#i need to build myself some kind of a life where i will still have things to live for if/when i lose the most important people in my life
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Home for the Holiday
Pairing: Johnny "Soap" MacTavish x Reader/You CW: Mispronunciation of Gaelic words; CUTE MUH-FEKKIN' FLUFF! Author's Note: Happy holidays to ME- and all of you! Thank you for reading and engaging. I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season <3
For Christmas I decided to send myself "home". As in Scotland, the place I'd never been but that I was always drawn to. It always felt like home, so why not treat myself for the holidays, you know?
Somehow, my gift to myself led me to Fiona - the owner of the bed and breakfast I'm staying at - inviting me to her White Elephant party. I suppose the theme of the party helps. I don't know anybody attending so I just need to get a silly gift to (hopefully) make people laugh. Everything was fine and going smoothly... until now.
"Shit! I'm so sorry!"
I'm now on my knees on a snow-covered sidewalk and trying to scoop up my White Elephant gift after running directly into...
"Alright, lass?"
Fuck me... he's a local.
"Yeah, yeah. I'm ok," I assure him and I reach for the goofy gift.
"Is this... a..."
Before he can finish his question, I'm desperately shoving the joke gift - a Highland Cow tail butt plug with a pretty Christmas bow attached to the end - back in the bag. Why couldn't it have been in a discreet box?!
"It's for a White Elephant party," I say quickly once it's back in the bag.
Finally, I look up.
Oh, he's... painfully pretty. That just makes this worse.
"What about this guy?" he asks with a lopsided smile as he holds out the Highland cow plushie I bought myself.
"He's... for me," I say quietly and gently take the plushie back, tucking him into the top of the bag.
"Got a theme going there, lass," he chuckles.
"Figured... it might make my life a bit easier to stick to some kind of theme, y'know?" I offer softly and stand, hugging the bag to my chest.
"You sure you're alright? Didn't hurt yourself or the coo when you fell? And I'm sorry too. I wasn't paying attention."
I shake my head quickly.
"No, no I'm ok. So is the, uh, cow," I tell reassure him with a small smile and brush some snow off the cow's fuzzy head. "I should, um, get going. I'm sorry, again. And... nollag kridel."
"Nollaig Chridheil, lass," he chuckles knowingly.
"Oh my god," I whisper as my head falls and my eyes go wide. I didn't even pronounce it correctly! Without another word, I turn quickly and fast-walk away.
"You made it!" Fiona exclaims and throws her arms around my shoulders. "Get in here," she says as she pulls me into her house. It's literally just a private entrance to the bed and breakfast.
Within a few moments I'm in the building, my (wrapped) gift is under Fiona's tree, and a cute elf hat has been placed on my head. Fiona gently sets me on the couch next to- oh, no. Nonononono-
"Oh, so you're the surprise guest Fi was raving about," Painfully Pretty laughs loudly as I beg whatever higher power for a black hole to swallow me up.
"Yeah," I give an awkward laugh, "that's me. I guess."
"You two know each other?" Fiona says as she hands me a hot chocolate.
"We bumped into each other yesterday in town. And the Highland coo," he chuckles.
I should have wrapped the cow. I should have wrapped the cow. I should have-
"Oh, that adorable plushie you walked in with? I was wondering where you got 'im. Cute little Christmas sweater and all," Fiona laughs - very similarly to Painfully Pretty.
Conversation shifts off of me and to other guests who are still arriving by the minute. Soon enough, Fiona's living room is packed full of people and one dog. His name is Riley and we made fast friends. I, admittedly, have been hiding in the corner hanging out with him most of the party so far.
"Time for gifts! Johnny, help me get these piled in the center of the room," Fiona demands of Painfully Pretty. Apparently his name is Johnny.
Once all of the gifts are piled where Fiona wants them, we all migrate to the surrounding furniture. She gives us the rundown for how the gift exhcange works and we all begin drawing numbers from a Santa hat. When it's my turn, I grab a random gift and begin opening it.
It's a... Highland cow in a holiday dress and crown.
"Aw! Now your other guy's got a friend," Fiona announces excitedly.
I smile softly at the plushie and smooth out her dress.
"Yeah, I guess he does," I agree and smile at her.
"You should name them," Johnny suggests with a soft look in his eyes.
"I think I will," I nod and smile at him.
When the exchanges comes to an end, Johnny lingers in the living room with me.
"I was hoping you'd be the one to choose her," he says quietly. "Was worried she would be chosen and unappreciated until Fiona dragged you in here."
"You... brought her?" I ask, looking up from the plushie in question.
Johnny nods with a gentle smile.
"Glad the lad won't be lonely this Christmas. It was nice to meet you, officially," he says softly, lopsided smile lighting up his face.
"It was nice to meet you too, Johnny. Thank you for Christy." With a small smile, I hold up the plushie and tap it's nose to the end of his.
"Nollaig Chridheil."
"Yeah, I'm not trying to say that again," I insist with a giggle.
He laughs loudly.
"Why not? It was so cute when you said it last time."
I can feel my face warm at his words and his smirk.
This year's Christmas gift to me might turn out better than I originally expected.
Scottish Gaelic Translations (per Google Translate, apologies if incorrect!)
