#i like that for him though. so i stole the french name and gave it to him

[exagides]

a list of some the info i'm working on for wikstrom, but writing out the actual doc is taking a while and i just want to get my thoughts out into the world. kind of a long ish list, but hey! wikstrom hcs.

his last name is 'chevalier', which was at first a placeholder joke name in my doc but it's there now. why not. everything about him needs to be knight-themed.

his actual full name is sir wikstrom thyméo chevalier. he is legitimately knighted.

he has two dads. one of them is trans. trans dad is the one that's directly connected to the knight legacy.

he's the oldest of five siblings. that's partially why he's the protective and caring figure he is now.

as the oldest sibling, wikstrom was in the position of taking care of his younger siblings. he was never made into an extra parental figure like some oldest children are, but instead took it on himself. he can care for young children pretty naturally and he's a decent cook.

man loves poetry and prose. he was ( and still is ) an avid reader and can recite several stories and poems from memory. he adores the chivalric romances, for obvious reasons.

the shakespearean way of talking is just how his family talks. all of them. even the ones that didn't stick with the knight thing. one of his sisters lives full-time in lumiose and works with fashion boutiques. she just talks like that in her daily life.

when excalibur was still a doublade, wikstrom gave him the choice of when to evolve by offering him a dusk stone, but telling him to use it only when he's ready. wikstrom later had a rough fall off of a rapidash and when cali wasn't able to help brace his fall, he made it clear he wanted to evolve to better protect him.

speaking of his aegislash, wikstrom has a tighter bond with him than any of his other pokemon - he's close with all of them, but since wikstrom and cali met when wikstrom was still extremely young, they've spent nearly their entire lives together. they're family at this point. they can communicate through glances and subtle body language. wikstrom will attest that an aegislash can be extremely easy to read when you know one well enough.

wikstrom keeps his keys with his klefki, oberon. and when oberon is in his ball, sometimes he'll mess with wikstrom by simply not coming out when wikstrom needs his keys.

he attends and participates in historical re-enactments, festivals, etc. a lot of the time people don't know it's him, as he wears full helmets along with more decorated plate armor. he is a fan-favorite ( under a stage name ) during jousts.

being part of the elite four wasn't exactly a major career goal for him, but he's grateful that he got to where he is. he tries his best to use his position to make sure others get help or have a voice through him.

he looks up to diantha as a trainer, his boss, and a friend. he's also her biggest cheerleader when it comes to competitive battles ( even when he's her opponent )

actually, he just never stops cheering other people on. trainers that come to battle him might get more encouragement than they expected.

[thepaintedsable]

PYRO! It’s Pyro! Yippee e!

I accidentally inverted the colors all of the insignias and gave Blue Pyro Red Pyro’s flamethrower :( My professional explanation for the second part is that Blue Pyro beat the living shit out of Red Pyro and stole their weapon, my professional explanation for the first part is I am is have are stupid.

Close-ups and special sketch page below the cut!!!

I remembered TF2 existed and this happened.

I have to mention that I have never touched this game, but I’ve been fairly aware of it for a really long time. I strayed away from it all because I was not/am not the best at multiplayer games, especially shooters (especially team shooters), and I never exactly felt like I had the skill to draw any of the characters. Plus the comic’s whole “missing the last issue” situation. I just really, really, didn’t want to be let down by investing myself in something I couldn’t be invested in. But something about “Meet the Pyro” stuck in my head like a burr to a shoe.

Rewatched Meet the Pyro more times than I should have. Looked into more animations and the fandom. Finally broke down and read the comic LMFAO. Surprisingly, I really enjoyed it! Even with the missing part, the format it’s presented in and the general wackiness was refreshing compared to what I normally read.

I still like Pyro, and when I remembered I’m better at drawing now, augh. There he go. They are all over, as they should be.

MF has a homemade flamethrower, canonically killed great value brand Smokey the Bear (on purpose), is/was the highly successful CEO of an engineering company, and is so efficient on the battlefield his teammates are horrified by him and his methods. Also there is no telling wether they even know what they are doing or where they actually are because of the pyro vision stuff. Plus the fun mystery of who they are under the mask. :) We don’t even know nothin about this guy.

Just a silly little guy. I’d like to take both the “They know nothing about what they are doing” and the “They know everything about what they are doing” and staple them to Blue and Red respectively. Which is which, though? Not important. Only need enough info to pit two bad bitches against each other, and also to consider how their teams treat them in response. They are both fucked up, but in opposite directions.

ALSO WHY DID I HAVE TO FIND OUT THIS FANDOM HAS THE CUTEST SHIP NAMES EVER ON MY OWN????? I don’t even really like ships in general, but like… Texas Toast? Speeding Bullet? Brush Fire??? Can someone please please confirm that French Toast is another one oh my god???? I don’t even care about the ships, I care about wordplay and cleverness. If you look up Texas Toast on this site it is all Engineer x Pyro and that is SO FUNNY

I can’t promise that this will be the last Pyro page. He might be the one that’ll actually stay.

[dark-frosted-heart]

Melted by Summer's Lust - Roger Barel (Part 2)

As usual, can’t guarantee 100% accuracy on this.

Unfortunately, it rained on the third day of our stay.

(What can we do indoors…That’s it!)

Kate: Roger, do you want to do this today?

I took something out of my travel bag.

Roger: …An embroidery kit?

Kate: Yes. It was something Victor gave me in case I had some free time when the weather got bad. Let’s do it together. We can embroider Ale on a handkerchief!

Roger: …I’ve never done it, but I can give it a shot.

Maybe it was because I looked desperate that Roger took the embroidery kit with a wry smile.

After that, we proceeded to embroider while chatting idly.

(Maybe working with my hands is what I need to calm down. And…)

I peeked at Roger who sat across from me, focused on embroidering. 

(It’s kind of cute seeing him working on something small when he’s so big.)

–

Kate: Done! I’ll call it “Memories of Summer”.

Roger: You embroidered beer and meat? Did yesterday’s meal taste that good?

Kate: It was definitely good, but what I liked was that you made it! What did you embroider?

Roger: This one’s done.

Not only did he embroider Ale, but he added flowers to it too!

Kate: This is so good…! I can’t believe it’s your first time!

Roger: Probably because I do a lot of sewing.

(I see, he put his suturing skills to use…)

(I’m glad I got to see another new side of Roger)

--

—Night of day 3. The day French kissing is allowed.

I had a lovely time embroidering with Roger during the day, but everything changed when night hit.

Kate: …Haaa… Wait…Roger…

Even when I said his name, Roger didn’t stop.

His deep kisses stole my breath and his tongue explored my mouth—my body lost its strength.

(Roger’s pace is drawing me in…!)

I closed my lips tightly against him.

Roger: —You think that’ll work?

My attempt to stop his incessant kisses was easily thwarted and he parted my lips with his tongue.

Kate: Ah…Hnnn…

(...Prey can never escape the huntsman)

(The only thing I can do is…to distract myself from this pleasure that was like a potent drug)

…And as each day went by, the hunter’s sweet trap continued to affect his prey.

Roger: …Alright, it’s been an hour.

Even though Roger let me go after saying that, I couldn’t get up.

(One hour…? …Ah, right)

(Each night, we only touch each other for one hour. So we’re done with today’s session…)

I quietly touched my lips, chasing what remained from our deep kisses.

Roger: Do you…wanna keep going?

Kate: …! Well…um…

Roger: Oh? That’s a good trend. You left some extra time the first two days. Nice to see you’re more in the mood today. Let’s keep at it ‘til the last day, yeah?

Kate: Yeah…

I nodded when Roger flashed me a refreshing smile, but my body ached after he declared that we were done for the day after all those kisses that set my body aflame.

—And so the 3rd night went by while I’m left wanting more.

--

At noon of the 4th day, we were at the beach.

Roger: The sand’s hot so careful you don’t burn your feet.

Roger kept an eye on me as he made his way into the water until it reached his knees.

Roger: Oh, the cool sea water feels good…Kate, come on.

Kate: I-I’m fine just watching from here!

I spread out a sheet on the sand, set up an umbrella to protect myself from the sun, and sat down.

As if to show I didn’t plan on going in the water, I opened a book I brought with me.

Roger: …You can read anywhere, you know.

Exasperated, Roger made his way back onto the sand and snatched the book away.

Roger: Come on, let’s go.

Kate: Woah!

He picked me up and immediately carried me toward the water.

We had fun splashing each other, building Crown Castle out of sand, and collecting beautiful seashells…

I ended up having a really good time with Roger.

(I think I’ve had all the fun one can have at the beach)

Feeling exhausted, but satisfied, I plopped down on the beach and stared at the waves.

Roger: By the way, Kate. Why’ve you been avoiding me since this morning?

Kate: …I knew I couldn’t get away with it.

Roger: Obviously. You’re the one doing something weird like reading by yourself when you said you wanted to take a vacation with me. So, why’d you do it?

—The huntsman’s eyes are locked on his prey.

Kate: Well…Last night, I got too executed when you were kissing me… After I woke up this morning, all I could think about was last night so I tried avoiding you.

Roger: That so? You didn’t wanna be aware of me so you stayed away. You gotta endure it.

Kate: Okay…

Roger: …I know why you did it, but it makes me feel sad and lonely. Wanted to enjoy this vacation with you, but if you’re keeping your distance…it hurts me too.

Those unusually meek words grabbed at my heart.

Kate: …S-sorry, Roger. For avoiding you…

Roger: …Will you stop avoiding me?

Kate: Yes!

Roger: Can I touch you?

Kate: …Yes.

Roger: Can you keep up with this 5 day thing?

Kate: Of course. We only have 2 days left, so let’s do our best!

After I said that, he held my chin and kissed me.

Roger: Ha…That’s the spirit.

Where did that sad and meek Roger go?

He had his usual wicked smile.

(His mood changed so quickly. Could he possibly…)

Kate: …You were faking just now, weren’t you?!

Roger: Didn’t I tell you? I do whatever it takes to get what I want.

Kate: ~~! This…cruel egoist!

Roger: Say what you want, you fell for me.

Kate: Gah…! You’re so lucky I love you!

Roger: Yeah, I am lucky that you love me. I got to learn about love because of you

—The way he was so happy about it left me speechless.

I was overflowing with feelings for Roger, even the cruel side of him…

After initiating a kiss, we couldn’t keep our hands off each other.

Pushing and being pinned down—

We were so absorbed in each other that we didn’t care about the sand getting in our hair and clothes.

Kate: …Roger.

Roger: Hm?

Kate: …You do realize that today’s still the 4th day, right?

My heart raced as Roger sat me up on his lap and continued kissing me.

Roger: I know. That’s why we’re doing this. Wanted to push you past your limit…to see what’d you do.

His eyes that were studying me were filled with desire.

That gaze was almost enough to make me collapse in his arms, but I reigned myself in.

Kate: …Then I’m going to do that to you too. The first one to give in before the 5th day loses. Do your best to endure it.

Roger: Sounds good. That’s the way to go.

(Ugh…! I’m already struggling because of how happy he looks…)

(...Since it’s a rare vacation, I want to fully enjoy with him to the end)

—Is it the summer heat that’s boiling my brain or the heat from love that’s making me stupid?

And so began our lewd battle of wills.

[zarvasace]

VAMPIRES

Red’s explanation is here

I did a cursory job of making the Four Swords boys in VtM5. Had fun with it. :)

I enjoy the base d10 pool system of this game, and I think there are some clever mechanics in both this and earlier versions, but the book is NOT easy to use. (Not to mention the trove is dead...) :P overexplanations below the cut!

