#i like this little dude so much. he's such a weepy looking guy

[unicorntolerant]

Fish are beautiful inside and out!!!

[righteous-r0de0]

surprise surprise i have more useless headcanons :)

vincent plays a lot of different instruments at varying skill levels (french horn and cello are his favorites). william made him learn in an effort to reinvigorate his zest for life after being turned

after ivan’s memories were changed he fell into a really deep depression and always felt guilty and he just didn’t know why

angel got david hooked on jane the virgin. he was team michael but his favorite character is alma (jane’s grandmother)

caelum’s favorite food his spaghetti. he always makes a huge mess, so gav and freelancer circumvent this (kinda) by doing that thing where you wrap the table in cling wrap or tinfoil and forgo plates and silverware

gavin trip sits for the rest of the damn crew when they smoke. he only messes with damien a little bit

lasko is NOT a lightweight but he is a weepy drunk (ie “i just love you guys so much” absolutely sobbing)

damien gets so silly when he’s sleep deprived, laughing at everything, making dirty jokes etc

kody bleached his hair and freelancer didn’t recognize him until they were practically right next to him

huxley gets very grumpy when he’s sleep deprived, whining, crossing his arms, frowning. he doesn’t yell or anything but you just KNOW when he’s tired

if you put anything green apple flavored in front of asher, he’s absolutely tearing it up

james loves indian food. his local place always asks after him whenever his spouse orders when they miss him a lot

marcus majored in game design, but later switched to computer science and programming. he also really liked geology

anton really likes half and half (iced tea/lemonade)

ollie looks like he listens to classic white girl pop or something similar but you pull his airpods out and he’s actually listening to either heavy metal or very disturbing true crime podcasts

elliot can swing dance

brachium erased even the memories of him from sunshine, elliot, aaron, and smartass

avior loves soups and stews any kind of food he can drink

milo loves hot chip (takis, hot cheetos, doritos) they make his nose run but he can’t stop

camelopardalis is a cat person

blake wanted to be a firefighter when he was a kid, but it changed when he met bestie. after that his only aspiration was to be theirs.

if aaron is given the option of sausage or bacon, he’s choosing bacon

sam can sew a little bit like mending seams and patching holes

vega doesn’t like human food. he thinks it’s strange. but he does like cheesecake.

regulus used to really enjoy cereal

geordi’s favorite fruit is bananas

guy LOVES bo burnham

morgan is really good at point and shoot games. it’s nothing to do with the sight or anything, they’re just his favorite

hush really likes chocolate and chocolate flavored things

porter’s favorite candy is reese’s peanut butter cups dude is a fiend for them

[disniq]

Season 1, Episode 4, “Doom Patrol”

The backdoor pilot to a show that is significantly better than this one

(No seriously, if you haven’t watched Doom Patrol you should. It has even more batshit comics energy than Titans and is significantly funnier, queerer, and with 200% more found family vibes.)

We start this episode with another traumatic flashback! Yay!

Congo, two years ago, and Garfield Logan is dying of some mystery disease in a field quarantine tent. The doctors decide it’s a lost cause and abandon the camp but, luckily for Gar, Chief of Unethical Experimentation himself, Dr Niles Caulder is sneaking around looking for victims people to save.

He injects Gar with mountain dew, which I’m sure is properly medically licenced.

In present day, Rachel runs into the woods and is promptly pursued by bear tiger. She’s awful chill about a tiger turning into a boy and pulling the ‘Come with me if you want to live’ line, but then again she did just blow up a convent with her evil mirror possession powers so. Sure.

Dick and Kori head back to said blown up convent, are told by the sister that “There’s no stopping it now”, and then argue about who’s fault it is for leaving Rachel unsupervised despite the fact that they both left her!

He's got the spirit!

Rach and Gar have a cute little bonding moment over being weirdos on their way to meet Gar’s crew of even weirder weirdos (affectionate)!

They take a minor detour to scare the shit out of some random hunters, because killing nuns is fine but killing a deer is a step too far. One of the hunters gets shot in the kerfuffle, the deer dies anyway, and Rachel gets weepy about it. Gar is a goddamn saint, so he comforts her and they continue on their journey.

Only, SURPRISE, the deer suddenly gets up again because Rachel’s powers can heal too!

Gar shows Rachel his nerd basement (I am high key jealous, negl). Rach isn’t as impressed as I am, but they bond over dead parents for long enough for us to slide into the character introduction portion of the episode!

Left to right, we have:

Cliff Steele, AKA the Robotman, a former racecar driver and piece of shit that “died” in a car accident. Dr Caulder “saved” him by transplanting his brain into a robot body. Larry Trainor, AKA Negative Man, a former air force pilot that flew into cloud of negative energy which gave him fully body radiation burns, hence the bandages. And Rita Farr, AKA Elastiwoman, who’s molecular structure is um. Gooey. Because of some toxic water.

Gar admits her brought Rachel over to see if Dr Caulder, AKA the Chief, can… “help her”, whatever that means, and they invite Rachel to stay for dinner.

Not much happens here that isn’t character intro for the Doom Patrol series, but I do like them. They’re sarcastic and damaged and actually care about one another in a way the Titans never manage to acheive.

Anyway, dinner is interrupted by Chief bringing home a new victim patient - a woman who was caught up in a liquid nitrogen explosion and is now blue and so cold she burns. Chief injects her with his magic apparently multi-purpose serum, but OH NO, it’s making things worse! The woman wakes up and panics, because she’s in a gothic Frankenstein type basement lab surrounded by strangers, and Rachel steps in to help ease the pain with her powers, because that’s apparently a thing she can do now.

At any rate, it works and the woman stabilises!

Chief finds time to give Gar some deep-seated self-worth issues by implying that Gar leaving the house puts everyone else at risk, and that anything less than total obedience makes him selfish and untrustworthy. Which I think explains a lot of Gar’s deferral to Dick later tbh.

Leave him alone, he is the one actually decent person in this show!

Meanwhile, Dick flashes his police badge to get information on the hunters from earlier and he and Kori track them down for a little light, uh. “Questioning”. The guy is a little uncooperative, but Dick goes full apeshit on the dude, punching him in the face and basically accusing him of raping and murdering Rachel.

Kori stops him, but only after noticing the hunter guy’s kid peeking around the door because beating a man for no reason and beating a man for no reason while his kid watches are fundamentally different things of course. Dick finally backs off, the guy reluctantly directs them to the old abandoned Caulder house, and Kori offers him some cash for his time and broken nose.

True heroes.

Kori at least calls Dick out on his simmering repressed violence.

There’s this fantastic hypocricy in how Dick continuously blames his issues on Bruce and talks about how he doesn't want Rachel (and later, Gar and Jason and the other "kids") to make the same mistakes he did in trusting the wrong person at the wrong time. But then he puts himself in that secretive mentor position, withholding information he doesn't think they can handle, demanding trust when it isn't deserved and going off to do everything solo.

Dick talks about breaking the cycle a lot without actually doing much to make it happen, and that theme is established pretty early on.

Anyway, back at the house Dr Caulder is gearing up for some more medical malpractice!

Are you sure?

He straps Rachel down under the guise of “running some tests”, and then decides he’s going to remove the source of her power even when she changes her mind. This goes about as well as you’d expect.

Gar tries to stop Chief and unstrap Rachel, because he’s a good boy. Dr Caulder shoots Gar with a tranq dart, because he’s very much not.

Naturally, this kicks off Rachel’s demonic powers again just in time for Dick and Kori to arrive!

After a brief, perfunctory confrontation with the Doom Patrol, Dick makes it down to the creepy lab basement in time to see Rachel opening some kind of portal.

One conversation with Kori, and Dick has changed his mind about his lone wolf stance! Rachel isn’t alone, he’s there for her now! And he’s not going anywhere! [lie]

At any rate, it works! The portal closes, her inky tornado thingy vanishes, and they hug it out. Aww.

The Doom Patrol see this as an opportunity to let Gar be an outside kitty, and send him off with this new group of misfits.

Unfortunately for Dr Caulder, his spine is already broken again and we leave him with one last shot of him looking mournfully out of a window from his wheelchair.

You brought this on yourself, dude.

[Titans rewatch]

[vitasexualiiis]

oh look, something i have put way too much thought into. mix and match or include all four, it's up to you:

dazai: mr. "i can't let anyone in" allowing something to invade his literal body? never. get it out. would be terrified he wouldn't have the capacity to love it the way it needed to be loved 🙃🙃🙃 he'd ultimately endure, but it'd be rough.

ranpo: that much discomfort?? for that long??? followed by the responsibility of a child???? absolutely not. HE is the baby. no other babies allowed. pregnant ranpo would be a menace, and manipulate everyone into taking care of him. he WOULD pretend to be pregnant like that one platypus, though. just to get extra food. let's be real.

fukuzawa: would be super fucked up that he didn't have control over his body or brain anymore! like, my dude would get morning sickness and be randomly bursting into tears or piss himself a little and would just be like, "this is it. the final betrayal. leave me here to die." he'd deal, though. like dazai, he'd also be worried he'd fuck the kid up. (he'd do fine.)

mori: vacilltes wildly between pathetic and weepy, and Mommy Boss. would be health conscious to the point of paranoia, to make up for the fact that he wouldn't stop working. (and because my dude def has OCD.) would absolutely give birth during an important Port Mafia zoom meeting he didn't think he could skip. (the sounds of mori pushing a child out of his body will be with entirely too many people forever.) otherwise? he'd be fine. out of all of these guys, he'd probably be the one most likely to take it all in stride and be excited about it.

BONUS ROUND, CHUUYA: would do a great job at being pregnant and also a parent! but would 100% take too many risks that would make everyone else around him insane. mori would have to condemn him to bed rest for the last trimester or he'd be out on missions and driving way too fast and kicking people in the head. he'd vacillate between "i'm going to be the best dad in the WHOLE FUCKING WORLD" and "oh god oh god oh god oh god" but at least he'd know he'd love that kid so hard that everything would be okay :)

so i guess the real takeaway here is that out of all of them, morichuu is the ship most capable of having babies 👍 have fun with that one!

forget top and bottom. which half of your pairing can handle being pregnant?

[jisungsmochi]

nct dream reaction - pissing you off

short little scenarios of you getting pissed off at the members and how they’d react

MARK:

tbh he wouldn’t even realise it was a proper argument until you raised your voice

he would be like 👁👄👁

he’s pretty clueless, so when he saw you storm off to your room he was like

“oh shit what did i do?”

would probably assume that you needed your space

so he’d brainstorm things to say once you were ready to talk to him again

would consider begging on his knees but didn’t want you to end up laughing at him or anything

he’d rethink over the situation and try and identify what he said/did

once you came out of your room, mark would be right infront of you

he barely gave you time to breathe before he blurts:

“i’m sorry that i was being an idiot before. i didn’t realise how insensitive i was”

you would almost forgive him in an instant i mean

he’s mark lee

but you would still explain to him how you felt, and mark would be all ears!

he’s definitely someone who wants to grow as a person

who learns from his mistakes

also never wants you to be mad at him, you were a bit scary hehe

RENJUN:

he can be a bit confrontational (i mean have you seen him rage at some of the members?)

so when he pisses you off, he would try and brushes it off as you being sensitive

but inside he knew he fucked up

depending on the situation, renjun would have a certain level of stubbornness

it prevented him from apologising first

he would try and speak to you like nothing happened the next day

but once you gave him to cold shoulder he was like

“oh no they didn’t”

is not the grovelling type but will definitely make his presence known to you

he would trail behind you throughout the apartment you shared

whether it be in the kitchen or in the living room, he needed you to look at him or atleast acknowledge he existed

eventually you were fed up with him always following you, so you snapped

once he heard the real reason you were upset, he immediately regretted it

quick to make it up to you tho

in any form of forgiveness you wanted!

this time it was in sweet treats from the local cafe

JENO:

he would rarely piss you off but in the case he does

he takes the situation really seriously

part of him wants to resolve it instantly

so he’d badger you until you snapped,

“i really don’t want you around me right now”

“but you need talk to me, we can’t be mad at eachother for long”

but honestly sometimes you just gotta work through things separately

so you distance yourself

he gets really worried, probably an over thinker

this leads him to slip into a phase of sadness himself

calls the older members to vent, wanting nothing more but to see you happy again

once you got over it, you’d see him curled up on his bed all weepy

“hey, i’m not mad anymore, we can talk it out”

he’d hold out his arms, begging you to hold him

you’d basically be the big spoon as you explain why you were upset with him

felt like an idiot after hearing it, opting to making it up to you by giving you plenty of kisses

HAECHAN:

could drive you insane sometimes

one day he takes one of his pranks too far and you just completely shut off from him

immediate silent treatment

ofc he doesn’t take it seriously, still trying to prank you / annoy you into talking to him again

but you stood your ground, the only words leaving your mouth were ‘leave me alone’

he knew he had to respect your space, but it didn’t stop him from feeling awful

he’d probably brainstorm ideas about how to get you to give him attention again

whether it was knocking on your door while cooing endearing pet names that you liked

or singing to you (he knew you loved whenever he sang hehe)

eventually you’d pull open the door and envelope him in a huge hug

“okay so now that we’ve made up, don’t tell the guys all this stuff i did for you okay? i’m gonna get teased!”

“uhhh too late, sent an audio message of you singing to me, to the group chat oops”

he would tackle you on the ground while pecking your cheeks

JAEMIN:

i see him getting mad at you for being mad at him

like he doesn't realise that he's being lowkey childish

he would let you have time to yourself, mainly also giving himself time to stop being mad at you lmao

he then realised that he may or may not have messed up

really doesn’t know if he should apologise asap or leave you be

the lovey dovey side of jaemin wants to cuddle you and kiss you and mumble apologises over and over

but right now he wasn’t sure if that’s what you wanted

goes through a midlife crisis honestly

tries to talk to you a few times but you’d just mumble back to him or just shrug it off

he eventually was like, nope enough

barges into your room, walks right over to you and says

“i’m sorry okay? i’m really freaking sorry now please stop being sad, my heart aches”

you’d look up at him, softly pouting which only added to his guilt

but as soon as he stepped closer to you, and you saw how apologetic he was

you could hold up the act anymore

he engulfed you into a warm hug, mumbling

“my baby can’t be mad at me, right? you love me too much, and i love you even more”

would pepper you with kisses and stay by your side for the rest of the day

CHENLE:

doesn’t realise you’re actually pissed off

honestly thinks you’re just trying to be all petty

until you refuse a hug from him, that’s when he’s like ‘oh fuck’

chenle wasn’t overly affectionate with you, so when you denied his hug, he knew something was up

becomes a clueless baby

really doesn’t know how to get you to talk to him again

considers asking the other members for advice but he’s got trust issues with them lmao

he just waits it out, probably tries to google some advice oop

but you don’t stay too mad for long so when you see him again

he’s sitting on the couch, head in hands, softly scolding himself for making you mad

you just go up to him and attack him with a hug

you both have a long talk about what to do if the other person is mad

after you’d watch movies while cuddling hehe

JISUNG:

god deadass the others would have to spell out that you were mad at him

once you stormed out of the room during a group hang out, jisung shrugged it off

jeno: “uhh dude aren’t you going to ask if they’re okay?”

jisung: “wdym, they just went to the toilet?”

jaemin: “my god, do we have to tell you everything?”

he walked to his bedroom where you were seated on his bed

he was about to walk in before you rushed to close the door but he stopped it before you could

“you seem mad, are you okay?”

“no i’m not, jisung. i would like some space”

he goes back to the others, really worried at this point

he knew he needed to make sure you were good before he could even consider going on with the rest of the day

eventually the rest leave

he knocks on the door repeatedly, waiting for a response

you open the door slightly, hiding your face

“i-i’m sorry that i upset you, please talk to me, i can’t leave you sad” he pouts

you pull him into the room, burying yourself into his chest as he slowly hugged you back

“it’s okay, i just needed time to calm down, sung.”

you both sat on the bed together, going over the events that led to what made you mad

jisung appreciated how you explained it to him, he just liked the fact you were talking to him again :)

[darlingpetao3]

House of W (Multiple!Wells x Reader, Chapter 5)

Rating: T

Summary: After having to deal with the deaths of an infinite number of Harrison Wells in the Multiverse, you, a magic-wielding meta, have a breakdown and unwittingly create a happy, fictitious sitcom life with some of your favourite men. In a world of comedy and cameos, can Team Flash and an out-of-town magician break through your powers to save you? And what if you don’t want to be saved...?

Tag List: @fandomdancer @bluesclues-1234 @crissymadlock @firstofficer-tilly @disneyoncerlover815 @marvel-lady10 @thecaptainsgingersnap @noctvrnalmoth @alexxlynn @dontbedumb3 @heyl0lwhatsup @ryou-cosmos @arianalilyblack @sonnensplitter @imagine-yourself-happy @stuckysdaughter​

PROLOGUE | CHAPTER 1 | CHAPTER 2 | CHAPTER 3 | CHAPTER 4

“Honeyyyyyyys…?” you call out in the house. Naturally, four handsome men come running.

“What’s happening?” Nash, in his jean shorts and Hawaiian themed shirt, asks you urgently.

“What’s happening is I am the worst mother ever!” you yell. Cue four sweet and simultaneous denials of your belief. “But I am—I can’t find the twins!”

How can someone lose two tiny babies? You had only looked away for thirty seconds and poof—Liberty and Belle were gone! They couldn’t even so much as crawl yet!

“Everyone, spread out,” a suspenders-wearing H.R. conducts the family, “they can’t have gone far.”

Harry moves closer to you to rub your back with small circles. “It’s going to be okay. You’re a wonderful mother. We just have a couple of troublemakers on our hands, it seems.”

You give a slight nod and begin to scour every place you haven’t already checked in the house. Everything is going to be fine, everything is going to be fine…

A pair of foreign giggles come from the closet by the alcove. How strange. You follow the sounds, and sometimes you’ll hear a “Shhhhh!” followed by more snickering. When you open the door to the closet, you’re entirely shocked to find two little girls who look to be five years old—one in overalls and the other in a dress.

“Libby, Libby, Libby! I told you to be quiet!” Belle scolds her sister.

“But your hair was tickling my face!” Liberty tries to explain.

Meanwhile, you’re still stunned to see your babies have grown in such a short amount of time. It really should be such a surprise considering the shortness of the pregnancy, but still!

You try to find your voice by beckoning your husbands. “I-I found them!”

“Hi, mommyyyyy,” they say in such adorable unison. Their perfect little faces look up at you and you feel like you’re staring into a mirror-time-portal. You crouch down and open your arms.

“I was so worried,” you tell the girls. “I thought I’d lost you.”

Sherloque, H.R., Harry, and Nash soon appear behind you and gawk at their rapidly aged daughters.

“How are they five?” H.R. whispers his question to no one and anyone.

“A very good question…” Sherloque, in his white trousers and blazers with a sharp purple shirt underneath, strokes his chin.

You wipe a tear from your eye and clear your throat. “Why don’t you two hooligans help your Pops with something in the garage?”

“You got it, dude!” Belle shoots you adorable finger guns before grabbing her sister’s and Nash’s hand. And then, in a flash, they’re gone. Indeed so quick that your voluminous hair flies every which way—books and papers suddenly strewn all over the house.

“Did Belle just…?” Harry starts to ask but falters.

“Run Mach one in my house? Yeah, I think she did…” you reply, figuratively and almost literally blown away. “Oh!”

H.R. holds your hand in comfort at the sound of your weepy noise. “What is it, Honey Bear?”

“I can’t believe it. I missed their first steps, their first words. So many firsts. They’re five!”

“There will be plenty more firsts that we won’t miss,” Harry soothes, “together.”

“If ma Belle ‘as the ability to run vitement,” Sherloque wonders to the rest of you, “what does this mean pour ma Liberté?”

This makes you think—remember things that you’d rather not remember. But, what if…?

You take quick strides towards the garage through the kitchen, your remaining husbands following closely behind. Peering out the window, you spot Liberty using her glowing purple hands to float a socket wrench over to Nash from his toolbox. His eyes are wide, but happily so, at the magic presented by his daughter.

“Little chips off the old block, aren’t they?” H.R. notes, putting an arm around your shoulders and Harry’s (the latter picks up and drops his doppelganger’s arm off of him).

“Yes, I suppose they are.” You sigh in contentment. “What do you three say to a little quiet time on the couch?”

The men don’t even need to voice their approval of the idea, only follow you devotedly out of the kitchen. Sherloque pulls up the rear but stops short at the refrigerator. The appliance is strangely already covered in artwork, with barely any free space available on the appliance. And then… there’s something else that sticks out amongst the vibrantly coloured scribbles.

He leans in a little closer to inspect a piece of paper. Sherloque notes the hurried scrawl of the letters:

You’re on a TV show. This isn’t real. We’re trying to help you.

The puzzled detective continues to analyze the strange message. What does this mean? he wonders.

He tries his best to remember what his life was like before he married you. What was life like? It takes every ounce of brainpower to attempt the recollection, but Sherloque unfortunately comes up short with answers.

Something he is both not known for and hates.

He checks around the room to see if anyone is watching him, but no one is in sight. Regardless of his lack of findings, he waves in the direction of one of the kitchen walls as if someone was watching. Sherloque then marches into the living room where you’re snuggled up with Harry and H.R.

“What is this?” he demands of you, flashing the note in front of your face. You, of course, have no idea and voice as such.

Harry snatches the piece of paper and proceeds to study it. “This is a joke, right?”

“I think someone must be playing a prank on you, my love,” you tell your suspicious French husband.

“And I think you are lying to us, ma petite,” he replies. Sherloque turns his attention to the other men on the couch. “Dites-moi, what is your earliest memory?”

Harry and H.R.’s foreheads scrunch in thought.

“The first thing I ever remember is showing up here for dinner a few nights ago,” H.R. says slowly. “But it feels much quicker than only a couple of nights…”

“And you, (Y/N),” Harry adds, “I feel like I’ve known you my entire life, and yet my first memory was the same as this jackwagon.”

“Aww, Harry, I feel like I’ve known you my entire life too,” you say sweetly. “All of you!”

Sherloque squints at you. “Stop that. You are hiding something. Eet is the way you swallow with difficulty and perspire. Aussi the tapping of your foot.”

“I am not hiding any-”

“-You lie!” Sherloque raises his voice. H.R. and Harry stand up from the couch and face you with crossed arms, pulling his blue plaid shirt tighter against his chest.

“Is it true?” H.R. asks you, looking ever so much like a puppy dog. It pains you to see him look so hurt. They both seem to take Sherloque’s word for it. And over yours?

“Is any of this real?” Harry finishes his opposite-self’s question, then points in the direction of the garage. “Are they real?”

“Of course our daughters are real!” you find yourself shouting at the notion otherwise. “They’re parts of us!”

“Then what have you done to our memories? You’re keeping secrets!”

At this point, Nash enters the room with Liberty and Belle, clearly not expecting an argument from their idyllic family unit. His hands on their shoulders. They must have heard the fighting…

“Listen,” you try calmly, “I did this for us. You don’t want to know what happened before our lives together here. You just don’t.”

“You do not get to choose for us,” Sherloque counters sternly.

The tension can be cut with a knife, and the proverbial knife that does the cutting comes in the form of a sound—the doorbell.

“Who is that, (Y/N)?” Harry asks you.

“I don’t know. That’s not me, I swear it,” you tell him, very much confused yourself. Each of your husbands stands with their arms still crossed, waiting. It hurts you to see them so upset with you. This was supposed to be perfect. This was supposed to be easy.

Your feet that feel like lead somehow manage to carry you over to the door. Twisting the doorknob, you open the door to reveal another extremely familiar face…

“How’s it hangin’, Miss (Y/L/N).”

