#i have grief mixes for all seasons apparently

[mylittleredgirl]

holy smokes man sometimes old grief just comes up behind you swinging a bat

[that-left-turn]

Je ne sais quoi

My first impression of 201 "La Gentillesse des Etrangers" is mixed. On the one hand, there's the unequal billing, which I can't stomach for a show that will need to rely on the non-titular character for its success and on the other, Melissa and Carol are back.

There are (already) several problems with the plot and its themes. I won't get into it here, the list is too long.

As for Carol's arc, the unfolding exploration of grief is exquisite in Melissa's voice. In her mimicry, her eyes... It's a beautiful performance. She's such a gorgeous, intuitive actor and I can't quite wrap my mind around TPTB not being elated at having her on their show. Speaking the words they wrote, breathing life into the story. I'm often accused by anons of being jealous of Zabel and Gimple because I'm critical of their actions, but the one thing I'm actually jealous of? Getting to work with Melissa. I would love that.

And I want to love the episode, for Melissa because I love Melissa. It's just very apparent by the execution that it's a show for and by middle-aged white men who lack emotional intelligence.

It's difficult to fit an arc into six episodes when the scope is too wide and I think the show wants to be two different things at once: Zabel's original story and Gimple's adrenaline pumping action adventure. The pacing is off—it's dragging in parts and in others, it's so filled with gimmicks, my suspension of disbelief can't keep up with the over the top ridiculousness. I suspect, based on what I'm seeing in this episode, that AMC wasn't happy with the reception of the slow meandering plod through S1, so Gimple stepped in to 'rescue' the show because his fingerprints are all over.

You can't have two people with completely different visions of what the show should look like in charge of creative decisions. The last season of the flagship show was atrocious because of the power struggle happening behind the scenes between Gimple and Kang.

My takeaway from the episode: Melissa was fabulous. Everything else, not so much. Production value was low despite the gorgeous backdrop of France, but Melissa's performance so far is breathtaking and heartbreaking. She deserves at least equal billing because she's this show's one saving grace.

[princesssarcastia]

delighted by the series finale of the borgias

holy shit!!!!!

FUCK!

let me start again.

the slowest burn

the slowest burn on this show was not, in fact, lucrezia/cesare—it was cesare/the papal armies. it was cesare/his father's trust. Cesare could only find himself in possession of these things at the very end because they're overwhelmingly transformative. We spent two seasons watching his brother, Juan, faff about, completely inept, unable to accomplish almost any task the pope sets for him. And then! Cesare takes command and it really is like god smiles on him and everything is suddenly possible. Suddenly, for one shining moment, it seems like the world really is ripe for the taking.

This was of course foreshadowed as far back as the first episode, when Cesare, cloaked in an archbishop's robes, steps in with a sword to easily, handily, save his brother from two random dudes he got into a fight with on the street. It's perfectly emblematic of what's to come.

Micheletto and the case of courtly love

The return of Micheletto!!!! Micheletto my love!! My darling dearest. Talk about the platonic ideal of courtly love—his devotion to Cesare, his love for Cesare, his impulse to serve him, outweighs even his hatred and his grief. To have him come back one last time, grant Cesare one last gift, one that wins him his first battle decisively? How utterly fantastic.

And of course, when Micheletto says it's over and done with and he's dead as far as anyone is concerned, Cesare lets him go. First of all, because there's no way in hell he could stop him. Second of all, because of course Cesare loves him, too. Trusts him.

One great parallel drawn is between Cesare/Micheletto and Caterina/Rufio. Two nobles who remain ennobled by their left hands of death whom they trust utterly and, apparently, love beyond anyone else. Cesare lets Micheletto go...and Caterina lets Rufio go. Gives him her blessing to go serve a new master once she's finally gone—once he ensure that she's finally gone. You could read it as Caterina searching to put a failsafe into place, to put someone in Cesare's household that can one day free her or continue to work to her ends. But honestly? I think the most Rufio will ever do for her again is slip into her rooms one night and see her dead, like she asked. A last kindness for the Lady he served his whole life.

Caterina Sforza meets her end

Caterina Sforza, my love, you were fantastic, and you lost in a spectacular fashion fitting your spectacular legend and comportment. Ten more sons! The Tigress of Forli indeed!

I thought her storyline was also tragically beset by in-universe sexism; the way those other Italian lords abandoned her cause for Cesare the second he gathered an army of his own must have burned. Certainly, it ensured there was no way for her to win. But everything she accomplished in spite of that is all the more impressive, to the very end.

It's also interesting, because as she had to deal with sexism, so too have the Borgias dealt with that classic european mix of nativism and racism, and no one else spells it out quite like Caterina does. At the very end, the second she's well and truly lost:

"Damn you, Spanish half-breed," she says to Cesare, who just prevented her from killing herself.

Her family was originally supposed to be allied with the Borgias! The Sforzas and the Borgias, bound together by Lucrezia's marriage to her first husband. But the Sforzas spurned the alliance at every turn, refusing to provide the promised military aid, and on a more personal level, allowing Giovanni to beat Lucrezia and generally treat her like shit.

Why? Because the Borgias are outsiders. Because they're a bunch of Spaniards in an Italian world, and the italians can't help but punish them for it. Why should the Sforzas keep their word to a bunch of spanish half-breeds?

Why should a bunch of italian men keep their word to an italian woman?

Caterina Sforza sits at a very neat intersection of prejudices, and I find it fascinating.

Lucrezia now firmly resides in a tragedy

There's also a fantastic comparison to be had between Cesare's love for Lucrezia and his love for Micheletto. Both of them, he would trust with power and authority—he tells his mother he misses Micheletto's counsel and skill. He tells Machiavelli he would make his sister the regent of Naples. But here lies the difference: Micheletto he would allow to walk free, to live as he chooses. Lucrezia will never, ever be afforded that privilege. Never.

"You will be naked, and clean, and bloodless again. And mine."

FUCK.

Watching him kneel at her side, as she lies next to her husband's recent bloody corpse, and try to wipe her clean...that's romance. Creepy, terrifying, devoted love. An insidious inversion of the tender care he's shown for her the whole show up to this point. He'll continue to love her, care for her and her son and her happiness, no doubt. But there can also be no doubt that Lucrezia is completely at the mercy of a much more powerful man once again.

Literally the last lines of the whole show is a creepy incestuous declaration of possession. Cesare owns Lucrezia, now. I'd be shocked, in this universe the show constructed, if she ever married again. Certainly, now that their father has given Cesare the keys to the kingdom, has decided he'll trust his first-born son with both their ambitions, I can't see him denying Cesare anything, even Lucrezia—so long as he's discrete.

I mean...the pair of them DID keep making out in front of servants and also minor lordlings who owe Cesare allegiance. It's not like it's a total secret at this point. And still, they follow him.

Poor Lucrezia. I think if Rodrigo and Cesare had literally just included her, treated her like, if not an equal, at least someone with skin in the game whom they trust, this could have turned from the tragedy it was to a triumph, for her.

Instead, she has to beg for scraps of news Rodrigo can barely give her, and grant her husband a mercy killing after her brother stabs him mortally but doesn't finish the job.

Cesare's new preoccupation with legitimacy

There's also a fantastic scene between Cesare and Vanozza, his mother. His mother, the courtesan, the whore, who offers her son her counsel, offers to ride to war with him so he has someone he can trust by his side! Something he had just finished telling her he desperately missed (Micheletto my love you are irreplaceable)

And...he turns her down.

He not only turns her down, he does so in a way that's eerily reminiscent of his dead brother, Juan. His dead brother whom he murdered.

"I would not be the son of a whore," Cesare says to his mother, the whore. Suddenly, after his father shared his dream of creating a Papal Bloodline, to be passed down to Cesare so he in turn can pass it down to his own son...suddenly, now, he begins to care about the very perceptions that eventually drove Juan to dangle his nephew over a balcony and sign his own death warrant. It is, to me, the second most chilling moment in the whole episode, after what he says to Lucrezia.

Now, Vanozza might not be trapped like her daughter, but she may soon be consigned to insignificance, without any responsibility or meaning, but also without any power. Relevant only as much as Cesare loves her or wants to see her. Which, before this episode, I would have said was quite a lot! But if he's about to descend into the same game of legitimacy and legend and perception his brother did...perhaps not so much.

Rodrigo and Cesare and the death of daddy issues

We spent three seasons watching Rodrigo dismiss and belittle and refuse to trust Cesare, but finally, in this episode, we come to see the truth: that he always meant for Cesare to succeed him in the only way that matters to him: in the church. He made him a cardinal so he could one day be pope, after him! Made him a prince of the church! But Cesare was also right to miss and lust after traditional station of power, after the dukedoms and armies he amasses after forcing his father to let him renounce his position as cardinal, because the empire they both want to build is impossible without them.

Still: to realize, with Cesare, that even though Rodrigo sees so much of himself in Cesare, he still planned from the beginning to make Cesare his true heir...what a payoff. What a relief. What a consolation for years of feelings of inadequacy! Of never being enough!

No wonder he's riding high, immortal, invincible, Cesar come again. All his daddy issues went "poof" and left him, well, clean.

All told?

In the end, having now watched all of it, I have to say the whole show was marvelous. Politics, intrigue, romance, forbidden romance, the things people do for family or for love or for both, the things they do for power, how lonely it is to sit at the pinnacle of the world. The costuming, the writing, the dialogue, it's all so compelling, and I frankly recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in period dramas

P.S.

Contender for funniest line in the whole fucking show:

"Primogeniture is the future," the pope of rome says.

CACKLING oh my god. that's hilarious. definitely, that is a thing that will happen for the papacy and the world at large.

SureJan.gif

[esther-dot]

This text is still one of the greatest piece I’ve ever read on this site. How are you worshipping male characters such as Walter White, Tywin, Jaime, or Stannis, but end up hating Cersei, Sansa, and Catelyn ?

“This kind of reaction is not uncommon, for Skyler in particular and for women – often wives – on top-drawer TV dramas in general. Characters like Skyler become targets of vituperation unimaginable to their male counterparts, most of whom engage in vastly more destructive and immoral behavior every episode. By failing to indulge every whim of the the male antiheroes around whom their shows are built, the women become obstacles to those men getting exactly what they want when they want it at all times, which is the core fantasy of antihero fiction. Cold cunning, ruthlessness, rage, self-interest, a propensity for physical violence – we gender these unheroic characteristics as male, and celebrate them; passivity, bitterness, grief, emotional enmeshment, a knack for attacking and deflating egos – we gender these unheroic characteristics as female, and loathe them. Skyler White, Betty Francis, Megan Draper, Catelyn Stark, Sansa Stark, Cersei Lannister, Carmela Soprano: On the sole count of “being women,” Fan Court finds you guilty as charged.”

The source is a 2012 Rolling Stone Breaking Bad recap, and apparently the author inspired a lot of chatter in the fandom with his takes (I avoided all fan/professional content while watching so I have no idea what his thoughts were like on any other aspect of the story/fandom), but that really is a great assessment of the fandom's reaction to certain characters!

It's fascinating that he pinpointed those characteristics so accurately. This part, "ruthlessness, rage, self-interest, a propensity for physical violence – we gender these unheroic characteristics as male, and celebrate them" -- explains why no matter what Dany did she was celebrated, while Sansa was condemned, well shit, he called that too, in her interaction with Jon she showed, "a knack for attacking and deflating egos." He wrote that years before s6, but people raged about Sansa "undermining" Jon and hated the way she spoke to Dany in s8, kept bitching about it even after Dany burned KL.

I don't think it's that surprising for fans to connect with the "victim" in a scenario, and the more verbal character might seem like the aggressor even if their words are in reaction to a horrible decision/inciting action of the other character, so I actually can see how fans slip into sympathizing with Jon over Sansa (or any of those men over the female counterpart) because the fans aren't grasping the context for the verbalization of disagreement/grievances. In some instances, the fault is with the writer who is (perhaps unknowingly, due to their own acceptance of the ok crimes/not ok crimes) guiding the audience to sympathize with one character over the other. I certainly felt that GoT was not that sympathetic to Sansa in the later seasons when she was dealing with Jon or Tyrion, so there were all sorts of mixed messages or outright, offensive messages like "but why wouldn't Sansa want to be with nice guy Tyrion who she was forced to marry as a child bride? Like, why would she object? What could the reason be????" But Breaking Bad seemed to be very clear eyed about who Walter was, and I think it was the audience who fucked up there all on their own.

That was such an interesting read. I’ll have to look up more of that writer’s work. Thank you for sending it, anon!

[clothyume]

A Premature Burial Episode 2

A Premature Burial 

Episode 2 

Season: Winter 

Characters: Kuro, Nazuna, Mika, Shu

Nazuna: Hm~? Speaking of which, Kagehira, I heard Itsuki called you over to his boarding house for something? 

Has he done something horrible to you again? That guy~ If it’s really bad I’ll be filing a complaint, alright? 

Mika: Nnah, Nazuna-nii—

Nazuna-nii~! W-W-W-What should I do? I, I, I dunno what to do anymore…! 

Nazuna: Uhya? Don’t come flying over here, you’ve gotten a lot heavier lately! 

Mika: Nnah~ Nnaaah~… But, I, I—

Nazuna: Don’t wail like a cat… There there~ What’s really the matter? You’re graduating soon aren’t you, you’re a big boy now~? 

Mika: Achoo! But, Nazuna-nii~? This is real serious, it’s Oshisan’s grandad—

Kuro: Hmm? What happened to his pops? I heard that he’s been in bad shape and can’t get out of bed since last winter? 

Mika: Ryu-kun-san ain’t heard anythin’? Ah, yer real distant now ain’t ya? 

Um. I ain’t checked the facts yet but… Oshisan’s grandad has passed away. 

Kuro: Aah?

Mika: It ain’t really my business, but he took care of me when I lived there too! 

That’s why I hurried back fer the— f-funeral? To prepare fer it…! 

Kuro: Ah~… Again?

Mika: Nnah? Whaddya mean a-again? 

Kurou: No, I think it’s serious this time… But I can’t say anything that’s too careless. 

All I know is that Itsuki’s pops has died— This is the 17th time. 

Mika: Nnah…? 

Nazuna: Ah~ It happened once when “Valkyrie” was just Itsuki and I as well. 

I wasn’t well acquainted with Itsuki’s Grandad but from what I’d heard, he was a really mischievous guy. Apparently he pretended to die over and over again. 

Mika: P-Pretended to die…? Eh…? Yer kiddin, why’d he do somethin’ like that? 

Nazuna: Well… At least when I knew them, Itsuki’s family had already gotten used to it. 

It seems like they were pretty tired of his antics. But Itsuki loved his grandad so much that he was the only one that would panic. 

Kuro: That’s right~… I felt so sorry for him at first, being a kid I was considerate and consoled him with cheap sweets and stuff. 

By the 5th time it started being a pain… When I heard it I would say stuff like “Really? How sad”. 

Mika: Ehhh…? 

Kuro: But if it’s serious this time, I won’t make any jokes, it’s better not to overthink it—Kagehira. 

Itsuki too. The person he loves the most in the world is his pops, but he’s also the type of person to get tired in serious relationships. 

Mika: …

Shu: (Yes. Well then, I’ll be on my way.) 

(Yes. I understand that but—- just in case— Should something happen. It’s true that my grandfather is very old, and he has been in poor health since last winter.) 

(That attention seeking old man flailing around and pretending to be confused as he would… I’d prefer it were a jest as such.) 

(I’m going to return home temporarily to find out the truth myself. Yes, it’s still very cold, so be cautious of your own health too, landlord.) 

(Well then, I should be going.)

(… Yes? Hm? What do you think?) 

(Perhaps Kagehira mailed it— Ah, it might have been mixed in with my business partner’s luggage.) 

(Yes. I mailed the works I made while I was at it… It could have been confused with the works that were originally in  my atelier at the time.) 

(Yes. I’ll have a look. Ah, no, it doesn’t belong to me.) 

(Hmph. Originally my grandfather’s? In that case, instead of returning it here, if my grandfather really has passed away, perhaps it would be better to place it in front of his grave?) 

(Hm, I should avoid that? It could start an argument? What could you possibly mean…?) 

(I don’t quite understand, but I’ll comply. Yes. In that case, I really should be going.) 

(…Good grief. My grandfather is known for his false alarms.) 

(Such as the boy who cried wolf. However the last time I visited my grandfather, he was worn out, as though he were a completely different person—) 

(This time, it’s possible…) 

(How unpleasant. No matter how much time passes, I can’t get used to the thought of death.) 

(If only everyone could become dolls.) 

(Then I could display them forever in my undecaying kingdom.) 

(………) 

[casliveblog]

Custom Toonami Block Week 119 Rundown

Kaguya-sama: Love is War: So this episode is fucking kickass, like I’ve been kinda mellow about my reactions to this series thus far but this season finale was hype as fuck. Just all the crazy shit people do to get Kagura smuggled out to the fireworks festival, Hayakasa is still best girl, Chika and Ishigami do their part and Miyuki is pretty badass weaponizing his usual mind game tactics and we even get a cameo from one of Chika’s ramen buddies, all of it’s pretty fantastic. It’s pretty funny how in the next part Miyuki thinks all the cool stuff he said came off as cringe because that’s definitely a matter of perspective and definitely a part of social anxiety but at the same time even the cringe versions of events he gives are still pretty cool, just more in an unhinged Jack Sparrow Guile Hero kind of way than the Shojo Manga Man way that Kagura saw them. Still you know how it goes, shenanigans and everything and we’re basically back where we started with a net no progress, like I like to think there’s at least some experience gained here but the nature of the show is fucking over any dynamic these two have that isn’t mind games. Still all that said it was pretty funny, I don’t know if I’ll be watching future seasons on the Custom Toonami Block specifically since it seems like a show that’s more fun to casually binge than do this sort of format for but we’ll see how it goes.

Inuyasha: So IMMEDIATELY after setting up the whole ‘Inuyasha is trapped in Jakotsu’s blade’ cliffhanger Inuyasha just gets cut a little and Wind Scars his way out, OHKOing Jakotsu but refusing to finish him off because killing a queer man that is yandere for you while he’s under a pile of rocks just doesn’t feel right I guess. Still Renkotsu comes and steals Jakotsu’s shard and kills him right after, then goes to fight Bankotsu because he’s pissed Bankotsu won’t share the shards and Bankotsu’s pissed Renkotsu keeps killing all his friends. Bankotsu even says he won’t use his weapon to fight Renkotsu and fucks him up just using Jakotsu’s hair pin which is pretty fucking dope. And just like that the Band of Seven has become the Band of One with a superpowered Bankotsu going to fight Inuyasha. Kikyo has a nice little talk with Hakushin about how even though he couldn’t be the perfectly selfless Saint everyone thought he was he did a lot of good for everyone and not wanting to die isn’t a sin but carrying grief in your heart isn’t healthy and he’s not really mad at everyone for using him but at himself for not living up to that heroic façade. She even gives him permission to quit being a saint and let go of the burden to set his soul at ease and it’s really pretty nice, probably one of Kikyo’s best moments given her own perspective on selflessness and death. But yeah with Hakushin gone, Mt. Hakurei transforms into a JRPG final boss arena and we’re ready for the final Inuyasha vs Bankotsu fight.

Yu Yu Hakusho: So we spend the first part of this episode going ‘Genkai’s really dead forever for reals guys, tournament’s over, no dragon balls or anything so home, show’s over’ then we cut to Toguro volunteering himself for ten thousand years in hell when according to his paperwork he should maybe go to the Moderately Bad Place instead of the Very Very Bad Place. And we get his full backstory which is basically the same as Jiren’s backstory in Dragon Ball Super except less terrible. Apparently all his students were murdered by a big demon and he was prompted to join the Dark Tournament just like he prompted Yusuke to and legitimately became cold and ruthless to rise to the challenge, then wishing to become a demon as a form of punishment and to double down on the path of strength he’d chosen. Basically everything in Toguro’s backstory goes ‘maybe he’s being an asshole but maybe also he has another motive’ and you can really go back and forth on each part of his motive about which of these are self-flagellation and which are corruption since it’s probably a mix of both. Even Toguro seems to be going out of his way to zig-zag the tropes as if someone understanding him in any way is a comfort he doesn’t want. Anyway Yusuke and co. are getting ready for the boat and oops Genkai’s alive again, I mean they are friends with the god of the dead and they did get jipped out of their prize for the tournament, seems like he shouldn’t be able to just… do that but here we are, we went through a lot of ‘she’s really dead super for reals this time’ for her to just come back but whatever. Just hope they do something cool with her in future arcs and this isn’t just something to not make Yusuke have to deal with loss.