Nollaig Chridheil - Merry Christmas
CoD Christmas (Meet) Cuties Masterlist
#backseat soldier#rhi_writing_adventures#call of duty#cod#john soap mactavish#soap x you#soap x reader#christmas#christmas gift
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hmm
#nonsims#been thinking of the support group that starts this sunday#in a way my brains are all 'you don't need to go if it makes you uncomfortable!!! you can just stay home!!! that would be sooo comfy!!!'#but at the same time i recognize that stepping out of my comfort zone might be very good in this particular case#not that i haven't been out of my comfort zone all my life lol#i just know that i need Something that feels real and important in my life#i need to build myself some kind of a life where i will still have things to live for if/when i lose the most important people in my life#and you know what. i counted the social things i've done independently as an adult#like sure my bf's friends visit us a few times a year#but for me those visits are 100% tied to my bf and i would never see those people without him cos they're HIS friends#i do always refer to them as our friends but the reality is that i would never hear from them again if me and the bf split up#so i counted the stuff i've done independently (school or work or hanging out with mom/grandma/bf not included)#i've had dinner with my coworkers TWICE (i didn't want to go but i didn't dare stand out by not going)#i've been to a bar with my work partner ONCE (after one of those dinners)#i see my BFF 2-3 times PER YEAR#that's it. that's my independent social life for AT LEAST the last 12 years#so you know if i were to go to the support group and attend all 11 meetings...#that would be like the biggest social thing for me in my whole adult life#and it's so funny cos it's an AUTISM support group!!! my biggest social thing would be an autism support group!!!#so i'm trying to get into this mindset that i'll go at least this first time to see what it's like
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ahh.. I have tickets for a small music festival tmr which I went to last year + had a whale of a time but this year theres only like 2 artists I wanted to see but they released the schedule a couple days ago and neither are playing before 9:30pm. since I don't live local anymore I'd have to leave to travel back home around that time or I'd miss the last train... and there's not rly anywhere I can crash overnight there (and I was planning on going alone anyway like I did last year). so I think im gonna have to let this one pass me by :-(
#its not the end of the world like theyre not artists i LOVE love just ones i know and like a few tracks of#last year i had so much fun bc one of the artists there was an all time fave of mine. but yeah im not missing out on that this year#but its still a shame. i miss living there and being able to walk to gigs to easily like the music scene was so up my street!!#and i was kind of looking forward to it. but i shouldve planned it further in advance if i was serious abt going#i just didnt think theyd BOTH play so late???? i swear they had an earlier schedule last year#i guess i could just go and mill around some of the shows earlier in the day even tho ive skimmed most of them on spotify and theyre-#not rly my thing. sigh#im v tired + starting to feel quite sad this evening for some specific reasons i dont really want to think much about bc it is what it is#so its hard to imagine going out and having fun tomorrow. maybe ill just aim to get my chores done instead and see how i feel after that#i might fix my bike up and check the other local climbing gym out bc i havent visited that one before and itd be nice to mix it up#and i need to go out on the bike at some point this weekend so i dont build up anxiety abt it after yesterdays crash. hmm#man. its hard trying to do things solely for my own enjoyment sometimes. im usually pretty ok at making myself do it#and im grateful that i am! but i think im just feeling quite lonely. and not in a way where being around other people rly helps#like its more of a core thing. i feel kind of unseen by people in my life at the moment and that makes me feel like im not quite real#and i dont really know what to do about that. i think its why im still on my discord hiatus i just dont really have anything to say rn#ive felt this intermittently throughout a lot my life i think. but most of the time i can distract myself from it enough not to notice it#and i put the effort in socially regardless + usually when im in the moment it doesnt matter. but the stretches inbetween those moments..#its not unbearable and i dont feel that depressed at the moment either. just a bit lost i guess. i know itll pass eventually#but yeah it just keeps nudging up against me bc im feeling every little misunderstanding and slight quite keenly atm#ahh.. well its okay. ive never really needed much anyway im good at taking care of myself and thats enough to get by#ill do something nice for myself this weekend one way or another. im gonna go take a long shower rn i think and then read a bit#ah and i said i didn't rly want to think about it! but i guess i did... well i feel like i exist a little more for typing it out anyway#okay yes shower time now :-)#.diaries#maybe someday ill have ppl in my everyday life who i do feel seen + safe around. a girl can dream.. i have a lot of work to do before then
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TEMPORARY
pairing: gojo satoru/reader
wc: 5.2k
summary: your close friend gojo is kind enough to let you stay with him for a while, it's just a shame that he's overly curious about what you read when he's not home
a/n; gojo is nosy and i stand by that, also, i can't seem to help myself when it comes to him... this was only meant to be 2k but i think i like him a little too much. that or he just yaps a lot
warnings: 18+ only, smut, pwp, dirty talk, fingering, tease!gojo, hickeys, p in v sex, clit slapping (once), creampie, afab!reader, no use of pronouns or y/n, big dick gojo, gojo likes embarrassing reader
MDNI | SMUT UNDER CUT
Somehow, you’ve ended up in Gojo’s fancy apartment… the ‘somehow’ is, he is one of your closest friends and the only person you could ask for help. It had already been a long day when you came home to a hole in your ceiling and a bath – that isn’t yours but the floors above – in your apartment, you wanted to give up on life. Your apartment was wet and some of your stuff had water damage.
Maybe if you weren’t so distraught and just wanting somewhere to stay, you would’ve asked someone else but you decided to call Gojo and while he was more than happy to accommodate you, temporary living with him has been… troublesome.
It’s not so much as what he’s been doing but how you’re feeling, you feel self-conscious and too aware of yourself. Constantly wondering if it’s okay that you’re here, that you’re sitting on his couch or using his kitchen. He goes away for days at a time and yet you still worry about whether or not it’s okay you’re here.
You don’t bug him too much with it, you know that can get annoying, asking for constant reassurance but you’re worried that you’re overstaying your welcome. Especially when your building manager keeps calling and telling you fixes will take longer than expected. At this rate, you might just have to live elsewhere.
Another call like that had just come in and when you walk back into the living room and plonk down on the couch next to Gojo, he can immediately tell you’re feeling disheartened, “Not ready yet?”
“I don’t even know if they’ve started yet,” you sigh, kicking your feet a little in your frustration, “I’m really sorry, Gojo,” you lean back into the couch more, head resting on the back of it.
“I’m not worried about it,” he hums, crossed leg bouncing slightly, “Stay as long as you like, it’s nice having someone here when I come home,” he leans his head back on the couch too but turns to look at you.
Turning your head, you meet his gaze, “Are you sure? I don’t want to overstay my welcome,” your brows pull together, “I can always find another place to stay, honestly, I won’t be offended if you’re sick of me… I don’t want to inconvenience you.”
He scoffs, “What inconvenience? You barely make a mess and move around the place like it’s made of glass,” he’s making fun of you a little, trying to get you to relax more, “You should chill out and get a bit more comfortable, it seems like you might be here for a while yet,” he shrugs easily, not at all worried about you staying.
You intake a breath, “Yeah but I–”
“–Plus, where else would you stay? I’m like… your only friend,” he snickers.
Frowning at him, you defend, “That’s not true and you know it!”
“Yeah? Then why was I your first call?” He’s smug.
Looking away, you mumble, “You have no way of knowing that.”
“Ah, but I think your reaction gave it away,” he chuckles, poking your cheek with his finger.
“I wonder if it’s too late to ask Shoko for her couch,” you grumble, ignoring him.
“Nooo~” he pouts, “Don’t leave, you’re such a good guest, I’m sorry for saying you have no friends.”
You roll your eyes at him, “Do you ever get tired of yourself,” you ask, side-eyeing him.
He smiles big, “Never.”
If Gojo were being honest with you, he’d admit he likes your company, he likes coming home and hearing you patter around his apartment, and he likes that you trusted him enough to call him when you needed help. He likes that he was the first person you called because he wants you to rely on him, he wants to feel wanted and needed by you. It’s just a shame a bathtub had to fall through your ceiling for it to happen.
He's not even mad that your building manager is downright atrocious at his job because that just means he gets to have more time with you.
⸝⸝⸝
You’re in his home… alone, just for tonight. Gojo said he had ‘super important and super-secret’ things to attend to, so you’re choosing to be scandalous and instead of reading your current novel in your room, you’re reading it on the couch.
Under a blanket and snuggled into Gojo’s nice couch is about as close to comfortable as you get these days. His living room is nice and you like it out here, though you tend to shy away from main areas when he’s home, afraid of disturbing his peace.
The book is in depth, the scenes heating up quickly, you quietly read, flicking the pages slowly, savouring the tension. It’s not often that you read stuff like this but you’re getting invested, finding a good book with plot and porn is hard to come by and you’re finding yourself getting more and more invested.
Gojo’s voice from behind you is a scare you weren’t ready for, “Wouldn’t it feel better to actually get fucked instead of just reading about it?”
“Fuck! Geez, Gojo, way to scare someone to death,” you huff, not at all ready for his comparably loud voice in the quiet room.
He’s leaning over the back of the couch, apparently reading over your shoulder, “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Yeah, that’s why you were lurking behind me for so long… because you didn’t mean to scare me,” you crane your neck to look up at him, your eyes showing your clear scepticism.