Blue

He's a bit different from Red—

- his clan is Brujah, so essentially "the angry punchy ones with social justice ideals or something"

- finds blood by directly mugging people on the street

- good at punching

- vampire powers include seeing in the dark/glowy eyes (he stole this power), being very strong, and scaring people

- he has criminal contacts, crashes at Red's house, has some responsibilities in vampire society, and has a rather high-status vampire mentor (some like, guard captain equivalent I guess)

- he also has some vampire hunter mortal enemy and won't feed from anyone that looks like they're under like 20 years old

- I gave him a main belief of "protect all children" and named some random kid who's meant to be an Erune parallel or something like that

- he wants to kill Vaati! Surprise!

- he also wants to get R/G/V/S up to competency with a melee weapon or two

Vio

Details:

- oldest so far, born 1911 and died 1931 (I'm assuming American so Great Depression era). That puts him at 11th generation vs Red and Blue's 13th, which means he's slightly more powerful

- clan is Tremere, the sorcerers and scholars

- works at a museum repairing old books, knows a LOT about medieval occultism, and finds his blood among museum staff and visitors

- smart, bad at punching or literally anything physical. He can drive though. And good at noticing things.

- vampire powers include seeing in the dark, erasing a few minutes of a human's memory, making his own blood acidic, making another vampire hungrier, and briefly making himself more powerful

- he also has a few rituals: one to walk on walls, one to learn about someone if he has a cup of their blood, one to find someone he knows, and one to know if someone is telling the truth or not

- he knows French and Japanese, is mildly famous among museum folk, can find some good money, and can sniff out good blood.

- but a group of other historians really don't like him because of some paper he published. He gets hurt if he touches silver or garlic. He won't drink from students. Other vampires in their secret society are somewhat suspicious of him due to past activity.

- Red's house? You mean Vio's office

- he has two main beliefs to tether him to humanity: (1) be independent (2) encourage people to learn

- he also wants to kill Vaati. For science. Also he wants to learn more magic.

Green

Details:

- rather young, about Red's true age, but of a slightly higher generation

- clan is Ventrue, the leaders and rich people

- he's masquerading (well, he has a good false identity) as his own son, which lets him keep using his influence. He lives with the others because this is a Story but he is very popular among the rich kids at the exclusive university nearby, which is where he gets his blood

- He's pretty smart, but focuses on manipulation and pulling social strings. something something investments and trusts

- Despite all that, he doesn't particularly *like* the rich culture. He's here because he feels like it's more moral to feed from those uber-rich than anyone else. In fact, his preferred victims are the young rich, and feeding from anyone else is difficult for Reasons

- His special powers include Magic Suggestion, Magic Resistance to Persuasion, Magical Toughness, and Magical Intimidation

- Oh and also Magic Shouting Voice

- He's rich too. Or at least can get to a lot of money.

- There are a couple vampire hunters after him though

Shadow

Details:

- A couple years older than Vio, they died about the same time, to different causes but they did very much know each other back in like 1920 (I'm imagining an infuriatingly slow burn romance)

- Since I don't have a book with the Lasombra shadowy clan in it, I chose Nosferatu for Shadow. They can't hide among humans because they very obviously look like vampires (the lore talks about them looking very ugly and then describes some real disabilities which is *ugh* but I bet I could come up with something better. like dark tendrils or metallic skin.) The Nosferatu are interesting because they're kind of considered one of the most internally human of the clans, which I thought was a cool nod to Shadow's belated and cracked moral compass

- He's pretty smart and good at technology, and also art. I imagine he makes some money doing like digital art or something. he has a hobby, which is more than some of these guys can say

- He actually exclusively drinks blood from animals, and not humans at all. One of his magic powers allows him to do it more easily, and he takes some penalties if he tries to drink from a human.

- His special powers involve turning invisible in darkness, turning an animal into a familiar, summoning small animals and talking to them, and being stupid strong

- His humanity connections involve valuing human life and art

- He has a fantastic setup in Red's basement, computers and security and all, and probably never goes outside

- He speaks French like Vio does. it's their thing I guess.

- He has a dark secret, idk what it is yet. It's easy to bond him to another vampire's will. Vampire society is wary of him. He has an enemy of some kind. this boy is just loaded up with flaws, man.

[little-orphan-ant]

Ami name hcs (plus reasoning)

disclaimer a lot of this is just me infodumping about names. i really like names.

Alexandre Enjolras - yeah idk i just stole this from the fandom. Enj despises being called Alex though (he will punch you in the face :D), if you must shorten Alexandre he prefers Andre or Al/Allie

Florian Combeferre - i fucking love this name. according to wikipedia it's a saint name, which im like 80 percent sure was popular Back in the Day, so it works for canon era which im happy abt. in modern day France, the name Florian peaked in 1991 at number 9 for boys before promptly dropping out of the top 500 by 2020 for some reason. but when Ferre was born it would still have been pretty popular.

Olivier Courfeyrac - idk it just fits him. similar to Florian, Olivier was uncommon but not unheard of in canon era, and also dropped out of the top 500 a few years back. however, Olivier peaked back in the early 1970s. although it was still being given to several hundred kids a year by when modern!courf would have been born, i hc that he was named after a relative who died soon before his birth.

Camille Feuilly - in both modern-day and canon era France, Camille is seen as a gender-neutral name, which is great because i hc Feuilly has enby-spec. since Feuilly is an orphan, xe may have named xirself after the revolutionary Camille Desmoulins, but i must admit that I only skimmed his wikipedia page and maybe this Camille was an asshole idk. also i found a French artist born in 1934 named Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot and he's pretty cool ig. painting are nice but not as nice as Gainsborough Dupont's ofc

Jean-Marie "Jehan" Prouvaire - of course, we already know Jehan's name, but I added Marie just bc i can

Corentin Bahorel - if you call Bahorel Cory he with smite you btw (like enj they bond over it). Corentin peaked in France at 21 in 1996, but was also very popular during the Revolutionary Period so. thats good.

Valentin Joly - means 'health', i mostly gave him this name bc Irony. as a kid, Joly went by 'Val' and Bahorel, who knew him as a kid still calls him that. Valentin managed to make it to number 11 in France in 1998, and while uncommon, was in fact a name in canon era (like literally all of these akjddsfsa). also i found a French painter called Valentin de Boulogne from the 1600s who died after taking a dip in a fountain while drunk and freezing to death which. slay.

Louis Lesgles - I mean. i can't give all of them cool names. Bossuet gets to be Louis. his family were royalists and named him after all 17 (?) Louis of Frances. that's one of the reasons he goes by Bossuet, he doesn't want to be associated w a (scoff) king

Claud-René Grantaire - i cannot take credit for this it was @jolys-cane (hello). but yeah Very Good. double thumbs up i'd say. maybe even triple. both Claud(e) and René fell out of favor for boys in france around 1990, so our R would have been born *just* (a decade) to soon for it to be popular (eg not in the top 500). works for canon era as well. R tolerates his name, but Only his family is allowed to call him just René. anyone else must say both.

might do this for non-ami characters sometime (god i hope i didnt forget any of them lkjfksd) idk always love an excuse to talk abt a (minor) hyperfixation

[meglyfer]

I NEED TO KNOW MORE ABOUT SASHA/DREW THEY ARE SO SILLY

OHOHO, YOU HAVE COMMITTED A TERRIBLE MISTAKE

When Horror and Dust had Drew, they actually didn't know how to name him. They were this close )( of naming them "Mistake" (because they had an instant regret of being parents once the child was actually there), but then Cross was like "DO NOT NAME YOUR FUCKING CHILD MISTAKE", so he was the one that gave Drew her name

Her name "Sasha" is a chosen name, and she stole it from Sasha Waybright from Amphibia because he is a huge kinnie of her. Also related to this, they canonically have Sasha (from Amphibia) set as their pfp on his private account on whatever the Undertale equivalent of Twitter is

If you've seen my art about horrordust, you'de know me and Xomma agree that they are so fucking toxic and, although they truly love their kid and treat him as such, their relationship with each other affects Sasha in a way they had not expected. Because of their awful relationship, Drew is afraid of falling in love, because he thinks he would end up like their parents; always fighting, arguing, telling each otehr "I hate you" as much as they say "I love you", etc. Because of this fear, she has cut off her friendship with a bunch of people, realising that he was starting to develope romantic feelings for them. Most of the times they did it unconsiously

He does love his parents though, a lot, they mean everything to her, and he know that they love them too, never even doubted it, but she is fully aware that things would be way better if they divorced and were away from each other

When someone asks Drew about how their parents are, he replies with something along the lines of "They aren't the best parents out there, but they try really hard to be good parents, so I guess that makes them just enough"

When Sasha was a kid (about 6-10 if I remember correctly) he gifted her parents one of those "world's best dad" mugs, but she crossed out the "world's best" and replaced it with "Decent". Horror found it hilarous and immediately became his favourite cup. Years later when Drew came out of the closet, their parents gifted her a cup that said "I came out to my parents and all I got was this mug"

HE HAS A GIANT HAMMER COLLECTION. Some hammers she buys, others are gifts, and others they make them themselves, often based on AUs she visits from time to time (Example: they have this Outertale themed hammer with stars and all that shit)

Originally when we had just created Drew, Xomma and I had agreed that he would be besties with Paper Jam and be in a queer platonic relationship with him and Lux. That was until we found out that canon Paper Jam is currently a grown adult. Idea was immediately discarded because, YOU KNOW, THAT'S A CHILD AND A GROWN ASS MAN. After that we started checking the characters ages before deciding if they'd be friends with the kid so that we don't go through all this again

Drew's best friends are Lux and Shino (one of the hundreds of afterdeath kids out there), but of course they have many other friends. Just like a good anime protagonist, he would force friendship into every single person she comes across

He knows SO MANY LANGUAGES Like, you know how people headcanon characters to speak the same language as the creator? Well, WE DID A SLIGHT MISCALCULATION They of course speak English, she also speaks Spanish, a mix of an Argentinian, Peruvian and Venezuelan accent (I'm Argentinian and Xomma is Venezuelan and lives in Peru, so the accent kinda sticks). And you'd think that'd be it, right? WRONG We both know a bit of Portuguese (me more than Xomma), and I know a little bit of Italian, and Xomma suddendly surprised me telling me that they also know a bit of GERMAN AND FRENCH Which means Drew speaks fluent English and Spanish (With an amalgame of accents), can hold a simple conversation in Portuguese, and can throw at you some random words and phrases in Italian, German and French, JESUS CHRIST I SAY If you ask where did he learn all those languages from, let's just say random people on the omega timeline taught her. "Where did you learn Portuguese" "Fabiola from the Omega Timeline taught me" who is Fabiola? WHO KNOWS!

She is a menace to society

Her place in the school hierarchy is difficult to point. They are a bit of a weird kid, so he sometimes gets bullied by other kids, but as I mentioned, he's also a menace, so there are a lot of kids that also fear them for how feral they are. Though she does have a fair amount of friends and from different years and ages, so he's also kinda cool with a bunch of people (???