Fate/Apocrypha: So now Yggy Mcbabyeater is very mad that the Bigger Cup got stolen and makes Vlad turn into Dracula against his wishes so he can fight despite his weird thing of not being able to fight outside his home turf and he kinda just… fuses with him which is apparently something people can do? So yeah now we have Yggycula as our big season-ending midboss and this just became Netflix Castlevania for a bit with everyone fighting him. They get interrupted though as all the Team Shirou Servants get hit with a case of ‘my master has just been poisoned’ on account of their masters just being poisoned, also Shirou has all their Command Seals now. Also Yggycula comes up to Shirou’s terf and Shirou just starts throwing knives at him like ‘bro you’re a vampire and you walked into a church, the fuck’d you expect’? And we go from Netflix Castlevania to Hellsing Ultimate briefly as Shirou does his best Father Anderson and melts the vampire. We got a little flashback for Shirou a little while ago about him being in the same Grail War as Mr. Yggy Babyeater and if I was paying attention or knew anything about Japanese history I’d have known Shirou was a Servant, not a Master from that though to be fair he does have a human alias and everyone’s surprised he’s still alive after the war like they think he’s just some dude, but yeah basically he seems to be what if Saber lost Shirou and went apeshit and also incarnated to loop the Grail War cycle like Gilgamesh because he’s also a Ruler from before this war started. Seems he was Irisviel’s Servant in this verse and we can’t have a universe where any of the homunculi girls aren’t angst fodder for their male leads so of course she died and now Shirou’s all ‘I’m just keep doing genocide until god strikes me down himself to tell me I’m wrong’ so good luck with that.

Speed Grapher: So they send a Euphoric who can make his tattoos come to life after Ginza who is not down for his superpowered bullshit and has already moved Saiga to a secondary location but she gets marked with his tiny middle finger spider tattoo, guess they put that one in the right place cause it’s a real fuck you to her for kicking his ass. Meanwhile Kagura uses the guy that’s been sexually harassing her in the sensual deprivation chamber to escape by offering herself to him if he lets her step outside and then immediately grabbing an axe and holding herself hostage so she can make her escape, some real character development from her taking charge of the situation, not a perfect plan but it gets the job done. Meanwhile her mom and Suitengu are legit getting ready to sign the paperwork to get married because despite Suitengu not breaking character and pretending to be a romantic he’s also not wasting time on this whole takeover plan. We also get a flashback of Shinzen first meeting her now Alzheimer’s-ridden mother and find out she was actually adopted by the modeling agency because her mom saw her getting harassed by an agent and picked her up on the spot. Though also there’s some magic gene splicing they did on her to make her more ‘perfect’ since she had like two genes out of place or something and the one who did it is Kagura’s dad/the doctor she loved. Really kinda paints a sympathetic picture of Kagura’s mom despite what a bitch she is, like she just wanted to be a model and got roped into an international magic gene therapy ring and became a loveless billionaire because the doctor that transformed her was murdered by a higher power and made to look like he ditched her and now as a result of the gene bullshit her daughter has a tumor that lets her give superpowers to rich assholes by letting them sexually assault her… god this plot is weird when I say it out loud. But yeah turns out Shinzen’s adopted mom got into a car accident on the night Shinzen was out seeing Mr. Dr. Kagura’s dad and got ditched because she was driving down the road REALLY pissed off and that may be why she has such a shitty memory and can barely walk or she could just be old or both idk. Funny thing is Suitengu and everyone talk about not knowing Shinzen’s mom was alive but like she has cameras and staff specifically assigned to her and takes her on walks and shit but guess she never specifically told him about it. Anyway Kagura breaks into her mom’s tower and finds her grandma’s room and Suitengu’s goons find her there. Shinzen backs off signing the marriage certificate because she wants her mom to see it which I’m not entirely sure if that’s out of love or spite for her being pissy about her first marriage attempt. She finds Kagura and Suitengu’s Team Rocket squad in Grandma’s room and is like ‘yo Suitengu wtf bro’ when Kagura starts talking about the eyes wide shut cult of superpowered billionaires he’s been running. She doesn’t seem to believe either of them and for some reason still thinks Suitengu’s just fucking Kagura on the side because she’s really fixated on that and gives him a gun to play Russian roulette with along with Kagura, giving them a 75% chance of survival but playing with their lives. Suitengu’s goons take the gun and try to shoot Shinzen with it but this is why you always fucking use your own guns because turns out there were no bullets and she just wanted them to pull the trigger as a show of faith and apology so she busts out a room full of dozens of kimono girls with automatic rifles because apparently she just had that at the ready at a minute’s notice at like 2am in her marriage certificate ceremony. Luckily Suitengu is Blood Sephiroth and is able to make a Blood Barrier out of blood strands and then turn them into tentacles to Elfen Lied the kimono girls, also killing the poor city worker who was there just because no one that sees his powers can live (except Kagura I guess cause he told his goons to close their eyes). He then uses the blood to do the blood bullet thing from Deadman Wonderland to kill Shinzen’s mom and then choke Shinzen herself out. Kagura desperately tells her mom that her dad didn’t abandon her and was just late and that he loved her even as he was dying and Shinzen dies happy knowing that. Suitengu also has Mr. Dr. Kagura’s Dad’s left arm for some reason so I guess he’s the original Euphoric and is made of a bunch of frakenstein’d body parts that give him blood powers or some shit since he does say “I’m the original’ when talking about Mr. Dr. Kagura’s dad and tells Shinzen that she was always really in the left arm of the man she loved even if it wasn’t him. So yeah now Suitengu’s going to marry Kagura to control the company which she’s like fourteen so that’s kinda fucked up, dunno how the media’s going to spin that one.

Durararax2: Tom takes over the narration and goes on about how everyone needs to chill the fuck out which is fair. Meanwhile Haruna and her teacher crush have turned the Saika army into an actual zombie apocalypse overtaking the town with the same infection types, like can’t believe that’s the most widespread threat with all the weird factions going on here. Izaya has a flashback of Shinra saying how even when Shizuo dies he’ll have a legendary legacy that may exceed his ridiculous exploits since people will be bound to talk about how strong he is. It seems like that ends up getting at the heart of Izaya’s character because that’s kind of what he wanted going into this war for Celty’s head. Meanwhile Shinra’s dad gives Celty her head back and her memory is wiped as expected and she advents like a god from the sky down to the city which is ridiculously cool. Chikage has a ridiculously convoluted plan to pretend to kidnap Masaomi just to get him and Mikado to fucking talk to each other meanwhile Mikado’s about to send Aoba to cap Chikage at the Dollars’ birthplace as Chikage and Namie doxx Masaomi, Mikado and Anri about their parts in leading these huge gang wars. Kujisaki and Varona end up fighting Izaya’s karate girl midboss like this is a scene out of Kill Bill (and Varona has the outfit for it, huh… may be onto something) while Izaya and Shizuo set out to have a Mastermind vs Supertank battle that puts every Batman vs Superman incarnation to shame. So in summary: shit’s about to go down for the tenth time, we really are getting to the endgame here.

[avorbl]

Avor's Watchlist for weeks 42 + 43

The seasonal weather change has hit my family hard this year and it hasnt helped that this last week was apparently rip your heart out week in queer focused asian film.

Currently Airing

Kidnap 8/12 I think all has been said on this series

The Hidden Moon 8/10 I am seeing a pattern here Its one episode thats mixing romantic visuals with the furtherance of the mystery followed by lull episode and I can live with that it’s not among my favourites this year but it has a good mix to keep me interested

Jack & Joker: U Steal My Heart! 7/12 With the way this story is going i have to really watch how I am pacing my Mondays for the next few weeks

Doku Koi: Doku mo Sugireba Koi to Naru 6/10

Love Sick 2024 7/15

Smells Like Green Spirit 5/9

Fourever You 4/16 Its fullfills the need for low stakes low attention drama

My Damn Business 4/7 They are using the format well I am enjoying this tropy office fantasy

Uncle Unknown 8/12

Every You, Every Me 4/8 They are really selling the concept of soulmates. In light of the earlier aroace mentions I am curious if we get platonic soulmates.

Eccentric Romance 6/12

Blue Complex 10/? I am hoping to get my hands on the rest of this series at some point its a solid beginning

Let Free the Curse of Taekwondo 4/8

Usotoki Rhetoric 2/10 The second ep saw them stumble on real detective work.

Lion no Kakurega 2/11

Love in the Big City 2/8 Its very good but I cannot fully appreciate it in my current mood

See Your Love 2/13

Blue Canvas of Youthful Days 2/12 I had watched the first two episodes previously but watching them one by one gives a different perspective

Polyethylene terephthalate 2: Even if it's just a dream that I'll forget when I wake up 2/8 A sequel series where you should watch the original first

Stealing from My CEO 10/61 Very fast paced, Very dramatic, a ceo novel put in short form

What I am catching up on

My Best Boyfriend 12/17

Unstoppable High Kick 28/167

The Princess Royal 26/40

Word of Honor 21/36

Fight for My Way 9/16

Finished in the last two weeks

The Secret of Male Students 14.10.24 7/10 Light entertainment

Our Golden Times 15.10.24 7,5/10 Old school BL. Light production enjoyable despite the treatment of women.

After Goodbye 16.10.24 8/10 Grief

Dom 17.10.24 7,5/10 Safe and or casual sex in small gay circles

Unknown Untitled Unmastered 19.10.24 7/10 Too much of an advertisement to be the series about youthful regret its trying tobe

Battle of the Writers 21.10.24 6,5/10 Watchable TutorYim vehicle trying to string together kissing and sex scenes. 12. 21.10.24

First Note of Love 21.10.24 8,5/10 A quiet but earnest healing story. With focus of on the joy of life itself rather than individual emotional moments.

What Comes after Love 26.10.24 7,5/10 This could have been a story about how hard it is to let go and the grief of over an ended relationship. There was't enough appreciation between the couple in the present it missed out on joy or happiness to sell this melancholic work as a getting back together romance.

Polyethylene terephthalate 27.10.24 8/10 Slice of Life about the struggles for mm couple graduating from acting school and their paths diverging; Queer life in Japan

Dropped in the last two weeks

Iron Family 3/36 18.10.24 /10 It didnt catch me (not enough of the cast promised a story Id be interested in) and then it made looking at the sky a plot point in obvious in-studio scenes which broke whatever imersion I had.

Teenager Judge 5/20 26.10.24 /10 20 episodes are too much of a time investment for the level of enjoyment i get out of it

Apple My Love 3/6 26.10.24 /10

[dulcewrites]

new chap of fcc… love u babe. DID WATCH THE NEW HOTD EP??? keep us updated on ur thoughts!!

Love you more 😘 glad you liked it!

Ok don’t hate me but I didn’t. I don’t have work on Wednesday so I may watch it then. But tbh I was tempted to do what I did last season and sort of catch up after the fact. I didn’t start watching s1 in real time till ep 8 (I binged the other eps the Friday and Saturday before). It actually helped me formulate my thoughts better. If that makes sense. Idk this fandom can be… a lot/overly negative for the sake of argument and it can be hard to enjoy it while airing. I don’t want to be fighting for my life as an Alicent girlie and an overall team green enjoyer lmao.

That being said I have seen a couple of clips and knows the basic beats simply by just being around so I will say:

- glad they gave Aegon Helaena and their family some development pre b&c. Can’t speak on actual b&c bc I haven’t seen it. Wish we got more of them as a unit in s1

- I think Emma and their acting skills does most of the work bc I don’t care about lucerys dying (sorry not sorry) but interested to see where grief takes Rhaenyra. How is she going to react to b&c.

- daemon is a loser wbk

- loving the dynamic they are setting up with Aemond. Not only him lean to the death being on purpose but also pointing out the honest hypocrisy of him ‘being the reason the war started’… while they already put Aegon on the throne 😭. Like yeah Luke dying def accelerated things. But at the end of the day, it all broke the moment Aegon got a crown on his head. Naturally Aemond would feel some type of way about a parent choosing Rhaenyra over him (in his mind)… again. And this time it’s the parent that defended him. That has to suck

- I guess the thing (outside of b&c) that people have the most things to say about is Alicent and Criston. Soooo I have mixed feelings on this. On one hand, I’m of the belief that BOTH rhaenicent and alicole are better left in the margines… aka things left unsaid and unconsumated. I like the will they or won’t they of both. That means I wasn’t like jumping up and down knowing they hooked up, especially since we apparently don’t see how?? I could be wrong about that but that’s what i am assuming not watching. I think I’d appreciate it more seeing the first time or how these ultra repressed people got to having casual sex. But I will say even as someone who enjoys rhaenicent, that I like the idea of Alicent figuring her sexuality out for herself. Even if she realizes it’s not for her or hates herself afterward, she deserves a chance to try it out. I’m not of the belief that Criston is just gonna turn on her one day.

Also I feel more inclined to defend it simply bc this fandom is weird and now people are taking their distain for alicole out on Fabien. What we aren’t gonna do is demonize a man of color for some ship. It is to the point where people want to make it seem like Liv doesn’t like him which we know is just not true. It is also extra icky when it comes from white people bc why are you calling Criston a dog…. While actively stanning white character who behave the same or worse way. It gives the same vibes as the misogynist who love the male characters of the show but hate the women. Like bffr

This in general brings up a larger point for me that I haven’t really known how to put into words. I feel like a group of people - mainly rhaenicents (and once again I say this as someone who thinks that relationship is one of the most if not the most interesting in the whole show) - who act as if Alicent needs to hate everyone BUT Rhaenyra. Like she must hate her children, her father, and Criston but god forbid you bring up any resentment she may have towards Rhaenyra. Alicent is allowed to be sad about her childhood being taken and love her kids. She’s allowed to resent the position her father put her in and seek his council. She is allowed to know what Criston is capable of and understand he has been there for her for more than a decade. Just like she can move to put her son on the throne and miss what she had with Rhaenyra. Alicent is very complex and that should be seen through all her relationship.

One gripe I will say about alicole is like… what is the payoff. It is to make his eventual death hurt more? Is it more division amongst the greens? Is it for the guilt of it all?

[magnetengineer]

Anyways I was 'liveblogging' watching BoJack for the first time but stopped since I got depressed as hell

*not actual depression sorry

*tell me "I'm sorry about that, you deserve better"

I still collected my thoughts in my note app so I'll dump them all at once

——————————

BJH Season 3, the most whimsical episode soon followed by the most blursed one (the abortion one)

Better than S2 and S1 ✨

——————————

Don't Stop Dancing isn't a real song, it's something BoJack's mind made up.

——————————

BoJack's out-of-body experience (The View From Halfway Down) had him seeing dead friends and relatives… except for the cardinal, who wasn't welcome there. They were trying to chase her out, while she apparently wanted to stay.

And for what? That place was for the dead and the dying. Was she there by accident, and didn't realize the meaning of it? Was she there on purpose, but felt safe anyway? And if she was feeling safe, was her "safety" 1) returning to life, 2) surrendering to death, 3) either, or 4) neither?

And later, she appeared to try to stop Death (blocks the door against the black tar), but turns out she's been gone even before that…? She still appears to try to escape through the kitchen window, only to melt away

✨ Fun speculation while considering her being a real person ofc. The alternative is me pulling out the Occam's razor, and considering her a hallucination with little meaning.

——————————

Random things I wanted in BoJack but didn't get (to my knowledge):

• Turns out Vincent Adultman is genuinely an adult. It's just. Seems like a perfectly good progression for the joke.

• When Mr. Witherspoon "croaked", this wasn't Charley's pun—he literally just croaked, being the frog he is, and is still alive.

——————————

BoJack's couples with biological children have only been human x human, anthro x human, and same-anthro x same-anthro. Never different-anthro x different-anthro—though we almost got that with Princess Caro. The Charlotte x BoJack dream almost counts

…Since I was wondering whether different-anthro x different-anthro would make mixed children species

——————————

The Old Sugarman Place/I Will Always Think Of You—

"I've never seen so much compassion directed towards a grieving mother and a widower."

——————————

Anyways my three favorite episodes will have to be the abortion one, the grief one, and the mortality one

[talesofstyles]

Stitches and Pucks

i swear i tried writing the whole fic from the 3rd and 2nd pov in the beginning but hockey harry is so dang loud he’s like hang on honey this is MY story so let me tell this one ☠️ so here we are. i had loads of fun getting inside his head though, i hope you like it!

massive thank you to my biggest cheerleader @smokeinherperfume 🥺💛 and ken i’m so sorry for making you read an LA Kings fic 😂 @emotionally-imbruised

warning: smut. there’s no actual bow chicka wow wow stuff though but there’s some thigh riding 👀

[17k]

Harry

I swear I’m gonna kill Zayn.

That fucker just slammed my face into the boards, and as I’m trying to push back while flexing my jaw because that’s the right thing to do when you’ve got your face smashed into the boards, he tries to push me back again. Well, not a fucking chance. I give a particularly hard push back to get him off my back and I’m able to free my stick from the boards and put the blade to ice.

Because we’re playing on home ice here at Staples Center and I know its speed and consistency like the back of my hand, it takes nothing but a short tap on the puck and it shoots back between both of our legs. We scrabble, throwing elbows and shoulders and even kicking at it with our skates to expel it out. It’s a hard-fought battle, probably not lasting more than a few seconds, but it’s starting to wind me up because fuck if I’m gonna let them score. We’re up 4-2 against The Sharks, and with only under six minutes left to play in the game, I’d like to keep it that way.

I really don’t see it coming. And as much as we hate each other’s guts, it probably wasn’t even intentional, but it still hurts like a mother when Zayn’s stick pops upward, the end catching me just above my left eyebrow. I don’t feel any pain at first, but red, blurred vision definitely lets me know I’ve got blood streaming down my face. The ref blows the whistle and the play stops as the penalty is called.

The pain hits me next, and I bend over at the waist, my clear eye watching as a stream of blood hits the ice and freezes. In just about a few seconds, I feel a towel covering the cut and I hear the new team doctor say, “alright… let’s get you off the ice.”

Her hand stays steady at my back as I lift up straight, taking the towel in my own hand to hold it in place. The doctor walks alongside me while I skate to the bench, which has an exit door on one end that will lead back to the locker room. A few of my teammates slap me on the shoulder as I walk past. Harvey, who plays the same position as me but on the second-line yells out, “get stitched up so you can come back out and kick his pansy ass.”

I can’t help but chuckle, because that’s exactly what I plan to do.

“Up on the table,” the doctor says briskly and I watch with my one good eye as she quickly starts preparing the necessary supplies. I hop up onto the table, and in just under four minutes, my very own Doctor McSteamy has my injury evaluated, lidocaine injected, and is now closing the cut with stitches.

Good grief, she’s a fucking vision. Has a slammin’ body too, which no doubt would feel fucking fantastic underneath me. She probably doesn’t even realise it, but she’s got her little tongue sticking out the side of her mouth and I bet that’s something she does when she’s trying to concentrate on what she’s doing. I can feel my dick starting to twitch, so I close my eyes and get my mind out of the gutter before I get a hard-on. Fucking embarrassing.

When I’m sure I’ve got my downstairs head situation under control, I open my eyes again. She’s placing what I’m guessing the last suture on the cut and I make sure I put on my most dazzling smile as I look at her because I can be devastatingly charming when I want to be.

“Hey Doc,” I lean a bit closer to her when she’s done and murmur, “you should let me cook you dinner at my place tonight. You know, as a thank you.”

“No, thank you,” she replies without even looking towards me, preferring to busy herself with putting away the supplies that she used to tend to my cut. “I was just doing my job.”

“Alright then, no dinner at my place tonight,” I say with a sly smile. “But how about giving me your number so I can take you out sometime?”

She snorts in reply. “I’m not one of your puck bunnies.”

“No, you’re not,” I smirk at her. My tone is matter-of-fact when I add, “you’re one hot doctor.”

Not sure what I’m expecting, but this is definitely not it. Most women would blush and drop their knickers in an instant when I give them the tiniest bit of my attention, let alone a compliment, and let’s just say that’s why my bed is rarely empty. But it seems like my charms don’t work on this doctor since all I get is a fucking eye-roll.

“Are you always this forward?” She asks, still not looking at me.

“I’m a simple man, Doc,” I tell her with a shrug. “I see something I like, I go and get it.”

“Good for you,” she says dismissively, but I don’t miss the hint of amusement in her tone.

“Does that mean I get your number?”

She lets out a chuckle and finally turns to look at me. “That means I like your way of thinking.”