What? No… It can’t be him?

Looking the epitome of cool—dressed in stone washed jeans, a yellow button-down shirt with a black leather jacket thrown over top—stands the man you never thought you’d see again. Especially in your own safe little world.

Eobard Thawne.

The man walks right in the house like he owns the place with an incredible amount of swagger.

“So, what’s a guy gotta do to get a drink around here?”

[i-prefer-the-term-antihero]

Additionally, your thoughts on Dracula and Adrian from the Netflix adaptation of Castlevania? I find Dracula really tragic, and the ending scene of Season 2 crushed me because I was not expecting Adrian to cry. He’s usually so stoic and calm that I didn’t think he would weep, I expected him to just shrug it off like heroes usually do, but no, when given time to process everything, the first thing he does is break down into tears. Sypha was right in calling him a brooding teen in an adult body.

Ohh man. If you just take a look at my writing blog (or anywhere I post my fanfiction) it’ll become pretty clear pretty quickly how I feel about them XD So far all my Castlevania fics have been about the Tepes Family. Adrian and Drac are my favorite characters in the series!! (Though I do love pretty much all the characters in it.)

YES YES YES!!

They did an incredible job making Drac sympathetic and tragic. I don’t know if you know anything about the games, and granted, they couldn’t put a lot of story stuff in the games, but (at least as far as I’m aware) in most of them it’s like “ya, he was an evil dude who did evil things because he was evil.” So it actually would have been pretty accurate to the source to make him just an unsympathetic, irredeemable villain, but they didn’t and I LOVE them for it. Playing Symphony of the Night (Alucards game) after watching the series l was almost longing for that Drac I know and love from the series, (though it’s fun to see evil Drac too).

As I’ve said, I adore redeemable villains, and they did an amazing job with him, to the point where pretty much everyone in the fandom adores him, which is extremely tough to accomplish—even if you write a redeemable villain well, often large parts of the fandom don’t see it and hate the character. I knew that the point was that they were going to defeat Drac but I have to say, especially since I originally knew nothing of the games, I was hoping they’d save him by the end.

I think the fact that he liked and was kind to Hector and Isaac was evidence that he wasn’t too far gone. I mean, the only two people he genuinely trusted and liked in his court were human…that’s so interesting, I wish it was at least talked about, either in the show or in the fandom. I think he actually liked humans, partially or especially because of Lisa, he just...was so angry, and needed someone to blame. He probably ultimately blamed himself for not being there to save her, and it was just easier to blame the humans he once hated/didn’t understand, even if in reality he didn’t hate them as much as he thought he did...

Doing more thinking and research into the show for my “If These Walls Could Talk” fic I recognize now that symbolically it made sense even within the show that he died when Lisa died (which I can explain more about if you want but id probably end up going off on a long tangent so I’ll save it)...but I still thought practically, in the show, he could have still been redeemed.

Omg I LOVED that. The longer I take to sit with it, the more I realize just how much I loved that they put him crying instead of shaking it off.

It’s very interesting that Drac and Alucard are more openly emotional characters. I might be totally wrong, but as far as I remember, they (...and Lisa when she dies, and probably Isaac in a flashback), are the only main characters we see openly cry. It’s a pretty bold move to make any of your characters emotional like that, but especially your villain, and your bold handsome hero. It’s sooo easy to get emotional characters and emotions wrong…or just offputting to some people...but more on that later.

I think Adrian and Drac are both rather sentimental, in an odd way. Much of Drac’s motivations in the show and even in the games (the times his motivations are explained) had to do with his wives (yes he was married before Lisa in the games...unless Lament of Innocence was retconned...) which is interesting. So many of his decisions are based on emotion. He lets Lisa in just because he likes her, he goes to war with the world because of Lisa, he sits in his study mourning her loss, he let’s Alucard kill him… I also notice very often he digs his nails into his palms until they bleed, presumably because if he didn’t he’d hurt someone else (in the scene where he hurts Alucard, he does this). His sentimentality doesn’t diminish is power as a villain, which is SO difficult to accomplish.

 I am emotional myself so I absolutely love to see emotional characters, but for most people, seeing even a normal character be emotional diminishes them in their eyes, or makes them whiny, so making your villain even a little emotional, and having that not take away from the audiences perception of their power as a villain is sooooooo hard to do, and I applaud them for making a so well-beloved, and still villainous and intimidating, but also emotional (at times) villain.

For Alucard. I don’t see any problem with him being emotional, but it makes even more sense if he’s a teen in an adult’s body—which was indeed portrayed quite well.

Yes that was interesting when he cried when drawing his parents!! I wasn’t expecting that when I saw him drawing them. I was enjoying and intrigued by his story so much, then when he started crying I was caught off guard—but in a good way. It really made me feel for him, and understand that he was still grieving his mother, and that knew the gravity of what he was currently doing.

I think it’s kind of important to show that kind of thing in a situation like this. It’s easy to think Alucard hates his dad, and they need to show the emotion of the situation to make it clear “no he doesn’t hate his dad, this actually breaks his heart, he just knows he has to do this.”

I loved when he was telling Trevor and Sypha about how much the world would lose by killing Dracula. It’s really interesting that he hides his emotion with them, and that Trevor and Sypha are so stoic. The son of Dracula isn’t the guy you expect to be the only hero who cries.

In “For Love” when Trevor’s like “Don’t get weepy about it” I was sitting there, sobbing, like “No, please get weepy about it! Let the boy cry for goodness sake!! Give me some emotion!!” But I too was not expecting him to cry like he did, and in grieving the death of his parents...

I knew the crying scene was coming because I’d seen pictures of it on here and pinterest, but I had no context for it. In the end it wasn’t just the weeping itself that made the scene so impactful, it was everything surrounding it. I didn’t know it would happen when he was completely alone (and would be for the foreseeable future), and in grieving his parents, or about the ghosts/flashbacks before it (cementing his grief), or that it was literally the last scene of the season, or that there would be no music for both the scene and the credits thereafter.

And that was what really got me.

Because, firstly, we never got to see any flashbacks to his childhood, and that was what I was begging for the entire series (and hence why its what I write about). To finally get it, and it not to just be something the audience gets to see, but something Alucard himself is seeing... a happy memory he’s seeing when he knows that is completely gone, he cannot hope to have it again, and for him to now be in his father’s place…that’s heartbreaking. Like just having your character cry—let alone those kinds of full-on sobs—is painful enough, showing a son grieving his parents is a particularly heart wrenching kind of sadness, but showing that he is haunted by memories of those parents he lost—not only lost but one of which he killed, and, if SOTN is canon for the show, the other of which he could have saved—of a happy childhood, and he is alone with these memories for the foreseeable future...that is truly heart wrenching.

Also the scene with Trevor and Sypha in the wagon earlier in the episode was super sweet, they could have easily put the Adrian crying scene earlier, and had the Trevor and Sypha scene be the last scene of the season (and Trevor’s game actually does end with them looking into the sunset, so ending with the last scene of “For Love” would be accurate as well), and left it on a positive note, and the audience would have been left with a completeness. But they made a conscious choice put his crying scene last, and it was so powerful, because it made you remember that at the end of the day, he isn’t just our bold handsome hero, he was a son who lost both his parents, and that, to him, this isn’t really a triumph, but a loss. It also kinda confirmed that Drac wasn’t an "evil guy, end of story". That there was reason to grieve him, and to show his son grieving, and to leave it there because of it. It was a personal gravity too

In the end, it was the lack of music in the scene, and even more so during the credits, so theres only his tears, and all you are left with in the end is this amplified emptiness that really did me in. I think I literally sat there, tear tracks on my face, my mouth open when I hit the credits.

Playing Symphony of the Night after watching the show is really interesting in exploring his character. I knew there was very little story, so I wasn’t expecting much from the story, but I actually found that I was beyond excited whenever there actually was some story, and the few lines they did say are stuck with me.

Maria comments early on that Alucard’s not very good at talking. At first I just chalked it up to...weird translations or whatever. But the more I played the game and the more I thought about him in the show...I think she’s right. He’s not very good at talking, yet if and when he does talk he’s quite eloquent, and precise with his words. (This actually makes him a somewhat difficult character to write). I wonder if perhaps this has some connection to his emotionalness. He’s very careful with what he says, and this may spread to what he does—such as being careful when he shows emotion. I’m curious why he’s like this. It could just be his nature, but I wonder if as a kid he was ever hated because he was a vampire—maybe people made fun of him, and he cried, and they made more fun of him because of it—and he learned both to hide his emotions, and that he had to be very deliberate and show people he didn’t mean any ill will with his words. (And he looks older than he is so people might call him immature for acting his mental age). All very speculative, of course. But it’d be fun to write about!

Also, another thing from SOTN that is related to this topic, there was a fight that really struck me (enough I actually wrote a fic about it (inverted recurrence)). SOTN takes plays 300 years after the events of The Netflix Series (aka Dracula’s Curse). Most of the bosses don’t seem to have a lot of meaning story-wise, they’re just there for you to fight. The other day I (Alucard) walked into a boss room...and there were Trevor, Sypha, and Grant (who was omitted from the Netflix series). They were fake versions of them, of course. And there’s no dialogue in the fight so maybe I’m just speculating, but what struck me was that the fact that Dracula could use them against him probably means he still cares about them, even after 300 years. It probably also means that they’re some of the only friends he’s ever had. Granted, he was asleep for a good chunk of those 300 years, still. It goes back to that sentimental-ness I was talking about earlier.

I few years ago I watched the Gravity Falls commentaries, and from them I got a lot of the writing advice I still think about and use today. Alex Hirsch said something on this subject which I really liked which is “Hold your tears.” When a character cries they’ve broken, that’s as far as they can go. So if you make a character cry when the audience themselves doesn’t feel the weight of the scene, or it doesn’t feel like the character has broken yet, it can feel like too...much/cheesy, and distance the audience. especially with cartoons where the way it’s drawn can actually affect your sympathy for the character (it can look weird or accentuated).

They did such an awesome job with this by literally holding his tears until the very end. I don’t know how other, non-emotional people felt about it, but Ive don’t know if I’ve ever seen tears used so well in a show, pack such a punch. To have it not just be a part of the scene but literally the focus, and at the end...it was powerful.

Sorry for the long response, and more importantly, I’m beyond sorry for taking so so SOOO long to respond. I hope you enjoy my response, if you see it <3

P.S. For anyone else who made it all the way to the end, I actually have a Castlevania sideblog now: @symphonyofthewrite !! I’d be beyond happy to recieve asks like this over there, if you’d like to hear more of my thoughts!!

[demetriandelibinaryboyfriends]

AIGHT Y’ALL I wasn’t tagged but I’m doing this anyways because f u c k  i t

It's the year 2021 and you're obsessed with The Karate Kid. How are you feeling?

Deadasss weird as fuck, my dude. Like...out of all the things I could’ve predicted happening in our lord’s year 2021, it definitely was NOT getting hyperfixated on a hammy gay ship with a punk and a nerd from a goddamn karate soap opera. And yet...here we are??? I will never understand hyperfixations, my guy. But I’ve met a lot of really cool people in this fandom, so I can’t really complain.

Did you grow up with TKK or are you new to the series?

I have never seen a single Karate Kid movie in my entire life. When I was a kid, it looked kinda dumb so I never got into it XD But then I saw my roommate watching Cobra Kai on Youtube Red one day (he has every streaming service known to man) and I was hooked. And...here I am!

We gotta do the basics. Favorite character:  

Literally EVERYONE except for Kreese, Yasmine, Kyler, and Tory, sorry stans

Okay but if we gotta pick, Johnny Lawrence is my Problematic Fave. Also I love my boy Daniel, he’s trying his best!!! And Amanda LaRusso, we stan a queen!!!

Among the kids, definitely Miguel, with Demetri as a close second. I also love Sam, Aisha, Moon, and Hawk (pre- and post-Bastardization Arc, anyways XD)!

Favorite ship:  

Take a look at my username and take a WILD FUCKING GUESS lmao Yes it’s Eli/Demetri because DUH, every interaction they have is so fucking gay and Eli fucking saved him!!! And came back to him!!! And betrayed the world’s most terrifying dojo with a WAR CRIMINAL SENSEI all for Demetri!!! And how Demetri was willing to forgive him for everything at the drop of a hat because he always had faith there was still good in his best friend??? That’s TRUE LOVE motherfuckers. Please let them kiss in Season 4. I will sell you all of my limbs. Sam/Miguel is a close second because they’re cute as shit and it’s just so lovely to see two people so unapologetically smitten with each other. They are in LOVE, and I will RIOT if they break up again!!! Keep Sam and Miguel together 2k21!!!

Underrated character:

SAMANTHA LARUSSO!!! The amount of hate my girl gets for acting like a normal teenager and fucking up occasionally JUST like the rest of the cast makes me want to start punching things. She cares SO MUCH about her friends!!! And she loves the shit out of Miguel!!! She hasn’t always been the best friend but you know what??? Neither has Hawk, and we still forgave his ass!!! Also LET HER BE FEMININE but also kick utter ass, my god!!! Femininity should not be synonymous with being weak, y’all! ALSO DEMETRI, like yes, he likes to complain and occasionally run his mouth, but guess what else he likes to do??? Never give up on the love of his life his best friend Eli Moskowitz and refuse to lose faith in him no matter how much of a little shit he’s become, and I for one think that’s very badass of him. Also the way he takes care of Eli pre-Cobra Kai in his own snarky bastard way makes me absolutely Weak and needs more appreciation. Like the dude has charisma and COULD have probably made other friends and left Eli behind if he wanted, but did he??? No, he wants the weepy loser with the lip scar in the polo shirts and dorky sweaters and will protect him as much as his wimpy ass is able!!!

Underrated ship (don’t say therapy, lol):  

Among the adults, Daniel/Amanda!!! Like maybe I just don’t watch that much tv, but it seems kinda rare to me to see a happily married hetero couple, and it’s just nice to see a married couple who genuinely love each other and where there’s not like...lingering resentment or some shit. I feel like this ship gets overshadowed by Lawrusso a lot (which like--okay, fair!!! Daniel and Johnny do have a ridiculous amount of chemistry, and the gay undertones are undeniable, so I get it), and it makes me kinda sad. I do love Lawrusso, but I don’t like when Amanda has to get her heart broke for it to happen, you feel? Among the kids, honestly YasMoon. Like I really love the idea of Yasmine trying to better herself because of Moon’s influence on her and because Moon like...inspires her to be a better person, I guess? With their pretty strong friendship, it just makes more sense to me for Yasmine to get a redemption arc through Moon than through Demetri. ALSO girls DO often pull the whole “mean girl” shtick to cover up being closeted lesbians, and Moon IS canonically bi, so it could work!!! I just think this one could be a really interesting Friends to Lovers take, and could make a really nice coming-out arc for Yas. And MoonPiper too, honestly!!! Like they only got 5 seconds of screentime so I understand WHY it’s underrated, but I still love what we DID get and loved that there was a canon gay ship (even if only for 1 scene lmao). I’m really excited to potentially see more of them in Season 4!!! Please, I’m begging!!!

Wax On, Wax Off or Sweep the Leg?

Sweep the Leg because it will always be deeply hilarious to me how Demetri took note of the first move Eli ever used on him and spent presumably weeks perfecting it OUT OF SPITE just to get him back with it at the soccer game MONTHS later. Just goes to show how OBSESSED Demetri is with Eli and their little karate rivalry which is just NOT straight, I’m sorry

Which of Daniel’s dumb little outfits is your favorite?

There’s something so funny about this pretentious little fuck walking around in fancy suits once he becomes a #SuccessfulBusinessman, and still occasionally trying to do karate in a full-ass suit (take THAT, Tom Cole’s boba!!!) I’m also a big fan of how he looks in his gi with his little headband. Still killing that look as a 40-50-something!!!

Character from the films you most want to return, who’s not Terry Silver:

Tbh I have still never seen a single Karate Kid movie (they took them off of Netflix, RIP), so...I don’t really care if they bring anyone else back??? I’m invested in the characters we already have in the show, I don’t need some rando from the movies to make a cameo to have a good time XD The only character I really wanted them to bring back was Ali, and they already did, so like...I’m good??? That’s all I really needed, I can die in peace now XD

Scene that lives in your head rent-free:

Basically any fluffy Elimetri scene, but 5 in particular: ~Miguel first meeting Eli and Demetri at the lunch table, and Eli looking at Demetri like he hung every goddamn star in the sky ~Demetri going off at a terrifying, “unhinged” karate sensei on the first day of Cobra Kai because he made fun of Eli’s lip and Demetri is not about that shit ~ELI STEALING DEMETRI’S NACHO AND SMIRKING AT HIM, LIKE EXCUSE ME SIR PLEASE BE A LITTLE LESS HOMOSEXUAL IN FRONT OF YOUR GIRLFRIEND ~Eli yanking Demetri onstage during Valley Fest to hold a board, and Demetri being visibly like...extremely turned on when Eli breaks said board ~ELI SAVING DEMETRI DURING THE CHRISTMAS FIGHT, ELI APOLOGIZING, DEMETRI AND ELI KICKING COBRA ASS TOGETHER AKSBDCUWYVCBU

Will Anthony LaRusso ever be relevant?

I hope not! He’s kind of a funny meme character to pop up now and again but I don’t think he deserves a serious plotline when there are so many more interesting characters to follow.

You live in The Valley and are forced into the karate gang war. Which dojo do you join?

Miyagi-Do because Cobra Kai would eat me alive. Also I’d probably straight up get stuck and die in that cement mixer, if I even made it that far XD Besides, being salty that your friend who you have a crush on likes martial arts better than you and starting martial arts to impress them but also being too lazy to join anything TOO intense is a Big Mood and I am certainly not speaking from personal experience here, no sirree

What’s your training montage song?

"Shut Up and Drive” by Rihanna for a weight-training and bicep-flexing montage, “Whatever It Takes” by Imagine Dragons for a more intense punching-and-kicking-shit montage. I don’t know why this is, I just feel it in my heart.

It’s the crossover event of the century! Which TV show are you combining with Cobra Kai for an hour-long Saturday night special?

*Briefly panics because I don’t actually watch that much TV and most of the stuff I do watch is fantasy/sci fi shit that absolutely would not work for a CK crossover*

Hmmmm okay but ACTUALLY

You know what would be fucking funny as hell would be an It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia crossover. Allow me to elaborate: ~The Gang goes to LA on vacation during the height of the Karate Dojo Wars. They literally can get barely anything done without all these goddamn karate-fighting teenagers getting in the way. ~They are all very annoyed by this. Even the most obscure of tourist attractions is eventually intercepted by karate fights. ~Mac tries to join Cobra Kai because he sees all this karate fighting on, and wants to unquestionably prove both his badassery and masculinity. Both Johnny and Kreese are like “Wtf are you doing here? Aren’t you like 30?” ~Mac gets a planet-sized crush on Johnny after all of 5 minutes and endlessly gushes to the gang about him. The gang mercilessly roast him about this and about how much of a pathetic loser with his life together in no way whatsoever Johnny sounds like. They proceed to have exactly 0 self awareness about this. ~The Waitress is in town visiting family or something, and Charlie is stalking her, as per usual. However, every time he’s about to go up and talk to her, a pack of battling Miyagi-Dos and Cobra Kais throwing punches and kicks everywhere blocks his path. One times, Mac is among one of these packs and Charlie is like “???? He didn’t get kicked out of that teen karate dojo yet???” ~Seeing how much the Kids These Days seem to like fighting, Charlie drops by a local high school to try and sell Fight Milk to the kids doing karate. Only Kyler and Brucks buy into it, and subsequently get the entire West Valley High wrestling team sick. Charlie is inevitably arrested, as Counselor Blatt thinks he’s selling the kids drugs. ~Dennis makes a plan to have sex with every hot chick he can in Los Angeles. He meets Ali on a dating app post-divorce, and inevitably tries to bang her. It doesn’t work. ~Frank crashes the rental car, and inevitably the gang ends up at one of Daniel’s dealerships. Dee quickly takes a liking to Daniel and is like “Watch, assholes--Imma homewreck this guy’s marriage.” She starts frequenting the dealerships to attempt to flirt with Daniel, until one day she walks in on him having sex with Johnny in a back room and she’s like “Is that the guy from Mac’s goddamn dojo?!?!” ~Dennis, of course, tries to sleep with Amanda. Amanda is not having it, and rebukes him in the most snarky, Amanda-esque way possible. Dennis is just like “Oh not AGAIN--the women in this goddamn diva city have too high of standards!” ~Later on, the gang is at the beach and Dennis spots the blonde lady he went out on an ill-fate date with, and decides to give it another shot--that is, until he sees her go up and kiss another woman and he’s like “IS THAT THE LADY FROM THE CAR DEALERSHIP??? STUPID-KARATE-KICK-COMMERCIAL’S WIFE?!? YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME.” ~Dee complains to Dennis about her lack of luck getting laid, and Dennis is just like “Oh come ON, is everyone in Los Angeles gay???” Smash cut to Hawk and Demetri having sex, Moon and Piper making out, Bert and Nate holding hands, Chris and Mitch doing oral, and Amanda, Ali, and Carmen having a threesome. ~Frank tries to scam Kreese into buying cheaply-made karate equipment for his dojo. The gang ends up having to leave LA because Kreese is quite literally plotting all of their murders.

For tagging, uuuuhhhhhh @jackonthelongwalk @soe-leo @max-eagle-fang @cc-tinslebee @backawayfromthegay @asphodel-storm do the thing, if y’all haven’t yet!

[indefiniteimagines]

Not Even For A Minute || Poussey Washington Imagine *Requested*

Summary: Poussey has a crush on the reader and thinks she doesn’t like her back, but she does.

Pairing: Poussey Washington x Reader

Warnings: Fem!reader, lewd language/comments, language, reader doesn’t have a preferred sexual orientation, use of R slur, angst, fluff

A/N: Holy shit! This is my first piece of writing in actually only a couple of months, but I’m claiming years because I am officially back like I was in high school. I’m so sorry if this is not my best, I am EXTREMELY rusty, so take it easy on me for now :) 

It was dinner time at Lichfield and it was only my second meal in my new home. My new home filled with almost 200 other women. For the next 5 years, I will see the inside of this cafeteria 3 times a day, 21 times a week, 1,095 times a year and a whopping 5,473 times in total. You’re probably wondering why that matters, but it matters.

I take my tray and do a quick search for a place to sit. I find a spot at the very end of one of the middle tables. It was the only seat with no one in a two foot radius of me. I sit down and look at the food in front of me. My first dinner includes spaghetti, two mini oranges, a salad, and a brownie. It’s not horrible when you think about it. It’s a pretty standard meal. Well it would be without the questionable odor coming from the meatballs. I close my eyes and sigh. 

“Maybe she’s deaf.”

“She ain’t deaf.”

“HELLO!”

“She can’t hear you if she’s deaf, dummy.”

“Fine, then you try, Angie.”

I was so deep in my own world that I almost didn’t notice the cherry tomato that hit me in my head. 

“Hey, girl!”

I opened my eyes and looked to my left.

“Are you talking to me?” I asked with a hint of a nervous tone.

“Uh yeah, have been for the last 5 hours. You retarded or something?”

“5 hours ago? No that can’t be right. Remember, we was in the laundry room 5 hours ago, Tucky.”

“Jesus, Angie! I was being snide.”

“You mean sarcastic?”

“Snide means sarcastic.”

“Then why not just say sarcastic?”

I watched as “Tucky” closed her eyes and tilted her head in annoyance.

“I’m sorry, but did you guys need something?”