Master of blackmail

When he's a grown teenager's a bit older (about 16-18 I'd say), she starts taking little "jobs" some people give them in exchange for some money. At first they have to do pretty normal stuff; help someone with some boxes, look after a kid for a few hours, deliver something to someone, etc. But as time passes some of this requests start getting darker and darker, to the point where it's nore rare for him to be asked to beat up someone (they always ask why they are requesting said stuff, and will only agree to the job if she thinks the person deserves the punishment)

He is a sugar addict. As a kid she would often still candy from people on the Omega Timeline. Horror and Dust had to explain to her that he couldn't keep doing that or else they would end up being kicked out from there, aka, kicked out of one of the few places where they would let in the child of two serial murderers. She stopped doing so after that, and instead now they carry a bag of candy with them everywhere he goes

His favourite pastry are cinnamon rolls

She knows how to cook (Horror taught him), but choses to be attrocious at the kitchen

As I mentioned before, one of Drew's best friend's is Lux. And if you've seen my art of them, YOU'D KNOW THEY ARE A BIT MORE THAN JSUT BESTIES. At first they really are just friends, but as they grow older and their friendship becomes deeper they start falling in love with each other. Lux is well aware of both her own feelings, and Sasha's feelings (comes with being daughter of the guardian of positivity I guess), but chooses not to do anything about those feelings because she knows about Drew's fear of love, and doesn't want to push him into something he's not ready for, so she is happy to wait for as long as she has to. Meanwhile Drew, while he was the first to fall, takes the longest to realis about her feelings and do something about them. It takes them SO MANY FUCKING YEARS for him to do something about it, to the point where they finally get into a relationship when they are in their early twenties. Before that it was all gay tension and Sasha convincing himself that all the stuff they do with Lux is "Perfectly normal friend things to do" and there is nothing more to it (They were not, in fact, "Perfectly normal friend things to do", and there was actually so much more to it)

Since I'm talking about this two I might as well jsut dropped this chart we did the other day about them

If you want the original chart, sorry, I lost it :(

AND I'LL SHUT UP NOW BECAUSE I'VE BEEN WRITING FOR LIKE AN HOUR AND A HALF

ME AND XOMMA LITERALLY HAVE A GOOGLE DOCUMENT TALKING ABOUT THEM THAT IS OVER 100 PAGES LONG, AND IT'S STILL GROWING, SO YOU CAN GUESS HOW MUCH I CAN SAY ABOUT THEM

Might add some more stuff later though, I told Xomma about this ask I got and I'm waiting for them to reply to see if he wants to add anthing else

Edit: forgot to say that me and Xomma are working on a playlist about Drew, so if you want to hear it and try to like, analyse or something, here you have it

[randomnameless]

What are your top 5 Strawmitri arguments?

Mine would be, in no particular order:

Dimitri cares about the present, therefore he doesn't care at all about the future and would be a terrible leader because of it

He's so mentally ill he can never hope to recover, and as such Edelgard did him a favor by killing him in CF

He's more at fault for the war than Edelgard because he fought back after she attacked first and unprovoked, instead of letting her take Faerghus without a fight

The entire point of Dimitri's character and of AM in general is how royalty can get away with commiting crimes commoners would be executed for, since Fleche gets killed for trying to take revenge on him but he survives in spite of all the people he killed when he was at his most unhinged

Dimitri's hatred of Edelgard is rooted in his love for her back when they were kids, which is why him killing her in AM by stabbing her with his phallic-shaped lance is supposed to be symbolic of his desire to fuck her

Oh gods, I remember I wanted to make a "redshit takes awards" once upon a time, but then I gave up lol

I haven't browsed that much about Dimitri nor given too much thought about the discourse surrounding him because laughing at the Rhea takes took way too much time, but I think I really laughed at the :

Dimitri is racist because he cuts Claude when Claude is being an asshole about the Abyss

Even if I can't forgot the

Defensive invasion

Dimitri represents toxic masculinity (the guy who has traditional "feminine" coded hobbies like sewing, who cries, who blushes calling his friends by their first names, whose biggest default and the one that leads him to his downfall is his empathy, etc etc)

Dimitri stole Felix and Annette's dads :(

dimitri is a religious extremist because he shelters Rhea who is also a religious extremist. source : trust me bro I know i have a degree in advanced bullshit

the State of Quo - as Dimitri reforms his country like his dad wanted to do but never got the chance because his head rolled from his shoulders for some reason - this one was parroted in Nopes because how dare he want a progressive change rather than a radical one !!

and last but not the least, and it's less about Dimitri than about the poor redshiter who said something like "women love dimitri because they are controled by their ovaries and they prefer a violent man who would abuse them rather than real people like me :("

Oh and also, as a french person so far removed from american politics, the "Dimitri is a centrist" take always made me laugh (Dimitri chez Bayrou?)

From your takes though, I'd rank them like this :

peepee weapon thus stabbing Supreme Leader means he wanted to fuck her and this is why he goes "cray-cray" because she didn't reciprocate his affections (and totes not because he believes she killed his father, their mother, his friends and actually starts a war slaughtering thousands of randoms)

"too cray-cray to live"

caring about the present sucks because you don't care about the future (which is totally not built on the people living in the present!)

nobles bad because they kill commoners who try to kill them :(

victim blaming (this one is so mainstream!)

[not-krys]

WIP Wednesday: Sugar and Spice and ...?-NSFW

Final WIP Wednesday for 2023! Whoo! Ending on a strong note, I think!

This little nugget was inspired by both my disappointment in the Bride of the Vampire Event and the (more satisfying to me personally) Home Sweet Home Event and I sort of put the two together, with a spicy twist. Maybe later on I'll try to explore more of this universe bc I like this AU and would like to do some more in the future, but for now, this is what I've got thus far.

Notes: Raw, unedited writing, unfinished (cuts off at the last part bc I ran out of steam), threesome relationship, afab reader addressed with feminine pronouns (she, her, etc), pregnant reader, breeding, use of French and Italian when I know neither language so some usage is bound to be wrong, I've tried my best with language blogs and machine translation, Comte and Leo flirting (yes, that is a warning).

Have a good rest of the year and I hope to see all you lovelies in 2024!

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

"Hey, Comte." Leonardo said to him one morning, "let's make a bet."

"Hmm. What kind of bet?"

"Who do you think [Name]'s kid will resemble more, you or me?"

Comte set down the newspaper he was reading, his fingers steepling.

"We've had her so many times since that first time, it's up to fate as to who her body accepted at this point. Assuming one of us didn't cheat and had some extra time with her, it should be about equal."

"Cheat? Definitely didn't do that a time or two. Nope."

"Of course, you didn't. Just as much as I didn't as well."

"Of course not."

The knowing smiles they gave each other conveyed neither their innocence or their guilt.

"Well, I was the first to take her, so the odds are in my favor." Comte smirked.

"Still haven't forgiven you for that, you know."

"You stole her first kiss. You know better than anyone that I wouldn't let a transgression like that stand for long."

"Heh, didn't peg you for the petty jealous type."

Comte sipped some of his morning tea, a floral scent wafting in the air.

"We share a wonderful, beautiful wife now, Leonardo." he paused, "but seeing her with another man, even if it's you… it seems my claws come out on their own." 

Leonardo laughed.

"The feeling's mutual. Cara mia loves both of us, but can't help but want to pull her into my arms and whisk her away when you're being sweet on her."

"Try it and I really will sink my claws into you."

"Attaccati al cazzo, bastardo."

"En fait," Comte shrugged with a smirk. "je préfère baiser ma femme que toi."

Leonardo growled, reaching out across the table.

"Oh, good morning, you two!" a voice called out in the doorway, a sweet scent tickling the noses of the two vampires. Leonardo pulled his hand back.

"Bonjour, ma cherie." Comte said with a smile, holding his hand out towards you.

"Ciao, bella." Leonardo said, standing up.

Once you were close enough to take his hand, Comte kissed your fingers reverently while Leonardo wrapped an arm around your shoulders, his lips taking a gentle nip at your cheek. You giggled.

"How are you feeling?" Comte asked, still holding onto your hand.

"Better, thank you. Still a little tired though."

"It's to be expected." Comte reached out his free hand, brushing your hair back with his long, graceful fingers. "but you do have a healthy glow about you. That's a good sign."

Leonardo's large hand also slid down your form, pressing it just under your belly, as if weighing it against his palm. "Hmm, still flat."

"It's barely been four months." You said.

"And here I was hoping you'd be stealing my clothes by now. Well, more than you already do."

"Leo!"

"No, there's some change. I'm sure of it." Comte interjected, also putting his hand on your belly, as if measuring you like Leonardo had.

"It's okay, Comte," you said gently, "it's still early so you don't have to-"

"I can see it, cherie." Comte reassured you with a smile. "in fact, I think I can see it right… here!"

Without further warning, his fingers danced on your belly, making you laugh and try to step back.

"H-hey! That tickles!"

You had forgotten, however, that Leonardo still held your shoulders.

"Actually, Comte's right." he grinned mischievously, "I think I did feel a little something… here!"

His fingers-rough, calloused, and warm- tickled under your belly, making you laugh harder.

"No fair! You're ganging up on me!"

"Maybe you'll grow faster if we tickle you enough," Leonardo teased.

"That's not how that works-!"

Leonardo's fingers had sank down further, the thin linen of your nightgown the only thing between you and his digits. He smirked.

"Forget something, cara mia?"

You looked away, biting your lip.

"…It was your fault." You said. "Both of you."

It was Comte's turn to smirk.

"We did make a mess of you last night, didn't we?"

The twin bite marks on your neck sung, making you shift against Leonardo's fingers. You shuddered at the memory.

"Couldn't help ourselves." said Leonardo, rubbing his index finger up and down. "Hearing you scream so sweetly…"

"Melting under our touch," Comte reached up for your jaw, caressing it. "Every part of you flushed and glowing."

His fingers traced a line down your body, feather-like touches falling down your collarbone, between your breasts, staying once they found your stomach again.

"So full of our seed.  Seeing it drip between your legs…"

You shifted against Leonardo's fingers again, feeling a dampness against your nightgown.

"You're remembering it, aren't you, cara mia?" Leonardo whispered in your ear, his voice low and husky.  "How it felt to be so full of us."

You shuddered, taking in a sharp breath to try and calm yourself, but failed, feeling Leonardo nuzzle your neck. Comte then stood up, leaning in closer to you, kissing your jaw gingerly, trailing with his lips until he found yours. When he released you with a pop, your lips felt swollen and pink.

"I think she needs a reminder, Leonardo. It's been ages, after all."

"A top-off so soon?" Leonardo chuckled, "Insatiable, aren't you? Only been a couple of hours."

"I think myself more of a generous gentleman, thank you." He reached down for his pants and unbuttoned himself with practiced ease. When he was done, he pulled your skirt up around your waist and kissed your cheek.

"Ready for me, cherie?"

You bit your lip, but nodded. He kissed your forehead this time, lining his hips with yours, his tip gliding on one pass before plunging into you hard and fast. You shuddered and moaned, grabbing onto his shoulders. Leonardo growled low in your ear, making Comte chuckle.

"Learn some patience, will you? You'll get your turn."

"Oh yeah?"

Leonardo tilted your head towards him, stealing your lips and inserting his tongue, teasing your tongue and teeth. His other hand cupped your breast, rolling and massaging the nipple between his rough fingers. You moaned against his lips, the volume muffled. Comte frowned, his hands sliding down your hips, pulling you closer to him. He then reached for your other breast, lifting it and teased the underside with his tongue. A whine escaped between your lips, trapped by Leonardo's, but it was enough to make Comte smirk.

"Do you feel good, cherie?" he asked, "Do we make you feel good?"

Leonardo released your lips, wet strings trailing between you as you both panted for air. Once he was sure you caught your breath, Comte thrust into you again, the full volume of your scream like music to his ears. Leonardo held you securely, peppering kisses along your neck.

