#i have also been thinking i should make more weather posts probably so that people are aware of the funky things happening in their area

[russell-crowe]

i tried to make a more sentimental post but as someone with the weather (and by extension space weather) as my special interest i am so so so so happy seeing all the posts from people who got to experience this rare solar storm <3 it makes me so happy when people get to witness how beautiful (space) weather can be!!!

[rhaenyratargcryen]

you're my shotgun lover and i want it all | tyler owens (twisters)

masterlist ❈

summary: Every once in a while, the two of you will get a little too drunk, stay until last call, sneak back to your motel room, and fuck. Nobody knows – at least you don’t think they do – and you never talk about it when you’re sober. Tyler will generally stay until you fall asleep, but he’s always gone when you get up the next day. Only once has he woken up in bed with you the next morning, and you’ve never made that mistake again. There isn’t a name for what you feel for him, you don’t think, and you can’t tell what he thinks of the arrangement. Clearly he likes it, or he wouldn’t be making eyes at you from across three people’s laps as you pull these peanuts from their shells. author's note: i...wrote this...in one.......single......afternoon. my fingers hurt anyway he's so hot i have had a crush on glen powell since 2018 (set it up supremacy) but this movie reawakened something in me. i should probably watch top gun now

pairing: tyler owens x f!reader word count: 9,123 (...oopsie) warnings/tags: pWp (with, y'all!), alternate universe: canon divergence, friends to lovers, friends with benefits

also cross-posted to ao3 okay love you bye xoxo your comments and reblogs are appreciated but not required i will love you all the same i hope u like !!!! <3

all characters are 18+ these are 18+ activities minors pls do not interact my eye is twitching as i write this 

It has been one hell of a week.

The tornadic activity has been off the charts – more storms built up under ideal conditions for weather hell-bent on destruction in a multiple-day stretch than you can remember ever tracking before. Your team had obviously been up for the chase, but now that the storms have passed, and the sun shines on the cleanup efforts, you can’t help but wish you’d chosen a different life path. You love what you do, but God, were you tired. Blisters have formed on the palms of your hands despite the gloves you’d donned. You could practically feel the knots forming in your neck. You shovel one more load of leaf litter before heaving the blade into the ground and leaning against it. Across from you, a backhoe is demolishing and excavating the remains of a house.

You close your eyes and try to just let the sun warm your face, thinking about how fast it can all just be gone. Mother Nature’s a beautiful force, but she can be cruel.

“Hey, don’t be slowin’ down on me,” Tyler jokes, clapping a hand between your shoulder blades. You hadn’t heard him approach, and his voice has startled you, pulling you from your thoughts. “We’re ‘bout halfway done with our part, I think.”

“No,” you reply, swiping the back of your arm across your forehead, trying in vain to clear your bangs from your eyes, but they won’t budge. Tyler reaches up and, almost as if he isn’t even thinking about it, takes the unruly pieces of hair between his thumb and forefinger and tucks it behind your ear, underneath the temple of your sunglasses, to make sure it stays this time. The action is so intimate it sends a flush crawling up your neck. You chance a look around to make sure no one else has seen. “Not slowin’ down, I promise. Just thinking about how lucky we are to be alive. How sad it is that all these people just lost everything.”

You’ve known Tyler since the two of you were in college together, fast friends who’d stuck together through a lot that could've put a strain on any other relationship, although you hadn’t studied meteorology – you’d been in school to be a librarian. 

One night, he’d asked you to stay up and help him with a lab he’d missed for one of his classes, and he loves to say he knew it then – that you were hooked – but you were too far along in your degree to do anything about it now. Switching from an arts degree to one in STEM? You’d have had to start over from scratch. 

Tyler had formed his team while you were in grad school and he was working as a cowboy for the rodeo back home, and you’d dropped out without a second thought when he asked you to be a founding member, to travel the country with him every tornado season. Said he wouldn’t – couldn’t – think about doing it without you. You’ve been riding with him ever since.

The two of you share everything, always have, and sometimes you wonder if it might be too much for the professional relationship you’re supposed to have.

“That’s what we’re here for,” Tyler grins, the hand still glued to your back rubbing gently, sending goosebumps across your skin under your shirt. “To help ‘em feel like their luck is turnin’.”

Always the optimist, Tyler Owens. He clears his throat, the hand on your back pulling away, and steps slightly closer to you.

“One of the folks over there gave these to me,” he says, gesturing to a group of people gathering in front of a house that looks like something had tried to suck it into the ground from dead center. “I saved their cat from their screened-in porch, poor thing had been yowling all night apparently. Know these’re your favorite, so, here you go. I think you earned it.”

You take the tin from him and open it, your mouth instantly watering at the sight of the small, round butter cookies inside. “God,” you groan, picking one up and taking a bite, savoring it over your tongue. You can feel Tyler watching you carefully. “Thank you. You get me.”

“Do we get cookies, Tyler?”

Lily’s voice sounds from your left, and you glance over at her. The shit-eating look on her face tells you she did see Tyler fix your hair for you. Your stomach somersaults.

“If you’re good,” Tyler says, smirking, “after the sun sets, we can head back to the motel, find some shitty bar, and drinks’ll be on me, okay? How’s that sound?”

Lily whoops, turning to Dani, who’d since appeared beside her, and the two snicker and fist bump. 

“You need any help over here?”

You look back at Tyler, cupping one hand above your eyes to shield them from the sunlight. Despite your glasses, it shines bright from directly behind him, and you can hardly stand to look at him. 

“Yeah, I’m good,” you murmur in reply, bending down to toss some siding that had been blown off one of the houses on this street into the wheelbarrow you’ve been using. “You should go see what Boone’s up to – I don’t think anyone has seen him in a minute.”

No doubt Boone was hiding somewhere with one of the breakfast burritos Lily and Dani have been rolling since early that morning, seeing how long he can get away with not doing his part. He’s a good guy, but the manual labor side of the job isn’t really his thing.

“Eh, he’s better off wherever he is,” Tyler laughs, and a small smile takes over your face, too. “Hey, you sure you’re okay? You don’t need a break? You can take a minute to yourself, no one’ll judge. I know how this can all get to you a little more than it gets to everyone else.”

You know him well enough to know he’s not calling you weak-stomached, that he’s genuinely concerned for how you feel, but he’s right. It does all get to you. Settling in to help survivors of these natural disasters is just something that comes with the chasing – there isn’t one without the other for you and the rest of the crew. You nod, glancing back up at him. 

“I’m okay, Tyler. Go off and be the face of the operation – you don’t have to worry about me.”

Tyler’s eyes narrow, his gaze shifting between your eyes, trying to find evidence you’re withholding the truth from him, but he seems to find nothing. With a minute tip of his head, he turns to resume working through a long-term plan for rebuilding the town with the mayor and some other members of the local government. 

This is something else you know he loves to do – shmooze with higher-ups, show off his people skills. Not only are they higher-ups, they’re small-town folk. His kind of people. He knows how to get through to them, how to get them to trust him. You love that about Tyler. He’s never condescending – he always has a genuine desire to help. He’s been through this hundreds of times, and these people may only have been through it this one time. You look around at them, at the people of all ages picking up the pieces that remain of their community, then cross your fingers and send a thought out to anyone listening:

Please let it be the only time.

After a few more hours of genuinely back-breaking work, you hear Tyler’s sharp whistle and know it’s time, meandering over to his truck where it’s been parked for almost eighteen hours. Using your teeth, you pull your gloves from your hands and hiss. They’ve been rubbed raw, the skin blistering where each finger meets the palm. You try to ignore the throbbing sensation, leaning against the passenger side door and closing your eyes. The rest of the crew sidle up to you, taking long drags from water bottles and cigarettes and trying to make peace with how you’re leaving this place tonight.

“Does anyone else want to break off to shower first?”

It seems Dani’s the only one, and they shrug, putting their hand out, palm up, to Dexter, who hands them the keys to the RV.

“Meet y’all there,” they say, stifling a yawn, and you know it’ll be a bit before you see them. The rest of you will have to pile into Tyler’s truck, and before you can object, the other three crawl into the back seat and leave you on the front bench with Tyler. You let yourself in and close the door behind you, buckling and watching as Tyler shakes someone’s hand and hustles to meet the rest of you. His Texans cap hits the bench before he does, between the two of you, and he turns his keys in the ignition, buckling his own seatbelt.

“Where we headin’?”

“There’s a place with a mechanical bull nearby. I vote there.”

“How nearby is ‘nearby,’ Boone?”

“Uh,” he pulls his phone from his pocket, does a quick Google to double-check. “Forty-five minutes?”

Dexter leans over and grips Boone’s phone, reading the screen. “In the opposite direction of the motel, Boone.”

Everyone groans, objecting, and you press your hand against your temple to alleviate the pressure there. The noise, God, the noise.

“Could we go somewhere closer to the motel, maybe?”

“It’s got a mechanical bull,” Boone stresses, and everyone rolls their eyes.

“Boone, you know damn well we’re not making it back to the motel if we go that far away.”

He groans, and you pull your own phone out, checking Maps to see what’s around the motel.

“This one’s three minutes from where we’re stayin’,” you say, showing Tyler your screen, and he nods, shifting into reverse, backing out, and starting down the one lane of the street that’s been cleared of debris. 

“Hey Boone,” you toss over your shoulder as Tyler shifts into second gear. “By the way. Long time no see.”

Lily snorts, smacking you on the shoulder to let you know she thought that was a good one. Boone shakes his head. 

“Hey, just because you didn’t see me all day doesn’t mean I wasn’t out there, too. How do I know you were workin’, weren’t sitting on your ass in the shade somewhere, hm?”

You hold your raw, red palms out for him to inspect and that shuts Boone up quick. Tyler whistles as he gets an eyeful of your skin.

“God damn, girl,” Lily murmurs. “That looks like it hurts. I think I might have Aquaphor in my bag back at the motel if you want some.”

“I’ll be alright,” you reply, knocking your elbow against her knee behind you in thanks. “Appreciate you.”

The rest of the drive is taken mostly in silence, everyone in the backseat trying to rest their eyes, but you stay up, your eyes on the road, so Tyler isn’t the only one making the thirty-ish minute drive back to where you’re staying, where you checked in only after it’d been decided which towns had been hit the worst, so you could reach all of them easily by truck.

“What’s goin’ on in your head? Hm?”

You turn to look at Tyler and he glances at you from out of the corner of his eye, then at your lap, at the fingernails you’ve picked down to the quick. “Real quiet over there.”

“Nothing,” you reply, your voice barely above a whisper.

“Don’t let Boone get to you,” Tyler says, tapping his right fist on your thigh once, twice, then letting it rest there. You brush your knuckles against his and he opens the fist immediately, taking your hand in his but not squeezing, careful not to put pressure on the blisters on your palms.

“It’s not that,” you start, then realize your mistake, your admission. “I really – I think I’m just tired. It’s been a long week.”

You’re acutely aware of your hand in Tyler’s. It’s not like you’ve ever been shy around him – your cheeks flush at the thought – but this is…different. Sweet. More.

“Yeah, that it has,” he sighs, adjusting his left hand on the steering wheel so he can drive a little more comfortably, but his right hand stays in yours. 

You settle back into silence, Tyler seemingly having dropped the subject, and your eyes return to the road, but you feel him looking over at you, checking on you, every once in a while. You try your hardest not to meet his gaze. 

Soon enough, Tyler is putting the truck in park, then shutting the thing off. The noise – or lack thereof, you guess – wakes Dexter in the back, then Lily, who snorts when she sees your hand in Tyler’s. You pull away and unbuckle your seatbelt, watching as Tyler, with a hurt look on his face, wipes his hand on his jeans and swings himself down and out of the truck.

“C’mon, Boone,” he shouts, slapping a hand on the door that Boone has his head resting against, and the man sits up straight, wiping sleep from his eyes. “The sun hasn’t even gone down yet. Drinks on me, pal!”

The motel really is that close to the bar, so you all decide you’ll leave the truck parked there and walk home at the end of the night. The unspoken verdict is that you will all be getting shitfaced tonight.

The lingering smell of cigarettes in the air seems to rejuvenate everyone and Lily pumps a fist when she spots the old-fashioned jukebox across the room, then claps a hand over her mouth when she realizes there’s a TouchTunes sitting right next to it.

“Oh, I am so forcing you fuckers to listen to Chappell Roan all night,” she says gleefully, and you laugh along with her, looping your arm in hers and letting her pull you across the room while the boys settle in at the bar.

“So what was that all about?”

“What was what all about?” You play dumb, shrugging when Lily gives you a hard look and unhooks her arm from yours.

“Girl, seriously,” Lily scoffs, bumping your hip with hers and slipping a twenty dollar bill into the TouchTunes. Evidently she wasn’t joking when she meant you’d be listening to Chappell Roan all night. “I saw that thing earlier, the hair thing, don’t think I didn’t. And y’all holding hands in the truck. What’s going on there?”

You shake your head but she grabs your wrist. “I’m serious, Lil. Nothing’s going on. We’re friends – good friends. He noticed I was having a hard time today, and wanted to make sure I was alright. That’s all.”

You can tell she doesn’t fully believe you, and when she opens her mouth to object, you cut her off.

“I’m gonna run to the bathroom, okay?”

Lily watches you, trying to read the small line between your eyebrows, but eventually she nods and lets go of you, letting you turn away from her. You push through the door to the women’s restroom, your nose wrinkling at the smell, but you ignore it. Standing in front of the sink, you watch yourself, hands shaking. This isn’t you. You’re better than this at shoving these feelings for Tyler down, way down – or, rather, you had been, up until this week broke you, apparently. Turning the knob for the cold water to the left, you let it run over your sore hands, hissing at the feeling. Carefully, you cup your palms and watch them fill, then splash the water onto your face, soothing the flush. There. That should help.

There’s a cold bottle of Coors in front of the seat next to Dexter when you arrive back to the group, “Red Wine Supernova” playing from the speakers. You almost snort at all the old men – regulars, no doubt – groaning out their distaste for whoever chose the music all across the room.

“Thanks,” you toss over your shoulder at Tyler, sitting on the other side of Dexter and Boone. He nods and nurses his own. You frown and settle onto the stool, leaning an elbow on the bartop so you can turn and face your friends. The cold beer against the palms of your hands feels so nice.

What’s wrong with him? He won’t make eye contact with you, and you notice his jaw clicking as he grits his teeth. What’s got his panties in a twist?

As the night unfolds, you find yourself laughing more and more, loosening up, letting the stress of the last week fade into memory. Someone has produced a deck of cards from God knows where and Dani – who did join the group eventually – is showing off card tricks you didn’t even know they knew. You feel a warmth spreading through your body, and you can’t stop thinking about how much you love all of these people. Your friends. Your family. Empty bottles are swiftly replaced with full, cold ones without notice, and everyone is languid, relaxed, unburdened by the work that you’re all doing.