Tucky’s eyes snapped open, “Uh, yeah. Why’re you sitting here?” She took her bottom lip into her mouth as she waited for my response.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know anyone was sitting here.”

“She never said that,” Angie said while flashing her pearly browns.

“I’m confused.”

“Wow maybe she really is retarded,” Angie said.

“Tucky” nodded at Angie, “I think you’re right, Ang. Here, I’ll break it down real slow like for you: You don’t belong here.”

“Look, I don’t want any trouble. Just let me finish my dinner and I’ll never sit with you again.” I tried to reason with the little troll, but she just wasn’t having it. 

She nodded her head while picking up her milk carton. She then poured it all over my food. “Seems to me like you’re done.”

All I could do was stare with my mouth open. 

“Why did you do that?!”

“BECAUSE YOU DON’T BELONG HERE!” She screamed as she stood up and let one of her fist hit the metal table.

“Dogget! You’re done! Empty your tray.” A CO finally intervened from the next row over. Dogget and her Meth Mates got up from the table and walked out. 

All I could do was sit there with my head hanging low as I let a few tears escape. I’m not usually this weepy, but in my defense, all I wanted was that little brownie...which was now swimming in a pool of used milk. 

*A few tables over*

“Fuck was that about?” Poussey asked her family as she nodded her head over to the other table; finally arriving with her tray. 

“Mmmm, Meth Mouth and her cult were fuckin’ with one of the newbies,” Janae replied in the middle of finishing her bite.

Poussey hovered over her chair to get a good look at the bothered inmate and sat back down while shaking her head. 

After having a mini pity party for myself, I got up and dumped my spoiled tray before leaving the cafeteria. I go back to my temporary bunk and buried myself under my blanket. 

“Cheer up, Kid. You’ll be out of here sooner than you know.”

I gave a pitiful grin to the nice older woman.

“I like your eyeshadow.”

“Duh,” she said as she threw me a wink.  

I let out a sigh, got comfortable and laid in my bed until morning.

I finally fell asleep, but only for 2 hours. At the ass crack of dawn, I was woken up by the morning announcement, which had absolutely no enthusiasm. “Good morning, ladies. Try to seize the day. The world is your oyster.”

“You’d think she’d quit if she hates her job so much.” That was the first time I heard the redhead with the horrible bed head speak.

“Bell is about as enthusiastic as a wet bag of hair, but she’s one of the good ones.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said groggily.  

“You joining us for breakfast?”

I drifted back to sleep before I could hear her response. I woke up in what seemed like an hour, but was only 30 minutes. For the slightest second I forgot where I was. I opened my eyes and was met with DeMarco standing right in front of me.

“Well good morning sleepyhead! Nice of you to join the living.”

“What? What time is it?”

“You see a clock in here? What I do know is that you got 10 minutes left for breakfast. You better hurry.”

I hop down off my bunk and start to change.

“Thanks.” 

“You don’t talk much, do you?”

I gave her a shrug as I zipped up my jacket and headed for breakfast. I arrived in the cafeteria and was able to get my food right away since there was no line. Some tables are still filled, but some are also empty. I scan the room and pick the table farthest away from Doggett and her followers. I was in the middle of eating my eggs when Angie walked by and sneezed on my tray. 

“Oops, ‘scuse me,” she said with a shit eating grin.

“God damnit,” I whisper to myself while trying not to deck this bitch.

“You shouldn’t say the Lord’s name in vain like that.”

I look up at her through hooded eyes, “Walk the fuck away.” My voice was low and I kind of scared myself.

“Oooo, devil eyes. Hey! She’s got devil eyes,” she says louder than the first time, except now she’s giggling and pointing at me while backing away. Doggett sucks her bottom lip at me while flipping her hood and getting up to walk out. I can feel people starring so I do a very quick observation and then stand up to leave. 

“Empty your tray,” the guard at the door told me. “Get some coffee while you’re at it. It’ll help you stay full until lunch.”

 I look up at his name that’s stitched into his shirt. Ohhhh, so this is O’Neil. I heard some of the girls talking about his scandalous relationship with CO Bell. Good for them. I turned around and went to dump my tray before following the advice and going for the coffee. 

“Yo, why they always fucking with her?” Poussey asked the table as she watched in disapproval as Y/N dumped her tray.

“Why do you care?” Taystee asked while rolling her eyes.

“For real? You ain’t notice that ever since China got out, Prince Charming over here been lookin’ for a new helpless, basket case? I mean, shit.”

“Aye don’t talk about Brook like that. Not cool, Cindy.”

“ “Cindy”? Bitch, fuck you think you is? My mama? Ugh, check ya tone.”

“Whatever man. I’m just tired of seeing Meth Madness fuck with people like they run the place.”

“Again, why do you care?”

“Shit just ain’t right, is all.”

“Mmmhmm,” Taystee replied as they got up from the table.

I turn around after filling my mug and notice that it’s just me, the inmates that clean up and the CO’s supervising them. I carry my warm mug through the halls and I notice there’s not as many people crowding them as there were last night. 

“Inmate! Where you are supposed to be?”

“Uhm, I’m not really sure.”

“Wrong answer!”

“Wrong?”

“Don’t get smart with me. Jefferson! Tell inmate...Y/L/N where she’s supposed to be.”

“Well, since it’s after lunch, we’re supposed to be headed to our work detail. Not whatever you was doing, apparently.”

The tall guard with the creepy mustache looked down at me and raised his eyebrows.

“Thank you, Jefferson.”

“I don’t have a work detail yet.”

He closed his eyes and sighed. When he opens them he looked back at Jefferson, “you work in the library, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Take her with you.”

She sucked her teeth, “Man, what do I say when someone asks why she’s there? No offense, but I ain’t taking no shots just because she’s somewhere she’s not supposed to be.”

“What’s a shot?”

“Jesus fuck. Will you both get out of my goddamn sight?” 

He snatched my mug; Jefferson and I gave each other a look and started towards the library. When we got there it was almost empty.

“You know, the labels are there to help the books be put back in their respectful place, not to look cute. I mean, damn.” I notice Jefferson chuckle at the girl we hear before seeing. She’s talking to a pair of inmates who are whispering to each other before tossing another book down and scurrying off. 

“Are you fucking kidding me?!” she calls after them, but to no avail. She sighs to herself before returning back to work. 

“Hey, P! Whatchu up to?”

“Practically cleaning up behind bitches. I mean, why is it so hard to put a book back in its original spot? Jane Eyre belongs in literature, not SAT Prep,” she called back.

“Truly first world problems,” Jefferson said unamused.

“Yooo, you ever heard of “Oedipus”? It’s mad crazy. Like this one part where the main dude...” she kept talking as she rounded the corner to finally come face to face with us.

“...who’s this?”

“Our puppy dog for the day,” Jefferson said as she rolled her eyes.

“Oh alright then. Well I’m working over here in history. Y’all can start in fiction. It’s a fuckin mess over there.”

“Um, then why don’t we all work in fiction?”

“Did you not hear me say it’s a fuckin mess? Have fun.”

I walked away, smiling to myself. I didn’t think anyone here would care for books like I did.

After the work day was over, I separated from the two friends and went back to my temporary bunk until dinner. The next day I followed Jefferson back into the library.

“Oh, puppy dog is back.”

Jefferson turned her head to me, “Don’t you know when you gettin your work detail yet?“

“Sorry, still no.”

“As much as I’m sure you love the view you get, I’m gettin tired of you following me.”

“I can ask someone if I can work somewhere else.”

“T-ha! And make me look like a problem? I think not.”

“Nah, we could use the extra help in here since bitches can’t put shit back where it’s supposed to go. Hate to break it to y’all, but foreign language is even worse than fiction was.”

“My god. Can’t you help us over here instead of doing whatever it is the fuck you doin?”

“Uh no.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m President of the Library.”

“Says who!?”

“Suzanne,” she said as a matter of fact while leaning forward to show us her ID that read “President Washington: Library”.

“Aw damn. It’s official and everything. Man, that’s some bull shit,” Jefferson said as she walked away.

All I did was look at the Presidential badge and smile.

“Since you don’t complain like some people, just know you’re first in line for Vice President. Just don’t tell Taystee,” she told me on the sly.

“Taystee?”

“Jefferson.”

“Ohh, got it.”

“I’m Poussey, by the way,” she said extending her hand.

“Y/N. Nice to meet you.”

“Yeah you too.”

She has a beautiful smile.

Towards the end of the work day, I found myself near Poussey’s section. Since our work for the time being is pretty much done, I start to browse the shelves when I spot a book dear to my heart, “Alice in Wonderland”. I get a mini rush of serotonin and pop a squat up against one of the shelves. I lose track of time, until I realize I no longer see anyone. “Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality”. You are right about that, Mr. Carroll.

“Hello?” I’m immediately startled. I start to shuffle to my feet and by the time I stand, I’m met with someone else.

“Whoa, shit. My bad. I didn’t think anyone else was in here.” Shit, I must’ve I said that out loud.

“Sorry, I guess I lost track of time.”

“It’s cool. So you haven’t been assigned a work duty yet, huh?”

I shook my head.

“I, uh, I must admit that this is the best job. Call me bias, but it’s the truth.”

“Thanks,” I say with a slight smile.

“You’re the one Pennsatucky and her crew keep messing with.”

“Yeah, that���s me.”

“Y’all got beef on the outside or something?”

“No, but I found it’s better to not provoke a methed out mental case.”

“Not wrong there. Well, I’ll see you around. Oh and be careful with Alice, she’s my favorite.”

The next few days were the same. I would follow Taystee into the library and listen to her and Poussey be absolute clowns. Poussey and I got to be closer since we were usually the last two to leave. We talked about how much time we have, our family, and she even told me about the Vee drama. During my stint of unpaid work in the library, I was finally able to change out of the highlighter jumpsuit and into a khaki set.

After an hour or so into a shift, I found myself distracted with my favorite book, “In Five Years”.

“Oh uh, that goes on the second to last shelf right behind you.”

“Huh? Oh yeah. It was actually already in the right spot, but it’s one of my favorites,” I tell her as I put the book back.

“What’s it about?”

“This woman named Dannie-“

“Y/L/N!”

We both looked towards the door and saw and the same pasty CO that sent me here.

“With me.”

I gave Poussey a grin and walked towards the CO,

“Where are we going?”

He didn’t answer me and just kept walking. I followed him to a warehouse that smelled of Clorox and musty water.

“Janitorial. Your job assignment. Morello will fill you in on what to do.”

“Oh yeah I can do that. No problem.”

The first couple of hours involved cleaning the halls, but I moved on to the Spanish bathrooms. Poussey was right, the library was the best job to have.

*A few weeks later at dinner

“I don’t know why you’d let Edward Scissorhands cut your hair and not me.”

“Because Danita only charges me a bag of Doritos. Not two cokes. Plus, she don’t even ask for the Cool Ranch flavor!”

“Beggars can’t be choosers. I do two cokes worth of work, Child.”

I laughed at Taystee and Sophia having their little banter in the food line. I walked with them to the table and sat down.

“...but then the dragon realized the little ghost girl was friendly, even though she was cold as ice. Fire and ice, that would never work!”

“Why not? What happened to opposites attract?” I ask sort of challengingly. 

“Mommy said ice is used to put out fires. Well, technically water is used to put out fires but ice is just water in solid form. So the fire would go out!”

“But do you know what happens when fire and ice mix?”

“The world goes dark?”

“No. They make steam,” I gave Poussey a “subtle” smirk.

“Mommy says steam is for showers, crab legs and “fun times”.

“I miss making steam with a fine gentleman with a curve on that dick.”

We all laughed along at what Cindy said and I agreed with her.

“There are just some things your fingers can’t accomplish,” I said jokingly while being serious. She pointed her fork at me, “I like her.”

Poussey was noticeably quiet throughout the rest of dinner. Only chiming in to seem interested. She didn’t even finish her tray before she was dipping out.

“Wait I’ll come with you.”

“Nah, stay and eat. I’ll catch you later.”

“Uh oh. Trouble is Lezzy Paradise?”

I almost didn’t hear Cindy as I kept watching Poussey leave the cafeteria.

“Stop it.”

Taystee rolled her eyes and shook her head.

For the next few days, it was hard to get ahold of Poussey. Since we knew each other’s schedules, it was easy for her to avoid me.

Meals were no better. She made sure to get there early so by the time I was sitting down, she was done.

“Aye, you need to fix that,” Janae told me with her eyebrow raised.

“I don’t know what the problem is.”

“I know you are not that dumb,” Boo said as she sat across from me.

“She’s kicking her own ass because she broke the #1 rule of being interested in pussy...” she continued.

I looked at her as I was waiting for her to continue.

“Never fall in love with a straight girl!”

“Love? What-When did I say I was straight-”

“The other night when that one was talkin bout curved dick and you chimed in basically foamin at the mouth at the thought,” Taystee said.

“Noooo, I was joking.”

“Yeah well, apparently she don’t know that.” I looked at Janae and sighed.

I had to wait until the weekend to see her. It was pouring rain and there was a leak in the library and the cleaning warehouse had a slight flood, so neither of us had work.

I snuck my way to her bunk only to discover her to not be there.

“There’s only one place she’d go...” Janae told me.

I made my way down and opened the door.

She was right.

“...there was another before you, but she got out. There’s a time machine in the laundry room. That was their place. That’s where she goes to think.”

“How’d you find me?”

“Your bunkie.”

“What do you want?”

“What’s going on? Why are you being so weird?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said standing up.

“Are we not friends anymore?”

“Friends,” she said with a sarcastic chuckle.

“Can we please sit?” I gestured to the inside of her hiding spot. She backed up slightly to let me further in to the time machine and we both sat down. Neither of us said anything for a while until I did,

“I’m not gay...”

She nodded her head with a sad smile on her face.

“...but I’m not straight either. I’m just me. I’ve dated guys, I’ve had experiences with girls-”

“Experiences? But you’ve never dated a girl?”

“No, but for the past few weeks, I’ve really wanted to,” I said with a slight smile.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because of this. I didn’t want to say something stupid and mess this up. And because I’ve never dated a girl before, but I have dated guys, I didn’t want you to think I was using you. I thought that because I don’t identify as anything, you wouldn’t like me back.”

“I thought you didn’t like me.”

“I didn’t want you to get hurt.”

“Look, I got my heart broken not too long ago by a girl that promised me forever. She didn’t identify as anything either and she ended up falling in love with a dude when she got out. We were both in a dark place when we met and getting to know each other and eventually falling in love helped. I could’ve given up on love and fate, but I haven’t yet. Look, maybe this-..this connection that we have, challenges what you thought you were. And maybe I'm gonna get my heart broken in a thousand different pieces again. But those are maybes. You can't live your life according to maybes.”

The next few months were bliss. Poussey and I have connected on a level I didn’t know was attainable. 

Today is Valentine’s Day and right now we’re back in the time machine. We’re both laying down, holding each other and looking up at the ceiling. 

“It’s about a woman named Dannie who’s this a high-powered corporate lawyer. She’s one of those types who has everything planned out. The story has a lot of twists and turns because her five year plan goes differently than she thought.”

“So why is it your favorite if it’s so inconsistent? For a woman who knows what she wants “Dannie” sure seems okay with settling.”

“It’s my favorite because it mirrors me. It mirrors us. In five years I saw myself at some job a teenager would have with my only responsibility being my phone bill.”

“What do you see now?”

“I see me with our dog, Keith, holding signs with your dad on your release day. Then I see us heading to our apartment where you can see it for the first time in person. Then we’ll go to our jobs, pay rent, and hound our parents for travel money.”

“I’m in your future?”

“You are my future.”

She gave me a kiss when there was a bang on the cardboard door, “Hey kids! They’re doing interviews in the bunks,” Boo informed us.

When we got to her dorm, there were a few guards asking ladies questions about love.

“Does anyone else want to be asked questions?”

“Yeah, I do,” Poussey said while raising her hand.

I feel Taystee put her elbow on my shoulder, “What the hell?” The rest of the family comes around.

“Okay Washington, what is love?”

“Love. It’s just chilling, you know? Kicking it with somebody, talking, making mad stupid jokes. And, like, not even wanting to go to sleep, ‘cause then you might be without ‘em for a minute,” she looked at me, “And you don’t want that.”

•taglist: @mina672

[belpheroo]

Title: Untitled Genre: Hurt/Comfort, short bit of fluff. Pairing: Mammon x MC Summary: In which Mammon gets in trouble, Lucifer makes a half-hearted declaration Mammon then takes way too seriously and MC is there to make it better. Notes: I just like taking an insecure Mammon and showering him with affirmations until he cries. - MC Includes some of my headcanons about pact bonds aka emotional walkie talkie and pact marks appearing in the same spot on both MC and the bros. There is a passing reference to my other fic Between the Flash and the Thunder in this one, but you don’t need to read it to know what is going on.

In Mammon’s defense, he had done nothing that he hadn’t done before, so why Lucifer was so angry over some missing dusty old statue was truly a mystery. Lucifer turned a blind eye so often to his petty thefts and insurmountable debts to highly shrewd yet beautiful witches, but for some reason today was different.

He could practically feel the heat radiating off Lucifer’s body, a faint scent of sulfur warning that he could, at any moment, transform. Mammon knew better than to talk back in these moments so instead he waited with his arms crossed over his chest, head ducked down as if he could make himself smaller and unnoticable.

“You gave those harpies a relic of immense value.” Lucifer said, voice teetering between even and ragged, “It was one of the components that protects and seals this House from outside intruders… evidently… we have far worse concerns within!”

His voice raised to a near shout at the end, but Lucifer restrained it back, eyes shut tightly as he composed himself. Mammon felt his pulse all the way to his fingertips, clenching the fabric of his sleeves tight in his fists, focusing on the solidness of the floor beneath him rather than the lightness that threatened to swarm through his head.

“… I-I’ll get it back.”

“No. You will not. I will retrieve it. You can not be trusted to any position of responsibility. In fact, I begin to think I made a mistake entrusting the well being of our human guest with such an irresponsible lout.”

Insults were nothing, Mammon felt the blow of words meant in teasing and in earnest all the time… but this was different. His eyes widened, a breath caught in his chest. He wheezed trying to form words of protest, but Lucifer simply threw up his hand, silencing him.

“These thefts will stop. Do you understand me?”

“Yeah…”

“I will think upon your status as protector. Until then, if you so much as step one centimeter out of line—“

“I got it, okay? …I got it. I’m sorry.” Mammon hurried to change his tone and must have appeared sufficiently abashed because Lucifer’s shoulders relaxed and he turned his eyes away from Mammon. That alone hurt worse than anything his brother had said.

“…okay. Good.”

As always, something softened in Lucifer’s features and Mammon could feel the regret mixed into his anger. It wasn’t like Lucifer enjoyed this shit and Mammon knew that… but thievery was a compulsion he wasn’t likely to kick for good anytime soon. Perks of being the Avatar of Greed.

“You can go back to class.” Lucifer said instead of what else was on his mind and Mammon did.

—

It was nearly impossible not to hide the sharpness in his breath as Mammon half gasped and half panted as he strode down the halls of RAD. Being away from the House was good, it got out from under the oppressive aura Lucifer gave off when he was angry… but in the back of his mind he kept hearing those words over and over.

…I made a mistake entrusting the well being of our human guest…

The thought of Lucifer taking her away from him made his stomach churn. He’d still see her, sure, but her concerns? Her needs and her wants? Those would fall to another brother. He’d be sidelined and unimportant, pushed aside. Would she make a pact with that brother? Who would it be? Asmo? Beel? Most likely Satan if Lucifer could stomach granting such a privilege to him. He was reliable, he was smart.

Mammon growled under his breath, pushing a hand roughly through his hair and tugging, trying to distract himself with the pain.

“Stupid, worthless idiot… shut the fuck up, stop thinkin’ bout it.”

It was no use. His thoughts were spiraling and his chest was prickling with tightness. His eyes stung and Mammon knew then, without a shadow of a doubt, he needed to get out of sight. He found an empty classroom just in time, forcing open the door and slamming it closed as he furiously began rubbing at his eyes with the back of his fist.

Why the hell was he so upset?! He didn’t give a shit about Lucifer being mad! Luci would posture and raise his voice and be rough and then by tomorrow he’d be apologetic … even if Mammon did probably deserve this scolding and worse for having stolen from Lucifer yet again.

But… but dammit just the thought of Lucifer giving her to someone else made him want to fuckin’ scream. He didn’t want them near her! She was his to protect! He was the one she should be comin’ to in the middle of the night, when she was scared of thunderstorms. He was the one who should be taking her around Devildom, the one she was glued to and brought her homework to when she needed “help”… even if they just played on Devilgram the whole time instead.

Mammon was so preoccupied with these thoughts he jolted when the classroom door opened and softly someone slipped in.

“… hey um— so. You like, okay?”

Her voice was quiet and strained, but he knew the human exchange student’s voice anymore. In confusion, Mammon turned and saw in the light that her eyes were red-rimmed and her cheeks blotchy… as if she had been crying. His entire demeanor shifted, brows snapping together as he stood up taller.

“Whose responsible for this, huh? Who messed with ya?”

“Uh? What? Dude. I’m not crying because I want to. It’s you!” She waved back and forth between them, indicating to something invisible.

“Ha…w-what? Me? The Great Mammon? Absolutely not, I would never be all weepy and pitiful and junk.”

She gave him a skeptical look, one well-groomed brow lifting and a smirk on her lips. She reached into the pocket of her RAD uniform and produced a handkerchief.

“Your nose is running.”

He swiped it with a scowl, balling it up and roughly scrubbing his face.

“It’s the pact. I can feel what you feel when you are close.”

Mammon grumbled some reply, but it was indecipherable behind the handkerchief.

“You wanna talk about it?”

“No… man, this sucks. Just stupid really, but it’s gonna mess everything up.”

She nodded, not pointing out he had said “no” and then proceeded to begin talking about it. That was pretty typical Mammon behavior.

“I got in trouble.” He mumbled, looking away from her sheepishly, “…Lucifer said I ain’t responsible enough to be lookin’ after ya anymore. So… guess ya will have to get used to Satan or someone.”

The silence after he stopped speaking was deafening, but he felt something in his chest… a tiny twinge of anxiety similar to what he had felt before but… faded. Like someone speaking through a tin can on a string into his heart. Mammon risked a short sideways glance over to her and found she was standing rigid, fists clenched at her sides. Her glossy lips were pressed tight together, redness spreading from her cheeks down her throat like a lit fuse before she exploded.

“Lucifer can shove it, I’m not taking anyone else! He can’t make me.”

“W-well… I dunno, it might be better cause I ain’t exactly the most reliable kinda guy. Ya probably would be better off if you had someone else watchin’ out—“

“What? What? What are you saying? Like, I can’t hear you over Lucifer talking out your mouth!”

Not what he had expected, he’d give her that.

“Say sike like right now!!!” she demanded.

“Wha- wait?! Why are you mad at me!”

“Because I don’t hear you saying you told him no!” She said, crossing her arms tightly against her chest and huffing, “Because you are standing there talking bad about my best friend… I don’t want someone ‘more’ reliable or whatever. I rely on you just fine. You are…I…”

She struggled to get the words out, the redness in her face having little to do with anger now.

“Mammon, I want you. No one else. I don’t care whether they are better at the job or not, they will suck at it because they aren’t you!”

Relief was immediate, followed closely by sheer embarrassment as Mammon hid his face with her handkerchief, covering his nose and mouth and hoping she wouldn’t notice the flush creeping down his own neck now.

She took in a shaky breath, eyes going wide as her chest rose and fell a bit faster.

