mutual spot of comfort! Forget the other customer, he wanted to shout. Harry would kick them out and flip the sign to ‘closed’ if it meant only a few more minutes in the presence of her candy-coated charisma.

But he knows that’s unrealistic, and settles with, “it was my pleasure, y/n,” a flirty wink (at least he hopes it is), “I’ll be waiting f’your next visit.” His taffy lips wrapping effortlessly around his smooth words, fueled by her welcoming receptiveness to his advances. It would be easy to be himself in the future, a little smoother and eloquent in his language and feeling. He was usually clear with what he wanted from anyone, and made it a pleasurable experience in all aspects for both parties involved (once it was three). Harry wanted to sweep her off her feet, and he wanted it to be an enjoyable experience for the both of them. Revel in that feeling of blooming emotions in a new relationship. A healthy one, in which he wasn’t receiving back-handed compliments all the time.

He wasn’t superficial enough to push anyone off the table based on looks alone, but it did help that y/n had the disposition of an angel. An ethereal voice, supple lips that looked so silky and soft they had to feel that way, too, and hands that felt so tender in his. Perfect for holding on a late night stroll, or over the center console of his car when -if they go out on dates.

What really hooked, reeled, and sinked him, though, was the fact that she was so nice to him. From the start, she’d been nothing but polite and sweet with him. Don’t even get him started on the way he swooned at the tone of her voice when he said that her name was pretty! So quiet and velvety, careful and calculated like she wanted him to know that it was okay. That she wasn’t thrown off by his comment. He nearly toppled over, clutching his heart with his legs jutting straight up into the air like a frightened goat.

It wasn’t until the bells stopped ringing the sad notice of her exit that Harry realized he passed up the perfect opportunity to ask for her number, and as he kicked himself over it, he walked with the perfect customer service face he could muster to help the other person in his store.

***

Harry was having a shitty morning.

Not the kind of morning where every aspect of his routine is a terrible mishap, but like the water being too cold and the stove not working or the bottle of oat milk in the fridge being empty so he couldn’t make coffee. No, everything was fine and rolling smoothly, as it should.

His water was the perfect temperature and ran down the toned bumps and divots of his muscles like the relaxing thrums of a lover’s caress in the midst of prowling heat. As soon as it hit his back, he released a sigh of contentment, his shoulders hunching and head rolling back and his hands roamed his shoulders and the back of his neck, rubbing away any aches that existed. The branch of eucalyptus that hung from the golden pipe of his showerhead fused a thick minty scent into the steam that fogged the glass wall, and the calming aroma helped the tendons loosen like the deflating limpness of untied shoelaces. He spent a few minutes just standing there, inhaling and exhaling deeply and feeling his lungs open and stretch beneath his rib cage.

It almost made him wish that he’d opted to use his tub for a hot bath instead.

He was able to cook an egg just fine on his stove, with dashes of Everything Bagel Seasoning with a side of avocado and a slice of toasted cranberry walnut bread, the same thing he had every morning. The carton of oat milk was brand new from his trip to the market the day before, and his coffee tasted the same as it always did. But… he was just... sad. An melancholy soreness that eroded against the insides of his body, consuming him slowly but surely and leaving him with a lost feeling of emptiness and unimportance.

He thinks he might know why he’s feeling this way.

While he’s stirring his scrambled eggs, he’s wondering how y/n likes hers. Over easy? Sunny-side up? Scrambled, like him? Did she even like eggs in the morning? What did she eat in the morning? He knows that some people ‘aren’t hungry’ in the mornings, though that’s only because they’ve gone hungry in the mornings before for an extended time period, and after so long of not feeding their growling stomachs, their brain discontinues the signals of hunger. Harry hopes that isn’t the case with y/n, and that she’s eating the proper three meals a day every day.

And while he dipped a mini vegan chocolate croissant that he got at Whole Foods, he also wonders what she likes to dip chocolate croissants into, or if she even likes chocolate croissants. If she was a person who likes sweet treats, like strawberry tarts with powdered sugar over them or something lighter, like fruit cut into small squares in a bowl. When Harry was younger and would visit his nan on the weekends, she would pick fresh strawberries from her garden and cut them up for him when he’d woken from his nap. Sometimes, she would even sprinkle half a tablespoon of sugar over them. He wonders if she’d ever eaten strawberries like that.

It’s been a week and a half, he still hasn’t seen her, and his heart is yearning.

Harry knows he’s not in the correct headspace to assist other people with a cheery disposition about an hour before opening time, and decides it’s best if he writes a note on the door about how the shop wouldn’t open that day because he didn’t want to taint the reputation of his business by snapping at a customer for the only bundle of sunflowers he had, or dissolve into a puddle of love-sick tears in the middle of ringing someone up. Though really the notice just says ‘H’s Garden will not be opening today. Sorry for the inconvenience!’ followed by a frowning face and a lopsided, filled-in heart.

Harry drags his feet back up the stairs, his lower lip jutting out in a discreet but depressing pout, and grabs Owen from his tank so that the chameleon could curl into the shoulder of Harry’s hoodie while he moped on the couch to sappy rom-coms that would only make him think about her more. At least there was someone there with him, even if his small green friend only used him for mangoes and papaya. They sit together for the entirety of Romeo + Juliet, and when it’s over, Harry’s sniffly and standing up to return Owen to his enclosure and to clean because the riotous emotions that whirl within him are too much to process while sitting down.

Cleaning wouldn’t help him solve his problems, but it would help him cram all of his worries into a tight corner at the back of his mind- sort of like when dirty laundry began to overflow in the hamper and it requires extra force to shove it all in, only to come all back out like a memory sponge. His tormented thoughts on y/n could be compared to a dramatic inner monologue, very similar to how Romeo feels about his Juliet. But, soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and y/n is the sun. Harry has the play on his book shelf (the one with the side-to-side modern English translation because he was never quite gifted in the English department) and as he reaches for a bandana to tie his hair back, he finds himself resonating with a particular line: parting is such a sweet sorrow.

There was no need to change any of his clothing, since he was already dressed in one of his more impromptu outfits; grey sweats and a white t-shirt that read ‘women are smarter’ in black across his chest. He tied the red bandana into a knot at the back of his head, and lifted it over his chin so that it settled on his forehead, sweeping his hair back with a final push back. It doesn’t get in his way when he crouches to clean his various tables, spraying cleaning products with his shirt pulled over his nose, another organic product that’s supposed to be less harmful and smells like cinnamon and sandalwood. His shoulder blades begin to ache because he’s being a little more aggressive than he has to be, but the green tiles were sparkling so he was content.

He washes the dishes, mops the kitchen floor, vacuums the carpets, cleans Owen’s habitat, and tidies the mail that piled up on the table when he finally calls it quits. Scouring his brain for something to do, to keep him busy- his brain busy, Harry settles on the floor with his back to the edge of his bed. He’s shirtless now, and is in need of another shower but he’d rather not because he knows he might end up crying over the possibility that he’s scared y/n off. There’s a book in his hands and a Frank Ocean record playing softly in the background that mentions something about ‘I've been thinkin' 'bout you, do you think about me still?’ and it’s not helping his case at all.

It’s no use.

There’s a plague of darkness buzzing like cicadas in his ears. He fears rejection and criticism. That maybe, she was only pretending in order to make the situation more pleasant so it ended sooner. Most of all, he feared that it would always be this way. That he would never find someone who embraces who he is as a person. Always met with mean side-eye glances or second looks of displeasure and confusion. It isn’t always that way, though, because then that would mean he gets absolutely no action, and that isn’t true.

Harry is very… well-educated in matters that concerned sexual intercourse, but it was always a one-night stand ordeal. It was never ‘I really like you we should go out sometime’. In fact, he noticed that only time his approaches were well received were those in which he was dressed in a calmer manner. Simple, solid colors with sneakers or a t-shirt. Girls would flirt back, make good conversation, allow him to buy them a few drinks, and when he’d take them to his apartment they’d ask why he lived on top of a flower-shop, and if it was his sister or female-friend’s palace that he was crashing. Sex would ensue, but his heart wouldn’t be as present and engaged as he wanted it to be.

Wrong. It was always so fucking wrong, and God, if he didn’t get out of this apartment he’s going to breakdown and cry and there’s no one to call to come over because Mitch is on a trip with his girlfriend, Sarah, and his other friend Jeff is on his honeymoon in Sweden. They were the only two on his mental speed dial list during the rare occasions he had a crisis, as they were the two that Harry had ever really opened up to. Mitch was a bit closer to his heart. They’ve known each other since their school days and practically grew up together (at one point they had small crushes on each other, which were confessed years down the line). Jeff was the owner of Winsome where… where y/n had mentioned spending her last twenty dollar bill. He didn’t have an issue opening up to them. He liked opening up to them, but he didn’t understand why they were the only two that ever truly opened their arms to him.

A walk, he decided, would help him… air out his brain. Calm down. Breathe a little deeper, a little easier.

He threw his white shirt back on, and a forest green sweatshirt that donned the emblem of the school he went to earn his business degree that fit him wide around the shoulders and felt like a marshmallow. Putting on a pair of beat up shoes, he shoved his keys into his pocket, hobbling and nearly losing his balance because he was moving way too fast. The door closed behind him with a slam, and even though he was still wearing the bandana around his head, wispy stray curls framing his face in a wild mane, his distress palpable through his appearance, but he doesn’t care. He just needs to get out and feel the cool air against his skin.

There’s a backdoor behind the stairs that will take him to a small alleyway that leads to a back parking lot where other shop owners that live at the top of their stores on the same side of his street parked their cars. He unlocks it from the inside, and throws his shoulder into it, desperate to her out. When it shuts behind him, he doesn’t turn back because it’s the kind to lock from the outside when closed. His fingers curl into the ends of his sleeve so that the tips of his fingers (nails now changed to a sparkling silver color) are the only parts of his hands visible.

Rounding the corner, he whistled the cheeriest tune he can muster. His lips are puckered and his cheekbones high with the extension of his mouth. He’s not very happy on the inside, though he remembers reading something somewhere that if you pretend to be something long enough, you’ll eventually become it. If he pretends to be happy, then he’ll actually be happy.

Right?

Harry rounds the corner of the parking lot and turns on to the main street. It’s only two in the afternoon, so there's people crawling in and out of shops anywhere. He even sees a man and a woman peeking into the window of his store, and he would feel bad if he wasn’t in a shitty mood already. He’s so out of it, that he nearly yells ‘get your hands off my windows!’. He doesn’t though, because for a moment the woman becomes y/n and the man becomes him, wrapping a ringed hand around her waist and whispering in her downy ear ‘they’re closed, darling, let’s go somewhere else’ and she straightens dejectedly, pouting playfully and standing up and her tippy toes so that she could press a quick kiss to his lips.

That image fades though, and the couple continues with their stroll, hand in hand, and his heart is wrenching, writhing and trying to yank itself free from it’s place in his chest because it hurts too much to stay.

Cars whizz past, and he skirts in and out of people on the sidewalk, keeping his pace fast and focused. There’s no intended destination, he’s just moving with the intent to forget the pretty girl who haunts him. Her voice is all he can hear. Her smile is all she can picture. And the rest of her is all he can imagine, which is exactly what hurts the most. Imagination only goes so far, fulfils so much with uncertainty of what the truth was and what wasn’t. Harry could imagine her with her feet up on the lip of a bubble filled tub, a glass of wine in her hands, but then…what kind of wine did she like? Or did she even like wine? And did she even have a bathtub to stretch out in after a long day?

He curses the crimes he may have committed in past lives to deserve this torture. This unbearable pain that felt like he was being dunked in a slow-acting acid. He can do nothing about it but keep walking with labored will power. He passed his shop, and a bakery and a small thrift store that sells used clothing for way too much money. At the propped open double-doors of Jeff’s Winsome, he decides to talk in and browse. There’s so many items that smell good and taste good, that it was fun to just walk in and look.

“Back again so soon, H?”

Spinning on his heel, Harry comes face to face with Niall, a brunette, fit, Irish bloke with a chummy smile and a killer sense of humor. The two have brokered a sort of friendship, considering the amount of time (and money) that Harry spends there. Niall has even started calling him ‘H’ in silent homage to his flower shop.

“Y’know I can’t stay away,” Harry attempted to joke, his lips pulling up in a weak smile, “plus, I think I needed s’more of the peppermint essential oils f’my diffuser.”

“‘Course ya do! You're worse than the bloody vegan mums that come in asking for gluten free baby powder!” Niall cups a hand over his mouth and loudly whispers to so that only Harry catches his verbiage. There was a woman in the back of the store, looking through soaps in the limited kid’s section, the same exact kind that Niall was speaking about. “Go on and look around then, I’ll be here when you’re finished.” He said.

Harry only nodded his acknowledgement, and moved in between wooden walnut shelves. The entire store had a caramel brown color scheme, with only the inventory adding color to it. Macramé potted succulents and plants added to the natural, outdoorsy feel. Winsome had an interesting mix of smells from all of the aromatherapy based products it housed, but it only added to the appeal.

Currently, he held a packet of four lip balms that advertised to be ‘100% all naturally derived ingredients with no artificial additives' infused with ‘healing power of crystals’, two of them ‘citrine cherry' flavored, and the remaining ‘garnet guava’. The brand name is something in Italian that he can’t read, packaging thick and a triangle made of arrows in the corner signaling it can be decomposed and/or recycled. He had the same exact ones at home, only they were all misplaced and-

“Harry?”

A small, timid voice called his name from behind him, and he froze. He knew that voice. It was the same one he had repeated over and over in his head for the past week, waiting for her promised arrival with a hopeful heart.

His eyes go wide with recognition, body still and stiff like a deer caught in headlights. His heart begins to rump at a furious speed, loud in his ears like a million stampeding hooves. The packaged products in his hands shake, and then she speaks again, “Harry, is that you?”

Is this really happening right now? He’s embarrassed at having been caught with lipstick in his hands of all things, but he can’t put them back now. It was too late for that. He lets them hang at his side, and turns around. He hopes there isn’t perspiration dripping from his temples because all of a sudden he wants to yank his sweater off.

Harry turned, slowly. He feared that if he moved too fast she would fly away like a startled dove.

“Y/n…” He’s breathless, but he manages a pitiful quirk of the corner of his mouth, which he licks over right after, “hi.”

She’s wearing a dress this time, frilly at the hem which fell just above her knees. It’s pink and covered and lined with blood red trim at her forearms. A string of pearls glistens at the base of her throat, and her lips are covered in a sheen of lipstick. Her hair, however, is a tousled mess, pieces of it framing her face and untucked from her bun as if she had been jostling around. Her cheeks are flushed with the cold, and clearly that thin beige cardigan hanging off her elbows is doing nothing to keep her warm.