You take a pull from your drink, using the cover of the bottle to risk a glance to Tyler three seats down from you to find that he’s already watching you, and the look in his eye tells you exactly what he’s thinking. That somersault-y feeling is lower than your stomach now. You’re only three beers deep, but the air in your head reminds you that you’ve barely eaten all day, so you’re a little more affected by the alcohol than you’d usually be. Impolitely, you reach across Dexter next to you to grab a handful of peanuts from the basket to his left.

Glancing back up at Tyler, you meet his heady gaze again, and he smirks around the lip of the bottle against his mouth. He knows he’s got you right where he wants you. You swallow nervously around another sip of beer.

Every once in a while, the two of you will get a little too drunk, stay until last call, sneak back to your motel room, and fuck. Nobody knows – at least you don’t think they do – and you never talk about it when you’re sober. Tyler will generally stay until you fall asleep, but he’s always gone when you get up the next day. Only once has he woken up in bed with you the next morning, and you’ve never made that mistake again. There isn’t a name for what you feel for him, you don’t think, and you can’t tell what he thinks of the arrangement. Clearly he likes it, or he wouldn’t be making eyes at you from across three people’s laps as you pull these peanuts from their shells.

“Alright, y’all,” Lily says, slapping a hand on the bar, startling you out of your thoughts. You watch her, popping a nut into your mouth. “Think I’m gonna head out. I suggest you all do, too, fuckers, it’s late.”

Everyone starts to protest, but one glance at the clock tells you you’ve all stayed much longer than you thought – it’s a quarter past midnight, and you’ve got to be up with the daylight. You balk, but if you want to talk to Tyler tonight, you know you’ve got to shoulder your exhaustion and stick it out a little longer.

“I think I might stay for a bit,” you murmur, watching everyone stand and gather their things. You glance over at Tyler, who you can see clearly now that everyone’s out of their seats, and he’s watching you, too. The look on his face reads plain, now – he wants you.

“I’ll stay with her,” he says, eyes on yours. The green in them has disappeared almost completely, you notice, his pupils blown wide. “Walk her back. Y’all head back if you want.”

“I might stay, too –” Boone’s voice cuts off, coughing as Lily elbows him in the stomach, maybe a little too hard. “What the fuck was that for?”

“You’re going to bed, too, Boone,” Dani interrupts, a hand on his shoulder, guiding him towards the door. They poke him once when he starts to protest. “C’mon, now.”

Everyone shuffles out the front, Dexter calling good night, and all of the sudden, it’s just you and Tyler. You don’t know why, but your palms begin to sweat at the thought of being alone with him again. He stands, palming his drink, and slides onto the seat next to you, his body angled towards yours.

He’s never made you nervous like this. You don’t know what the fuck is wrong with you.

“So,” Tyler starts, grinning at you. “You come here often?”

You snort, emboldened by the booze, and he chuckles in response. “Idiot.”

“God, but I do love making you laugh.”

You blush under his scrutinous gaze, and take a quick swig of the dregs of your drink, unsure what to say to that. He mirrors you, taking a sip of his own while his eyes bore into yours. Accusatory.

“You don’t do it much anymore, you know that?”

“Do what?”

“Laugh.”

You press your fingertips to your mouth and Tyler’s eyes follow your hand. “I guess I just haven’t had much to laugh about lately,” you start, sighing deeply. “Tornado season’s been hard this year, and you know how much that – it gets to me. As much as I love what we do. You know. Remember that family a couple weeks back whose daughter was stuck under her bunk bed when it pressed on her too long, lost her leg below the knee? That got to me, Tyler. It did.”

“It gets to me, too,” he murmurs, knocking his knee against yours. “I guess I’m just better at hiding how bad it affects me. You can talk to me about it, though. You can talk to any of us.”

“I know I can,” you breathe, trying to keep your hands from shaking. “I know. Sometimes I don’t know what to say, though, you know, what is there to say? It’s not fair to complain about how sad it makes me to watch these people lose everything.”

“You’re allowed to feel sad. And to feel frustrated. It’s not fair, you’re right, but we’re doing good work, yeah? Fighting the good fight. Figuring out what makes these things tick, how to warn people when they’re in the path, get them outta the way and safe. Maybe they lose their house, their car, but they won’t lose themselves, or each other. That’s what matters most. Just remember that.”

You look up at him, set your elbow on the bartop, and prop your chin on your open palm. Your hands don’t hurt so bad anymore, you notice. “Thanks, Tyler.”

“Anytime,” he smiles, but you shake your head. 

“Seriously. You always know what to say.”

A look crosses his face then, too quick for you to read, and he sets his drink down, flagging the bartender over to close out the team’s tab. You frown, wondering if you’d, ironically, said the wrong thing.

“What’s up?”

Tyler looks back to you, and this time, the look in his eyes is unmistakable. It burns. “Taking you home, sweetheart.”

The walk back to your motel is done in silence. Tyler’s hand swings next to yours, and you feel it searching for yours more than once, but you don’t take it. You climb the stairs together, slowly, and he walks you to your door. His room is one more floor up.

You can tell he thinks you won’t invite him in, that you’ve changed your mind – or maybe that you never made it up. He hadn’t, after all, told you plainly that that was why he’d stayed with you at the bar. You unlock the room with your key card and step inside, opening the door only far enough for you to fit through it. You turn back to look at him, his face awash in the street lights shining into the hallway. You flip the lightswitch on next to you, illuminating the room behind you, too.

“Well,” he murmurs, making to head back down the stairs. “Good night.”

“Tyler?”

His head turns back to look at you, watching as you hold out one hand and he takes it, letting you pull him closer to you. You press yourself into him, push your whole face against his chest, your hip keeping the door from closing on the two of you. You inhale deeply, the smell of him overtaking your senses. His cologne, yes, but underneath that, the smell of dirt, earth. Home.

You feel his arms wrap around your back and you turn your head to the side, press your ear to his heartbeat. Your hands come up to scratch down his back and you feel it when he shudders.

“Stay?”

You hear his breath hitch in his chest, then the deep rumble of his voice as he says, “Alright, baby.”

With a short inhale, your eyes flutter, nearly closing at the term of endearment. You step back, pulling him with you, and as you close the door behind you, he pushes one hand up into your hair and pulls your head toward his.

“I, uh,” you whisper against his lips when they get close enough to yours, “I think I might shower first, if that’s okay with you?”

“Alright,” he murmurs, unlacing his hand from the strands of your hair before toeing his boots off and carefully setting them under the chair next to the front door. “You want company?”

You swallow. You’ve never done anything like that before. It’s always been quick. When you do this with him, you hardly ever have time for a chat before he’s got your shirt over your head and his mouth on your skin.

“Sure,” you reply. You feel him watch as you turn around and pull your shirt off, reaching back to unclasp your bra. The modesty feels redundant, but you can’t help it.

“Not gettin’ shy on me now, are you? S’not like I haven’t seen you naked before,” he chuckles, and you throw a look at him over your shoulder just as he’s pulling his own shirt over his head. He left his hat at the bar, you think. You’ll have to go back in for it when you pick up the truck.

“Tyler,” you scold, and he laughs at you, steps across the room to wrap an arm around your torso and press a kiss to where your neck meets your shoulder. The place he knows makes you melt. You sigh and push back against him, the feeling of his hard chest against your bare back a welcome one. This feels more like what you know, what you’re used to.

“Shower,” you remind him, and he nods, his forehead pressed into that spot now, and he pushes his fingers underneath the waistband of your jeans, running them along the bit of skin there around to the front, where the fabric splits at the button. He pops it undone, then uses his thumb and forefinger to grip the zipper and slowly – so slowly – pulls that down. He can’t help himself, you know that, and so you hold your breath and wait for him to push his hand into your panties. Ever a predictable man, he does just that, and you gasp at the feeling of his warm hand against you.

“Are you sure?” Tyler’s breath against your neck makes you shiver, and you press your ear to the side of his chin. He runs his fingers along the seam of you, finding first your clit, your legs twitching at the sudden rush of pleasure when he brushes his hand against it, then pushing down to find you wet and wanting. You cry out softly. “You don’t sound sure. You don’t feel sure.”

You hum, your neck stretching back until your head is pressed to his chest, and he pulls his hand back up to start working small circles on your clit, your wetness on his fingers allowing for smooth movement, with just enough friction to have you panting for more. 

“Sounds more to me like you kinda want me to fuck you with my fingers.”

“Tyler,” you whimper, telling him with just his name that you are getting close. He smiles against the side of your neck, pulling his hand away and shoving your jeans and underwear down just enough that his hand has room to smack your clit lightly. You squeal, right leg kicking out at the feeling, and he continues moving his hand in circles to soothe the hurt.

Your breath is coming out of you in short huffs, and before you can come, Tyler takes his hand off of you and wraps it around your stomach to join the other. You pant and whine, rubbing your thighs together to chase the feeling he’d had you practically pressed up against, now ebbing with the loss of his fingers.

“You said you wanted to shower,” he whispers in your ear, pulling your panties back up, and you scowl, pushing away from him. He laughs and holds his hands up in defense as you pick your t-shirt up off your bed and crack it at him like a whip. “Let’s shower, baby.”

“I might kick you out right now, Owens,” you snark, but the small smile on your face gives you away, and Tyler unbuttons his own jeans, leaving them in a pile on the floor at the end of the bed. Your jeans join his, and you’re both left in your underwear.

“You wouldn’t,” he replies, pulling his briefs off slowly, biting his bottom lip as you watch him. “You like this cock too much.”

You can’t help laughing at him, but the sight of him bare in front of you does have you biting your lip. You step forward to cup his growing length in your hand. Before you can move it, Tyler puts a hand on your wrist.

“How’s your hand?” He makes to pull it away, presumably to turn it over and appraise your blisters, but you shake your head.

“S’fine,” you whisper, tightening your grip. You tug once, twice, and press a kiss to his bare chest, then tip your head back to search out his lips. He leans down to oblige you, his lips parting against your mouth as you twist your fist. You love these moments you share with him, when you’re both bare, physically, emotionally, away from the real world, and you can pretend this is an everyday thing. When you’re not trying to tell yourself you feel nothing for him. Like this is just how it is between you.

Tyler groans when you pull your hand away from him and you click your tongue, press that same hand against his bicep.

“Doesn’t feel so good, now does it?”

Before you even know what’s happening, Tyler is picking you up, one arm underneath your back and the other around the backs of your knees. You look up at his face and laugh. “Put me down, Owens!”

He grins and carries you the few paces into the bathroom, placing you on your feet in front of the tub. Tyler leans down and pushes his thumbs underneath the waistband of your panties, waiting for you to put your hands on his shoulders and step out of them.

He lets you pull away from him to turn the hot water on, adjusting the cold side until the temperature is perfect, before pulling you against his chest once again. This time, you can feel his hard cock pressed against your backside, and you hum appraisingly. You reach behind you to fist him again, but he shakes his head – you feel his chin brush against the top of your head – and he groans out, “Mm-mm.”

“What?”

“We’re gonna shower, baby, c’mon.”

You glance back towards him and watch as he flicks the overhead light on. “So we don’t slip and die,” he says, and you laugh, pushing the shower curtain to the side. Holding Tyler’s hand, you step over the lip of the tub and under the steady stream of warm water, inhaling deeply when it hits the sore muscles in your shoulders and back. Tyler groans at the feeling, too, when he steps in behind you.

“Here, switch with me,” he murmurs, guiding you by your waist until you’re the one underneath the water. You let it fall onto the top of your head, over your face and down the back of your hair, for a moment, eyes closed, relishing the feeling. Tyler reaches both hands up and brushes the water out of your eyes, runs his hand over the top of your head. 

“Shampoo?”

You open one eye, the other shut against the water, and nod. You gaze up at him, heart squeezing at the way he’s watching you. His smile widens and he takes the tiny bottle in his hand – it looks even more comically small now – and dumps the product into his other palm, setting the bottle down onto the edge of the tub and rubbing his hands together.

“Turn around.”

You do as he asks, inhaling sharply through your nose when you feel his hands run through the hair at the crown of your head. Your stomach aches with longing as you register how unnaturally intimate this is. His fingers feel so good against your scalp, which is slightly sunburnt, you’re now realizing. He massages the shampoo further into your hair, running his fingers down the back of your neck and across the tops of your shoulders. When he’s satisfied with his shampoo job, he steers you by your arms to face him again, then carefully helps you tilt your head back and rinses it all from your hair.

You watch him pick up the other small bottle from the shelf, warm water still running down the back of your head. 

“I’ll do my conditioner,” you murmur, taking the bottle gently from his hands. “It’s a – it’s a science.”

“I am very good at science, if you can recall.”

You laugh, shaking your head. “It’s something I’ve gotten perfectly right. It’ll take just a sec.”

So you work the conditioner through the ends of your hair, avoiding his gaze as he watches your hands first coat your hair in the product, then rinse it out. He reaches forward to run his own fingers across it, as gently as he can.

“Hm,” he makes the noise in the back of his throat, pulling his hand away. “Soft.”

You can hardly look at him, the twisting feeling in your stomach shifting to something warmer, something further from apprehension, something that feels a lot like want. “You?”

Tyler shakes his head. “I’m good. Here,” he says, rubbing his hands across the plane of your upper back. “You’re tense. You worked hard today. Let me help.”

You weren’t going to protest, but before you can, Tyler guides you forward and out of the direct spray of the shower, then presses his thumbs into your muscle. You groan, your head falling forward onto his chest at the feeling, and he chuckles at you, continuing with his hands. “Feel good?”

“So good,” you whimper, and you feel his cock twitch against your stomach.

“You fucking dog,” you joke, and Tyler laughs against you, pushing your hair off the back of your neck and pressing his thumbs in there, too.

“Hey, what can I say? I like making my girl feel good.”

You freeze. His girl? His girl. He hasn’t noticed your reaction, and he keeps pressing his fingers into your sore muscles, pulling one hand away briefly to push the showerhead down and away from the two of you. You glance up, already missing its warmth, but you find that the steam rising around you is doing a good enough job at that.

“Here, baby,” he murmurs, pressing a kiss to your forehead and guiding you to press your hands against the tiled wall to your left, running his hands down your back.

“What are you –”

Before you can finish the thought, you feel Tyler’s fingers parting the seam of your cunt from – from behind, and you groan at the feeling of his middle finger slipping inside of you.

“That’s it, sweetheart,” he groans, his knees hitting the floor behind you. You toss a glance at him over your shoulder and your own knees nearly buckle at the way he’s looking up at you – with hunger, and with reverence, and with something else entirely unrecognizable. He looks wild. He looks in love.

One of Tyler’s hands clamps down around your hips and he leans forward, pressing a kiss to the back of your thigh as his finger starts to shift in and out of you. You shiver and push your face into the cool tile, groaning softly when he finds that rough bit of flesh inside of you, the one that makes you come undone if he works it long enough.

“Yeah?” Tyler sounds fucked out already, his voice breathy against your skin, and you can picture the look on his face, the concentrated expression he gets when he’s trying to make you come. You try to focus on the feeling of the shower’s spray where it hits the edge of your foot rather than how good his finger feels inside you because if you think too closely about how good it feels, you’ll get lightheaded. And nobody wants that.