“Wow… wow, I can like totally feel that.” She said, voice hushed, “You’re so—“

“Shuddup!” Mammon groaned, tossing aside her handkerchief and dragging her close. With her face pressed into his chest, she couldn’t see his face anymore and honestly… Mammon couldn’t bare to let her see him, pact or no pact.

His embrace was crushing and no doubt not very comfortable, but she softened under his touch and gently her hands came up to soothe over his back.

It was too much. It was just too fuckin’ much.

“…you’re just so happy.” She murmured into his shirt and Mammon swore he could feel her smiling.

“What if I am?! W-what’s it to ya, huh? Human?”

She giggled, arms wrapping around him fully as she squeezed back as tightly as she could.

“You’re so weak… puny human arms. Nuthin’ compared to the Mammon.”

“Ohhh, can you pick me up!? That’d be fun!”

“N-no!”

“Oh, so you can’t? Got puny demon arms?”

Mammon wasn’t one to take a challenge laying down. Her feet lifted off the floor as he hoisted her up, wiggling and giggling with delight. She got her arms up between them so she could wrap them around his neck, hooking her legs behind his own.

“Whee! Much better.” She hummed, looking down at his very unamused face with a smile. She had succeeded in her goal of distracting him and Mammon knew it.

“...I ain’t got puny arms.”

“I know, Mammon.”

“You’re bein’ extra needy, human.”

It wasn’t true. He was the one who needed and needed and needed. Her affirmation, her affection… don’t look at anyone else. Don’t be with anyone else. Mammon was suddenly struck with the knowledge he’d give up every penny in his bank accounts if it meant no one else ever got to have her.

And he didn’t know what that meant, but he knew what she wanted it to mean right now.

“…I’ll tell Lucifer no.”

“Hmm? What was that?” She cooed, voice teasing and light.

“I said I’ll tell um no! I ain’t given ya up!”

She weighed next to nothing with his strength, but still he settled her unto the instructor’s desk, palms flat on either side of it’s smooth surface as he leaned in, caging her.

She kept her legs locked around him, but now she could put them around his waist. Her hands slid from his neck down his arms, coming to rest on his forearms where she kneaded and rubbed at the bare skin where his sleeves were rolled up.

Normally, this kind of position would have Mammon a stuttering mess, but there was something determined and direct in his eyes, as if he couldn’t focus on anything right now but making sure she knew he was in earnest when he said what he said.

“I’m not giving you up either.”

Simple words, and yet she could feel where they pierced into his heart, leaving him half joy and half agony. Why did it hurt him so much when she spoke kindly to him? Mammon craved the words, but something held him back.

“You aren’t stupid.” She whispered, gently lifting her hand and resting it on his neck, watching as the pact mark began to appear exactly on him where it was on her.  Her thumb found it, pressing and rubbing in firm circles until she pulled a groan from Mammon’s throat and he tipped his head forward to bury his face against her neck.

She felt his lips brush her mark, a touch more than a kiss, but a kiss all the same.

“You’re my first guy… you’re my favorite guy. I like you best.”

She knew if she kept it up, she was going to make him fall apart… and part of her wanted to. Part of her thought it was exactly what he needed. Instead, she gently kissed the side of his head with a loud and pronounced “mu-wah”.

“C’mon! Let’s cut class.” She said, gently wiping Mammon’s cheeks with the back of her hand when he untangled himself from her. He sniffed once, refusing to meet her eyes and nodding vigorously as he got himself composed.

“Eh… Lucifer did say somethin’ bout not breakin’ anymore rules today.”

“I’ll tell him I was sick and needed company.”

“You ain’t sick!”

“I’ll tell him it was ‘girl troubles’. That one gets him so quiet you’d think I was the Avatar of Awkward Silences.”

Mammon laughed, rolling his eyes which were starting to look a bit less red and a bit more mischievous as he considered the possibilities of ditching. Taking the opportunity, she slid off the desk with a tiny flourish, spinning to fluff out her skirt before brushing it down resolutely.

“It’s decided! Two hellfire boba teas and chocolate newts are what the doctor ordered!”

She took his hand and he resisted only for a moment so he could relish the feel of her tugging him towards her and the sight of her pouting before she stamped her little booted foot on the floor.

“C’mooooon!”

“Alright, human. You’re buying."

[thephantomofthe-internet]

Read into Me Chapter 4: North and South

Steve Harrington x Reader

CATCH UP ON THE SERIES HERE

Words: 4,753

Warnings: Swearing, bullying, i reference the plot of Wuthering Heights and that has some icky stuff in it idk what to tag that though

Author’s Note: How’re you guys liking the series so far? I’m really enjoying it, I’d love to hear what you guys think, good or bad! Also, is over 4k too much for you guys? I used to strive to hit that mark when I first started but the fandom’s changed so much, I feel like an old fart lmao

Tag List: @divinity-deos @thecaptainsgingersnap​ @wolfish-willow​ @scoopsohboi​ @herre-gud-nej​ @clockworkballerina​ @maddie1504​ @i-am-trash-so-much-its-scary​ @buckysarge​ @wildcvltre​ @stanleyyelnatsiii​ @unusuallchild @alwaysstressedout @linkispink1995​ @asharpkniffe​ @a-big-ball-of-idk​ @mochminnie​ @used-avocado​ @sledgy14​ @the-creative-lie​

You didn’t hear from Steve after that, save for him returning your essay with minimal markings and a graded ‘A’ on the top. He’d gone back to his people as quickly as he’d left them, letting Vicki talk his ear off from across the aisle. You didn’t mind too much, her voice was grating on the ear, but her hair was pretty and she actually seemed to ask him questions. You didn’t know why it mattered to you that she seemed genuinely interested in Steve, but you decided that he deserved someone who cared enough to know him. Everyone deserved someone who cared enough to know them. Tina just talked about herself for the whole class when everyone was supposed to be discussing the book at hand, Wuthering Heights, and it got very annoying. You just filled out your discussion questions and did your best to be invisible. No one seemed to notice except for Mr. Lawrence, who’d scolded you twice now for not participating in group discussions.

“I know that you know this stuff, but I can’t give you participation points if you don’t participate with others.” He handed you back your discussion sheet for chapter four. You’d gotten everything right; Mr. Lawrence was lobbing low balls at the class to try to get them to read the book. You didn’t change your tune; you didn’t want to talk to your peers. It didn’t matter anyway, no matter what you said to them you’d still write down the same answers and get the same grade.

You didn’t hear much about your failings to participate after he handed back your first essays. You weren’t surprised that you’d gotten a low ‘A’ on the paper; you hadn’t tried that hard on it. You noted that he’d given you a good grade on your editing, which Mr. Lawrence noted on the page that he could count it for your participation for the class, since you did so well with it. You couldn’t complain because it was a decent way to pass.

When the bell rang, you made your usual break for it, excited to be on your free period and free to sit in the sun for the afternoon. Tracy Lords was in Samantha’s gym class and with the weather so lovely they’d do class outside, giving you a chance to work on front profiles with her flat, pretty features.

Steve was dreading getting his paper back. He didn’t trust himself to get a decent grade and even with your help he was certain he’d pull above a ‘D’. Mr. Lawrence always handed out pairs face down, so no one got their grades till they were ready to flip over the page. This was the moment that he always dreaded. He found that it was easiest to rip it off like a Band-Aid, just flip it and see so it can be over. He never read comments, he just needed to know if he failed, but the bright red writing on the top of the page caught his eye immediately-‘I’m impressed, Mr. Harrington’ with a 81 percent seeping through to the back of the page. He stared at the grade until the bell rang, unsure if it was even real, if he was even awake. Once he woke up from his beautiful dream, he knew he had one thing to do.

He burst in the hallway like a golden retriever out an open gate, searching for you without really knowing where to begin. He spotted you at your locker. “Y/N!” he called. You flinched, your shoulders hunching into your neck. You could feel people looking at you, which turned you beet red, almost purple, from embarrassment. You didn’t move from your space, hoping that the tile under you would pull back into a trap door and make you disappear from the scene. It didn’t, of course, and Steve found you quickly.

“Look at this!” he held up his paper to you, beaming like a child. You looked at the paper slowly, taking in the grade and the note at the top of the page, then his face.

“Oh…that’s great.” You said, unsure how to really respond. How was supposed to respond to someone else’s B?

Steve didn’t take in your uncertainty, continuing on “Thank you,” he said earnestly, lowering his voice to add “This is probably the best grade I’ve ever gotten in that class.”

“I’m glad I could help.” You couldn’t help but feel a sense of pride in how you’d helped him out. Usually, the only people around that you could help was your grandparents with chores or Samantha with getting out of her house for an afternoon and while you enjoyed helping them out, you didn’t get the same joy from it, having done it for so long. Helping Steve made you feel full in a way.

Tommy Hanson had been trying to call the new kid, Billy, over to him when he saw the whole scene go down. And he didn’t like it. Not one bit. There was a hierarchy to Hawkins, rules to follow until you graduated and either solidified your choices or moved the hell out. Steve was popular, the home town hero, the sports star. That kind of power was not something to throw away on a little nobody. Tommy wished he could be that popular, to have that sort of accessibility and he got close when he kept his friends in the right station. Steve had already fucked up once, that little Nancy Wheeler bitch had already demoted him from sex god to weepy heartbroken sad boy, but that was still working for him. And he needed his backup plan to still be cool.

Tommy stalked up to Steve, throwing an arm over his shoulders. “Hey, dude, come over here, Stefanie Tomlinson’s panties are showing, you’ve gotta see this shit.” He whispered at him, loud enough to make you cringe and look away, turning back to your books and the stickers on your locker door.

“Dude, don’t be gross.” Steve said, turning his attention back to you “Like I said, thanks for the help.” Tommy kept trying to pull him away, but Steve was taller than him and harder to move around.

“Yeah, like I said, no biggie.” You kept your gaze firmly locked on your locker door. You refused to be mocked by Tommy Hanson. He practically pulled Steve away from you, looking you over with a sneer as they walked off. Tommy didn’t like you, which you already knew. It wasn’t easy for him to hide his hatred in a small town. You didn’t know why, but he’d always been like this, ever since you were kids. He used to push you into the mud and chase you off the swings in elementary school. Since you’d grown up, his cruelty had mostly subsided, but the animosity remained, especially after your mother had threatened his family with albeit an unrelated law suit, which succeeded in getting the whole family away from yours. That was the last helpful thing your mother had done for you.

Tommy kept his arm locked around his friend’s shoulders, escorting him away from potential social suicide. Steve held up his arms in defeat, laughing all the way. “Come on dude, she’s not anything to waste your time on.” Tommy said in a voice loud enough for you to hear, but quiet enough to seem like a whisper.

You shrunk in place, unable to pull your eyes away from the scene, a silent plea echoing in your mind for him to look back if he wasn’t a dick head like Tommy, left unspoken but felt in the depths of your soul. You didn’t know why it hurt you as badly as it had; you knew in your head that he no better than his friends. But your heart had hoped that he was different, that he could be better than him. You turned away before it hurt too badly, collecting your books in your arms and rushing off towards your spare period, hoping to find a bit of quiet to recover from what you’d just experienced.

Steve turned back to see you walking away, his laughter dying in his throat, what Tommy said bouncing around his mind. As soon as Tommy released him, he smacked the freckle faced boy hard in the ribs. “Can you try to not be a dick for five minutes?” he asked, getting a laugh out of Carol, who’d been filing her nails without much interest in the whole thing.

“What? Who gives a shit about her?” Tommy asked, doubling back with his hand on his chest.

“She’s a nice girl, dude, don’t be an asshole.” Steve replied sternly. That piqued Carol’s attention. She turned up from her chipped red nails to look Steve over with a discerning eye.

“Oh god, don’t tell me that you’re trying to bring in another Wheeler type chick into this.” She groaned, brushing away a strand of red hair from her cheek.

“Jesus Christ…” Steve rubbed the bridge of his nose “I don’t know what Nance did to you, but you need to calm down on that crap.”

“But you’re not dating her, right?” Tommy asked.

“Dude, all she did was help me with an assignment, that’s all.” Steve groaned. He felt like a dick, being so dismissive of you, he did like you, but he didn’t really even know you and neither did his friends. He didn’t like anyone assuming who he was or wasn’t with, and yet he still felt like a shithead. He didn’t know why but he did.

When you came home from school, your grandmother was waiting for you by the front door, red plaid kitchen rag draped on her shoulder, apron hanging low on her hips. “Your mother called when you were at school, wanted to see how you were.” She said, wiping her hands on the apron. She shook her head, obviously annoyed at the thought of her absent daughter.

“What’d you tell her?” you asked, kicking off your sneakers and putting them back onto the rack. You didn’t hide your distaste in your mother’s asking about you.

“That you were at school and to call back for you later. She told me to tell you that she’d be back in June and that she was bringing back someone special.” Your grandmother replied, turning back into the kitchen to return to whatever she was making. Your grandfather was passed out on the couch, his snores emanating from the living room almost comforting to you as you trekked up the stairs. You knew that your mother wouldn’t call again for you. She could never remember to call you at a time when you might be at home. She certainly wouldn’t be able to remember to call back.

Before you could even set your bag down, the phone on your desk blared from your desk. Samantha was at soccer practise, so you didn’t believe it was for you, but with your grandmother busy in the kitchen and your grandfather passed out, you grabbed the phone, asking “Hello?”

“Hey, it’s Steve,” from his own room, Steve had thought about talking to you again for most of the day, but he’d only found the confidence what the day was over and he was home, where he didn’t have to look at you to speak to you. “I’m sorry if Tommy was weird to you today, he’s an idiot.”

You frowned, brow furrowing “It’s cool, no worries…” you replied. You didn’t feel like explaining how you already knew how much of an idiot he was.

“Yeah, so I was kind of wondering…if you’re not busy…would you mind maybe helping me with the readings? I don’t get this shit at all.” He chuckled awkwardly. In truth he’d had no plan to actually read the novel they’d been assigned, that’s what Cliff’s Notes was for, but he wanted to be around you more, so if homework was a reason to get to be around, then he’d actually read.

“Um…sure, I guess I could.” You didn’t really know what the right answer was for you. You weren’t sure that you trusted him, especially after what had happened that afternoon with Tommy, but your gut told you to say yes.

“Great! What’re you doing right now? Could you meet me somewhere, the reading for the tenth chapter is due tomorrow and I don’t even know what’s happening.” He felt a tad desperate, which was not a feeling he was used to around girls.

“I mean…where would you wanna meet?” anxiety was creeping up the back of your neck. You tried to wipe it away like sweat, but it was stuck to your brainstem.

“You could come over to my place or like I could meet you at the library or something.” Steve didn’t exactly have an answer to that one, he wasn’t even sure he’d get this far. He looked around his messy room, wondering if he’d made the right choice.

You didn’t exactly want to be in his house, but you didn’t have a car and it would take you forever to walk back into town to get to the public library. With a heavy heart, you accepted your unfortunate fate. “I could come over to your place.” You said, squeezing your eyes shut. You hoped that he wasn’t going to take that the wrong way.

“Yeah?” Steve hoped the panic wasn’t evident in his voice. His mother was still out of town and his father spent more time at his office in Carmel then he spent at home as it was. He’d let the mess pile up a bit and he didn’t want to look disgusting.

“Yeah, sure.” You tried to sound casual, but your blood had run cold and your hands had gone clammy. You gripped the receiver far too tightly, your eyes shifting around your room.

“Alright, cool, yeah cool…” Steve said, trying to sound casual “How long do you think it would take to get here?”

“I mean…you still drive the rust coloured BMW, right?” you asked, pulling your curtains back to peer out your window.

“Yeah?” Steve asked.

“I can see your house from my window, I’ll be there in like a minute.” You said.

Steve’s head turned upward, looking around worriedly. He bid his goodbyes quickly, turning his full attention to his messy bed and dirty floor, trying to get every pair of boxers laying on the floor into a basket. He hadn’t expected you to agree to come to his house, and his stomach churned at the idea of freaking you out. He didn’t want to scare you away because he was messy and gross.

You felt as if you’d swallowed your tongue. You rushed for the door, uttering a quick goodbye to your grandparents and pulling your backpack straps tight on your back. It was only five feet away. Five feet. Cross the street and up the driveway and you’re there. You took in a deep breath through your nose and took the first tripping step down your driveway, your body not co-operating with your mind and trying to escape where you were trying to bring it. You needed to calm down, your palms were starting to sweat and your knees had turned to Jell-O. You stopped in the middle of the empty street, huffing out another breath, trying to remind yourself that nothing could hurt you over there. That you could handle anything thrown at you.

Somehow, you made it to the front door without blacking out. You went to knock on the door, but it opened before you made contact. Steve looked frazzled, his hair flopping into his eyes, his expression panicked. “You’re here!” he said, his body blocking the doorframe.

“Am I not supposed to be?” you asked, your hand coming to clutch the top of your opposite arm.

“Nah, nah you are I just-never mind. I’m going crazy I think, come on in.” Steve stuttered, moving his arm out of the way, letting you inside. He didn’t know why he was nervous, he was never nervous to have a girl over. But you weren’t like the usual girls he would invite to hang out by his pool.

You stepped into his house cautiously, entering the dark space like it was a well-preserved colonial mansion. The Harrington household was cold. Everything was navy blue, steely grey, and white. He’d left the lights off in the entryway and the kitchen, although the lights above the grey brick fireplace were on, three white pot lights lighting the whole space. It made his house look ominous. Nobody was around either, you knew that Steve was an only child, but in your house your grandparents were always milling around; sound and voices were everywhere. Steve’s house was silent. The white vertical blinds were left open, and you could see the pool outside, which hadn’t been cleaned yet that day. The carpeting throughout the downstairs muffled your footsteps, adding to the eerie silence.  Overall, the house looked expensive. They had all the latest technology and aesthetically the house was very stylish, it made you want to not touch anything in fear of breaking something. You shivered involuntarily, letting your eyes wander around the house, taking in the massive TV and the matching stereo. All his money didn’t make the space feel like home.

“My stuff’s just upstairs.” Steve pointed a thumb up the stairwell by the front door. You hadn’t realized that you’d wandered out of the foyer and into his house. You swallowed, nodding hard and bounding up the steps ahead of him. You noticed that there weren’t any photographs around the house. That felt a bit homier to you; your grandmother kept most of the photos in intricate albums, only keeping a singular family photograph on the mantle of the white tiled fireplace. That felt a bit right to you, that it really was a home and not a showcase home.

Steve’s bedroom was also blue and dark. His walls were dark blue plaid, with matching curtains. The colour was only broken up by a few posters and a floating bookshelf, which held a couple small trophies and a couple books held between black metal bookstands. His bedspread was a navy quilt,  and his desk was dark wood and heavy looking. The signs of childhood were clear in the plaid wallpaper and curtains, clearly still remaining from a younger life. But beyond it, the room lacked a bit of personality. The only signs of life were the full laundry hamper and the papers on his desk. Everything else in the room could be in anyone’s room. It looked like a guest room or a hotel room. You dropped your bag on the grey carpeting, unsure where to put yourself in the space. Steve was much more casual, pulling out his desk chair and taking a seat, gesturing for you to sit across from him on the bed. You did so, sitting gingerly on the wrinkled bedspread. It was strange to sit on a boy’s bed, much less it be Steve Harrington’s bed.  

“Alright, um…where to begin?” you asked, more to yourself than him. “I guess we should go over what happened in the chapter, yeah?”

“Yeah sure…” Steve replied, picking up his copy of the novel, flipping it open to the chapter. “Uh…so the main chick is in love with Heath and she loves him and they all live happily ever after?”

“That’s…not the plot of either this chapter or the novel.” You said slowly, not looking down to flip your own copy of the book to the marked chapter.

“I mean…that’s what I got from the Kate Bush song.” Steve muttered awkwardly.

“So, you haven’t read the book? Like nothing at all?” you asked. Steve shook his head. “Cliff’s Notes then?” you guessed, looking back to the shelf to see a few of the black and yellow striped covers of the versions of Little Women, Robinson Crusoe, and King Lear. You’d used the reference guides yourself, albeit not as a replacement for the novels themselves.

“You got me…” Steve muttered. He felt like an idiot. It had only taken a minute for him to get caught in his fib.

“Then what’d you need me for?” you replied, setting your book down on the bed next to you, looking him over carefully. Cliff’s Notes would cover everything he needed, they’d answer the questions for him.

“Look…I’m shit at this stuff. I don’t get it. I don’t get why we’re reading this, the book is so boring, even the notes are boring!” he groaned.

“The book is shit.” You replied, deadpan. “Mr. Lawrence is having us read it because it’s one of like three books the county mandates that we read and they gave us Robinson Crusoe last year.”

“What am I supposed to get from it then if he doesn’t even like it?” Steve chuckled, turning to address you fully.

“Well…it’s a tortured love story.” Steve raised an eyebrow at you. You pressed on “Catherine and Heathcliff are in love, but because Heathcliff’s of a lower station than her, they can never be together. And even though Catherine marries someone else she can’t bear life without him.”

“Aren’t they like siblings or something?” Steve’s lip curled upwards in a disgusted expression.

“Adopted siblings and if Emily Bronte doesn’t think it’s weird then we have to ignore it.” You explained with a shrug. You leaned back on your palms, kicking your feet casually. With the windows open, his room was warm and sunny. It faced the woods behind his side of the road, and they looked beautiful from up near the treetops. You’d heard the rumours of Jonathan Byers taking photos of little Nancy Wheeler on the same bed you sat on from the woods. It made you feel icky at the time and uncomfortable now. You didn’t like the idea that anyone could be watching you.

“Then what is Kate Bush singing about? She makes it sound like they get together.” Steve asked. He watched you with a careful eye, his nerves making it hard to even try to catch your eye. You seemed happy, calmer too, and your hair was catching the sunlight from his window, making a pretty crown of light around your head.

“I mean…Catherine dies trying to return to Heathcliff across the moors, Kate Bush is like being her ghost, trying to come back to her love from beyond the grave.” You said simply. Steve pulled out his notebook, the questions written out in wide, square letters. He quickly began scribbling down what you’d said. He pulled out his copy of the Cliff’s Notes and flipped to chapter ten, filling out the questions. You wondered if you should stay or go, but Steve’s profile was partially shaded by the angle he sat at, and the way his jaw jutted out made him look like the statue of David. You slowly pulled out your sketchbook and flipped to a new page. Graphite in hand, you slowly began drawing out his sharp, angular jaw and strong neck.

“So, when did you find the time to read the whole book?” he asked; only briefly looking up from his notes to look at you. Your hair was still pulled up in the bun you’d put it in that morning and your gaze was focused on whatever was behind that heavy looking spiral bound pad.

“It was on, like, the seventh grade summer reading list.” You replied, not looking up. You could feel his eyes on you and the copy of lips weren’t matching the real life counterpart. You pulled your lip between your teeth, using your thumb to blend out a thin line.

“You remembered all that from middle school?” Steve asked.

“Well…I mean the book is kind of weird. Like, it doesn’t make sense, the narrator keeps changing and the speaker isn’t always made known. It was really hard to read, but the story itself was pretty run of the mill. I don’t really get why we have to read it at all…” You explained quietly, switching to a piece of charcoal to add thin, textured lines to the lower lip.

“It’s really shit, eh?” Steve chuckled, turning his attention back to the thin book. “Who’s Isabella again?”

“It is crap. And Isabella’s Catherine’s sister-in-law. She has a crush on Heathcliff, you can write on that, that’s revealed in this chapter.” You explained. You didn’t blame Steve for not understanding the book, you absolutely hated the book when you read it the first time and it was by no means an easy read.