“Let’s change the topic back to how you’re reading porn out in the open,” he smiles.
You squint at him, “It’s a sex scene, not a porn book.”
He leans in a little closer, “Could’ve fooled me.”
“You’re nosy,” you accuse.
He clarifies, “I am curious.” He adds, “You were so involved in your book that you didn’t even notice my presence… now I know why,” his eyebrows wiggle at you.
You shoot your head back up so you don’t have to look at him, “Why are you back anyways? I thought you weren’t gonna be home until tomorrow?”
“I’m just simply too good,” he boasts. You grumble at him but pick up your blanket and stomp off to the spare room with your book, he calls out to you, “Don’t be like that, come hang out with me.”
“No,” you cement, feeling overly embarrassed. You know he was just kidding but you can’t help the way your skin feels all hot and the bit of shame that creeps into your bones.
⸝⸝⸝
When you’re in bed, you don’t continue reading, the moment ruined and now you just want to crawl into a ball and die. It’s too early to sleep though, so you end up just lying there lifelessly. Some time passes before Gojo knocks on your door, waiting for you to answer to see if you’re still awake.
“Go away,” you pout out. He opens the door at the sound of your voice, “That’s like… the exact opposite of going away.”
“I know,” he shuffles over to the bed and flops down next to you, making himself comfortable, “But I wanna talk about earlier.”
You groan, “Ugh, that’s like the last thing I wanna talk about with you right now.”
“You sure? Because there are plenty of other things I could think to talk about instead,” he smiles evilly, he sits up slightly, resting his weight on his forearm to watch over you.
Flat on your back, you scowl up at him, “Maybe we should talk about how lovely the weather has been lately.”
“It’s been raining for a week straight,” he reminds.
You cross your arms over your chest, “…Maybe I like the rain.”
“I am sorry,” he changes the topic.
“It doesn’t matter,” you try brushing it off.
“I made you uncomfortable and I didn’t mean to,” he looks away in thought, “I wasn’t trying to pry, I just wanted to know what you were so interested in and when I saw–”
“–Okay! It’s fine, I’m not mad.”
“It would be understandable if you were,” he flops onto his back again.
You turn to look at him, “If you’re still feeling bad, make me breakfast in the morning.”
“Look at that! I think all the guilt I had just left my body,” he smiles cheekily, also turning to look at you.
You can’t help the way your eyes drop to his lips, just for a second, you didn’t mean anything by it… you think. Gojo sees it because of course he does, he doesn’t miss a single thing and he decides to push the limits of your friendship, just a little bit.
He speaks again, “You know… I am curious about something though.”
Unamused, you raise a brow, “Oh yeah? And what’s that?”
“Does it do anything? I mean… reading porn like that? Does it actually effect you?” He knows what he’s doing and he knows the answer to his question, he’s not as dense as he pretends he is.
“Invasive question,” you squint at him before letting your face relax, “I can always read it to you and you can see for yourself,” you joke.
His smile grows, “Fantastic idea!”
Your eyes widen, “No! No it’s not! I was kidding, I’m not reading porn to you Gojo.”
“Boo,” he jeers.
“You’re so weird,” you sigh.
He offers you an alternative, “I’ll settle for an answer to my question if you don’t want to read me porn.”
This man is getting on your nerves, “Who would want to do that in the first place?”
“Me, I will read porn to you right now if you like,” he offers.
“Okay let me rephrase, what kind of sane person would want that?” You’re hoping to guide him away from this topic.
“Ouch, words hurt,” you can see his face light up with his joke, “And arouse, apparently.”
“What do you mean apparently?” You ask, “I haven’t even answered your question, very presumptuous of you.”
“Yeah but if the answer was a simple ‘no’ you would’ve just said that and moved on,” he looks proud of himself right now, “Sometimes… not giving an answer is almost as telling as giving one.”
“Yeah, whatever,” you move your head to face the ceiling again, “Get a load of Socrates over here.” You sigh, “What do you want to hear? That it does arouse me, that I get sooo wet reading porn on your couch while you’re gone?”
He’s quiet, at a loss for words really, which is shocking to you. His prolonged silence has you looking back to him. His eyes look a little darker than before, his gaze far away. You’re starting to feel bad, like maybe you’re the one who took it too far now, “Gojo, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you–”
“–No… go on,” he encourages, “Tell me all about what you do when I’m not home,” his eyes glimmer.
“I– nothing really– I’m not…” you’re starting to heat up, his gaze on you not helping, “I’m not being creepy while you’re gone…”
“I didn’t say you were being creepy,” he moves so he’s being supported by his forearm again, your eyes follow him as he ends up almost hovering over you, “I said I wanted to know what else you do when I’m not home.”
You hesitate, “This might not be–”
“You don’t have to tell me, if I’m being pushy, if you’re uncomfortable… tell me, I’ll leave you alone,” he wants this bad but he’s not going to force you, he wants you to want it too.
“It’s not… I am uncomfortable but only because,” your thighs press together slightly, seeking pressure, you’re uncomfortable because he’s turning you on and he’s not done a damn thing.
“…Because…”
“Ugh, Gojo,” your hands cover your face, trying to hide yourself from his eyes, “Because you’re…” you mumble, trailing off.
He leans in a little closer, smug smile loud in his voice, “I’m sorry, what?”
You peak through your fingers, “…You’re…turning me on…”
“I still didn’t get that,” he feigns ignorance, he heard you just fine, “Maybe move your hands properly?”
“You’re being mean,” you mutter from behind your hands, “I know you heard me.”
His gaze lowers, scanning your body, taking in how your breathing has sped up, how your thighs clench together, fighting the urge to rub against each other. “No idea what you’re on about, I can’t hear a thing from behind your hands.”
You drop your arms with a huff, “You’re really quite unkind, you know?”
“I think I’m perfectly kind,” his tone is jovial, happy with your acquiescence, “Now repeat what you said, I wanna hear it loud and clear.”
You’re gonna hit him, you wanna hit him. Taking a breath, your hands reach out for his face and move him so he’s looking you dead in the eyes, “Gojo… you’re making me really wet and needy,” your tone is coquettish, “I need your help, please.”
His eyes brighten, deliciously satisfied with your words and confession, “Tell me what you do when I’m not here then.”
You stare at him, you thought you had one up him but he readjusts alarmingly well, you’ll just have to double down, “I lay on your nice, big couch and I fingerfuck myself, hoping I get to cum before you get home.”
“I already like coming home to you,” he leans into you, his lips brushing the shell of your ear, “I think I’d like coming home to the sounds of you playing with your wet cunt even more.”
Oh god, he might kill you, he’s clearly much better at this than you are, his words have your eyes glazing over slightly. Just his presence is suffocating, “Gojo, please… touch me?”
He pulls back, “Hmm, giving up already? Where’s your fighting spirit?”
“You’re an unbearable tease…”
“Tease… yes. Unbearable? I don’t agree, you’ve put up with me for this long,” he all but singsongs, he’s so smug – you want to get up and walk away from him but you don’t have the strength.
“Either kiss me or I’m changing my mind and pretending that tonight didn’t happen,” you glare at him.
His smile doesn’t falter, “Now who’s unkind?” You make a show of trying to get up but he pushes you back down into the mattress, his lips finding yours. You moan into his kiss and he huffs against you, “Open your mouth more,” he speaks against you.