Y/n smiles at him, with the same shakiness, “f-for a second I thought I was talking to the wrong p-person.”

It’s quiet again, and they’re both fidgeting. Y/n’s knees knock together as she shifts her weight from foot to food, and Harry idly rubs his finger under his nose and sniffs boogies that aren’t there. She’s staring at the ground and rocking back and forth on her heels and he can’t think of anything to say because he’s so paralyzed by the fact that she’s actually standing in front of him, and looks as gorgeous as ever. Had he somehow manifested her presence?

While she’s hiking up the ends of her sweater so that they’re situated properly on her shoulders, he says the first thing that comes to his mind. “Aren’t y’cold?”

Her head snaps up and she peeks at him from under her lashes while flattening a hand at her thigh, “a little bit.”

Harry watches her tuck her hair behind her ears and wonders if she came walking from her apartment again. In the cold. Dress as she was. Not that he had a problem with the way that she was dressed! He understood that sometimes when people grew bored they used the smallest occasions to dress up and have some fun and get out of their homes. He did it too, sometimes. To clear his head. Hell, isn’t that what he was doing now?

“D’you need a ride home?” He stumbled over his tongue to backtrack, not wanting her to think that he was a wierdo or anything like that, “t-that is if y’walking, I wouldn’t want you to get sick or anything like that. S’bit chilly out today.”

Y/n smiles shyly at him, a blush on the highest points of her cheeks, and rubs the side of her face against the fabric of her cardigan, “thank you, for the offer, but uhm… it’s my friend’s baby-shower-gender-reveal thing today and I came with my other friend to some last minute gifts and some flowers. I was going to buy some stuff from here because she’s crazy about the whole ‘no preservatives’ and all but, and I was also going to stop by your shop to buy some flowers, but I saw you were closed so I…I’m rambling again.” She sputtered out the last bit, and pressed the tips of her three middle fingers to her lips to stop the words from coming out.

Harry smirked at her antics, but it’s more of a repressed smile, and the rest of his humor gleamed in the sea-glass of his eyes like a message in a bottle.

“S’alright, love.” He’s still holding the lip balms in his hand, and he can feel the moisture that’s collecting on his palms dampening the Kraft like material as he gestured to her dress with the tip of his chin. “Y’wearing pink. I take it y’want the baby to be a girl?”

“Actually, I know it’s a girl. She told me,” y/n pips, shrugging smugly.

Harry laughs at her this time, “Did you finish with all your purchases here? I can make an exception and open up f’you.”

“Oh, Harry, I don’t wanna bother you! Because if this was your day off then-”

He lifts a hand to get her to stop, and uses the opportunity to twist around and put back what he had in his hands. The conversation is flowing so smoothly now, that all of his previous worries are gone. He can only focus on her and the way her eyelashes fluttered and the crystalline sparkly in her voice.

“Y/n, it’s fine. D’ya finish here? We can head over to the shop now if you’d like.” Harry points a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the door.

“Uh, no. I just got here so I still have to go grab some things,” she said, pushing her hair past her ears again. He thinks that she can probably tell the disheveled state her hair was in, because she begins to pop off a pin in her hair to readjust it. He doesn’t mind it, though. He thinks she looks cute. Angel-like.

He nods, rolling his hands into fists within his sleeves so that the cuffs hang over his knuckles, and tries not to trip over his legs as he backs away. “A’right. I’ll wait f’you in the front, then. Take y’time, love.”

“‘Kay,” she gleams at him, biting down on her bottom lip, and Harry turns away fully before he starts whining about how cute she is or before there’s a dent in the heather grey fabric of his sweatpants.

At the front, Niall has his chin at the palm of his hand, and as he gets closer, Harry lifts his head to see that the brunette is wiggling his eyebrows mischievously. There's a shit-eating grin on his face that clearly points to a mountain of teasing in the near distance.

“A little love-struck, mate?” He said, as soon as Harry was within hearing distance. At least he had the decency to keep his voice down, he thought.

Harry flips him off, “oh, bug off.”

Silver glitter sparkling on his nails, and his gaze strays to the floor, bashful of how clear his affection was. He turns to rest his bum against the counter and pulls out his phone to appear busy as he waits for y/n, mindlessly opening Instagram to have something to do (and to stop him from glancing at her ever two seconds).

“Yup. I knew it. Have y’asked her out yet?” Niall doesn’t stop to let Harry refute his question, “y’know she comes in sometimes, after stopping by your place? And she just will not stop talking about how nice yeh were to her.”

Harry’s head snaps up from his screen so fast, something at the back of his neck creaks with the force. Instagram is long forgotten.

“What? Are you fuckin’ with me right now?” He doesn’t mean for his words to come as aggressive as they do, but the thought of her speaking to someone else about him is… well, it’s thrilling.

Alarmed, Niall’s hands come up near his face in the motion of surrender, “no, man! Dead serious. Think she likes yeh, honestly.”

He can only say: “Fuck me.”

Niall is about to respond when a quiet voice breaks their stares, “I’m all finished.”

“Already, babe? I’ll rig ya up, then!”

He’s quick to slide the few products over the scanning square, and y/n and Harry stand beside each other silently, their height difference laughable. Niall’s gaze flickered between them with no commentary, and his lips pucker with a wiggling smile when he finally announces her total. A bit too much for a small changing blanket, oatmeal-based baby lotion, pacifiers with a lavender infused towel attached to ‘aid with goodnight night’s sleep’, and a bamboo hairbrush with a tuft of soft bristles.

Nonetheless, she provides the money with a pleasant smile. Harry can see a bit of tightness around her eyes that suggests discomfort, but he doesn’t say anything. Niall hands her a paper bag with her purchase, “there yeh go! Have a good day now, y/n! And be good, to Harry!”

Harry’s eyes widen at Niall’s last comment, and it takes every bit of self-restraint in him to not reach the other counter and whack him in the back of the head. Instead, he shakes and ducks his head in near shame.

Y/n, however, quips back with “I’ll be nice only if you’re nice,” and bumps her shoulder against his before walking towards the door, looking over her shoulder at Harry who’s smiling wide now, and trailing after her with no regard to Niall at all.

He shouts something after them about being rude lovebirds, but Harry doesn’t care. He’s floating after this heaven-sent like cartoon characters being led to a freshly baked pie with their nose on the scent. His rump high in the air like the Lorax disappearing into the light in the clouds, utterly ignorant to everything else.

When they’ve both stepped outside, they speak at the same time,

“Let me just-”

“Do y’wanna put-”

Harry and y/n giggle at each other,

“You go first.”

“Y’speak first.”

And then they laugh again. Harry pretends to zip his lips and throws away the key, and she says radiantly, “I’ll drop this off in my friend’s car really fast and we can walk to your flower shop.”

Watching her approach a car parked two spots away, a girl with blue, pink, and brown hair leans over to the passenger side, seat belt straining against her throat and when she sees Harry, she waves and it makes y/n push her back to her spot behind the driver’s side. Whoever this girl is, she and Niall have to meet, seeing as they can’t mind their own business. He chuckled and waved back, that girl laughing along with him and it made y/n cover her face with her cardigan covered hands.

“I’m sorry about Charlotte,” she said when she got back, “she doesn’t know how to mind her own.”

“A bit like Niall, it seems.” Harry said. He waits for her to catch up before beginning to walk down the street. Side to side, shoulder to shoulder. They’re so close, Harry can feel the warmth of her body heat through the fleece of his sweatshirt. It’s cold, and she’s still this warm?

“Maybe,” her eyebrows raise, and her head tilts towards him, “they should meet.”

“Tha’s exactly what I was thinkin’!” His voice rises with his excited agreement, and the tip of his nose wiggles as he scrunches his nose.

As they get closer, to H’s Garden, Harry reaches into his pocket for his keys, fingering through them so that they wouldn’t have to stand in the cold for so long. He didn’t want her to get sick.

“I’m sorry, Harry. I feel really bad about this,” she whispered beside him, looking up at him with doe eyes as she worried her lip between her teeth, the sheen of gloss adding an extra allure to her image at that moment. “It’s your day off, and I’m bugging you.”

They stood in front of the door now, underneath the green umbrella cover that extended from the top of the door and down the side of the window. Harry waited for her to step into the little alcove created by the indent of the door before stepping in after her and jiggling the key into the lock. He resisted the urge to pull his lips down into a cooing frown at the look on her face. She really was worried about disturbing him. If only she knew that he spent the entire day moping (and nearly crying) over her.

He sucked on his teeth, “oh, love, please worryin’ about it. Don’t wanna see that frown on y’pretty face anymore okay?” His confidence was slowly coming back, “s’not my day off, I just didn’t feel like speaking to customers today.”

Shrugging, he opened the door, and took a step back to allow her to step through first. Y/n ducked her head as she passed him with a murmured ‘oh, okay’, and he followed right after her, wanting to get away from the cold too because he knew that his nose was probably pink at that moment, but what he didn’t anticipate was for y/n to stop right after breaching the threshold, and bend over at the waist to pick something up from the floor, causing Harry to bump into her at such an awkwardly sexual angle with all of his momentum.

Considering he was half twisted away from her and in the middle of pulling out the key from it’s slot, the amount of force in Harry’s push from behind was enough to cause her to nearly fall forward, a surprised whimper slipping from her lips. Harry, determined not to see her fall, lets go of the key and reaches out just in time to grasp her hips on either side, pulling her back towards him mid-fall so that she doesn't collapse on her face.

However, in the midst of all of this Harry forgets himself and uses a bit too much force. Not to mention, the implications of their position makes him hyper aware of every single place their bodies touched, her small frame against his lithe, tattooed body.

This moment only lasts for a few seconds, but he can feel everything.

He can feel the easy give of the skin of her hips underneath each finger that touched her, the softness of the flesh on her thighs against his sturdy knees. The fabric of his sweatpants is suddenly non-existent, and it’s almost as if he felt every taught tendon of her legs, frozen with efforts of helping catch or brace herself. The heat of her groin is flush against his, and it makes him want to scream with a sudden sensitivity. Her ass is practically seated on him, full and malleable against the points of his laurel covered hip bones. Harry’s semi-hunched, as her weight also pushed him back, and the position is doing nothing to help his frenzied mind settle. He feels like shit because he’s being a horny, pubescent kid instead of asking her if she’s okay, but then y/n moves back into him to straighten fully and their centers grind. Her dress is semi-bunched at the halfway point of her bum, and he can feel heat emanating from her, radiating back on his bloating cock. He has to stifle a moan when she pushes herself up with the tips of her fingers.

Just as quickly as it started, it’s over. Y/n is dusting her bum off so that her dress falls and covers her modesty, and she’s beet red in the face, not looking at him. Which was fine by him, he was too ashamed to look into her eyes.

He clears his throat (something he’s doing a lot around her) and asks if she’s okay.

“Yes. Yes, I’m okay. This was on the floor,” she squeaked, holding up a neon yellow notice sheet in her hand. That damned thing was what caused all of this?

It’s a notice from the delivery men that said, ‘sorry! We missed you!’ with a time and date messily scrawled on the dotted lines. Harry had forgotten that he was getting a shipment of several plants that morning.

Cursing, he takes it from her, “t-thank you. Now how ‘bout those flowers?”

It’s awkward, obviously, but y/n is severely silent. Harry’s still stuffy in his pants, but he ignores it and doesn’t add any fuel to the fire because there’s more pressing matters at hand than a boner. Y/n is the most quiet she’s ever been around him, considering all of her word vomits and ramblings, and he’s suffering. Definitely beating himself up in his head for having ruined the moment. He held onto her for a second too long, frozen. She must feel so embarrassed, and he was self-endulging like a fucking asshole.

Harry asks her questions on what flowers she’d like, and she answers by pointing or bringing a stem to him, laying it on the counter without a word. A mixture of dahlias and baby’s breath with a handful of feverfew to make the pink in the dahlia’s stand out. He lays them out on his work table, cutting the ends at an angle where they need to be cutted and laying them out on a sheet of clear, dusty rose paper. Three packets of flower food are strewn at the corner, and y/n busies herself by fidgeting with them. He grows concerned when he makes a comment on the kinds of ribbons he had stored and she doesn’t say anything. Not even a nod or a hum.

Eventually, he decides he’s had enough of her neglect, and pauses his work to devote her some attention.

“Love, I’m sorry about what happened,” he said softly, trying to catch her eyes, “I know it probably made y’uncomfortable, and I didn’t do much to make the situation better, but I just didn’t wanna see y’fall.”

Y/n’s head is already dipped, so he can’t see her face, but when her shoulders begin to shake, he knows he’s utterly fucked. She starts to sniffle, and his eyes go wide. The paper crinkled as he set down the baby’s breath he’s holding in his hands. He hates seeing people cry, not because he didn’t know how to deal with it, but because he often ended up crying along with them. Also, he just didn’t want to see her cry. Harry wanted her to be happy, glowing, and smiling. Not dull with dollops of woeful distress in liquid form.

He rounds the corner and spares a look out to the street, wanting to make sure that there is no strange onlooker eavesdropping on their interaction. His hand reaches out to stroke her back or shoulder comfortingly, but he thinks better of it and drops his arm. She most likely would not like to be touched, considering what just happened between them. He drops his head, seeking face-to-face interaction, and speaks as gently as he can, “y/n, what’s wrong?”

She avoids his search, and turns the other way while sniffling, “you probably think I’m weird now or something after that.”

“No!” Harry exclaimed, jerking his head back as if he’d been struck, and her words practically had. He can’t believe that she would think that and even go as far as verbalizing her thoughts when he worshipped the ground she walked on and didn’t even know her that well, yet. “No, no. I don’t think that. Y’tripped, that’s all. Happens to everyone. If anythin’ I’m the weirdo for grabbin’ y’the way I did, and I’m really sorry about it.”

Y/n dig the heels of her hands into her eye sockets, “that was so embarrassing, I should’ve told you I was gonna stop or something. I always embarrass myself in front of cute boys and I never know what to do. I just-”

Harry interrupts before she can dig herself further another hole. He highlights a segment of her words, dropping everything else in hopes of changing the conversation and taking her discomfort away, and mostly because he was bursting with relief and happiness. She had said that she thought he was cute, just how he thought that she was adorable, and nice, and everything good. They were on the same level, their minds in sync. Did that mean…

His voice is airy and light because of what she had just admitted, “y’think I’m cute?”