“She’s in love with him, but he’s in love with Catherine?” Steve was scribbling fast, writing down whatever you said.

“Yes and Catherine’s in love with Heathcliff but married Mr. Linton for status.” You replied. Steve and you worked in silence for awhile. Mr. Lawrence expected answers in full sentences and provide reasoning for everything you sourced. Meanwhile, you set a high standard for your art. While you didn’t expect perfection from yourself, you wanted to try to do good work, even just for yourself.

You’d never drawn Steve Harrington before. You’d done pictures of tons of your classmates, Steve just never seemed like someone who needed to be drawn. He had tons of people looking at him and praising him all the time, to his face and behind his back. He seemed like a little celebrity in Hawkins, but sitting on his head, with the sun hitting half of his face and making pretty shadows in the hollows of his face, you saw the small beauty in his features. You knew that he was attractive, that was a universal truth, but now sat on his bed alone in his room, you understood that he really was beautiful. Maybe not on the inside, you didn’t know if he was a truly good person, but on the outside he was golden. Your hands demanded to recreate his features. You felt as though you were carving one of Greek gods of Hawkins high, the best of the town’s beauty.

Steve finished his work soon after and looked to you with a lopsided grin. “I say, and you can totally disagree, that we work better together than apart.” He said triumphantly, jabbing the cap onto his pen.

You looked up with a smirk from your drawing. It was nearly done and you weren’t mad at the work either. It certainly looked like Steve and the shadows were intriguing.  It would’ve made a better painting, but the little sketch was nothing to sneeze at. “I mean, you certainly do.” You replied easily. Steve chuckled, you weren’t wrong; he knew that you were much smarter than him.

“But sure, if you need the help then I’ll help. No big deal.” The words left your mouth before you’d thought them through. But they were true. Despite not knowing him, despite being freaked out by every phone call and conversation, you found yourself still coming back. Your mind was pulled in two very different directions, between adrenaline laced panic that made your hands go clammy and shake and genuine curiosity and intrigue.

Steve couldn’t hide the surprise on his face. He was certain that you’d already on the porch steps, running towards your house as fast as you could. Something in his gut told him not to expect anything. But you agreed. He broke into a lopsided grin, brushing a piece of long brown hair out of his eyes. “Cool, yeah, that’d be great! So, I’ll call you?” he asked tentatively, trying to still give you an out to his own request.

“You already know the number.” You smirked, a yellow sticky note catching your eye. You could see your name and number written in Steve’s wide handwriting stuck to the wall in front of his desk. It made you smile, the small detail of him even looking you up made you laugh. You’d been across the street from him your whole life, but him trying to find you made you strangely happy. You gathered up your things quickly, heading back across the street as another car came into his driveway, an immaculately made up woman in the front seat. She didn’t look you in the face as you passed, focusing on the opening garage door in front of her. You made a mad dash for your house. Everything felt…calm. Strangely calm. You didn’t know if you liked it.

[thottyimagines]

I really love your ideas haha! Have drunk konoha 11 + sasuke been requested yet? If not I'd love to read that

thank you!! I feel like it has been but I can’t find it and have no desire to go digging for it so I’m gonna do it again

Naruto

Gets all red when he drinks at all, let alone when he’s actually drunk. It’s so cute. 

He’s also one of those people who thinks he is even more invincible than usual when drunk. He’s off trying to challenge a sober Rock Lee to insane physical challenges if no one stops him. 

Talks a biiiig game shooting his shot and is super affectionate when drunk, but would chicken out if someone actually wanted to hook up. 

Occasionally tears up about friendship. Super embarrassing. Super cliche. 

Sakura

Is soooo aggressive lmao she’s so fucking mean I love it. The only people who can match this level of rude are Neji and Sasuke. If the three ever banded together (which they won’t, because Neji and Sasuke would fight), their target would be done for. 

Desperately wants to arm wrestle. 

Loves taking drunk showers. It’s just a fun time for her. 

Gets kind of annoyed when people get weepy with her. She’s drunk to have fun, not to cry. If she wanted to get drunk and cry, she’d do it in her own home, by herself, as god intended. 

Sasuke

Is such a wanderer. Every now and then team 8 will have to go track him down because he’s basically  playing hide and seek without telling anyone. 

Always tries to smoke a cigarette when he’s drunk. Always coughs super embarrassingly and painfully. 

Again, Sasuke is sooo mean lmao he just sits there, wine glass in hand, critiquing everyone aloud! Drunk Sasuke immediately senses the thing you are sensitive about and comments on it. 

Let Ino pierce his ear once when they were all drunk. Actually kind of liked it, but he eventually took it out because it got infected and he didn’t know how to take care of it (and was too embarrassed to ask). 

Kiba

Horny drunk for sure. Unlike Naruto, he’s down to hook up with whoever happens to returning his affections that night. Claims they actually fuck, but usually they just sloppy, ugly make out and then Kiba falls asleep and is ditched. 

If he drinks enough, Kiba is convinced he can communicate telepathically with Akamaru. No one can really disprove him.

Frickin loves to booty-pop to anything. My mans drops it low. 

Gets angry when people try to make him drink water. He’s literally like this vid of the dude spitting his drink at his friend like one of those bath toys.  

Hinata

Level 1 Drunk consists of her getting even quieter and even redder than usual. She’s embarrassed to be drunk and thinks she’s being judged. Kiba and Shino know this, so they get her to Level 2 Drunk, which is when she’s too fucked up to care and can finally let loose a little. 

She’s kind of a wild card when she’s drunk enough to do abnormal things. Sometimes she confesses her weird secrets (such as definitely training herself to love ramen, even though her baseline is just that it’s ok, but a little salty); sometimes she gets uncomfortably deep; sometimes she just sits there with her Byakugan activated. 

Legit will sit with her eyes clothes, in her own world, swaying to music that may or may not be playing. 

Throws up often, but quietly and without drawing attention. 

Shino

Hates being drunk in big groups. He really won’t do it unless he’s at home or somewhere safe with Hinata and Kiba. Otherwise he gets all weird and twitchy. 

Shino is the kind of drunk who is very, very good at hiding the fact that he’s fucked up. Like, he’ll go all night with his team and the next day Kiba will bring up something Shino said and he’ll have zero recollection of that happening. 

Lowkey is a huge savage when he’s drunk. He voices all of those mean inner thoughts that he definitely (and, tbh, rightfully) has. 

Spills everywhere!! Mess!

Shikamaru

Has a strong preference for whiskey. He drinks it on the rocks, and has always done this. It’s what his mom drinks, so he just copied her because it looked cool and now he has a taste for it. 

He’s relaxed enough to drop the totally disinterested facade. This sounds like an oxymoron, but he’s just comfortable enough to show that he gives a damn about whatever he’s talking about. 

I say whatever he’s talking about because drunk Shikamaru dominates conversations. Kiba, who never really inspected him closely enough to recognize he has brain cells, was genuinely surprised that Shikamaru knew so many words the first time they were drunk together. 

Doesn’t like to get deep when he’s drunk unless he’s with his team or with an s/o. 

Ino

Ugh little lush. I love her. And Ino loves to be drunk. 

I think she likes white wine the best and chooses to stick to it once she gets old enough to decide hard liquor just is not it for her. 

Ino thinks she’s the funniest person in the world when she’s drunk. She will frequently ask, “Why don’t we have a show, you guys?” 

She can also just flip a switch and go total mom friend, though. If someone seems to not be doing so well, she can suddenly function at a much higher level. Ino is always the one to notice if Hinata needs to have a nice little vomit. 

Choji

Gets sooo giggly. It’s adorable. He’s just happy to be here, coach, and happy to be drinking with his friends. 

He’s kind of a lightweight for his size lmao. Also, baby boy loves the fruity drinks. He’s very confident in himself and his masculinity; why would he drink something that tastes bad to prove something to Shikamaru, who was born liking straight whiskey? No, thanks. 

Drunk Choji agrees with Ino in that they should absolutely have a tv show. They’re obviously comedy gold. 

Volunteers waaaay too much information. He’s just…so, so honest…as soon as a drop of alcohol enters his system. That’s why all of the Konoha kids know how long he is a virgin; he informs them monthly on the status. 

Neji

The third and final true savage of the pack. He’s a straight-up animal. Remember the chunin exams? Thirteen-year-old, sober, angry Neji came up with all of that very accurate and somewhat hurtful shit. Drunk, jaded, older Neji can come up with much worse, especially because he’s gotten some more humor injected in there as well. It’s horribly accurate and then everyone will laugh at what he said. 

Picks fights with Sasuke sometimes. He’s just so fucking annoying, man. If Neji can be normal in mixed company, so can he, god damn it. 

Gets really, really competitive. Sometimes he’ll take Naruto up on challenges on behalf of Lee. 

Neji only eats junk food when he’s drunk. It is always a night of indulgence, meaning he doesn’t do it super often. Tenten usually has to bully him into joining her (and then she has to bully Lee). 

Tenten

Just bodies shots like it’s nothing. She takes shots of the nastiest shit and her face doesn’t change. She started out like that in her quest to emulate Tsunade, then she just got a taste for it. 

Usually tries to do damage control with the dumbass “challenges” Naruto gets up to with her teammates. Sometimes, though, she’ll just join in herself to prove she can beat them all. And she can. 

Sings her fucking heart out. Take her to a karaoke bar. Please. 

Suuuuper supportive. If someone gets in their feelings too much, she’s there to help them out and bring the mood back up. She’s here for a good time!

Rock Lee

Rarely, rarely drinks. His body is a temple, for one thing. And for another thing, he can’t finish a whole drink and everyone roasts the shit out of him.

Genuinely tries to hold back with the drunken fist stuff, but Naruto won’t stop challenging him! He turns into an agent of chaos. 

Has written so, so many apology letters to different establishments and friends for destroying property. They are often tearstained and so sincere that he has never been asked to pay for damages. 

Makes a lot of drunk impulse purchases. And if all the stores are closed, he’ll end up just picking flowers from yards as he walks by. He never goes home empty-handed. 

[sylvesterlestermanchester]

Fearfully and Wonderfully

Summary: Dan wasn’t entirely sure what he was going to experience when he starts his first semester at Uni, but he was pretty sure an incredibly sheltered Catholic boy stealing his heart wasn’t on his list of typical college tropes.

Word Count: 12401

Genre: Humor, fluff, angst. All mixed together. Fun times!

Warnings: Conversion therapy, homophobia, brief allusions to sex and genitals. One puke joke?

A/N: This is my first ever published fic-I’ve been writing for literally years little bits and pieces, but COVID has me going crazy and I just wanted to put some effort into an actual thing. Thanks for reading!

-

Dan wasn’t sure what he was expecting when he walked through the door to his dorm the first time, parents and sullen little brother in tow. All of his knowledge about Uni had been from TV and movies-maybe he would have some frat guy in the bed across from him, or maybe a stoner, or maybe a weird silent dude who will disappear after the first week and let Dan put their beds together so they would actually fit his gangly body.

What he isn’t expecting is to have an eight-year-old girl bodyslam herself into his legs, followed by a loud groan and a sharp voice scolding “Suzanne, we told you to stop running!”

Dan’s eyes look down at the (quickly retreating) girl and blinks a few times as he takes in the scene in front of him. There are way too many people in the crowded room right now-he counts two identical boys, both around 10, bouncing on the stiff dorm bed, one pre-teen digging through a cardboard box, a girl around Adrian’s age whispering something to an older woman with a toddler in her arms, standing next to a quiet-looking tall man, and, of course, the eight-year-old, now having been scooped up by a sheepish looking guy around Dan’s age who’s giving him an apologetic smile. This must be the Philip Lester on his room assignment form. “Sorry. My family is kind of, erm, excited.” He says with a small, nervous laugh and sets the girl aside before sticking out a hand to shake. “I’m Phil! You must be, um...Daniel, right?”

Dan takes a second to readjust the bags in his arms to shake Phil’s hand awkwardly, trying not to look too overwhelmed at the scene in front of him. “Dan’s fine.”

The kids have all frozen in place, staring at Dan with wide eyes like Dan just sprouted a second head. There’s a few long beats of silence as Phil shakes his hand just a little too enthusiastically for just a bit too long. 

Finally, Phil’s mum places a hand on her son’s shoulder, beaming brightly. “It’s so great our boys will be living together!” She cheers to Dan’s mum, who looks a bit bewildered. Ms. Lester gently takes a few of Dan’s bags and sets them on the bed, continuing to chatter on. “Come on, we can unpack while you two get to know each other better. I need to know who my son is going to be rooming with, right?” She continues to babble in a thick northern drawl as Dan glances back at his parents, who look like they’re about to bolt for the door and leave their son to be swallowed whole by these people.

“You’re rooming with an absolute freak,” Adrian mumbles in his ear with a small smirk. “Karma is a bitch, huh?” “Shut up.” Dan hisses back through his teeth, trying to look as interested as possible as Phil’s mum keeps talking. 

“The weather here is so nice-it’s already getting cold up in Rossendale, can you believe it? Max and Adam were running around outside, and I was so scared they were gonna catch cold, you know how quickly little ones do. Oh, the drive here was wonderful-” “We saw cows!” One of the kids butts in, and suddenly they’re all talking, any nervousness they had around the strangers suddenly vanishing.

“And horses!” “We got hamburgers, and there was this huge truck-it had to have, like, forty wheels-” Phil seems to take after his dad, quietly but quickly unpacking since his siblings have seemingly given up on it in favor of telling Dan’s family every detail of the six-hour car ride. At one point he makes eye contact with Phil, who gives him an apologetic look, his cheeks flushed and an embarrassed grin on his face as the kids chatter along excitedly like they’ve never talked to another person before.

Finally, right when Dan feels like his ears are going to fall off, Phil speaks up again. “I-I think I can get this from here, guys. Mum, Dad, why don’t we go out for a walk before we say goodbye? I know you guys want to see the geese on campus, right?” The kids all cheer like geese are the most exciting thing on Earth, scrambling for the door. Phil’s mum gives Dan a tight hug and Phil’s dad, still not having spoken a single word, even gives his shoulder an uncomfortable pat before they head out. The small space suddenly feels vast and empty, and the silence is almost tangible. “Well. They seemed...friendly.” Dan’s mum says after a few moments, his dad snorting. 

“You’re in for quite a year, huh, kid?” He jokes. Dan laughs weakly, but in all honesty, it doesn’t seem that funny. 

Just what did he get himself into?

-

Dan’s curled up in his bed when Phil finally comes back a few hours later, giving Dan that same crooked, shy grin from earlier. Now that it’s just him and not him with (presumably) his entire Brady Bunch-style family, he can get a better look at his roommate. He’s tall, about an inch taller than Dan, and lanky. His black jeans are just a bit high on his ankles, and his faded green shirt clings to his skinny frame. As Dan’s eyes travel higher he takes in his flushed cheeks, his blue eyes wide behind his oversized glasses, all behind shaggy black hair that doesn’t match his ginger eyebrows-ginger like every other family member of his. Dan suddenly feels a bit self-conscious in his Game of Thrones pajamas and old school shirt, pulling his covers up a bit higher as he takes in the other young man with a strange feeling in his chest. He’s definitely different than anyone Dan’s ever known. But damn, if he isn’t cute.

“Sorry if my family was a lot today.” He says after a slight moment of silence, a slight giggle slipping out as he walks over to one of the boxes on his side of the room. “I’m the first to go to Uni out of my brothers and sisters, so my parents decided to, like, make it into a whole thing.”

The memory of the chaos is still fresh in Dan’s mind, but hearing Phil talk about it, he can’t help but smile a bit as well. “I’m the oldest, so I get it. And they were nice. Your siblings are very...uh, talkative.” He says slowly, trying not to sound rude, but Phil’s giggling again before he can worry too much about it.

“We’re from kind of the middle of nowhere, so they’re just excited to see, like, humans outside of Rossendale for the first time.” Phil joked as he started reorganizing some of the things his siblings had just sort of dumped around the room. “Plus, they don’t usually get sugar, but they had soda on the way here. So they were practically about to explode by the time we pulled in. They just exploded all of that excitement onto you.” 

Dan can’t help but laugh a bit at that as he watches Phil set some thick books up one way and then rearranges them. “Oh, Jesus. That car ride must have been nuts.” Phil looks over his shoulder, grinning wider now. He looks more and more relaxed each minute, as if he was just as nervous about Dan as Dan was about him. “You have no idea, oh my gosh. They were already wound up for today, and then there was soda, and Max and Alex-they get carsick even worse than I do, and then Suzanne had to pee, like, forty times an hour, and Mum was all weepy...this has been the longest day of my life.” He joked, laughing along with Dan. 

Even though Dan can’t connect any of the kids to their names, he feels like he knows them decently well. In fact, as the conversation drifts into more goofy road trip stories, Dan’s surprised with just how close he feels to Phil like they’ve known each other before they even met.

It’s strange, he finds. But then again, Phil’s pretty strange, after all.

-

Dan doesn’t fully realize how strange Phil is until the next day. There’s a few hints-Dan makes a reference to some TikTok audio and Phil admits he’s never used it before, staring in awe as Dan scrolls through his ForYou Page for him.  When they head off to orientation in one of the lecture halls, Phil’s head jolts up and his face flushes bright red when one of the countless speakers jokingly curses (if you can count “ass” as a curse-Dan honestly can’t). But it’s not until they’re out at the quad with some of their new peers for lunch when Chris turns to Phil and asks if he went to the school his cousin went to up north. “Oh, I didn’t go to school.” Phil says with a bright smile, before quickly adding “I mean-I was homeschooled. So I just kinda did the work when I wanted to.”

“Your parents homeschooled you? Didn’t Dan say you had, like, twenty siblings?” Louise questions as they all turn to look at Phil. Dan feels a migraine coming on just imagining being home with all of those kids all bloody day, though he can actually picture Mrs. Lester teaching them all pretty well. Phil laughed a bit, cheeks flushing pink as he looked down at his sandwich. 

“We all were. My mum and dad didn’t like the schools in our area-they wanted us to be more connected to the church, said that “our values weren’t instilled in traditional education’.” He explained with a small shrug. When PJ raised an eyebrow at that Phil pulled a small cross necklace out from under his shirt. “I’m Catholic. I actually have plans for Seminary after getting my bachelor’s-so if you’re planning on getting married, I’m taking bookings now.” Phil’s last comment was clearly meant to lighten up the mood, but it’s obvious that the subject matter was making the group a little uncomfortable, considering they all just met. Dan’s mentally running through Phil’s belongings in their dorm-were all those books Bibles? Was he going to start hanging crosses everywhere? Or make him wake up early on Sundays? 

Before his brain could spiral out further Chris blurted out “So, were you raised in a Jesus bubble or something?” Louise smacks his arm but Phil giggled. “I-I have been told I’ve lived a bit of a sheltered life before, yeah.” “Were you allowed...TV?” PJ asks slowly, eyes widening when Phil shook his head.

“Not cable. We could watch DVDs, but they had to be approved, so it was usually educational. I know a lot of animal facts, actually. Did you know hippo-”

“What about the internet?” Louise cuts him off.

“Not after my older brother got caught Googling “bikini girls” when he was 10.” Phil joked lightly. “But even before that, my mum was pretty anti-internet. If I really needed it for school or whatever, I’d go down to the library.”

“No Harry Potter?” “Promotes witchcraft. Apparently. I haven’t read it for myself, but-”

“Dating?” “Not without serious intention to marry-and I’m not exactly ready for that, so-” “Running water?” “You know what’s funny?” Phil says, giggling a bit and bringing his knees loosely to his chest. “You guys think I’m weird, which is totally understandable. But your guys’ lives before this sound weird to me, too. Like-Chris, you got to play video games as a kid, right? And I was taught that those would turn me into some homicidal maniac. Dan, I saw you have a horoscope app-that’s the occult, so that’s a huge no-no.” Wow, okay. Before Dan could feel too offended, though, and Chris could jump in, Phil keeps going. “But, like, I get that you’re not a witch, or Chris, you’re not gonna chop me up into little pieces when I’m sleeping. There’s gotta be some middle ground here, right? So...you guys could show me how to live more like you, and maybe you guys would be more interested in what I’m into?”

There’s a small silence that falls across the group before a wicked grin slowly appears on Louise’s face.

“What do you want to learn first?”

-

The next few weeks are a bit of a whirlwind for Dan. Between classes, hanging out with new friends, homework, scrambling to find a job, remembering to text his mum and let her know he hasn’t died, he’s barely able to keep his head on straight. But the time he spends trying to introduce Phil to the “real world” is some of his favorite. 

Phil had set some ground rules-nothing that could kill him or ruin his life if it got out on social media. If he got too uncomfortable, he was allowed to tap out, but he’d give it an honest attempt. And nothing Satanic. (Dan had laughed until he realized by the look on his face that he wasn’t joking).

Granted, their friend group hadn’t done a great job at the start. PJ thought it would be hilarious to let Phil start with some “iconic reading material”. 

Dan had been in class when they had presented the book to him, and the two were in their respective beds when Dan heard a shocked gasp from Phil’s side of the room.

“You good, mate?” He rolled over, watching as Phil sat upright and started flipping through the pages. “Do-Do you know about this book?” He asked, face turning impossibly redder as he held up the cover for Dan. 50 Shades of Gray. As Dan burst out laughing, his roommate whined playfully.

“What-Phil, who gave this to you?” “PJ said it was necessary reading!”

“PJ is a dunce. Give it here, I’ll protect you from the big bad book.” Dan teases, but Phil quickly shoves the book into his hands like it’s on fire. 

“I’m gonna have nightmares about ties and rich men for weeks.” He grumbled playfully, curling up on his bed and reaching for his phone. “I’m never trusting Peej again.” 

Louise turns full maternal the next day when he struggles to recount the experience in polite language (Dan holding back laughter), and she decides to go the complete opposite way, launching a mission to, as she put it, “reshape Phil’s lost childhood”. Phil lightly pushes back against wording, because he feels like he had quite a nice childhood, thank you very much. 

Still, Louise comes over a couple of nights later, armed with her laptop.

“They couldn’t come up with a more creative name than “High School Musical”?” Phil teased gently as she pulled it up on her screen.

“Phil, you sweet boy, High School Musical is a cultural milestone that you need experience. So no backtalk!”

“Whatever you say.” He said, sitting on the other side of her and holding a bowl of popcorn in his lap.

They watch the first movie, and then the second, and then Phil’s begging to watch the third. As the final song plays Dan glances over and sees that Phil has his head ducked down, shoulders shaking gently.

“Phil?” Louise asks gently right as a choked sob erupts from him. She lets out a yelp as Phil flings his arms around her neck, laughing shakily. “It was just...Troy chose basketball and music…both of his passions...” He blubbers out, nuzzling into her shoulder as she coos. “You’re so weird, hon. You know that?” Once he’s calmed down enough (when Dan offers him a hug the waterworks start up all over again, sniffling. “So. Is that what your guys’ school was like?”

Louise and Dan glance at each other before bursting into laughter, only stopping a couple of minutes later when Louise turns to Phil once more. “If you liked High School Musical, you’re going to love this show Victorious…”

Of course, it’s not all smutty books and (incredible) movie trilogies. 

Being homeschooled meant that all Phil knows is doing school when he feels like it. Lucky for Phil, he’s a huge nerd, so homework and studying actually excite him. The problem is, these things tend to excite him at 3 in the morning, and he actually has classes to go to now outside of his room. 