“So, no number?” I pout like a damn child, and apparently, the sight is hilarious to her. She throws her head back and laughs, and when she looks back to me, I get a wink.

“Sorry sunshine,” she smirks at me and I can’t help but ogle at her lips.

Perfect fucking lips.

“I don’t shit where I eat,” she adds.

Now, this is funny, so this time I’m the one tipping my head back laughing before I bring my gaze back to her. “You know our General Manager, Sloane Knightley?”

“Of course,” she replies, eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

“She’s with Alex, right-winger,” I tell her with a grin. “Now, Brynne Adams, have you met her yet?”

“The Athletic Trainer?”

“That’s the one, and she’s dating Matt, left-winger.”

“What?” Her jaw drops and it’s the cutest fucking sight. I’ve always thought of myself as a tits-man, but apparently now I’m a jaws-man too.

“Oh I’m not done yet,” I smirk at her. “Sarah Jones, Head of Equipment Manager, do you know her?”

She nods. “I’ve met her twice.”

“She’s with Mitch, right defenseman. Now, you probably haven’t met this one yet, but our goalie, Adam, is the only one married between us first-line players. His wife, Rachel, is the head of our in-house legal team. So look around Doc, everyone’s bloody shitting and eating around here,” I finish with a grin.

“Yeah, that doesn’t change a thing,” she insists. “That won’t be me.”

I give her one last glance as I hop off the table before I walk towards the door, pretty sure my eyes glitter with mischief as I say, “yeah, we’ll see, sunshine.”

—

The Owner’s Box is a local sports bar in El Segundo. Located only a stone’s throw away from the team’s practice facility at Toyota Sports Center, it has become the go-to hangout for a lot of the players ever since the facility opened in 2000. I like this place because it carries 140 types of beer and I like beer, and honestly the food is great as well.

As much as we like to mix and mingle with the fans, which is super fucking cool in my opinion, the manager always ropes off an area on the second floor for the players so we can drink and chill out without fans swamping us. Usually when we arrive, we’ll hang around the first-floor bar area for a bit to give the fans an opportunity to take pictures and ask for autographs before we head upstairs.

It’s always crowded after the game because everyone knows they can find us here, but it always gets extra busy whenever we win. Tonight, there’s an actual line of people waiting to get inside.

I nod at a bouncer and enter, and it takes me a good half an hour to make it to the second floor where I find several of my teammates sitting at some of the tables or standing around talking.

Winding around tables, teammates, and hot women since several puck bunnies have been allowed to go up the second floor and are doing their best to get noticed by the players wearing outfits that fit them like a second skin, I make my way over to Alex and Matt who are already sitting at one of the tables nursing their beers. Those two are my best friends since we’re linemates, but normally I’d go stand over with the single guys and start my selection process for whatever woman who’d warm my bed for the night.

Not tonight though. Never thought this day would come but I’m not here for a hookup tonight.

Alex gives me a knowing grin as I sit down since I told him in the locker room after the game about my exchange with the hot doctor earlier when she tended to my cut and how she turned me down. Well, he and several other of my teammates since there were a few there in the locker room with us and they had ears to listen. I’m pretty sure I could even hear Mitch chuckle, which is honestly one of the world’s seven wonders since the guy barely talks let alone laughs.

“How’s that cut feeling?” Matt asks as I take a seat in front of him.

“Feels like a butterfly kissed me there,” I tell him, which gets a deep belly laugh from both him and Alex. We hockey players would never admit to being hurt in a fight. Ever.

The voices in the second floor immediately go silent and I see all eyes swing towards the stairs, and when I look there I see our General Manager walks in alongside Coach Higgins, followed by some staff of the team. Cheers start ringing as she walks towards our table, no doubt to sit next to her man, and then I hear a low chant, “Sloane! Sloane! Sloane! Sloane!”

Matt and I do the same since not only Sloane is more of a close friend rather than a boss who signs our paycheck once she steps outside of the GM office, but as the only female GM in the league, she managed to turn our team into champions. We won the Stanley Cup last season and no doubt she’s going to push us to victory again this season. Alex has a shit-eating grin plastered across his face as his gaze focuses on his girl, looking so damn proud of her. Man, my best friend is fucking whipped.

Sloane blushes, slides a grin to Alex, and when the sound dissipates and the guys all start sitting back down, she says, “shut up you big jerks, do you want me to cry?”

We all bark in laughter.

I stand up to give her access to the booth so she can sit between Alex and I, and Alex immediately wraps his arm around her shoulders when she’s within his reach to pull her closer to him and proceeds to give her a searing kiss. I whip my head at Matt and we both make a fake gagging noise.

“God, I think I’m going to be sick,” Matt says and Alex flips him off, still giving his woman a hell of a kiss and without even looking at us.

“I know, right? Not used to you being so fucking mushy mate,” I add. “Gives me the willies.”

Sloane laughs as she breaks the kiss. She leans over and playfully punches me in the arm. “You’ll have a good woman one day, Harry.”

“Yeah,” I drawl, then I give a faux shudder to make sure they understand I like being single. “No thanks.”

“You sure?” Matt cocks an eyebrow, but before I can reply, something behind me catches his attention. “Ooh, isn’t that the new doctor?”

I whip around so fast I fucking knock a bottle of ketchup off the table and it goes flying across the floor. Matt is laughing so damn hard he almost falls off from the booth, Alex is leaning over as he laughs, pressing one palm down on the sofa with the other to his ribs as if they hurt from laughing and Sloane is dabbing at her eyes as she laughs hysterically.

But yes, holy shit, that’s the doctor stepping off the stairs and onto the second floor with Brynne and Sarah. Now, I know Brynne will most definitely walk towards our table since Matt is here, but Sarah will most definitely walk towards the bar where Mitch is talking with some other guys.

Come here. Come here. Come here.

Fuck, she goes with Sarah to the bar.

“Oh no,” Alex says low and in warning. “I know that look.”

I don’t bother to give him my attention, keeping my eyes pinned on my girl. But I do ask him, “what look?”

“Your gaze just became predatory,” he says with a laugh.

“God, you have it bad for her,” Sloane teases but I ignore her as I stand up. Brynne gives me a wink when I walk past her and now I have a suspicion that my teammates blabbed to their women about what happened earlier tonight and now they’re trying to set me and the hot doctor up. Otherwise, why would she even be here? Fucking crazy, I know, but they’re all nuts.

“Go get her, tiger!” Matt quips as I walk towards the bar without looking back at their table.

The doctor has ditched the white lab coat that she wore earlier tonight at the arena, and I’m glad she has her back to me since I don’t make a secret of my ogling. My eyes are pinned to her ass in those skinny jeans and fucks sake I need to get a grip.

“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine,” I say with a smile as I stand next to her, trying to get her attention. That was lame, I know, and I feel like I want to punch myself for not being cool.

She laughs and fuck if that’s not the best sound in the world. It’s warm, rich, and husky, which warms my blood and speaks to my dick for some reason. Not sure if she’s laughing because she genuinely thinks I’m funny or is that just a pity laugh, but honestly I could listen to her laughing all day. Wouldn’t be opposed to hearing her moan one day, preferably with her underneath me, but if her laugh is all I can get at this moment then I’ll take it.

“Can I get you a drink?” I ask her and I mentally prepare myself for her to decline since she turned me down earlier in the arena, so it totally takes me by surprise when she only shrugs and says, “eh, why not.”

I’m sure my smile is ten times wider and she sees it. “What’s your poison?”

“I’ll have whatever you’re having.”

“What if I want the hard stuff?” I raise a single brow. “Sure you want that?”

“What?” She smirks at me and my inner caveman is screaming for me at the sight to just throw her over my shoulder and take her home right this instant. But obviously I won’t do that, since I’m pretty sure that’s called kidnapping and I know I won’t look good in prison stripes. “You don’t think I can take it?”

“Oh honey, I know you can take it,” I laugh as I lift my finger to the bartender. “I’m only wondering how you’ll handle it.”

“Well, you’re gonna have to wait and see.”

—

It’s three hours and many beers later, well for her anyway since I limit myself at two because I’m driving, and we’re stumbling out of the bar, laughing our asses off.

She’s telling me about the funniest thing that happened at the hospital a few months ago. At the beginning they thought they had a domestic situation because the couple came separately; one via ambulance and one via police car. But when they finally got the whole story, it turned out to be an anniversary celebration gone wrong since the wife had a seizure when she was going down on her husband and bit down on him.

“Are you joking?!” I stare at her, mouth gaping in astonishment before I burst out laughing hysterically.

She shakes her head and laughs with me. “I wish.”

“Did you manage to save his manhood?” I ask with a half-grin and half grimace.

“My colleague did,” she replies. “I was busy with the wife, she had rather extensive head trauma.”

“From the seizure?”

“Well, in panic and pain, her husband didn’t think much and just grabbed the closest thing he could find to try to get her to loosen her bite, which sadly was an old rotary style telephone and hit her in the head with it. She was okay in the end, though.”

“That’s one hell of an anniversary to remember for sure,” I chuckle, and the giggle she emits pretty much confirms she’s bladdered. Well, not the kind of drunk where she wouldn’t remember tonight I’m sure, but I bet she’ll wake up with a massive headache.

“I sure hope you’re not driving,” I say as I steady her by the elbow when she wobbles as we step down the stairs.

“Sarah, Brynne and I took an Uber here from the arena earlier,” she mutters as she pulls out her phone from her handbag.

“Let me drive you home,” I quickly say before she gets the chance to order a ride. Not sure why I did that because I certainly have never offered women a ride home without the promise of getting in their knickers, and I can assure you that I won’t be getting anywhere near hers tonight, but maybe I just don’t want this night to end yet.

We’ve been glued at the hip from the moment I bought her first drink, and three hours purely just talking with the same woman? That’s a record in my book. While I’m not ashamed to admit that I also like looking at her, honestly, to me that’s just an added bonus. I think it’s safe to say that I have never met anyone like her before. Granted, with most women usually there wasn’t much talking, but from what I learnt in just the span of three hours is that this doctor of mine is a hell of a lot of fun.

I swear she’s just a pure fucking joy to be around. Conversation with her is like a never-ending merry-go-round and she makes me laugh a lot. She’s bright and witty and she’s one of those people that knows no strangers. She can easily talk about anything from politics to sports even to crude jokes, and add on to that, she’s just so kind and inclusive that several times tonight I actually had to drag her away to one of the back tables so we could have a proper chat without the crowd around us.

“You don’t have to,” she gives me a hesitantly sweet smile.

“But I want to,” I gallantly insist as I turn and offer my arm to her. “Come on, I just want to make sure you get home safe.”

“Well, alright then,” she smirks, her hand easily slides into the crook of my elbow. “I could save a few bucks.”

I roll my eyes and tease her, “didn’t take you to be such a skinflint.”

“Hey!” She playfully slaps my arm with her other hand as she laughs and I’m glad I amuse her.

No, seriously... I like her laugh.

There’s no doubt that she wants me, just as there’s no doubt that I totally want her. We’ve got this really heavy flirting going on all night, and plenty of innuendo, but I won’t be surprised nor disappointed if she doesn’t invite me inside when we get to her home and nothing happens tonight.

We’ll get there, I’m sure.

Until then, I’m completely fine drinking beer, being her personal chauffeur, and getting to know her a little better.

��

We always finish team practice with battle drills. From the end zone face-off spot to either the left or right of the goalie, we pair up and battle for a goal. One on offense, the other on defense, we shoulder, bump, and juke our way across the short distance to the net. It’s a four to five second drill that will make us sweat, and then it’s over. We skate to the end of the line, where we wait to do it again.

“Saw you left with the new doctor last night,” says Matt, my battle partner today, with a shit-eating grin as he taps his stick against my leg. “How was she?”

I ignore his question not only because I don’t have the answer that he’s looking for because nothing really happened after I dropped her in front of her house, but also because this feels different. She is different. Had it been just another one night stand, I wouldn’t think twice before I blab all about the dirty details with my teammates. Great lays, lousy lays, I honestly have no filter and I tell them all.

But this is YN, and fuck if I know why and what this really means. All I know for sure is that I want more than to just tap that. The thing is, my teammates will probably not understand because they can’t really see past the fact that the new doctor is a gorgeous woman who I’ve been lusting after for about a week.

“Dude,” Matt says to get a reaction from me, smacking me a little bit harder with his stick. “How many times did you score her last night?”

“Don’t talk about her like that,” I growl.

“Whoa, dude,” he apologises and I swear his grin gets even wider. “Sorry. I guess you’re serious about her?”

“Serious about what?” Alex pipes up from in front of us. He’s paired with Adam, our goalie. There are four pairs of skaters in front of Matt and me, but there’s an equal number on the other side. We’re alternating.

“None of your fucking business,” I mutter, willing the line we’re in to go faster so I can escape from my nosy teammates and head to the doctor’s office.

Alex and Adam take off, Alex with the puck. They ram their shoulders into each other, legs braced and skates digging hard all the way to the net.

“Did you at least kiss her?” Matt nudges me with a sly grin, still trying. Man, he’s not a quitter.

“No,” I answer shortly, hoping that will satisfy him. “Just dropped her at her house and left after I made sure she got inside safely.”

“No. Fucking. Way,” he quips dramatically. “Who are you and what have you done to my teammate?”

Play continues, the next set of skaters in our line taking off and I ignore Matt but apparently he’s not done poking his nose in my business. “Oh, we’re not done yet buddy. Let’s go out tonight so we can squeeze some more gos out of you. Just you, Alex and I, how does that sound? Brynne said the girls are going to have a girls night out so I know he’ll be game.”

The girls means my teammates’ better halves, and honestly, hanging out with just my bros does sound good. Don’t get me wrong, those girls are cool—yes, my boss, Sloane, included—and they’re fun to hang out with. My teammates sure hit the jackpots with their women. But before Sloane and Brynne came along, the three of us were thick as thieves. There was a time where we went out almost every night and that’s why we’re more like brothers than teammates. Sometimes I miss that since we don’t get the chance to do it as often now that they act like old married couples, so yes, this does sound nice.

However, as tempting as it sounds, I want to hang out with my hot doctor more than my mates. That is if she’ll have me though.

“I can’t,” I say, clearing my throat. I lean in towards him and whisper, “I want to take YN out to dinner tonight.”

“Seriously,” he drawls dramatically. “Who are you and what have you done to my best friend?”

Again, I ignore his comment.

“Alright, I guess that’s a definite no to dinner with me and Alex then, huh?” Matt says in an exaggeratedly glum tone.

“The doctor is way prettier than you,” I reply blandly.

“Fine, go on your date,” he says with a slap on my back. “But I want to book some time with my best friend in the near future if it’s not too much trouble.”

“We’re going on a four day road trip in two weeks,” I mutter as I roll my eyes at him. “I’ll snuggle you then.”

Matt sidles up to me, lays his head on my shoulder, and bats his eyelashes. “Oooh, I can’t wait.”

I shove him off with a chuckle. That bastard.

—

“Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope,” I say after two knocks on her office door. I can hear her chuckle as she tells me to come in.

God, I have turned into such a dork. But I like hearing her laugh and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to hear that sound again and again.

“Hey,” she smiles at me as she looks up from her computer. “What’s wrong?”

“Knee’s a little sore,” I tell her, not feeling the slightest bit of guilt for my lie just so I can have a few moments to talk to her. “Thought you could take a look at it.”

Her brows draw inward with concern and she motions towards a table. “Did something happen?”

“Nah,” I shake my head as I hop onto the table with my legs hanging over the edge and kick off my slides. “Just came off the ice and noticed it.”

“Alright, go ahead and lie back,” she says as she turns to the sink and washes her hands. “I’m going to do some range-of-motion tests.”

I stay silent as she maneuvers my leg, trying not to focus too much on the feel of her soft hands against me or the smell of her perfume. Fuck, she smells good. Fruity and flowery. Like berries and the heart of rose and bitter wormwood, and the scent is fucking delicious.

“Do you feel any pain when I do this?” She asks with one hand on my calf, the other on my thigh as she rotates my knee.

“Not really,” I shake my head. What happens here today will go in my chart and I don’t want to call any attention to my knee.

“How about this?” She asks, rotating the opposite way.

I shake my head again. “Nope.”

The hand on my calf slides down, grasping the bottom of my foot firmly. With the other hand still holding onto my thigh, she pushes hard into my foot. “This cause any pain?”

“Nope,” I say quickly, and then add, “I think it’s nothing more than my muscles getting back in shape. But I figure some ice can’t hurt, right?”

She slowly lowers my leg and gives me a sweet smile. “Well, I don’t think anything’s loose or torn, but if you’re worried about it, I can schedule an appointment with Dr Green.”

She is the team’s orthopaedic surgeon, and hell I’m not about to do that. Talk about an unnecessary red flag. “I think it’s just a lack of conditioning. Got lazy this summer.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah,” I nod firmly. “I just need some ice and I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

“Well, alright then,” she says as she turns back to wash her hands again at the sink. “I’ll let Brynne know and have her prepare you an ice bath.”

“Oh hell no,” I quickly shake my head and grimace. “That bloody thing is pure torture and my balls will go into hibernation until next summer. Just an ice pack will do, Doc.”

She laughs again. “Okay, just an ice pack. I’ll be right back.”

She turns and heads through the door to the treatment room and I take a moment to admire her gracefulness as she moves. She looks delectable today in her scrubs, which are the typical light blue you see in the hospitals, and they hang on her tiny frame loosely. I’d actually never seen her in them before since she usually just wears normal clothes underneath her white lab coat in the arena, but I swear this might possibly be the sexiest outfit I’ve ever seen her in. I’m sure that has to do with the fact that I respect her so much as a doctor that it just heightens my attraction to her, and I can’t help but wonder if she’ll play dress-up games with me in the bedroom when the time comes. Because, well… I certainly wouldn’t mind getting a thorough exam from her.

“Here you go,” she says when she comes back. “Scoot back on the table and stretch your leg out. Keep this on for twenty minutes, then you can go.”

She places a towel over my knee, then lays the bag of ice on top.

“Thanks, Doc,” I tell her.

“Just doing my job,” she quips, and then walks back over to the box of supplies she had been unloading.

“Well, you’re very good at it,” I add and I can hear her chuckle. But I got nothing in response, so I add, “speaking about good things… I had a good time last night.”

“Did you?” She quips, still not looking at me but I can hear from her tone that she’s smiling.

“Well, yeah,” I say with a confident nod. “Didn’t you?”

“Eh, it was alright,” she smirks at me over her shoulder as she walks towards her desk.

“I want to do that again,” I tell her nonchalantly before I ask with a lopsided grin that I hope she finds charming, “will you let me take you to dinner tonight?”

“I can’t,” she shakes her head as she turns to look at me.

“Why? Got a hot date already?”

“Nah,” she chuckles. “Sarah invited me to a girls night at her place. I wasn’t gonna go because they seem like a tight-knit group and I don’t want to intrude, but Sloane came by here earlier to ask me again and she’s bribing me with tacos and margaritas, and well… I can’t say no to both.”

“Fair enough,” I laugh. “But have fun then. They’re all really nice, you’ll fit right in.”

“Thanks,” she gives me an easy smile, and I hope it’s subtle enough that she doesn’t realise this, but my breath actually hitch a little while I stare at her lips.

“How about tomorrow night then?”

“Well-” she begins, but she’s cut short when she hears her pager beeping. “Oh shit, I need to go back to the hospital. You think you’re okay there? Go to Brynne if you need something else.”

“Okay, don’t worry,” I tell her with an encouraging smile. “You go and save some lives, Doc.”

—

The arena is packed, the fans are at a fever pitch, and we’re in the midst of a fierce battle with the Anaheim Ducks. We’d taken them on in the first round of the playoffs last season, and while we swept them, they’re still a formidable opponent. Not to mention there’s a long-standing rivalry between the two teams, and add on to that, we’re in the regular season now so every win counts. The pressure is on.

As a center, I’m a shooter, not a fighter. That means I’m relied on to score, not to play defense or get tough with other players. My body is too valuable to mess it up in a slugfest, so I’m rarely enticed into a fight. Sometimes it takes everything in me to keep my cool, but I know I’ve got to trust Mitch and Marcel, our defensemen.

Just like right now. We’re late in the second period tonight, and one of the Ducks players, Jeff Azoff, is being a dick. He cross-checked me in the back, not strong enough to slam me into the boards, but it was enough to alert Mitch who’s skating right behind us.

“Do that again and I’m going to kick your ass,” I hear Mitch tell him. That guy doesn’t really talk, but he wouldn’t think twice before beating the hell out of someone if they mess with our team. He takes his job as a defenseman seriously. When he’s on the ice, nobody dares to touch his guys.