She stills with awareness of what she’s just said, and a puppy-like noise seeps from the back of the throat before her hands sink further into her eyes, embarrassed. Harry tenderly wraps his fingers around her small wrists and pulls her hands away from her face, murmuring about ‘don’t rub y’eyes anymore, love, y’gonna hurt’ with nothing but kindness. A millisecond of distraction speeds through his mind at the softness on the inside of her wrists.

There’s a trickle of blubbering in her part, her bitten lips bumping against each other as she attempts to backtrack, “I mean- I- I-”

Harry decides that it’s now or never. It was a bit inconvenient, perhaps, but with her revelation his confidence soared and he was more prepared now to ask than he ever had been. So, he goes for it, “can I have y’number?”

A moment of semi-uncomfortable silence as the unknown tips the scale. Would she say yes? Would she say no? His head was spinning and he hoped his nose didn’t start bleeding or something because y/n nods slowly, smiling, and then, “okay.”

He’s elated. He was the polar opposite of what he had been that morning. If only Owen could see him then. He doesn’t waste any time reaching into his back pocket and handing her his unlocked phone. They don’t share any words, only coy glances and flirty quirks of the lips as the tips of her fingers move on his screen. Harry can’t believe that he’s finally getting her number, after nearly a month of pinning.

When she’s finished, she clicks it off and sets it next to him with an added pat to the back of his suspiciously clean white phone case while he’s tying the flowers together with a loose rubber band at the ends to attach the food packets. He’s fine with working in silence now that she's not crying anymore. He throws occasional glances in her direction, and catches her watching his hands while fiddling with her own. Her brows were furrowed and her mouth was twitching.

“Will you text me?” She asked him.

He’s careful not to bruise any of the petals as he sets them down again, pausing with his ministrations to pick up his phone. He wiggles his eyebrows at her and types a quick ‘Hi. It’s Harry :)’. He hits send, “until you’re sick of me.”

“I don’t think that’s possible.” She shakes her head, and Harry’s reminded Rachel McAdams in The Notebook while she’s in complete denial of her feelings for Noah. The comparison makes his heart flutter, considering the romance of the onscreen couple. “How much do I owe you?”

Harry waves her off, “it’s on the house.” She begins to argue, but Harry stops her before she starts rambling again, “y’better go or you’ll be late, love.” He holds out the arrangement to her, tufts of baby’s breath poking out from between the vibrant dahlias like fluffy clouds, the feverfew looking like miniature white daisies in the center.

She looks at it, and back at him before huffing, “fine, but you’ll have to let me return the favor.”

“Of course,” he smirks, “with dinner, maybe?”

They’re both gleaming at each other now, “okay.” Y/n takes a step back, her body half twisted as she walks away, but it remains like that for a moment as her eyes rake him up and down, a murmur following, “bye, Harry.”

His veins charge with electricity, and his dark taffy lips part at her actions. Had she just checked him out? He doesn’t recover quick enough to return her goodbye because the previous swirl of arousal in his navel was bristling back to life at the implications of that look. Calm, slow, steady, and her eyes remained doe-like and innocent.

She had to have known exactly what she was doing, whispering his name the way she had, looking over her shoulder and under her eyelashes the way she did. Deviously provoking his thoughts to begin a new with a reinspired fervor. The space in his underwear was growing tighter by the second, a blissful ache swelling.

Before any other customer stepped in after her, Harry locked the door, and jogged up the stairs to prepare himself a nice, hot bath, simultaneously cursing and thanking the stupid fucking delivery men.

********

Harry can’t stop thinking.

Obviously, this is a huge issue for him. He was constantly thinking, and well, who wasn’t? The process of thoughts wisping around in his brain was one that he often put an unnecessary amount of energy into because he had no one to filter these thoughts onto, releasing them through a conversation to prevent the exhaustion of his brain and heart. A prime example of these mishaps being the depressing slump that occupied his demeanor that very morning.

This?

This was different.

As soon as the apartment door was shut behind him, Harry pulled the suffocating sweatshirt off of his upper body, fingers hooking in at the collar and yanking it off with a swift tug. It landed somewhere on his kitchen floor, and he didn’t stop to take note of its final destination. Instead, his legs instinctively took him to his bathroom.

Chest heaving, Harry walked to the small window leaking sunlight and rolled the stick between his fingers to close the blinds. His thumb dipped into the waistband of his boxes and dragged them down lopsidedly, the tiger tattoo roaring as it became exposed. When the blinds are fully closed, the white extension clangs against the shutters from his aggressive release. His body was slowly being consumed by a raging fire stoked by the illicit images his brain conjured of the innocent, unsuspecting y/n.

His inner turmoil consisted of guilt for using her image that way and justification from the conspiring rake of her eyes along the upper half of him that was visible behind the counter. He was so fixated by her, that her look alone felt like a tempting caress along his skin. And it all happened in a matter of fucking seconds. That’s how gone he was. That’s how fucking gone he was. Harry guesses that the easy excitement also had to do with the fact that he hadn’t gotten laid in a while (he only ever gets lucky when he goes out to the bars with Mitch or Jeff, and they’d been gone for a significant amount of time) and the strong affinity he had for the girl who bought flowers from him.

Explanation or not, he had to do something about the problem in his pants. He was painfully hard, and when he shucked his pants off fully, his underwear dragged with the movement and pressed against the tip of his swollen prick. A darkened patch of moisture bloomed where the head was, and he saw stars at the short pressure. He wouldn’t take his pants off just then, though. He liked to stall his pleasure as much as he could so that when he finally did cum, his stomach muscles contracted and his toes remained curled for more than ten seconds.

He twisted the golden knobs of his tub so that the water would come rushing out at a borderline scalding temperature, and opened the small cabinet above the toilet for a bottle of almond and coconut shea butter bubbles. He uncapped it and bent over the edge of the tip, the cool, porcelain lip touching his crotch and provoking a choked whimper to leave him. Jerking his hips back, he poured the soapy liquid into the spot where the water cascaded, and retracted his hand when the beginning of froth formed along the surface.

The heady sweet smell permeated the air with the rising levels of bubbles, and Harry couldn’t wait any longer. Because he liked to torture himself, he closed his eyes and slowly dragged the hell of his hand over the outline of his cock, a groan ripping though the silence. It’s so painfully good, that he does it one more time, and he jolts forward. He removes his hand, slips his thumbs underneath the waistband of his boxers, and lugs the fabric down his hips at an excruciatingly slow pace. The head of his member smearing precum all along as he moves and when he gets caught in the ripples of his boxers the muscles in his thighs flex at the ripple of pleasure that zips into his nerves.

“Fuck,” he hissed under his breath. His mind was a spinning vintage reel of slideshow images of y/n. Y/n on bruised knees, her mouth wide open and her own drool on her tits, the tip of his cock flat on her tongue as she pleads with weepy eyes for him to cum down her throat. When he finally springs free of his underwear, a hefty slap rings out as his dick collides against his abdomen, right on the space underneath his belly button.

There’s a stripe of liquid on the trail left by the mushroom head of his prick, and Harry’s eyes roll to the back of his head, throat straining as he hovers over the bathtub. He doesn’t remember the last time he’s ever been this hard over a girl before, and it’s driving him crazy. He doesn’t know if he’ll be able to last as long as he usually does. As he swings a leg over the edge of the tub, the hot water encasing his calf, he’s thinking about how soft she is. The inside of her wrist and the palm of her hand. If she’s that soft on an external part of her body that’s used everyday, he can only wither away at the idea of what the inside of her thighs feel like.

Bubbles are swarming up now, swathing his thighs and buttocks as he sinks into the sloshing water. When he’s completely seated and satisfied with the belly-button level of water, he clumsily throws a hand in the direction of the knobs to shut them off, and reclined his head against the curved end of the tub with his eyes shut.

He hikes up his knees so that they’re resting against the porcelain walls, and mindlessly ruts up into the water at the filthy images he’s picturing, white foam collecting in sparse clouds over the math on his chest. He doesn’t know what’s gotten into him. It’s as if his body is being transported back to the moment his hips clashed with y/n’s. At the recollection, his mouth drops and his eyebrows pinch in a silent moan. The feel of her flesh underneath his fingertips has him bobbing in the water, and the next ideation has him gripping the base of his cock.

Vividly, he pictured her on all fours, keening back onto him as her pussy enveloped him in warmth, a warmth that is almost replicated by the temperature of the water, dripping and making a mess of him but what’s turning him on most of all is the easy flushness of their bodies. He had felt the way her bum gave way under his hold, and he imagined the bounce of her flesh as he thrusted into her.

He moaned a broken call of her name with his eyes still shut, and heard the trickling of water as his fist rolled up his stiff prick, squeezing at the tip so that a few more droplets of precum dribbled out. With his thumb, he rubbed over the red mushroom head and lathered it in slow, leisurely circles, a throb pulsating with the beat of his heart as he returned to flicking his wrist over himself.

The way that he looked at him and the sound of his name on her lips seared into his memory. Airy and willowy, similar to it resonated in his brain with the fantasy of sinking into her for the first time, stretching her and having her preen and arch with desperate whimpers of his name for more. Harry considered himself to be ‘well-endowed’ and his size was a factor of what sent him careening over the edge as girls mewled over his size after he’d bottomed out. He wanted y/n to mewl under him, both of them falling apart at the seams at the mutual pleasures because if Harry’s this broken over just the thought of her, then he’s sure he’s going to lose himself beyond recognition after he’s buried himself into her velvety walls, slick with her arousal and so fucking warm.

Just as she had been earlier that day. There had been two layers between them- the fabric of Harry’s pants and her panties- yet, he was still able to feel an immense heat from the apex of her thighs against his cock. He needed more than this. He needed her, not just his hand driving him closer to the edge.

His jaw clenched as he bit back on a particularly loud moan, for no reason other than he enjoyed self-sabotage from time to time, and the speed of his jerking hand increased. His other hand gripped the side of the tub, and his legs flexed as he began to thrust up into his own fist, a trail of bubbles sticking to the tanned muscles. The cut rectangles of muscles of his abdomen glistened like freshly chopped cubes of apricot with the droplets of water that remained clinging to him. His breath came in labored, strained puffs as the palm of his hand twisted, tightening at the tip and loosening at the base.

For a moment, he paused and cupped his balls, massaging them as the fantasy in his head continued. His mouth wrapping around y/n’s nipples, her eyes glazed over from previous orgasm that he wanted so badly to give her. She’d whine something soft and quiet to match her personality, ‘please, Harry, please I want more. Need another Harry, please’, and he’d speed up the movement of his hips, driving deep into her and cooing into her ear about, ‘c’mon, darling. Give m’another then. Y’want it so bad, yeah? Give me a’fucking ‘nother’, and she’d release a peircing moan that explodes in his eardrums while arching into him. She’d squeeze impossible tight around him, gushing with her own cum.

The water in Harry’s tub sloshes around his ankles, and the muscles of his abdomen clench so that he’s closing in on himself, sputtering on an outrageously loud cry that he can’t contain and his hand increases the speed of his filthy ministrations because he’s right on the edge. He’s about to fucking cum and the back of his eyelids burns with the possible variances of y/n’s face in ecstasy provided by him with his nose deep in her cunt, lapping at the sweet honey that spills with every whimper of, ‘please let me cum, Harry. I’ll do anything, I’ll be good, please let me cum.

He tensed violently, his face contorted painfully as white ropes spurt from the tip of his cock over his fist and onto his chest, blending with the white almond foam. His feet are braced against the edge of the tub and his head falls back and his stomach tenses even further, the final leaks of his cum dribbling out.

With the fuzziness that comes after an orgasm, his body melts back into the water that’s still warm, and his jerks with a pant as he allows his softening prick to sink into the water. The head on his hair is matted in a chocolate smear across his forehead, and his lips are a raging heart of cherry blossoms, parted with arduous gasps of recovery breath. His hands fall into the water at his sides, and with the lapping movement of the liquid against his sensitive member, he ruts into nothing again.

Reclined with his eyes closed and heartbeat slowing, Harry murmurs a final, “fuck me,” at the extreme sensations that had raked through his body.

Somewhere in the muffled distance, his phone dings with the notification of a text message, and with a tired noise of resentment, he sits up and reaches for his sweatpants that lay in a messy puddle besides the tub. His fingers drip darkening spots onto the grey material as he rummages for his phone, and then he finally clicks it on...

It’s her name, lighting up his screen, and the text reads:

y/n <3 : so… dinner?

Harry doesn’t think he’s ever crushed on a girl this hard before because even though he’s just completely physically spent himself, there’s something stirring in the depths of his tummy just at seeing the heart she put next to her name.

He couldn’t be happier.

* * * * * *

and here he is!! what do you guys think?? pls pls pls leave your feedback in my askbox! i’d love to hear your thoughts! and if you really really loved it, don’t be afraid to press that reblog button <3333

3K notes · View notes

dolphiana · 4 years ago

Text

Men and the "perfect" woman

It's really disgusting to watch men ( online and real life ) talk about what a woman has to look like. Not too tall, but not too short either, beautiful without heaps of make-up, breast cup B-D because A is too flat and everything over D is too much, dressing up for them because they don't look sexy enough in comfy clothes, high-heels are a must, no cellulite or stretchmarks because that's ugly, flat stomach, perfect butt and long legs, tan of course and nipples in the right size and colour ( yes, I've actually come across bullshit like that ). Now we could say, okay, that's personal preference, but especially those guys who pretty much want a devoted super-model continue to diss every woman who doesn't meet their standards. Short and big boobs? Gheez, running dwarfs with mega udders. Large nipples? Eew, grotesque. Hanging boobs? Haha, looks like an old hag, no thanks. Cellulite? So disgusting, probably doesn't work out enough. When talking about the "perfect" woman those essays are usually about their looks, because who cares about personality as long as she doesn't cause too much drama and doesn't run off with other men? Now that made me ponder how men would react if women started treating them as superficially as they do vice versa. Beard? Only if you have the face and hair for it, otherwise big no, it will just make you look like a hairy toddler or a Neandertal. A thin beard just makes you look pathetic. Trained body? Yes, but without going to the gymn every day because that's annoying, and no exaggerated muscles, no one wants the Hulk as boyfriend. And don't miss leg day, the muscles on your body have to look consistent. Skin not too pale but not too tan either, please. Has to be a head taller than the woman, we don't want a Hobbit walking by our sides. Hairy body? Eeew, no, that's disgusting, dating a man, not an ape. And don't you dare to wear your oversized hoodies and ancient jeans, keep an eye on the latest fashion and dress up accordingly. Flat butt and no Marvel-superhero upper arms? Off with you to the gymn, but be back in time for us to go shopping! If women started being more condescending like this towards equally superficial men, giving them a bit of their own medicine, I'm pretty sure those would be the first ones to snap and freak out , probably get violent, because their fragile male ego got a scratch and can't handle that. The ego that is so huge that even a 300 pound hairy and sweaty guy or a 35-year old scruffy nerd, who still lives at his parents' basement, thinks they can demand a supermodel as girlfriend, but the moment someone criticizes their own insufficiencies they crumble like a dried-out cookie. Men who can't deal with any kind of criticism aimed towards themselves should quit talking about what a woman "has" to look like as if we were only a piece of aesthetic meat. Not all of us have a skinny body, not all of us have full hair and good looks, perfect perky boobs or smooth cellulite-less butts. Most of the time, we KNOW about our flaws, because we are women and get confronted with what we are expected to look like daily. But it still hurts to hear how we are ugly, disgusting, unsexy or grotesque just because we are not perfect. Dear guys, no one is perfect. Not us, not you. If you are a superficial asshole who makes fun of women for not meeting your beauty standards you are in fact far from being perfect yourself. So stop making demands.