By day three of no sleep, Phil swears Dan’s grown wings, and Dan intervenes. They make up a rules sheet-bedtime is 2AM, wake up at 10AM, eat three meals a day, no more than five cups of coffee a day (of all the vices Phil was deprived of, caffeine was clearly not one of them-Dan’s never seen anyone drink more coffee in his life). He gets him down to one all-nighter a week, and in turn, Phil wakes him up each morning and helps him with schoolwork so Dan doesn’t have to face going to the tutoring center. It turns out that Phil’s kind of a genius, despite never being in a classroom until a couple of weeks prior.

Chris is the one who convinces Phil to get social media, telling him that “only serial killers and old people” don’t. Phil’s not the greatest at it at first (there’s a lot of pictures uploaded on accident to his Instagram stories and nonsense tweets), but he slowly gets more used to it, getting his terrible puns and weird things he sees on campus out to the world (all 20 of his followers).

Dan can’t help but get slightly annoyed when Phil’s phone is shoved in his face to choose a filter of some stupid looking goose that’s close to attacking him, but the look of pure elation that Phil gets when someone sends a dog meme in their group chat is enough to warm his heart in ways he didn’t want to address fully but knew he couldn’t ignore.

There’s so much to teach him, and it seems like each day something pops up. Still, Dan’s surprised by Phil’s world, too. 

First, he brings them to a non-denominational bible study group. PJ groaned quietly as Phil handed them all cheap paperback Bibles before they entered the church.

“Can’t we do something a bit more...fun? With less reading?”

“If you don’t like it, you don’t have to do it again,” Phil said with a grin, rocking back and forth on his heels. “And if you like it-which hopefully, you will-we can come back once a week, and I’ll get you some nicer Bibles. These are just to start out with.”

Louise forces a small “yay” as they head inside, Phil leading them through the sanctuary with a happy sigh before taking them down some stairs, where a young woman sits in front of a small arrangement of chairs. “Phil, you brought your friends!” The woman cheers and Phil laughs happily. “Caroline-this is Dan, PJ, Chris, and Lou. They’re new to all this, so we’ll go easy this week?” He joked lightly, and Caroline nods, asking them about their religious beliefs.

“Uh, went to church a few times with my Nan. Atheist.” Dan says, biting his lip. He never actually said the “a'' word around Phil, and he’s a bit nervous that he’s going to suddenly flip out, but he still seems just as excited as when he walked in.

“Atheist. Never been-parents hate churches. Can I still grab snacks?” Chris adds and Caroline laughs, nodding.

“I’m a little complicated, but it’s basically just hippie church.” PJ says, shrugging. “Singing and chanting and all.”

“I go about once a month-I’m Episcopal, officially, but I’ve been to other churches too.” Louise gently smiled, and with that, the group got started. They went around and talked about their weeks, a few upcoming events, a prayer, and then Caroline instructed them to get their books. Phil pulled a well-worn leather Bible out of his bag, and Dan’s eyes widened a bit when he opened it. There are post-it notes everywhere, with entire passages highlighted and notes covering practically every margin in Phil’s stupidly perfect handwriting. It’s clear that Phil’s spent a lot of time with the book.

“Since we have guests, I figured we’d take a break from our reading of Matthew and focus on a couple of specific verses today,” Caroline says brightly. “James 1:13-15: “Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man: But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.”

There’s a slight pause and Chris furrows his eyebrows. “Huh?” “In simple terms-don’t say God isn’t the one to tempt you, because when you stray off His path, that’s on you.” One of the group members explains. “And if you do sin, it’ll lead to, uh, death.”

“Well, does God not tempt us to do bad things by putting so much pressure on us to be perfect?” A girl with blue hair jumps in, raising an eyebrow. “He sets the standard so high. Sometimes I’m just like, ‘Chill, dude. I can’t do everything. I’m not you.’ “

PJ snorts at that, giggling. “You call God dude?” They’re all laughing now, but Dan can’t believe it-he wants to jump in.

“Can I ask a dumb question?” His voice is a bit quiet but inquisitive. “Isn’t God supposed to be loving and forgiving? Why does He want you guys to be perfect? That sounds kind of...harsh.”

“Well, He knows we’re not perfect.” Phil says, and another guy nods.

“He asks for us to be because it strives us to be better. And it teaches us that messing up is okay.” The conversation keeps up for a bit before Caroline interrupts, asking them to focus on the latter half of the passage.

PJ narrows his eyes at the text before looking up. “Am I really gonna die if I sin?” “Well, sin was what led us away from eternal life in the first place-Adam and Eve kinda messed that up for us.”

“Yeah, but our personal sins can lead us to death, too. Not just old sins. That’s what God’s warning us about here.”

“Not every sin does, though. Like mixed-fabric shirts.” Louise grinned a little. “Or grabbing dudes by their nads during fights.” PJ’s eyes widened and he turned to Phil. “Are those actual rules?!” “It was a different time!” Phil giggled as he watched him flip through the pages quickly.

“Where does it say we can’t grab nads?’ “Can we stop saying nads in church?” Phil pointed out, still laughing despite his red face.

Caroline tuts and wags a finger playfully. “Uh-uh, Philip. No judgment. They can talk about nads all they want, now.”

The entire room is laughing again as Phil buries his face in his hands. Finally, when he controls his giggles, Caroline speaks again. “Do you think talking about that kind of stuff in church is a sin, Phil?”

It’s teasing at first, but Phil actually thinks about it for a moment.

“Well...my household was pretty strict growing up. I mean, I got yelled at once for just sneezing during church.” He admits slowly and Dan’s eyebrows furrow a little. He can’t imagine either of Phil’s parents yelling at him, or anyone, really. “But I get why it was. They wanted me to love God, and respect Him, just like they loved and respected me and I loved and respected them. So I think if you do things with love, genuine love, it’s not a sin. But if you do things out of hate, or anger, or with the intention of hurting, that’s a sin. And that’s not automatically bad-like T’andra said, we’re all gonna make mistakes. Just keep on acting with love, and I think you’re good.” There’s a pause, and Dan’s face flushes slightly. Not just at how much Phil was saying “love”, but the words he spoke, and the true thought and passion behind them. 

The moment is cut short when PJ snorts. “So if I love nads, I can talk about them to Jesus?”

By the time the room is back under control, the group is over. “Y’know, that was actually pretty fun.” Chris said after they had all grabbed snacks and talked to everyone. 

“It was! It was like...philosophical debate.” Dan said. “The real nitty-gritty. The topics of good, evil, life, death, corruption-” Louise shoved him gently. “So deep, Dan. Of course you enjoyed it.” She joked lightly before adding “No offense, Phil!” Phil doesn’t seem to care-he’s grinning so wide it must be hurting his cheeks, and Dan would be lying if he isn’t tempted to start reading the whole Bible from cover to cover just to see him grin like that again.

Phil also manages to bring them to actual church services a couple of times (though getting college students out of bed before noon on a weekend proves to be a practically impossible task). 

Dan has to admit he’s not as impressed with this as he is with the study group. The group is fun-they can all talk, and laugh, and actually discuss the points. Church is...not. They sit on hard pews. They listen. They stand and sit and kneel and stand and sit and kneel. They sing a few songs, and while Phil’s quiet baritone makes Dan’s sore knees quiver, it’s not enough to really warrant him waking up at 8AM on a weekend. 

Phil is politely understanding of this, though it’s clear that this is of certain importance to him that his friends might not ever understand. It’s admirable if nothing else.

Other than storytelling from his childhood (which does little to make him seem more normal, honestly) and the weekly study, though, Phil doesn’t talk too much about the church to his other friends. Dan, however, is different. Maybe it’s just the fact that they live together and their space is more shared, but Phil opens up to Dan a bit more about it. He reads passages and verses to Dan, he prays in front of him, and he answers his questions in a non-condescending way. Dan has to admit that while he likes what Phil says, he can’t find himself connecting to it in the way Phil has, with his entire heart and soul. But Dan can admire the stories and the way his friend sees the world, and this new world that he’s entering with him.

It’s been a month of them being friends when Dan realizes that he’s seeing the world in two ways-Dan’s universe, and Phil’s universe. They’re so different, but (and he’s sure he’d never admit this out loud) Dan prefers when their universes collide. 

When Dan comes home after a long day of classes and working at the campus bookstore, he’s exhausted. The soft music fades through the room as he opens the door to find Phil chewing on a pen, looking just as anxious as him. “I think my brain is leaking out my ears,” Phil said wearily, looking over the top of his glasses at Dan. “Do I have brain on my desk?” Dan snorts and rolls his eyes, reaching over and grabbing his textbook. “We need a break. And you need sleep-I know you took that second all-nighter last night, rule-breaker.” “Fine. Watch something with me?” He says after a moment, grabbing his laptop. They load up an episode of Zoey101 (they’d finished Victorious the week before) and hit play.

As the bars from the theme song fade out, Dan suddenly feels a strange pressure on his shoulder. He glances over and finds Phil with his cheek pressed to Dan’s shoulder, glasses sliding down his nose as he lets out a soft snore. Dan pauses the show, and for a brief moment, it’s just the two of them. Dan and Phil. 

He lives for those moments: Getting coffee after a class. Sending each other memes. Trying new food at the dining hall. Brief greetings in the halls. Shared looks as they hang out with their friend group.

It’s been a month of them being friends when Dan realizes he's never fallen quite this hard before. He doesn’t just want to make out, all hot and heavy, or go further than just that. He just wants this-Dan and Phil-forever, even just as friends. He didn’t expect to find that in this pale, bible-banging weirdo, but now that he does he never wants to let him go.

-

Dan’s getting that feeling now more and more, the Dan and Phil feeling when they’re in the study group a few weeks later. They’re both sat towards the back, trying (and failing) to hold back laughter as they’re hunched over Dan’s Bible.

“I have compared thee, O my love, to a company of horses in Pharaoh's chariots. Thy cheeks are comely with rows of jewels, thy neck with chains of gold. We will make thee borders of gold with studs of silver…” Phil says under his breath in a low, gravelly tone. 

Dan turns to the next page. “O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely. Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes!” He whispers, still trying to make his voice sound high-pitched.

“Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves' eyes within thy locks: thy hair is as a flock of goats, that appear from mount Gilead. Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn, which came up from-”

“Dan, Phil, I’m guessing you both are whispering about how excited you are about our retreat at Camp Brabeck?”

The two both fall silent, Dan quickly glancing between Phil and Caroline, her smile wearing a bit thin from having to call them out. Phil’s eyes are wide, suddenly all signs of laughter gone. “Camp Brabeck?” He squeaks out, and the leader nods.

“On our upcoming four-day weekend. It’s up North, so it’ll be a bit of a drive, but we’ve already got the vans rented out and everything.” She says before noticing Phil’s sudden change in demeanor. “Phil, you’re from around there, actually. Have you been before?”

Phil blinks a few times before nodding, curling up into his seat a little. “O-Oh. Well, I actually did, once, but-”

“Great! So you’ll be down to come, right? We’ve got more space in the van, and it’ll be fun…” Caroline says hopefully, not letting him argue as he starts shaking his head. “Plus, if you’ve already been there, you can tell us all about it! C’mon, this is right up your alley. I think you’ll-” “I’ll go if Dan does.” Phil blurts out suddenly, looking nervously over at. Dan’s definitely confused now-Phil loves the outdoors. He loves this group. He loves-well, to be fair, Phil seems to love most things. He’s racking his brain trying to figure out what it could be, but he just can’t, and now all eyes are on him, and-

“I mean...as long as someone brings bug spray.” Dan says slowly, Caroline beaming and writing on her clipboard before talking excitedly about the campground. The two stay quiet, Dan focusing on Phil’s eyes trained on her and hands gripping his Bible so tightly that his knuckles turn white.

The minute the group ends Phil makes a beeline to the door, walking so fast that Dan can’t catch up without actually chasing him. Dan’s phone dings a short moment later:

Sorry 2 run! Had 2 catch up w some1 4 a thing. Thx 4 signing up w me ^_^ - Phil!

Dan furrows his eyebrows, and not for the normal reason of Phil’s stupid abbreviations and the fact he insists upon signing all his texts. He’s trying to piece the pieces together from the few characters on his screen when Louise puts a hand on his shoulder. “So what was all that about?” She asks with a raised eyebrow, giggling a bit as she gives his arm a light squeeze. “What did you show him that spooked him so bad?” Before Dan can speak, Chris is at his side.

“He’s just embarrassed that Dan was flirting with him during the Jesus Power Hour.” “Dan, were you?” Louise gasped teasingly, and Dan sputters a bit, sliding his phone into his jacket pocket. “Chris-what?! No, no, I wasn’t flirting. I wasn’t! He just-when she mentioned the retreat-and the camp-” Dan’s face is bright red now, suddenly the words from Solomon seem a lot less goofy and a lot more...romantic, to outsiders, with their heads bowed together with dumb grins on their faces. 

Louise and Chris shoot Dan equally doubtful looks. “Dan-” She starts, but Dan grits his teeth.

“We’re not-neither of us are like that.” He snaps. As she steps back and Chris raises an eyebrow, guilt starts to pool in his stomach, but he can’t stop. “For one, I’m not gay, and two, Phil is gonna be a priest, remember? Aren’t they, like, sworn to celibacy?”

Chris and Louise glance at each other. “Mate...chill, yeah? We were just joking. We know you’re not...y’know.” “Good.” Dan said before turning and stomping up the steps, the unnerving sense that the painting of Jesus had his eyes following him the whole way.

A few minutes later, Dan is sitting in the back garden of the church that Phil helps tend to after services, the wind whipping through his hair. Usually, he’d be walking to a Starbucks with Phil, discussing that session’s theme in-depth and watching Phil’s face turn pink as Dan releases the string of expletives he’s been holding in for an entire hour. The expletives are running through his head at top speed, as he spends about three minutes crafting the perfect text message. 

hey, i’m sorry if i weirded you out today! didn’t mean to haha. i was goofing off way too much and i know you take these meetings p seriously. i’ll take it more seriously next time and not distract you

Dan hits send after rereading it about a million times, groaning audibly as he does. It’s not exactly a “Sorry I have a crush on you and made you seem gay but I get you’ll never like me and that’s fine I just wanna spend all my time with you”, but it’s the best he can do.

No worries! OMGosh I was just embarrassed 2 b called out like that hahaha! 0_o <= Literally my face. I was def the 1 who was whispering 2 loud. Lol! -Phil!

dude, it was totally on me. Dan texts back, chewing on his bottom lip. Phil had looked pretty freaked out, but if he was fine, maybe they could just...move past it? really, i started it. 

Noooooooo! I take all the blame. I had some cookies b4 group and I was on major sugar rush. Btw...I had some of those cookies ur nan sent! Sorry, I’ll buy some snacks 4 us. Ask her to send more, tho? So good <3 Thank u! Take dancing men as an apology (/-_-)/ |(-_-|) -Phil!

okay, seriously, who taught you to text like this? my head hurts trying to decipher everything

DANCING MEN 4 U (/-_-)/ |(-_-\) ~(*-*)~ (/-_-)/ |(-_-\) -Phil!

you’re ridiculous. Dan can’t help but laugh, in spite of the churning feeling in his stomach. He drops his phone onto the grass next to him and looks up at the sky. 

“If you know Phil so well, big guy, what do I do?” He asks before he can stop himself, before pausing. Half of him expects a thunderstorm to start, and him to get struck by lightning, or a rainbow to leap across the sky and the clouds to part to show Phil’s shining face as the sun. But after a few long moments of silence, Dan realizes he’s not going to get any divine intervention and groans. 

“Well...let me know when you figure it out.”

-

The next couple of weeks go by quickly. Everything seems normal-they go to classes, they go to work, they go to group, they goof off. The four-day weekend creeps upon them, but before they know it the whole group is up at 6AM standing in front of a huge white van.

“This isn’t cult-ish at all.” PJ yawns, chucking his duffle bag into the trunk. Louise sips her coffee and squints over at Phil.

“This has to be a sin, you know. Not giving a girl her beauty sleep.” Usually, Phil would spout something about “being beautiful in His eyes”, but right now he’s getting the same sense of panic in his eyes that he had when the camp was first mentioned, laughing weakly as he adjusts his glasses. Dan is just awake enough to get the sense that Phil has been repressing the idea of the trip until this exact moment, but he also knows just how to fix it. He had been stockpiling on Phil knowledge for this exact moment.

Phil jumps a bit as Dan nudges him. “Relax. Listen, I know what’s up.” He says quietly, watching as his friend’s eyes widen and a blush spreads across his cheeks.

“What?!” Phil yelps a bit as Dan gently leads him away from the rest of the group. “I mean...what do you know? What’s up?” He asks quietly, fiddling with the strap of his messenger bag.

Dan holds back a fond noise as he smiles gently, shaking his head. “No need to be embarrassed, Phil. My mom went through the same thing for years.” As Phil looks more and more concerned, wringing his hands, Dan digs in his own backpack for a moment before pulling out a small box of Dramamine and handing it to him. “So you don’t upchuck all over us.”

There’s a beat as Phil stares down at the box, eyes wide, and Dan almost thinks he’s got it wrong. Does Phil not get carsick? Was he insulted? Was he really that embarrassed by it?

Phil finally starts to giggle, but it seems more relieved than anything. He nudges Dan lightly and opens his mouth to speak.

“Ah, Dan and Phil! The dynamic duo. You two can sit in the back with the bags!” Caroline’s voice cuts through whatever Phil’s about to say, and he turns to Dan with a small shrug. 

“Looks like it’ll just be you I puke on.” He says, a slight grin on his face as he pulls the door open for Dan, who rolls his eyes but steps in “Gotta get you a poncho for the splash zone.” Dan gags playfully before squeezing in to sit next to Phil amongst all the bags, rolling his eyes and plugging his earbuds in before holding out one bud to Phil and turning on their shared playlist-a mix of indie, Christian rock, (mostly clean) emo jams, and Disney Channel top hits. It’s not the most welcoming thing to listen to at 6AM, but if it keeps Phil calm and Dan from actually needing a poncho, he’ll welcome it.

The majority of the drive is spent in and out of sleep for Dan, guitar chords and vocals bouncing around his sleep-deprived brain. He’s not fully conscious until around noon when they’re about an hour away from the camp. The roads are getting twisty, and it’s then that he notices that Phil has his eyes screwed shut and face scrunched up, both hands shoved into his messenger bag. It only takes a slight peek for Dan to see his fingers curled tightly around his well-worn Bible, and he bites his lip. 

Phil talks about leaps of faith a lot in group. Dan doesn’t quite get it, but he’s pretty sure he’s taking one when he slides his hand into the other’s bag and gently coaxes Phil’s hand into his own. The young man stiffens up for a moment before turning to stare at Dan with wide eyes.

“Shush. It’ll help nausea.” Dan mumbles, his own face red and praying that Phil won’t ask how exactly it will. There’s a pause before Phil smiles weakly, turning his face away, and Dan is about five seconds away from opening the van door and hurtling himself onto the road.

Phil’s probably just been playing nice, and now Dan’s gone and made it uncomfortable for the both of them, and Phil can’t even look at him. Dan’s whole body turns hot, but right before he can pull away, he feels Phil’s slender fingers intertwine with his own.

It’s not the first time they’ve held hands-they do it at the start and end of study groups, and at church, and that one time Phil got them all to hold hands while standing on a hill to reenact the ending of High School Musical 2 for his Instagram. Dan was a bit flustered then, too. But this is different. It’s...intimate. Phil’s never held his hand with such need before, fingers locked with his and palm quivering gently as he mouths a silent “thank you.” Dan feels his entire body buzz, and he can’t help but close his eyes and try to focus on the music and not the fact that he feels like he’s literally twelve years old.

The rest of the ride somehow takes an eternity and only a minute before the van stops, Chris bemoaning his hunger loudly and the rest chattering excitedly. Phil finally opens his eyes and turns to Dan, slowly pulling his hand away. 

They both look at their hands, and then back at each other. There’s a long pause before he opens his mouth, and Dan’s heart starts pounding so hard he’s surprised Phil can’t hear it.

All that Dan has thought about them staying platonic goes out the window. Dan wants nothing more than to lunge forward and shove his lips against Phil’s, to run his hands through his hair, to climb into his lap and- “I didn’t puke!” Phil blurts out loudly, loud enough that everyone hears. The group falls silent before one of the other young men, Raz, gives Phil a thumbs up. “Good for you, bud. C’mon, let’s get these bags up to the cabin, and then we can get some food to celebrate.” Phil laughs a bit too hard at that, face bright red. As he clamors out of the van he leaves Dan in the backseat, trying to climb over the mountain of bags as he watches his friend chatter away as if nothing happened. He watches for a moment before shaking his head quickly, trying to erase the memory from his mind. He was just making things more complicated than they needed to be. They didn’t share a moment. No way.

Dan hauls his bag over his shoulder and walks along with PJ and Lou, struggling to stop the loop of those ten seconds from playing in his head.

-

Dan liked that the Bible study group wasn’t too Jesus-y. It was more philosophical than anything. Even church was just an hour a week on the weeks he went, which was really only once a month when Phil promised brunch afterward.

This weekend, he and his friends had realized, seemed to be where the group could get enough Jesus to last them until the next retreat. It started with grace before lunch-simple enough. But then a pastor had started to preach to them during lunch. And then after lunch. And then afternoon Bible study-for two hours, with a lot more reading and praying than actual discussion. Pj, Chris, and Louise were clearly trying not to fall asleep, while Phil sat off a bit, eyes trained on either the priest or his Bible, hugging himself tightly as he stayed completely silent.

“It’s just so boring!” Louise groaned once they were all finally outside and out of earshot. “I’m sorry, I know this is what you want to do with the rest of your life, Phil, but we’re in nature! Why are we just stuck in some stuffy room listening to an old dude read for hours when we can see the cool stuff God apparently built for us?” “God wants me to climb some of those rocks over there.” PJ agreed, snapping a few pictures on his phone. “He tried to call me earlier to tell me so, but reception sucks here.”

Phil laughed a bit, but it’s definitely more hollow than his normal giggles. “I’m sorry, I-I really thought-”

“Wait. Haven’t you been here before?” Louise asked as PJ started jogging over to the huge rocks, Chris following shortly after. Phil paused before rubbing the back of his neck. “I-I mean, yeah, but-” 

They’re both cut off by someone calling Phil’s name, and he whirls around to see the priest-the same “old dude” Louise had just been insulting-walk over and clap a hand on Phil’s shoulder. “Philip, you must have grown a full foot since I last saw you!” Dan glances over at Phil with a slightly surprised look. He knew Phil had been here before, sure. But to know this man? Someone who seemed so different from Phil in so many ways?

“O-Oh, Father Richard. Hey. Guys, Father Richard worked at the camp I came to a-a couple of years ago.” “And Philip was one of the finest boys there, wasn’t he?” If the man notices Phil shift from one foot to the other nervously, he sure doesn’t show it. “I mean, they were all wonderful young men, don’t get me wrong. But Philip-you’re truly going to be a man of the cloth. Don’t you both think?” Dan is watching Father Richard’s face closely, immediately feeling himself wanting to leave the conversation as soon as possible. If it wasn’t for Phil, he’d have made an excuse and walked off by now. It seems like Louise isn’t thrilled, either, but she smiles and nods a bit. “It’s clearly his passion, uh, Father Richard.”

“Oh, absolutely. As long as he keeps his head out of the clouds.” He throws his head back and laughs, Phil’s grin looking more like a grimace as he chuckles along. “I swear, this boy would lose his head if it wasn’t attached to him!” “I think Phil’s pretty smart, actually.” Dan says suddenly, a good bit of bite to his tone. He’s not sure why, but something about this guy gives him the creeps. He stares him in the eyes as he gets a surprised look from both him and Phil.