The fucker did it again, still not forceful enough for a penalty to be called, but Mitch was quick to drop his gloves and took on that Azoff guy. He kicked his ass good.

Man, I wouldn’t want to get on his bad side. Mitch is a badass. Unfortunately though, the fucker did land a lucky hit to his temple and his skin split just to the side of his eyebrow. Knowing Mitch, that will be nothing but a ten-minute trip to the treatment room where YN will stitch him up. I’m sure as hell he wouldn’t let her give him anaesthetic so he can get back on the ice as soon as possible. As I watch him skate towards the exit, I make a mental note in my head to buy him a beer tonight as a thank you.

The play resumed, and there are about forty seconds left on the clock before intermission. The Ducks are down 3-0, and they pull their goalie once they gain possession of the puck since they have nothing to lose. Luckily our stamina is stellar, so our legs are still fresh as we defend.

They pass the puck back and forth, looking for the long shot or a quick dump inside for a goal. My back is to Adam, our goalie, as I keep myself facing the action, letting my stick play loose.

The crowd’s screams escalate in tune to the clock ticking closer to zero. With a sharp flick of the wrist, the puck makes it past Alex, our right-winger, to the inside. Players crash the net, Marcel poke checks, and the biscuit shoots out towards me.

It’s a full-on breakaway as I shoot down the ice, one on one against the goalie.

Tap, tap, tap… back and forth… puck to blade of stick.

I close in on the goalie and juke left.

He goes left and I juke right.

He keeps going left, so I keep going right and flip the puck up and over his shoulder into the back of the net. The red light burns bright behind the net and the fans go wild. That was my third goal tonight, and it’s the perfect timing for intermission since there’s no way we can play with all the hats being thrown onto the ice.

It takes merely a second before I’ve got my teammates surrounding me. Alex, Matt, Marcel, Adam and Niall, one of the defensemen from the second line who’s filling in for Mitch. Pats of their gloved hands on my helmet, stick blades gently against my calves.

We skate to the gate that would lead us to our locker room. We all trudge there, taking up spots around the open space as we wait for Coach Higgins to address us. It’s what he does at the end of every period. If we play poorly, we get our asses handed to us. If we play stellar though, like tonight, he’d be effusive in his praise.

But as much as I’d love to hear nice things from the Coach, there’s nobody I want to see more than my very own Doctor McSteamy. And yes, just to put it out here since I’ve been calling the hot doctor by that nickname, I’ve got to admit that I did watch too much Grey’s Anatomy in the summer because there’s not much I could do during the off-season. My sister didn’t let me watch past season 10 though, because she said it’s not worth it.

“Need to get my knee taped,” I tell Alex on my right as I stand up. We have 17 minutes before we start the third period and I figure that should be enough time to see the Doctor and secure a date in the near future. “I’ll be right back.”

“Bullshit,” he grins and there’s a clear amusement in his eyes. “You want to see your girlfriend.”

“Shut up,” I growl.

“What’s this?” Matt asks curiously as he takes a seat next to Alex.

“Our buddy here wants to see his girlfriend,” Alex’s grin doesn’t lessen as he tilts his head at me. “Needs to get his knee taped, he said.”

“Conjugal visit in-between periods? Classy,” Matt says with a salacious grin and I glare at him. When his laughter dies down, he points out, “okay, jokes aside, that’s a shit excuse. If you really need your knee taped, you’d see Brynne and not YN.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve got nothing else here,” I grumble like a stroppy child. “Can’t hit my own head just to get a cut, can I?”

“That would be outright dumb,” Alex laughs. “But come on, I’ll go to Brynne and make up something so at least you can tell the doctor that she’s busy.”

The treatment room is just down the hall from the locker, and when I get there, I notice the door is half open. I see her sitting on the little desk with her computer, so I knock lightly on the door to get her attention.

“Hey, you got a minute?” Her head swings up when she hears my voice and it takes everything in me not to just march there and kiss the fuck out of her when she offers me the sweetest smile. Crazy how much effect this woman has on me. “I need my knee taped but Brynne’s busy.”

“Sure, I was just reading the players’ medical chart,” she replies. “You were on fire out there by the way.”

“Thanks, Doc,” I smile at her.

“Skates, socks, shin pads and pants off,” she says as she walks towards the supply cabinet.

“Jock strap too?” I can’t help but smirk.

“No,” she rolls her eyes playfully as she grabs a towel and hands it to me. “Put this over your lap.”

“Do I have to?”

“Well, yeah, unless you want me to get a peek of your dick.”

“You know I wouldn’t be averse to that, Doc,” I say with a waggle of my eyebrows.

She gives me a school teacher, disapproving-type look but the slight twitch of amusement in the corner of her mouth is hard to miss. “You’re so bad.”

“You have no idea,” I grin, but she doesn’t see it because she has her back to me. She’s pulling another cabinet open to get adhesive, gauze and tape before knocking it close with her shoulder.

This is ridiculous but I’m actually a bit self-conscious of getting practically half naked in front of the hot doctor. I have absolutely no clue why and this had certainly never happened before.

I shed my gear from the waist down and she keeps her back to me until I get on the therapy table and the towel is covering my lap. She lays out her supplies on the table beside us, her slender fingers using a pair of scissors to open a new package of tape.

I take a moment to admire her as she cuts off uniform lengths of tape and attaches them to the table. She’s not in the scrubs I saw her in last week, but if you think I’d be disappointed, even just slightly, then you’d be wrong because you could put her in a burlap sack and to me she would still absolutely look edible.

Tonight, she’s rocking a mustard-yellow trouser suit with wide legs and a cross-over pleated blouse underneath her white lab coat. The crisscross swath of silk that wraps around her upper body does lovely things to her tits, and I realise I’m quite the pig to be thinking about her this way.

“Left knee?” She asks. “I’ve just finished reading your medical chart when you came in. Arthroscopic medical meniscus repair two years ago.”

“Yeah,” I nod. “Sometimes it feels a little loose. A good taping is all it needs.”

“Any soreness?” She asks as she steps up in between my legs that dangle over the table.

I shake my head and say, “nope.”

“Clicking or popping?”

“Nope.”

“Locking?” She inquires as she lifts her face up to mine.

She’s fucking close enough I can smell her minty breath. I could easily kiss her, but I’d probably get kneed in the nuts, so I just shake my head and say, “nah, just feels a little loose.”

“Okay,” she says, laying a soft pat on my thigh. It’s nothing but a move of reassurance, but fuck if I don’t feel it all the way through my gut.

She grabs her supplies and I can’t keep my eyes off her as she gets to work taping my knee. It takes merely a few minutes, and then she finishes the wrap, holding the end while taping it with the precut pieces. “There you go,” she says, stepping back.

“I’ve got something to confess. My knee was absolutely fine,” I blurt out, the words popping out of my mouth so suddenly, I’ve got no clue where they came from. Clearly my subconscious decided to overtake my sensibility and make itself known. “I came here because I wanted to see you. Thought I’d try to get your phone number and a date one last time before I give up.”

She gives a tinkling laugh. “You’re not a quitter, are you?”

“Well, no,” I reply with a grin. “So, tomorrow night. I’ll pick you up at seven. How does that sound?”

“Listen,” she smiles at me sweetly as she begins, but I don’t like the sound of it. Nothing good ever comes after ‘listen’. “You’re a nice guy-”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I cut her as I hold my hands up. “Don’t go with the ‘nice guy’ brush off. Clearly I’m not if you won’t give me the time of day.”

“I just don’t think we’re looking for the same thing-”

“What?” I ask incredulously.

“Look, please don’t take this the wrong way, but you seem more like the bang ‘em and leave ‘em type to me.”

“Is that really how people see me?” I ask her curiously, without an ounce of defense in my voice because there’s no point in denying that. I really don’t care what people think, but I’d like to hear her opinion.

“You’re a player, Harry,” she says with a chuckle. “And there’s nothing wrong with that. You’re young and in your prime. You should totally be sowing all your wild oats. It’s just… I’m at the point in my life where I realise that meaningless sex without something deeper isn’t very fulfilling. I don’t want that anymore.”

I feel a metaphorical light bulb goes off in my head.

I know she doesn’t mean to, but fuck, she hits me right where it hurts. She’s called that exactly right. This is something that I’ve actually realised and known for a while, especially after seeing my best mates being the happiest they’ve ever been after they found their women. There’s not an ounce of regret in what I did though, because just like my girl right here said, there’s nothing wrong with that. There was a time when burning my way through all the hot women in LA and having them take turns warming my bed had its appeal, but not anymore.

Maybe this is why I’ve been feeling unfulfilled lately. I know I’ve got a great career, more money than I could ever need in a lifetime and endless selection of gorgeous women to warm my bed every night. What more could a man possibly ask for, right? But at the end of the day, it’s just me in a monstrosity of a house that I call home.

Maybe deep down I know I don’t want it to be just me anymore.

“I think I’ve actually known that for a while, but the way you point that out, I think it’s drilled home now,” I admit as I face her.

“What do you mean?”

“That casual, meaningless sex without something deeper isn’t very fulfilling,” I say with a smile. “I mean, yes what I did was fun, but then I look at my best mates and see how happy they are with their women. Of course I rib them good because hey, that’s my job as their best mate…”

She laughs.

“...but that doesn’t mean I never look at them and think, fuck, I want that one day. Maybe the idea didn’t really appeal to me because I had never found the right person, who knows. But I swear I don’t want just sex with you. I want more. Do I know what I’m doing? Fuck, no. I haven’t even been on a proper date in years. But I do know that I genuinely want to get to know you better, Doc, that is if you give me the chance.”

She gives me a dopey smile when she asks, “you mean all that?”

“I really do,” I nod solemnly. “Now let me prove it to you. Go on a date with me.”

“Tell you what,” she begins, her eyes sparkling with mischief. “If you go back on the ice and win the game, we can go to The Owner’s Box when you’re done to celebrate just like the other night. And if you behave, I’ll give you my number this time.”

“Want me to behave, huh?” I say teasingly with a waggle of my eyebrows. “Don’t fancy a bad boy?”

“Oh I actually have it bad for bad boys,” she smirks. “My favourite character in Harry Potter is Draco Malfoy.”

“Okay, I’ve got a counter offer,” I say as my laughter dies down. “If I get MVP tonight, which I’m pretty sure I will since you said it yourself that I’m on fire tonight, you give me your number straight away after the game and let me take you out to dinner. I’m thinking seven tomorrow night.”

Another roll of those gorgeous eyes that twinkle slightly at me. “Pushy, aren’t ya?”

“Only when I want something,” I tell her with a grin. “And I want you.”

“So do you want me or do you want to go out with me?” She asks slyly, tilting her head to the side.

“You gonna kick my balls if I say both?”

“I admire honesty,” she murmurs softly in that sexy, husky voice that seems to flow through my body and straight down to my dick.

“Hey boyfriend and girlfriend,” I hear Matt chirps from the doorway and my spine stiffens involuntarily. His shit-eating grin doesn’t lessen a bit even when I give him a glare. “Hate to steal your man, Doc, but the game is starting again soon and we kinda need our favourite asshole right here.”

“You two break a leg,” she chuckles. And then as an afterthought, she adds, “just so we’re clear, I don’t mean that literally.”

—

Manhattan Beach’s high-end strip of boutiques and restaurants are hugged by the beach on one side and some of California’s most expensive real estate on the other. It’s southern end blends seamlessly into smaller Hermosa Beach, which is similarly quiet but has a tight concentration of bars and restaurants near the town’s pier that attract bar-hoppers at night and sun-bleached dropouts during the day.

The Kings players’ houses are scattered evenly across the two towns. Some of us are clustered within a block or two of several teammates; others sprinkled little more than a mile or two away. All but one of the first-line players live in Manhattan Beach though, and we can easily walk or ride a beach cruiser to everyone else’s house.

YN lives in Silver Lake, and the drive to pick her up takes me about forty minutes. I know she must make a pretty good bank being an ER doctor, not to mention that she works at two places, but her house doesn’t scream that. It’s rather tiny, I’m betting not more than seven or eight hundred square feet max, and there’s not much of a porch but on the outer edge is a hanging basket of flowers.

There’s no doorbell so I rap my knuckles on the door. Flecks of peeling paint get knocked loose and fall to the concrete porch.

“Coming,” I hear her yell from inside and I can imagine her plopping in an earring, grabbing her handbag, and wondering if she turned the curling iron off. She sounds frazzled and rushed and I can’t wait to fucking see what she looks like when she opens the door.

And there she is.

She has a black dress on, and it’s not little but it’s spectacular. The neckline of the dress skims just below her collarbone so no skin or cleavage is exposed, but it doesn’t matter because the narrow waist and flared hips, all cocooned in black is sexy as shit. The hem of her dress comes down below her knees and the dress is so well fitted that I know there has to be a slit up the back so she can walk.

“Good grief you’re a sight for sore eyes,” I mutter as I let my eyes roam down and then back up again to find her smirking at me.

She’s got an off-white clutch bag tucked under an arm, and her head is leaning to the side so she can put her last earring in, exactly as I’d imagined.

“You’re not too bad yourself,” she says, still smirking at me. I’d worn my best suit tonight in black with black shirt underneath and no tie. Glad she likes what she sees.

I step back so she can lock her door, and she turns to me as she tosses her keys in her clutch. I hold my arm out to her and ask, “ready?”

She nods and smiles as she curls her fingers in just below my biceps, then I escort her to my car.

I’m taking her to this new restaurant that both Alex and Matt recommended when I asked them last night for the finest restaurant in LA. It had been so long since the last time I took a woman out for a proper date, so I knew I needed to ask my mates and that they would have the answer. They both swore by this place called Apron, but then told me it took at least two weeks to get a reservation. Luckily though Alex had booked a table for him and Sloane tonight, and they gladly gave me the reservation. Sure I had to take a good deal of ribbing from my teammates and their women last night at the bar where we celebrated our win, but I knew it would be worth it.

The drive to the restaurant is short, only about ten minutes. And we lapse into the same easy conversation right away, just like we did the other night at The Owner’s Box. Today was my day off and I did absolutely nothing so I’ve got nothing interesting to tell, but she had plenty of exciting cases at the emergency room today, which included a toddler swallowing a penny.

“Holy shit, how did you get the coin out?” I ask her.

She laughs. “You don’t take it out. You’ve got to let the kid pass it naturally.”

“He can do that?”

“Well,” she begins. “I did take an X-ray first to make sure that it was small and could pass safely.”

“Okay, okay, okay… what’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever had to remove from a patient?” I ask her with childish curiosity.

“Honestly, I think I’ve removed everything on the surface of the earth,” she snickers. “Coke bottle, tapeworms, coins, candles, but the strangest has got to be a stuffed animal. It was a Curious George doll, and… let’s just say that he’s no longer curious.”

“You’re joking right?” I bark in laughter as I park my car. We’ve arrived and I swear that was the shortest ten minutes of my life. “I mean… who does that?!”

“I wish,” she says with a wrinkle of her nose. “You’d be surprised if you know how many weirdos out there.”

I’m still chuckling as I exit my car, then I walk over to the passenger side to get her. I hold my arm out to her, and her hand so very easily slides into the crook of my elbow.

“You don’t think I’m one of them, right?”

She gives me a playful shrug. “Well, I don’t know, you might be a weirdo... I mean, I don’t know you well enough yet.”

I give her a smart-ass smirk. “Let’s remedy that then.”

—

“How’s that one?” I ask her as I finish a mouthful of this chocolate thingy. It was a chocolate ball concoction the waiter had poured more hot chocolate over, which then melted the ball to reveal a raspberry chocolate torte inside. She had a bite, but it was too rich for her. I agree though, it was a lot of damn chocolate.

“You’ve got to try this,” she says, spearing the lemon meringue pie with her fork, top it with a little bit of pine nut ice cream and holding it over the table to me.

It’s a completely intimate move and one that I didn’t expect from her tonight. I mean, she was reluctant to go out with me in the beginning and needed some convincing, so I expected her to be reserved and cautious. But hell I’m not complaining.

I lean in and let her feed me the dessert. The flavours explode on my tongue and I think that’s the best we’ve had tonight.

I don’t normally indulge in dessert, but they all sound good so I told her we should order all the ones we like the sound of. Which was most of them except that cucumber mousse and pickle ice cream because those sound like disasters on a plate.

“Good, huh?” She asks with a smile.

“Really good,” I tell her. “I think I like that one best.”

“Finish it then,” she says as she pushes the plate towards me. “I can’t possibly take another bite. I’m stuffed to the brim.”

“Alright,” I say with a chuckle as I pull the plate closer to me. “So, when are you free again so I can take you out to another date?”

She chuckles. “We’re not even finished with this one.”

I roll my eyes at her, then I ask, “are you having a good time?”

Her smile turns dopey and I know she’s just as smitten with me as I am with her. “This is definitely the best first date I’ve ever been on.”

“If we were finished, considering how things have gone, would you go out with me again?”

“I would.”

“Good,” I say with an emphatic nod. “So, weekend or weekdays? When will it work best for you?”

—

I slow the speed on the treadmill, taking me down from a brisk run to a slow walk so I can cool down. Normally I like to run outside in the morning, but I woke up late this morning and we had a team skate scheduled at ten, so I figured I’d just do my workout afterwards at the arena.

Only a few of us actually have a gym membership outside. Most of us prefer to work out at the arena because not only is the equipment better, but we also have an abundance of teammates to work out with and that’s always nice.

I walk for about five minutes to cool down, then I turn the machine off and wipe my face with a towel. I grab my phone and water bottle and turn for the barbells, as today I’m working my chest and shoulders. Mitch and Marcel are already lifting, both defensemen who tend to focus on brute strength versus speed and stamina, so I’m not surprised they didn’t go for the treadmill. I also see Matt there, and I bet Alex will join us too after he’s done cooling down.

“Have a nice run, princess?” Marcel asks dryly as I set my stuff down near the bench press.

“I’m not the one who has to prove my manhood by how much weight I can lift,” I return with a sly grin.

“Yeah, well, your manhood is in a dry spell,” he says as he loads some weight onto the bar. Pre the hot doctor, both Marcel and I were the only single guys in the first line. He’s just as much as a player—on and off the ice—as I was, but now I gladly pass the title to him.

“Not true,” Matt quips with a grin. “He went on a date last night.”

“No shit,” Marcel turns to me in astonishment. “With who?”

Before I can even answer Alex throws a quick glance at us, flashes a shit-eating grin, and yells from the treadmill, “the new doctor.”

“But I saw you two got pretty cosy at The Owner’s Box last week,” Marcel says, as if he’s still confused as hell.

“Well yeah, she was cool, so I took her out again,” I say firmly.

“Dude, what’s wrong with you?” He blinks at me. Eyes all round and not comprehending. “You never look at the same woman twice.”

“So?” I ask, playing dumb.

“Ooh, I get it,” he says with a smirk. “Pussy that good, huh?”

“Hey,” I cut in with a warning. “I’m not there yet.”

They all suddenly stop whatever they’re doing and turn to me with raised eyebrows. Yes, Mitch included, which I’m actually quite surprised.

“Whoa, hang on,” Marcel says. “You haven’t tapped that yet?”

“You’re serious?” Matt looks at me in disbelief. “Not even last night?”

“Dude, I gave you that reservation last night to give you the opportunity,” Alex says as he walks towards us. “I was genuinely worried about your balls.”

They’re still looking at me confused, but Adam howls with laughter. “Don’t listen to these pigs. Rachel and I took it real slow at the beginning of our relationship too, and I got to tell you, the anticipation was half the fun.”

It’s true. I’m in no rush with YN because I know we’ll get there sooner or later. I can be patient when I want to be, and right now I honestly want to. I want to prove to her that when I said I wanted to get to know her, I meant her as a person and not just carnally.

I could tell that I confused her last night when I dropped her off at her doorstep after our date. I gave her nothing but a soft, brief kiss to her cheek, then told her to get inside, lock up and get some rest. Sure, she was confused for a few seconds, but the smile that I got after she realised that I really did want to take things slow was so much more than worth it.

“So you think this thing with the hot doctor is going to go the distance?” Matt asks me.

“I do,” I say confidently. I’m not dumb enough not to realise that she hasn’t fully let her guard down yet for whatever reason. Maybe she’d been badly hurt in the past, maybe it’s my past that causes her to be a little bit sceptical, I mean... let’s be honest, I was a player through and through. But that doesn’t scare me though, because I know I’m in it for the long haul. So yes, I can say it with confidence that this thing between us is going to go the distance.