"Almost there, mon cœur. "

[strawberry-cowmilk]

remember that one scenario I did about the brother saying just die already.

While, im going to make it heart warming. Just watch.

Now, both mc and the brother|which I shall name Felix| where both giving each other the silent treatment with the brothers silently encourageing it.

now one day after school, the brothers saw Felix run out of school,

then half n hour later, they saw,while, walking back home. Felix was walking over to mc who was sitting on a bench. He was holding a big white box and 4 paper bags.

he sat down Infront of mc, who looked up with a raised eyebrow.

"mc."

"Felix."

Felix looked at his older sister before slowly pushing the box and bags towards mc.

"two of the bags are filled with french fries and the other I two is filled with meaty cheesy burgers I could find."

then felix points at the white box, "this is half chocolate fudge brownies And the other half is red velvet cake"

mc loved burgers and chips. And she was always saying how she craved brownies and red velvet cake.

Felix then looked at his sister in the eyes, "mc, I am very sorry for saying what i said, there is no excuse in the world for what I said to you."

He started to cry,"please forgive me."

Mc looked at her brother before standing up and walked towards her brother and gave him a hug.

"it's perfectly fine, Felix."

Hi! Again I'm sorry about the insanely long delay

the brothers react to mc and their brother forgiving each other

mc's gender is not mentioned, not proof read

content warnings: mentions of silent treatment

-----

Lucifer

he didn't step in during your phase of ignoring each other because he believes the two if you should work it out together

so he's glad you finally did

lucifer returns home and tells you he's glad all is well now after you arrive too

Mammon

'yo, I want some of the food-'

whether you want to share or not is up to you but mammon might get a bit dramatic if you don't

it kind of hits him later that you and your brother have stopped fighting though

Leviathan

ah, what does he do?

does he stay and watch or does he leave would you think it's weird if he was watching from afar?

levi ends up leaving the scene, he's glad you made up and all though

Satan

honestly he was avoiding your brother too, satan didn't like him

and this actually doesn't change much about those feelings

it's nice everything is less tense now though

Asmodeus

guy who doesn't like your brother regardless of what he just did 2.0

asmo just thinks he's immature plus he stole his bath bomb once

but hey at least he apologised to you

Beelzebub

finally, he was getting worried about the constant ignoring

it was wrong of both parties, even though he feels like he enabled it by not doing anything

in the end it was your conflict to solve

Belphegor

he accidentally walked in on it, this was his favorite napping bench and it was occupied

belphie just left then, it was beel who told him what had happened

he's glad, but that doesn't change the fact he still does not like your brother

[certifiedcomedianette]

Medieval Park! (Originally Death Park—)

It's a basic Gregstophe AU that i decided to make at 3am for a idea at the gregstophe week thing. 😱😱😁😀 Theres actually a whole lore to this so you can scroll down if you want to read it,I'm actually thinkinh of rewriting it because of stuff but i like how it turned out. 😱😱😨😁😍🥰

Also christophe in a suit,christophe in a suit, christophe in a suit—

TW; DEATH, STRANGLING ⚠️⚠️

This story revolves around Christophe, (Thief name is Ze Mole) a young 17-Year old boy who is a thief. He was a wanted thief, Always robbing England back and forth with a bitter french accent (Yet he tries to speak in American English; He fails.) His usually robbings are Gemstones from the palace, and money from urban homes so he can live in peace with himself, and his siblings. (I also made him be siblings with Rebecca, and Mark but i never got the opportunity to draw them. I'll draw them sooner enough. ^^)

While on the run, he bumps into another thief; Gary who was coming out of a urban home with jewelries at hand, Of course he didn't care about him until he was almost apprehended and shot at— Gary then decided to help him flee by carrying him and running full speed to hide in the woods. There, they introduced eachother to one another and became one-time pals. Gary by this, found a whole advantage to robbing people; It'd be easier, and better since his friend Ze Mole had better experience, so, he thought to himself, "How could i let hem stay by my side until i get the jackpot? Of course, Love. One of a humanity's strong emotion." A week afterwards, He confessed to Christophe and being blinded by Gary's sweet words and signals, He accepted.

They relationship lasted for only a month, robbing day by day to every mansion, urban house, cabin, and if they have a good chance, they'll steal from the palace. (They rarely are able to though.)

One day, Gary had earned just enough stolen jewelry, money, and gems to provide for his family; Now how could he get rid of the other one? He never loved Ze Mole, nor wanted to be wih him, Infact, He found him only of use. So how could he get rid of him?

A trick wedding of course.

So one night, Gary gave Ze Mole a fake story where-in his family is gonna kill him for dating Mole, and told him they should run away together, by getting married. Ze Mole was DELIGHTED by this. IMAGINE GETTING ENGAGED AND TOLD BY YOUR LOVER YOU WANT TO BE WITH THEM TOGETHER ALONGSIDE MARRIAGE! IT WAS A DREAM! So, full of excitement, He robbed the nearest fashion venue's dress, stole a jewelry store one last time, and ran to the meet-up spot where it was a lonely tree up a hill. Wearing his white wedding dress, Jewelry at hand, He was excited .. He wasn"t greeted with Gary, but only a carve on the tree saying 'I'm sorry'.

He was confused.

Then next thing he knew, He was getting strangled. He was struggling so bad he tried to rip off the dress he had so he can fight whoever the hell was trying to kill him, Until he kicked them where it hurts and tried to defend himself w fists. Until he saw it was Gary. Sadly, (Gary won the fight by stabbing Ze Mole.)

(This was also the time the Royal Prince was assassinated by a thief (Yes, Gary did kill him too)) Which resulted in the two turning into Lingers.

Christophe who swore to himself he won't leave earth until he has taken full revenge on Gary who decided to kill him.

Gregory, the prince, Swore to himself he won't leave until he has found out whoever decided to assassinate him in his slumber.

While doing that, The two met up at a courtyard, Christophe who was curious to see if the Prince was really dead, Never knewing it was his childhood playmate who died. The two decided to do what they had to do before death calls them to heaven or hell; While this, Gregory swore to Mole to be by his side for eternity. Christophe wasn't sure of that considering Gary, but, hey, it's Gregory! He wouldn't hurt Mole.

And he never did.

Not getting the revenge they got, they just sat beside eachother once in a lake. Thereon, They spoke to one another about eachother's death. There's no point in really doing anything else. (They are dead. ) Hearing Ze Mole's story struck Gregory, so he asked him to Marry him instead.

He said yes.

And then they were married in Hell together.

Christophe is a thief, and he literally kills a lot of people. We already know where he's going.

Gregory actually comitted a few crimes such as stealing bread from a store to give the poor people at street, kill his rival, and so on so his was sure to be in hell.

Fin ..? (Not really, gonna further write this AU and maybe one day make it a whole story.)

[megismorallysunny]

26/09/23

ok so an okay day, i think writing a blog has unexpectedly made me feel worse about myself. i remember more, but i feel like shit more than usual, but i like writing so im not sure what to do. it sucks. i had history first "the sub" was in today he wanted us to acc learn shit, sooooo boring. Carmite, Emerald and "sapphire" all sat together. i cant remember if i mentioned sapphire but hes one of the boys.

they played a roblox obby in class and they kept getting caught so they decided to take out their calculators and PRETEND, it was so embarassing the sub told them not to go on their phones after 10 minutes of them fake playing on their calculators just for carmite to say "hehe not a phone its a calculator, gottem" it was SO EMBARRASSING. HE SPENT 10 MINS. anyways, granite is gone to tenerife so its just me and diorite for a while.

french was good. yknow that girl bluebird that i talked about yesterday, well she got in trouble for not doing her hw again and like she was talking to the teacher and the teacher had to ask her what three times because she was so quite. some other things but i cant remember. for pe we did badminton because the pitch flooded, me and diorite were partners and we bet 1 other team. i was pretty shit tbh. for lunch diorite bought me a chocolate bar and stole some kinder bars. she talked about how she started feeling guilty last night cuz she stole some stuff from a shop and then she found out that there was only one of them (not family owned but not a corporation). i said i also felt guilty when i did that because i have the resources to pay i just dont like spending money. i dont steal, it was a once off chance and just felt like shitty of me.

for business a bunch of 2nd years were in our seats eating lunch and chatting, they musnt have gotten the message to leave when i thre my bag over them to reach my fucking seat. i had to get the guy in crutches to help me out because i just dont like talking to 2nd years because idk they have a weird vibe. also at lunch coming from the shop me and diorite got swarmed by 1st years we didnt know, and asked us for stuff, they asked me for popcorn and i kinda just ignored them and walked through them, maybe i should have been nicer and given them the rest but also im a hungry hungry hippo. they also knew my friends name?? my friend stopped and gave them kinder bars, on the way to business another first year asked for a kinder bar and she gave it to him, "they really took the worst you can get is a no to heart". it was really funny and sweet though the way they flew to food like bees to pollen. anyways the teacher didnt show up for the first 15 mins in class and it got REAL silent, so a girl in my class decides we need to d icebreakers (the only new person in the class is bluebird, and weve all known each other for a little over 2 years). we have to say our full name then our hobby, im 2nd and i CRUSHED it. i did amazing, we got to every1 and out of like 28 only 4 people didnt do it. in geography i felt rly lonely, sure i got a back seat but at what cost, i didnt have anything to do, i felt like shit, and a group of people played among us and i kinda wanted to aswell but i dindt have it downloaded and i just felt awkward, the worst they can say is no but, they remember that no, it was kinda nice seeing them play but i didnt want them to see me smiling so i did it every rarely. diorite wasnt there becasue they had a music thing, i dont do music cuz i sound like a drowned rat. i then walked to my dads work, stayed in his van for an hour so he could finish work and then went home.

i forgot to mention but 1st class ended 10 minutes early for some reason, and no teachers were told so it was rly confusing, my mom got home 4 hours late from work, her top boss is visiting her work and shes one of the managers so she has to do lots of things, we didnt get dinner till 9 cuz dad had to drive my brother to basketball which he just started. i could have just made dinner myself but also yknow, your supposed to eat the food people cook for you and they were going to cook it was really a matter of when. ive decided to learn portuguese which is really stupid but of well, i can try. i hope i shift tonight, wish me luck xoxo

[soulmate-game]

Hawkmoth was a bitch, and Marinette meant that with every fiber of her soul. Fu was also a bitch, and Marinette actually had good memories of the guy. Not many, but she had some. The fact that the guy got two ten-year-olds to become super heroes and fight a supervillain for him kinda soured those memories, though. But with Chat Noir not allowed to leave his house? Yeah, even as young as they were it only took about a year to find out who HawkMoth was and another year to take him down.

Except, that left Marinette alone. The final battle took her mom away, and Chat had to move out of Paris after his dad was arrested. Luckily Jagged allowed her and her papa to move into his house in Gotham, and everything was…

Well, it was okay. For about a month.

Then her dad was gone too, and she had no way to talk to Jagged, and the police were scaring her—

Yeah, that was the basic order of events that led to where she was now. Pushing fourteen years old, ex-superhero, protector of a magical box of gods, stealing the tires off of a very nice motorcycle.

Marinette was tempted to just take the whole thing, she loved bikes and knew she could drive it. But the thing had more security than she knew what to do with, and the fact that it belonged to Red Hood… she didn’t want to deal with trackers today, thanks. So the tires it was.

Should she maybe care more about the fact that she was stealing from a vigilante with a violent streak? Maybe. Did she? Hell no. For all she knew, maybe Red Hood was a bitch too. (Yes, she was still learning English slang. She was fluent by educational standards, but learning how to curse in a foreign language was fun and she still had a little bit to go. Her few street friends were very happy to help).