#feminism #menjudgingwomen #womenslooks #respect #nojudging #appearances #whatwomenhavetodealwith #criticism #bodyshaming

28 notes · View notes

greatbigbellies · 4 years ago

Text

New commission story. This is an anonymous slice of life piece about a woman hyperpregnant with overdue decuplets. This one’s a little different from my usual stuff cause it focuses so heavily on a unique form of belly. Contains hyperpregnancy, light belly worship, extreme fetal movement, and an incredibly tight, almost shrink-wrapped style of pregnant belly. Enjoy!

Molina waved goodbye as her midwife left, the kind woman getting in her car, off to another housecall most likely. The midwife had given the heavily expectant woman a clean bill of health, despite her... unique medical challenges. Molina was indeed a special case in more ways than one, just looking at her with no medical experience at all was the proof one needed for that.

For starters, she was gigantic, her belly stretching well past her knees when she sat down. She measured in the neighborhood of eighty inches in circumference. This was due to her extraordinary pregnancy, as she carried decuplets, and was presently 2 years past her due date. However, her belly wasn’t perfectly round like one would expect, instead looking uneven, lopsided, and in some areas, almost shrinkwrapped to her unborn babies. This was due in part to her being 33 months pregnant, and also partly because her body wouldn’t produce enough amniotic fluid. As a result, her normally plump, rounded pregnant belly was instead tight, lumpy, and left every movement on display.

And movement there was, as ten strong, overgrown fetuses would shift, kick, punch, and lurch constantly, vying for room where there was none. At times, her whole belly would writhe with fetal movement, as it did during her midwife appointment. Her belly wobbled and squirmed while the poor midwife tried to take an ultrasound with her portable doppler. The resulting images were… blurry to say the least, but she somehow got what she needed. Even now as she closed the front door and waddled inside, Molina’s brood squirmed restlessly inside her.

“Ooomph, calm down in there, I’m going!” she chided them, which only seemed to rile them up more. She slowly waddled to the kitchen to grab a snack, something she did a lot. Due to her size, she didn’t have a lot of room in her squashed stomach to eat, but she needed the calories, so she would constantly snack throughout the day. She awkwardly grabbed some leftover pizza from the fridge, having to turn to the side to reach it past her mountainous belly. She didn’t even bother to heat it up, as the wait would require more standing. She slowly made her way to the couch, and flopped down into it, causing her belly’s contents to kick and squirm about. “Oof, guys I’m eating right now,it’s fine. There's no more ultrasound wand rubbing against my tummy, you can chill,”

Molina rotated and propped her feet up on one armrest, and laid back to prop her head on the other. The weight of her tummy resting on her lower back, hips, and thighs. One hand delivered the pizza to her waiting mouth, and the other rubbed her uneven belly, party to calm her babies, partly to remove a little leftover ultrasound gel. She felt her overstretched skin shift under her hand as baby H and G pushed on each other for space. “Be nice you two, there’s room enough for both,”

She took another bite of pizza and felt someones foot kick directly into her palm. She pushed it back in and felt something roll deep inside her womb. She looked down and saw what was probably the top of someone’s head pushed up into the top shelf of her belly. She could never take those cute pictures most pregnant women took, using their bellies as a table. Her tummy was just too uneven and lively for that. She lovingly patted the top of the head, and just as quickly as it had sprouted up, it sank back down.

Molina sighed and finished her pizza, leaving both hands free to caress the belly. Her brood calmed slightly with the introduction of food, and the calming touch of her hands seemed to soothe them more. She reached as far as she could to try to get to the front of her tummy, but alas, baby B, the front most occupant, was out of her reach. She could feel her itchy popped navel getting pushed even further out by various kicks and shifts, but could do nothing for it. She placed her hands on the sides of her belly and squeezed it lovingly before rotating back to a sitting position. She placed her feet on the carpet and leaned forward to put her weight on them, then stood up into a standing position. Her shirt rode up, and she felt her already unbuttoned shorts unzip a little.

Her clothes, as large and maternal as they were, stood no chance against such a belly. There was a time, over two years ago, where she could cover her tummy completely, and even lean forward, but those times disappeared along with the view of her feet. She reached around to her waist and tried to zip her shorts back up, but alas, she was simply too big. Pregnancy had caused her body to change in more areas than just her belly. Her butt had plumped up significantly, almost giving her a back shelf, and her thighs had rounded out to a degree that could only be described as “thicc”.

She heard a knock at the door and waddled over, her massive belly wobbling left and right with each step. The front of her tummy nudged the door as she opened it, greeting a shocked deliveryman. “Uh… p-package for… Molina…” she poor man just stared at Molina’s massive, squirming pregnant belly. Her cargo took that moment to lurch, causing the many arms, hand, legs, and feet to be even more visible under the overstretched flesh. Molina smiled at him, somewhat used to this reaction. “Do I need to sign?” she asked. “Y-yeah… h-here…” he reached out with a small clipboard and pen. Molina took it, reaching just past her tummy to take it from him.

“You look concerned?” she teased him, signing the slip. “It’s just… you’re REALLY pregnant,” he stammered. “Does it… hurt?” he asked. “Not quite. Its far from comfortable, but’s not painful. It helps to have someone rub it though, would you?” she asked, taking a step forward. The mailman hesitated, but slowly reached out. His fingers brushed against the skin of her overly taught tummy before jolting back, and she giggled. “You won’t hurt me, just touch it!” As he reached forward again, one of her brood did a somersault in her womb and shifted her skin out, causing the belly to come to him. He blushed intensely and she just chuckled, causing more of her babies to move inside her. Her whole belly was alive with action now, as limbs and heads and even faces became visible under her skin. The mailman took his hand back and just stared.

“The package please?” she asked. The man shook his head and handed her a small parcel, before turning to leave. She smiled, having had her fun, and went back inside. Her belly actually let out an audible grown as she made her way back to the couch, tired from the effort of standing with so much weight on her aching back and feet. She flopped back down, causing a bit of sloshing from her womb, and somehow even more movement. She opened the package to see the specially designed stretchmark cream she’d ordered online. This stuff was a lifesaver, even after almost three years of pregnancy, not a single mark could be seen on her aching, writhing belly.

She hummed a song to herself and her babies as she opened the tube of lotion, squeezing a heaping glob into her hand. She capped it shut and rubbed her hands together before working the lotion into her tight belly skin. She leaned back, closed her eyes, and just reveled in exploring her own gravid belly. Feeling every nook and cranny between the various limbs of her babies. Her belly shifted again as movement stirred within her, strong kicks pushing into her her hands as she rubbed the lotion into her constantly shifting skin. She felt baby D’s backside against the side of her bump, rubbing it gently before moving on so what was probably a leg sticking out. There were times when it was legitimately hard to tell what was where, but she made the best of it.

In truth she just loved being pregnant, feeling the life grow in her body, feeling herself swell up with love. Its why she carried so far past term, to keep her babies close to her, and safe within her womb. She continued exploring her shrink-wrapped tummy, playing with her babies from outside. She’d push back on the little hands and feet sticking out, pat the heads that bulged out, and just generally interact with her unborn young. She jostled her tummy a little trying to reach the front to apply the lotion, and she felt several movements deep inside her pregnant gut. She worried that she’d start getting marks on the portions of her belly where she couldn’t reach, and wondered if she could talk the midwife into applying it for her at her next appointment.

She considered inviting a friend over to do it… but almost everyone in her friend group was pregnant themselves, and quite busy because of it. Except one who she admittedly hadn’t seen since she was only 3 months along… which was nearly three years ago… but it was worth a shot, Molina thought, to reconnect. And maybe get some belly rubs out of it. She pulled her phone out of her tight pocked and scrolled through her contacts until she found her… and old friend of hers, Orphea.

Orphea, somewhat nervously, walked up to the address she’d been sent, anxious to see her friend Molina again. It had been years since they had seen each other, and last time they were together Molina was 3 months pregnant with decuplets… Orphea could only imagine how chaotic it would be inside with ten toddlers running around. Still, her old friend had said she needed help with something personal, and Orphea was nothing if not loyal. Her 4 inch heels clacked against the concrete as she approached the door.

She knocked on the door and noticed the silence, the distinct lack of rampaging children… was it nap time? “Door’s unlocked, please come in!” rang the familiar sound of Molina’s voice. Orphea slowly opened the door and started to step through, looking around for her friend. “Molina hun, are you okay? You were kinda vagu-” Orphea froze when she saw the massively overdue Molina, sprawled across the couch. She simply stared at Molina’s active, wriggling belly, taking in every limb, face, and body on display under the tightly pulled skin. “Oh my God Molina! What… happened?” she stammered, slowly stepping in and shutting the door behind her.

“I… nothing happened, I’m fine, I’m just very pregnant!” said Molina, placing her hands on her belly, as if she needed emphasis on th fact. “But… you look absolutely vacuum packed, I can see every movement in there!? Are you sure you’re okay? Is this healthy?” Orphea nearly shouted, a little freaked out at the sight of such fecundity. “I promise you, I have weekly doctors and midwife visits, everyone in here in safe and healthy,” Molinda assured her friend. Orphea shook her head in awe, unsure of what to do. “I”m sorry it’s just… you’re a sight!” she said. Molina beamed at the compliment, “Thank you! I owe it all to these little guys!” she rubber her beyond-drum-tight tummy lovingly.

“Which brings me to why I invited you here,” she stated. “I’ve gotten so big I can’t reach my whole belly, and I need someone to apply lotion to my tummy so I don’t get stretchmarks,” she explained. Orphea blinked. “You mean you want me to touch… that?” she pointed at Molinas mountain of a belly. “What? It’s just a pregnant belly!” replied Molina. Orphea blinked incredulously. “Have you never touched a pregnant woman’s belly?” Orphea blinked more. “Well… I have… just not one so… overdue. How many months past due are you?” “twenty four,” stated Molina matter of factly.

Orphea sighed. It was just a pregnant belly. Just a very large, very lumpy one. And Molina had taken care of her in the past. “Alright, sure, why not? Where’s your lotion?” she finally asked. “Heads up!” Molina tossed the tube to her friend, who caught it effortlessly. Molina shifted around on her butt, before laying down to expose as much of her pregnant belly as possible. “So like…” she gestured with her arms, painting swaths over her orb of a tummy to show where she could reach, “These areas are fine, I can reach this stuff,” She pointed toward the front hemisphere and her underbelly, “but these areas I can’t get on my own anymore. If you’ll lotion those up I’ll order takeout and feed you for your troubles,”

Orphea knelt next to her friend’s writhing tummy. “You don’t have to…” she paused as a foot stuck directly out of the womb, stretching the belly skin toward Orphea’s head. “...You like panda express?” she changed her tune. “Love panda express,” smiled Molina, whipping out her phone to place the order through an app. Orphea reached up and squeezed a heaping glob of cold lotion into the front of Molina’s titanic tummy, eliciting a shiver from her friend. “Oooh, that skin is so sensitive,” “S-sorry,” apologized Orphea. She slowly reached over, still freaked out at the tightness of the skin, and the amount of movement she could see.

She took a breath, steeled herself, and laid her hand on it. And… it was… fine? Uneven, sure, and warm to the touch, but it was just skin. She felt a tiny fist push up into her hand, but it didn’t really bother her. She’d felt a fetus move in a pregnant tummy before, this was the same, just stronger. She settled into small, circular movements as she worked the cream into Molina’s gravid gut, and smiled. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad. Molina sighed and visibly relaxed at her touch, settling into the couch more. Orphea’s fingers brushed over Molina’s very popped belly button, and she cooed in response, something Orphea thought was very cute.

“Mmmm, thank you again for coming over. This is really nice,” said Molina as she relaxed. Orphea added more lotion and continued massaging the glowing belly, working the smooth substance into every nook and cranny. “Yeah, anything for a friend!” she replied. Molina felt baby B do a somersault in response to all the touch, and the top of their head pushed into Orphea’s palm. “Is that… a head?” Molina nodded and smiled, brushing her black bangs out of her face as she looked over her phone.

“What do you like from Panda?” she asked. “Orange chicken please! And I can cover my own food, you don’t actually have to feed me,” Orphea offered. Molina shook her head, “Honestly it’s the least I could do since you came over on virtually no notice. We haven’t seen each other in over two years and you dropped everything just to rub my belly for me! I’m more than happy to feed you!”

Orphea squirted even more lotion into her hands, rubbing them together, before starting work on Molina’s expansive underbelly. This portion of her tummy actually somehow felt more tightly packed than the front, Orphea assumed it was due to the constant force of gravity pulling the babies in this direction. There was less movement down here, and more indentations and bulges from the packed decuplets. Orphea couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to be THIS pregnant, and actually have this as part of her body. Molina let out a groan, causing Orphea to peek around the massive midriff to check on her friend. “If everything okay? Did I push too hard?”

Molina’s plump lips curled into a satisfied smile, “Mmmm, nooooo, it just feels so good to have someone rub down there. I haven’t been able to reach that part of myself in over a year and the skin is so stretched, your hands feel lovely,” she explained. “Please don’t stop,” Orphea nodded and went back to work, making sure to run her finger through every divot, crevasse, and valley caused by Molina’s squirming young. She also made sure to run her hands over every lump, bump, and bulge on the expanse of pregnant flesh.

The contact seemed the rile up the lower sitting babies, as they began to stir under Orphea’s hands. The movement and contact on both sides of her skin only revved up Molina more, and she moaned and cooed at the attention she was receiving. Orphea got an impulsive idea, and sank her fingers into the bottom of Molina’s belly. Molina gasped at the sudden intrusion, and would have jolted upright if she physically could, but her belly weight kept her from doing so.