You do as he says and his tongue slips into your mouth, he licks at you and you tentatively meet him half-way. If kissing someone felt this good surely you’d have remembered it, so why can’t you remember a single kiss that feels as good as this one.
He crawls onto you more, your hands move to find his shoulders before wrapping around his neck, tugging him closer. He groans into the kiss and you swallow it down, your head is swimming, he sounds hot, he feels hot, he’s making you feel hot.
He pulls back, “Fuck, I gotta touch you, let me touch you.”
“Mhm, yeah, please,” you’re all too eager to agree, not missing the thinly veiled desperation in his words.
His hand is quick to snake down your body and into your pants, slipping past the waist band of your underwear. A shiver runs down your spine as his fingers carefully part your folds and slide through you’re very wet cunt. Gojo groans, he wasn’t expecting you to be this aroused, his head swimming with just how slick it must feel to fuck balls deep inside your pussy.
His dick twitches in his pants, he’s been horny since he started this stupid conversation, not that you noticed, too self-conscious to take note of the semi he’d been sporting while teasing you. Fuck, he needs more, his finger moves to your entrance, his eyes watching your expression carefully as he slips it inside you.
Your brows turn up and a soft sigh leaves your lungs at his finger entering you, he doesn’t move straight away, his thumb instead rubbing into your clit. He can feel the way your walls twitch around his single digit; he might go crazy before this is over.
“Gojo~ more,” you want more, you wanna feel full.
“Anything for you,” he teases but pulls his single finger back, easing in another with it.
They curl when reaching their hilt, caressing inside you, the pleasure makes you whine and your stomach jump. He pumps his fingers languidly, enjoying the view, delighting in how you squirm and whimper underneath him from just a couple fingers.
He looks down to his hand underneath your pants, your thighs shake slightly, “That’s cute,” he murmurs.
He pulls his hand away from you, “Wait– Gojo what are–”
Laughing at how frantic you are, he reassures, “–Shh, it’s fine, I just wanna see how your pretty pussy sucks my fingers back in is all.”
You feel like you could faint, he’s so crude and for what reason? Just to embarrass you? Or to turn you on? Or is it just a bonus that he manages to do both at the same time?
Your pants and underwear are tugged off at once, he kneels between your legs and very lewdly pulls them wide apart, his eyes greedily watching the way your cunt opens up for him. He salivates at the way your pussy glimmers for him, cunt drooling from your tight hole, down your ass cheeks and onto the bed.
He wastes no more time and fills you back up with his long fingers, his mind registering that you got wetter, fuck you can get even wetter. The realisation hits him like a ton of bricks and he has a feeling he knows exactly what did it.
A grin on his face, he asks, “You know you could get this wet? Or are you shocked?” It’s not rhetorical, and to demonstrate what he means, his fingers speed up and you can hear the loud and obscene noises of your wet cunt sucking them back in.
You clench around his fingers at his words and his smile grows, now fully understanding the effect he has on you. The delight he takes in it could almost be diabolical, the enjoyment he’s getting out of knowing he can be a little mean or lewd with his words and it will only turn you is immense.
“Come on, I want an answer when I ask a question,” he reminds you.
You gasp as his fingers crook up, purposefully making it harder for you to answer, “I –hah– I didn’t knooww–”
And you didn’t, not to this extent, it’s mortifying, how much your cunt gushes for him. You’re ashamed and also… so ridiculously turned on. His voice doesn’t help, not only the content of his words but just the sound of him, it’s setting you on edge.
“I find that quite shocking, only realising just how turned on you can get and it’s for your good friend? How scandalous,” he tsks at you, his words holding no malice, he truly is amused by how things have unfolded.
“Stop t–teasing me, Gojo,” you frown at him but it’s not nearly as effective as it normally would be. To him you look like a cute mess who’s making a mess on his fingers and spare bed sheets.
His thumb presses into your clit again, steady pressure rounding it, “I like teasing you though~”
Your head tilts back, your eyes unable to focus on anything, you’re going to cum, you’re so fucking close, you just need him to not stop, “Gojo, please, d–don’t stop –ngh– please, please, please please pleaseppleaseplease,” you’re begging him to show mercy – pity, you don’t care what you just want him to make you cum.
“You think I’d be so mean as to not let you cum?” he asks like it’s not definitely within his character to do something so cruel, “I’d never deprive myself of the sight.”
Your toes curl and your head presses back into the pillows hard, your eyes rolling into the back of your head. It feels like your stomach does flips as you moan out for Gojo, your hands clutching the sheets as you shake pitifully with the force of your orgasm.
He massages your walls through it, fucking his fingers in and out of you steadily, letting you ride out your high. He keeps going even as you reach overstimulation, he likes seeing you twitch and shake with your sensitivity, makes his cock leak into his pants at how you clench pathetically around his fingers as he strokes in and out of you as he pleases.
“Gojo… is too much,” you mumble weakly.
He hums at you but pulls his fingers from your sopping cunt, he holds his two fingers up and pulls them apart, watching the way your cum coats them and connects them by sticky strings. Fuck it’s a sight to behold to him, he shoves those two fingers right into his mouth, sucking them clean and savouring the taste.
Pulling his digits out of his mouth, he comments, “I think… if I didn’t wanna stick my dick into you as badly as I do… I’d shove my tongue inside your little pussy and eat you until you came again and again and–”
You’re gonna burst into flames, “–Do you get off on your own words or something?”
“I’m not the one getting off on my words,” he grins knowingly.
The words you were going to retort with die on your tongue as he suddenly tugs his shirt off, exposing his bare skin to you. How are you meant to reply with anything smart when he’s constantly able to throw you off kilter, you can’t win against him.
He undoes his belt and nods towards you, “Take your shirt off.”
“…Bossy,” you pout out.
He stands up to undress completely, “You into that?”
“No.”
“Could’ve fooled me, you take directions so well,” he smirks, clearly poking fun at how you took off your shirt as soon as he asked you to. He gets back on the bed and taps your thigh, “Hands and knees,” you look at him with an unamused expression and he tacks on, “Pleeeasseeee?”
You get up and spin round onto your hands and knees, feeling vulnerable like this, extra so because you can’t see what he’s doing. One of his hands slides from your lower back up your spine, gentle pressure behind his touch, encouraging you to push your upper half into the bed, cheek pressed against the mattress by the time he reaches your neck.
“Yeahhh, you take directions so well,” he means it as a compliment but it feels degrading.
Soft clicking noises of him fisting his cock fill the room, he’s spreading his precum all along the shaft, collecting it at the tip. He needs to be slick if you’re gonna take him, though he figures you’ve done most of the work on that end already.
You wiggle your hips back at him, feeling impatient and dazed from your previous orgasm. He chuckles at your eagerness but doesn’t keep you waiting, you’re far too enticing for him to tease any longer. He swipes his dick through your folds a few times first, letting you feel him and also let your cunt drool onto him a bit.
He wants to slam into you quickly, he’s so sick of waiting, he’s harder than he’s been in his life and he’s itching to have your pussy swallow him whole but he doesn’t want to hurt you. If he fucks this up he’ll never forgive himself, he needs to give you the best dicking of your life so that you keep coming back to him for more.