“Yeah,” you reply weakly, and for a few minutes it’s just like that, the only sound in the bathroom the shower, your panting moans, and the noise your pussy makes as he pulls his finger in and out.

“Sound so good for me, baby,” he says, pressing a kiss to the back of your thigh again, and you whine, trying to protest when he slips his finger from you. He laughs deep in his chest and lightly smacks the swell of your ass.

“Don’t complain when I’m doin’ somethin’ nice for you,” he jok, and you can feel then that he’s shifting himself around. You want to look over your shoulder, want to see for yourself what he’s doing, but freeze when you feel his palms cupping your ass, his nose pressing against the inside of your thighs.

Your mouth forms the word oh, but no sound comes out until you feel his mouth press against your cunt, tongue pushing inside of you, and then you cry out, chest heaving, when he presses a sloppy, wet kiss to your clit. You pull your face from where it’s still resting against the tile and look down at Tyler to find he’s already looking right up at you. His grip on your ass tightens when you make eye contact with him, and he spreads you open wider for him, eyes narrowing as his tongue flicks again, and again, and again.

“That’s it, sweetheart,” he moans against you, the vibrations causing your legs to twitch. You already thought you were going to burst, the steam from the shower, the way he’d washed your hair, the fact that he was in your room at all – it all made you feel slightly insane. To add insult to injury, he’s just pushed two fingers inside of you and immediately found the spot that takes you out, and you start to shake a little.

“Tyler,” you whine, pushing one hand down to grip his hair. He groans when you tighten your hold on it, fucking into you a little faster. “Tyler, fuck, gonna come.”

“So come, baby,” comes his reply, and you do, you come so hard that the toes on your right foot curl until you’re on tiptoe and Tyler has to reach up and grip your waist to steady you. You feel it crest, and peak, then subside, but he keeps working you through it, his mouth moving against you still, and a second, smaller – though still good – orgasm wracks your body right after the first.

You breathe through it, push your foot down so you’re standing flat on the surface of the tub again, and wait for Tyler to pull his fingers out of you. 

“Baby,” Tyler groans, squeezing your hips, his fingernails biting slightly into your skin. “You gotta let go’a me, if you want me to get up.”

His voice, fuck, his voice, you think, releasing your grip on his hair and turning to watch him rise from his knees, the tile cold against your back. You surge forward to kiss him square on the mouth and he catches you, smiles against you when you part your lips to taste yourself on his tongue.

“Was that good?”

“Yeah,” you breathe, pressing one, two, three more quick kisses to his mouth, before he reaches behind you to turn off the water. “So fucking good.”

Neither of you bother with a towel, instead opting to stumble toward the queen bed in the middle of the room and climb right underneath the covers.

“Hi,” you whisper when you’re settled in, the duvet pulled up under your chin. Your eyes rove over his face, then glance over to the alarm clock behind him. 1:56 in the morning. “You still wanna fuck?”

Tyler snorts, reaching over to poke you in the side, gripping the skin there until you start to laugh. “You still wanna fuck?”

“Yeah,” you reply, grinning, when you catch your breath. “Wanna?”

He’s quiet for a second, watching the duvet rise and fall with each breath you take, before he peels it off of you, using his elbow to push himself up until he’s leaning over you. There’s a rosy flush on your chest, your breasts heaving and it’s all he can do not to lean down and take one of your nipples in his mouth, the one closest to him. Instead, he runs the back of his other hand across your chest, catching against the hard peak, and watches your breath stick to the inside of your throat. You feel yourself subconsciously leaning toward him as his face comes toward you. You want him to kiss you, but instead, he angles his mouth to kiss the skin below your chin.

“You’re so beautiful,” he breathes against your neck, pressing his open mouth to you there, and you gasp at the feeling – of his mouth against you, and of his praise. It all feels so nice. He just made you come in the shower, and now he’s going to make you come in this bed, hopefully more than once. 

You wrap your hands around his back and pull him toward you, watch as he settles in between your thighs. You can feel his thick cock, heavy, insistent, where it presses against you, and you want to take him into your hands, but he has other plans. 

With one hand pressed into the pillow on either side of your head, Tyler uses his knees to knock your legs out further, sitting back against his heels when he’s satisfied. He wraps his big hands around your thighs and pulls you closer, smiling down at you. “You’re so beautiful.”

You blush when he repeats himself, suddenly feeling very bare. He’s just as naked as you are, but you can’t help but feel like he’s seen your whole hand, meanwhile you hardly have any idea what cards he might hold. In the dim light from the lamp beside your head, you notice that you can see the green of his irises again. It seems like the shower sobered the two of you up very quickly.

His gaze locked on yours, Tyler takes himself into his hand, groaning at the pressure of his grip after neglecting his own want for so long, but he suddenly curses, pausing just as he’s about to press inside of you.

“What?”

“I don’t have a condom,” he breathes, sitting back again. He runs one hand through his hair, visibly weighing the options.

“It’s okay, Tyler,” you murmur, leaning up onto your elbows. “It’s okay. I have an IUD, and I got screened after the last time I was with someone. I’m good. I’m good if you’re good.”

Tyler heaves a heavy sigh, running his hands up your thighs. “You’re sure? I’m clean, too, cross my heart. But only if you’re sure.”

You nod. “My head is clear. I think I shook off my drunk an orgasm or two ago.”

A grin crosses his face, and you roll your eyes at him before he even opens his mouth. Two? he mouths, then whistles lowly. You smack his stomach, and he grabs your wrist in his hand, lightning quick, pressing a kiss to the pulse point there. Your jaw falls slack, and you go all soft and pliant, letting him pin your hands above your head. His body comes down over yours, and his mouth presses to your cheek, then your forehead, and when your eyes flutter shut, the ghost of a kiss crosses them, too.

“I’m gonna fuck you so good,” he murmurs, and normally if a man were to say that to you, you would immediately regret letting him into your bed. But for some reason, when Tyler says it, it sends that familiar warmth spiraling down into your gut. You know he means it.

Slowly – too slowly – he guides himself back to your entrance, shifting his hips so they’re resting comfortably against yours, and he presses himself inside of you. You hiss; the girth of him, although a welcome stretch, is also a bit of an uncomfortable one. He leans down to kiss you, working you through it with a thumb pressing circles into your clit, sliding himself in bit by bit until he’s fully seated. 

A groan pushes out of him when you clench around him, testing the waters.

“Careful,” he murmurs, easing his hips back. “I’d like it if this lasted longer than ten seconds, please.”

You laugh against the side of his head, pull your hands down from where he’d left them above you and wrap yourself around his shoulders, pulling him flush against you. Tyler grips your thighs and starts to work himself in and out of you, carefully, gently, but you squeeze his waist with your knees. Encouraging him. Asking him to pick it up. You can handle it.

His hips start to pull back and snap against yours quicker and quicker, Tyler panting in your ear, lifting up onto his palms and pushing himself off of you. He sits up onto his knees and tilts your hips up for a different angle, one that sets sparks dancing in front of your eyes. You groan, head tossed back, and dig your nails into his thighs as his pace picks up.

“Fuck, yeah, that it, baby? I can feel you – fuck, feel you squeezin’ me.”

You hardly have a voice with the rate he’s slipping in and out of you, barely enough to squeak out, “Fuck,” before your cunt has him in a vice grip, working through another orgasm.

“Ohhh, that’s it, huh, that’s it.” His mouth is going a mile a minute, neither of you really paying much attention to anything he’s actually saying. You’re both focused on his own mounting orgasm – you don’t feel like your body is capable of much more than that – and you weakly clamp down around him once more. His eyes squeeze shut, his hips stutter, and he grits out, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck fuck,” before he slots against you and you feel him filling you. You run a hand down his back, soothing him as he comes, biting your lip at the feeling, foreign but enjoyable.

Tyler groans and glances down to where his cock is softening inside of you. He eases his hips back, cupping your face and pressing a kiss to your forehead as he does. “Shit, I’m sorry, are you okay?”

You nod meagerly, pressing the back of your hand against your warm cheek. He watches you and, assured that you’re not going to pass out on him or anything, stands and hobbles into the bathroom. The sink turns on out of sight, and you close your eyes, listening to the water run. Tyler returns with a warm, wet towel and wipes the inside of your thighs, swiping gently across your cunt, before folding the towel and letting it fall to the floor at your bedside.

You feel loose, calm. Safe. You hardly notice him turn the light off, but you do feel the bed dip beside you as he rejoins you under the covers and pulls you into his arms. You melt against his sturdy chest, his heartbeat under your face a comfort, the rhythmic tick tick tick of it lulling you to sleep. But there’s still one thing you have to know before you can relax completely.

His breathing has started to even out, but he hasn’t snored yet, so you know he’ll still hear you when you ask, “Are you gonna leave?”

He grunts an acknowledgement of your question, nuzzling down into the top of your head.

“Do you want me to stay?”

You know your answer, but you still bite your lip, considering the question. You hadn’t thought before that maybe he left after every night you spent together because he thought you didn’t want to wake up with him. “Yes.”

“Okay,” he murmurs against your hair, pressing a kiss to your temple. “Then I’ll stay.”

If he’s at all worried about what will happen when you wake up tomorrow, he doesn’t show it, but anxiety courses through you at the thought of anyone finding out. Does he want the others to know? Because that’s what it feels like.

“Stop thinking about it,” he whispers, like he can hear your thoughts racing. “It’ll be fine. Just go to sleep.”

Easy for him to say. He’s out like a light. And you’re left alone with your thoughts until you fall into fitful, dissatisfying sleep sometime around when the world outside starts to turn blue.

A pounding on your door wakes you from deep sleep – the deepest you’d gotten all night, at least – and you try to sit up but find there’s a heavy weight on your chest blocking you. You rub the sleep from your eyes, glancing down at the sleeping body next to you. It takes a second for it to register: Tyler’s here. 

Tyler’s here. Sidled up against you, arm thrown over your stomach like this is where he belongs. He didn’t leave. He stayed, like he said he would. His face looks so peaceful – so beautiful – you almost hate to wake him.

“Come on, sleepyhead! Time to get a move on!”

Almost. You scramble to push Tyler off of you, ignoring his noises of protest, jumping out from under the covers and grabbing various articles of clothing off the floor to pull over your naked form. You plop back down on the bed, this time on his side, right next to where he’s starting to wake.

“Dude, get up, they’re gonna know you’re not in your room. They’re gonna know you’re in here.”

“So what,” he grumbles, rolling over as you push him and settling deeper into the bed. “Let ‘em.”

You sit up straight, one hand on his arm. “You mean that?”

He hums and turns his neck to glance at you over his shoulder. “Yeah, ‘course I do. You’re my girl.”

Your face flushes a deep pink and Tyler grins, reaching over to wrap an arm around you and drag you back down into the bed, pinning you under him and peppering an assault of open-mouthed kisses all over your face. You grin, thinking that you could get used to this – just not right now.

“Seriously, Tyler,” you laugh, pushing a hand against the side of his face. He squeezes your hip. “We have to get up. We gotta get back out there.”

Tyler sighs, loosening his grip on your body and kneeling over you. “Yeah, you’re right. Alright, alright.”

He stands and takes the top sheet with him, wrapped around his waist, and heads to the bathroom. To brush his teeth, you hope. God.

“You know,” he says, head popping back out into the room, mouth full of toothpaste. “Yesterday. I wanted them to see us holding hands.”

You watch as he smiles at you and disappears back into the bathroom, then fall back onto the bed, hands pressed over your eyes. 

Fifteen minutes later, the two of you are dressed, teeth brushed, hair taken care of, day packs slung over your shoulder, and you’re pulling the door closed behind you when you hear a whistle that pulls your attention to the parking lot.

“Damn, Owens!”

The voice makes you jump, and you groan. You thought you were going to get away with the sneaking around, but the rest of your team is watching from next to the RV as the two of you descend the stairs together.

Lily and Dani turn to Boone with smug looks on both their faces, and he rolls his eyes and pulls his wallet from his back pocket. They hold their hands out for him to slap two twenty dollar bills down into.

“What’s that?” You ask when you get close enough to them.

“We had a bet that you and Owens would come out of that room together. Well, that one or his. Didn’t matter which.”

“A bet I just lost,” Boone groans, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes. “I thought for sure…”

The rest of the crew snickers, including Tyler, who won’t look at you. You poke a finger into his chest.

“Did you know about this?”

“No, I swear,” he says, hands up, and you don’t know why, but you believe him. “That doesn’t mean I didn’t drunkenly confess to Lily weeks ago that sometimes we, you know…”

You scoff, almost mad, but then Boone shouts and the scoff turns into a snicker because, hey, you love him, but you can’t help but relish in his defeat.

“So they knew?! That’s cheating!”

He storms off while the rest of you laugh, Dani clutching their side and following him around the side of the building to try to make amends, trailing off, “If it makes you feel any better…”

Lily looks over at you, then at Tyler, a grin swallowing her face. “So, are you guys, like, together now? Or something?”

You look up at Tyler, who’s smiling softly at you, clearly deferring to you to answer that question. You feel a surge of affection for him swell in your chest. Clearing your throat, you turn to Lily.

“Or something.”

[mishellii]

♢ᴘᴇᴛ ɴᴀᴍᴇꜱ ʜᴇᴀᴅᴄᴀɴᴏɴꜱ♢

naruto, sasuke, shikamaru, kiba, shino, neji, iruka & kakashi

a/n: sooo,, i SHOUld be working on my uni essays and on the bf!neji texts BUT this had been sitting in my notes app for a while so i decided to post it ;D (the neji texts will come soon i promise). some are longer, some are shorter for which i apologise,,,,,, please ignore typos, i can't spell & enjoy MWUAH

likes & reblogs appreciated <3

warnings: some NSFW parts! MINORS DO NOT INTERACT! :) also not proofread as usual

masterlist

♢ɴᴀʀᴜᴛᴏ ᴜᴢᴜᴍᴀᴋɪ♢

✿oh my baby boy

❀first off: angel. 100%.

✿because u are his angel u feel me

❀he can't go a day without telling u

✿then also just the basic baby

❀but mostly when he wants something from u or he's apologising for dumb stuff he's done

✿puppy eyes and all

❀and also during sexy time

✿it's his most used name for u there

✿fight me on this

❀big on his own self made nicknames for u

✿for instance: u fell down the stairs once?

❀"hey, stairs, how you doin'"

✿and just silly ones like: boo, pookie, apple of my eye

❀he's weird like that c'mon we been knew

♢ꜱᴀꜱᴜᴋᴇ ᴜᴄʜɪʜᴀ♢

✿now this guy is a wild card

❀he'd prefer ur name through & through

✿but he'd slip in a casual babe sometimes which makes ur knees weak obviously

❀because he barely ever calls u that

✿if ur married he'd only call you his wife

❀doesn't even let you answer questions on your own sometimes just so he can hit them with

❀"well, MY WIFE, thinks you suck ass, so.."