“Well, if you fuck it up, I’ve got the first crack at her,” Marcel says with a salacious grin. I don’t think twice before I grab my wet towel and throw it at him. It hits him right in the face, and my teammates howl with laughter.

All this talk about her makes me want to see her again. I’ve secured a second date last night for next Wednesday since that’s when both of us will be free, but that’s still four days away and I can’t wait that long. So I pull up my phone and type out a quick text to her.

Hey, what are you doing today?

I grab my water bottle and take a slug. Before I put my water bottle down, I already got a response. I need to go and get a new bed frame. Really can’t stand this old thing anymore.

I can’t help but chuckle. She did tell me last night about her bedroom set which was apparently really old, but she couldn’t get rid of it since it’d been in the family for a few generations and her grandmother gave it to her when she bought her house.

Want some company? I quickly type.

She’s just as fast in her response. You want to go with me buy a bed frame?

Well, yeah. I’ve finished the team skate this morning and will be done with my workout soon. I’ve got nothing to do after and I want to see you. I reply.

Alright then. She texts me back within a minute. But I’m on-call though so I can be called to the hospital any time.

Doesn’t matter, I still want to see you. I text her back. When can I pick you up?

Give me half an hour.

Perfect.

—

I’ve bought three houses in my twenty-seven years of life; the one I currently live in, one in Toronto when I was still with the Leafs before I got traded to the Kings and one for my mum back in London. And yet not once have I ever gone on a furniture shopping.

Until today.

That was something I never in a million years would have dreamed to do, simply because I hated shopping with a burning passion. Hell, I didn’t even buy things for my own house because I paid the previous owner to leave everything behind. That kind of thing was honestly just something that I would have never taken the time for.

And yet, in shuffling through my memories, I really can’t remember having such a great time before. All I know is that I don’t want the day to end, and I also know that it has everything to do with the company.

I know we’ve only known each other for a few weeks, and technically we’ve only been on one date even though we saw each other quite often at the arena. But there was nothing odd when my hand would find its way to her thigh, or when she’d drape her arm across my shoulders so her fingers could play with my hair as we cruised along from one furniture shop to another. I love that we’re at ease with each other as if we’d known each other forever, not to mention that she’s also one of the easiest women I’ve had the pleasure of talking to in a long time.

Sadly though, it had to end when she was called to the hospital. Luckily, it was just in time after she chose a particular bed frame that she liked. It’s a classic canopy bed in live-edge oakwood with a brushed brass iron base, and I felt like a pig because even as we were still at the shop, I was already thinking about which ties from my collection would work best.

They offered same-day delivery since they had it in the storage, and since she was needed at the hospital, I offered to wait for the delivery at her home for her. She agreed, so she gave me her key after I dropped her at the hospital.

And here I am. Sitting on her bedroom floor trying to build this bloody nightmare because apparently they didn’t offer assembly service. I’ve been at it for an hour and a half now. Okay, no, more like an hour and ten minutes because I spent about twenty minutes fixing the sink in her en suite. I noticed the faucet was leaking, and I needed to step away from that bloody bed for a little anyway.

Now I don’t have another excuse, so I’m back on hammering one of the bazillion nails into the wood. I’m so focused on the task that I didn’t realise YN is home until I hear her chuckling as she walks into her bedroom and say, “you know, that is the kind of pounding that’s supposed to happen after you’re in the bed.”

I can’t help it. I fucking throw my head back and bust out laughing. “Sod off.”

“You don’t have to do it, that looks complicated. I’ll just hire someone to put it together tomorrow,” she says with a sweet smile. “Just get up and go sit on the couch. I just need to go to the bathroom real quick and then I’ll join you.”

“Yeah, that won’t do, Doc,” I say firmly. “I’ll still finish this bloody thing even if it kills me.”

“Stubborn,” she quips affectionately with a roll of her eyes as she heads towards her en suite.

“Smart-ass,” I reply with my eyes pinned to one of the million pieces of her bed frame, also with affection.  

“Harry?” She calls out from her en suite.

“Yeah?” I answer, when I look up, she’s leaning against the doorframe and looking at me confused.

“Am I crazy or did you actually fix my sink?” She asks with an arched eyebrow. “Because I swear the faucet still leaks a little this morning.”

“Yeah, I did,” I say with a wave of my hand. “I needed to walk away from this for a minute and when I went to your en suite, I noticed it leaked. Not a big deal though, took me only about fifteen minutes.”

“Well, good to know that if you ever quit your day job, you have a career in plumbing,” she snickers. “But seriously, you didn’t have to do that, and you certainly don’t have to finish that.”

“It’s what any boyfriend would do, Doc,” I say with a nonchalant shrug.

“You’re not my boyfriend.”

“Yes I am,” I roll my eyes. “I took you on a date last night and I’m taking you out again on Wednesday. I’m not seeing anyone else, so that means we’re dating. And technically that makes me your boyfriend.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she sputters but I can see the amusement twinkling in her eyes. “Besides… I might be seeing someone else.”

“You’re not,” I say with relative certainty.

“How did you change just like that is beyond me,” she murmurs, the appreciation in her voice evident.

I let out a chuckle. “Just get your butt in there and go chill on the couch after. I’m pretty sure I’ll be done in about half an hour, then we can order something for dinner.”

“Yes sir,” she says with a mock salute, which makes me snort.

—

An hour later, her bed is finally built and as I walk into her kitchen I see her putting the plates on the table. It smells phenomenal here, and I’m surprised when I look at the table because how the hell did she manage to cook all that in an hour?

I take advantage of her back facing me by putting my hands at her hips and pressing my chest onto her back. I nuzzle my face into the crook of her neck and it takes everything in me not to kiss her there. The combination of her perfume and the faint smell of antiseptic is sexy to me. So I can’t help but hum and mumble, “smells delicious.”

“The chicken?” She murmurs.

“Among other things,” I reply softly.

She chuckles. “Come on, let’s dig in while it’s still hot.”

I take a seat in front of her before I select a drumstick from a plate of fried, spicy goodness and put it on my plate. There’s something about the fact that YN made it that makes me believe it will be the best chicken I’ve ever had. Today will no doubt go down as one of the best days ever, which I seem to think a lot when I’m around this woman.

As she dishes me some salad, I honestly can’t wait anymore and take a bite of the chicken. Her eyes snap to me when I let out a groan.

“Good?” She asks with a grin.

I can’t help but let out another groan of approval as I take another bite. “Damn, Colonel, you never told me you make a mean fried chicken.”

“I’m not just a pretty face,” she shrugs smugly.

“Or a fine ass,” I tease. “If you want to quit your day job you can totally open up a fast food chain. Your fried chicken puts KFC to shame.”

She laughs as she cuts some cornbread and puts it on my plate. “Now try this, I make a mean cornbread too.”

“Mmm,” I say in pleasure as I take the first bite.

“Okay, you need to stop with the sexy moaning,” she grumbles with a tiny smirk before she turns back to her dinner. “You’re so bad. I think you’re trying to take advantage of me.”

“Get your mind out of the gutter,” I laugh. “And besides, you’re just as bad.”

“True,” she replies with a sly smile. “I can be bad too.”

“But just how bad are we talking here?” I ask with a smirk.

“Not bad enough to sleep with you tonight,” she says before she takes a sip of water. After she swallows, she adds, “but totally bad enough I might get frisky with you.”

I give her a mock groan and look up to the ceiling. “A tease. I’ve saddled myself with a tease tonight.”

She laughs.

We talk about what she did at the hospital today as we eat, and her job in general, and it never fails to thrill me the things that she can do. She’s a jack of all trades when it comes to medicine, needing to be able to diagnose and stabilise, often in pressure-filled situations where time is of the essence. I can’t even imagine having the responsibility of someone’s life in my hands like that, and yet she seems to be able to leave it all behind. She talks openly and often with humour about her work, but she also admits that sometimes she can’t help but bear the burden of death too when her skills just don’t make a difference.

I admire her so fucking much. Never admired a woman before, but in fairness… I never looked too deeply at them.

I’m seeing YN through unfiltered eyes and I like everything that I’m seeing.

—

Something is squirming in my arms and it wakes me up.

I tighten my arm around it in response to the movement and pull it back slightly against my body.

Wait? What?

Sleep.

Couch.

We fell asleep on her couch while watching a film.

It all comes back in a rush. Our totally awesome conversation over equally awesome food she cooked that I couldn’t stop raving about all night. I had three pieces of chicken by the way. We talked more about our backgrounds, me growing up in Cheshire and her childhood in South Carolina. We had a few beers, and when she asked me if I wanted to stay a bit and watch a film or something, of course I said hell yes.

The fact that she asked made me smile, because it meant that she was having a good time too with me. So we ended up on her couch watching Jaws, and I liked that she didn’t even hesitate when I lay down on her couch, pressed my back against the cushions and patted the area in front of my hips. I’m pretty sure she can see the devilish gleam in my eyes when I said, “come on… let’s cuddle.”

“Wow… Harry Styles, big bad hockey player, shameless flirt, total panty dropper. Didn’t peg you as a cuddler.”

“I’m a big teddy bear, honey,” I said with a grin and open arms.

She fell asleep first, and I know I should’ve left but the slightest movement from me would definitely wake her up. I know she must be tired so I decided against it and closed my eyes instead.

“Morning,” she says in a husky, raspy, ‘I just woke up’ voice and it’s sexy as fuck.

“Morning,” I reply, my own voice is still rough with sleep. I wonder if she thinks that’s sexy too. “You slept good?”

“Mhmm,” she hums softly, but then immediately groans as she glances at the clock above the telly. “Ugh, I have to be in the hospital in about an hour.”

She then tries to extricate herself from my arms, but I pull her back in close and nuzzle her neck as I point out, “you work a lot.”

“Ha, tell me about it,” she says with a dry laugh. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love my job. It’s just I wish I could sleep for three days straight sometimes.”

“Do you even have a day off in the week?” I ask curiously.

“I do,” she answers with a nod. “It was actually my day off yesterday, but I was filling in for a colleague.”

I loosen my hold and let her sit up in front of me. “Go get in the shower, I’ll make us both a quick breakfast.”

“You can cook?”

“Well, if I give you food poisoning you’re heading to the hospital anyway,” I chuckle.

In the kitchen, I grab some eggs and a pack of English muffins from her fridge. A quick breakfast sandwich sounds good, and portable just in case she needs to eat on her way to the hospital. I crack open a couple of eggs, scramble them with a fork and add salt and pepper while my skillet heats up. I put a bit of olive oil in the pan before I toss the English muffins into her toaster to crisp, then set coffee to brew in her Keurig. I’m moving around her kitchen as if I was born here.

By the time I pour the eggs into the pan, she walks out of her bedroom in her scrubs. I smile and nod at the Keurig as I say, “coffee’s ready.”

“And damn, you’re hot in those scrubs,” I add with a grin, giving the eggs a last scramble before pulling them off the heat.

“You’re joking right?” She says, wrinkling her nose as she grabs the milk from the fridge and turns my way, letting the door swing shut on its own.

“I’m serious, Doc,” I say with a smirk. “I wouldn’t mind getting a thorough exam from you. Preferably in your new canopy bed though so I can tie you up after for a payback.”

“Get your mind out of the gutter. It’s eight in the morning,” she laughs and I snort in return.

She then pours some milk in her coffee, pulls the cup to her mouth, and blows across the steaming surface. Her eyes meet mine over the edge of the cup as she takes a tentative sip. “Are we still on for Wednesday?”

“Of course,” I say with a confident smile.

“What have you got planned?”

“Well, you’ll have to wait and see,” I tease her. “Just to warn you though, I may or may not gonna put my hands all over you.”

I don’t tell her that by putting my hands all over her, I mean on the ice to keep her from falling since I plan to take her ice-skating on the team’s practice rink. I don’t want to spoil the surprise, and besides, I’d be lying if I said I never thought of other ways too. The way she’s looking at me right now assures me that she does too, and well, that’s good.

We can compare notes on that later when we get there.

—

Blinking at me with a sleepy smile on her face, YN stands up from my couch. I walk up to her and she pushes me down into her seat, and then crawls onto my lap.

This is nice.

Our date on Wednesday was amazing, and as we walked inside, she turned to me and asked, “so this was your big plan to put your hands on me?”

I just laughed in response, and I did have to put my hands on her quite a lot in the end since she didn’t know how to ice-skate. Fuck if I’m complaining though.

Now we’re snuggled up on the couch at my house with full bellies. Last weekend she cooked me amazing food, so today, I wanted to impress her by cooking a roast dinner and introduced her to Yorkshire pudding. Sure, I was on the phone with my mum the entire time so she could give me directions, but I only almost burnt down my kitchen once so I’d call that a success.

I lean forward, which pushes her slightly to the edge of the couch, then I reach an arm over her and grab a packet of KitKat from the coffee table. I’m glad when I learnt that it is actually her favourite chocolate too, because KitKat is elite and it’s good to know we’re on the same page.

“Want another?” I ask her.

“No,” she groans. “I’m so full.”

I chuckle and awkwardly unwrap the chocolate. Awkward because I have to open it in front of her face since I have my arms around her, and once I got it opened, I hold the naked little chocolate bars in front of her mouth and tease, “want a bite?”

She shakes her head.

I wave it under her nose and I guess the smell of the chocolate changes her mind because then she says, “okay, a little bite.”

I break the bars and feed one of it to her, letting her take a bite and then chucks the rest in my mouth. We chew silently as we watch Marlin looking for Nemo, and I sigh in contentment when she tucks her face into my neck and drapes one arm across my chest.

It takes no more than ten minutes before I notice her breathing has slowed down and she’s fallen asleep. I rest my cheek on the top of her head and continue watching these fishies. I’m a little drowsy from all the food, but I resist the urge to fall under. For now, I just want to savour my existence at this moment because as Dory says to Marlin, “I look at you and I’m home”, I truly realise that’s how she makes me feel.

I’m sitting in my house, but for once, it doesn’t feel empty anymore. I just had a wonderful meal where we talked and joked and flirted, and now I have a gorgeous woman who I’m crazy about curled up on my lap.

There is absolutely no other place I’d rather be right now.

—

“Dude, you’re so fucking whipped,” Alex says as he punches me on the shoulder. I jerk slightly and reluctantly take my gaze off YN to look his way.

“What do you mean?” I ask as I take a swig of my beer and promptly look back at my girl. She’s standing just ten feet away, sipping on her own beer and talking animatedly with Sloane and Brynne. We’re at The Owner’s Box tonight having our first triple date, and I’m having a brilliant time. The only thing better would be if YN would quit chatting with the girls and get her sweet ass over here to sit next to me.

“Fucking hopeless,” Matt mutters and Alex snickers.

I blink and turn to look at them. “What? Why am I hopeless?”

“Because you can’t fucking take your eyes off of your girl for more than two seconds,” Alex jeers at me. Then he leans in towards me and murmurs with a mocking sneer, “pussy.”

“Bollocks that,” I say haughtily. “I can take my eyes off of her longer than that.”

“Good,” Matt says, handing me an empty beer bottle. “Go get us some more beer.”

“Assholes,” I say with good nature and head towards the bar. Stopping beside my girl, I kiss her on the temple. “You girls want anything else to drink?”

Sloane and Brynne shake their heads, smiling coyly at me as they watch my uncharacteristic display of affection. I’m immensely pleased when YN smiles at me and rests her hand on my chest. “I’m good, but thank you.”

“Be right back,” I tell the girls, and then I set out to prove Alex and Matt wrong.

I swivel my gaze back to Matt and Alex, and I give a sheepish grin when Matt mouths the word pussy at me. I flip him off and head towards the bar, intent on not looking back at my girl for at least the next few minutes it takes me to get the beers.

“Excuse me,” I hear and feel a tap on my shoulder. “Harry, can we get an autograph and a picture?”

As I turn around with a warm smile in my place, the word sure is out of my mouth before I even see who’s asking. I’m met by a vision of holy hotness as two women stand there with tight-as-hell t-shirts cut obscenely low and with plenty of silicone boobs pouring out.

Just a mere month ago, I would have whispered a prayer of thanks to the big man upstairs for sending these two my way, knowing well that I’d be banging the hell out of one of them before the night was finished. Instead, my stomach tightens and I glance past them to see YN still deep in conversation with Sloane and Brynne.

I bring my gaze back to the women… a brunette and a blonde, both looking at me with promise in their eyes.

“Do you mind taking your picture with us?” The blonde asks with a bat of her eyelashes.

I give her a quick smile and say, “sure, no problem.”

She steps up to me as she hands her phone to the brunette. I lift my arm to sling it companionably around her shoulders, but she uses that opportunity to press intimately into my side, bringing both arms around my waist and mashing her breasts against my ribs.

“Thanks so much,” the blonde says in a seductive voice. “Can we buy you a drink?”

“No, thanks,” I decline with a smile. “I’ve got some friends waiting for me.”

“An autograph, then?” She asks.

“Sure.”

The blonde digs in her handbag and pulls out a sharpie. She then hands it to me and says, “can you make mine out to Kourtney with a K?”

“You got it,” I say, eager to get this over with because it feels awkward to me to have this woman coming onto me with my girl standing just a few feet away.

“Just sign here,” she says and my jaw drops as she pulls the edge of her t-shirt down her chest, practically exposing her entire right breast to me.

“Uh, you got a piece of paper instead?” I ask her. “I don’t think my girlfriend would like that.”

“You bet your ass she won’t,” I hear my girl quips from behind me and I’m trying my best not to laugh. I like that she immediately snuggles into my side so those women now would have no doubt that I’m totally hers, “wanna go play some pool, baby? Loser buys the drinks.”

“You’re on,” I tell her, Kourtney with a K and her friend are long forgotten. “But just to warn you, I’m really good.”

“Honey, I was practically born on one of these tables with a beer in my hand,” she says smugly, “you’re going down.”

—

“Do you want to come in?” YN asks as she pulls out her keys from her handbag. We’ve just got back from The Owner’s Box and as usual, I walk her to the door.

My tone is low, soft, and barely audible when I say, “Doc, if I come inside tonight, I don’t think I can promise you to keep my hands to myself.”

“I don’t want you to promise me anything,” she replies firmly. “Whatever happens, happens. Now, let’s not dawdle on my porch and get inside. Want some more beers?”

“Whoa, don’t hand me ammunition,” I joke and she laughs. “I’ll take some water though.”

“There’s some water bottles in the fridge,” she says, pointing to the tiny kitchen that sits at the rear of the house, past the living room. “I’ll be right back.”

I get two bottles of water out of the fridge and head back into her living room. I take a seat on the couch and pull out my phone, scrolling mindlessly as I wait for my girl.

When she reappears, she’s wearing a pair of sleep shorts and a white t-shirt. Her hair is pulled into a ponytail and her makeup has been washed off. Her in a t-shirt and tiny shorts is a hundred times sexier than her in literally anything else—yes, including her scrubs—and there’s no stopping my downstairs head from waking up.

“Come here.”

Her eyebrows rise, but I don’t miss the clear interest in her eyes. “Come there?”

I tap my thigh, “right here.”

Her cheeks flush and a little puff of breath blows out of her. With absolutely no hesitation, she crawls onto my lap. Our gazes are locked tight and her eyes darken with intensity. When her chest comes level with mine, and her knees are pressed into the cushion just inches from my crotch, she asks me softly, “you going to finally kiss me?”

“I’m thinking about it,” I tease her as my hands come around her lower back, pressing her onto me.

Fuck, she feels good against me. Just her soft curves and warmth and I’m already starting to get hard before I even lay my mouth on hers.

She looks at me with sizzling eyes as we stare at each other, knowing that once we take this step, our relationship is going to another level.

Leaving one hand on her lower back, I slide the other up and over the shoulder, letting my palm glide up her neck so my fingers can tangle in her hair. She shivers when my thumb strokes her jaw before I cup my hand around the back of her head.

Her hands reach out and circle behind my neck. Then she whispers as she licks her lower lip, “so this is it?”

“This is it,” I tell her, and because I absolutely cannot wait one second longer, I put pressure on the back of her head to lock our mouths together. The first touch of her lips against mine causes pleasure to punch straight through my groin, and the world just absolutely melts away.

There’s nothing else but her.

Lips so fucking soft, tongue tentative and sweet. Her hair silky to the touch and her skin warm as my hand snakes up just under the edge of her t-shirt.