“Oh God I’m so sorry I don’t know why I did that!” apologized Orphea as she pulled her hands back. There was an awkward pause between the two before Molina squeaked out, “Do it again,” another pause. “What?!” “Please do that again, push your fingers into the nooks and crannies, it felt really good. Really stimulating,” she blushed. Orphea did as she was told, lining up the tips of her fingers with the few soft spots on Molina’s underbelly. She, more slowly this time, pushed her fingers in, causing, somehow, even more movement inside. “Oooohh… god... “ Molina sighed. Orphea blushed a little, and went back to rubbing, taking time to poke her fingers into various indents as she found them. Molina seemed to really enjoy it, and it gave Orphea another impulsive idea.

Without putting much thought into it, she cleaned the lotion off of a small spot, leaned in, and pecked the spot of belly skin with her lips.

While the belly itself was still very much in motion, the rest of Molina seemed to freeze up at the sudden affection. Yet another long, heavy pause held the pair in social paralysis. Finally, Orphea broke the ice with a subdued, “Sorry,” She couldn’t see Molina’s face past her tummy, but could still feel her stare. “Did you just… kiss me? Down there?” “I’m sorry I’m sorry. It was dumb, I shouldn’t have done that. I don’t know why I did,” Orphea started to ramble, a rising blush painting her face pink. “Orphea, honey, it’s okay,” “No, no it really wasn’t,” “Orphea. I liked it,” One. Last. Pause.

“You… liked it? When I kissed your tummy?” she gently placed a hand back on the underbelly, feeling more strong, almost violent movements underneath. “Yeah… it… I don’t get a lot of attention like this, Orphea, I spend a lot of time cooped up,” she admitted. “I love this, being massively pregnant, I love each and every one of my babies. But for having 11 people in this house… I’m lonely,” Orphea scooted around to make herself visible to her friend, noticing her blush and averted gaze. “So… that was the first kiss you’ve had in a while, wasn’t it?” inquired Orphea. Molina nodded solemnly, trying not to let her loneliness, magnified by extreme pregnancy hormones, make her too emotional.

Orphea leaned over and kissed the side of her belly, causing Molina to blush intensely again. She then placed both hands firmly on the uneven sides of Molina’s massive gut and began drumming her fingers. “So you love being this pregnant, huh?” asked Orphea. Molina smiled meekly, again brushing her hair out of her face, and nodded. Orphea reached around, and tried to hold as much belly as she could in her arms, before planting a long, loving kiss on Molina’s gut. She felt the constant stirring movement of Molina’s ten kids inside her, and maximized her skin contact with it. She pushed her face into the belly, and baby F pushed back with their arms.

Molina moaned and squirmed herself on the couch, her thick thighs rubbing together as she didn’t know what to do with herself. Orphea pulled her face back, “You’re a real baby factory, Molina. If you love this, I think I can learn to love it too. Maybe we should catch up, and get to know each other a bit more,” Molina nodded, biting her lip. She hadn’t had this kind of physical contact in too long, and it felt amazing.

Orphea stood up on her high heels, bringing her to a height of 5’7”, and leaned forward, planting a strong, loving kiss on Molina’s navel. She cooed and squirmed from new overstimulation, the skin on her belly so very sensitive. Orphea took a moment to empty the rest of the lotion tube onto the bottom of Molina’s belly, reaching down with her hand to rub it in, while continuing to plant kiss after kiss onto the front area of Molina’s squirming belly.

“Wait!” cried Molina. “What? Too much! Did I overstay my welcome?” asked Orphea. “No… this feels amazing… but first…” she tapped her phone screen twice. “Okay, we have an hour to fool around before dinner gets here,” she said a little breathlessly. She leaned back into the couch, closed her eyes, and beamed, “Now… where were we?”

#writing #anonymous #commissions #not bellies

41 notes · View notes

jiminniethemarshmallow · 5 years ago

Text

Ball of Stress (M)

Pairing: Jimin x reader

Genre: smut, college AU

Word Count: 5,690

Warnings: Jimin watching porn, edging, unprotected sex, creampie, cum eating

(A/N): Writing the warnings makes me feel dirtier than writing the actual smut lol. Finally got one of my several drafts complete, so you guys actually have new stuff to read (from me at least)!

Being a college student is stressful, despite it being the “best time” of many people’s lives. Keeping up with the school work, doing well in sports, attending clubs, and having a healthy social and party life are all things that students have to juggle, and Jimin knows the struggle all too well. You both are in your final year and it never really gets any easier, the pressure to graduate and transition into the world of adults almost crushing at this stage in your lives. But you have each other, keeping the both of you afloat, because surely you would sink and drown on your own.

The last few weeks have been hard on Jimin. His sports team is in peak season and practice has been running longer everyday it seems. The work load his professors dump on him doesn’t help and he feels like he’s falling farther and farther behind with every class. Not to mention the strain that’s put on his friendships and social life. He’s had to decline invitation after invitation to parties and group gatherings because of school work. His friends understand and they support him, but one thing that has been becoming unbearable for him is the lack of time he gets to spend with you. Your class and practice schedules don’t line up with his too well so you mostly only get to see each other at night, and even then you don’t talk that much because you’re both consumed with homework and projects. There’s no time for romance anymore, he barely gets the chance to touch you, and when things do start to heat up, you’re both too tired to do anything.

It’s been about 2 and a half weeks since you actually had the time and energy to hang out with Jimin and you vividly remember that last time the two of you got intimate. You had finally gotten the chance to attend your friend Hoseok’s party and you decided to get all dressed up for it, wearing the sexiest and most revealing outfit you could find, hoping to spark something within your boyfriend when he laid eyes on you. You expected him to get jealous from all the looks you were getting that night, but he didn’t— or at least you hadn’t noticed if he did— and instead he was all over you, whispering in your ear how sexy you look, how badly he wants you and exactly what he wants to do to you. When neither of you could take it anymore, you stumbled back to your home and barely made it through the door before your clothes were off, already mingled in a heated embrace. The bedroom seemed too far away in the moment so you both settled for the couch, making love on the love seat until your bodies gave out.

It feels like so long ago but you could never forget that night— in fact, it’s been all you can think about since. You remember the depth of every kiss, the tenderness of every touch as he took his time caressing your body, committing it to memory as if it would be his last time seeing it. You remember the hunger in his eyes once he was finished worshipping you, the softness switching to a predatory gaze that made it look like he wanted to devour you. And he did. There is no middle ground when it comes to you and Jimin in bed. You’re either making love or fucking. One or the other. Nothing in between. That night, although it might have started off soft, turned into one of the best fucks of your life, and Jimin agrees.

That night has been replaying in his head all day today, and no matter how hard he tries to focus, he can’t get the thought of you off of his mind. Today was rough, he practiced hard, stayed up all night studying for the exam he took today, and was just tired in general, but he finally made it home, stepping through the threshold of your shared off-campus house. Even though he knows you’re not home, he’s still a bit disappointed when he finds the house deserted. Your shoes weren’t in front of the door, your purse and bag weren’t laying in a heap on the kitchen counter, and the space around him was filled with unsettling silence. With a huff, Jimin kicks off his shoes and ventures deeper into your home, holding onto the small shred of hope that you somehow had come home before him and were currently in your bedroom waiting to welcome him.

But much to his dismay, your bedroom was empty. And loneliness crept into his heart.

You had once teased Jimin about his need for attention, laughed at how much he beamed at every compliment, constantly looking for approval, but you never once hesitate to feed into his desires for praise. That was your job as a loving girlfriend. But everyone else, however, is not his girlfriend and he knows that they won’t entertain his neediness unless he does something significant that shows he truly deserves it. Well, right now Jimin feels like he deserves some attention. As he walks through the room to your bed, he winces at his sore muscles and creaking joints, tired from the hours of practice he’s just gone through. This season he’s been working double time and playing harder than ever to be successful and lead his teammates like the great captain he is. It’s no wonder he’s so sore, his back must hurt from carrying his team the entire year. But it’s not like he’s frustrated by that fact, he takes pride in being the best player on his team, he just craves to be acknowledged, at the very least.

His coaches and teammates never congratulate him, never comment on how much harder he works than everyone else, and quite frankly, it’s starting to piss him off. You are the only person who ever feeds into his praise kink. You always know just what to say, reminding him that he’s amazing at what he does and that his team is lucky to have him. You are the only one who gets it. And as he falls face first onto your side of the bed, just the scent of you is enough to calm him down a little.

A small smile graces his lips when he remembers the time he plopped onto your side of the bed one day, only to encounter a hard mass instead of the plush surface of the mattress he was expecting.

“Ow! Jimin, you’re crushing me.” You had mumbled from beneath the sheets. He didn’t see you hidden under the cover of the dark room, taking a nap peacefully while waiting for him to return home. He remembers fondly how he showered you with kisses in apology, eventually finding your lips and ending your night in a sweaty mess between the sheets.

Fuck, he really needs you right now. Jimin feels a vein in his forehead throb from the headache that’s plagued him all week. Usually you would run your hands through his hair gently whenever he was in this condition, telling him random anecdotes about your day to take his mind off of the stress. He can’t help but wish you would just come home already.

Burying his face into your pillow, Jimin inhales deeply and his body automatically relaxes, but the relief is short lived because he reaches out for you only to find the cold, empty bedding surrounding him. By this point, your absence is becoming irritating and he can feel his patience running low and sense his frustration bulging against the crotch of his pants. Damn it. Sitting up from his spot, he tries to calm himself. Is he really getting hard right now? It’s shocking to him that just the thought and smell of you can make him this horny. But he can’t afford for that to happen, not when you’re not home. He stands slowly, making his way to his desk chair to sit in front of his laptop. Gaming should take his mind off of you for a while, right? It’s never failed him before.

Opening his laptop, Jimin browses through his games, but nothing captures his attention or interest at the moment, even when he sees that his friends Jungkook and Seokjin are online. After almost a half an hour of scrolling through social media, texting you, and trying to find anything to distract himself, Jimin gives up, and with his surrender emerges that tireless voice from the back of his mind that appears every time he is alone and bored. There’s only a moment’s hesitation on his part before he clicks the browser on his laptop and types, finding himself on the homepage of his favorite porn site. Thumbnails of erotic videos present themselves to him immediately, along with a section of recommended videos based on his search history, even though he hasn’t been here in a while. Through the selection of thousands of videos, nothing really appeals to him, a few catching his eye because of the actress’ resemblance to you, but the women were always with another man and he refused to even imagine you with anyone but him.

He’s even more frustrated now, dick half hard and waiting, but Jimin is far too picky to be satisfied with just any old video. Oh, here’s one! A blowjob with the faces cropped out, just a view of all the juicy action, and it’s enough to get him to grow a bit, so he accepts it, pants unzipped and circling his ankles by the time he clicks play, hand already tugging at his length and his dignity thrown into an empty drawer.

Today was a rough day. Back to back exams and strict professors were enough to put you in a mood, but your favorite food place on campus closing right before you reached its doors was what sent you over the edge. Plus the whiny texts you’d received from your boyfriend. Your needy boyfriend, who you’d promised cuddles and kisses as soon as you returned home. You told him that you were on your way back less than 10 minutes ago, but he hasn’t responded yet, something you don’t dwell on long as you rush to your home with the prickling need to shower, slip into your pajamas, and watch the next episode of the newest hit drama over your plate of leftovers.

What you don’t expect when you enter your home is to find it so quiet. You thought for sure that Jimin would be watching tv or making something for himself in the kitchen like usual. Whatever, maybe he’s taking a nap in your room. You take your sweet time in the kitchen, pulling out a container of the food you made a couple days ago, thinking a few minutes before throwing all of its contents onto a pan and stuffing it in the oven because you have a feeling Jimin hasn’t eaten yet, pulling out plates and utensils until you finally make your way toward the bedroom. Initially, the plan was to strip out of your clothes and throw on some sweats— your shower could wait until after you’ve eaten— but those plans come to a halt as soon as you open the door.

Your wide eyes adjust to the dimly lit room fairly quickly, the laptop sitting open on the desk illuminating your slightly sweaty boyfriend and his hand that pumps steadily at his cock. He’s bare from the waist down, his shirt tucked under his chin as he reclines to see the screen. You see the way he flexes his abs every time he twists around his head, bucking up a little, and God, you haven’t seen anything that hot in a long while.

He doesn’t notice you at first, focused intently on the woman deep-throating the man on screen until she drools down her chin, and you have the opportunity to creep forward, knowing he can’t hear you with his noise-cancelling gamer headphones coving his ears. You’re almost at his side when he shuts his eyes and lets out a groan, slowing his pace and biting his lip with an expression you would interpret as pained, squeezing himself with a huff before speeding up.

“(Y/n), please,” He almost whispers, and you start to understand the situation a little better. He can’t quite get himself over the edge, too tense and too eager to let go. Without thinking, you reach for him, your hand wrapping around his own delicately.

“Need help, baby?” Jimin almost leaps out of the chair, snapping his eyes to your face in a look of terror that makes you laugh. He relaxes when he realizes its you, though he is a bit embarrassed that you caught him.

“Babe, I-“

You hush him as you position yourself between his legs, taking over the movement of his hand until he lets go and sinks back into his seat. He moves his headphones to rest around his neck and reaches to stop the video, but you grab his arm before he can do so. “Leave it on.” You watch his throat bob, an excited look glazing his eyes as your tongue slithers out to lick the bead of liquid at his tip. Flicking over the slit a few times, you trace your tongue along the sides of him, loving how hot he feels.

You go straight to work once you sink down on him, starting halfway down his length and bobbing at the same pace his hand was moving earlier. Jimin moans immediately, eyes locked on you as you swallow more of his cock, one hand on what you can’t fit and the other lightly massaging his balls. His hands move to shift your hair away from your face, pulling it to the back of your head in a messy ponytail, and you pull off of him quickly to assist, using the hair tie around your wrist for his convenience. He can barely see you as you sit under the shadows of his desk, but you yank off your shirt anyway and toss it aside. What he can see is the suave grin plastered to your lips and the seductive look in your eyes when you grab him again.

“What’s the girl in the video doing? Guide me.” You can tell he’s almost forgotten about the video because of the way he snaps his head back up to the screen. His legs tense when you push him into your throat, his hands returning to your head to guide you up and down. You let him push you down a little farther, loving how his girth sets in your jaw uncomfortably and makes you drool down your lips and chin.

Jimin moans as his eyes flicker back and forth between the bright screen and your shadowed face, doing his best to help match your movements with the video. When he pulls you up for air, you suck on his tip with your wet lips, gliding over it repeatedly and making his thighs tremble on either side of your head until he hisses.