✿during sex he can be quiet mean 

❀I DONT THINK in the derogatory way but more in a teasing way

✿"c'mon, sweetheart, look at me."

❀when ur just about to black out??

✿but like i said 

❀not big on pet names but he'll use them more often if he knows u enjoy it <3

♢ꜱʜɪᴋᴀᴍᴀʀᴜ ɴᴀʀᴀ♢

✿pretty

❀just pretty bro.

✿not ALL THE TIME, especially not in public as i don't think he's big on PDA

❀but in the comfort of ur own 4 walls? definitely

✿now don't HATE ME for this but,,,

❀woman. and brat.

✿but only in petty situations, like when ur scolding his lazy ass and he hits u with a "go easy on me, woman, i just woke up."

❀or u've been going on his nerves while he's working

✿,,i'm busy, brat.''

❀in bed tho???

✿love or doll

❀i'm almost CERTAIN.

✿like,, can u imagine?? in his dumb fucking charming voice ???

❀PFFF i'm on my knees 

♢ᴋɪʙᴀ ɪɴᴜᴢᴜᴋᴀ♢

✿now this fucker

❀teasing names through & through

✿ur shorter than him? 

❀"hey, shortie, need help?"

✿ur taller than him?

❀"hey, giant, how's the weather up there?"

✿he's a DICK ok (affectionately ofc)

❀but he can be sweet too i promise

✿he's having fun with calling u bunny during sex or simply baby 

❀also ???? "okay, boss." when he's been annoying u all day and u finally snap at him?

✿he's a menace with nicknames i'm telling u

♢ꜱʜɪɴᴏ ᴀʙᴜʀᴀᴍᴇ♢

✿you probably guessed it and bully me if you'd like but,,,

❀bug or lovebug

✿come oooon he loves his bugs AND he loves you?? it fits PERFECTLY

❀not one to do it infront of other people either but in your private space he just wouldn't stop calling you one of these

✿i also see him using the regular honey but the abbreviation so hun because it's short and sweet and he doesn't like those long ass names

❀apologies if ur name is long LMAO mine is too tho

✿takes the hun into the bedroom but prefers a gentle love while having sex

❀shino's not a sweet talker in my mind, but the pet names make up for it FOSHOU

✿ALSO big brain idea i just had:

❀i think shino can't fully express his emotions verbally so before going on missions he definitely writes u letters and that's where he's blooming

✿''u keep me going everyday, sunshine.''

❀and it doesn't even matter if you have a bubbly personality or not

✿UGH lovesick fr

♢ɴᴇᴊɪ ʜʏᴜɢᴀ♢

❀this pretty princess doesn't even know ur name when ur alone with him 

✿ESPECIALLY when ur texting

❀sweetheart, love & darling

✿he'd make u fall in love over again whenever he calls u one of those i'm just saying

❀because he's always so sincere when he's talking to u it drives me crazy just thinking about it 

✿during sexy time too, he would NEVER

❀& i will die on this hill 

✿NEVER use any degrading names for u

❀ur his baby don't make him do that

✿even when ur fighting, he'd always address u in such a kind way i'm actually going insane

❀"have you had dinner yet, dear?"

✿ sedate me pls

♢ɪʀᴜᴋᴀ ᴜᴍɪɴᴏ♢

✿AAA this guy

❀soo,, like father like son,,, angel

✿u can't change my mind

❀being the kind hearted person he is, it just fits u can't tell me off

✿but i will also say he'd use some funny ones in private because we all know he's just a silly lil guy deep inside

❀i'm thinking toots & peach

✿especially when greeting u !! like ''ey, toots, how's it going?''

❀during sex he will be quiet awkward at the start of ur relationship, settling in angel as he's most familiar with it at first

✿but after some time he'd pull a babydoll or gorgeous on u

❀i mean,,, i'd cry but idk about y'all

✿oVERALL he loves using pet names and wouldn't be opossed to u calling him some sweet ones as well <3

❀call him handsome and he'll go through the roof

♢ᴋᴀᴋᴀꜱʜɪ ʜᴀᴛᴀᴋᴇ♢

✿AHEM

❀so this man,,

✿at the start of ur relationship he's such a shy lil bean so he'll only use your first name

❀but once he's been with you long enough he gets so so comfortable

✿starts of with the regular baby because u are his baby aight.

❀his most frequently used one too i'd say

✿but then he'd go like 

❀"hey, beautiful." "y'alright, sweetheart?"

✿and idk about u but i'd faint

❀HE KNOWS ABOUT HIS AFFECT ON U TOO

✿uses it against u during sex SO OFTEN

❀grunting a "there y'go, darling." into your ear with a sly smirk on his lips 

✿i'm (s)creaming

❀but he's a very private person so don't expect too much of that in public !!

✿a side from a "yes, ma'am" when u tell him not to die on a mission <3

a/n: i hope this doesn't SUCK ahemm,,, and i'll see you beans next time bye bye x

devider by @enchanthings

[theminecraftbee]

the summer before THE END...

(this fic contains @hotguycomiczine spoilers! go read it first! i'll wait!)

It’s midday. The sun is heavy and hot, bearing down against the asphalt and visibly making the air shimmer over the road. Summer in Hermitopia can be miserable, and frankly Cuteguy thinks it’s far more miserable than the bruises. The humidity makes his feathers stick together and itch in awkward ways, he’s sweaty twice over because he hadn’t had time to actually wash his costume between the last major villain attack, his recent part-time line cook job, and then this fight.

He’s in his early thirties and he’s becoming an old man, he thinks. His knees should not hurt this much, and yet here they are. Vigilantism is going to give him early arthritis.

They’ve driven off the villain. Didn’t manage to catch him, though. He wasn’t even from Hermitopia. That’s been happening more lately; people who see Hermitopia as some lawless wasteland where they can come visit, avoid drinking any water, and live out their dreams of being a comic book character, damn the consequences or collateral damage. It’s frustrating. Sometimes, deep in Cuteguy’s soul, he sort of thinks the Soup Group has a point in calling out all this bullshit.

Of course, they do all that murder about it. So. Not much better, really.

He leans against a building and tries to breathe. Normally he has a water bottle with his costume, but this guy had homemade napalm. Luckily, not real napalm! The water did work for putting out the fire! Unfortunately, it’s ninety-seven degrees and humid and Cuteguy has just done enough cardio that he’s honestly worried about the odds he passes out. 

Out on the street, Hotguy is chatting with every civilian he comes across. He’s grandstanding. He’s giving blow-by-blows. He’s acting like his sweat doesn’t stink like a mere mortal’s. He has a water bottle, and he’s taking sips of it between chats with reporters and posing for cameras. There are enough cars and civilians that Cuteguy isn’t all that worried about the TCG yet. Hotguy’s still pretty damn wanted, what with the whole possession thing that they don’t exactly have the means to prove to the public, so Cuteguy’s got to keep an eye out for them, but with this many cameras on him? The TCG isn’t about to arrest him on camera. Despite everything, he's still too charismatic; he'd still make them look too bad. 

Cuteguy wipes his forehead again. He does notice when someone starts approaching him; he might be exhausted, but he’s acting as Hotguy’s situational awareness while he’s busy playing up crowds. He can’t afford to be that exhausted, so he isn’t. That, and the woman approaching him is hardly as stealthy as the Bleeding Hart. Another thing he might have to give to the Soup Group were he willing to give them credit for anything: he’s never been able to fully stop noticing where everyone is around him. Hotguy had winced and called it “hypervigilance”. Cuteguy had said that he wasn’t any better, he just calls it a superpower. Hotguy had said it is hardly his fault his superpower promotes vigilance. Cuteguy had—

“Uh, good fight. Thanks,” says the woman.

“Oh, uh. You’re welcome,” Cuteguy says.

She’s tall and blonde. Also, she has four arms. Cuteguy should have probably noticed that first, but he didn’t, and that’s on him.

“Bit of a mess, especially in this weather. Hotter and they’d issue a heat advisory, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Cuteguy says.

He is not good at post-battle smalltalk. That’s why it’s Hotguy’s job. He’s good at causing chaos if needed, but chaos is the opening the TCG would need to get to Hotguy. Cuteguy glances in his direction. He’s posing and signing autographs still. He can’t help but sigh. They’re going to be here all day.

The four-armed lady follows his gaze.

“You know, I’d always wondered why you stick to him,” she says.

“Sorry?” Cuteguy says.

“I just mean—I watched the fight. Yeah, he’s good, but you’re decent at range too. You can get enough height to really not need perfect accuracy because you’ll be hard to hit. Wings are, uh, a pretty overpowered combat tool, really, especially when most of your enemies are on the ground. But you’re good at close range, so, uh, inside isn’t awful for you either, really.”

“I mean, you’re right, I am pretty good,” Cuteguy says, interrupting her. “I don’t really get—”

“Look at him,” the woman says. “You ran around more than him and he took the water bottle.”

Cuteguy wants to defend Hotguy for that one; it’s hardly his fault that Cuteguy dumped his water bottle on napalm like it would do anything. It did, which is convenient, but still. Not Hotguy’s call. He doesn’t quite get the chance.

“Even after everything last month, he’s still grandstanding too. Sure, he’s stopped shooting people for not being grateful enough, or holding rescues hostage for cash, but look at him. Hardly any better, is he. Sure, he says he was possessed—”

“He was,” Cuteguy snaps.

“—but like, is the guy he is now actually all that different? Just saying.”

Cuteguy stares at the man trying to get extra photo ops out of a group of passing runners. They’re topless to account for the heat, which is probably why Hotguy wants photos with them. Cuteguy can just barely hear the man asking to trade phone numbers. Is it worse or better, Cuteguy wonders, that the phone number Hotguy gives out just goes straight to Cub’s inbox? Is that catfishing or just good sense?

“He’s trying to help,” Cuteguy says.

“He’s desperate for attention,” the four-armed woman says. “You know, you’d probably be better without him. After everything that happened, your reputation would be better too. A little more in the shadows, a little less associated with his crimes.”

“He’s…”

“I just want the real reason, really,” the woman says. 

“What do you…”

“Why would you stick with him when you’re so much better?”

Hotguy waves goodbye to the runners. He takes another sip of the water bottle. Really, there’s so much that Cuteguy can say here, watching that. He could say something about how, in the terrible days when the Soup Group had first come onto the scene, Hotguy had barely left Cuteguy’s side until Cuteguy started pushing him away. He could say that Hotguy is earnest, that he really does want to save people, despite the fact he also wants attention. He could say that he knows the man behind the mask now, and he’s seen his films, and frankly getting a little recognition as Hotguy kind of makes up for not getting recognition for his decent acting talent. He could say something about playing Mario Kart on the couch, or learning to aim a bow, or fights with Doc, or secrets shared that Cuteguy wants to make sure Hotguy never has an incentive to spread. He could say something about how dangerous fighting alone is. That’s probably the more sensible thing to say, actually; Cuteguy knows exactly how dangerous fighting alone is.

What Cuteguy says is this:

“He makes me happy.”

There is a long not-quite silence as sirens and cicadas fill the summer air.

“Huh,” the woman says.

Cuteguy doesn’t say anything else.

“Well. I mean. I don’t really know how to save you from that, so I guess I’ll just leave you to it,” the woman says. “Consider if he’s really worth it.”

She leaves. Cuteguy stares after her a moment before shaking his head and going back to scanning the crowd for any known TCG elements.

“Birdie!” Hotguy crows, running over from the reporters. “We’re on the 5 PM news!”

“Really? An out-of-towner with questionable pyrotechnics made it?” 

“I got it worked out,” Hotguy says confidently. “But, uh, with that said, you look like you need some AC and a drink. I have so much Gatorade in my fridge that it isn’t even funny. All the labels are pulled off because it’s for that one football movie I did, right? And for some reason they didn’t want to give Gatorade the product placement, so they made all these sports drinks without—”

“Not in-costume, Hotguy,” Cuteguy says, but he doesn’t put any heat into it.

“—oh, you know no one’s listening, lighten up! Anyway, so the movie ended up somehow ordering far too many bottles, and you know what they say about underpaid actors and free food—or, I’m not sure it’s actually an expression, but let me tell you, I have never turned it down. And with the number of ele… electo-mites? I think? You know, all the sweat we’re sweaty about—come on Cuteguy, I don’t want you passing out on the pavement, I really didn’t mean to get caught out that long!” Hotguy says, grabbing Cuteguy’s hand to take him back to his apartment.

Miserable heat or not, Cuteguy can’t help but smile slightly.

“I don’t want to pass out either, that’s why I’m not running, Hotguy,” he says, and he lets himself be tugged along in that man’s wake once more.

[drowning-rat37]

☆ Mia/pvr9ing harm reduction and after care ☆

☆ps.- this is not tips on “how to do it better”, this is tips on how to not hurt your body too much while doing it. I am in no way suggesting anyone starts doing it, i am just saying if you are already doing it, try to stay safe❤️❤️❤️

☆anti-acids: if you’re planning to pvr9e, take a couple before you eat, it’ll reduce the acidity of your stomach acid, which in turn reduces the level of enamel loss and tooth decay as well as reducing the trauma on your oesophagus from the acid

☆short nails: if you use your fingers, keep your nails short to prevent scratching/cvtting your throat. Having short nails is also more hygienic as (even if you keep your nails clean) the underside of your nails can carry a lot of bacteria, (this is mainly found in children but has been known in adults) can carry types of worms under the nails. If you have long nails or false nails i recommend going on the utensil route

☆hand sanitizers or antibacterial soap: if you’re adamant that you don’t want to cut your nails short, clean under your nails thoroughly with hand sanitizer and wash ALL OF YOUR HANDS with antibacterial soap to avoid getting ill. Another thing to address about getting ill: you may think “if i get ill/sick then I won’t eat as much” or “i’ll be throwing up so no need for pvr9ing” in theory, great. In reality, it feels awful. I used to think that sort of way and then ever time i got ill i would feel like actual death, just stay clean and hygienic please🙏🙏🙏

☆water: after pvr9ing your body gets extremely dehydrated, make sure to drink enough water, also I recommend alkali water to reduce acid reflux. Take small sips every couple of minutes as to not make yourself feel more nauseous than you probably already are!!!

☆electrolytes: if possible, get yourself a drink with electrolytes or you can also get sachets that are sugar free and put that in water. In another post (i think i tagged it as an update post to a different post i have put a picture of some electrolyte water i bought, i really like that brand)

☆warnings: bl00d, feeling like you’re about to pass out, legs shaking, hands shaking. If you see any of those signs, take a break or stop all together, I’ll get into each signs in detail in a second.