She tilts her head, opens her mouth more and kisses me deeper. I groan and pull her tighter to me. My hand fists tighter into her hair, hampered by the hair tie somewhat but not giving a fuck. Her hips start to rotate slightly, rubbing herself along the top of my thigh. My dick gets achingly hard as she starts to make tiny sounds of need in the back of her throat.

My other hand slips down her back and palms her backside, then I give a tentative squeeze. I think she likes that, because her hips shift forward and she starts to grind her crotch on my leg. I press against her ass, encouraging her to keep moving against me. She does it again and shudders in my arms, so I know it’s hitting her in the right spot.

Pulling on her hair, I break the kiss just enough so I can growl at her, “get yourself off, darling. Right here. On my leg.”

Her eyes fly open and they’re full of fire and sexual need as they stare back at me. Her lips curve up in a wicked smile of acquiescence and I pull her back down to my mouth for a hard kiss.

She rotates her hips in circles, then alternates flexing back and forth. I clench my thigh muscle, wanting to give her as hard a surface as possible to stimulate herself. I slip my hand down the back of her shorts, finding bare skin. I squeeze and push her down on me, helping her to move faster on my leg.

She pants and moans softly as she works herself up. I have to force myself not to push my hand down further between her legs. I’m bound and determined not to go there yet, and besides, this is hot as fuck and completely satisfying to me.

She moves faster and faster, making tiny cries of yearning into my mouth as we kiss. Then she punches her pelvis down hard onto my thigh, going still for a moment before her entire body starts quaking in silent orgasm. I hear nothing but a soft sigh of pleasure escape her lips and slither over my tongue.

Her body goes limp in my arms. She lifts her head, our lips parting, and looks down at me with glazed eyes. I press my lips to her briefly just once more, before I pull my hand out of the back of her shorts and roll her body off me. As I stand up and hover over her for a minute, I see her cheeks flushed rosy and her nipples pebbled hard, even through her t-shirt.

Placing a hand on the couch cushion, I lower myself to her and brush my lips across her forehead. “Get a good night’s sleep.”

“Wait- you’re leaving?” She asks, confusion coating her expression.

“Yes,” is all I say.

“But-”

“I’ll take a cold shower when I get home, no worries,” I assure her with a smile. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“I had a great time tonight, Harry,” she tells me, still looking like a wet noodle on the couch so I don’t think she’ll be getting up anytime soon.

“I did too,” I smile at her over my shoulder as I reach for her door.

It’s in this moment that I’m pretty sure I’m a goner for her.

—

I see the hottest, sexiest, most adorable doctor walking across the darkened parking lot towards me. Well, towards her car. Her head is tucked down and she looks tired. When she finally looks up and locks her eyes on me, the exhaustion melts away and I’m rewarded with a happy, welcoming smile from her.

“You really have to stop stalking me in parking lots,” she quips as she walks closer.

Then closer still until the tips of her shoes touch the tips of mine and she’s offering her mouth to me for a kiss. Obviously, I take it, because who wouldn’t? Her lips are perfect. She tastes like mint gum and smells faintly of antiseptic, and that right there is my favourite combo.

When she pulls back, she tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear and asks, “seriously, what are you doing here?”

“I wanna take you somewhere,” I tell her as I grab her hand and take her towards my car that’s parked the next row over.

“Where?”

“Just get in the car, Doc.”

“You’re being vague,” she says with an arched eyebrow. “Is this where you kidnap me, take my kidney and sell it on eBay?”

“This is where I’ll find a way to occupy that beautiful mouth of yours if you keep asking questions and ruin the surprise,” I tell her and she gives a tinkling laugh.

“Promises, promises,” she singsongs and I just roll my eyes.

It only takes about fifteen minutes from Cedars-Sinai Hospital where she works to the closest beach where I plan to take her for an impromptu picnic date night. We only had to stop by to get some pizza because I already have a cooler with a six-pack of beers loaded in the back of my car. It’s a little too late for sunset, but the purplish black of twilight is lush.

“The beach, huh,” she deadpans. “You brought me out here to seduce me?”

“You naughty girl,” I clutch a hand to my chest and make an exaggerated gasp of disbelief. “That’s indecent exposure that is.”

She laughs as she opens the door of the car and hops out. I do the same, then I open the back door to pull out the pizza, blanket and the cooler with beers inside before letting her help by taking the blanket.

Somehow we have the beach to ourselves tonight, and she points out a nice spot for us to sit. I agree, so I let her spread out the blanket. After both of us have our butts firmly planted, side by side, facing the ocean, I take two beers out and hand one to her.

“Ooh, we’re going fancy tonight,” she says when she sees that I brought microbrews instead of cheap beer.

I chuckle as I open the pizza box and grab a slice of the cheesy goodness that will probably clog my artery, then we talk about our day as we eat. I tell her the funny things that happened at practice today, including a joke that Marcel told us in the locker room which most would probably find insulting, but I know my girl is used to locker room talk and would find it hilarious, and she tells me what she did in the hospital. Apparently, they were so busy today that her lunch break lasted less than ten minutes.

“You never cease to amaze me, Doc,” I tell her honestly. “It’s so cool what you do for a living. Impressive as hell.”

“Thanks, Harry,” she says softly. “That means a lot.”

It’s completely dark by the time we finish our pizza, but the view is still lush since the moon is bright, causing the water to look like it’s covered in floating, crushed diamonds.

We’re silent as we sip our beers, and I love that we can sit in comfortable silence as well as talk for hours. It’s crazy to think that it’s only been a few weeks that we’ve known each other yet I just feel such a strong connection with her. I love that we’re so in tune with each other that sometimes we say the same things and steal lines from one another. We have a similar sense of humour and we can even exchange an inside joke with just a glance.

I loosen my hold of her when she pulls away from my side embrace. Her head swivels to me, and I can see the moon glittering in her eyes. “I owe you an apology.”

“What?” I look at her in confusion.

“I misjudged you, Harry,” she says with a tender smile. “When you asked me out, I outright told you that you’re a player without even giving you a chance to explain yourself. I made an assumption, and that was wrong of me. I’m sorry.”

“And your assumption was right,” I tell her honestly with a light chuckle. “There is nothing to apologise for. It was common knowledge, I was a manwhore.”

She snorts. “Shut up, I’m serious.”

“Me too,” I squeeze her hand. “You didn’t misjudge me, Doc, you knew exactly the type of guy I used to be.”

She has a dreamy smile on her face when she says, “kiss me.”

“No, you come here and kiss me,” I say, and I’m pretty sure she can see my eyes sparkling with mischief.

She rolls her eyes and mutters “fine” under her breath as she plants her knees on the sides of my legs, but I don’t miss the light in her eyes which tells me that she likes the idea.

Closing her eyes, she dips her mouth to mine and now I’m wondering if the two years of jail time and a fine for indecent exposure is worth it if I were to take her right here right now.

—

We’re in New York for two away games in a row, tonight against the Rangers which we won 3-1, and tomorrow night against the Devils. I’m chuffed not only because we won and I played great, but I also had a great day today before the game with my girl. We didn’t do much since she wanted me to save my energy for the game tonight, but we did walk around our hotel and ended up napping on the couch in the room that I share with Marcel.

We all ride on the team bus that takes us from the hotel to the arena and back to the hotel after we finish the game. I wanted her to sit next to me, but for both trips, to the arena and back, she gave me a slight shake of her head and sat with the girls along with the rest of the staff in the front.

When I hop off the bus though, I see her waiting for me with a grin on her face. I kiss the fuck out of her, not caring about my teammates who whistle and yell, “get a room.”

“Which floor are you on again?” I ask her as we enter the lift. I want to walk her to her room just to spend a few minutes more with her.

Yeah, laugh all you want. I know I’m fucking whipped.

“Tenth,” she says, pulling her room key out of her handbag and hands it to me so I can scan it then tap the button on number ten.

“Wanna catch an early breakfast with me tomorrow?” I ask her as we approach her room that she shares with the team’s orthopaedic surgeon, Callie.

“Sure. What time?”

“We’re leaving for light skate practice at 9:30, so we should have plenty of time if we meet down there at 8:30.”

“Sounds good,” she nods as we reach her door.

There’s a handwritten note stuck in between the door and the jamb. She puts her key in the card slot, opens the door slightly, and snag the piece of paper. She opens it up and I look over her shoulder at the note as we read it silently together.

YN,

Marcel and Joslynn are hooking up and they’re in his room which means Harry has been kicked out. I’m going to sleep with Macy instead, so you and Harry can have this room. Unless you want Harry to go sleep with Macy?

No? Didn’t think so.

Have fun you two.

Callie

“This is Alex, Matt and Marcel’s doing,” I tell her with absolute certainty as she twists her neck to look at me. “I’ll just get an extra room for tonight.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she chuckles. “You can sleep here. We’ve spent the night together before.”

“Yeah, but that was different. We fell asleep on the couch, it wasn’t intentional,” I point out. “I don’t trust myself sleeping in the same bed with you, Doc. I’m not going to be able to help myself.”

“Well, good,” she says, smiling mischievously. “Cause I’m done wait-”

That’s as far as she gets before I push her through the door, backing her into the room. My mouth hits her only moments before her legs hit the edge of the bed and we both go tumbling onto it.

This is when we realise there’s a huge box of condoms with 144 packs inside it in the middle of the bed. On the top, there’s another note and I recognise Matt’s handwriting on it.

You’re welcome by the way

“I freaking love your teammates,” she says with a laugh.

I guess I owe those fuckers some beers.

[retvenkos]

newfound love | t.l.

Little Women - Laurie Laurence x Reader, slight angst, fluff

tw: mentions of a dead mother

word count: 1.9k

A/N: i’m apparently incapable of writing fluff without first mentioning crushing loss, so that’s fun.

prompt: we’re going out in the cold for a walk, and I know you don’t want to get wet, but I’m trying to convince you to make a snow angel with me

The first thing (Y/n) knew was the cold. From the moment they had been born, they knew the icy touch of frigid air and the bite of snow. Winter babies were often babies who didn’t survive, but it had been their mother that didn’t last the night. Their family had mourning during the most dangerous of seasons, snow falling on their cheeks and melting at their hot tears.

Ever since, (Y/n) knew that winters often brought more problems than they were worth - from the cold, to the lack food, to the bouts of sickness that always seemed to follow, and the tight grasp of melancholy that held their heart hostage. Times were hard enough without the troubles of a changing season, and to have winter come early was simply cruel.

Already the winds had changed, and sometimes, when (Y/n) looked around at the people who surrounded them, they thought they could tell who was already blown away.

Laurie had always been rather good at convincing them that it was just worry, but the feeling never left, just gnawed a little less. 

Now, with the war being what it was, there was more at risk, and more that ate at (Y/n), devouring the very root of their being. It hadn’t taken long for Laurie to notice the strength of (Y/n)’s grief, that year, and he had grown intent on trying to show (Y/n) the beauty of winter, even with it’s hardship and death.

“You can’t just have one,” he had said, sounding much older than he usually did. “Everything is good and bad.”

“Are we?”

And Laurie had laughed unabashedly, as though the thought had never crossed his mind. (Y/n) hadn’t admitted it, then, but they resolved that if naivete was the worst of Laurie’s offenses, they could fall in love with all of him - the good and bad.

In his attempts to demonstrate the enchantment of winter (because Laurie was a true romantic, and he did insist winter was enchanting), he had exhausted every effort he could think of.

He had taken (Y/n) out to ice skate, had taken them to a winter dance, and had even stolen some of his grandfather’s seasonal wines for them to share. Although that last one was largely a success, before they were caught, (Y/n) still couldn’t shake the idea that winters brought nothing but misery. It was an instinct set deep in the fibre of their soul; something created the moment they were born, when the ice and cold had stolen them from the warmth of a mother.

It seemed, even with Laurie’s efforts, that there was one inescapable truth about (Y/n)’s experiences:

Winters were bleak and their frosts were long, lingering well after the snow had melted and the sun dared to peek out once more.

When it neared the end of winter, (Y/n) had assumed that Laurie had let his little project go. It had been a while since he asked them about their opinion of the winter months, and while (Y/n) still caught him staring every once in a while, he made no effort to speak of what he was thinking.

On a day when the cold seemed to be letting up, (Y/n) and Laurie made plans to meet the next day. He had some books he wanted them to see, and (Y/n) was in the throes of  a crisis - finding themself unable to oppose Laurie’s good, if often too forward, nature.

When (Y/n) woke to find that it had snowed sometime between night and early morning, they had sighed, but steeled themself to the reality of it. The day prior they had promised Laurie they would go over, and when Laurie had smiled, they had even promised to be in a better mood. Laurie had said that they needn’t hide their feeling for his sake, but (Y/n) put their hands over his and told them they wanted to.

“It won’t be winter for much longer.”

It wouldn’t have been the first time (Y/n) managed to speak too soon.

Bundled in their warmest clothes, (Y/n) had set out in the cold, intent to walk to Laurie’s house, no matter the weather. The snow crunched beneath their boots, and the rising sun made a blinding glare against the white expanse, but they journeyed forth.

Laurie didn’t live too far away from (Y/n). In the summer months, walking to his house was a welcome distraction and the view of the world in full bloom never ceased to amaze them. (Y/n) looked around at the snow covered world around them and tried to appraise it in Laurie’s eyes - what enchanting beauty could be found, when everything was frozen in time?

Perhaps there was something beautiful in the vastness of it - when covered in snow, the world didn’t seem to end at definite horizon. The clouded sky met the snowy land in a sort of haze - one color mixing with the other and never quite distinguishing itself. And the icicles hanging from trees seemed to shine like diamonds when the sunlight hit them, just right. The ice was sharp and deadly, yes, but it was also delicate and easily broken. 

(Y/n) stopped beneath a tree and when they looked back at the way they came, there was almost something poetic in the way their steps had made a trail - like their existence in the world left a mark, no matter how small.

(Y/n) looked down at their shoes, shaking their head at their own thoughts. If only Laurie saw them now - he might think all of this was his doing.

Perhaps it was.

(Y/n) scuffed the fresh layer of snow with the tip of their shoe, revealing some of the grass beneath - a dark green that reminded (Y/n) of the decorations Laurie had insisted on putting up, claiming that the atmosphere alone would be enough to convince them of the beauty of winter.

(Y/n) was careful to admit it, but all of Laurie’s antic - from the most simple to the elaborate - had made them feel better. Most of the time. Laurie’s presence alone was enough to coax happiness out of them, pushing down that melancholy that stubbornly clung to their being.

“(Y/n)!” A voice brought them out of their thoughts, and it took a moment for (Y/n) to realize they had been smiling.

Laurie, wrapped in a thick coat, was running over to them, his expression a blur and hair flying wild. The sun was rising with him and made it hard to focus on his nearing figure for long, but when he was close enough, Laurie blocked the glare with an amusement that seemed to shine brighter than his heavenly competitor.

“I didn’t think you’d come out for a walk.”

(Y/n) brought a hand up to tame his hair. “Well, I did promise you, didn’t I?”

Laurie nodded his head, dark hair flying once more. “I just thought that with the snow, you might have changed your mind.”

“If it was anyone else, I would have.”

“Do I really mean that much to you?”

(Y/n) felt their cheeks get hot and burrowed their face deeper into their scarf. Laurie hummed in acknowledgement, neither triumphantly nor disappointedly, just markedly.

“You wouldn’t be admiring the weather, would you? I was trying to compose a poem on my way here - something that would capture the essence of a final snow.” (Y/n) scoffed and Laurie’s teasing eyes caught their gaze. “Perhaps you have a line or two to add?”

“Maybe,” (Y/n) conceded, “but only if I can write it somewhere warm - preferably in front of a fireplace, with those books you mentioned.”

The two set off in the way Laurie had come, (Y/n) making it a point to step in his footprints from earlier so that they might avoid getting wet anymore than they already were. Despite having consented to the idea that the winter might be slightly beautiful, in its own, haunting sort of way, (Y/n) was still averse to the cold, and there was nothing worse than the kind of cold that stuck to your skin after getting your clothes wet.

It was when Laurie’s house was in sight, and closer to them than the distant horizon, that snow started to fall from the heavens, sprinkling through Laurie’s dark hair and settling on his scarf. A snowflake fell on (Y/n)’s eyelashes, and they took in a breath, preparing to sigh, but stopped themself short. Laurie looked at them from the corner of his eye, just barely managing to suppress a smile from creeping onto his lips; there was affection in his eyes, though, sweet and pure.

“(Y/n),” Laurie grabbed their hands and the party in question turned to them, snow collecting on their head like the soft down of a duckling. “Do something for me?”

“What?”

Laurie fell back into the snow, letting go of (Y/n)’s hands as he dropped so that he wouldn’t pull them with him. He fell back with an “oof” that seemed to knock the wind out of him, but he quickly recovered started moving his arms and legs, fanning outwards to create a snow angel.

(Y/n) scoffed and shook their head. “Laurie, you’re going to get all wet.”

“And so will you, when you join me.” Laurie’s smile was convincing, making up for his lack of persuasion skills. (Y/n) was able to resist, if only barely.

They opened their mouth to refuse, but no sound came. Laurie seemed to notice the falter in their resolve because he held out a hand, sitting up carefully as to not ruin his angel.

“The house is right there. We’ll be inside before the cold seeps through the layers of your clothes.” 

“Is this another attempt of yours to get me to fall in love with winter?”

Laurie smiled devilishly, despite what he had created just moments before. “You’ve already fallen in love. My schemes are over.”

Laurie was right - (Y/n) had fallen in love - but whether it was with winter or the boy who pointed out it’s beauty, was hard to tell. Maybe a snow angel would help them decide...

“Fine, for you.”

A moment after the words left their lips, Laurie reached for their hand and tugged them downward, pulling (Y/n) with such a force that they stumbled in their fall and landed half on top of him. (Y/n) shrieked and screwed their eyes tight.

They were awfully close, when dared to peek. Lauries cheeks were flushed scarlet, although whether it was from the cold or their position was hard to determine. (Y/n) shuffled away and lay down in the snow, hesitating before putting their hands out. Laurie lay back down, a little breathless, and the two stared at each other for a moment before laughing, not minding the wet snow beneath them.

(Y/n) eventually pushed their arms out and made their frozen angel, their fingers grazing Laurie’s arm. 

When the two stood up, they both looked at their creations with a critical eye.

“We ruined those pretty well, don’t you think?” 

“You were the one who pulled me down!”

“You didn’t give yourself enough space to make wings.”

(Y/n) and Laurie looked at the other challengingly before breaking out in chuckles.

“Let’s get inside. I wouldn’t want your newfound love of winter spoiled by catching a cold.”

(Y/n) nodded, but it wasn’t until they were sitting in front of a fire, books between them and blankets draped over their shoulders, that (Y/n) told Laurie, in just above a whisper, that it wasn’t winter they had discovered their affections for.

[noa-nightingale]

Unsolved’s Last Episode

What a journey it has been. And now it is over and I have to find ways to deal with that. So I decided to do what I do best, which is rambling about things I love, finding meaning in them and trying to get that meaning across in a way that is probably way too earnest and too emotional.

Let’s take a close look at the last Buzzfeed Unsolved episode, Return To The Demonic Sallie House.

I watched this alone. I stayed away from tumblr, twitter and discord on purpose. It was midnight in Germany when the episode aired and it was about 1 a.m. when I went to bed. I decided to go to sleep immediately after I watched the episode without talking to anyone about it, and that’s exatly what I did.

I wanted to cry but I did not manage to do it. I just lay in the dark, stared at the ceiling and had a lot of thoughts in my head.

So, let’s unpack this.

The Sallie House! Where it all started! And the second demon ep of the season! They really decided to go out with a bang.

I don’t know why I thought I would be able to get through this without getting my heart broken - it already started in such a wonderful, beautiful, sad way. Shane reading what Ryan said the last time at the Sallie House. The handshake. The trip via plane and car (loved that tiny bit of footage of their journey there). Shane making Ryan say “And now I’m back” with confidence.

“What a weird mix of emotions, to be sad, happy and horrified.” Lord, that hit me in the feelings. Ryan, I hope everything you went through and everything you experienced was worth it to you. And I really hope you know how much it means to people.

(I have my own weird mix of emotions attached to that episode now - sadness, excitement, joy, happiness, grief, gratefulness, love.)

I loved how they kept referencing the first investigation without making this episode feel like “just” a copy of it. It’s an entirely different vibe, a strong, fantastic episode in its own right and a worthy goodbye.

(And I also have to mention that little conversation about Shane laying on the pentragram. Look. Listen. I am asexual as hell. I am the most asexual asexual who has ever asexual-ed. I have not experienced one single sexual attraction in my entire life. It’s just not part of my experience. But putting yourself on a pentagram in the basement of a demon house while yelling “Rock’n’roll buckaroo” at whatever entity might listen - that is, respectfully and platonically, friggin’ sexy.)