“Mm, you’re so good at this. Can I..?” His fingers weave firmly in your roots and you know exactly what this means, humming a response and waiting for him with an open mouth. Distantly, you can hear the woman’s erotic gagging coming from Jimin’s forgotten headphones. He pulls you down cautiously before lifting his hips from his seat, sliding easily until his head hits the back of your throat. You don’t gag, though your stomach quivers a little, and his next thrusts are less wary, keeping the pace just quick enough to have him panting. Locking your hands behind your back, you give him full control as he pulls you deeper, his jerking hips struggling to keep rhythm as tears spring to your eyes. But you take him gratefully. Your panties stick to you more when his moans get breathier, and he holds your head in place so he can buck into you deeper, his length slipping down your throat and making you choke hard. The sound you make is obscene, but it’s worth it when he looks so damn good, mouth ajar and eyes screwed shut as he nears the edge.

At the first twitch of his member, he yanks you away, whimpering at the loss and squeezing himself at the base with shaky fingers. You’re confused when you look up at his sweaty form and ask, “What are you doing?”

He sighs through his nose, untangling his other hand from your hair to run through his own. “I can’t cum yet.” A small gasp leaves him at the feel of your tongue on his scrotum, sucking one of the soft sacks into your mouth while giving him the most innocent look you can muster when his length flexes just an inch from your face. “I- I want you to feel good, too. Come here.” Jimin’s fingers delicately hold your chin to lead you up and onto his lap, your pants and underwear discarded on the ascent. Next to go is your bra, and Jimin takes this time to remove his own shirt and the headphones around his neck, your bodies naked and hot and dripping with lust.

“You don’t have to worry about me, clearly you need this more than I do.” You mumble, lips already closing in on his. Your mouth tastes like him as he slips his tongue past your lips and wraps his arms around you, holding you firm against him. One of his hands slips between your bodies to cup your core, the jump of your hips blowing your cover, and you can feel his smile against you.

“Really? You seem pretty needy too, baby.” He grazes your clit with the pads of his fingers just to watch you chew your lip, eyes falling closed in the dimness.

“N-no, I’m fine.” You begin to fidget when his fingers remain soft, and only then does he press into you in earnest, circling the bud just the way you like, burning arousal leaking onto the digits.

He chuckles. “Oh yeah? So you’d be okay if I didn’t fuck you?”

“Yes.” You lie. “But I’ll let you do it anyway since you’re so... mmm... hard right now.” Your mouth moves on its own as you speak, trying to tease him, but it looks like it’s working against you.

“And you wouldn’t need to take care of yourself later because you’re not horny at all, is that right?” He’s breathless, too, at the way you rock against his hand, your arms resting around his shoulders to hold yourself steady.

“Yup.” You strain your answer as his lips and teeth begin to nip at your neck and collarbones, kissing down until one of your nipples is in his mouth and you finally groan. “Minnie~”

“Hmm?” His eyes dance with friskiness. Even if he was on the verge of cumming, he still had the power to make you desperate. Your head rolls back to arch your chest further into him, and you can feel your heart hammering against it when 2 of his plump fingers slip into you. Working you up has always been Jimin’s specialty, but today your patience has run thin with the aching desire to have him deep inside you and you’d really rather skip the second half of foreplay.

Taking matters into your own hands quite literally, you start to stroke him as you lean in to nibble on his earlobe. “Baby, put your cock in me.” You whine, carding your hand through the hair at the nape of his neck. He shivers but stays resistant.

“Well, since you don’t need me to fuck you, I was just thinking about how nice it would be to finish in that pretty mouth of yours.” His free hand comes up to thumb your lips, pushing it into your open mouth for you to suck, which you do simply out of habit.

“It woul’ peel nicer if you phinished in my puthy.” The words lisp with his digit pressed to your tongue and you stare at each other for a split second before bursting into giggles.

“What was that?” He laughs, some of the tension breaking with your silliness. You love how you can laugh with your boyfriend during sex. Instead of ruining the mood, it feels like you get closer to him, both of you so comfortable with each other that there’s never any awkwardness in moments like these.

“I said, it would feel nicer if you finished in my pussy.” You clarify when he pulls his thumb from your mouth.

“For you or for me?”

“For you.”

The tsk of his tongue is harsh on your ears like broken glass. One of his shapely eyebrows curves upwards in faux irritation, the hand between your legs skidding to a halt with his palm smashed against your clit. “Still so stubborn, babygirl?” He looks you over with dark eyes, the light of the screen behind you casting dangerous angles on his face. By now your hand on him has also come to a stop, but you can feel just how swollen and hot his is, stiff enough to curb his usual generosity, but also enough to take away the assertive edge you expect his voice to be laced with. “On your knees.”

“Nonono, wait, I was kidding!” You gasp in an outburst, resisting his insistent hands that attempt to push you off of his lap. “I want you, Jimin, let me take care of you. We both need this.” You hold onto him by his handle, tightening your grip and effectively derailing his train of thought. He says nothing further and you reposition yourself above him, looking down into his chocolate eyes as they soften.

You glide his tip gently along your slick folds, enjoying how it brushes your clit and makes you impossibly more wet. It certainly has been a while, you don’t remember the last time you responded to him this well.

“Please don’t tease me,” He breathes, voice barely above a whisper, and you glance up to catch him looking at you with a pleading stare, plump lip caught between his abusive teeth.

You cave in instantly, guiding his tip to finally nudge against your entrance. Leaning forward, you steal a kiss, letting him lick into your mouth, his tongue caressing your own as you slowly slide down his wide length. You suck in a long inhale throughout your lengthy descent, addicted to the feeling of him filling you up. Filling up the hole inside of you made just for him. God, you missed this; and you tell him these words in the small space between your lips.

Jimin’s hands skim up your back, then trail down the lines of your sides, waist, and hips indecisively before settling on your ass, pulling you closer to help you take that last extra inch. When he’s buried to the hilt, you both sigh deeply, letting out the breath you didn’t know you were holding. He releases your lips to lean his forehead against your shoulder, fingers squeezing your bottom tightly as he fights to control the emotions bubbling inside him. It feels like it’s been forever since he was last this close to you, connected to you like this, and it’s almost overwhelming, especially when he’s this sensitive. His cock feels like a comfortable heaviness in the pit of your stomach, your shared warmth heating your passion like a furnace, and you have to anchor yourself around his neck so it doesn’t burn you alive.

Your grip around his hair and around his member are like a vice, keeping him grounded and sane, all of his stress and frustration being sucked out of him and replaced by raging lust for you. You rock your hips experimentally, sparks of pleasure shooting through your bodies.

“Fuck, babe, please move. I can’t take it anymore.” Jimin whines, digging his fingers into your flesh. You swivel your hips as you adjust yourself, smirking down at your boyfriend who is in shambles beneath you.

“Fast or slow?” The seduction dripping from your voice makes him throb and he can barely groan out an answer.

“Ride me fast, (Y/n). Make me cum.” He commands, a hint of dominance tracing his demeanor, and you gladly oblige his request.

With feet hooked around the tops of his thighs to support your bent legs, you use your thigh strength to lift yourself up until just his tip is sheathed within you. Then you drop yourself down completely, impaling yourself on his hard cock and knocking the air from both of your lungs. You brace your hands on his shoulders for stability as you set a quick pace— as fast as your legs can take you— and it’s almost as if you have ignited a hunger inside you that singes your nerves.

“Oh shit,” Jimin whispers, throwing his head back at the return of that special tightness in his belly. You have always been good at riding him, but he never gets used to it. Your own mouth hangs at the catch of his burning red tip prodding all the best places within you, his moans restoring your strength and stamina as they increase in volume.

The chair beneath you squeaks desperately, groaning from your combined weight and movement, but you pay no attention as you focus your energy on making Jimin see stars, clenching purposefully just to hear him gasp and watch his eyes roll back. His fingertips dimple the flesh of your ass, pulling you down on him harshly until his cock is rammed as deep as it can go, only to lift you with ease and reveal the pearly cocktail gathering between you on the base of his shaft. He peeks his eyes open to look at you, transfixed by your bouncing breasts and the shiny quality of your neck, an urge to lick a stripe up the skin overcoming him and gifting you with the sensation of his tongue tracing a ragged line from chest to chin, tiny mountains prickling the skin in pursuit.

“Fuck, I’m close,” He grunts as he brings you forward until you’re leaning over him. Your head hangs over his shoulder and your legs drop back down to the floor, having unraveled with your new shift in weight, and Jimin just keeps sinking lower and lower in his seat with every bounce of your hips. He buries his face in the crook of your neck, whimpering praises and forcing you to go faster with his hands. But your muscles are already starting to fatigue and your legs begin to tingle with pleasure. “Where do you want me, baby?” It’s through the grit of his teeth that he strains this, veins pressing through his skin and sweat gluing your chests together, and you can only think of one answer.

“Inside me, Minnie-“ Before you can even finish the last syllable, his hips snap up into you, the strong muscles in his arms working to hold you above him so he can fuck you relentlessly from underneath. You feel his teeth sink into your shoulder, his breath held tight in his chest as he focuses on reaching that long awaited orgasm, and it’s all you can do to moan and encourage him with your fingers twisted in his scalp. There’ll be bruises on your ass for sure from how he lifts you and from the rapid fire smacks it receives from every thrust. Feet planted, arms tense, you know your boyfriend is ready to crumble.

“Tell me you want it.” He muffles into your skin, voice shaking with effort.

“I want it, baby. Want you!” He huffs at this, stuttering out of rhythm as he brings your body down to meet his, hitting you in a spot that makes you go blind with pleasure for a second. You’ve always known him to be a slut for praise and validation, and this time is no different, your words being the drop that breaks the dam, frenzied moans pouring from him with his last few thrusts, your hips slamming down to cement him inside you while his whole body twitches and rolls. This is the hardest you’ve seen him cum in a long time and you want to pull back and watch the beautiful expression painted all over his face, but he’s busy sculpting indentations of his teeth in the crook of your neck. His hands slide up your back as he begins to calm down, though you can still feel him throbbing inside you. Your walls clench at the feeling, close to their own peak, and it’s then that Jimin removes his mouth from you, collapsing back on the unsteady chair and looking up at you with the most content and satiated look you could imagine. As if he had been suffering a great pain and it had finally been relieved.

You watch him with joy at the sight of his relief, but he can still see the lust and need swimming in your eyes. Not wasting a second, he stands and turns you so that you are now the one in the seat, it’s leather sticking to your skin from his damp adhesive. Jimin lowers himself between your legs, the long forgotten laptop behind him illuminating you as his eyes feast on the sight of your glistening core. His cum hasn’t started leaking yet, but your own wetness stains your lips regardless.

It’s almost a surprise when you’re met with his tongue, half expecting that he’d just use his fingers to avoid tasting his own mess, but Jimin dives in eagerly with his long tongue, sucking your swollen clit between his lips skillfully. You clench at the feeling, returning your hands to his hair, and the rhythmic pulse of your walls pushes out his seed to seep slowly down your lips. He licks it up easily, groaning against you at the combined taste, and honestly, seeing him close his eyes in bliss as he tastes his own cum in you is probably your new favorite thing. Unable to stop yourself, you begin to rock your hips against him, whining and cursing as you near your edge. The feeling of him dipping his long pink muscle into your leaking cavern is what sends you into your orgasm, and he gratefully cleans up everything you have to offer, swirling his tongue a few more times just to watch you jump from sensitivity before pressing kisses along your inner thighs, all the way up until he reaches you lips.

You kiss like that for an unspecified amount of time, you were so lost in his talented mouth that you have no idea how much time has passed. It could have been seconds, it might have been minutes. You couldn’t care less. When Jimin finally pulls away for air, you loop your arms around his neck, your body lifting with his as he stands to his full height. He closes the porn site that is still displaying the white replay button to the video that now seems repulsive to him. Post-nut clarity at its finest. Once he walks you both to the bed (your legs just drag lazily as he pulls you along), you plop down and simultaneously sigh.

“I needed that, thank you.” He whispers, though you doubt it’s from sleepiness.

“I needed it, too, little vampire. I’m glad I came home to that.” You giggle, the stress of the day effectively replaced by the pleasant buzz of your lingering high.

“Little vampire?” This time you’re giggling from the lift of Jimin’s eyebrow, completely unaware that he has marked you with his teeth. You turn your head to give him a view of it, and he gasps, apologizing profusely with kisses to the darkening bruise.

“Minnie?” You say when it’s quiet again. He hums. “If this whole school thing doesn’t work out, let’s become a cam couple, okay?”

“What?” Not expecting you to ever say anything like that, he is rightfully appalled.

“I’m pretty sure I failed both my exams today, so I’m preparing my plan B for when I get kicked out of school. Plus, I know for a fact that I can give better blowjobs than the girl on that video you were watching, so we’d probably do really well. I hear pornstars make a lot of money.” One look at you and he knows you’re completely serious, which makes the situation that much funnier. You stare at him with a goofy smile as he laughs, wrapping his arms around you and pulling you closer.

“You’re not going to fail out of school, silly.” He says between chuckles. You shrug. “Don’t talk like that, you have a brilliant mind and you’re one of the most determined people I know. You’ll succeed for sure.”

“I know, I’m just a bit overwhelmed at the moment. This did help, though.” You look down at your naked bodies for emphasis, cuddling comfortably into him.

“I feel exactly the same way. How about we spend the rest of the night de-stressing. We can eat dinner, take a long bath, have a movie-“

“Dinner!” You gasp, only just realizing that you left your leftovers in the oven before Jimin... distracted you. You hop up and run to the kitchen still buck ass naked, and he follows, rounding the corner to see you pulling out an undistinguishable lump of charcoal from the oven. You look absolutely defeated.

“Well, I guess we’re ordering in tonight.” He stifles a laugh when you pout, dressed in nothing but your mint oven mitts and a frown.

So he orders something greasy and unhealthy, and you spend the night wrapped in each other’s arms binge watching addictive shows and cuddling, erasing the world until it’s just you two in your own bubble inside your shared apartment. And it’s better stress relief than anything you could imagine.