☆utensils: if you’re not using your fingers, keep your utensils clean, weather its a toothbrush or cutlery or something different. Also please use something you know you can easily hold onto to prevent choking on it or letting go of it. If you’re using cutlery, find plastic cutlery, im not talking about the cheap flimsy ones, im talking about the thick type you can get from ikea or other places, make sure it’s rounded in the side you are putting in your mouth, again to not cause trauma to your throat. I can not stress this enough: use👏 something 👏 you👏 can👏 easily 👏 hold👏 on👏 to

☆tools: this is a follow up from the utensil. Please try not to use medication or other methods to induce vomiting, it is extremely dangerous. I have seen a lot of people (specifically on a certain clock app) talking about putting large amounts of salt in water and drinking it to induce vomiting, i can not stress this enough DO NOT DO THAT, it is so incredibly dangerous and by far the most unpleasant way to pvr9e. This is coming from someone who has tried almost ever way, including the salt method. It can cause long term health issues to consume that much salt even if you vomit it back up, there will still be a large amount left in your system which can lead to high blood pressure (which if you are pvr9ing often may already have) and generally if you are going to that extent to pvr9e, take a break from doing it, even if it is hard!!!!

☆food/chewing: make sure that what you’re eating before you pvr9e you chew really well, if you swallow large chunks, it will be hard to get up and you have a chance of choking and it will not be good and is very scary. Bread is especially hard to get up. Some foods should definitely be avoided, such as hard crunchy foods like tortilla chips/crisps, they are sharp once broken and in the time it takes for you to eat, then pvr9e, your body will not have broken it down enough and it WILL hurt coming back up. Try to stick to soft or quickly digest-able foods to avoid pain and trauma to the throat.

☆follow on to the warning signs ☆

☆Bl00d: if you pvr9e bl00d, genuinely stop, i know you might not want to but to avoid damage, stop. If it is anything above a few drops, I greatly suggest seeking medical attention asap. Give yourself a week or two to recover from that, it will be hard but it’s whats best for harm reduction!!!!(this is a very scary thing to experience, the first time it happened i was terrified however as you can see, i am alive, i didnt die although that still doesn’t mean you should just ignore it)

☆feeling like you’re about to pass out/ hands and legs shaking: believe me, you do not want to be found on the floor after pvr9ing. If you’re shaking, take a break, weather its 10 minutes or a couple days, take a break. If you feel shaky, that is a sign you are going to pass out, again, take a break. Sit down in a place you know you won’t hurt yourself if you do pass out, have a drink and rest for a moment!!! I know you don’t want to hear the “listen to your body bull shit” but in cases like this it is vital if you are genuinely trying to avoid permanent damage or injuries of any kind!

☆Thank you for reading, stay safe. My dm’s are open if you need help or advice. If you need to reach out to your local helpline don’t hesitate, you’re weak for reaching out for help!!! ☆

@mamabearwonders

[scoobydoodean]

Looking at your recent posts/reblogs has reminded me of how much I hate the conversation between Dean and Bobby at the beginning of 4.22 when Dean is trying to deal with the fact that Sam has chosen to trust Ruby instead of him, when Dean can see that he’s obviously being manipulated, and, in response, Bobby just says

You stupid, stupid son of a bitch! Well, boo hoo, I am so sorry your feelings are hurt, princess! Are you under the impression that family's supposed to make you feel good?! Bake you an apple pie, maybe? They're supposed to make you miserable! That's why they're family!

and I feel like that line just summarizes how so many people view Dean both in the show & in discourse about it: that whenever he’s upset by something someone does, he’s being overdramatic, and the tension it creates is his fault for not just accepting that his loved ones will make him miserable.

(& the context of the quote is kind of the perfect example of this because Dean has spent the whole season trying to deal with his own trauma from hell & the fact that the angels won’t leave him alone while also continually giving Sam chances to be upfront about what’s going on with him and trying to warn him that Ruby is manipulating him into doing what she wants, and when that tension finally breaks because Sam refuses to believe—or even consider—any of Dean’s suspicions about Ruby, Dean is basically told by Bobby that he should just let it go)

I agree with you—and that speech is absolute trash.

To frame Bobby's reaction here a little, he and Dean have some conversations in 4.21 and 4.22 that I think leave Bobby pretty unsettled. I think his emotional reaction is driven by that.

In 4.21, Dean and Bobby don't see things the same way when it comes to Sam's demon blood detox and they also disagree on Dean intending to sacrifice himself by signing himself over to the angels to protect Sam. So I'd say leading into 4.22, Bobby is already apprehensive about Sam and Dean both being killed. We know he didn't weather Dean's death at the end of season 3 well.

In 4.22, right before Bobby blows up at him, Dean is also jumping to some conclusions about his relationship with Sam that are pretty extreme.

DEAN No, damnit! No. I gotta face the facts. Sam never wanted part of this family. He hated this life growing up. Ran away to Stanford first chance he got. Now it's like déjà vu all over again. Well, I am sick and tired of chasing him. Screw him, he can do what he wants. BOBBY You don't mean that. DEAN Yes I do, Bobby. Sam's gone. He's gone. I'm not even sure if he's still my brother anymore. If he ever was.

I think Dean having to work through thoughts like this is understandable given probably less than 24 hours ago, Sam was strangling him unconscious in absolutely seething rage, had spent the entirety of the season lying to Dean and then getting indignant when Dean caught on, and reiterated the incredibly damaging things he said about Dean's hell trauma from 4.14. At the same time, I don't think Dean's thinking straight. Sam's motivations in the demon blood arc are incredibly multi-faceted... but hating hunting or their family simply is not part of this situation. This is made most clear to us just a couple episodes before in 4.19 (where Sam tries to push Adam into hunting and praises their father for teaching them to protect themselves—and this certainly didn't go unnoticed by Dean who confronted him about it). The bit about not wanting to hunt hasn't been true in years and won't resurface again for several more. It seems like Dean is just swirling through a lot of unaddressed hurt and misunderstandings from the past as he processes through the last year.

I think Dean saying he is done trying and he has tried and tried and tried and he is not doing it anymore is completely reasonable (he also has no idea yet that Lilith is the last seal), but I think when presented with the harm Bobby knows Sam is doing to his body by proceeding, thinking about "his boys", Bobby sees Sam as being in more imminent danger and wants Dean to reach out one last time to try and get through to him. Dean's rare show of verbal processing sets Bobby on edge and because he's human too, he says some stupid things. And if we're being real, Bobby is like this sometimes. I love Bobby to death, and in a general sense, I think he's very caring and supportive toward the people he loves. But when he himself is scared or angry or otherwise agitated, his patience evaporates and other people's vulnerability makes him upset. "The Curious Case of Dean Winchester" is a more sympathetic example of this. Bobby is angry and raw and deeply depressed, and Dean's well-meaning love and support—no matter how casually offered—is received like poison because it reminds him that he is not okay. The same sort of language about Dean being a pansy and how they're both going to "grow lady parts" shows up from Bobby in this episode.

I go back and forth on what Kripke was thinking when he wrote that dialogue, because the man is absolutely obsessed with the exploration of "toxic masculinity", which I think he's done well at times and extremely poorly at others, and I think Bobby's speech clearly embodies that interest. At the same time, I actually do think that, leading into season 5, there are some aspects to the fallout of Sam and Dean's season 4 conflict that are ultimately just very lazily brushed over and so I do think he bought the shit he had Bobby shoveling to an extent. Setting the content and tone aside, in a vacuum, the idea that Dean has to be the one to reach out—while exhausting—plays into the idea of Dean as the hero character. And when I say this, I don't mean that Sam isn't a hero. Sam is VERY much trying to be the unconventional hero this season. But Dean is often made to embody the concept of the righteous hero as an ideal, and part of being the righteous hero in season 4 means ultimately being... right (in more ways than you even knew) but another part of it is having to be the bigger person. Your wrath has to be tempered by love. We could go further down this rabbithole as far as themes and meta narrative, but none of this, from a human perspective, makes me like this speech any more. It just sucks balls.

[catholictrauma]

this is the place to post about your knowledge and i’m thinking about my little royal sunangel (from the coquette hummingbird family) google deep-dive and i wanted to show you guys these rare little bastards!

this is a male (left) and female (right) sunangel, they’re sexually dichromatic (different colors indicate different sexes) and so, so teensy! they’re roughly 4.3-4.7 inches/10-12 cm long from their beak to their tail!

they’re as little in number as they are little in size, too. they are exclusively found in the bordering andes area ecuador and peru share, where there are subtropical elven forests (because everything about them deserves a pretty name). there are only 8 known sunangel habitats within this area. when documentation started, around the start of the 2010s, there were 12. the estimated population of this endangered bird is anywhere from 3-7 thousand. the royal sunangel population has been steadily — and scarily — declining since their discovery in 2009, and this is largely attributed to the deforestation due to frequent forest fires and the conversion of their habitats into agricultural fields.

it feels like the royal sunangel JUST got discovered, and the scientific community has only JUST started noting down how unique they are among their hummingbird family and birds at large, and now their delicate little frames and stubborn commitment to their habitat range might lead them to death’s door before i reach middle age and have the credentials or cause to observe them myself. ornithologists love these little guys because they feed in these little circuits so no two (super territorial) males may meet, and when they feed, they either stalk and eventually eat insects or take nectar from shrubs and flowers using the punctured feeding holes of some other animals’ labor. also, you know how hummingbirds famously hover while they feed? these hummingbirds are the only ones who don’t. they perch and relax (as is only sensible)!

If you find them as charming as I do, or if you have a heart, you’re probably asking yourself how we go about conserving these birds in the first place.

well, on the agricultural front (which is more heavily an ecuadorian obstacle for these habitats), the situation feels more complicated. ecuador’s market relies on agricultural exports and i don’t see how tumblr users could make the government prioritize sustainability over profits. There are already conservation groups trying to fight that good fight and buy properties on these fragile biodiverse lands before agricultural companies can (you can punch in neoprimate.org for a good one, my link function isn’t working on here) and if you can donate a little to these initiatives you’d be contributing to the protection of tons of endangered species in the local areas.

another way to prevent habitat loss is by funding efforts to prevent the forest fires that frequently wipe out habitats around this area, especially those in peru (the area with the majority of sunangel habitats). there are legal and activist groups putting energy towards that that’s linked above, but another subtle improvement is to provide local farmers and residents with fire weather forecast devices. this way, everyone will be on the same page, and know that if it’s an arid/risky day to light a fire, they should act conscientiously. these devices are being circulated and groups are educating about and encouraging them to the local communities and could use some help in these links. below, i have a screenshot from an organization that doesn’t have a clear donation link for me, but i heavily encourage supporting, because ultimately i think local, sustainable, community-based and indigenous-prioritizing efforts are the way to go.

thanks so much for listening to my little spiel about these cuties, and i hope this information brightens your day and motivates you to care about the beautiful things we can protect. 💙💜

[changingplumbob]

Nicolas Caldwell

Trying @cawthorntales bachelor challenge to woo Mr Bloom

Download from SFS (only cc are his lashes. He was made with the Waterdrop eyes so I'm not sure if his eye colour is custom but it should be whatever swatch looks grey and blue). For him to have all his outfits you'll need: Werewolves, Cats & Dogs, Romantic Garden and Cottage Living.

Forget that I often make self assured and confident sims because Nicolas is anything but...

Tell us a bit about yourself.

Oh shoot I should have figured that would be a question. Umm, I'm Nicolas, which I mean you probably know from the application. Ah, I'm what's called a military brat. My parents are both in the military and did a whole bunch of postings as I was growing up so we were never in one place for very long. It's made me kind of shy I guess, I'm not great at relating to others. I have one sister, Teresa, she's a decade younger than me but we get along.

And why have you applied?

Funny story. Well not really. Ah my younger sister Teresa actually applied for me. I consider myself pansexual but I've only ever been romantically attracted to guys. That was not a fun conversation with my father. But he's fine abut it now. What was I saying? Oh yeah, Teresa. She keeps telling me I need a boyfriend so I don't turn in to a hermit, I've had to shut down several fake dating profiles she's made on my behalf. I told her I'm shy, and the idea of being on camera all day scares me, and having to compete... But I don't want to let her down, she was so excited my application got accepted.

Tell us about some of your likes and dislikes

I'm a bit animal mad, it's what made me become vegetarian. As much as I like being outside hiking, gardening, bird watching... I cannot stand fishing. I just feel so bad for the poor fish, like what a terrible way to die. And even if you throw them back they're probably freaking out thinking they were abducted, and they are definitely still injured from the hook! Sorry... I don't mean to lecture I just... I like animals okay. You can fish all you like just don't expect me to join.

I'm a little bit musical. I mean I don't perform for anyone but myself and occasionally Teresa. Mum tried to get me in to violin but it was so boring. Guitar is my instrument. Well, musical instrument not... you know. Ah... I did a programming course after high school that was not for me, and I'm rather useless at fixing or making things. Except baking! I do like baking. I've definitely got a sweet tooth.

What are you dreading?

People. You'd probably think with having to introduce myself new places so many times it wouldn't worry me but it does. I'm pretty quiet so people can think I'm being a snob when really I just have no idea what to say. Is there a gender neutral or masculine term for resting bitch face? And I don't know if I can take my guitar. Playing it is what calms me down. Well that and cloudgazing. So hopefully the weather is good and I can get outside between challenges. I've really no idea how this show works. Also worried about losing my contacts but that's an everyday worry.

What are you looking forward to?

I mean.. Teresa showed me the picture of Daisy and yeah he's good looking. Those eyes, I just completely missed what she told me right after because I was dreaming. She also said he wasn't actually organizing it so I really really hope he can understand this all being a surprise for me because it's one for him to. And she said he has farm animals! I want to meet them. Hopefully they'll like me and that can convince him I'm a keeper.

Do you have a message for Mr Bloom?

Oh, ah, sure! Umm... hey there good looking. Give me a chance to show you I'm certified boyfriend material. Well not certified because I've never had a boyfriend. *BLEEP* I didn't mean to say that, I don't want the other contestants knowing. Can I start the message again?

EDIT: Turns out he should have green hair... the save file is his brunette look but on the show he will look more like...

[pensat-i-fet]

I chose you (Julián Álvarez x Reader)

**Got another Julián request recently and it’s always funny how easy it is to write for him. So hopefully it’s easy and enjoyable to read for all of you ❤️**

Word count: 1879

Masterlist

Wattpad

“Are you ok?”, asks my mum, and I can see the worry in her expression even through the screen.

“Yeah. Just not feeling 100% at the moment, you know?”

“Why? Are you sick or something?”

“No. I guess I’m just going through one of those moments where I don’t feel super confident or whatever. No specific reason. For all I know, it could just be the bad weather making me feel this way”.

“Is everything ok with Julián?”

I smile without even noticing. “Yes, mum. It’s nothing to do with him”.

“Well, I’ll still tell him to take better care of you so you don’t feel this way”.

“Mum, I’m a grown woman. I don’t need my boyfriend to take care of me”.

“We all need people to take care of us. Don’t forget that”.

I don’t want to admit it but I know she’s right. I’m always in my own head, not sharing how I feel and it can be a bit much sometimes.

“I’ll talk to Julián when he comes back”, I promise to myself before picking up my phone to waste my time on social media.

I see City have posted some photos, including one of Julián, so I like the post. Then I click on his profile and go to the tagged photos. I always love seeing all the photos of him that professional photographers take. I have an album full of them.