His initial thrust is shallow and barely gets the head of his cock inside you, this is going to be a slow process. He’ll have to take his time, not that he particularly minds, the longer he takes, the longer he gets to spend fucking you. This is a responsible decision on Gojo’s behalf, unfortunately for him, you’re not quite so patient. You’re horny beyond belief and have the sudden urge for him to be as deep as he can possibly get, you want to feel him in your guts, you fucking need it.
Bracing yourself, you spread your legs apart further and push back, his cock slipping deeper suddenly, the stretch has a delicious feeling crawling up your spine, or maybe that’s Gojo’s hand. His hand reaches around your neck and pulls your back to his front, a whimper tumbling from you as you slide down his cock further.
He breathes against you, “Desperate thing aren’t you?” He nips your ear and then trails his lips down to your neck, leaving marks in his wake.
His hips thrust up, forcing you to take more of him, “Ah~ sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry~ I think it’s very endearing,” his voice is dreamy, “Very flattering, willing to hurt yourself just to take me?”
Ah, of course he’d find a way to boost his own ego through all this, “–ngh– You really do love yourself, huh?”
You can feel his big smile against your skin, “Not as much as I love this pussy,” he thrusts inside you deeper, punctuating his words with his hips.
You can’t do much else but moan and take it like this, though, you’re pretty happy to take it like this. Your slick gushes from your cunt and leaks down his shaft. The mess you’re making on the bed is beyond lewd and you have no idea if you should be more embarrassed of the state you’re in. You’re not here though, you’re elsewhere, head in the clouds as your eyes glaze over.
“Aww~ you’ve gone stupid and I’m not even fully in yet,” he coos at you.
He drops you back down onto the bed in your previous position, face buried into the blankets with your ass in the air, back arched deeply. Gojo thinks he has enough room to slip in completely now so he does, when he does, he knocks something so deep inside you that your cunt quivers and you make the smallest, fucked out sound.
It makes him moan deeply, your pussy gripping him for dear life as you sound out gasped whimpers, you’re a fucking mess in more than one way and he’s gonna paint your walls white before too long if he doesn’t get it together. Your cunt is sinfully tight, snug and warm around him, spilling out around where he’s stuffed you full. Your eyes are glassy and fucked out and you look like you might cry, drool dribbles from the corner of your mouth from how deep you can feel him.
Tentatively, he pulls back, his thrusts initially shallow, wanting to get you used to the motion, you really are not capable of any coherent thought, everything coming from you right now is downright pornographic, you don’t even think you could string together enough words to beg him to let you cum.
He’s ruining any future sex you may have and he’s barely started fucking you, his rhythm, is slow but constant. The pressure you feel slowly building in your abdomen makes your pussy cry on his cock.
“You literally have–” he cuts himself off with his own gasped whine, “–the most perfect cunt, holy fuck.” What he did in life to deserve sticking his dick inside you, he has no clue but he’ll keep doing it if it means fucking your tight hole.
You chant his name at him, it’s all you’re really able to do, in your brain fog you spill out, “S’toru sobig, you’re –hng– so deep~” You can’t think.
His hands grab your hips tight, the pressure bruising, his thrusts are speeding up, growing frantic, desperate. He’s fucking you like it’ll be the last time he ever gets to be inside you. One hand reaches around and lands on your clit, furiously rubbing at it, the stimulation has you biting back a cry as tears slip from the corner of your eyes.
Your pussy spasms and twitches on him violently, you’re so sensitive, in general and to him. His hand pulls you back against him with every thrust in, the resounding smacking of skin on skin and your sloppy cunt are like music to his ears. You’re so messy, such a beautiful and delightful mess, he wonders just how fucking messy he could make you; he’ll need to remember this thought if he ever gets another chance to have you… though he’s probably never going to be able to think of anything else after this.
The muscles in your legs are quivering, you’re not going to be able to hold yourself up for much longer, not with how he’s fucking you. You’re going to cum and then promptly pass out, your vision is dotted and you’re barely able to comprehend your surroundings, the only thing you hear is Gojo’s moans.
“Need you to cum for me, now,” he urges, his words hissed through his teeth, fighting off his own orgasm.
His fingers on your clit speed up, he slaps your clit once and harshly, the sudden contact makes you shake. Your orgasm comes out of nowhere, your legs would’ve given out if he weren’t holding you up, you’re actually just crying now, the force of your orgasm shaking you to your core, it’s so overwhelming that it’s all you can feel.
Gojo moves both his hands to your ass cheeks and spreads them, looking at how he’s plowing into you over and over, watching how you grip him tight, trying to milk his cock. The sight of this, of your pussy clenching around him, has him cumming, he bites out your name before stuffing his dick all the way inside you. His cum dumping itself deep inside, his cock twitching as he spills. The amount he cums is immense, leaking out around the base of him and down onto the sheets, the mess you’ve both made only growing.
He stays seated inside you for a while, letting you both come down before even attempting to move. When he does slip out of you, it’s with a hiss, he holds you up for a bit longer, watching the way his cum seeps out of you, his eyes transfixed on how much he came inside of you, how much of him you took. He’s addicted.
Laying your lower half back onto the bed gently, he flops down next to you, evening out his breathing more. He turns his head to the side to look at you, your eyes closed and a stupid smile on your face, tear stains on your cheeks and a little bit of drool still present in the corner of your mouth.
He reaches out and wipes it way with his thumb, “Fucked dumb taken to a new level, huh?”
“You’ve ruined me,” you mutter back, not really paying attention.
A cocky grin takes its place on his face, “In what way?”
“S’many,” your words slur together.
He jokes, “Better than your book though right?”
You can only hum your confirmation, all your limbs are heavy, you might die, you’re fighting it though, the unconsciousness that’s threatening to take over.
Gojo moves closer to you, kissing your arm, “Hey, sleep, I’ll take care of you,” he murmurs into your skin.
That’s the last thing you hear before you’re dead asleep.
PLAGIARISM NOT CONDONED | REPOSTS NOT AUTHORISED
#gojo satoru x reader#jjk smut#gojo x reader#gojo smut#gojo satoru x reader smut#gojo satoru x you#gojo satoru smut#gojo satoru x you smut#jjk x reader#jjk x reader smut#visionwrites
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shoot an arrow through my heart
max verstappen x reader
there's something you need to hear max say, but you're not sure if he's actually going to say it. you do know one thing though, it was always gonna be you and max.
a/n: started this longer ago than i'd like to admit but here we are! a big thank you to my fave beta reader K and to @scuderiahoney who helped me figure out all the banner image stuff. based on prompt #966 from this list.
masterlist
It starts with Lando. Because doesn’t it always?
Lando says shit he doesn’t mean, Lando says things just for the sake of saying them. Lando says things as if they are fundamentally truths when they are in fact are lies.
And so, one moment you’re hanging out with Lando, letting him talk you down from buying the little trinket of the week you’ve fixated on, and the next he’s saying that Max is in love with you, saying it like it’s a truth, and then moving on as if he hasn’t just tilted your world on its axis.
And then, before you know it, you’re banging on Max’s front door trying to figure out if it’s true or not.
Trying to figure out if your best friend is in love with you.
“Max! Open the door.”