“It just occured to me, we don’t really talk on the phone to like, just see what’s going on, because we see each other every day.” Oh dear God, it’s still happening. ^-^ I was reminded of the several times this has been brought up before - that they see each other more than any other person, that they spend a shitton of time together, and that even during quarantine they facetimed almost every day. Idk it just made me even sadder - they made memories together, went on this journey together, got closer as friends, grew as people; and now this show is over.

I am beyond grateful that Watcher exists and that Steven Lim (because goddamn, I love that guy) exists and that new memories will be made, but I am still so damn sad.

“It felt like the right time to leave on our own terms.” I am gonna ignore for now that he said this to a demon - I am just happy for them. This episode is such a great ending for such a great show, and I am glad they could do it on their own terms.

(Although I am a tiny bit salty that they apparently could not promote Watcher the way they should have been able to. Having to cut parts from the postmortem etc. But I once again have to give kudos to the Watcher fandom here; I have seen many people promoting the hell out of Watcher, and that is a beautiful thing.)

Ryan: “If that actually is a demonic presence in here, or Sallie, the thing that says it’s Sallie, can you turn the light on?”

(light switches on immediately)

Ryan: “Oh fuck off.”

I almost laughed out loud (had to stop myself, did not want to wake my roommate or my cat) but he said that in such a genuine, emphatic way and it was funny as hell.

“An audio recorder left in this room would later pick up the musical mobile playing by itself. Making this evidence even more compelling is the fact that seconds before the mobile plays, a white orb moves across the top right corner, just near the mobile that is out of frame.”

This narration brought to you by Ryan “Not An Orb Guy” Bergara. :p (I am not gonna razz him too much though - we know he presents evidence (or “evidence”, if you are a Shaniac) and then let’s the viewer decide what to make of it. He’s just reporting the findings. And yeah, I think that is admirable. Also, I know it has been said many times before but hats off to those guys for not faking evidence. Best ghosthunters in the world indeed, and I mean that.)

I also love that Ryan considers Shane a ghost cage (and an organic ghost cage, at that). Shane Madej, organic ghost cage. Put that on a lower third somewhere.

I generally don’t get that scared while watching Unsolved but the little girl turning into the demon thingy - the visual itself - is a tiny little bit disturbing when you watch this stuff at midnight. (I still slept soundly though lol. Did not have any nightmares.)

A thing that is just really endearing (and a little bit funny) to me is Shane sitting on the counter in the kitchen, with his long legs. Compare that to Ryan sitting on the table, with his little legs. ^-^

Also, compare Season 1 Ryan to Ryan now. He would never have mocked a demon in its own house and now look at him, drawing that portrait of Sallie. Yeah, I know it is silly but I am so incredibly proud of the guy.

Aand into the basement we go. And almost six years later, they are still a package deal. *noises of ugly crying*

He’s on the pentagram! I repeat, he’s on the pentagram!!! Never thought I’d see the day. Like, good God, this guy. The character development. The courage. I am blessed to be allowed to witness it.

AND THE BOYS ARE SALLIE APPROVED! GREATEST GHOSTHUNTERS IN THE WORLD! I AM SO DAMN HAPPY FOR THEM!!

That’s some well-earned cheering right there. Genuinely happy for them. Loved this moment.

We have reached Shane’s solo investigation and I got, once again, punched in the heart when Ryan said “So long, friend”.

And I know I am “just” watching Shane doing what Shane has done for all this series - being rude to demons and ghosts, yelling at them, telling them to do stuff to him and to wreak havoc. But it’s the last time now and it’s difficult to watch. I am happy for him - he defeated Annabelle, he defeated the Goatman and now he defeated Sallie.

“You’re a big nothing! You’re powerless in the face of the ghoul boys!” Hell yeah!!!

And, for the last time, they are doing the little dance of Shane telling Ryan he heard some spooky stuff that he did not actually hear. My heart can’t take it, it’s too much, I don’t want this to end.

Really enjoyed how Shane admitted that it is a spooky house (always has been, always will be). Like, that seemed like a genuine moment he had outside by himself there.

And now, Ryan’s time alone in the Sallie House.

I adore how brave Ryan as gotten, how he developed as a person, how things that would scare him in earlier seasons do not scare him as much anymore - but I have to admit, the moment in the kitchen when he told whoever was there not to show itself was fucking delicious. The fear in his voice. I don’t want this to sound mean but I adored that little moment.

“I am not my fear. I am stronger than my fear.” We love to see it. Genuinely.

I had to giggle when he started laughing maniacally by himself. I am sorry, it is just too hilarious and endearing at the same time.

And he went into the basement alone!!! <3 <3 <3

Shane: “How’d it go?”

Ryan: “It’s over.”

Shane: “It’s over.”

Ryan: “That’s how it went.”

Shane: “You ended it.”

Just... let me cry in peace.

I had to stop myself again from laughing out loud when Shane lay down with the two dolls next to him, aaannnnddd the framed pic of the ghoul boys near where Ryan slept was just a very nice little touch, honestly.

And it is over. It is morning, the “the investigation is done” music starts to play in the background and the series is complete.

... And Shane killed the spirit box. That happened too.

Before I write the last words here like Ryan said his speech at the end of the ep, let me just say: I loved this. I loved this entire episode. And I love these guys. From the bottom of  my heart.

“You believed in us. And for that, I will always be grateful.”

I did. And I do. And many more people do too. And you made me cry. Thank you.

“And sure, we may have never definitively answered the question of Are Ghosts Real. But in the end, in perhaps fitting fashion for a show that finds resolution in the unresolved, all I can say is I’m sure glad we didn’t, because the pursuit and the friendship made along the way was far more fulfilling. I hope the ride was as joyous and full of discovery for you as it was for us. That being said, I ask you one last time: Are ghosts real? For now, and perhaps forever, the answer will graciously remain Unsolved.”

I hope you know how many lives you changed and how many joy and happiness you brought to people, both of you, and the rest of the team. I have seen many many people say how this show helped them through dark times, helped them make friends, made them happy, and was deeply deeply meaningful to them.

The same is true for me, I just never know how to adequately put it into words. This changed my life for the better. It was a light in dark times. It made me braver. It made me better. I can’t thank you enough.

And they could have ended it here, after the “Unsolved”. But nooooo, he had to say more heartfelt words and Shane had to say more heartfelt words and that was what truly made it real for me. It sank in at that point, that this is the end of an era and that this chapter of their life and this chapter of my life is over.

Ryan’s words just really touched me, and it also touched me how intently Shane listened. And Shane can’t tell me that he was not moved as well. Package deal, bond that can’t be broken, best ghosthunters in the world.

(And I would also like to report that while writing this, my dumb stupid eyes finally cooperated and I cried. Thanks for everything, guys. I will keep the memories with me forever while making new ones with Watcher, and I love you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.)

[nincompoopydoo]

PINING, BAGELS, REPEAT.

— WHEN THE DRINKING'S DONE ; PART 6 / ?

( gif from this gifset by @jascontodd )

PAIRING: Bruce Wayne x reader

WORD COUNT: 2.9k

SUMMARY: Sunday night dinner with your mother doesn’t go as planned when Bruce shows up unexpectedly at your door and you both know how your mother really loves him alot.

A/N: Slow and kinda long-winded chapter again haha. I used to be the kind of person who couldn’t write long stuff. Now look at me. Who is she??? Enjoy this one yall. Probably one or two more chapters to go, depends on how much I can write <3

WARNINGS: Swearing, alcohol. I write about what I feel and they are very real. So if you find these things triggering, please do not read this.

MASTERLIST ; MASTERPOST

Sunday night. You’re in an apron, flushed from the heat of the stove. You’ve just poured a glass of wine for your mother, but she doesn’t drink it—too busy walking around your apartment, clearing your stuff as she criticizes your lack of cleanliness and organization. Grading papers during exam season keeps you busy. Needless to say, you don’t have the time to clean your goddamn house.

You still love her anyway.

You’re at the sink, purple-stained fingers from peeling the tunic of the red onions are under running water when there is a knock on your door. It’s deafening, rapid, and agitating. You’ve just spilled boiling water onto your hand and you really don’t need another problem to come charging at your front door. Literally.

Moving out of the kitchen with haste, you call out over your shoulder to your mother to quit rearranging with bits and bobs of stationary and papers because yes, it’s messy but you know exactly where everything is. The knocking doesn’t cease, and your annoyance aggravates further. You’re gonna have to punch someone or something if it doesn’t stop.

You aggressively pushed the barrel of the bolt lock, swinging the door open as the strands of your wild hair flew backward in the sudden blow of air.

All forms of anger and agitation disappear as soon as your gaze meets the flushed face of none other than Bruce fucking Wayne, dressed in a grey dress vest, tie hanging loosely a pristine white shirt, and an ebony tweed overcoat. This feels like deja vu. Your expression goes through a series of mixed emotions, mostly confusion, when it morphed into a guise of embarrassment, cheeks even redder. “Don’t tell me I texted you by accident again?” He blinks, seemingly as bewildered as you are. “What? No, no. No. I—” His sentence is cut short when he takes a moment to catch his breath. Your brows are frowning even deeper than before. “Did you run here or something? And what are you doing here anyway?”

Bruce shifts in his stance, a palm against the door frame, shaking his head. He feels small under your interrogative stare. “No, I came here to see you…” he trails off, eyes shamelessly skirting across your figure. He just now notices that it may be a bad time for him to turn up, and you’re hit with the realization you’re in a ratty apron, very red and very sweaty. You’re right. It is deja vu because why are you always a mess when Bruce shows up at your front door unannounced? You abruptly pull the apron over your head, hurling it behind the door, hands palming the frizz of your hair into a somewhat presentable look.

“Look, I need to talk you—”

“Honey! Who’s at the door?” He’s being cut off mid-sentence again. This time, by your mother’s voice from the living room. Your eyes are wide again—so are his.

Your mother’s fondness for Bruce is an understatement. Obsession is a better word. She had only met him once, and that was six years ago but the conceptualization of being somewhat related to an exceptionally handsome and successful man had gotten to her head all those years ago. Hell, she loves him more than she loves you. Your mother—A woman who wishes to call your best friend ‘son’ with a whole lot of love to give. If she discovers Bruce is here, at your doorstep, she will never let go. Never. And you both know it. There’s a silent understanding that travels between the two of you and the look you’re giving him tells only one thing—Run before it’s too late.

“Bruce Wayne as I live and breathe...”

Well, too late.

A small-statured lady stands on the farther side of the hallway, face lit up with sheer joy and excitement as if she had just won a lottery. She approaches him with arms open wide and soon, her hands are laid on his cheeks, examining the man’s face carefully. Bruce just stands there, stiff as a rock, unsure of how to regain his composure from all the adrenaline of wanting to see you now that he was in such close proximity to the woman who raised you. When it’s you, he tends to struggle with timing and it’s partly the reason he has never managed to act on his feelings for you. For the longest time, he has wanted to be more than friends or whatever the hell this was. He had been hesitant but now, he’s very sure.

Sometimes it feels like it's the right person but the wrong time. He doesn’t want it to be that way. He wants to make things right with you.

And there he was, being squished under the grasp of the lady that loves him very much.

He catches your gaze; you flash him a sympathetic smile as you mouth the word “sorry.” Bruce arches his brows, indicating he has no idea what to do or how to get out of this situation.

“You’ve grown so much since the last time I saw you!” the older woman exclaims, a hand now firmly on his shoulder, the other brushing away his long strands of hair from his face with affection. Bruce would never admit it; he likes the attention your mother gives to him—the touch of a mother. Something he longs for.

“Why don’t you come in and join us for dinner? There's more than enough food.”

Crap, you should have known that question was bound to be mentioned. You’re not convinced that you will be able to suppress your emotional heartburn and the idea of Bruce tasting the dishes you’re cooking, it’s making your palms sweat. But what the hell. You shouldn’t be this nervous around him, you’ve known each other for years. He has seen you at your worst and vice versa.

Still, you’ll like to avoid the predicament of a dinner table set for you, your mother, and the man you secretly love. You’re quick with an answer. “Oh, I’m sure he has other important things to do. Bruce is very busy—”

“I’ll be happy to. I have no plans for tonight after all.”

You stare at Bruce, eyes glimmering with shock and betrayal—he is supposed to be on your side. He simply sends you a swift wink, and you feel the growing and most likely apparent deep red of your already flushed cheeks. You glance away to face your mother, eye crinkling in hopes of concealing the effect he has on you. Well, at least your mother looks fucking overjoyed. Maybe the night won’t end in disappointment.

-

The scent of chicken and spice whiffs through the air from the dishes of chicken and chorizo paella you’ve managed to whip up in a quick thirty minutes—a recipe you came by in an article titled “Fancy dishes for lazy cooks.” Well, it’s certainly working; everyone looks pleasantly surprised when you emerge from the kitchen with a cast-iron skillet within your kitchen gloved-grasp.

Happiness is the sound of the clinking of cutlery against nearly empty smeared plates, the splash of wine cascading from the bottle you held into the glasses of your guests, and the occasional laughter that erupts from your mother as Bruce tries to make a joke through mouthfuls of paella. A symphony of contentment and comfort, composed and orchestrated by the two most significant individuals in your life. Beauty is made anywhere beautiful people are; in this space, cramped up at the beech wooden table made for one by the casement window that overlooks the apartment across yours.

This side of Bruce—where boyish smiles were manifested and hearty laughs arising from the belly—is the side you miss the most. Years ago, things felt simpler though your past self would deny that notion as human life continues to become more intricate as we grow older and our eyes see more. Innocence to maturity. Happiness to grief. But, the complexity of this warfare between the brain and the heart seems to reside in perpetual darkness, no light at the end of the tunnel. For a long time, you thought deciding to be alone could eventually bring peace to the madness but maybe, you’ve been with the wrong people this whole time. It’s your reflection against the window pane that shows the evident crinkle in your eyes and the constant upward in the curve of your lips even though it contrasts the gloomy hues of blue from the sky at twilight—you’re happy.

It’s the way your mother leans over and wipes off the bits of rice from the corner of your mouth and the exchange of awkward smiles when Bruce accidentally brushes his hand against yours when reaching for the fork. This is what you want. And maybe, just maybe, you deserve to not be alone.

“So, have you decided on who you’re taking to the wedding?”

Your mother’s voice hauls you back from your daydream. She gives you a knowing look, discretely glancing towards Bruce on the other end of the table. She knows you don’t have a date, and you know she wants you to bring Bruce. You feel your anxiety creep back in.

This is weirdly the second time you’re in this situation.

“I don’t know yet...” In times like this, you wonder if your mother wields some sort of magical ability of truth or something because no matter how much you try, you can never lie to her. And now, you wish the ground would collapse and swallow you up. You know she means well, but oh my God, Bruce is staring at you and you don’t know what to do with your hands anymore.

“Wedding?” Bruce chirps with a questioning brow as he glances between you and your mother. Now, you’re forced to explain for the sake of context. “My cousin’s getting married next week and mom here wants me to bring a date.” Your mother’s expression indicates that you’re lying through your teeth. Yet in reality, it’s not technically a lie if you’re leaving parts of reason out of the explanation because it’s true she wants you to bring a date but you don’t mention how you don’t want to go alone because weddings make you sad.

It sounds pathetic.

Bruce just nods, taking a sip of his wine. The fact he’s not saying anything is making you anxious. You thought you didn’t want him to be your date but now, maybe you do. These feelings are messing up your brain. It’s just mush now, and there’s no cure.

These are the times you want to say “Fuck you, Bruce” but in the nicest way possible.

“Why don’t you bring Bruce?”

She was direct as they come but is mostly tired of your lack of initiative and doubt. I mean, it’s not like you’re asking him to marry you, right? And honestly, you’re kind of relieved you didn’t have to be one to do it but you can’t keep depending on her to do all the heavy lifting for you. You’re not a teenager anymore. You’re a goddamn grown adult.

Nevertheless, you peer at his reaction to this from the corner of your eye, fully expecting some sort of a resting jaded expression or eyes wide in horror but he’s just looking at you...with that look—highly bewildered and almost seems to be entertained by your embarrassment. Despite the purse of his lips, you manage to catch sight of the slight impish tuck of his lips.

He thinks it's the wine, but he isn’t exactly sure.

“Yeah, sure. Why not?”

-

“Are you sure about this?” you cross your arms, as you watch Bruce shrug on his coat from the rack. The two of you are squeezed in the entryway of your apartment, huddling in hushed conversation. “About what?” he asks absentmindedly when in reality, he knows exactly what you’re referring to. As much as he doesn’t want to admit it, it’s an excuse to be around you longer. You purse your lips, shifting in your stance, eyes flickering away from his gaze. “About coming to the wedding,” you say it slowly, carefully, like you’re afraid to and you’re not sure why. He nods with the furrow of his brows, tugging his hands into the pockets of his ebony tweed coat. “I’m sure...Unless you don’t want me to come—”

“No, no. God, of course, I want you to come,” you stop, realizing how your sudden outburst of excitement must have made you seem desperate. You clear your throat, feet shifting once more. “I don’t want to pull you off work just because I don’t want to be alone.”

He raises his brows, nearing a little closer to you. “So that’s the real reason?” A hint of a smile—it’s a teasing one. You simply throw a fist to his arm yet unable to stifle your growing smile. “Don’t be a jerk.”

Bruce winces followed by a laugh that comes out more light a puff of air as he bares his palms in a gesture of surrender. “Hey, I didn’t say anything.”

Maybe, it’s the walls of this hallway, covered with hung framed photographs of family, childhood, and friends because it’s starting to feel warm. You think it’s the way his eyes light up when you laugh, radiating a sort of comforting warmth on this cold night. It feels like home. Bruce feels like home. You notice the prominent stain of your mother’s lipstick on his left cheek. You bring one hand to rest on the curve of his cheekbone, thumb trying to efface the smeared stain away.

You’re not sure if it's the smell of his deodorant or the sudden sense of his breath on your skin that made you comprehend the closing gap between your face and his. In an instant, your hand jerks away and returns to your side, clenching to a fist. Bruce clears his throat, bringing a hand up to scratch the growing stubble at his jaw. The touch of your fingers lingers like a burn.

Recognizing the tension in the air, you decide to avert your thoughts back to the conversation you were having in the first place. “You know, you don’t have to come. Really. You’ve done a lot for me, and you know that.”

“Yes...but I’ll always have your back no matter what.”

He smiles at you. The kind that reaches his eyes. He looks younger like this.

“And I’ll always have yours, Bruce.”

You’re an idiot. He’s an idiot. You’re just two idiots, standing in the hallway with hearts that feel like they’re about to explode. Despite the lingering tension in the air that’s still present, you bring him into an embrace. It feels natural, your arms around his shoulder and his on the small of your back. “Thanks for everything. Especially for making my mom really happy.” you punctuate your sentence with a gentle caress to the back where his shoulders meet. You hear the muffled sound of his laugh, feeling the rumble of his chest against yours as you try not to squirm at the brush of his unshaven chin against the curve of your neck. “No problem,” he mumbles before pulling away.

“And you need a shave.” You’re pointing to his chin and he finds himself scratching it again. He merely hums in response.

Swinging the door open while you wave him goodbye feels like a part of you is leaving. You’re not sure why you’re feeling this newly found emptiness in you when you know you’ll see him next week. You decide to blame the wine. It’s easier that way.

He’s walking away, already out of view when you decide you should really say something at least.

“Bruce,” you suddenly call out; he turns on his heels and backtracks a little too eager to face you at the doorway. “What was it you wanted to talk about?” He frowns in response, head tilting in a questioning manner. “When you came here, you said you needed to talk.”

He recalls the real reason he was here in the first place. Rushing to your door like you’re about to disappear any minute. Yet, you’re here, still at the doorway, three hours later. Fuck, he was about to confess.

Bad timing. Again.

Right person, wrong time.

No. He’ll make it right. Just, not now.

“I was...going to thank you for the bagels; Asiago. Nice choice.” Is what he says instead of reciting the words that had been running through his head in rehearsal since the drive to your apartment. He ignores the way your shoulders sag, perhaps in relief—he doesn’t want to know. He ignores the burning in his chest when you nod, the corners of your mouth tugging into a faint smile as you raise a palm in a somewhat solemn wave of farewell. He ignores the sting in his eyes when the door closes on him, symbolizing finality when he really doesn’t want it to end. Left alone in the dismal light of the hallway; it acts as a poignant reminder of his bereavement and how much of his consolation depends on your presence.