But I also see photos fans have posted. It seems like there are more girls taking photos with him after training. With him and all the others, but I only care about my boyfriend.

I’m not a jealous person. I’ve never been, honestly. It’s easy to say you aren’t but then your actions show the opposite. However, that’s not me. I don’t think I’d be able to deal with the stress if I was a jealous person and dating a football player.

So it’s not jealousy I feel while reading the captions they write for my boyfriend. Or seeing the videos where they try to hug him or kiss his cheek. But if it isn’t jealousy, then what is it?

I usually would just laugh it off. Julián himself tells me stories of these meetings whenever something funny happens, knowing how little I’ll care about their flirting with him.

Opening TikTok is probably the stupidest idea at the moment. Yet here I am wasting more time making myself feel ugly seeing all the gorgeous girls I follow for beauty and fashion inspo and getting annoyed at the edits Julián’s fans make for him.

“I’m so stupid”, I say, throwing the phone on the sofa before hiding underneath one of the blankets.

A couple of minutes later, Julián is back and starts to call my name. For a second, I think about pretending to sleep but he would notice the lie.

“I’m here”, I say in a small voice, getting my head out from underneath the blanket so he can see me.

“What are you doing there? Are you feeling alright?”

I nod, not wanting to worry him with my silly thoughts. “Just tired”.

“Well, I’m tired too. How about you move so I can fit next to you and we cuddle?”

“I’d like that”.

My promise to tell him about how I was feeling is gone the second I place my head on his chest. Because I have no reason to feel like this. I should be fine. This will pass soon.

                                    **

"So how was your day?, asks Julián while he sets the table for our dinner. We fell asleep on the sofa the moment we cuddled and didn't get to talk at all.

"Ok, I guess", I shrug.

"What did you do? You always tell me about the whole day. Come on, I want to know".

I'm usually excited to talk about my day. But not right now. "You know. Studied in the morning, face timed with my mum and then went to the sofa to nap".

"Everything ok with your parents?"

"Sure. Why do you ask?"

I can see him trying to find the right words. "I don't know. You seem a bit off. I thought maybe they gave you bad news or something".

"No. I'm just tired. I told you".

"Well, then you sit here", he says, putting his hands on my shoulders and guiding me to the chair. "And I'll finish getting everything ready".

"Thank you", I say, offering him a small smile. His is a lot bigger and after kissing my temple he goes back to the kitchen.

During dinner, he updates me on everything going on at the club and focusing my attention on someone else for a second helps me a lot.

"Feeling better?", he says, hopeful.

"Yes. I think I'll just take a shower before bed to help me relax".

"Go do that. I'll put this in the dishwasher".

I get up to go to the room and stop when I reach Julián to give him a hug.

"I love it when you're clingy like that".

This time the smile is bigger. It's easy to smile when he's around. It's when I'm alone with my thoughts that I struggle.

When I get out of the shower, I try to make a bit of an effort. It's not as if I have to impress Julián right now, but I need to impress myself, sort of.

Whenever I'm having these confidence issues or whatever they are, the first thing I drop is looking after myself. I struggle with simple things such as putting on moisturizer after the shower or picking cute outfits. And it only makes me feel worse in the end because I look worse. It's such a stupid cycle.

Julián is already in bed looking at his phone when I get back to the room. He puts the phone away the moment I get to the bed and puts one of his arms around my shoulders to bring me closer to him.

"You smell so good I could eat you".

I laugh. "You don't like coconut".

"Not the fruit. But I like it when you smell like this", he says, nuzzling his nose on my neck.

"Feel free to use the body butter if you want to smell like me", I joke.

"Wouldn't that make me too irresistible to other women?"

I roll my eyes at his bad joke. "I'll take the risk".

"Actually, I didn't tell you this funny story from today. These three girls asked for a photo when I was in my car and kept complimenting me, my clothes, my car …no subtlety", he laughs but I don't join him. "And then a kid showed up and they had to let him get closer and were so annoyed. They'll probably be there again tomorrow".

I don't say anything because what can I say? I already saw the photos and I thought the girls looked familiar. I guess they spend their days there.

"Hey, you ok?"

"Yes", I say, turning my back to him and pretending to get ready to sleep.

"What was that?"

"I'm sleepy. Good night".

"What did I do for you to react like…wait, are you jealous?"

"What?", I say, turning again to look at him.

"I told you about those girls and you got all weird. You have no reason to be jealous, you know that".

"I'm not jealous of any fangirls, Julián".

And I'm not, but my tone and my face make it sound like a lie. I hate this feeling.

I go back to my previous position and a couple of seconds later I notice Julián wrapping his arms around my waist and bringing me closer to his chest.

"It's you I want. Please know that".

"I know", I whisper. Maybe it's better if he thinks I'm jealous instead of having to dig deeper to explain everything else. "I love you".

"I love you too. Sleep well now. You'll feel better tomorrow after a good night's rest".

If only it were that easy.

                                      **

The next couple of days, Julián seems to be tiptoeing around my feelings and he doesn't bring up any meetings with fangirls. Actually, by checking Instagram, I've noticed one of them mentioned he didn't stop to attend them at all. I don't even know how I feel about that.

By the time he comes back from training, I'm back under the blanket and when he gets to the sofa, he moves it to see my face.

"You were worrying me so I spoke to your mum".

"What?", I say, sitting up.

"Well, you don't talk to me so I had to do something. I can't see my girlfriend hurting and do nothing".

"I just don't know what happens to me", I say, feeling the tears on the back of my eyes.

"It's not going to solve everything but sit here", he says, patting the spot between his legs. "So I can hold you while we try to make sense of it, ok?"

I nod, sitting there and letting him share his strength with me through this hug.

"It's just something that happens sometimes. I don't know if it's anxiety or something else. But I just feel like I'm not enough. Like all my confidence is gone. Like anything I have to do, no matter how small, demands too big of an effort from me".

"Ok. Does it usually take long for that feeling to go away?"

"It depends. It used to be worse when I was younger. Now it's usually a couple of days. Maybe a week and a half or something like that".

"And do you know anything that can make you feel better? Whatever it is, I'll make sure you have it".

"You".

He looks at me confused. "What do you mean?"

"I need you. You don't even notice how much you help me just by being you. It's when you're not around that it gets worse".

"That means a lot to me. But we need to find other ways to help. I wish I could always stay with you but I can't".

"I know", I say, hugging him tighter and placing my head on his chest.

"And you're sure there is no jealousy involved in this? It's ok if there is. I mean, I'm jealous of every man that talks to you".

I chuckle. "No, I'm not jealous. I guess what made me feel worse about those fans was their confidence. How they had no fear of going to talk with you guys and being so direct to you. I wouldn't be able to do something like that. Not in the state I'm in at the moment".

"You don't need to. Because I chose you a while ago. And I keep choosing you every day".

"But you didn't know all these issues were included in the package when you chose me. What if it gets too much for you? I don't want you to feel like you have to baby me".

"I'm not. I'm just looking after you like you look after me. Can you just let me do it? Let me look after you, please".

"Does looking after me include cuddles and watching my favourite movies while we eat ice cream?"

"Of course it does".

"Then count me in".

[tokillamockingbird427]

Random assorted Ghosts headcanons

Keegan has an intense affinity for chocolate milk. Man enjoys it so much he'd probably drink it with every meal and fill his water bottle with it if Elias didn't interfere. (Elias has caught him chugging from the jug once. It was like three am and Keegan was too tired to get a cup. It's his personal jug so no harm done, but Elias just... he can't deal with it. Cardinal sin.)

Speaking of Elias, man knows the "youngin" lingo and uses it just to dick with Hesh and Logan. Likes dropping "You're cringe." at random times just to see the his sons crumble like he verbally shot them.

On the other hand, Merrick knows the lingo, but doesn't understand how to use it. He's right like once a day with it and the splash effect from it is marvelous. (Calls Hesh cringe when Hesh complains that he's too nervous to ask out this chick he's been talking to and Logan laughs so hard he genuinely can't breathe for a few minutes.)

You know those little mini skateboard toys? Kick has a collection of those, and he's entirely too good at doing tricks with them. Hesh thinks it's so fucking cool (He likes skateboards.) but sucks at tricks. (Trains in secret to try and impress Kick.)

Logan carries a tablet on him 24/7 so he can type shit out for people who don't know ASL, but also because he has a sound effects board and likes dropping random vine booms in conversations. "Me and Kick were hanging out the other day an-" *Vine boom* "Logan I am gonna take that damn thing away from you so help me-" *VINE BOOM* "LOGAN!" He will also walk past people and do a lil fart noise, it's hilarious cus he does to to Merrick the most and it makes him so mad.

Cuter hc. Elias asked Logan what he wanted to be when he got older (When he was like seven.) and Logan answered "David!" (I am a big fat sucker for the whole "Logan looks up to Hesh more than anyone else." headcanon okay? They're so cute.)

Hesh and Logan doing dumb sibling shit like "Beating the everloving fuck" out of each other worries Merrick because he didn't have siblings, so he always has to ask Elias is he should interfere. Elias's #1 answer is always "When one of them starts crying." because he knows his kids are tough shit. (And also that they won't hurt each other on purpose.)

Logan and Keegan both have such intense sweet tooths that they can and will just eat straight sugar out of the bag if there isn't any candy or other sweets at their post. Elias keeps an emergency jar of candy... which is also just his personal stash so he doesn't have to share with the fiends.

Hesh Logan and Riley are literally inseparable. It's ridiculous. If for whatever reason one of them is actually separated from the others, it's probably for a genuinely bad reason. (They had a fight, one of them got hurt, one of them got lost, etc.)

Despite Riley being younger than Logan, they consider him the "Middle sibling." Logan is always "little brother" and Hesh is always "big brother" that way.

Logan and Hesh constantly steal each others clothes to the point where their wardrobes have just fused. They can't even remember what piece of clothing originally belonged to who. The sizing can clue them in, but also: Logan likes baggy clothes and Hesh likes fitted. So the mixup intensifies. They also just steal their dads stuff from time to time. Mainly hoodies. Irritates the shit out of Elias. (Not really.) Uses his lack of hoodies to bitch about the weather 24/7.

Riley leaves dog toys scattered all over the ghosts current post and there's always a little "easter egg hunt" when they're moving places because of it.

[day6source]

hello my loves <33333333 happy spring! i hope you've all been enjoying it so far, and especially enjoying it with the new album hehe!!🫶 so! first things first:

the welcome to the show concert is next week! as always i'll be recording, and i've since figured out recording with firefox, so there should be 0 to little stuttering this time in the VOD! i apologize heavily for that, and i actually have a gift to make up for it, but stay with me until the end! second: since kcon was...virtually unwatchable to most of us, i went on a little hunt for it! you may or may not be able to find the meet & greet here and the performance cut of the boys here. not sure. you might just have to check out the links to double check ;)

third: masterpost for 'fourever' is basically all updated! you can find it here! i was...unaware of the link limit, so if you want the shopping and streaming and performance links, those'll be in the first read more, watching things and articles are in the second one (which is the one linked for ease)! promo is basically over (i say cautiously) minus the concert, so feel free dive in if you missed anything! speaking of masterposts!

fourth: i got to thinking about it, and i found it a little unfair to only include jae in the pinned, so you can now find links/some updated info about what junhyeok is doing! i figured if i'm gonna have one former member, i should also have the other, even if he was there for only a short amount of time. so if you've been wondering what he's been up to, check him out on youtube and streaming! i'll be keeping it...semi-updated in the way i do jae's part, checking in every like, three months to see if anything's changed. on the flip side, if none of you care to know what those two are up to, i might just take their sections out entirely, but for now i thought it'd be courteous to have them there at the very least!

and last but not least: so, you guys know that watching old concert content is...entirely impossible really, and i thought...that was pretty wack, actually. so! the other day i went on a little deep dive on some sites, and i found some old concerts including the youth tour, the streams from pilmography, an old fanmeet, and the final every day6 concert. this site is uhhh basically impossible to see without a vpn and...well i also thought that was super wack, especially granted this content is...impossible to find elsewhere, and you can't even buy it. so i...took the liberty of gathering it and maybe...just maybe...you can find it here along with all of the other shows of recent, including a better stream of the christmas show for you guys. this is just me personally, but i think especially in comparison to other fandoms, ours is...a bit smaller and older, so gatekeeping content is just...not cool, and i wanna make sure that if you guys wanna see things, i can bring them to you to watch! it's not everything probably by a long shot, but if it's somewhere, i want you guys to be able to see it, even if those people don't think so, and especially if we can't just go out and buy it somewhere! so please enjoy! it should all be uploading as of me typing this post up, but should be up within a couple of hours, but there's some things in there like the kcon stuff and some other shows already, so that should keep you busy in the meantime.

okay, that's it! i love you guys, and i hope you're all staying so so so healthy and so so so so happy and enjoying fourever! we're actually almost at 300 followers which is INSANE, especially because the blog is almost a year old!!!!! what!!!!!!!! time truly flies, and i have loved every second with you all, i've got some potential things planned, so...stay tuned ;) stay happy and healthy, study well, take long breaks when you need, enjoy the weather! i love you guys so much <33333 tay💕💕💕🫶🫶🫶

[bayofwolves]

Rereading The Evertree

We've come to the end. I'm finally at the last book of the first arc! Hopefully I can stop explaining what these posts are now, but one more time for anyone unaware: These posts are a compilation of notes taken from my rereads of the Spirit Animals books. They include interesting details, stuff I missed and how I plan to change certain things in my retelling of the series, A Revised History of Erdas. Shall we begin?

"I know you were supposed to be your village's Rain Dancer and all, but can you lighten up on all the dancing?" I know Rain Dancers have to engage in rituals and meditate extensively before they can produce rain, but Abeke influencing the weather with her emotions is a fun idea. Imagine the ceaseless rain is brought down by her pain and sorrow over Shane, Meilin, Tarik and her family.

It definitely feels to me like Tarik was one of the Greencloak leaders, alongside Lenori and underneath Olvan. His role in training the Four Heroes themselves, him having a seat at the table with the other leaders and a place at their important meetings, et cetera... it all seems like his rank was higher than he let on in-text. (Also, my two cents: I would nominate Finn to take his place as the third Greencloak leader.)

"The image of Gerathon's smiling jaws and slithering body disappeared, replaced instead with Rollan's lopsided grin and Conor's encouraging voice, Abeke's clear laugh." I am crying.

The typos in this one are funny. Kalani's dolphin, Katoa, is referred to as female even though he was introduced as male in Against the Tide. And Devin is mistakenly called Devon.

I don't like how Kalani and Rollan made up by completely forsaking the cultural beliefs of Kalani's people. If Hundred Islanders believe something is tapu and want nothing to do with it, they shouldn't be forced to go against that. They already introduced the concept of a ceremony to rid someone or something or tapu (noa), so they could have simply had Kalani perform this for Rollan. I've been saying this, but I'll say it again.