He doesn’t.
You honestly don’t know if you want him to, or what you’re going to do when he does. Or if he even will, Max doesn’t know you’re here and you don’t even know if he’s home.
You’re just about ready to search for the spare key, the one you told him to hide in the firehose down the hallway because having a fake rock in front of his door makes no sense when he lives in an apartment building, when the door is flung open and a very grumpy looking Max, headset in hand, is giving you just about the most fed-up, unimpressed, stare you’ve seen in your life.
“Are you in love with me?” You can’t help it, the words foreign on your tongue but there’s an urgency to get them out and into the space in between you. You’re so desperate to hear him say it back.
Max blinks at you, bewildered at your words. You can see the gears turning in his head trying to work out what you just said and if you’re being honest you don’t know if you should be offended at the fact that the answer isn’t an immediate yes.
His brow furrows and his lips purse, “what?”
A beat passes, and then another, and then the idiot actually has the audacity to close the door.
You roll your eyes, even if he can’t see it you know that he knows that you’re doing it. As you push the exasperation out of your lungs you knock again.
“Max, nuh-uh, that is not going to work, open the door and answer my question.”
Nothing.
You bang your fist on the door one more time for good measure, “Max, you know I know where your spare key is and we both know that I’ll let myself in if necessary.”
It’s true and he knows it.
There have been many nights where you’ve verged on the edge of too far gone and walked from the club to his apartment. Nights where you didn’t want the fun to end so instead of going home you go to Max’s where you can cuddle and coo at Jimmy and Sassy and sit around in comfy clothes and watch as Max putters around doing whatever it was he was doing before you came over.
It’s true. He knows it. But still, he doesn’t open the door.
You sigh and softly thump your forehead against Max’s front door, through the absence of your knocking you can hear his nervous shuffling on the other side. The inquisitive meows from the cats, the faint scrape of the peephole cover as Max checks to see if you’re still there, if you’re still waiting for him.
You would wait for him for forever, but that’s just for you to know really.
Max opens the door again, just the barest amount. Just enough so his eyes, wide and disbelieving can lock onto yours.
They’re so blue, you don’t know how you never noticed it before, so classically storybook blue that you’re really starting to wonder if this is all some kind of weird dream where you’re standing at his doorstep begging to be loved by him, like some kind of cheesy romcom star. Because after all, aren’t you just a girl standing in front of a guy?
“You’re in love with me.”
The words stretch the impossible distance between the two of you. Even when he’s halfway around the globe he’s never felt this far away.
And still, somehow, you feel too close to him. Like somehow all the other versions of you and him have been false proxies to what you’re reaching for right now. Like all of a sudden, somehow, he’s been molded into your every contour of your soul and you don’t want anything else
The door edges open a little wider.
“Are you asking me that or are you telling me?”
He’s stalling, you both know it. But, you can’t really bring yourself to do more than give him a fondly smile and roll your eyes at him. Because you know, if the roles were reversed, if he was the one throwing pebbles like some kind of suave Dutch romeo, demanding to know if you were in love with him, you would be doing the same thing.
“You and I both know how much you like being told what to do.” With a sigh Max opens the door to his apartment a little wider once more to let you in, “and yet, you’re still here telling me to open my door.”
You can’t really fault him for that one can you?
You make your way to the living room where you settle down on your spot on the couch while Max flits around the living room. Sassy is meowing at Max, desperate for a taste of the outside she only ever gets when the front door opens, and even though he knows she’s not going to make a run for it he still takes the time to half-heartedly shoo her away.
Max does this, dragging his feet, until both of the cats have curled up next to you on the couch and it is only then that he makes his way over to you. Coming to stand behind the armrest on his side of the couch, putting a little too much distance between the two of you for you to not feel spurned by him.
You can hear it in silence between you, you can feel it in the way your body seems to ache from having him in the ways you have him now and not in the ways you want to have him.
You’re not ready to have this conversation.
There’s a part of you that almost wants to say nevermind and forget that you even said anything in the first place. But deep down you know that the two of you have been putting on this elaborate dog and pony show for far too long. You’re only delaying the inevitable.
“So,” you say, nervously running your fingers over the fabric of the couch. “Is it true?”
You try to catch his eye as you say it, not only to try to make sure he doesn't chicken out but to see the reaction he gives. You want to see his soul and know that he means whatever he says.
But Max doges your gaze at every move in a way that makes him look like a kicked puppy. And you’re not really sure what it means but you can feel the way the dynamic has shifted. All of a sudden the two of you are on shaky ground, not sure where you stand with each other. Even though two hours earlier you would have called him your best friend with your entire heart.
“Well?”
“Please,” he says your name, strained and with a weight to it that you don’t quite want to acknowledge, “don’t make me say it.”
You’re not above begging, you really aren’t, but something about the way he sounds makes you falter. Just a little.
“Max,” you say his name softly, “I think you and I both know what your answer is going to be.”
“Then why do you need to hear it so bad?” His words bite, tinged with an anger that you know he doesn't really mean. “So, I can say it back!” Your words match the sharpness in his and you can see how much they throw Max off kilter.
He blinks at you and then rocks on his feet, first a step forward and then a step back like he’s blown away by the force of what you said. “Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Why did you never tell me?”
You cross your arms and shrug your shoulders, “it was a personal issue.”
“You being in love with me kind of also involves me.”
You really don’t want to admit that he’s right on with that one.
You huff and shrug your shoulders again, “well it goes both ways, why didn’t you say anything?”
“I asked first,” Max shoots back.
You groan at his response and launch yourself up towards Max in a play attempt to strangle him. “Argh, you’re so!” You drape your arms over his shoulders as you slump against him, head resting in the spot where his shoulder meets his neck, “God I hate you.”
Max laughs underneath you, his arms coming up to wrap around your waist, “you evidently don’t.”
“You're so silly,” you sigh, tilting your head up to look at him. "You want to hear me say it so bad."
Your nose nearly brushes against his, he’s so close you think you could count every single one of his eyelashes if you tried.
Max makes a noise that’s somewhere between exasperated and surprised and you know that you’re toeing the line with your teasing
You always know when to give in when it comes to him.
“Okay, yes, I love you! I love you,” you say, “do you love me?”
“Yeah, I do,” Max says as he moves to cradles your jaw in his hands. “I love you.”
You grin, “good. Now kiss me please.”
And he does. He does and it feels like all the cliche things people say. It feels like coming home, it feels like fireworks are going off in the background, it feels like you were meant to be, that he was made for you just as much as you were made for him.
And you just know. You know that there can never be anyone else but him. That there was a version of you before Max and now there’s going to be a version of you that’s with Max, but there’s never going to be a you after Max.
“I love you.” Softer, quieter this time.
You don’t dare look him in the eye, instead choosing to press your cheek against his and stare out the window of his apartment. Your gaze settles somewhere in the distance as you try to memorize the feel of his body pressed up against yours.
You curl your fingers around the hair at the nape of his neck, tugging absentmindedly as you say, “I’m glad that worked out, I didn’t even know you were home.”
He pulls away from you to fix you with a look that is so quintessentially Max, “you have my location on your phone, you’re always stalking me,” he says, punctuating his words with little jabs to your shoulder.