After a moment, he clears his throat. “Well...I suppose he’s matured a lot over the past two years. Good to see you again, boy. We’ll have to catch up.” With that he heads off, giving Dan a slightly curious look as he does so, and Phil watches him go before shaking his head.

“Jeez. Phil Lester Fan Club over here.” Louise teased gently before frowning. “What’s his deal?” Phil bit his lip and sighed. “That’s how he is.” He explained quietly, yelping as Louise pulled him into a tight hug.

“Philly…” She cooed before moving to sit on the grass with him, motioning for Dan to do the same. “Talk to us? You’re not usually closed off like this. We know something’s up.” Phil squirms, and Dan can tell he’s debating whether or not to lie. He’s seen it before-when Chris asked if he looked good in his new neon t-shirt, or when some girl asked him once if she was being too annoying after complaining about her roommate to them for five minutes straight. “I just...I came to this camp when I was younger and had different ideas than I do now.” He explains finally.

“Like how interesting that Richard guy was?” Dan tries to joke, instantly regretting it as Phil brings his knees to his chest and curls up into himself.

His voice gets quiet, as it does sometimes when things get serious in group meetings and he’s comforting someone with a verse or trying to explain a tough concept to Dan. 

“Like...I was raised to think God ruled with a vengeance. If you sinned in any way, He would punish you. That’s what my parents said. We were supposed to fear Him, y’know? And when I came here...Father Richard pushed that hard.” Phil explained gently. “But I don’t think God’s like that. I think we’re all sinners-we all make mistakes. James 3:2 and all that. God loves us in spite of our flaws. Hearing him talk about God like he was so cruel, and then reading about His love for us...it was the first time it didn’t add up for me.”

Dan’s eyes widened. In all his time of knowing Phil-two months doesn’t sound like much, but it feels like a lifetime ago-he’s never once heard him speak against his parent’s beliefs. Sure, he could admit that they were a bit extreme at times, but it was always quickly followed with how their intentions were good and that everything had been great. 

“And as someone who wants to be a priest, I don’t think the way to get people to turn to God is to scream at them until they repent and scare them into not sinning. I think you need to be like Jesus. Hate the sin, love the sinner.” He continued, forcing a tiny smile as he rubbed the back of his neck. “Because we’re all His children, after all. And He’s got a path for all of us-fear won’t guide us onto that.”

There’s a moment of silence before Louise reaches down, giving his hair an affectionate tousle. “You start preaching like that and I’ll come to your church every Sunday. I’ll even sing in the choir.” She joked. A slow beam spread across Phil’s face-a a genuine one, and he stood up before pulling her into a tight hug. 

“Thank you.” He whispered. “Thank you both. I-If I had known he would’ve been here, I’d have at least warned you-”

“Shush, mate. You had no idea. Trust me, you’re way too much of a softie to lie to us, we know that.” Dan laughed a bit, giving Phil’s back a light pat. Phil giggled a bit before pulling away, taking a deep breath. 

“Wanna go make sure Chris and Peej don’t crack their heads open?” He said finally, and before they could say anything the two of them were taking off towards the rocks, Dan chasing after both of them. Despite his grin, he still couldn’t help but feel like his head was heavy with questions. Father Richard had seemed boring, and a bit grumpy, but not angry. Were Phil’s changing beliefs really all that had happened?

-

Phil had seemed relieved to talk for a bit, but the mood shifted again once evening activities started. Father Richard had preached again during dinner-and again, nothing terrible happened. He made a few dry jokes, he talked about having “complete and total faith”, he read some long passages that Dan didn’t care about. He was too busy glancing over at Phil next to him, who had left his food practically untouched. 

Then there are evening vespers, with Phil’s hands clenched together so tightly in prayer that his knuckles turn white and his fingernails dig into the skin. The firepit seems to be going well-he shares a s’more with Dan, but before he could get another he’s pulled aside by Father Richard. Dan’s sure at one point the two glance over at Dan, but then Phil’s walking back over, trying to look interested in some story one of the group members is telling as he brings his knees to his chest. Even Chris and PJ seem to notice that something’s going on, but with a pointed look from Dan, they give him some space.

They turn in for the night, but Dan wakes up way too early to find Phil curled up on his bunk pouring over his Bible. The bags under his eyes tell Dan that he didn’t sleep a wink last night, and he sighs. “C’mon, you gotta show me where the showerhouse is.” He says gently, and Phil looks up at him with a tired laugh. “Do I?” He teased weakly. After a minute though, he sits up and stretches. “Mmm...fine. But no chickening out.” With that he hops down from the bunk, peeling off his shirt before walking over to his bag.

Dan’s pretty sure he gulps audibly as Phil grabs a change of clothes and a towel, eyes wandering over him. Though Phil braved the communal showers at Uni, he was always sure to change in the stall-Dan had never seen him in so much as a pair of shorts that went higher than his knees. And yet, here he was. Dan would feel guilty about watching him, especially considering he knew Phil was having a tough time, but…

He couldn’t help it. His best friend looked hot as hell from behind. He couldn’t help but admire his slim frame, his lean but toned arms, and when he turned around, the slight smattering of chest hair that slowly turned into a happy trail that crept lower, into-

“I’m telling you now, if you forget a towel you’ll regret it.” He said, voice still low from sleep, and Dan snapped his head up. “Towel! Right! Let me go grab that.” He squeaked and quickly moved to grab it, trying to hide his flushed cheeks as he snagged a change of clothes as well. By the time he looked up Phil was already heading for the door, humming under his breath, and Dan followed him quickly.

After a few moments of silence, Phil spoke. “Father Richard is leaving tonight, so you won’t have to sit through his lectures after today. He’s just stopping by to talk to us. So we’ll have less worship-y stuff and more free time tomorrow.” Phil glanced over at Dan. “Sorry if I’m weird about it. I just..y’know.”

Dan nodded and relaxed into the shared feeling of relief, even if he didn’t exactly know what Phil was talking about. Before he could ask, though, they were at the small building-just a row of four stalls that looked like bathroom stalls, built out of wood. As Dan stepped inside and stripped-definitely not thinking about how Phil was doing the same just inches away, especially as he heard his sweatpants hit the ground-he rubbed his eyes. “Is there coffee here?”

“Oh, trust me, you don’t need coffee here.” Phil laughed a bit, a genuine one, and Dan raised an eyebrow, glancing over at where his head peeked over the stall. 

“Dude, I’ve seen you-sweet fuck!” Dan shrieked as he turned the single knob on and freezing cold water shot out of a showerhead on the ceiling. “How the fuck do you get the hot water?!”

Phil was really laughing now, his witch cackle carrying over Dan’s screams. “No hot water at camp.” He sang playfully. “And no swearing, either, but-”

“Christ on a bike, no wonder you were fucking miserable here!” The words come out before he can realize it, and suddenly he freezes (as well as he can while shivering like mad), but Phil only laughs harder. 

“You’re ridiculous, you know that?” Dan can hear the grin in his voice, and he lets out a long breath. “Whatever. Shitting fucking fuck! Let’s get this over with.”

Dan somehow manages to survive the worst shower of his life, his hair curling as he towels himself off before tugging on clothes and leaving the showerhouse. If it wasn’t for the bright smile on Phil’s face, he’d say it wasn’t worth it. But at least for right now, Phil is his old, giggly self again, and Dan comes to the realization he’d do just about anything to keep him like that.

Unfortunately for Dan, it doesn’t last long. As they’re walking back to the cabin, Phil glances across the way and sees Father Richard, walking through the trees. “Oh, shoot, c’mon-” Phil grabs Dan’s arm and tugs him along a bit faster, not looking behind him for nearly a full minute. As he glances over and sees the look on Dan’s face he finally stops, sighing softly. The joy from before is gone. “Sorry. I just...too early to try to handle that right now.” “Yeah, yeah, of course. Let’s just get going to the cabin, yeah? I’m still freezing.” Dan jokes weakly, and Phil tries to crack a smile, still looking uncomfortable as they walk along the trail in silence.

The rest of the day is disturbingly similar to yesterday, and the whole group is sensing that Phil is just...off. He’s usually eager to jump into discussions, but even when Father Richard gives them the chance to talk, Phil seems totally holed up in himself, mumbling something about wanting to give others a time to speak (which pushes the topic along to Louise, who fumbles it totally and is earned a condescending smile from Father Richard).

By lunch, Dan thinks he can’t sit through another hour of this. By mid-afternoon, he’s considering faking being possessed by Satan. And by dinner, he’s come up with about forty ways to fake the possession. The only reason keeping him from doing so is that when he mutters it to PJ he tells him to wait until after dinner-if he keeps Chris from food, he’ll have bigger things to worry about than a camp full of religious fanatics thinking he’s possessed.

They set the tables and then get in line to eat dinner. Dan immediately realizes Phil isn’t anywhere to be found, exchanging concerned looks with Louise. When they get five minutes into dinner and realize that Father Richard is also missing, he starts to worry. 

What if Father Richard was...well, what would he do? 

The truth is, Dan doesn’t know what the big deal is with this guy. He honestly doesn’t seem to be too bad, but the control he has over Phil’s emotions is genuinely weird. Still, he doesn’t want to cause a scene. 

“Hey, Caroline!” He says, quickly jogging over to the young woman, and she gives Dan a kind smile. “Dan, hey! How have you been enjoying this so far?” She asked gently, resting a hand on his arm. “I know it can be intense, considering your, um...well, you weren’t exactly in the church before you joined us, and-”

“Caroline, it’s all great, but do you know where Phil is?”

She smiles and gives Dan’s arm a squeeze. “I’m so glad you two found each other, you know that? You guys are like-”

“Caroline.”

“Okay, okay. I won’t be mushy, even if you guys are my favorite freshmen.” She winked before waving her hand towards the door. “He’s out by the lake with Father Rich. They go way back, did you know?”

Dan nods slowly. It’s clearly not the answer he wanted, because Caroline leans in. “Don’t tell him I said this, but trust me, Phil’s not choosing Father Richard over you. You’re still his BFF.”

Wonderful. That’s the reassurance he needed right now, that Phil wasn’t going to choose a 65-year-old man to be his ‘BFF”. He manages to smile and thank Caroline before going to wait on the mess hall deck. If Richard was going to drag Phil away, then dammit, he was going to be the first to talk to him when he got back.

-

Phil doesn’t come back up to the mess hall for at least another hour. His eyes are rimmed red, and he’s alone. The second Dan hears his footsteps he shoots up. “Phil!” He shouts after he yanks his earbuds out, and Phil lets out a yelp, laughing shakily. “Oh my God, did he-did he make you cry?!”

Phil rubs his eyes quickly and giggles weakly. “Dan, I cry at everything. We cried together over that muffin in the dining hall on Wednesday, remember?” 

Dan doesn’t look convinced in the slightest, but suddenly Phil’s arms are pulling him into a long hug. “We just had a long talk. Don’t tell me I missed anything?”

“They went on some dumb night hike, but-don’t tell me you wanted to go on the night hike?” He asked as he saw the disappointment on Phil’s face, frowning. “We can go! We can go right now, and meet them, and-” “Dan. Breathe, okay?” He giggled and led Dan inside. “Our group can go on our own little night hike tomorrow, I’ll survive. Besides. I haven’t gotten to spend time with you these past couple of days, and I’ve missed you.” Phil’s voice is a bit softer, and he gives him a shy smile.

Dan’s face turns red and he sits down in one of the faded couches, Phil flopping next to him. “It’s only been, like, a day and a half.” He mumbles.

“It’s been a long day and a half.” Dan nods slowly, looking up at Phil. “Is he gone?” “Yep. Just left camp now. Didn’t wanna make a fuss.” Dan can’t help but roll his eyes a bit at that, shaking his head. “Now, c’mon. Can we talk about something fun? Like…” He reaches out and snatches up an old copy of Women’s Health from a bin by the fireplace, clearly meant for kindling. “What advice can we find for two lovely women like ourselves?” 

As he flutters his eyelashes at him, Dan can’t help but laugh, grabbing the magazine from him. The two swap it back and forth, giggling like children at the stupid advice and making fun of all the pictures. The tension from before melts away, and suddenly it’s just Dan and Phil, the two of them being absolute idiots and laughing over nothing. After the last day and a half, it feels amazing to just laugh.

When they finish that one they go to the next one in the bin. They read through issues of Runner’s World, Golf Digest, Christian Living, Better Homes and Gardens, and even a Highlights before Phil’s stomach lets out a loud growl.

“Oooh, I need some food. Why don’t I go grab us some snacks from the kitchen? There’s some board games in one of the closets, find something for us to play?” 

With that, he’s up and going into the kitchen, and Dan wanders over to one of the closet doors. Sure enough, he sees some old board game boxes peeking out behind some moving boxes. Dan goes to move one out of the way when he catches a peek of the pile of brochures inside. His eyes run over the text and clip-art outline of a strong-looking man. Program Judges 6:12 at Camp Brabeck: For teen boys and young men struggling with sexual impurity.

Sexual impurity? Dan grabs the brochure and flips it open.

Today, our young men are raised in a culture where abnormal lifestyles are being accepted, even praised and celebrated. It’s no wonder that more youth than ever before are turning out oversexualized and confused, and more than ever are struggling with same-sex desires...

From there on, the words start to blur together for Dan, and he flips the brochure over.

And then Dan sees it. In the top corner is Father Richard, smiling wide.

With his hand on Phil’s shoulder. 

Dan feels his stomach churn violently as he looks at younger Phil. There’s no way it could be anyone else. Even if he’s a bit shorter, and his hair isn’t dyed, Dan’s studied Phil’s face long enough to know it’s him. As Dan grips the picture frame in his hands, Phil’s words from yesterday come back to him, hitting his chest like rocks.

“Hate the sin, love the sinner.”

Phil worked with Father Richard, at this-this “camp”, this place. They worked together.

“God loves us in spite of our flaws.”

Not only was Phil not gay, thus extinguishing the slightest bit of hope he had, but Phil was actively homophobic. Phil worked at a bloody conversion therapy site, for fuck’s sake.

“He’s got a path for all of us.”

Phil wasn’t uncomfortable about Father Richard-he was uncomfortable about Dan and their friends being around Father Richard, and them finding out just what a homophobic, lying, fake-

“I found Pop-Tarts!”

Phil’s voice interrupts the swirling thoughts in his head, and he slowly turns, holding the brochure up. “Were you ever going to mention this?” Phil’s face goes pale. “I...Where did you…” He whispers, but Dan growls. Actually growls. Red hot anger is taking control now as days, weeks, months, years of suffocated emotions rises to the top suddenly. A lifetime of not fitting in, a lifetime of hiding, and to be rejected by Phil-like this.

“Nice pic of you and your friend, Phil. You worked with him on this? You and Richard, two pals-and you knew we’d judge you for it, so you just decided not to tell us?!”

“Wait, wait, Dan, no. It’s not like that. That’s not what-” Phil tries to butt in. Dan isn’t having it.

“Do you realize what kind of damage you do to people, Phil?! You can’t act like-like Little Mr. Innocent about this, this is some seriously fucked up shit you’ve done!” Dan’s properly yelling now, getting to his feet and not even stopping as Phil cowers back. “And-And worst of all, you hid it from us! You talk like you love everyone, hiding behind your stupid flowery language, but you’re a total fucking hateful dick!”

Phil suddenly stands as well, putting his hands in front of his chest, but irritation is creeping into his voice. “Daniel. Listen to me, you don’t understand. I’m not hateful-” “Oh-Oh yeah? Not hateful, huh? Not hateful when you say ‘gay is an artificial construct, created to celebrate people’s sinful homosexual desires’? Or when your stupid fucking camp goes to ‘remove young men from their unhealthy environment to bring them to Jesus and see the errors they’re making’?” Dan’s reading directly from the pamphlet now. “That doesn’t sound loving, Phil!”

“Dan, let me-” “There is literally nothing you could say to make this better. You think you’re helping, don’t you? But you’re just-just spreading hate, and-” Dan’s words are cut off as Phil suddenly grabs him by the back of his head, pulling him into a hard kiss. For possibly the first time in his life, Dan is rendered speechless, especially a few moments later when Phil pulls away and his eyes well up.

“Dan…” He choked out, sinking down onto the couch and starting to sob. “I didn’t-I didn’t-” After a moment he grabs the brochure weakly. “I didn’t work at the camp.” He chokes out finally, and Dan just stands frozen in place. “I was a camper.”

Dan hates that he doesn’t know whether he should trust him or not. But...this is Phil, crying ugly, hard sobs, and he can’t help but feel his heart break in two. “A...camper?” He asks slowly, moving to sit next to him but keeping his distance.

Phil lets out a pained noise but nods. “I signed up to go. Because I kept having these-these dreams, and these urges. And I thought if I did everything right, if I listened to Father R-Richard…” He has to stop himself to catch his breath as it comes quicker, curling into himself and resting his head on his knees. “I thought if I could be perfect, I could b-be like him. A priest. A husband, to a wife. A father to my k-kids. An ex-homosexual.” He said, tears streaming down his face. “Dan, I-I tried so hard…” Dan frowns, running a hand through his hair slowly. “You can’t just-I mean, I don’t think it works like that, Phil,” Dan says after a moment, and Phil nods quickly. “I know, I know. God knows I know. They tried everything on m-me. I mean, everything. But the more they did, the more angry I got, with myself, with Richard, with God. I hated God, Dan, I hated him so much, and I did all this stuff…” Dan can’t stop himself but reaching out and taking his hand at that, and Phil clings to it almost instantly. “I lied, and I ripped up my Bible, and I did stuff with the other guys there…”

Dan blinked a few times. For Phil, that was intense, and he can hear the guilt and true sorrow in his voice. “You-I mean, no offense, but kissing a few guys and tearing up a book aren’t exactly unforgivable sins.” He says, hoping to bring him comfort. To his surprise, Phil laughs sadly.

“I did more than just kiss, trust me. When Richard found me in the showers with one of the guys-” 

At that Dan’s eyes nearly bug out of his head. Phil, who half an hour ago was blushing at ads for tampons, in the showers with a guy? “He-He decided I needed more intense therapy. It was hours and hours of just being told how disgusting I was, being shown these videos, being preached at, b-but I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t stop feeling like I did.”

“Phil…” Dan feels his broken heart finally crumble. He pulls him into a hug, letting him sob into his hair.

“F-Finally I just lied my way th-through it. That’s what m-most of us do. And then I was th-the big success story, and they took that dumb picture, and it was finally over. I went home, and I was so mad I decided I’d go through my Bible-the nice, new one my parents had bought me, when they heard that ‘somebody’ tore up my old one-to s-see how wrong I was before and how terrible He was. So I stayed up for nearly a week, no school, no nothing. Just reading.”

Phil pulled away to reach out, grabbing his copy of the Bible from his bag “ And as I read, I…” 

He took a deep breath as he opened it up and slowly turned the pages, motioning to the Post-Its and notes littering the scripture. “I didn’t find that. I found a God that wanted me to love-He wanted me to love my family, and my friends, and my neighbors, and-and guys. He wanted me to love you. He wanted me to love you, romantically.” At that, Dan feels his heart stop and he gently moves to look Phil in the eyes. “You really think that?” He whispered, Phil nodding quickly as he ran a hand through Dan’s hair.

“God gave us all the ability to love-fully, and deeply, and wonderfully. And-And I love you, so much. I didn’t want to freak you out, and I’m not ready to be out, but-” This time it’s Dan’s turn to cut him off with a slower, gentler kiss. “Shh. We don’t have to tell anyone.” He murmured.

“It can just be us?” Phil asked in a small voice. “Just you and me?” 

At that, Dan is pretty sure he’s going to explode, because dear God that’s all he’s ever wanted. He wants to scream, he wants to jump up and down, he wants to run down the fucking mountain and throw rocks at Father Richard’s car-

Instead, Dan takes a deep breath before smiling and nodding. “Just me and you.” He agreed quietly.

He leaned in and kissed Phil again, cupping his cheeks. This time was gentler, and Phil let out a soft, relieved noise as his lips moved against Dan’s and he pulled Dan close to him.

“I love you,” Dan says once they pull away. “I love you, I love you, I love you-”

“Have I ever read you Proverbs 17:28?” Phil interrupts with a giggle. Dan raises an eyebrow but grabs Phil’s Bible, flipping to it.

Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.

“Did you just ask me to shut up and keep kissing you through a Bible verse?!” Dan whined, but he can’t help but grin as Phil kept laughing, nodding as he connected their lips again.

Time seems to stand still. Two minutes, five minutes, ten minutes, ten hours, ten years-Dan can only guess how much time has passed when they hear the group off in the distance. “Shit-shit, okay, one last-” Dan jerked away but Phil giggled, grabbing the plate of Pop-Tarts and Dan’s hand before dragging him outside. He took him out a bit before they got down to the lake, sitting on the sand and wrapping his arms around Dan. Dan pauses before shyly climbing into his lap, and then they’re kissing again, Phil only pausing to catch his breath and murmur “I’m sorry you thought I could be homophobic.” “I’m sorry I didn’t ask before jumping to conclusions.” “I’m sorry I didn’t open up about what had happened.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t keep you away from Father Richard.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t keep you away from Father Richard.” “I’m sorry I couldn’t have been that guy in the showers with you.” The words leave Dan’s mouth before he can stop himself-humor is a coping mechanism for him, but right now, he wants to kick himself when he hears Phil’s gasp.

“Oi! Not yet, at least.” He said with a slight laugh, pressing his lips to Dan’s cheek and watching as his face burns red. He grins and presses a few pecks to his lips before looking up at the sky. 

“...You really think God wants this for us?” Dan says and Phil closes his eyes, snuggling closer.

“‘For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.  I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. Psalm 139:113 to 114’.” Phil recited quietly. “God made us fearfully-like, with great awe and respect of us-and wonderfully. He made us find each other, he made us love each other.” He kissed Dan’s nose. “So that’s us. Fearfully and wonderfully made.” Dan looks at Phil with a soft smile, a bit worn from all the excitement of the day, but feeling...free. “Fearfully and wonderfully, huh?”

Phil nods, and Dan pulls him even closer.

“I could get used to that.”

[skamamoroma]

All done.

I’m going to struggle IMMENSELY to summarise the past few hours.

I just used many tissues to dry my ridiculous tears, hardly able to see the screen. If this is the end completely then I’m satisfied. My heart doesn’t know what to do with itself but I feel contented.

But, LUDOVICO FUCKING BESSEGATO. Dude. I don’t know what to say about the talent of that man. The original s4 was fraught with issues with the odd true magic and beauty in there. It broke my heart at the time. I cherish those moments that truly were special and done to perfection. But I thank Ludo so much for what he tried to do, for the many MANY changes he made that made so much sense, that changed the story to fit his world, that made more messes that were ultimately more meaningful and for the surprises I didn’t expect. He has done this since day 1 and I am genuinely stunned.

Sana was and is beautiful. She was breathtaking from start to finish. She was human and difficult and gentle and funny and weird and intelligent and sensitive and so so much. Her mistakes didn’t feel unusual, her reasoning was impassioned and never once was she treated by the writing with anything other than affection even when she behaved wrongly. She was surrounded by beauty and at every turn she was just truly truly wonderful to behold. I didn’t know what to expect from this season but this? This genuine and total adoration for her. Ludo, that has you written all over it.

I have so much to say about the individual characters and moments and issues and THAT LAST EPISODE but as ever, if Skam It can be held up for one thing alone it is the dynamics between the characters and how they’re written with warmth and humanity and total deep affection. There was no dynamic went untouched, no moment wasted even in the background. Everyone was given their time and I didn’t feel it took away at all from Sana’s story... it always added to it. Rami/Sana, Filo/Marti, Fede/Sana, Luchino/Silvia, Gio/Marti, Eva/Gio, Sana/Ele, Filo/Sana, Marti/Sana, Marti/Eva, Sana/Malik, Elia/Gio, Filo/Ele.... every single one.