Finn should have been the leader of the Greencloak expedition from the beginning. He already has experience with these kids, and placing him back in a position of authority would be much less likely to spark resentment than a completely new person like Dorian would. Narratively, I do think it was necessary to see more of how Tarik's death affected the Four. But logically...

The Conquerors are monitoring their own people for signs of disloyalty. Interesting.

It seems some records of Stetriolan wildlife survived after all -- Finn knows that the animal who stole their provisions is a dingo. Since it was established earlier that the Greencloaks know next to nothing about Stetriol, I would have liked it better if Abeke was one of their only sources of information. She could use whatever she learned about the continent from Shane and the Conquerors to help guide them in their quest. And she identified a dingo in Against the Tide, so she could have done the same here instead of Finn.

Strange how the party just left the dead horse behind and continued on, instead of using it for meat. Between the meat from the horse and the water bulbs Abeke found, they would have been set to last for even longer.

Abeke swinging up onto her horse's back reminds me of that scene in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers where Legolas does that crazy mounting technique. I'm willing to bet that was done on purpose; both characters are great archers, after all.

Shane's intense reaction to Gerathon entering his mind must mean that this is the first time she has controlled him. It makes sense, given that she probably wanted to make him feel like he was the one in charge. Oh, what I would give to get inside Shane's head during this battle.

Gerathon forcing Shane to aim for Abeke specifically was definitely intentional. Her method of reading people and then turning them against the ones they love the most is the highest form of torture.

I know I've mentioned that Sundown in Rise and Fall may be my favourite chapter in all of Spirit Animals, but Duel is a strong contender, too. The contrast between the raw pain and rage of Duel and the peacefulness, the gentleness, the emotional vulnerability of Sundown is incredible. It makes sense why both are so close to my heart; they go together, hand in hand. You can't have one without the other.

Everything I read about the Four Heroes' travels is telling me that Erdas is a remarkably small planet.

Conor is sorely mistaken about the crater around the Evertree being caused by an ancient volcano. Additionally, when Abeke later sees a vision in the sky of how the world came to be, including the birth of the Evertree and the Great Beasts, there is not even a hint about the Wyrm. It makes me wonder if the authors had conceived of the Wyrm's landing at this point (or if they were purposefully covering up this plot point to surprise the readers).

Only the Great Beasts know the location of the Evertree. I wonder how it has remained hidden to the rest of the creatures on Erdas. Surely there are tribes living in southern Nilo, yes? It would be cool if the Great Beasts were able to conceal it with their combined magic, making the crater and everything inside it invisible to the human eye.

The Evertree bears fruit! Its description of "pure white" and, well, the fact that it comes from the Evertree itself makes me imagine it has magical properties of some kind. What could this fruit bestow upon you if you were to eat it? Good health? Eternal life? If humans knew how to find the Evertree, I'm sure wars would have been waged over this very question. (It could have made for an interesting storyline if Shane had managed to steal one of the fruits before he fled. Perhaps he would eat it, perhaps sell it, perhaps keep it to look at. I imagine it would stay fresh even after being plucked and never spoil.)

In ARHoE, Arax appears at the Evertree with a broken horn from when Barlow threw him off the cliff. Just a cool detail I thought to mention.

Tellun sacrificing himself is supposed to be seen as a noble act, but at a closer look it actually works against our protagonists. Kovo has made his intent to rule the whole world quite clear. While the Great Beasts dying might sadden him, it won't stop him. By taking themselves out of the battle, Tellun and the first few are leaving it all up to a bunch of kids (warriors, yes, but still kids) to bring down this age-old, godlike gorilla, instead of using their combined might to stop him and save the world they swore to protect. If Tellun had learned something from the last Great War and decided to fight this time, aided our heroes in driving Kovo into the Evertree and died in the process, it would have been so much better! On the flip side, though, it could be read as a testament to how selfish the Great Beasts actually are -- how they are shown time and time again to care more about themselves and their talismans than upholding their oath.

I would have preferred it if the brief moment when the Four Fallen appear as Great Beasts once more happened at the Evertree and not Muttering Rock. Like, if being in the presence of the tree that created them temporarily restored them to their old forms. Great Beast-sized Briggan, Uraza, Jhi and Essix fighting Kovo, Gerathon and Halawir with the rest of their brethren, a more hopeful and heartbreaking rendition of their last battle all those years ago, would have been amazing.

Something about Shane presumably fleeing further into Nilo, home of the friend he betrayed, and perhaps wandering there a while in the wake of his defeat... and many months later, Abeke restoring her bond with Uraza in Stetriol, home of the friend she forgave. Everything is connected.

Wow. This was a powerful finale -- high stakes, epic final battle, emotional climax, descriptions I could see in my mind's eye. There were quite a few things I didn't like about this one, though. Outside of what I've already mentioned: The ending should have been heartwarming, and for the most part it was, but Abeke reconciling with her abusive family soured it for me. I wish the Four had reconvened with Finn, Maya, Kalani and the rest of their party at some point, instead of them vanishing in the middle of a battle and never being heard from again. And once again, I protest the exclusion of Irtike! Aside from all that, though, The Evertree was a great read and a solid conclusion to arc one of Spirit Animals. There are a lot of loose ends to be tied, but for now, the war is over, and our protagonists can finally breathe.

It's been a good run. I plan to take a short break here, but I'm excited to turn the page and begin a new arc soon!

This is part of an ongoing series.

Wild Born | Hunted | Blood Ties | Fire and Ice | Against the Tide | Rise and Fall | The Evertree

Immortal Guardians | Broken Ground | The Return | The Burning Tide

Heart of the Land | The Wildcat's Claw | Stormspeaker | The Dragon's Eye

Tales of the Great Beasts | The Book of Shane | Tales of the Fallen Beasts

[luvism333]

the maze runner maze diversity ideas directly inspired by this @petrichor-idyllic post!!

ive literally been thinking about it nonstop since omg okay BASICALLY its confirmed in the scorch trials movie that there are a bunch of other mazes aside from the glade and group b. since these other mazes are never touched on there are one million and one ways people could go with them in fanfiction in terms of layout, weather conditions, etc. so i wanted to share some!

petri had tons of great ideas (go follow them right NEOW) and im just here to expand on them. 4 the sake of simplicity im gonna call the “gladers” subjects/mazers since we dont really know what theyd call themselves, and im gonna call the “glade” the centre. i am gonna keep calling new kids greenies bc i think its a funny little name + DISCLAIMER i have not read the books and i also do not have the time or energy to rewatch the movies so if any information is off my bad fr

NOT PROOFREAD

MONSTER IDEAS

a maze with birdbox style monsters so they have to navigate the maze blindfolded

a maze where the monsters are deathly afraid of some sort of metal that wicked wont send them enough of to make clothes or armor (at least not enough to keep every mazer safe) so all the people are heavily pierced. greenies come up piercingless and have to sit in the piercing hut (where they keep the metal) for however long it takes them to let the maze piercers do their job because absolutely no shot are they letting any dumbass teenager go anywhere with their rare life saving metal without it being fused to their bodies. the maze record for time a greenie has spent in the piercing hut is 3 full days and the less time you spend in there when you first arrive the more street cred you get

^ the piercer would probably be the maze leader, im picturing someone who at the beginning was the only person that could talk greenies into getting the piercing over n done with and as more came up the maze just filled with people that would only listen to the one person they trusted enough to pierce them straight out of the box.

a maze with underground monsters. you drop something heavy enough and something shoots out of the ground, jaws wide open. they have treestyle type houses, floating bridges connecting buildings. they dont have runner equivalents bc theyre working on building bridges through the maze and its like a no brainer that they cant go anywhere without a bridge. instead of “someone should try surviving the maze at night” its “we should climb the walls” and everyone thinks hes just as nuts

^theyd have a box but wouldnt it be fucking funny if their greenies just fell out of the sky?? they have a little platform right underneath where the greenies and supplies land (they call it ground zero) picturing wicked somehow forgetting to cushion the platform at first and patient zero falls out of the sky and dies on impact

a maze where the monsters arent giant teen eating beasts but deadly insects. one bite of that one and youll vomit up your internal organs, breathe in gas from that one and your entire body will be paralyzed. accidentally step on that one and your foot will swell to the size of a bowling ball and fucking explode. experiment with how your mazers cope with this - maybe everyone wears layers and layers of bee keeping style clothes outside and all the buildings are netted. do they have disinfecting rooms? do they have some sort of poison that takes the insects out? how to they distribute this poison since they cant just pierce it on like the metal maze?

a maze with the hunger games mutt type monster-mutations made out of fallen mazers

a maze where the monsters arent monsters or a threat at all but contain clues or keys thatll help the mazers get out and are notoriously impossible to catch

MAZE IDEAS

on the wiki page for group b it says their maze went vertical at one point - a maze that is completely vertical, their centre (creatively named The Hole) being like a tube just walled in by heaven high maze structures. you look up and at some point the walls give way to an abyss. most of the mazers have given up hope of getting out because it looks endless - or does it? nobody really entertains the idea that the top of The Wall is closer than they think, that the creators have put in a fake ceiling to fuck with them, but the people theyve sent up dont come back down and when the hole is quiet enough they can hear something alive up there and nobody can say for sure that their little village is any worse than what theyll find if they try to leave

hunger games quarter quell type maze where different sections of it have different monsters or obstacles. the sections with the easiest to bypass obstacles have the most complicated puzzle, the sections that are the easiest to navigate have obstacles 10x as deadly

PEOPLE IDEAS

a maze where 2 people come up in the box at a time (inspired by this thomas fic). theyd have names like box-mate or smth for whoever you come up in the box with (i.e thats jeff, he’s clints box-mate) and everyone is really close with their box-mate, platonically or otherwise. i feel like theres alot of cute potential for this idea, like an alby-equivalent talking to aggressive mazers like why dont you go find your box-mate and chill out. go cuddle or something. greenies often feeling weird about their connection w their box-mate (bc who wouldnt??) and long time mazers teasing them about it “oooooh somebodys making eyes at their booox-maaate muah muah muah”

unisex maze (although all these ideas can be unisex) where the number of boys and girls is slightly or very uneven at any given time. people have bets going around that time of the month every month about whether theyre getting a boy or a girl w things like chores and food being traded like currency. the bonfires on greenie day are just celebrations for the winning party

got this idea from petri but someone alone in a maze!!! just completely isolated for however long, not being expected to survive but making it out somehow. have you guys ever read an article or paper on the long term psychological effects of solitary confinement in prisons? of course itd be different but isolation is literally used as a torture method in some places. humans are not supposed to be so alone!! a lone mazer that sleeps by the thinnest part of the walls at night so they can hear the monsters, have some sort of connection to another living thing. a lone mazer that only survives their maze because they know their monsters like the back of their hand after spending endless nights well hidden in the maze just OBSERVING the creatures because it becomes a comfort to them, seeing something outside of themself move by its own free will. a lone mazer that never stops talking once theyre out of the maze because long silence makes them feel like theyre all alone again, a lone mazer that doesnt talk at all once theyre out of the maze because they cant stand the sound of their own voice anymore.

^ petri had the idea of an animal companion and i think that is a wonderful idea!! they have this fic where the reader had a dog and theyre really cute together. go full on disney princess & give your character a bird or a chameleon or a tiger if youre a jasmine guy. a dog or any predatory animal can conceivably help your character escape the maze - give your character a sloth or a koala or just a really lazy cat. give me a lone mazer whos animal companion is dead weight but they dont have the heart to leave them, who keeps their fat cat strapped to their chest like a baby as they fight for their life. 

person alone in a maze with a baby. ik this sounds so random but wicked wanting to see the effects of growing up in the maze so they send in a carer, someone that looks after the mazers before theyre sent in. the carer raises the kid angry at whoever has trapped their now adopted child in this torture chamber come to find out they used to be one of them

maze where the subjects are supposed to get injured in some way to force them to rely on one another. a subject being deafened by a banshee type monster, a subject getting a limb amputated by medjack equivalents after getting suddenly and suspisciously sick. they dont spend so much time mapping the maze as figuring out how to get all of them through to the very end because they quite literally cannot make it without every single mazer

a maze where the subjects keep their memories but theyve all been altered. some remember wicked as saviours providing shelter for them as orphaned children, others remember being restrained, poked and prodded, a vague feeling of grief and betrayal that they cant explain. others dont remember wicked at all and insist that the maze is a paradise compared to desert wastelands filled with zombie people and viral disease.

your mazers can react to this in any way shape or form. maybe factions/cliques of people with similar memories form. nobody wants a leader from a different group in charge of the entire maze so they dont have one, there not being any rules that apply to every group in the maze because nobody will listen to eachother. everyone thinks the ones that dont remember wicked are crazy and the anti-wicked group have the most reason to become violent, have been the most violent in the past so everyone thinks theyre psychos. it takes them longer than other groups to get out despite having memory because they all take over different parts of the maze and refuse to share information.

mazers that have access to technology. they can make things like recordings and audios but no way of connecting to the outside world and no information aside from what they put in themselves. they learn to program things and make robots/drones to navigate the maze for them, make intro videos for greenies so they dont have to deal with them. instead of track hoes and medjacks they have groups of people that work on different kinds of technology because theyve learnt to automate most of the stuff the gladers do by hand. some work on exploring the maze, some make weapons, some study the monster corpses theyve managed to get, etc etc.

CULTURE/TRADITION IDEAS

the different ways people commemorate dead mazers!! in the glade they cross out their names on the maze walls and in group Bs maze they like sculpt their faces into the ice. give me a maze that tattoos the names of their fallen, whos oldest mazers have the most ink so it kind of goes without saying that the more tattoos you have the more authority you have. greenies being able to tell clearly whos been around longer based on which names they have tattooed. give me a maze that mounts the weapons of the dead on a wall, a maze with a regular graveyard that the mazers visit on slow days

greenie events!!! give me greenie celebrations like the bonfire we see in the glade, parties or games, feasts to welcome newcomers. give me a maze where the arrival of a greenie is grim, one more mouth to feed, one more lost soul trapped. a maze where everything dims down around that time of the month because another person means another month theyve failed to get out. give me mazes that test their greenies to see if theyre of any use to the group because those that arent are dead weight. a maze that holds Greenie Trials, where you have to complete an obstacle course or survive a night in the maze or complete some obscure challenge and if you cant youre tossed to the monsters.

^bonus points for a gally-equivalent getting to say ominous shit like The Last One Didn’t Make It

TATTOO SUBGENRE

because i dont know what else to do with these

maze where wicked programmed the monsters to respond to some basic specific kind of symbol and the people have it tattooed in very visible places, painted on every hut and wall

maze where the monsters are deathly allergic to some sort of liquid so the subjects tattoo themselves with it

maze where you have to be incredibly light on your feet when navigating the maze so people tattoo maps on themselves.