It’s true, and you honestly don’t know why you didn’t try to check his location in the first place, your logic getting lost somewhere in the panic of knowing that he loved you.
“Mhmm.” You shrug noncommittally, trying very hard to ignore the rushing feeling of warmth in your chest that comes with the realization that Max was so ingrained in your life and you in his from the start.
You try not to think about the fact your toothbrush sits next to his in his bathroom, about the fact that your hand automatically gravitates to his favorite spoon in your cutlery drawer, the one you can identify solely based on the weight of it in your hand. You try very hard to think about how you couldn’t separate the love from the friendship.
It was always gonna be you and Max.
There’s a silence between you for a moment. You try to match your breath to his and let the sounds of outside filter through your ears. And for a moment you can hear how the rest of the world keeps turning, even when your world has stopped spinning on its axis.
“So, what now?” Max asks, turning his head to press kisses to your hairline, his hand squeezing your waist. You can feel his nose brush against your temple as he makes his way down, lips featherlight on your skin. The intimacy of it makes your blood sing with electricity.
You pull “Mhmm, you could take me to bed?”
It’s half serious, half a joke. You’ve waited so long to have Max like this that now that you finally do you want him in all ways possible. But still, there’s some young and girlish part of you that wants it to be special.
Max pretends to think about it for a little bit and it’s so impossibly silly that you have to resist the urge to strangle him again for it, “it’s three in the afternoon, I think it’s a little early for sleep.”
“You know that’s not what I mean, stop being a smartass.”
Max smiles, taking your hand in his and lacing your fingers together. “Well,” he says, “how about I send you home so you can get all nice and pretty for me and then I’ll come pick you up and take you to a nice dinner, hmm?”
You flush, not just from the way he pours honey, slow and sweet, into your ear, but from the way it feels like this was always meant to be. Like you were always meant to have this, always meant to have him.
“And then,” he says, dropping your hand to pull you in by your belt loops so your hips are press flush against his, “after dinner, that’s when I’ll take you to bed.”
#max verstappen x reader#max verstappen x you#mv1 x reader#mv33 x reader#max verstappen fanfic#max verstappen fic#mv1 fic#mv33 fic#mv1 x you#mv33 x you#max verstappen#mv1#mv33#f1 fanfiction#f1 fanfic
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I don’t usually talk about politics on here, if ever. But it’s been almost six months since the conflict in the Middle East flared up again, and I’m finally ready to start. Here are some of my thoughts.
I say ‘flared up’ because this has happened before and it’ll happen again. Because, even though what's currently going on is absolutely unprecedented, those of us who live in this part of the world are used to it. Let that sink in: we are used to this. And we shouldn’t have to be.
But I use that term for another reason: I don't want to accidentally call it the wrong thing lest I come under fire for being a genocidal maniac or a terrorist or a propaganda machine, etc., etc.—so let’s just call it ‘the war’ or ‘the conflict.’ Because that’s what it is. Doesn’t matter which side you’re on, who you love, or who you hate.
This post will, in all likelihood, sit in my drafts forever. If it does get posted, it certainly won’t be on my main, because I'm scared of being harassed (spoiler: she posted it on her main). I hate admitting that, but honestly? I’m fucking terrified.
I also feel like in order for anything I say on here (i.e. the hellscape of the internet) to be taken seriously, I have to somehow prove that a) I’m “educated” enough to talk about the conflict, and b) that my opinion lines up with what has been deemed the correct one. So, tedious and unnecessary though it is, I will tell you about my experience, because I have a feeling most of the people reading this post are not nearly as close to what’s happening as I am.
How do I explain where I live without actually explaining where I live? How do I say “I live in the Red Zone of international conflicts” without saying what I actually think? How do I convey the fear that grips me when I try to decide between saying “I live in Palestine” and “I live in Israel”? I don't really know. But I do know that names are important. I also know that, due to the various clickbaity monikers ascribed to the conflict, it would probably just be easier to point to a map.
I haven't always lived in the Middle East. I've lived in various places along America’s east coast, and traveled all over the world. But in short, I now live somewhere inside the crudely-drawn purple circle.
If you know anything about these borders you probably blanched a bit in sympathy, or maybe condolence. But in truth, it’s a shockingly normal existence. I don't feel like I've lived through the shifting of international relations or a war or anything. I just kind of feel like I did when COVID hit, that dull sameness as I wondered if this would be the only world-altering event to shape my life, or if there would be more.
I've been told that, in order for my brain to process all the horrific details of the past six months, there needs to be some element of cognitive dissonance—that falling into a sort of dissociative mindset is the only way to not go insane under the weight of it all. I think in some ways that’s true. I have been terrifyingly close to bus stop shootings when my commute wasn’t over; I have felt my apartment building shake with the reverberations of a missile strike; I have spent hours in underground shelters waiting for air raid sirens to stop.
But. I have also gone grocery shopping, and skipped class, and stayed up too late watching TV, and fed the cats on the street corner, and cried over a boy, and got myself AirPods just because, and taken out the trash, and done laundry on a delicate cycle, and bought overpriced lattes one too many days a week. I have looked at pretty things and taken out my phone because, despite it all, I still think that life is too short not to freeze the small moments.
So I'd say, all things considered, I live an incredibly privileged life—compared, of course, to those suffering in Gaza—one filled with sunsets and over-sweetened knafeh and every different color of sand. One that allows me to throw myself into a fandom-induced hyperfixation (or, alternatively, escape method) as I sit on the couch and crack open my laptop to write the next chapter of the fic I'm working on.
But there are bits of not-normalness that wheedle their way through the cracks. I pretend these moments are avoidable, even if they’re not.
They look like this: reading the news and seeing another idiotic, careless choice on Netanyahu’s part and groaning into my morning coffee. Watching Palestinian and Jewish children’s needless suffering posted on Instagram reels and feeling helpless. Opening my Tumblr DMs to find a message telling me to exterminate myself for reblogging a post that only seems like it’s about the war if you squint and tilt your head sideways.
These moments look like all the tiny ways I am reminded that I'm living in a post-October seventh world, where hearing a car backfire makes me jump out of my skin and the sound of a suitcase on pavement makes me look up at the sky and search for the war planes. They look like the heavy grief that is, and also isn’t, mine.
Here's the thing, though. I know you’re wondering when the ball will drop and my true opinion will be revealed. I know you’re waiting for me to reveal what demographic I'm a part of so that you, dear reader, can neatly slap a label on my head and sort me into some oversimplified category that lets you continue to think you understand this war.
No one wants to sit and ruminate on the difficult questions, the ones that make you wonder if maybe you’ve been tinkered with by the propaganda machine, if you might need to go back on what you’ve said or change your mind. We all strive for our perception of complicated issues to be a comfortable one.
But I know that no matter what I do, there will always be assumptions. So, while I shudder to reveal this information online, I think that maybe my most significant contribution to this meta-discussion spanning every facet of the internet is this:
I am a Jew.
Or, alternatively, I am: Jewish, יהודית, يَهُودِيٌّ, etc. Point is, I come from Jews. And, like any given person, I am a product of generation after generation of love.