When the drinking's done, does it make it any easier for him to open himself up to you?

Bruce allows himself to cry once he pulls the car door to a close because he feels overwhelmed by the conflicting thoughts that continue to reside in his mind. The regrets, the what-ifs, and the should-haves. He forgets himself sometimes because he gets so lost in his thoughts, he doesn’t recognize himself anymore.

You keep him grounded. You remind him who Bruce Wayne truly is.

He catches a glimpse of his reflection in the rearview mirror.

You’re right. He does need a shave.

TAGLIST:

@raineeace

[betweenlands]

and now: dreamsmp, as explained by a yogs/hermitcraft fan who only watches tales

note - i’m a yogs fan so all of this is, as the kids say, “c![name]” unless stated otherwise

general

these white men can have so many fucking wars

do any of them even... like each other? like. nobody fills in creeper holes, they’re constantly stealing from each other and griefing shit and half the time there’s not even plot reasons behind it

y’all don’t have access to the end? like at all? i mean i GET maybe if it was modded and people had access to, like, backpacks, but it’s vanilla

“dream thinks smps die when they get to the end” dream is wrong, a coward, and a baby boy man

no shopping district? no ECONOMY? this part is fucking BAFFLING to me hello i do nothing but strip mine while listen to podcasts, i could buy and sell these idiots in diamonds. i feel like you could just say “we’re using prismarine blocks for currency now” and everyone would go fucking off it

i’m. i’m still stuck on the fact that there’s NO ECONOMY. like NONE. what the fuck. how do y’all live like this.

IT’S NOT EVEN MODDED i cannot grasp this. how is nonmodded vanilla minecraft with NO sense of honor between everyone else fun for anyone?

if you’re gonna run an anarchy server you should at least put icbm in your mod pack so people can explode each other properly

y’all have to use withers? you don’t have antimatter? w

i’m surprised people don’t get the places they logged out deathtrapped, this might as well be demise

all songs are acoustic sadboy or indiepop. i’d say “please write a diss track” but i don’t... think i want to hear that

i know “my lmanburg” is plot important but i don’t listen to ANY dsmp music by choice so i can only imagine it to the tune of my sharona

plot/characters

three lives system except it’s retroactive and makes literally no sense

there’s three immortals -- the server admin, who’s a horrible green-screen fresno nightcrawler (and is also canonically abusive? what? why would you canonize this?), a bird dude who does hardcore sometimes also, and sonic the hedgehog

i’m rooting for sonic

two children. actually a lot more than two children but there’s two very important children.

tubbo is one of the important children. he has infinity dads and i think he’s related to sips because their last names are both “underscore”. other dads include captain sparklez and maybe schlatt and probably some others too

he can make armor out of radio waves. nobody talks about this

tommy is the other important child. he’s simultaneously an uwu baby boy and also a little shit gremlin

schlatt. he’s sips but more

he’s glatt (ghost schlatt) now. which i know because he was in tales and constantly shouting GLATT

the first season was written by (irl) wilbur soot and it was apparently just hamilton? i don’t like hamilton.

IRL - he also supposedly forgot to tell schlatt his character was dying. again do these people talk to each other at all? like are they friends?

lemon microburger started out as a british drug cartel and has since been exploded like, idk, five times. i forget vanilla players have to explode things on purpose because [antimatter wind-up noise]

karl jacobs exists. he’s a time traveler. he’s very cool

charlie slimesicle pulled a nanosounds and launched himself into orbit and hasn’t come back down since

me too, buddy

foolish! he’s like, a demigod slash Totem Of (Un)Dying. he actually knows how to build! he seems neat!

...unfortunately he looks like Bench Appearo (i’m sorry)

THERE’S AN EGG hi as an old redstoner/flux buddies fan i FULLY fucking approve of egg. i love weird minecraft corruption plotlines i think we should have more of them

egg will make the plot good. join egg

there was some sort of war involving pet murder and also a railway system? might as well be happening

other stuff

fandom has one hobby and it’s discourse about who’s justified in doing what, which is baffling to me

back in my day we pointed at the unethical clone scientist whose name was a pun on hannibal lector and who did SO MUCH MURDER and went “oh he did nothing wrong whatsoever”

everyone has done war crimes but none of the fun war crimes

so does nobody do like. psychological warfare? not abuse -- like, leaving 50 signs leading to different coordinates on a wild goose chase that ends with “made you look” or tricking someone into digging their own grave

have some PANACHE! march up to the egg and leave the entire This Is Not A Place Of Honor text on signs! mix it up!

apparently people don’t like it when the production values are good, because if it’s too well-made then it’s not dreamsmp anymore? baffling if true. let people minecraft roleplay! high production values mean better plot!

something about discs i guess

okay that’s all, if i missed anything i’m supposed to talk about just tell me when you reblog the post and i’ll explain what i know

also i still can’t believe you guys don’t have even, like, a barter economy

[lizacstuff]

Your thoughts on the first episode of the new season? And can we talk about all those parallels? Also I'm loving the summer vibes!

I'm LIVING for the summer vibes! Doesn't everything feel like a breath of fresh air? I definitely feel like new life has been injected into the series. And that new location is so beautiful, I LOVE IT.

As for the episode, I thought it was masterfully done. You could tell Ayse was back and bringing the perfect mix of comedy, romance and drama. And the sparkle! The show sparkles again. The almost two and half hours flew buy, I was on the edge of my seat, and the performances from Hande and Kerem were amazing. Plus I just adore every moment between Serkan and his new nemesis (aka his secret daughter).

On the sober side, I don't care how jerky Serkan got while battling cancer, or how he may have pushed her away, nothing they've shown us so far even begins to justify Eda not telling him about Kiraz, and it certainly doesn't justify her continuing to lie when he's standing right in front of her making overtures (and her daughter is clearly longing for her father). Obviously, there are still many things we don't know and I'm sure there are many flashbacks to come, and Eda has been though so much, but still...I don't see how they will thread that needle and have Eda come out unscathed.

That being said, with this first episode they executed this story so well and it really does give new life to the series, so I won't dwell on the fact that Eda never would have done this. Never. We just have to move past it, accept that it's a soap opera plot device designed to give us an amazing second season packed with all sorts of amazing scenes and just enjoy every minute while it lasts.

(More under the cut)

I'll get to more on Edser later, as for everyone else... silliness abounds.

First... Erdem cheated on Leyla? WHAT!?!?! With whom? But I guess that was a clean way to explain Leyla leaving.

Engin and Piril, I love that Engin is staying home with their son, and that young actor is a cutie! As for Piril... GRRRRRR... she is still on my shitlist. Last time it was for betraying Eda (and Serkan) by enabling Selin's reign of terror, this time it's by betraying her friend and business partner Serkan! Good grief. If Piril just found out recently at the start of this project I could accept on her holding off because it's not her secret to run off and tell, but what I can't accept is her actively working against Serkan finding out. Even if in this episode she had gently said to Eda... "do you think maybe it's time you told him?" it would be a lot easier to swallow... but nope! She's acting like it would be the end of the world if Serkan found out. I sincerely hope that when everyone finds out and Engin finds out Piril knew, it causes problems between them. She deserves that.

She remains my second least favorite character. Who was my least favorite character this episode? Oh you know! Awful Ayfer is back! We got a reprieve from her in the last arc, but she's back to her annoying, controlling, Serkan-hating ways. Eda is a mother, an international award-winning landscape architect and business owner and she still has to lie to Ayfer because she's such a pain-in-the-ass? Watching her is going to be a trial.

Even though it feels like both Aydan and Ayfer were reset to zero character development, and Aydan has done worse (keeping the fact that Serkan was alive from Eda) I still find her a much easier character to take. Probably because Neslihan is a much better comedic actress, so she's a lot more entertaining. But... Aydan's been with Kemal for 5 years and hasn't told Serkan? WHY? I can't believe Kemal didn't give her an ultimatum years ago. I was loving, however, Serkan being in the way for both Aydan/Kemal and Engin/Piril. GOOD. Those people caused problems for him at one point or another or were in the way, it was nice to see him return the favor. I like Kemal and am still hoping they'll do a parallel "not knowing your father thing" and reveal he's Serkan's bio dad while Serkan is finding out he had a child he never knew about.

Melo and Seyfi were their awesome supportive, funny selves. It was great to see both of them, I'm so glad they stayed.

As for the new characters, love the kids. The new hotel manager is apparently ditzy and starstruck over Serkan, and I don't really understand how she's going to be integrated into the cast, but I love that she was used as a device to show us that Serkan has zero interest in any woman who is not Eda Yildiz. Eda's assistant seems like he'll be a fine side character. As for Burak, he seems harmless, obviously he has feeling for Eda that she does not reciprocate (fuck off Ayfer trying to push her on him) but hopefully they don't make him a psycho like Deniz. I did think he was a bit out of line to Serkan. Isn't that his cafe? And a customer has his glass spilled by a child in his care, and he insults him instead of apologizing? That is the worst customer service I've ever seen! He's a character that could wear on me quickly, we shall see. Kiraz can't help but be sassy because of genetics, but some of the adults in her life seem to be modeling rude behavior!

Now on to Eda and Serkan, I can't say enough about Hande and Kerem's acting in this episode. Phenomenal! They were both brilliant. Plus both are doing a great job working off of Maya (especially Kerem) those scenes were priceless. I don't often enjoy kids on shows, but so far I'm loving this dynamic.

As for Edser, while we don't know everything yet it feels like Serkan got to a point where he couldn't stand to see Eda in pain and putting her life on hold, he outright mentioned that she might not have graduated if they'd stayed together, and so that was part of the reason he reverted to his robot self and pushed her away. I'm going to guess she tried and tried and he was just unyielding. Saying he didn't want to get married or have kids in the harshest way possible. Perhaps even she went to tell him that she was pregnant and he went off on not wanting kids before she could even tell him. Time will tell.

At this juncture, my best guess is Eda's fear is rooted in rejection. It can't be that she thinks Serkan is a terrible person that doesn't deserve to know his child, or would be detrimental to Kiraz. However, she knows what it feels like to be rejected by Serkan, I'm sure she was beyond devastated, so I'm guessing now she's bent on protecting her daughter from feeling that same rejection. She fears if he found out, but wanted nothing to do with her, it would feel worse than him not knowing. She's not thinking clearly and perhaps it hasn't even occurred to her that the man she fell in love with is still under there and that man is fully capable of opening his heart wide to their child.

The fact that this child, a stranger to him, already has him wrapped around her little finger to the tune of being late to meetings while he waits for her to pick berries, speaks volumes.

The lies that Eda is telling Kiraz though... there is a fairy tale poetry to Eda saying her father is among the stars... but there was no way this would ever end well. Such a bad idea. Eda.... has made mistakes.

As for Eda and Serkan, their reunion was so bitter sweet. The way Serkan was sure he was hallucinating her and couldn't believe she was real, speaks to the fact that his thinking he saw her that morning was not an anomaly. It must happen all the time. She's never left his thoughts in 5 years. Especially since Engin makes it clear that women throw themselves at Serkan all the time, and he never bites. That's a lot of years celebrate, pining after a love he lost through his own actions. Though it's not that surprising that he didn't pursue other women, as he's never been a character who was motivated by sex. Which makes it hilarious that during his presentation that's where his mind was at, remembering their intimate times together. Serkan Bolat is an Edasexual.

Serkan seemed to want to brush past what happened between them, how they ended, but from Eda's pain, it's clear it was gut-wrenching and tragic and that's something he's going to need to recon with in the coming episodes. But how refreshing that they actually talked! That Eda actually expressed her pain to him! Wowza, that's a change from recent episodes when they didn't even have a proper conversation after he got his memory back.

The flashback scenes were a combination of pure brilliance and pain. Just rip out my heart why don't you. Serkan's angry reactions seem very believable for someone suffering what he was going through. I think it's typical to lash out at the person closest to you. And their fear and pain, their commitment to getting him better and seeing it through... those scenes were made all the more heartbreaking knowing that they didn't make it out the other side intact.

On a lighter note, I loved how even despite their intention and best efforts to remain closed off to one another, and away from one another, they couldn't. Physically, Serkan couldn't stay away, and every time Eda was in his presence you saw her resolve slip and her start to feel that old pull towards him. The fact that Eda thinks there's any way to keep this secret and get rid of him, she must just be in full panic mode and not thinking clearly. She's never going to shake him.

Thank goodness Serkan came back and actually issued a sincere apology for what he said at coffee. He definitely owed her one, but what was extraordinary is that it showed that the growth he went through when they were together didn't regress. He was able to apologize and explain that he was angry and hurt and that's why it happened. If you remember from the first time around, saying sorry was something he was just unable to do, so this felt big to me. He's not the same robot Bolat, she left an indelible mark on him.

As for him making her present her proposal, it's really not out-of-line for the professional relationship, however, we all know he did it just so he had an excuse to be around her. That man will take any excuse, plus he likes to get a rise out of her.

The dinner scene was breathtaking. How beautiful and achingly romantic was that setting? Wowza. And what a roller coaster of emotion those scenes were. It was great to watch them talk and laugh. Who didn't swoon when he deveined her shrimp and when she gave him fries? But we had to know it wouldn't last. Eda's speech had me breathless. Serkan had that coming, it hurt but it had to happen. What a relief to see them get things out in the open. Now I hope we get to see them really talk about what happened and why. Explain yourself Serkan!

As for the next episode, I was so hopeful that the Kiraz secret would be out after the final scene, but the first fragman makes it look like that's not going to happen, at least not at the start of the episode. My fear is that if Eda outright lies to him that just makes everything worse. The longer she keeps it from him, when they're back in each other's orbits and it's clear he's not running away, it makes her more and more at fault.

In any case, it looks like we're in for some fabulous scene so I look forward to the second episode!

[essaysbyciara]

Red and Green Sprinkles [Erik Stevens x Y/N]

Fluff; warnings: grief, death. 

It’s still Jesus’s birthday in Hawaii so I guess I can still give out a fic on Christmas Day. I’m trying to find some spirit and reason for the season, y’all. I’m trying. 

Sugar cookies with red and green sprinkles. That’s what Ms. Ellie would leave at your front door every Christmas Eve. Your next door neighbor knew your work schedule like clockwork. If you weren’t home by 11 --  if she didn’t hear your door slam from after a grueling day at work -- she’d send a text to make sure that you were okay. You knew better not to delay your response or you’d get a talking to like a grandma was good for. You didn’t know any of Ms. Ellie’s grandchildren but you felt like one. That’s why her loss hurt like hell. 

You knew this year would be different, the first time in seven seasons where Ms. Ellie wouldn’t leave her signature confections inside of a dollar-store gift bag on your tattered welcome mat. You didn’t care to meet who moved into her apartment because you thought it was so cruel how soon she was replaced. Your nosy neighbor couldn’t wait to give you the tea of how Ms. Ellie died. Grace kept you from punching them dead in the face. ‘They don’t know…” is all you could whisper, pausing your tears for when you could be inside of your safe space to let them go unashamed. 

Christmas Eve crept up on you. You fought to ignore the day until you overhear the Donaldson family obnoxiously singing “Deck The Halls” from behind their wreathed-dressed door. It makes you smile for a brief moment, creating a pillow of joy for when the real grief would come crashing into you. You sigh heavily as you turn the corner of the hallway, coaching yourself to not look down. But as your sorrow clouds your vision, you see an emerald green bag leaning gently against your door. 

Christmas angels are real? 

Dear (Y/N), 

Merry Christmas. Mama Ellie didn’t want you to be without your favorite cookies. 

Best Wishes 

Stevens Clothiers

The note dropped you. No one knew of your cookie arrangement except you two. Despite her incessant check-ins, Ms. Ellie wouldn’t allow for you to know too much about her. You never gazed into the inside of her apartment or peeped pictures of her grandchildren, if they even existed. But apparently someone knew of you, where you lived and that every Christmas Eve around 10 PM, you’d walk up to your door to find a bag of sugar cookies. Cookies you devoured in one sitting. 

Stevens Clothiers. 115 8th Street, NW. 

“I don’t get why you’d call in a tailoring job on Christmas Eve!” But when it’s for Jay-Z, you have no choice but to comply. Erik would rather be home, curled up watching The Wiz, the movie his Grandma Ellie put him onto as a child. It was their Christmas Eve ritual; she’d bring over the sugar cookies with red and green sprinkles, Erik’s favorite, and he’d belt out “You Can’t Win” from his tiny lungs. This would be the first year that he wouldn’t fall asleep next to her on the couch as the credits rolled. Although he’s peeved to still be at work, it’s better than watching his favorite Christmastime movie without the one he loved. 

His misty exterior is startled when the phone rings. His exasperated voice gives salutations through the receiver.

“Oh, hi! I’m sorry! I didn’t think I’d get a live person this late.” Your sweet tone with an accent he can’t quite decipher causes Erik’s body to straighten up. He reasons for you to be the wife of a client hoping to score a last minute gift at the very last minute. 

“No, it’s okay. How can I help you?”

“I know this may sound weird but someone from this business left cookies for me at my front door and I just...I just wanted to thank whoever it was. I, uh, knew Ms. Ellie and I-”

“Oh, yeah. You’re welcome. It was me. I’m Erik, her grandson.” 

“I never knew she had a grandson.” A grandson with a sexy-ass voice, a baritone carrying through your end of the line causing you to stifle your whimper as he spoke. It��s been a minute since you’ve heard a man’s voice, embarrassingly enough. This one was doing so much that you forgot how your last sentence would make Erik feel denied. You snap back to punctuate your thoughts. 

“...not like she didn’t mention you. She did, she just was very private.”

Very private. She kept the cancer diagnosis to herself until she could know longer hide its effects. She made sure her assets passed down to her grandchildren including her famous sugar cookie recipe. Erik scored that one last Christmas, including a promise to make sure that he delivered some for her next door neighbor in ‘2B’. Your phone call proved he kept that. 

“Who made these?” You try to hide the lip smacks of ecstasy as you devour the entire bag. 

“I did, actually.”

“You what? Really? You nailed these!” You ate two cookies before you called. “Good job. I’m sure she’s proud.” 

Erik tenses up with pride and sadness as you go on about his first batch of cookies. He also couldn’t help to be turned on by a voice praising him beyond what his heart could take. Erik’s been single for a time longer than he can remember. The tailoring shop takes up so much of his time -- like tonight -- that he can’t escape from under piles of fabric to have one date. Even though his client’s assistants and stylists use their errands  to flirt with him for sport. 

He doesn’t mind your ramble. It’s a nice break from altering the shoulders on Hov’s suit jacket. 

“I’m glad you like them. I added something extra though, not sure if you can tell…”

“Oh, there’s brandy in here. I caught that early. Ms. Ellie would never do that.”

“You should see her on Thanksgiving. She could drink, trust me. She-” You can hear Erik trail off into a somber note. You didn’t mean to bring up any hurt. You just wanted to say thank you, not hurdle someone into a stage of grief. 

“I should get going. Thank you again for thinking of me like she would. She was an amazing woman and such a great neighbor. Happy holidays to you and your family, Erik.” 

“What family?” 

You weren’t ready for that. “This is the first time we won’t be together for the holidays.”

“Erik, I’m sorry-” 

“Nah, it’s cool. When the head is chopped off, the rest of the body falls, y’know?”

“I do. That’s why I haven’t been home for Christmas in years. I think Ms. Ellie could sense that loss through her door. I think that’s why she did this every year. So I wouldn’t feel like I was alone.” 

Erik’s alone right now, sitting in a brightly lit tailor shop mere minutes before Christmas. He doesn’t want to be alone and he can sense through your voice that you feel the same way.

“What are you doing tonight? I mean, so you don’t feel so alone. I don’t know what to do.” 

“Me? I put on The Wiz. I loved that movie as a kid.“  Somehow you build a courage mixed with care and maybe some carnality. You’ve been single for God’ knows how long too and you couldn’t help to imagine what Erik looked like, if that sexy-ass voice had a sexy-ass face attached to it and they both didn’t have a sexy-ass wife attached to it.  A man in your apartment on Christmas Eve wold be such a gift. 

“I know it’s late but you’re welcome to come join me if you don’t have somewhere to be.”

Your boldness did something to Erik too. His heart did a quick jingle jangle as he shuffled nervously at your request. This woman with the sweetest voice and a co sign from grandma and a love for The Wiz wants him to come over. 

“You’re right, I don’t. Give me an hour to shut things down and I’ll be there. I do know where you live.”  Erik never hemmed a suit so quickly in his life.