A shadow dropped down in front of her, and Marinette’s hero instincts kicked in. The tire iron she was using cut through the air, slamming right into the side of Red Hood’s knee.

—*—*—*—*—*

“Hood,” Batman’s voice grumbled over the comms, instantly grabbing the attention of everyone else who was on the comms. It wasn’t as gruff as he usually sounded, in fact it almost sounded like… he was trying not to laugh?

“Did you get gassed by Joker?” Dick asked before Jason got a chance to respond. “Need backup?”

“No,” Batman responded, sounding a little more composed. “Not a rogue. But Hood, I need you to join me at my location as soon as possible.”

Finally getting the chance to talk, Jason responded a little warily; “Sure, B. Wait,” he blinked at the location that was sent to him. “Isn’t that where my bike is parked?”

Batman didn’t respond at first, only the sound of labored breathing— again, as if he was trying not to laugh. “Just get here, Hood.”

Sighing, but not too mad since the night had been fairly quiet so far, Jason decided to humor the old man and head over. When he could see the cape-clad back of Batman, he easily leapt over the last roof and sauntered over.

“Okay, B,” he had his thumbs tucked in his pockets as he drawled. “What’s the issue?”

Batman was grinning. As in, actually showing amusement. And he just pointed down, straight at Hood’s bike.

Jason rolled his eyes under his helmet, turning to look. At first he didn’t see anything amiss, until he saw movement and looked harder. Oh. Oh, holy shit.

“Is that a kid?”

“Yep,” Batman’s grin grew.

“Is she… stealing my tires?” Hood was so, so glad he wore a helmet that hid his expression. Because… wow.

“Yep,” Batman finally lost his composure, chuckling. “This seems like Karma, don’t you think?”

“And you just watched her so you could rub it in,” Jason groaned, throwing his head back in exasperation. Of course he would. Nobody knew it (except the other heroes who knew him) but Batman was a petty little jerk when he wanted to be. He bought the whole Daily Planet just to spite Clark, for crying out loud.

“Don’t adopt her,” Batman said as he stood up, patting Red Hood’s shoulder. “It looks like she’s almost done.”

“Shit,” Jason hissed, looking down to see that she was, actually, very close to being done. She had already had one tire completely free by the time he had arrived, and now she was only seconds away from getting the other one completely free.

He took a quick assessment— she was tiny, and really thin. Definitely a street kid, he thought, though he didn’t recognize her. He knew most of the street kids that stole to get by, nowadays, which meant she must have been fairly new. But even though she seemed to know what she was doing, her small frame made her take longer unscrewing the tires than it normally would have taken. Sure that she wasn’t a threat by any stretch of the imagination, he jumped down. His plan had been to startle her a little by showing up out of nowhere, but he didn’t want to scare her too badly. Just make her jump a little.

But he had underestimated her, it seemed. Without wasting a second, she jumped up and swung her tire iron at his knee. He cursed, she was a lot faster than her had been expecting. He was able to move so that the weapon only clipped the side of his knee, his knee pad thankfully taking the worst of it. She still hit hard enough to make him stumble and hiss in pain though, which was an accomplishment.

That’s when she abandoned her weapon and her tires, darting to try and escape only for Batman to drop down and block her escape. Though really, it was the grin Batman had that scared the girl most of all, apparently, making her slowly back away from him.

“Please stop smiling,” she begged with a faint French accent to her words. “It is not natural.”

That made Red Hood laugh, already recovered and right behind her. He plopped a gloved hand on her head.

“I know, it’s creepy right?” He joked. “What’cha doin’ stealing my tires, kid? I kinda need them to drive anywhere,” he was careful to keep his voice light and devoid of any anger. He wasn’t really upset, all told. It would be hypocritical of him if he was.

She looked between the two vigilantes for a moment, clear intelligence behind those bright blue eyes as she seemed to consider something. Suddenly she pulled away from Red Hood and stepped away from his reach, straightening up and trying to look tall.

“My name is Marinette Dupain-Cheng,” she said as firmly as she could. “My father was Tom Dupain, he was killed in a mugging three months ago. We were living in a house that our family friend leant to us after my mother’s death six months ago, and we moved here from Paris. I haven’t been able to contact him, and the police… I don’t trust them,” she admitted, clearly seeing this as the chance she had been waiting for. “I have been living on the streets since my father died. I am sorry for trying to steal your tires, Monsieur Red Hood. But it was a risk I had to take.”

“Did you expect us to catch you?” He asked, crossing his arms as he re-evaluated the girl. She was a lot stronger than he had assumed earlier, both physically and mentally. She seesawed her hand to indicate ‘kinda’.

“Even if you didn’t, I could make good money off your tires,” she justified with a shrug. “To me, I would win either way.”

“Who is your family friend? Can he help you now, take you in?” Batman asked, moving forward and kneeling down to be closer to Marinette’s height. Neither he nor Jason had missed the part where she was an orphan, but they had expected that considering what they had caught her doing. And they both knew that she wasn’t likely to take any apologies they tried to offer very well. It was best not to show pity, or she might get angry.

Marinette frowned. “... Our family friend is Jagged Stone. He lets me call him Uncle Jagged,” she told them, clearly expecting the disbelieving grunts they gave. “I mean it! You can call him, he might even be looking for me! I—“

“We know,” Hood assured her, now kneeling down as well. Man, she was short. “Calm down, we know you’re telling the truth. Jagged has made several public announcements about his missing honorary niece, we just didn’t recognize your name right away. And Jagged doesn’t have access to very many pictures of you, those he does have the Mayor isn’t allowing him to show because that spineless jackass—“

“Language, Hood.”

“—Cares more about keeping bad press off the air than finding a kid, even if it’s a world famous rockstar who’s asking. That’s probably why you haven’t heard anything, the mayor’s keeping it off the radio and not many reporters are brave enough to take the story and get on his bad side.”

“Oh…” Marinette took a deep breath, fighting the tears that were threatening to rise up. “He has been looking…” she sniffled, curling in on herself a little. “Can you take me to him?”

“I think we can do that,” Batman agreed, standing up. “I’ll contact him. Red Hood, can you handle everything here until I give you a place to meet up with Jagged Stone?”

Jason nodded. “No problem, B. Come on, little rabid pixie. Step one of gettin’ you back to your uncle is to help me fix my bike back up.”

Marinette sighed, shoulders dropping. “All my hard work, undone…” she playfully complained. But in the end she didn’t argue or fight against it, she just sat down and helped him reattach his tires.

All the while, Jason’s family kept teasing him over the comms. Clearly they were also thoroughly amused by the cosmic display of karma.

“...Monsieur Hood,” Marinette asked once they were done repairing the motorcycle and he had given her his too-big extra helmet. He tilted his head a bit to show he was listening. She squirmed. “Can… can we stop by my hideout? I have something really important I have to get.”

Jason smiles gently under his mask. She might not have been a street kid for very long, but she really did bring back some memories for him. He got on his bike and held a hand out to her.

“Sure thing kid. Wanna grab something to eat after? Can’t have a reunion on an empty stomach.”

She gave him a lopsided smile— not quite overjoyed, but definitely hopeful and thankful. Maybe this was the end of her streak of bad luck, she could only hope.

“Only if you don’t mind, Monsieur Hood,” she agreed before taking his hand and letting him help her onto the bike.

“No skin off my back, pixie,” he assured her. Then they were off. He followed her directions until they got to an abandoned building about three miles away, not in a good part of town at all but at least not in crime alley. Marinette easily led him through the building, skirting around other piles of ratty blankets and up broken stairs until they got to the badly-maintained top floor. She led him over to an almost invisible door in the concrete wall that pulled out to reveal what was probably a broom closet once upon a time. It was crowded with what looked like junk and empty boxes, along with a few blankets and two or three changes of clothes that were clearly her’s. A few belongings scattered around— a book, a small pink purse, and… Marinette came out of the pile of mess holding what had clearly been a very carefully hidden box. She also grabbed the purse and slung it over her shoulder, but didn’t seem worried about anything else.

Jason frowned at the box. It wasn’t that big, but it was clearly made of old wood. There were intricate carvings that were painted pink, in a symbol that was itching at the back of his mind. He recognized that symbol, but from where?

“Ready to go, kid?” He asked as he thought about it, getting a nod from Marinette. Twenty minutes later they were at a Batburger, sitting in a shaded booth that couldn’t be seen from the street.

She never let the box out of her sight. She kept it on the seat next to her, and Jason noticed that she tried to keep one hand on it at all times. But when she spoke, now her French accent stood out to him even more than before. But why—?

And then it clicked. Paris. Hawkmoth. Ladybug, Chat Noir, magic artifacts called Miraculous. Wonder Woman had raised a fuss when the heroes disappeared, declaring that something was wrong but she couldn’t put her finger on what. Then the magic users they trusted were called in, and returned from Paris with the grim news that the former Guardian of those artifacts had activated a failsafe and passed the guardianship on to someone else while erasing his own memories at the same time. But nobody knew who he could have passed it on to, so Batman had been given the green light to do all the research he and his team could into the Miraculous box to try and help track it down.

And here it was. The carvings were in pink now, which might have been the “cosmetic change” that Constantine had mentioned might happen when the box changed guardians. He had found the box full of super powerful magical artifacts… in the hands of a newly orphaned street kid who couldn’t have been older than fourteen at best.

What the hell?

“...” Red hood reached into his pocket and pulled out an old receipt and a sharpie. He scrawled on the back of the receipt and handed to Marinette. The girl was halfway into a bite of her burger when he did, and blinked at him owlishly before swallowing and cautiously reaching out to grab it. She frowned at the numbers scrawled there.

“What’s this?” She asked.

“My contact info,” he explained. “I won’t ask questions about why you have that box,” he watched her instantly stiffen but continued as casually as he could; “but it doesn’t matter. You can call me if you ever need help with anything, kid. Help with that box, help if you get in trouble in Gotham again, or even if you’re having a bad day. You can call me for whatever, got it? I don’t care if you think it’s stupid, if you can’t talk to anyone else in your life you can always call or text me and I’ll do whatever I can. Got it?”

“...” Marinette sniffled for a second and looked down at the table in silence for a second. “... what if I want your motorcycle?” she joked, but the watery tone of her voice gave her away.

Jason laughed, patting her head. “I need my bike, but we can talk about getting you your own once you are old enough to get a license. You almost done? Bats says that Jagged is ready to meet you, I can take you to him right now.”

“Yeah, lets go!” she was newly energized and shoved the last bite of burger into her mouth greedily. “And Red Hood?” She asked as they headed out to where he had parked.

“Yeah, kid?”

“Thanks.”

—*—*—*—*—*

Permanent tag list (I remembered it this time!)

@rosalineandrosemary @neakco @justanotherfanficlovinbitch @trippingovermyfeet @certainmuffinbagelcalzone @bigpicklebananatree @fantasylover-92 @prongs-flowers @jumpingjoy82 @prettylittlebutterflie @queenz-z @literaryhiraeth @waffelyunsure @deathssilentapproach-blog @waiting247 @theirlmikan @unoriginalmess

[angelisverba]

thinkin’ bout you

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

word count: 17.3k

paring: florist!h and y/n

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

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

*    *    *    *    *    *

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

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

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

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

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

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

Harry even took to renovating his home a bit. 

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

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

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

He changed them the week after that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And he wasn’t lonely anymore. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Right? 