#Jimin smut #jimin scenario #ficswithluv #ksmutclub #bts smut

638 notes · View notes

rawmeknockout · 4 years ago

Note

Am I the only one tired of men dressing in feminine clothing and getting praised for it? Its not that difficult to put on a garment. What would actually be impressive is if men did the chores on their own, stopped acting on aggression, and took others into consideration. Overcoming socialization will always be a more powerful statement than some eyeliner wearing schmuck that creeps on girls on tiktok in his free time.

okay yea this esp if its cishet white boys yes bc a lot of them do the absolute minimum of femininity for praise online but would never wear it in public in case they were mistaken for the gay or GASP trans

but yes attractive white boys get heaps of praise online for shit that literally everyone should be doing and should be allowed to do openly its not strong for you to get called sweet and king by 50 million girls online

edit: i reread your ask and saw you mentioned socialization and that’s a word that tends to get used by terfs so i want to clarify that there’s no place for radfem rhetoric here; being cishet doesn’t exempt people from real life danger if they do present outside traditional gender boundaries

i have definitely noticed, on tiktok in particular, 100% stupidly straight men attempting to garner praise from their mainly female audience by doing things seen as traditionally feminine, but having their egos stroked is probably the least offensive thing they could do with a huge platform

it’s not dangerous it’s just dumb and ofc i’m an advocate of women raising their standards bc i feel like we’re always told to lower our expectations of men

#asks #Anonymous

18 notes · View notes

x--daughters-of-darkness--x · 3 years ago

Text

JINJER'S TATIANA SHMAYLUK: "I WILL GET REVENGE"

Go inside the Ukrainian metal group's new album 'Wallflowers'

Jinjer has teamed up with Revolver for a limited-edition bundle that includes the band's Summer cover story and a Wallflowers vinyl variant on 180g white wax. It's limited to only 300 copies — pick up yours now.

Tatiana Shmayluk wants revenge from beyond the grave.

As a woman fronting Ukraine's biggest metal band, she deals with endless bullshit. Comments. Snide remarks. Trolls. These dudes — and they are all dudes — might doubt her motivations. They might have something to say about her looks. Her clothes. Her uncompromising attitude. They might even attempt to throw shade on her high-flying vocal acrobatics or ferocious performances. But attempt is the key word here — in any and all cases.

Shmayluk is having none of it. If she can survive an upbringing in war-torn Ukraine, she can survive the haters. If she busted out of Eastern European obscurity to become an international star, the shit-talkers cannot touch her. If she can be held up as a role model by young women around the world, the power clowns cannot clown her.

Besides, there is post-mortem retribution to consider: "When I die, I will get their asses."

She says this with a laugh, perhaps because she understands that most of the people reading this won't believe it. But make no mistake: She means it.

Then again, undead reprisals won't be necessary. As it turns out, revenge is a dish best served with a heaping side of unmitigated success. Shmayluk fronts Jinjer, one of the premiere djent-prog bands on the planet. As of this writing, they have over 250 million cross-platform streams and views. They have nearly half a million monthly listeners on Spotify. Their 2017 live studio performance of "Pisces" — arguably their biggest song — has over 51 million views on YouTube.

Shmayluk and her bandmates — guitarist Roman Ibramkhalilov, bassist Eugene Abdukhanov and drummer Vladislav "Vladi" Ulasevich — somehow manage to combine metalcore, djent, prog, nu-metal and even R&B and reggae into a musical style all their own. Not bad for a group of young musicians from a conflict-ridden corner of the world that most Americans can't even point to on a map.

On the day Shmayluk and Abdukhanov speak with Revolver, Jinjer are in France recording their set for Hellfest's "Hellfest at Home" streaming event, which will replace the beloved annual metal festival — usually held in the sleepy French village of Clisson — with pre-recorded and contact-free sets from some of metal's heaviest and most popular bands. Such is life in what we hope are the waning days of the pandemic.

"Things with the pandemic are way worse in Ukraine than in the United States," Abdukhanov tells us. "Very few people have managed to get vaccinated. We are in line and waiting our turn. And because we haven't had the vaccine, we had to stay in quarantine here in France for seven days. We had to pay for this extra task just to be able to come here. It's a deep pain in the ass."

"In Ukraine, the shops will be open today but closed tomorrow," Shmayluk adds. "It's constantly on and off. But I didn't go sit in restaurants and things like this, anyway. I want to just be at home."

Both Shmayluk and Abdukhanov spent the early days of the COVID outbreak in Los Angeles. Jinjer were in Mexico when the remainder of their Latin American tour was cancelled, so Abdukhanov went to see his pregnant wife. Shmayluk went to visit her boyfriend, Alex Lopez of deathcore troupe Suicide Silence. She stayed for the remainder of her visa. "I was addicted to Amazon," she says. "Every day I ordered something. I got my first DSLR camera and some other photography equipment. Me and Alex got a huge fish tank — the Rolls-Royce of fish tanks. And then another tank. And another tank ..."

"Our American tour was supposed to start in April 2020, and it had not been cancelled yet," Abdukhanov explains. "We didn't know the situation fully, so we thought it might still happen — or part of it, maybe. So, it seemed reasonable to just stay in America. Of course, by the beginning of April the tour was cancelled, and it was clear that this thing would last very long."

The pandemic's enforced downtime did have a creative upside: Jinjer wrote and recorded their new album, Wallflowers. "For the first time in our whole career, we finally had time to write songs, practice them and go to the studio very well prepared," Abdukhanov says. This time around, drummer Ulasevich wrote the bulk of the material. Before he got started, the band collectively decided that they had to branch out from their last album, 2019's Macro.

"We knew for sure that we had to change the sound because we couldn't allow our album to sound the same," Abdukhanov offers. "All of us wanted some-thing new, and we had a very clear picture: We wanted the bass and guitars to be very aggressively distorted. Vlad, as always, had a very clear idea of how to change his drum sound and drum parts. As for the music, we never try to expect something from our new material. We just write music and let it flow. I think this will never change for us."

The result is somehow Jinjer's most aggressive and melancholy album to date. From the anguished, woozy groove of opener "Call Me a Symbol" and the dizzying, caustic metalcore of "Copycat" to the moody seesaw of "Vortex" and the airy, ominous dreamscape of the title track, Wallflowers is next-level Jinjer. "A lot of new elements are on this album," Abdukhanov confirms. "For people who are not familiar with our music, it can be complicated listening. But I think our fans are prepared for it. They got used to expecting what they don't expect."

At first, Shmayluk wanted to call the album As I Boil Ice, after Jinjer's new song of the same name. But the title didn't fit with the floral cover art they had already selected. They added an icicle to the image, but that didn't seem to help the situation. They ultimately decided on Wallflowers, which relates to both the artwork and Shmayluk's lyrics. "When I started writing lyrics, it was January 2021 and I was back in Kiev," she says. "Alex had come to visit, but it was time for him to fly back home to L.A. We had spent a lot of time together and now I had to learn to be alone. I didn't want to do anything socially oriented. I was just walking in circles in my apartment, making a huge hole in the floor."

Shmayluk's self-imposed isolation, underscored by the pandemic, set the stage for a more personal approach to her lyrics. At first, she started writing in Russian. Then she switched to English. "Vortex" was the first song she finished. "It's about a person who overthinks a lot," she explains. "Have you ever experienced that thing where you just cannot escape your thoughts? Your head becomes so heavy, like a ball of lead. It's about to explode. It can lead to depression, basically: You cannot stop, and you fall into it. That's the vortex."

As of this writing, "Vortex" is set to be the album's first single. The band has already filmed a video for the track. Shmayluk hopes the song can provide a kind of temporary support system for those who might need it. "Sometimes songs help me to overcome my emotional issues," she says. "Even with sad songs, they can make you feel you are not the only one who feels this way. It really eases your pain if you can find compassion to heal a sad heart."

Album closer "Mediator" is the result of an online personality test that Shmayluk took at the suggestion of a friend. "I'm always ready to do some psychology and self-analysis," she enthuses. "The result I got was 'mediator,' which has to do with compassionate, sensitive people. I feel this is basically another word for 'introvert' or 'wallflower' — it's all connected."

"But the song is about when I was younger," she adds. "I was an idealist. I wanted to see things as perfect and people as kind. But the reality is harsh. You grow up and you realize you still have a lot to learn — a lot of lessons that can't be taught in school. Life lessons."

The title track directly addresses the album's over-riding theme: Shmayluk's struggles as an introvert. "I've met a lot of people who have no idea what extraversion or introversion is," she says. "I explain it in this song so that hopefully people can relate. Introversion can be a problem for people who think that there's something wrong with them. If you are a wallflower in school, for example, people will mock you and bully you. When you grow up, you will realize you were just born this way."

"Society rejects people like her," Abdukhanov adds. "Society rejects people who stay inside. They think there's something wrong with these people because they are not part of a herd."

"That's true," Shmayluk says. "It's been hard for me to fit in with most people."

Which is probably why she feels so close to her bandmates in Jinjer. "They are my best friends and almost my only friends," she says. "It's really hard for me, as an introvert, to find new friends. Most people want an open book. They want you to just blah-blah-blah all the time. That's how they get information about you. But you have to read me if you want to know me, and most people are too lazy to do that."

"They want everything fast," Abdukhanov adds. "We live in a consumer society, and people are consumers even in relationships. In a way, you could say this album is like a manual for dealing with introverts."

"If you are patient with an introvert, you will discover the treasure," Shmayluk says. "You will have a friend for life. I think it takes a year or two to get to know me, and then dude ... you cannot shut me up!"

Abdukhanov knows Shmayluk better than most. They've been in Jinjer together for a decade. "Over the last 10 years, I think I saw her and talked to her more than anyone else," he says. "Because we're constantly on tour. We went through the nine circles of hell together. We played small clubs with only 10 people in front of us, and now we play huge stages for thousands of people around the world. This journey made us a family."

Of course, the haters are still out there. Lurking. Judging. Commenting. "I try not to read comments, but sometimes it is impossible not to see anything," Abdukhanov says. "I helped to manage some of our social media, and I cannot help but see some exchanges. But it doesn't hurt me much, fortunately."

"We are strong," Shmayluk says. "And I will get revenge."

#tatiana shmaylyuk #jinjer #2021 interviews

4 notes · View notes

awadhenterprises · 3 years ago

Text

The Consistently Thoughtful And Always Elegant Appeal of Architect Salwar Suits

Salwar Kameez Gets An Enormous round of commendation once more, Here's the manner by which one Can Style It, in the Most ideal way!

Think it or not, the method of utilizing a pretty pastel salwar suit is never more outdated. Not exclusively is the clothing just to the middle, however, it is additionally added a legitimate one for the sketchy environment states. Be it an irregular capacity or a set one, fashioner salwar suits will not get one wiped out. Not simply is this finished issue free, it is more normal nowadays because of the limitless assortments conceivable. Salwar kameez is a right on target choice for most women on practically all focuses. With a wide assortment of styles and plans alluring, it is likewise important to tell which one changes somebody. However, styling a salwar kameez might look basic it sure requires heaps of parts that ought to hold the charge of.

A fast interpretation of the various arrangements of salwar kameez

Gone are the occasions when salwar kameez recently suggested that one straightforward style. These days, there are multiple methods of salwar kameez potential. The current plans hold Angrakha Salwar Suit, Anarkali Dresses, front-cut salwar suit, Coat Style Salwar Suit, high-low salwar suit, and so on

Anarkali Suits

Anarkali suits are the typically selected clothing types for each event. The glimmer and the different shading keys make them a drawing on schedule for a cost. Anarkalis are not difficult to utilize and furthermore will one including an incredible look. Low on present-day and enormous on style, Anarkali bunches are an absolute necessity have for anyone who likes utilizing ethnic clothing types. One can likewise look for ethnic wear online in Rajasthan.

Angrakha Salwar Suit

In case somebody is looking out for a group that will set up a "Goodness" to the style then one ought to select Angrakha things. The overlying layers and the tufts give wind to the single salwar kameez plan. One can likewise hit a popular internet-based dress for women to get those lovely pieces.

Coat Style Suit

A coat style local area is an always popular course in the division of Indian ethnic style. The said comprises of two stories for example the kameez and its cover. A coat-style set consolidates a touch of uniqueness to the traditional techniques. One can meet this imprint by running with expanding shading groupings on the exhibits and the kameez. This outfit looks incredible when the game needs somebody to give in a further developed way.

Front-Cut Salwar Set

Cuts are as of now not restricted to western individuals; this pattern needs to grow a trend in ethnic style. The front-cut salwar kameez series is interesting to the mind and has a high cut stretching out from the center segment. On the off chance that one needs to investigate a little and need to take a stab at something else then front-cut way bunches are the way of working.

High-Low Salwar Suit

The high-low square shot with Kurtis insignificant, however, this strategy has been grown firmly in things as well. The high-low salwar kameez association works with the breadth of the kameez introducing it to a particular vibe!

End: Salwar Kameez resembles that no lady at any point gets depleted or tired for the matter. Their reaction is unendingly is a "Yes". They love anything they love to dress and Salwar kameez is one of them. In case anybody is looking for a connected sort of Salwar, Kurti, or any extra ethnic wear, they should Detect "Wrap ethnic" once. For specific, they will appreciate it and never misremember the existence that they will pick here.