Mess and emotion and mistakes and difficulties were written in such an honest, blunt way and felt so true, so real as if these characters were exceptionally genuine. Especially Sana’s voicemail and her talk with Marti.

Every single shot was just fucking beautiful. I mean there’s no other way to say it. It was all achingly gorgeous, tiny little moments like the sound of a storm of the glare of the light or the steam from those hot baths (WHERE DID HE FIND THOSE). GOOD GOD.

The music. Hands down my favourite soundtrack of any Skam season and there have been MANY I’ve adored but this took the bloody biscuit. A perfect mixture and fitted each scene so beautifully, often adding to it so seamlessly like when Nico was playing seeker in hide and seek or when Sana was praying or the street procession’s voices...

And religion. I am not religious and I don’t speak for anyone who shares Sana’s experiences. I want to hear from you so so much. What did you think? As someone from outside that beautiful community and religious experience, it felt utterly breathtaking. It felt casual and normal as a way of life (whereas religion can often be portrayed as a burden) and it also felt celebrated and lit up from the inside to show the truth of it and the beauty within, the values it holds... not to mention the difficulties. Sana being able to speak to Marti the way she did or explain in her voicemail. Her anger. I felt it and I learned from her words. She just wanted to be seen, to be considered as herself and watching Malik look at her like he did and Marti being upfront with her but all because he likes her and their personalities fit and seeing her with her Mamma navigating being a teenager alongside the idea of a future.

I can’t finish without a mention of my boys. They were, as always, heart and bloody soul. My Marti was so present and overwhelming for me. I will 100% want to write god damn essays about him and about Nico but I didn’t feel he was out of character for a moment despite the major tests they threw at him, mainly because they laid the groundwork before it kicked off. We saw him from an outside view and his brutal honesty, his lashing out through fear and his sarcasm and stubbornness was explored in such depth... but his love for Nico was everywhere. All over it. As two young, complex guys and Nico with a past and vulnerabilities... both felt so raw and desperate at all times without ever losing the foundation they have. The effort to allow Nico to have as much of a voice as possible while still keeping that solid POV on Sana... I’m grateful. We all want to see more but the way it played out didn’t leave me feeling TOO wanting (EXCEPT FOR THAT UNDER THE BED SCENE... oh the desperation to see that). Testing them in that way was a brave move by Ludo but I am so pleased he did because they weren’t reduced to background models. They were woven into Sana’s story and given respect and real moments of beauty and honesty. I will NEVER BE ABLE TO GET MARTI’S HEARTBROKEN RED PUFFY TEARY EYES OUT OF MY HEAD. And the fact Gio was the one to lock them away...! Also. Hands down one of the best Marti moments was that snuggly hug on the beach, the fact that Nico looks at home and they’re both a little fragile but comforted by each other and then Marti and his god damn mouth asking if they can throw the guy in the water... hahahahaha. And Nico smiles. Because he knows Marti and loves him exactly as he is. Also a moment for Luchi and Silvia because I have a LOT to say but to see him trusted and to see his heart alongside his Luchi side was so meaningful and they were this refreshing special surprise.

And Gio. Gioooooo. Yet again. No matter which season, he felt fundamental despite not being the main. He is warm and navigates between them all with this sense of solidity and support. He’s just LOVELY. He was never missing. None of them were. I loved seeing him settled with Sofia (who was never belittled - only by Eva and hahahahaha yes they included her rolling her eyes again) but also clearly still entirely in love with Eva. That moment he told Cannegallo to get in line I was a weepy mess. The ending. Oh the god darn ending. That voice and hearing Eva’s words spoken back to him, hearing how loved he is and also reflecting on life... seeing them get back together so naturally. I honestly couldn’t have asked for more.

Also a moment for Federica. STRIKING AS ALL HELL. Fierce and willing to learn. Honest and she dazzled me.

I am unable to summarise properly as I’d write all day and it’s 4am! I have so much to say. I was bowled over by emotion watching the entire thing. But I was absolutely reminded of what a gift this show is and how precious I consider it to be. This season has wildly surpassed every expectation I had and god damn soared into the distance. I am stunned and I want to live, as always, in those orangey glowy scenes of warmth. It’s like being wrapped in a big blanket with someone telling you - “life is going to be hard but you’re ok, you’re going to be ok”. That’s how Skam Italia feels. Written, performed, edited and delivered with affection and love and i genuinely couldn’t be more grateful for it as I am this morning (did I mention it’s 4am).

I will write tons more. You know me. I will be talking endless about this season and you won’t shut me up but, for now, I hope you all enjoyed it as much as me. I don’t think I’m quite prepared to hear anything but love at the moment so I shall see you all tomorrow.

And, I hadn’t a clue if season 5 is a thing or even a possibility of any magnitude. Whatever happens, I want Ludo Bessegato with his hands all over it, loving these characters and taking us with them as Eva said though messes. I hope they don’t leave each other either ❤️ AND GIVE ME 10 EPISODES OF GIOVANNI GARAU FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. The world wants it.

Aaaaanyway, WHOEVER DECIDED IT WOULD EVER BE A GOOD IDEA TO BINGE A SKAM SEASON. Too many emotions. This shit needs time to digest in between. I feel like I just pushed off an emotional cliff. And on that note. I sleep. I love you all and I’m not even sorry for my meltdown! I’m classing this as my Italian revision. Job well done 😘

[chloebeale]

UNTIL I’M OKAY (preview)

AUTHORS: @bottombeca & @snowbritt. RATING: M. PAIRING: Bechloe. WORDS: 1,794. ABOUT: Bechloe ‘Dead To Me’ AU.

This is purely a preview of chapter one, the entirety of which will be posted shortly. While this fic is based heavily on the show Dead To Me, it has been altered, adjusted and added to to create a Bechloe story and universe.

We hope you enjoy the below preview of our collaborative baby!

Warnings: Mentions of death and miscarriage.

***

All morning, there have been signs; signs that Beca shouldn’t be here. Firstly, Ryder’s cheeks had looked a little more flushed than usual. No, maybe he didn’t have a fever or anything, but Beca is not a doctor, he totally could be getting sick. Maybe she should’ve kept him home from school for the day, stuck around to take care of him.

Next, the Atlanta traffic, typically insufferable anyway, had been even worse this morning somehow.

It also doesn’t help that this isn’t necessarily voluntary on her part—court-ordered attendance doesn’t care about signs, or so the judge told her the last time she skipped. 

And now this: a broken coffee machine. At least, Beca thinks it’s broken… She is positive there is no way anybody would try to pass off what she can only consider the sludge floating around in her styrofoam cup as actual coffee, right? Not that she has tasted it yet. Rather, she simply eyes it with a scrutinizingly raised brow, attention shifting distractedly to the view ahead.

If she has to endure cheap coffee and even cheaper cliches, at least there’s a view. The river will be a nice distraction when everything inevitably starts to get a little too weepy for her tolerance, she supposes.

Perhaps Beca is a little too caught up in the serenity of it all, in fact—the aforementioned view—because she seems to lose herself for the briefest of moments, at least long enough to bring the coffee cup up to her lips.

Instantly, she regrets it.

“Dude, what the—” She doesn’t know if she should choke it down or spit it back in the cup.

“That bad, huh?”

The voice to break into her quiet outburst is an unfamiliar one, though it comes from close enough by to have Beca’s attention drifting toward its owner. She is unfamiliar, too. Beca doesn’t register her own blank expression until the other woman speaks again.

“The coffee…” There is a distinct lightness to the nameless face’s voice, one that Beca really does not have the energy for this morning. “Kind of looks like you’re not enjoying it.”

“Oh, right,” Beca nods, tone disinterested. “Yeah. It tastes like shit.”

The melodic giggle to ring out from the stranger’s lips seems somewhat misplaced, all things considered. “Guess I’ll avoid it then,” she says, tucking a chunk of curled red hair behind her ear. She hesitates for the shortest moment, before pushing a bright, welcoming smile to her lips. “I’m Chloe, by the way. This is…” Chloe motions vaguely around them, “Kind of new to me.”

Beca is not here to make friends. In fact, she doesn’t even want to be here. Regardless, she nods politely in response to Chloe’s introduction—it is really not her fault Beca cannot control her temper, after all. “Beca.”

“Beca…” Chloe repeats in a breezy tone, almost as if trying to commit it to memory. “Pretty.”

Though Beca’s brows tug together slightly, she offers Chloe a small smile, one that definitely does not meet her eyes—then again, when does Beca’s smile meet her eyes these days?

Chloe’s wide gaze seems to be staring at her expectantly, as if awaiting a response. What is she even supposed to say to that?

Fortunately—if anything about this situation can be considered fortunate—a new voice cuts into their conversation.

“Ready to join the circle?”

If Jesse were here, Beca would make a mumbled comment to him about how semi-threatening the request sounds. But, he isn’t… And that is why Beca is even here at all. So, exchanging a brief glance with Chloe, whose subtle amusement appears evident, Beca sets down her cup of lukewarm sludge, before dutifully making her way toward an empty seat.

“Looks like we have a few fresh faces here today,” the previous voice announces cheerfully.

Beca glances up to the blonde wearing the neatly pressed Fallen Leaves t-shirt, taking note of the way she is now looking expectantly between Beca and the redhead seated beside her.

Taking no further prompting, Chloe sends a small wave toward the group, before introducing herself with a polite, “Hi. I’m Chloe.”

Following a brief silence, Beca registers the countless sets of eyes now training on her.

“Oh. Um, hi. I’m Beca,” she says awkwardly to the group, the distinct difference between she and Chloe’s greetings palpable. The way she straightens in her chair seems to display her level of discomfort, if the way the blonde shoots a sympathetic look her way is anything to go by.

“Well, welcome to Fallen Leaves,” she says, evidently taking over, “My name is Aubrey. As some of you know, I like to start out our grief group by sharing the loss that got me into this work.”

Beca braces herself for the first of what she’s sure will be many sob stories to come, though she takes comfort in the focus no longer being on her.

“During an acapella competition in college, under extreme pressure, I violently vomited on stage,” Aubrey begins to explain somberly. “My co-captain slipped in it and fell off the stage, breaking her neck in the process. It happened with the whole crowd watching, not to mention on live television.” She pauses briefly, giving the group a moment to digest the information and evidently ignoring the look of mild horror displayed across Beca’s face. “And I live with that every day.”

Shrinking back into her chair a little bit, Beca is beginning to regret everything that led to her being here today. She doesn’t want to talk about it with anyone—let alone someone who anxiety-puked their way into killing someone. 

“Oh, my god,” Chloe murmurs sympathetically.

Aubrey presses her lips together. “Thank you. Is there a loss you’ve had that you’d like to share with us today?” Her gaze moves toward Beca briefly, though Beca is quick to shake her head in response.

“I do,” the voice beside her pipes up. The group’s attention, Beca and Aubrey’s included, moves toward Chloe, and Beca finds that she is grateful to lose the spotlight yet again.

Apparently, Chloe doesn’t share Beca’s disdain for all eyes on her. She looks comfortable enough as she shoots a small smile toward her audience. “Okay,” Chloe begins, straightening slightly in her seat. Just because she seems to be okay with the attention does not mean that whatever she is about to say is something she is comfortable with. In fact, it becomes quickly evident that it is not. “Well, um, my fiancé and I—ex fiancé—were trying to start a family. We tried a bunch of times, in fact,” Chloe explains, settling into her story.

Beca notes the way her gaze lowers, as if she is mentally disappearing somewhere else.

“About eight weeks ago, our baby died. It was sudden. Really sudden. I was…” Chloe’s voice gets small and strained as she wrings her fingers together.

Beca is about the least affectionate woman in all of Atlanta, but something about Chloe’s small voice and shrinking demeanor almost makes her want to reach out and settle a comforting hand against her shoulder. She doesn’t, of course; she just focuses her own sad gaze on Chloe as she continues.

“I was five months along, so we weren’t really expecting it, you know? Maybe we should have been. There were four before this. And the miscarriages… No one prepares you for how hard they really are. But this time, I guess I just thought we’d made it. That I was really going to have a family.”

Chloe is looking down at her hands, folded into each other to keep from fidgeting. “This time we’d set up the nursery. We hadn’t done that before, not since the first…” She clears her throat. “I keep coming back to this baby blanket that I’ll never get to wrap around my baby. Or lift it to my nose and breathe in her smell when I miss her.” She blinks a few times and looks back up, like she is coming back to the present. Beca notes that her eyes are a little harder to look into now. “So, yeah,” Chloe murmurs. “There’s nothing I can do about it.”

That same somber expression, already familiar, has returned almost automatically to Aubrey’s face. “We’re here for you, Chloe,” she says, a genuine air to her comforting tone. “Let’s hear it for Chloe, guys.” 

Like conditioned robots reading from a brief handed out before Beca’s arrival, everyone except for Beca, who is unintentionally watching Chloe, says in monotone, “We’re here for you, Chloe.”

Beca’s is the lone voice to say, much more personally, “That sucks. I’m really sorry.”

Despite the sea of eyes trained on Chloe, Chloe’s gaze lifts to meet Beca’s, auburn brows drawn tightly together. They seem to relax a little as she looks at Beca, though. Eventually, she just says, “Thank you,” quietly, a small nod of appreciation accompanying her words.

A moment passes between them before Aubrey speaks. “Thank you for sharing that.” While Beca may not be used to this, to people opening up so deeply and personally, Aubrey evidently is. It seems to be business as usual for her as she continues in a clear voice. “Last week, we started talking about the F-word.”

Instantly, Beca’s eyebrows jump up. She glances around at everyone else, but they don’t seem to find anything strange about this—something Beca finds strange in and of itself. Out of the corner of her eye, Chloe’s gaze catches Beca’s, and Beca notes that it looks as though she’s trying to suppress a confused chuckle.

“That’s right. Forgiveness,” Aubrey says. “Forgiveness can be really difficult. It can even take a lifetime. But no matter the circumstances, everyone is deserving of forgiveness.”

Beca can’t keep the indignant scoff from leaving her lips even if she wants to. Aubrey stops talking, her mouth slightly open in offense, while piercing eyes seem to narrow in on Beca directly.

“Do you have anything to share about forgiveness, Beca?”

Beca’s lips purse, armor falling briefly. “Yeah, I do,” she nods. “How do you forgive someone who hits your husband with their car and then drives away, leaving him to bleed to death on the side of the road?” Beca mutters flatly. “How do you forgive the person responsible for you lying awake every night, wondering how your boys are supposed to cope without their father? How do you forgive that?”

Wide eyes stare her way incredulously, but before anyone has the chance to respond, she leans back in her chair, closing herself off to further conversation. “You know what, I actually don’t want to get into it, so someone else can go,” Beca exhales sharply, trying to push her anger back into its usual box, stored up on the highest shelf where it belongs.

[ironmansuuucks]

Hello! uh is it alright if I requested a lil something something?? um! The reader coming home really really drunk after a girls night out and they basically can’t function properly, so Dewey helps take off makeup and clothes and what not and getting them ready for bed??? If you don’t want to write it or is overwhelmed by asks, I completely understand dude, no pressure I just really love your writing a lot xxx

this was one of my favourite requests oh my gosh...

dewey finn x reader

Thank you for this lovely request and for your beautiful words💜 I wasn’t loving this one until I wrote the ending and it pulled it all together hehe and now I love it and i hope you do to @large-unit 💜💜

As always, @thewolfisapartofmysoul always amazes me with her beautiful aesthetics, thank u so much for this one my angel💜

As usual, Friday nights out with the girls had been messy. This Friday had been messier than normal, and you knew your limits, but tonight you well and truly exceeded them. Normally you attempted to try and stick to one drink, be it wine or vodka, or rum, but tonight you thought you were clever and decided to mix everything. “Rookie mistake” you could practically hear Dewey’s condescending voice.

You tried to be as quiet as possible when you opened the door to the apartment you shared with your boyfriend, Dewey Finn. Your sweet sweet Dewey Finn. In your drunken state you were mumbling to yourself “shh-hh, gotta be quiet shhh”. But your actions rejected these mutterings.

The door seemed to be louder than ever as you closed it, your hand bag hitting the tiled floor with a bang. “shhhh” you told it, holding your finger up to your mouth looking down at the door, then the bag.

Your mind was in a frenzy, with the world spinning faster than normal, your legs giving way as you slumped against the door.

“baby, is that you?” Dewey called from the living room, a little concerned. Dewey would never sleep until you were home when you went out. He was too worried about you and kept his phone next to him all night in case his girl needed him.

He wandered out into the kitchen to see if it was you. “babe?” he turned the corner and seen you sitting on the floor, leaning against he door. He couldn’t help but let out a small chuckle at your punch-drunk and dazed being.

“shh-hh, Dewey’s slee-ping” you shushed him, your eyes closed and head against he door.

“well, someone’s had too much to drink.. again…” he plodded over to you snickering, plopping himself on the floor in front of your feet.

Dewey began to unlace your doc martens, but you pulled back before he could. “hey! I-I have a-a boyfriend” you slurred, pointing your finger, warning him.

“no shit” Dewey snorted, a smile brushed his lips as he grabbed your foot and held it tighter, managing to undo your laces.

You peeled open your eyes and frantically moved your sweaty hair out of your face, lighting up when you notice Dewey sitting in front of you, fighting with your boots. A smile quickly spread across your face as you flung your arms out “baaaa-aaabe! You’re here!” you bellowed, excited to see your boyfriend and his cute messy, tired face and hair.

“yeah I most certainly am.. now how did you get home this time my angel?” Dewey’s protective boyfriend side always came out when you stumbled through the door yourself, worried you had been left to walk home alone.

You twisted your mouth to the side, looking up for inspiration, confused. Everything was a bit fuzzy. Well, really fuzzy.

“uuuuuuh…..” you tried your best to remember.

Dewey pulled your first boot off and quickly got to work on the second. He sat with his legs open, at either side of your leg and pulled your foot towards him a little, making you slide along the floor, and down the door a bit. He briefly looked up at you trying to remember and smirked, before looking back down at your triple noted laces.

“was it maybe.. a car… maybe with Stacey… and Aimee?” he quizzed, eager to find out to settle his mind.

You knitted your eyebrows for a second before slightly remembering singing Galway Girl on the ride home with your friends. “oh! Yesyesyesyeys we were sing-ing uhhh Galloway Guy or something…”

Dewey nodded his head knowingly, “so it was Jason that picked you up... that’s fine.” Jason was Aimee’s boyfriend, and the one that normally picked you guys up on Fridays. It tended to alternate between Jason and Dewey.

After pulling off your second boot and tossing them to the side, Dewey pulled himself up, shaking his head and sniggering at the state you were in. Your hair was everywhere, one of your eyelashes was pretty much hanging off, not to mention the slight smudge of your lip gloss. His eyes wandered down and noticed the stain that tainted your red body suit. You had pretty much spilled an entire VBL down yourself and almost had a fight with the guy who knocked you and made you spill it.

He stood over you and grabbed your hands to pull you up.

“C’mon you..” he tried to pull but you resisted and slid further down the door. “nooooo” you whined, throwing your head back. Dewey rolled his eyes playfully, sighing at you. He pulled your arms up, but you went limp and let your head flop backwards. “leave me he-re I’m too tiiirreeed” you moaned.

“y/n, come on… you’re gonna hurt yourself!”. You pulled against him in protest “just leave me heeeerre”.

Eventually Dewey just picked you up, ignoring your drunken protests, and carried you to your bedroom, sitting you on the edge of the bed. He pointed his finger at you as you swayed a little, eyes half-lidded, smiling up at him.

“stay” he warned, smirking at you. He was trying not to laugh too much, because he knew that if he laughed and provoked you then he would have no hope in hell at settling you down for sleep.

You pointed your finger back at him, narrowing your eyes, still slightly swaying. “or what?”. You smirked.

Dewey turned around and searched for the baby wipes in the dimly lit bedroom. “you don’t… wanna find out…” he joked.

Dewey came and sat on the bed next to you, his hands finding your face and turning it to look at him softly. He smiled at your features. Your tired eyes and slumped form. He wouldn’t change any of this for the world.

“look at that face…” he squeezed your cheeks lightly, making you giggle. “I can tell you who won’t be laughing in the morning…” he raised one of his eyebrows, suppressing a laugh, knowing how moody you were gonna be in a matter of hours.

You continued to look at him in awe, he was the most beautiful man in the world to you. His sleepy eyes, and flushed face making you fall in love all over again. Dewey looked into your sparkling eyes and blushed a little at the way you looked at him. He kissed you quickly on your lips before taking a make up wipe out of the pack.

“first things first… lets get these contraptions off your beautiful face…” he gently took off your fake eyelashes one by one, setting them on your nightstand, knowing you would wear them again. He was so thoughtful, how did you get so lucky?

“mmmm I love you…” you hummed, leaning into kiss him, but you just fell against him instead. Dewey grinned, and shook his head, “ohhhh I can’t wait to see you in the morning”. “you- you’re just so beautiful” you continued humming into his chest. “and so cosy.. and you smell like cinnamon…” you trailed off as you started to slip into sleep.

Dewey put his hands under your arms and lifted you up. “make up and pyjamas and then you can sleep my darling”. You simply hummed in response, your eyes closed, slowly drifting.

Dewey ran the baby wipe across your face a few times, getting off as much as he could before he stood you up and started to get you undressed. All he could smell was whatever you had been drinking. H couldn’t quite put his finger on what the aroma was. “y/n what the hell were you drinking?” he muttered, unbuttoning your skirt.

“mmm lil bit of everything darling” you nonchalantly replied.

Dewey raised his eyebrows, his mouth moving to a shocked pose and looked up at you; he was crouching down, attempting to unbutton your body suit.

“uh, oh.. rookie mistake” he smirked. You simply rolled your eyes.

“im fi-“ you brought your hand up to your mouth, vomit threatening to spill. Dewey flinched a little. “if you’re gonna be sick you gotta tell me.”

You breathed in through your nose deeply and swallowed. “I’m- I’m fine.”

Finally he unbuttoned your body suit and started to lift it above your head. He had seen you like this too many times, nothing phased him anymore.

“Dewey Finn… don’t ya think you should take me to dinner first?” you flirted a little.

“oh ha ha, I’ve never heard that one before… only every freaking Friday night” he snorted.

As usual, Dewey already had your pyjamas sitting on your bed, waiting for you coming home, and he’d set up some pain killers and water on the bed side table just before you got home.

Eventually, he managed to get you pyjamas on and he had grabbed a bobble to tie your hair up. As he was softly pulling your hair into a low pony tail you sighed.. on the verge of tears.

“why am I such a mess” you sobbed a little.

Dewey shook his head and smiled, you always got like this at the end of the night; a little bit weepy and feeling sorry for yourself. You were fine really, just drunk.

“you’re not a mess baby.. you’re… a spicy disaster” he chuckled to himself. As he pulled back the bed sheets for you. You sobbed harder “why are you so mean to me”.

You got into bed, stepping over the bucket placed at your feet in case you woke up needing to puke.

Dewey continued to laugh under his breath, smirking. “I’m sorry my love…” he turned off the side light and climbed into bed next to you.

“I’m sorry, I’ll take you to McDonald’s tomorrow for chicken nuggets to make up for it… deal?” he scooted over to you, pulling you into him.

“mmm deal… I love chicken nuggets…” you managed before you drifted off to sleep in his arms.

“yeah I know you do..” he wiped the stray hairs from your face as he kissed your forehead.

“and I love you.. my spicy little chicken nugget”.

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