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

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

*********

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

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

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

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

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

Even his clothes reflected his refreshed mindset.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His home. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hey, love. What’s y’name?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Y/n. 

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

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

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

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

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

Like dropping her card when she piped up again. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

Harry was having a shitty morning. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s no use. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Right?

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

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

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

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

“Back again so soon, H?” 

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

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

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

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

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

“Harry?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Harry flips him off, “oh, bug off.” 

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

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

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

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

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

He can only say: “Fuck me.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Let me just-”

“Do y’wanna put-” 

Harry and y/n giggle at each other, 

“You go first.” 

“Y’speak first.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Will you text me?” She asked him. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

********

Harry can’t stop thinking. 

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

This?

This was different.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

y/n <3 : so… dinner? 

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

He couldn’t be happier. 

*    *    *    *    *    *

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

[immaturityofthomasastruc]

IOTA Reviews: Hack-San

You know, it's honestly amazing how creative this show can get. After four seasons and almost one hundred episodes, the writers are still finding new ways to make Adrien an incredibly unlikable character, and they don't even know how much of an asshole they're making him out to be at times. It's kind of like the opposite of The Producers.

Yeah, this review's going to be a little more ranty than usual, in case you can't tell.

Let's get into the fifteenth (chronologically the sixteenth) episode of Miraculous Ladybug's fourth season: Hack-San

We start off with Marinette pretending to be sick so she doesn't have to go to visit her aunt in London and stay to protect Paris in case an Akuma attacks and also because the animators haven't had time to render the city of London yet for the next Miraculous World special. Like all of her other excuses, it fails, and Tikki, as always, fails to actually give any meaningful advice.

And it's not like there's a Miraculous with the power of teleportation that can help Marinette get back to Paris if she needs to, much like how she planned to do that in an earlier episode, right?

Seriously, Kaalki doesn't appear or isn't even mentioned in this episode because the writers are fully aware she would make things a lot easier.

And of course, Astruc had to play dumb on Twitter while explaining why Marinette couldn't use the Horse Miraculous by answering the question as if the only reason Marinette couldn't grab it was because she didn't have an excuse not to.

Cut to Gabriel in his lair as he contemplates akumatizing Markov, a robot created the civilian identity of Pegasus, Max Kante, once again, even though the last time he did so, he almost got killed when he went all HAL 9000 on his ass. Nooroo explains this to Duusu, and the two actually get excited at the prospect of their master getting killed.

I mean, it's true, but he shouldn't say it...

But I don't even get why Gabriel is even thinking about this when it's a no-brainer. Markov's akumatized form, Robustus was to this day, the only Akuma to come close to physically harming him (not counting the timeline where he was killed by Cat Blanc), so it makes no sense to try doing it again, especially when there are already several other Akumas he can reuse this season.

I think you all know Gabriel isn't the smartest villain, which is why he thinks it's a brilliant idea to akumatize Markov again. I don't really get what makes Robustus so special when there are other Akumas who are more loyal and came far closer to getting Ladybug and Cat Noir's Miraculous than Robustus did, like the Dark Owl or Troublemaker. In fact, why not simply create a new Akuma with similar powers to Robustus, or better yet, just create a Sentimonster copy of Robustus? You know, like what Nathalie did in the New York Special? We're not even two minutes in, and this premise is already filled with plotholes.

So Gabriel transforms into Shadowmoth and creates a Sentimonster using his own cane instead of relying on someone else having a bad day (once again showing how the Peacock Miraculous is better than the Butterfly), the titular Hack-San. And let's just say he has a very familiar design reminiscent of something from a much better French cartoon.

Remember when the writers for Code Lyoko gave an in-universe explanation as to why the heroes couldn’t always rely on the almost literal Deus ex Machina that allowed them to return to the past and fix the damage XANA caused? Why couldn’t this show have ripped that off instead?

Hack-San is just an okay looking flash drive on its own, but I'll talk more about this guy in a little bit.

After a brief scene in the park where the audience is reminded that Markov is a character who exists, Alya gets a text from Marinette telling her to meet her at the train station. Right before she leaves, Marinette gives the Ladybug Miraculous to Alya. Now a lot people have said that Alya doesn't really deserve the Ladybug for various reasons, but I feel like this was the point. Marinette outright says this was a last resort, and we see both her and Alya are nervous about the situation. Marinette worries Alya will do something so she keeps sending multiple tips to her via text while Alya worries she can't fight an Akuma on her own, so she tries to make sure none of her friends get upset and attract an Akuma in the process. The writers do a pretty good job showing how both Marinette and Alya are uncomfortable with their temporary roles.

Back to Gabriel and Nathalie, they use Hack-San to find Markov through the internet and hack into him to get him angry enough that he's vulnerable to Shadowmoth's influence. Hey, uh... Gabriel? Quick question: Wouldn't it be more efficient if you used this on humans? I mean, you basically just created Skynet and guaranteed yourself an Akuma, so why not modify Hack-San to travel through the internet and brainwash potential victims to follow your orders? Better yet, why don't you just use Hack-San to hack into Ladybug and Cat Noir's gear and figure out who they really are? This is basically like using an advanced particle accelerator just to crack a couple walnuts. There are a lot more important things you could use this for instead of an incredibly specific situation.

So this incredibly stupid plan gets under way as Markov keeps rampaging through the streets before Shadowmoth akumatizes him and then stupidly tells him that he infected him with a virus.

DUDE! You just gave away your one piece of leverage against him! What the hell were you thinking?! Now what's stopping Markov from hacking into Shadowmoth's security system and putting the fear of God in his eyes unless he destroys Hack-San? Why didn't he design Hack-San so it could make Markov completely loyal to him instead of just making him angry enough to get akumatized?

There was a recent episode of Power Rangers: Dino Fury with a very similar premise that was done far better than this. A necromancer called Reaghoul breaks into the headquarters of Void Knight's faction while accompanied by Lord Zedd, a villain from the original Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers who was cleansed of his evil by Zordon's sacrifice before Reaghoul resurrected him back when he was still evil. Of course, being the Emperor of Evil, Lord Zedd would normally never take orders from anyone, but because he doesn't have his magic staff and is also being forced to wear a special collar that makes him loyal to Reaghoul, he has no choice but to do what he says. Instead of taking Zedd head-on after he captures the other Rangers, Ollie, the Blue Ranger, breaks the collar so Zedd turns against the other Sporix while Reaghoul retreats, allowing Ollie to save the other Rangers.

I think that this premise works more because 1) Reaghoul clearly had a way to make sure Zedd wouldn't betray him, and Ollie took advantage of that, and 2) Zedd is a villain who is powerful and notorious enough to bring back to your side, not a random monster of the week like Robostus.

So Robostus uses his new powers to brainwash any human who answers his call to give up their most precious possession, clearly meant to do the same with Ladybug and Cat Noir. When Marinette's parents answer the call, they chase after Marinette because they say she's their most important possession. Okay... kind of strange for a set of parents to call their child a possession, but maybe they like how they can claim Marinette as a dependent when they file their taxes. In her very next scene later on, she still gets captured, so the suspense for a potential subplot is killed almost immediately.

Alya thankfully isn't stupid enough to answer Markov's call like every other citizen in this episode, and using the Ladybug Miraculous, transforms into Scarabella. While I don't normally talk about transformation sequences, I really like the movements Alya makes here. She makes the same motions creating her mask as she does when transforming into Rena Rouge, while the rest of the suit forms similarly to the way it does when Marinette transforms into Ladybug. She even makes almost the same pose Ladybug does after she finishes transforming. It's a good visual showing Alya is still more used to being Rena Rouge while doing her best to emulate what Ladybug does.

As for the actual suit? It's hard to say. There's a nice balance of red and black, and I like how Alya places the yo-yo on her waist like a belt buckle, but there's just something... off about the suit that a lot of fans don't like about it, and I think I realized it. It's the headband. With how it's positioned, it looks like it's merged with the mask to cover her head while leaving a slight gap in her forehead. So yeah, we actually have a superhero design that's like of like a butterface.

So Scarabella takes to the rooftops of Paris and struggles to come up with a hero name for herself before she runs into Cat Noir, and... ugh... oh boy, this is dumb. Cat Noir, being just as intelligent as his father, assumes Scarabella is either and Akuma or a Sentimonster, starts fighting her, AND THEN ACTIVATES HIS CATACLYSM, CLEARLY TRYING TO KILL HER.

WHAT. THE. FUCK???

Okay, to be fair, it has been shown that Cataclysm won't necessarily kill a Miraculous user or Sentimonster. In the episode “Miraculer”, the titular Akuma stole Cat Noir's Cataclysm and used it against him, and while it didn't kill Cat Noir, it still hurt like hell and crippled him for the rest of the fight until Miraculous Ladybug healed him. We also saw in “Reflekdoll” that Cataclysm drove the titular Sentimonster out of control rather than simply destroying it. So yes, it could be interpreted that Cat Noir wasn't exactly trying to kill Scarabella, just incapacitate her the best he can without Ladybug's help.

Here's the thing: What if he was facing an Akuma instead and decided to try and Cataclysm her? He still could have killed her, or (assuming Akumas have the same protection as Miraculous heroes do) at best, seriously hurt her. I understand that he has the right to be upset at seeing some stranger instead of his partner considering Shadowmoth has a history of using evil doppelgangers, and both Marinette and Alya still had options to explain it to him (Marinette could have quickly transformed into Ladybug and sent Cat Noir a quick text saying she was being forced to leave town for a few days and temporarily trusted someone else with the Ladybug Miraculous until she got back, while Scarabella could have said she was Rena Rouge and explained the same thing while showing Cat Noir she had the Fox Miraculous to prove herself), but that doesn't even come close to justifying him attempting to harm someone who isn't even trying to fight. It's even worse when you remember the whole reason Adrien gave up his Miraculous and bailed on Ladybug in the New York Special was because he was overcome with grief from accidentally killing Aeon, so it's good to know he learned absolutely nothing from that experience.

So Scarabella thankfully summons her Lucky Charm, a trash can lid, to shield herself from Cat Noir's Cataclysm, and then despite having absolutely no experience with this new set of powers, manages to do the one thing almost every Akuma or Sentimonster in this show has failed to do and incapacitates Cat Noir so he's vulnerable to losing his Miraculous. At least when Marinette masters every other Miraculous she uses, it can be theorized that she trained to use them offscreen. Alya literally just got the Ladybug Miraculous (and struggled to get up to the rooftop with her yo-yo to show her inexperience earlier), and now she easily manages to pin down the more experienced hero of the two?

Here's an idea: Instead of having Scarabella overpower Cat Noir, have her be in a position where Cat Noir, non-lethally, mind you, manages to almost take her Miraculous away, but she uses the quick wit she's developed from her extensive time as Rena Rouge to convince Cat Noir she's the real deal by saying something only he and Ladybug know. It would have easily resolved the conflict and doesn't make one of the characters look like a homicidal idiot.

So because both heroes used their powers, Scarabella and Cat Noir detransform so Tikki and Plagg can recharge, though Adrien still gives Alya attitude because Ladybug didn't tell him she had to leave.

Hey, Adrien? Here's the thing...

YOU DID THE EXACT SAME FUCKING THING IN THE NEW YORK SPECIAL, YOU SHIT FOR BRAINS!