GROUP B

i know im supposed to be talking about maze ideas not mentioned in canon but group b has so much potential their wiki says that group b doesnt have runners, they literally all just go out into the maze in a giant group, AND that their monsters are out day and night PLUS their maze is a frozen wasteland. i imagine any girls that arent strong enough to withstand everything are like pretty quickly weeded out and only the hardasses that adapted quickly enough were left omg the cultural norms that would form?? theyre all absolutely jacked and if a greenie dies nobody bats an eye cause tough shit. no introduction no transition period you come into the maze with us and dodge airborne monsters or you stay here and freeze to death. the creators do send them medical supplies but over time they start to notice the way the group interacts w eachother so they start sending less to see if they can push it even farther, make the girls have to ration their medical supplies. it works tenfold oh you broke your arm and you want a sling, aris?? rachel got her arm CHEWED OFF by a FLYING MUTANT PTERADACTDOL and didnt ask me for so much as a BANDAID

this is like evidenced on the wiki too multiple girls suggesting they just leave aris to freeze to death or get eaten by monsters in the maze because theyre SUSPISCIOUS of him?? like absolutely unprovoked too thomas had a stung glader accusing him of being at fault for the maze an unconscious girl who came at the wrong time who is apparently going to be the last greenie they ever recieve feverishly gasping his name just so much ammo for the gladers to toss him out and it takes the death of like half the glade and an insane gally to get him where aris was upon arrival. they literally punch aris square in the face immediately after they decide not to kill him bc “its the fastest way to remember your name” like how did you guys realise that??? "fastest way” so you admit there are other ways??? why are you giving all your greenies concussions

GEN

because i dont know where to put these

explore the concept of failed mazes. a desert maze where the subjects couldnt survive on the monthly supplies because they couldnt farm any food on their own because, well, desert. a maze where wicked did something like the memory altering maze, purposefully dividing them but they went too far and the mazers killed eachother off hunger games style

test mazes! have you ever wondered why the mazes operate the way they do? why do they send people up once a month? why are the mazers of all different ages? why not make the centre already stocked with food and buildings so the subjects can spend more time cracking the maze instead of learning how to grow crops?

a maze where they sent all the people up at once and without guidance from more experienced subjects they pretty quickly killed themselves off. a maze where the subjects were too young and werent organising themselves or mapping the maze fast enough, a maze where the subjects were too old and lost hope faster and easier. a maze where the mazers had everything they needed upon arrival and nobody wanted to leave.

AND MANY MORE!!!

IN conclusion make ur own mazes people!!!!! get creative w it there are so many different directions you can take it in!! pls feel free to use any ideas thats what theyre here for i dont need credit but PLEASE tag me id love to see anything that comes from this nonsense!!! nd lmk if anybody wants a pt2 because i had a million half baked ideas that didnt make the cut i am filled to the brim with Thoughts

[marzipanandminutiae]

i think it’s less that ppl are legit expecting a white christmas in boston every year and more that the probability for one used to be 20 to 30% and it’s now been almost 15 years without one and probability has dropped to 10% and will continue to drop. for someplace like worcester in massachusetts it’s even worse — probability was 67% ish for the boomers and now it’s a little over 30%. only 27 white christmases in boston since 1892 sounds small but when u consider most bostonians had 3 white christmases by their mid-teens on top of all the christmases where there was snow even if it wasn’t one inch and now there are teenagers who haven’t seen even one white christmas… it makes sense why ppl freak out every year it still hasn’t happened.

And that absolutely makes sense, yeah! I have immense climate anxiety too, like I said!

What I was responding to was more the people saying "it's 60 and raining in Boston and it feels like the apocalypse" or "this isn't how it's supposed to be ever; this never used to happen."

I don't know if you saw my longer post, but I went and looked at Boston weather records going back to 1893. Most Decembers from 1893-1903 had multiple days in the upper 50s, with many years getting into the 60s at least once. I didn't track every single year from 1893 to the present, but it seems reasonable to assume that that 10-year period wasn't just a weird fluke. December 1895 actually had more days in the 60s (5) than December 2022 (1).

That's not the full story, of course- December 1895 also had a couple of days in the 20s before that upswing, some with small amounts of snow. You also have things like overnight lows going haywire, and other reminders that climate change is real and it is happening now. I would never, ever attempt to deny that. It's the single biggest problem facing humanity at the moment.

However. There are multiple things to hold in our minds at the same time when thinking about its day-to-day effect on our lives, and one of them is "the effects are seldom as simple as It's Warmer Every Day Now Than It Ever Has Been, And That Will Continue Unilaterally For The Rest Of Our Lives." I'm not trying to deny or negate anything. I'm just trying to make people feel a little less despondent.

(I also just discovered that the metric for a white Christmas here in Boson states that it has to fall before 7 AM, which seems arbitrary and weird. We actually had a white Christmas here in 2017- we got 2.9" of snow -it just fell later in the day. So...it doesn't count for some reason? That's really strange to me. Anyway, the article where I learned this estimates our average yearly "one inch of snow on the ground at 7 AM on Christmas morning" chances nowadays at 19% as of three days ago.)

(I also think this demonstrates what I'm calling Reverse Environmental Amnesia- where, rather than thinking that the effects of climate change have always been normal, you tend to remember past weather in a way that fits the absolute direst interpretation of circumstances. Anyone who was in Boston on Christmas 2017 SHOULD remember the snowstorm...but I've seen multiple locals who don't travel for the holidays agreeing that we've had no Christmas snow at all since 2009.)

[dropoutfailure]

Would absolutely love to hear more about mishka and gus? Like anything really. Maybe you could explain the timeline of how their story happens (i love that kind of thing) or just tell me something you find interesting about them or just ramble whats on your mind?

I'm excited to answer, but are YOU excited for the wall of text you're about to see?? I probably overthought and revised this answer for way too long. these OCs have wayyyy too much lore and backstory which I might draw at some point. eventually.

backstory in short:

Mishka is a 22yo depressed lonely college dropout NEET trans guy. he's in love with his dad, bc he can't connect to new people easily, and his dad's the only one who has just always been there for him, unconditionally.

his 45yo dad Gustav is a woodworking teacher. a single father who's doing his best. caring, and maybe even lenient with his precious son. he does not reciprocate though. at first.

backstory in long:

so basically Mishka was doomed from the start. his mom was not good at being a mother (violent) and gave him childhood trauma. she left eventually, and dad became a single father when Mishka was 7-9. he comes out as a trans boy in his teens, 14-15. his dad is accepting but his school is not. he makes no permanent connections in 12 years of being in school. just internet friends.

Mishka drops out of college at 22 because of many problems piling up there (adhd, loneliness, misunderstandings, transphobia) and overwhelming him for months. he breaks down in the middle of his last year of undergraduate (he probably could've weathered the storm and finished...), gives up, drops out, goes home and holes up in his room, in his dad's apartment...

Mishka developed a crush on his dad while halfway through college, at around 21 yeard old, but thought he'd get over it and not feel that way anymore when he got back home. lol. lmao.

when dad hugs him after he gets off the train, that notion quickly disappears.

at first he tries to hide it. he doesn't want his dad to hate him. Gustav is happy to see him again, and can tell something's bothering his son, but can never get a straightforward answer. he's worried.

confession scene comic drafts:

eventually, after a month of being back home, Mishka says "fuck it, I've already fucked up my life, I'm already a social outcast, I'm already a garbagefire, I have nothing to lose, I'll tell my dad and either he feels the same or he disowns me!!"

(here, I'll add some sketches I've made for the confession scene. amongst other sketches.)

Mishka confesses kinda hopeful (delusional) that maybe his dad might feel the same.

...but dad does NOT feel the same... he takes some time to process what he just heard.

Mishka is red in the face, sweating, panicking, tearing up bc this is humiliating and painfully awkward and he "should not have told him, should have taken it to the grave!! fuuuuuck"

Gustav is confused and concerned. it doesn't register until he asks again and Mishka's like "this is humiliating enough, don't make me say it again...."

(I need to work out the dialogue here I think..... Gus doesn't disown him, he's extremely uncomfortable with the idea, but ALSO doesn't want to reject Mishka!! he's at a loss and doesn't know how to respond so he's like "it's late, I need some time to think, let's talk about this tomorrow")

he loves his son. but not like that.

(extra long post and more sketches under the Keep Reading)

and then there's an awkward moment / fake-out where Mishka may or may not have been aiming for a kiss. dad turns that down real fast though, uncomfortable. Mishka fears this may have just caused a permanent rift between them, that they can never be affectionate again, and begs him to forget the whole thing.

Gustav can tell that Mishka's gonna be agonizing over this (oh, Gus is too. but doesn't want to double the panic here*) and tells his son to not hurt himself. (Mishka tends to pull at his hair and scratch his skin up to release emotion)

*main things on Gustav's mind: since he's a teacher, he would not only get fired, but hunted for sport if he was actually in an illicit relationship with his son, so he really doesn't want to even entertain the idea. especially since he already feels like he's on thin ice at his workplace - he's good at his job, but it's an open secret that he's "gay" (he's not even gay, he's bi!!)

they retreat to their rooms to turn in for the night. Mishka writes to his bestie Kaito who's the only one he talks to about his feelings for his dad (strangers on the internet and people who took his incest vagueposting as a joke don't count haha).

Gus looks to the internet for any advice on this situation he never expected to be in as a father. "wtf do I do when my own flesh and blood, my own son, half my age, is in love with me, romantically? and maybe sexually?? how do I turn him down without hurting his feelings" he somehow phrases it in such a way that he mostly gets porn results, which is the opposite of what he's looking for! XD it's a very popular porn category and that makes him feel even worse.

here's another WIP I'm trying to work on about this scene. the confession, plus a moment when Gus remembers fearing homophobia in his teen years, but confessing to a classmate regardless (he's bi but most people assume he's either gay or straight)... and immediately shuts it down, thinking to himself "wait that's not even remotely the same thing!! s-some things are societally unacceptable with good reason!"

I'm just trying to work out the dialogue more, to better show Gustav's confusion, apprehension, empathy and an attempt at a gentle rejection.

afterward, they try to go on as normal but now that it's out there, Mishka gets bolder with his affection. and gets reprimanded. occasionally. Gustav's body welcomes the touch, but Gus himself is not happy with this for a multitude of reasons!!!! it's ok, he gets over his incest aversion. he may have felt some sort of way about Mishka's scruffy facial hair and deeper voice when he saw him again for the first time in half a year, but chalked it up to aesthetic appreciation? "what the hell, my son's grown so much... he's so cute... uh, objectively."

they got some mutual desperation and loneliness going on, they're perfect for each other.

I like this fragile and uncertain time in their life and relationship the most so I draw it the most. guilty and hesitant indulgence in forbidden fruit... typical will-they-wont-they situation. but it's like they-probably-shouldnt. but they will.

thanks for asking!! 💘 hope this has been an interesting read. glad you like my characters. :) if this caused more questions than answers, feel free to ask more about them!

[renjibozo]

a coherent (probably not) thought dump about the new buddy daddies PV 3 (and additionally, PV 2)

because i'm sitting crying and need people to hear what i'm thinking about this PV i am brocken

edit: we’re making a few edits because i realized PV 2 exists and now i need to revise some parts so i don’t look like an utter clown next week (and please don’t trust me 100% with translations i’m using my very limited knowledge)

ok so starting off with this from PV 3, you can hear miri telling rei something along the lines of "Papa Rei! Get home quick, 'kay? Because today's!" before it just cuts to the next voice line

a birthday mayhaps? it might be miri’s birthday, it might be rei’s birthday, or it might be kazuki’s birthday and they’re preparing a surprise. unless it’s something else then literally please ignore this entire section

in PV 2, you can see her wearing a party hat along with streamers strung up behind her off to the side + another party hat at the corner of the screen

this means there IS a birthday (like i thought earlier before the edit) and it’s rei’s because kazuki is in the same room as miri while they’re talking

“Papa Rei looks lonely sometimes...” - Miri “Isn’t that guy just always grumpy?” - Kazuki

moving on, kazuki saying something along the lines of "I don't like this season/weather..." and a shot of a drawer opened to reveal a polaroid in the middle of many many knickknacks

judging by one of the shots in the opening,

his wife probably died in the rain and we're getting more information about the incident because it's been hinted at in the early episodes before it became parenting focused

and adding onto this because of a nice person in the replies!

the building behind him looks exactly like aozora daycare, just not sure if its the front or back (maybe the front bc of the hint of a blue gate beside him) but there doesn’t seem to be bushes planted anywhere near the spot where you can see the hydrangeas, so maybe it got planted a while later?

considering the clothes he’s wearing, this has to be before the dinner scene and is what leads up to it... the connections are getting stronger

you cannot convince me that this isn't rei's brother and that he isn't the favorite child

even rei (as seen from a flashback) couldn't call his father "dad" and that he should refer to him as "boss", but then there's this guy fighting him that calls rei's father as "father"

and something something about "Didn't Father tell you to return to the organization?" which implies he escaped the organization and got hired by kyutaro somehow

how he managed to get an apartment? i'll probably just say kyutaro did it i have no idea if he can even make forgeries like kazuki does

additionally: in PV2 you can see more of the gunfight between who i assume to be rei’s brother (older or younger? who knows)

and i assume this is set while miri and kazuki are waiting for rei to come back because it’s his birthday and they set up a nice surprise party for him, so, hoping he hurries back home because he can’t just stand them up like that on his own birthday

OK. NOW. THE SCENE THAT SPAWNED THIS ENTIRE POST.

there must've been some kind of falling out between rei + miri and kazuki because he was screaming "I'm... not your housekeeper!" during dinner

i'm suspecting that they finally got on his nerves if they never pick up after themselves properly or just the small stuff piled up onto kazuki and he had enough despite usually not really minding the fact that he has to do most if not all of the house chores

but another theory i have is that the scene with the photograph is connected and because of the stress, it leads up to him taking it out on rei and miri. i'm distraught i don't want to see this episode but i have to. mfs gonna have a sk8 episode 7 situation and i'm powerless to stop it

already saw a post or two about this one and i also hope it's just a red herring but judging by the shirt that rei has on which is different from the shirt he wears inside the house in earlier episodes, this was probably right after kazuki's meltdown

maybe kazuki ran off somewhere? maybe miri tried following him and got sick in the process and rei had to come fetch her? i just wonder how desperate rei must've been to run to kyutaro for help even if he's not as wary about kyutaro like kazuki is

kyutaro's talking about something being a warning because the organization doesn't forgive something (possibly kazurei taking in miri and raising her)

this shot looks like it could've been a flashback from when his wife died because he was wearing a green shirt during the dinner scene

ignoring the crossed out line because it has to be during the birthday surprise episode because if it really was after kazuki’s meltdown, he has to have been wearing a green shirt. but in the scene where he’s standing in the rain looking a little roughed up, he’s wearing the same exact clothes as here

and then a shot of rei's father without the shadows mostly hiding his face from a flashback!

he's gonna be a major player in the second half and i am Not Here for it

bonus: i think karin's a spy tasked to idk infiltrate kazuki and rei's apartment and see what they're up to i just know she's gonna be a pain in the ass for them

that's all folks i just needed to get these out right now