For More Info :- Ethnic Kurti Set Online Shop India

#Ethnic Kurti Set Online Shop India

1 note · View note

shemakesmusic-uk · 4 years ago

Photo

youtube

Simpson is a Richmond-based singer and rapper who you may also know as Babe Simpson, one-fourth of the Tumblr-born rap collective Barf Troop. They dazed the internet back in the early 2010s with their uncensored, forward-thinking rhymes and aesthetics, and even got the attention of Drake. Though the collective has gone silent in recent years, Simpson has since cultivated her own steady following around her soft, and ruminative tunes. Her latest is 'Cherry Ice Cream Sundae,' a song about "treating ourselves with as much tenderness as we treat everyone else," she says, and is backed by a lush landscape of jazzy guitars and drums — a sound that could be considered a close sibling to the rap lullabies of Noname. Simpson's now sharing the song's peculiar video, which features a charming but eerie cast of marionette puppets. Over email, Simpson explains that she wrote the song after experiencing "a feeling that I’ve always been trying to put into words but I don’t think I was mature enough to be able to sing. I reached my breaking point where I was like, f*ck it, whatever happens, happens, and I’m gonna look on the bright side everywhere I can. I’m going to 'smile because I can.' I actually changed the original opening lyrics from 'The world is in the shitter' to 'Life is kind to who’s kind to it back.' The world has always been in the shitter, but that hasn’t made it any less special or sweet. I think that’s made me much more of a realist. I recorded it tipsy, upside down, hanging off my bed as a freestyle, and it felt so natural saying and listening to it back made me feel so proud." [via NYLON]

youtube

Earlier this week, Lana Del Rey revealed the artwork and tracklist for her new album Chemtrails Over The Country Club. Back in October, Del Rey shared the album’s lead single 'Let Me Love You Like A Woman.' It was the first song she shared from the album after postponing its planned September release. Now, she’s sharing the album’s second single and title track. She’s also announced that Chemtrails Over The Country Club will be out March 19. In a lengthy interview with BBC Radio 1 — during which she talked about the Trump insurrection and her album cover controversy — she mentioned that Jack Antonoff produced much of the album, minus 'Yosemite,' which was produced with Rick Nowels. Watch a music video for the album’s title track, directed by BRTHR, above. In a different kind of statement, prior to the release of the 'Chemtrails Over The Country Club' music video, Del Rey explained why she is wearing a cast in it: "When you see my second video for this album, don’t think that the fact I’m wearing a cast is symbolic for anything other than thinking I was still a pro figure skater. I wiped out on my beautiful skates before the video even began after a long day of figure eights and jumps in the twilight of the dezert. Anyways my fracture isn’t that bad kind of goes with my new bucket hat. Thanks to my beautiful family for my gifts." [via Stereogum]

youtube

Joining forces for the new uplifting track, G Flip and mxmtoon are sharing new empowerment anthem ‘Queen’, produced by Rostam Batmanglij. "'Queen' was written about the strong women around me, the queens that raised me and the queens I’ve met through my years,” G Flip explains. “My idea of a queen is not necessarily linked to gender; queens come in all forms and walks of life. To me a queen embodies power and strength; they embrace all they are fiercely yet gracefully. The song was written one sunny day in LA, I was chillin on Rostam’s lovely white couch and he turned around to me and said ‘how about we write a song about Queens’ and I replied with ‘F@!K yeah!’. I’m also super stoked to have mxmtoon on the track with me, she is an absolute queen. I first was introduced to her when I was trying to find ukulele chords to a Khalid song and found her cover on YouTube years ago. She makes awesome music and her voice has such a cruisy timbre to it so I was thrilled to have her jump on 'Queen' with me. She is also an avid croc lover and part of the LGBTQIA+ community, so obviously it just made sense!” mxmtoon adds, “So happy to be a part of ‘Queen’ with G! she and Rostam were such a joy to work with and so so much fun to collaborate with on creative as well. I’m so glad that it’s still possible to make art and music with someone even when they’re on the other side of the world, and I’m lucky that I got the opportunity to feature on G’s song. ‘Queen’ is a power anthem for any person, and I’m so excited for people to love it as much as we do!” [via DIY]

youtube

With her hotly-anticipated new album Magic Mirror out now, Pearl Charles gave us our latest teaser of what to expect earlier this week, sharing new glitzy bop ‘Only For Tonight’. “‘Only for Tonight’ tells the story of a currently bygone era of wild nights out on the town - the highs and lows of one night stands and the crashes of the morning after,” she explains. “The music video, directed by Bobbi Rich, leans into those excesses, paying a sparkly homage to the late-night musical television shows of the 70’s, from Soul Train to The Midnight Special, as well as the gauzy, Vaseline’d lens of ABBA’s music videos. With an added sprinkling of VHS special effects, you’re likely to feel like you’re watching a home-taped recording of a lost episode of Top of the Pops.” [via DIY]

youtube

Alt-pop trailblazer dodie has shared her new single 'Hate Myself' in full. Everything the songwriter touches seems to turn into melodic gold, with her debut album Build A Problem landing this Spring. Out on March 5, it's led by new single 'Hate Myself', which made its bow as Annie Mac's Hottest Record In The World. It's an apt title, with this instantly-viral moment offering an "inner monologue" that touches on some of dodie's inner-most feelings. The song depicts "someone who seems to find themselves in relationships of any kind with people who deal with their feelings internally - unfortunately resulting in assuming the issue is with them." dodie co-directed the video alongside Sammy Paul, shooting at the Cornish seaside village Polperro. The pair "excitedly landed on the silly idea of the training leading up to becoming a post-lady, and thoroughly enjoyed planning the many bizarre exercises she would have to perfect. Our excellent Art Director, Louis Grant, worked on bringing her home and training station to life. Though jogging on cliff tops in the rain, carrying a large sack and slipping in the mud was certainly cold and exhausting, I think I preferred it to slowly feeling sicker, licking stamps on a swaying boat by the Excel." [via Clash]

youtube

Berlin-based indie five-piece People Club are back with new single and video 'Francine', following on from their last release 'Lay Down Your Weapons', which focused on police brutality. The new single 'Francine' tackles the topics of addiction and lovelessness. In the words of the band: "The song speaks from the voice of a lamenting partner whose lover (Francine) is helplessly addicted to drugs. Francine lost interest in her relationship with the narrator a long time ago. It's a song about commitment and how love can fade away leaving only wickedness behind." Regarding the visuals, the band said "The 'Francine' video is a play on the old idiom of 'being your own worst enemy'. A phrase which quite beautifully captures the inner critic which we know so well, especially during the course of the pandemic - we've had to learn to each give ourselves a break. The video was shot in the depth of the harsh Berlin winter, in the depth of the pandemic." Director Felix Spitta added "I love the band and I love the different personalities. It is always heaps of fun working on creative output together. Riding through Berlin only with bikes and all the film equipment in the freezing cold almost felt like a masochistic idea from Saxon. It's inspiring to be surrounded by so many creative minds.”

youtube

Pale Waves are back with 'Easy', the third single to be shared from their highly-anticipated second album Who Am I?. Lead vocalist Heather Baron-Gracie describes the new track as "a song about how love can change your whole entire perspective on life itself. It’s saying ‘being in love with you is so easy, you finally make sense in my life because nothing did before'." The new single is accompanied by a James Slater-directed video that shows Baron-Gracie performing at a Tim Burton/medieval-style wedding in an abandoned church. Baron-Gracie adds, "I wore a wedding dress throughout and we shot the video in an old abandoned church. I’m really inspired by the gothic medieval aesthetic and at the time I was thinking of the video I was watching a lot of Tim Burton films whose creativity really inspires me." Pale Waves' second album will follow their 2018 debut LP My Mind Makes Noises. Baron-Gracie says of their upcoming album, "For me, music and art is for people not to feel so alone and isolated. I want to be that person my fans look up to and find comfort in." [via the Line Of Best Fit]

youtube

The official video for Zoe Wees’ new single, 'Girls Like Us,' is online now. Like the song, the clip sends a message of togetherness and solidarity to girls around the world who are feeling the pressures of society. Zoe Wees says, “It’s not always good to think about how you look to the rest of the world. It’s much more important to think about how you feel inside. It is not easy to call yourself beautiful but being confident helps you to accept and love yourself.” The 18-year-old Hamburg, Germany-based artist adds, “We’re walking through a world with blinded eyes. At the end of the day, we all go to bed without make-up with the ugliest clothes and wake up with the messiest hair on earth.”

youtube

Julien Baker has shared a new taste of her forthcoming album Little Oblivions by way of a new single ‘Hardline’. Julien says, “A few years ago I started collecting travel ephemera again with a loose idea of making a piece of art with it. I had been touring pretty consistently since 2015 and had been traveling so much that items like plane tickets and hotel keycards didn't have much novelty anymore. So I saved all my travel stuff and made a little collage of a house and a van out of it. I wanted to incorporate it into the record and when we were brainstorming ideas for videos we came across Joe Baughman and really liked his work so we reached out with the idea of making a stop-motion video that had similar aesthetic qualities as the house I built did. I don't know why I have the impulse to write songs or make tiny sculptures out of plane tickets. But here it is anyway: a bunch of things I've collected and carried with me that I've re-organized into a new shape.” The video for ‘Hardline’ was directed by Joe Baughman, who notes: “Man, even after having spent 600 hours immersed in ‘Hardline’ and having listened to it thousands of times, I am still moved by it. It was a fun and ambitious challenge creating something that could accompany such a compelling song. The style of the set design, inspired by a sculpture that Julien created, was especially fun to work in. I loved sifting through magazines, maps, and newspapers from the 60s and 70s and finding the right colors, shapes, and quotes to cover almost every surface in the video.”

youtube

Teenage Joans are staying true to their world and unveiling 'Something About Being Sixteen', a new single that's sure to cement their 2021 as victorious. It's the perfect successor to 'Three Leaf Clover' and a track that makes it two-for-two for Teenage Joans, further capturing the excitement and energy within Cahli and Tahlia as they trade catchy riffs and thriving choruses with the combo of light-heartedness and intimateness that seems to define Teenage Joans' work, and how they're able to look in at themselves (and out at the world around them) through a lens that keeps it fun and digestable. "'Something About Being Sixteen' is undoubtedly Teenage Joans' great take on the classic coming of age rock tune, generally closing our live sets with audiences singing along every time without fail," the duo say on the single. [via Pilerats]

youtube

Kate Hollowell took a risk going by the moniker Number One Popstar when she released her debut single 'Psycho.' However, Hollowell didn’t mind if that choice set her up for failure or not. She goes with the flow. Luckily, that mentality has advanced her even farther. Now, Number One Popstar releases her second single, 'I Hate Running.' New Year’s resolutions are, most of the times, created for the wrong reasons. It’s also no surprise that majority of people’s goals center around exercising and weight loss. 'I Hate Running', however, challenges that mindset, satirizing the toxic nature of exercise industry and diet culture. Hollowell said herself, “The song explores facing the hard, emotional work instead of the physical. I really don’t enjoy running, and I wanted to troll the exercise industry and write an anti-motivational song.” In terms of sound, 'I Hate Running' shares similar vibes to her first single with its classic 80s pop of saturated synths. But, this time, there’s a hint of disco with the zealous psychedelic guitar and electric drums and keys. The interludes consist of a symbolic, robotic, and almost sinister snippet from a workout instructor. It all complements well with Hollowell’s escapist lyrics. Even though the lyrics say otherwise, the track’s sound might just spark that motivation to workout or dance, doing mindful movement that makes us feel good. Exercise should never feel like a punishment, and Number One Popstar is here to remind us. She makes us want to stick it to the exercise industry, proving to it that we will only work out for the right reasons. [via Earmilk]

youtube

Alt-pop riser Chloe Rodgers has shared her new video 'The Algea' in full. The Nottingham based talent sparkled in 2020 in spite of the pervasive gloom, releasing two startling singles. Her third release could be her best yet, with 'The Algea' hitting streaming services just before Christmas. The video captures those mid-winter chills, while providing a platform for Chloe to express herself. Constructed alongside creative director Kate Lomas, it was shot at Newstead Abbey in Nottingham. Chloe comments... "I wanted to use a music box in the video to represent being objectified and getting stuck in the same cycles, as that’s largely what the song is about. I wrote the song when I was 18, but didn’t add the verse at the end about claiming my power back until a couple of years later when I felt a bit stronger. We tried to reflect this in the video too with the Chloe in white sort of protecting the other Chloe of the past." Kate Lomas adds: "This was such a joy to watch come together, the video concept is based around the idea that Chloe is the character in a music box, she’s the performer that’s spinning round on an endless cycle for other people’s entertainment. The video tells the tale of Chloe definitely breaking this cycle and no longer playing this role." [via Clash]

youtube

Jaguar Jonze has announced her ANTIHERO EP will be released on April 16 via Nettwerk Records. With the EP announcement, Deena shares the official music video for her latest single, 'ASTRONAUT,' the follow-up to two previously released videos for 'DEADALIVE' and 'MURDER'. Each of the five music videos for the forthcoming ANTIHERO EP will come together through bold-palette videos that transform into an antihero character “in a cyberpunk, anime, futuristic, graphic, almost sci-fi world,” says Deena. Deena adds, “as ‘ASTRONAUT’ delves into my anxiety, I wanted the film to reflect that in a simple way that helped portray how my anxiety can sometimes manifest - a contradiction between feeling lost in vast spaces and trapped in claustrophobic spaces. I had a specific idea in mind, which meant that I had to undergo stunt training with professionals and learn how to maneuver in a wire harness. Most of the video had to be shot in a single take because of the stunts' nature in safety preparation, time consumption, and impact on the body. I'm still recovering from the bruises, but it was all worth it, and the team was amazing in pulling it all together. I'm proud of this one as it is 3 minutes of my rawest vulnerability, visually interpreted. I'm also finally ready to share it.” 'ASTRONAUT' is the sound of Deena liberating herself from a lifelong battle with anxiety. “It is a human trait. It’s how we survive in the wild,” she says. “We’re all wired as humans to be quite anxious. As females more so, because we’re more susceptible to danger.”

youtube

Rising star Mulay shares the smoking visuals for her new single, ‘Antracyte’. It’s the culminating release in a three-part video series from the Berlin-based alternative R&B singer-songwriter/producer/artist, ahead of her highly anticipated EP, which comes out at the end of the month via Groenland Records. Mulay explains about the single, “'ANTRACYTE' is the intro and title track to my debut EP. It’s the soundtrack to the birth of a villain and captures the moment of complete honesty to yourself about the awareness of doing wrong by the ones you love while feeling the inability to turn around. It’s about the desire to taste forbidden fruits, to cross and explore what lies beyond the line and the self-empowering feeling of playing by your own rules defeating the fear of consequences and the power of moral concepts. 'ANTRACYTE' tells a story of contradicting emotions, a story of love, lust, pain and a longing for more. It’s about facing your own darkness and sins, about self-revelation, emancipation and about paying its price, resigning to your fate.”

youtube

Only a band like shallow pools could make a blast of 'ice water' sound refreshing and necessary in the dead of New England winter. But the Massachusetts indie-pop group is usually pushing against the current of what we’d normally expect, and now the quartet hits us with a dose of cold reality through their new single and video. 'ice water' is a vivid new single that confronts the mental health struggles brought on by quarantine and isolation, and even the shallow pools aesthetic has reflected this by shifting from bright glowing neons to a more subdued color palette of beiges and browns. Call it a sign of the times, and call 'ice water' the sound of now; upbeat and jovial on the surface, a comet of pop smarts and hooks, but with the darker shine that resides in our lives when we’re positioned away from the screens and digital scenes. As Glynnis Brennan sings “Every day’s the same and / There’s no breaking out / Like I’m stuck here / Going through the motions now” well, we feel that. shallow pools describe “ice water” as “a departure from the music we’ve made in the past, but it’s the perfect bridge between our old and new sound.” That is certainly the case, and 'ice water' continues to showcase the group as one of New England’s sharpest, following a string of 2020 singles that included pop standouts like 'Haunted' and 'Afterlight'. “We wrote the song with our friend and producer, Chris Curran, and learned a lot about the type of music we want to be making in the process,” the band adds. “The song is about the impact that the state of the world has had on our mental health, specifically in the last year. We’re excited to share it and hope that anyone who has had similar experiences will find some comfort in knowing that there are others who can relate.” [via Vanyaland]

#videos of the week #simpson #lana del rey #g flip #mxmtoon #pearl charles #dodie #people club #pale waves #zoe wees #julien baker #teenage joans #number one popstar #chloe rodgers #mulay #jaguar jonze #shallow pools

3 notes · View notes