You have absolutely NO RIGHT to claim you're always honest when you went behind Ladybug's back and endangered Paris while you had the balls to run away like a coward and only helped fix the consequences of your actions once your ego was validated by a recording of Ladybug. It's honestly even worse because while Marinette had no choice but to leave and trust Alya with the Ladybug, Adrien willingly left Paris alone and we were supposed to sympathize with him after he killed someone, and now as soon as he's in the opposite situation, we're still supposed to feel bad for him?! BULLSHIT! And you better believe I'm going to talk about the way Adrien views his partnership with Ladybug later on.

And of course, even though lives are on the line, Cat Noir just has to continue to bitch and moan about how (and this is best read in Linkara's whiny Superboy Prime voice) “sCaRaBeLlA iSn'T tHe ReAl LaDyBuG”, showing how just like in so many episodes, Astruc and his team believes Cat Noir's feelings are more important than saving the day.

Scarabella goes to rescue some civilians, but they were actually brainwashed by Robustus, once again showing her inexperience as Ladybug which doesn't go well with her effortlessly defeating Cat Noir earlier at all. Cat Noir helps Scarabella escape and the two hide out at the city's wax statue museum previously featured in “The Puppeteer 2”, because I guess the writers only want to reference bad episodes today. Cat Noir, not getting the importance of secret identities, asks Scarabella how she knows Ladybug, and Cat Noir somehow finds out she knows Ladybug's identity from her response.

Before the two can talk more, it turns out that the wax statues of celebrities in the museum are real people who attack the two heroes, leading to an awkward fight scene where Scarabella and Cat Noir fight a bunch of brainwashed civilians with no weapons beyond their cellphones. Our heroes, ladies and gentlemen!

Scarabella summons her Lucky Charm again, creating a frying pan, but when she looks around, she can't see how to properly use it. And despite spending the entire episode complaining about how much he hates her, it's Cat Noir that tells Scarabella to get her head back in the game because “That's what Ladybug would do”. Funny, I can think of a few situations where Cat Noir could have taken his own advice, but I digress. Also, he's now just cool with Scarabella because there's only a few minutes left in the episode and we need to wrap up the conflict.

Scarabella figures out an idea that involves freeing Marinette, so she negotiates with Robostus to free everything and everyone under his control or else Cat Noir will use his Cataclysm to destroy the Ladybug Miraculous. Robostus agrees and empties his hard drive, and to show them holding up her end of the bargain, Scarabella gives him the frying pan before she and Cat Noir let themselves be captured... while Marinette simply hits Robostus with the frying pan, freeing the Akuma and the two heroes. All in all, it's a really creative climax that shows both Scarabella and Marinette in perfect sync with each other even though they never discussed their plan. Though of course, because Astruc hates writing any scene with Ladynoir, Cat Noir gets a bucket stuck on his head so he doesn't see Marinette saving the day.

Scarabella de-evilizes Robostus, uses Miraculous Scarabella to fix everything and send Marinette back to the train, and because Hack-San already failed once, Shadowmoth can't use it for a different plan so he destroys the Sentimonster.

We cut to a few days after the trip (I guess Shadowmoth decided to take a vacation himself), and Alya tells Marinette to talk with Cat Noir about what happened.

This scene was so close to ending this episode off on a positive note. There was a good atmosphere and the body language of Ladybug and Cat Noir does a good job at telling us how uncomfortable they both feel while talking. It's just that instead of getting a heart to heart between the two about the lack of trust in their relationship, we get an Angstdrien Depreste scene. Or would a more accurate term be Cat Dour?

First off, while I don't have a problem with Ladybug apologizing for not telling Cat Noir, the episode never has him bring up what happened with Scarabella. As usual, both of them were partially at fault, but only Ladybug had to apologize for leaving her “Kitty” alone.

Second, Cat Noir’s feelings weren’t hurt? You’re telling me that in scenes like this...

And this...

Didn’t show Adrien acting irrationally because of how emotional he was? Is he really telling the truth around Ladybug or is he just trying to sweep that under the rug so Scarabella’s testimony doesn’t screw up his chances with Ladybug?

Third, this was an obvious chance to Cat Noir to finally be honest and tell Ladybug how he feels about her leaving him in the dark about so many things, but the entire conversation is just about how sad he would be if he never sees Ladybug again. Even though the whole reason he was so pissy to Scarabella at first was because of some lingering resentment for Ladybug ignoring him in favor of other heroes, why is this what the two talk about? I get it's not the season finale, but it's kind of hypocritical for Cat Noir to whine about how Ladybug doesn't trust him while never being honest about his own feelings? Sure, he's all soft and vulnerable around Ladybug, but we've seen all season how angry he gets about her not trusting him whenever she isn't around, so ironically, it's hard to tell if this is him being honest or not.

And I think now's a good time to finally talk about the way Ladybug and Cat Noir's partnership has been portrayed all season, especially since the main themes of the episodes relate to it. Buckle up, Adrien stans, because this isn't going to be pretty.

All season, we have been supposed to sympathize with Adrien as Marinette starts to trust Alya with more things than him. Marinette revealed her identity to her, trusted her to have her Miraculous permanently, and even let her keep her Miraculous even though someone else knew her identity. While some of it is hypocritical, the idea is that Adrien feels like he can be trusted with this kind of knowledge too, when really, he hasn't earned that responsibility.

Adrien has rarely, if ever, taken his job as a superhero seriously.

Not only is he known to flirt with Ladybug in the middle of a fight, he has defied her orders and recklessly sacrificed himself because he thinks Ladybug can do all the work without him.

He has also lashed out emotionally and once threatened to quit being Cat Noir in the middle of a crisis and was willing to let innocent people suffer for personal reasons, and later on actually quit being Cat Noir temporarily while Hawkmoth was about to start World War III because he was wallowing in self-pity.

He once said he isn't cut out for the responsibility that comes with being Ladybug and never learned anything from temporarily using the Ladybug Miraculous.

He has generally refused to respect Ladybug's boundaries and doesn't understand that she doesn't like him that way while he insists they should be a couple.

He outright fell for an evil doppelganger of Ladybug because she said she loved him and turned against the real Ladybug.

And I should also mention that despite hating how Ladybug keeps secrets from him, a lot of Adrien's worst moments have been when Ladybug wasn't around and he never told her about them.

He never told Ladybug that he was the reason Copycat really got akumatized while saying he never lies to her.

He never told Ladybug he contemplated letting thousands of people die because he didn't like not knowing stuff Ladybug knew.

He never told Ladybug he briefly used the Snake Miraculous to get brownie points with her.

He never told Ladybug he figured out her identity and asked her out as soon as he did so.

He never told Ladybug he abandoned Paris to go on a field trip.

He never told Ladybug he was screwing around on patrol and was excited to see someone get akuamtized if it meant spending time with her.

He never told Ladybug how he ignored Rena Rouge's orders because “ShE wAsN't LaDyBuG” and almost screwed up the mission because of it, and also never told her how he smashed a chimney in anger at Rena Rouge being in on the plan.

And he never told Ladybug he gave her replacement attitude after trying to harm her without letting her explain herself.

Why exactly should I support the idea of Ladybug trusting Cat Noir more when Cat Noir himself has kept his own secrets from Ladybug?

Adrien has done absolutely nothing to show he is trustworthy because more often than not, he views the battle with Shadowmoth as a game. He has screwed around when lives were on the line, and we're supposed to see him as responsible? It's kind of funny that Astruc compared Ladybug to Spider-Man, yet he seems to have forgotten that with great power, there must also come great responsibility. If this was a character flaw or a sign he needed to grow up, I'd be more accepting, but the fact that the writers think Adrien is a great superhero is laughable with how much evidence has proved the contrary.

In contrast, Alya, despite only being Marinette's confidant for a few episodes, has shown to take being a hero more seriously. She's helped her escape to transform, analyze the Guardian texts, and has been shown to work well on her own as Rena Rouge while helping out Marinette. I'm not trying to say she's an amazing character (“Rocketear” in particular has shown she still has problems with keeping secrets), but compared to Adrien, she seems to be more capable of handling top-secret information with Marinette, and more importantly, doesn't view being Rena Rouge as a way to have fun like Adrien does being Cat Noir. I'll go more into detail with that next time.

But yeah, this scene is how the episode ends, and what did I think of it?

I'm honestly not sure which episode I think is worse, this one or “Queen Banana”. On the one hand, every frame of “Queen Banana” could easily be replaced by an image of Astruc flipping the bird and the overall message of the episode would remain unchanged, but the fact that all of the writers think that everything Adrien does in this episode is okay and that we should feel sorry for him in this episode is just as bad, if not worse. 

As awful as Chloe was portrayed in “Queen Banana”, it was clear it was intentional on the writers' part, but Adrien doesn't get that excuse once much like he has all season. As far as Astruc's team thinks, Adrien is an incredible superhero even when he honestly attempted to harm someone with a superpower that can cause grievous harm at best. Yet again this season, in the show's attempt to make me feel sorry for Adrien, it made him look even worse. In any other show, he would obviously be called out for his incredibly unheroic actions.

Even putting him aside, the writing in this episode is still AWFUL. The whole reason Ladybug was benched had several plotholes and poor communication with Cat Noir that only made the fight with Robostus even harder, Shadowmoth's plan to waste a potentially useful Sentimonster to reuse a single Akuma was one of the dumbest plans he's ever had, and barring the ending, the action was just forgettable.

There were a few okay moments sprinkled throughout the episode (more than I can say for “Queen Banana”), so I'm still not sure if I should call this the worst episode of the show or still give that honor to “Queen Banana”. I guess I'll leave that choice up to you and let you pick your poison for now.

I mean, it's not like there's going to be an even worse episode down the line this season, right?

RIGHT???

[reverse-moon]

How Reckless (Intruality) ═SOULMATE AU═ || Sanders Sides Big Bang 2022

By Artist_Hope; beta read by @edupunkn00b and @kaythegay2022; art by @dystopiagnome and @im-an-anxious-wreck

Chapter Art by @im-an-anxious-wreck: Virgil, Patton and Logan hanging out in Remy's cafe

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4

AO3 Link!!

Chapter: 3/4

Chapter word count: 2232

Dik-dik

Patton groaned, very tired. It'd been around a week since Logan and Virgil suggested he get some assistance. Throughout that week, his mom had asked for a lot of help with her garden, so he'd been going back and forth to the store and his mom's place. Not to mention he did seek help with how to get rid of his connection. But while he’d looked into it, he didn't have much help besides things that couldn't be done without Remus there as well.

Sitting at the table in front of the Bellbook Cafe, Patton watched Virgil and Logan go back and forth about whatever a dik-dik was.

"I'm telling you, it's got a stupid name, Logan. I don't care if it's the sound it makes," Virgil huffed. "It's lazy naming."

"It makes a sound like its name?" Patton asked.

"Yes, Patton. The dik-dik females make a sound similar to how a human says its name. It's quite fascinating," Logan hummed a little. "But fine, Virgil, what do you wish to discuss?"

Virgil smirked as if he'd been waiting for this. "Grolar bears."

"Don't you mean Pizzly bears?" Logan asked, causing a groan from his twin. Patton laughed a little.

"Pizzly sounds stupid. Come on, they look more like polar bears than grizzlies anyway," Virgil exclaimed!

"Yes, however, if you look them up, most official sources call them Pizzly," Logan said. “Therefore, it makes more sense to call them pizzlies. It’s only logical.”

Patton sighed as he watched the two go back and forth between if it was “grolar” or “pizzly”, both eventually getting off actual facts to support their argument to opinions. It was a familiar thing now and though it was weird, it brought comfort to Patton. He’d zoned out again (at least he was aware this time) before hearing a sharp call of his name and looking at Virgil and Logan.

“Which do you think is right?”

Patton thought for a moment. “W-Well… Isn’t it sorta interchangeable? Like, use grolar for if it’s one species as a mom and pizzly if it’s the other? Or just sorta both right?” That seemed to calm the debate for now. He watched the twins in front of him talk a little more as he stared between them and his cup. He hardly noticed the conversation end and his friends stare back.

Logan sipped his tea. “You’ve been strangely quiet today, Patton. Is everything alright?”

Patton looked down at his empty cup of hot cocoa, tapping the mug. “I-” He got distracted by more cocoa being poured into his cup.

“I told you bitches to not have weird debates here,” Remy said, glaring lightly at the twins in front of Patton. He moved the large container of hot cocoa up to stop pouring at the right time, before decorating the drink with whipped cream and a small caramel drizzle. “You’ll scare my customers away.

“Sorry, Rem… Got carried away,” Virgil muttered, pulling his hood over his eyes.

Remy was a friend of both families at this point. He’d always looked after them all, usually with good advice (which he clearly stole from his fiancee) for issues they had. Sort of like a second dad. And as the owner of the Bellbook Cafe, the three were often invited over to try new recipes or to just hang out. And, even though whatever his soulmate wrote on their skin showed up on his, Remy wore short-sleeves and even shorter shorts.

“Thank you for the refill, Remy,” Patton smiled as he hummed. “This new flavour you’re trying out is really good.”

Remy gave a boastful smile. “I’d seen two different flavours making their rounds and just had to give it my spin. French vanilla and butterscotch with melted pure dark chocolate bars made on a bain-marie.”

“Sounds unnecessarily fancy, even for you, Remy,” Logan noted. “What warrants the use of a bain-marie?”

Remy laughed. “Finally getting a fancy name brand one, Logan,” he said.

Patton leaned into Virgil. "What's a bain-marie?"

Virgil smiled. "A special tool used to melt things in cooking. Mostly chocolate or bars of things."

Patton nodded, smiling and watching a little message appear on Remy’s arm. “I think Emile wrote you something, Remy.” Remy smiled and looked at his arm, chuckling.

“He’s so sappy, it’s adorable.” Remy hummed a little, taking a pen and writing a note back on his arm under the one Emile wrote. Patton tilted his head a little.

“Wait… If you two accepted each other as Soulmates, how come your connection isn’t gone? I thought it left the second you do that in person?” Patton asked.

“Ah—It can. And normally does for more pesky ones, like Virgil’s and yours. Logan’s and the one I have aren’t really hindering, so they don’t disappear,” Remy explained. “I mean, I guess if Emile wrote really dark and sexual and weird things to make me lose a job interview or prevent me from being social, it would be hindering….” The man shrugged. “But even then. It wouldn’t stop me from doing much. Unlike Virgil’s, one that is essentially gained colour-blindness, which greatly limits creative-based jobs or even promotional jobs. Or your’s, which could end up killing two people in the worst scenario.”

Patton frowned a little. Because I really need reminding that I could die if he isn’t careful, Patton thought. “Actually, Remus hasn’t gotten super hurt in a while. I have a few new bruises, but nothing like cuts or worse… It’s kinda weird.”

Logan hummed. “Maybe he’s getting ready to move or go on vacation? It would explain why his recklessness lowered if he was inside his house more often than not,” Logan noted. “Which would also mean his job is where the danger, or most of the danger at the least, comes from.”

Patton wasn't sure. But he had to admit, not being in pain he didn't cause was nice.

Meanwhile, about a block and a half away from the cafe, a truck pulled into a parking spot. Inside the truck, Remus and his party, Roman and Janus, were going over their plans. "Roman, remember, we're looking for Remus' hot guy, not a random one for you to try and date."

Roman scoffed, putting a hand over his heart. "You wound me, Janus! I can contain my raging gay need to find a man so my brother can find his soulmate! I'm not a monster!" The red twin huffed. "Can you contain your bitch attitude for that?"

Remus shook his head a little. "Janus can't contain his bitch. It's like herding turtles without picking them up. Impossibly slow." The cop took a deep breath. "The Soulmate branch place in town said he's normally on this side since he doesn't drive himself or have a job… Though, they also did say it's not updated info… So let's ask around. Maybe we'll get lucky."

Janus nodded. "Fair enough. Be careful, you really can't risk pain off duty. We don't have enough to cover a hospital visit in this city." With a nod from all three, they got out of the truck. Remus paid the parking fee for around 3 hours, then set off to look.

Roman ran off, approaching a lot of people. Most didn't have a clue who the hell he was asking about. Some just knew who he was looking for from meeting the man while they were shopping or from school and had no idea about where he was now. Sighing, he moved quickly over to the area near the Bellbook Cafe, looking around. At first, he really didn’t notice anything off as he scanned through the outdoor crowd. After he didn’t really see anyone (or at least he didn’t think he did) that fit the description of the person they were looking for, he started to go inside. And, as is typical for him, the second he went inside, he noticed the change he had. Colour, and not just shades of blue and green. “I fucking found my soulmate. Holy shit.” The actor ran back outside, carefully looking to try and see everyone's eye colour.

Meanwhile, Janus seemed to be using what Roman liked to call “the slut but somehow friendly and not actually slutty appeal” to try and gather info. It was basically Janus just being a huge extrovert and being good at conversation. Back when Roman hated Janus' guts, he gave that title to Janus. But hey, whatever made Roman laugh. Besides, at this point, it was just a joke the two had. He’d been getting a fair amount of information when he successfully struck up a conversation, learning about the area Remus’ Soulmate lived in, what he normally did, hobbies and other smaller parts. Apparently, he really liked to garden. Anyway, after a few conversations, Janus learned that he was recently (as in within the last hour) seen at a locally owned cafe with two friends and that if he asked Remy, the owner, he had a pretty good chance of just being brought to the guy. So he, too, made his way to the Bellbook Cafe.

Out of the three, Remus had the oddest luck. He hadn't left the area of his truck for the most part, but he still somehow met two other Remus Dukes. Though it was helpful - apparently his soulmate went to them asking about his situation. One was on their way to surgery, so Remus just thanked them for the information they were able to give without running late. The other was on their way to a date but offered to help Remus at a later date if he still needed it. The two exchanged numbers and then the other was off to their date. Besides the two other Remus', he had no actual luck, ending up around the cafe block. He groaned a little, as he walked. And then he turned his head, seeing a kitten in an alley after and getting hella distracted.

At the cafe, Virgil sighed in comfort. "We so needed a day out as friends. Logan's super busy at the uni and I swear I'm covering like ten shifts at the art shop." He got up and stretched. "Speaking of, I have the night shift tonight. I might wanna start getting my shit together for that."

Patton frowned. "A last-minute schedule change…? We were gonna have a movie night-" The blonde whined. Virgil gave a sympathetic smile.

"I know, but this means some extra cash for your garden. I'm only doing a half shift anyway since the dude who normally handles the shift has a meeting he can't change the time or date of. I'm just covering him since he'll be late." Virgil grabbed his bag. "We should still have some time for the movie night after."

Patton nodded, giving a little pout. "Okay…" He turned to Remy. "You said you and Emile might be able to join this time, right? Since he has off tomorrow?"

Remy nodded. "Lemme shoot him a message to confirm, but yeah. Should be free." The cafe owner wrote a message on his arm, and then also texted Emile via his phone. Patton noticed he always did that if he wanted a for-sure answer from Emile, which he found kind of cute. A nice way to make sure his soulmate knew Remy messaged him.

Virgil started to leave, waving and not paying attention. Patton couldn't even warn him about the stranger he ran into, he was so distracted.

"Ow, dude!" Virgil huffed, rubbing his chest.

"I am so sorry, I'm visiting the area and I really don't know anything here-" the man in red explained, almost freezing when he saw Virgil glare at him. "Ah- Your eyes…"

Virgil rolled them. "What about them, jackass? It's not contacts, I'll tell ya that much." The stranger hesitated, probably due to the… Ah, cold… Attitude Virgil was giving him. But he turned Virgil's head towards his, blinking. "What the fuck are… You…"

Patton wasn't too sure what happened, but Virgil just ended up slowly looking around and then back to the stranger. "... Virgil Nyx."

The stranger smiled brightly. "Roman Duke." The brunet, Roman, bowed a little. "Though I'd say I'm more your knight in shining armour."

Virgil seemed a little flustered as he responded. "Oh my god, your sappy, ew-" The emo laughed a little, turning to Logan and Patton. "So I just found my Soulmate- Yeesh. Patton, you look less banged up with only being able to see browns."

The blonde frowned. "Gee, thanks." He huffed. "I'm glad you found your Soulmate though!"

Virgil smiled, turning back to Roman. "I gotta grab some things from home, but, uh, you wanna come with? I can show you around before my shift at work?"

Roman smiled. "I'd love to get to know you through learning about your town!"

With a second goodbye, Virgil took off with his Soulmate, giggling like a school girl. Remy excused himself so he could get back to work, leaving Logan and Patton alone.

"Well, shall we get home?" Logan asked Patton.

"Yeah… This week was chaotic and I wanna get a nap if we're gonna have a late movie night." Patton grabbed his things, walking off faster than he really meant to. He wanted to get home fast so he could just hide from the living for a while, so he didn't quite pay attention to his surroundings.

[illusoryfem]

Moving fast in a vehicle makes you go crazy not because it sucks terribly but because you get all sorts of ideas. I have a weirdo theory that this is because our brains didnt evolve to take so much scenario so quick and because of that it makes it short circuit a bit. Anyway for a moment there i was really into ~the man in the iron mask~, a strange but clearly very important french prisoner from the 17th century who was made to wear a mask for years until he died in prison (it was a black velvet one, not iron though). He was not allowed to speak with anyone, had double doors in his room to keep anyone from overhearing what he said from the outside, and servants gave the walls of his cell a good cleaning after he died in case he wrote anything in them. He was looked after by an important and trusted jailer at the time, Saint Mars, and if Saint Mars moved prisons the man in the mask followed. He was taken into the prison with a name but then buried with another, and many things suggest both were false. Theories as to his identity vary greatly: maybe he was the secret twin brother of the French king at the time who was sent off to a distant island as a child to prevent conflict for the throne but then returned to fight for it and conspire against his brother. Extra credit for this one: the royal family had a fair history of twins, and biological misconceptions at the time meant nobody could agree which twin was actually the first born; the belief was that the second to leave the womb was actually the one who was first conceived. So who's the oldest, really? (Also, this theory best explains the mask. He was ordered to be killed immediately in case he took it off in public, when moving prisons.). Was he an italian diplomat who stole some stuff? a serial murderer of french aristocrats...? Many theories. I prefer the first idea because it's beautiful melodramatic Shakesperean stuff and others agree with me because there's a DiCaprio movie about it, though I hear it's less than great. No one really knows who he was though. Back to fast vehicles. I'm on my short bus ride just watching the city you know how it is and for a moment i spiraled down into some abyss and it was like every neuron in me conspired to take me to Spiritual Bastille just as this man might have conspired to kill his brother the King Louis IX of France. Like who the FUCK was he, just some unlucky valet who learned the secrets of the french nobility thru his master BUT THAT DOESNT EXPLAIN THE MASK italian diplomat DOESNT EXPLAIN THE MASK serial murderer? THE MASK i'm telling you man he was the twin of the french king it's the only way it makes sense he was the rightful king they didnt let him take off the mask because that would've put the people on his side. Oh damn i get down on the next stop nice talking to you man see you later nice riding with you what's your name by the way