I'm not going to take time to explain my heritage to you, or to prove that before all the expulsions and pogroms, there was an origin point. If you don’t believe that, perhaps it’s less of a factual problem and more of an ‘I don’t give weight to the beliefs of indigenous people’ problem. But, in case you want to spend time uselessly refuting this tiny point in a larger argument, you can inspect the photos below (it’s just a small chunk of my DNA test results). Alternatively, you can remember that interrogating someone in an attempt to make their indigeneity match your arbitrary criteria is generally not seen as good manners.
Now, let’s go back to thathateful message (read: poorly disguised death threat) I received in my Tumblr DMs. I think it was like two or three weeks ago. I had recently gained a new follower whose blog’s primary focus was the fandom I contribute to, so I followed them back. I saw in my notes that they were going through my posts and liking them—as one does when gaining a new mutual. Yippee!
Then they sent me this:
I tried to explain that hate speech is not a way to go about participating in political discourse, but the person had already blocked me immediately after sending that message. Then, assured by the fact that I surely would never see them complaining about me on their blog (because, as I said, they blocked me), they posted a shouting rant accusing me of sympathizing with colonizing settlers and declaring me a “racist Zionist fuck.” Oh, the wonders of incognito tabs.
Where this person drew these conclusions after reading my (reblogged) post about antisemitism…. I'm not actually sure. But I greatly sympathize with them, and hope that they weren’t too personally offended by my desire to not die.
For a while I contemplated this experience in my righteous anger, and tried to figure out a way to message this person. I wanted to explain that a) seeing a post about being Jewish and choosing to harass the creator about Israel is literally the definition of antisemitism and b) that sending a hateful DM and refusing to be held accountable is just childish and immature. But I gave up soon after—because, honestly, I knew it wasn’t worth my effort or energy. And I knew that I wouldn't be able to change their mind.
But I still remember staring at that rather unfortunate meme, accompanied by an all-caps message demanding for me to Free Palestine, and thinking: the post didn’t even have any buzzwords. I remember the swoop of dread and guilt and fear. I remember wondering why this kind of antisemitism felt worse, in that moment, than the kind that leaves bodies in its wake.
I remember thinking, I don’t have the power to free anyone.
I remember thinking, I’m so fucking tired.
And before you tell me that this conflict isn’t about religion—let me ask you some questions. Why is it that Israel is even called Israel? (Here’s why.) Why do Jews even want it? (Here’s why.) But also, if you actually read the charters of Islamist terrorist organizations like ISIS, Hamas, and Hezbollah (among others), they equate the modern state of Israel with the Jewish people, and they use the two entities interchangeably. So of course this conflict is religious. It’s never been anything but that.
But I do wonder, when faced with those who deny this fact: how do I prove, through an endless slew of what-about-isms and victim blaming, that I too am hurting? How do I show that empathy is dialectical, that I can care deeply for Palestinians and Gazans while also grieving my own people?
There's this thing that humans do, when we’re frustrated about politics and need to howl our opinions about it into the void until we feel better. We find like-minded souls, usually our friends and neighbors, and fret about the state of the world to each other until we’ve gone around in a satisfactory amount of circles. But these conversations never truly accomplish anything. They’re just a substitute, a stand-in catharsis, for what we really wish we could do: find someone who embodies the spirit of every Jew-hating internet troll, every ignorant justifier of terrorism, and scream ourselves hoarse at them until we change their mind.
But, of course, minds cannot be changed when they are determined to live in a state of irrational dislike. In Judaism, this way of thinking has a name: שנאת חינם (sinat hinam), or baseless hatred. It's a parasite with no definite cure, and it makes people bend over backwards to justify things like the massacre on October seventh, simply because the blame always needs to be placed on the Jews.
So when a Jew is faced with this unsolvable problem, there is only one response to be had, only one feeling to be felt: anger. And we are angry. Carrying around rage with nowhere to put it is exhausting. It's like a weight at the base of our neck that pushes down on our spine, bending it until we will inevitably snap under the pressure. I’m still waiting to break, even now.
I wish I could explain to someone who needs to hear it that terrorism against Israelis happens every single day here, and that we are never more than one degree of separation away from the brutal slaughter of a friend, lover, parent, sibling. I wish it would be enough to say that the majority of Israelis (which includes Arab-Israeli citizens who have the exact same rights as Jewish-Israelis) wish for peace every day without ever having seen what it looks like.
I wish I could show the world that Israel was founded as a socialist state, that it was built on communal values and born from a cluster of kibbutzim (small farming communities based on collective responsibility), and that what it is now isn’t what its people stand for.
I wish the world could open their eyes to what we Israelis have seen since the beginning: that Hamas is the enemy, Hamas is the one starving Palestinians and denying them aid, Hamas is the one who keeps rejecting ceasefire terms and denying their citizens basic human rights. Hamas is the governing body of Gaza, not Israel. Hamas is responsible for the wellbeing of the Palestinian people. And Hamas are the ones who are more determined to murder Jews—over and over and over again, in the most animalistic ways possible—than to look inwards and see the suffering they’ve inflicted on their own people. I wish it was easier to see that.
But the wishing, the asking how can people be so blind, is never enough. I can never just say, I promise I don't want war.
When I bear witness to this baseless hatred, I think of the victims of October seventh. I think of the women and girls who were raped and then murdered, forever unable to tell their stories. I think of the hostages, trapped underneath Gaza in dark tunnels, wondering if anyone will come for them. I think of Ori Ansbacher, of Ezra Schwartz, of Eyal, Gilad, and Naftali, of Lucy, Rina, and Maia Dee, of the Paley boys, of Ari Fuld and of Nachshon Wachsman. I think of all the innocent blood spilled because of terror-fueled hatred and the virus of antisemitism. I think of all the thousands of people who were brutally murdered in Israel, Jews and Muslims and Christians and humans, who will never see peace.
My ties to this land are knotted a thousand times over. Even when I leave, a part of me is left behind, waiting for me to claim it when I return. But when I see the grit it takes to live through this pain, when I see the suffering that paints the world the color of blood, I look to the heavens and I wonder why.
I ask God: is it worth all this? He doesn't answer. So I am the one, in the end, to answer my own question. I say, it has to be.
Feel free to send any genuine, respectful, and clarifying questions you may have to my inbox!
EDIT: just coming on here to say that I'm really touched & grateful for the love on this post. When I wrote it, I felt hopeless; I logged off of Tumblr for Shabbat, dreading the moment I would turn off my phone to find more hate in my inbox. Granted, I did find some, and responding to it was exhausting, but it wasn’t all hate. I read every kind reblog and comment, and the love was so much louder. Thank you, thank you, thank you. 🤍
Source Reading
The Whispered in Gaza Project by The Center for Peace Communications
Why Jews Cannot Stop Shaking Right Now by Dara Horn
Hamas Kidnapped My Father for Refusing to Be Their Puppet by Ala Mohammed Mushtaha
I Hope Someone Somewhere Is Being Kind to My Boy by Rachel Goldberg
The Struggle for Black Freedom Has Nothing to Do with Israel by Coleman Hughes
Israel Can Defend Itself and Uphold Its Values by The New York Times Editorial Board
There Is a Jewish Hope for Palestinian Liberation. It Must Survive by Peter Beinart
The Long Wait of the Hostages’ Families by Ruth Margalit
“By Any Means Necessary”: Hamas, Iran, and the Left by Armin Navabi
When People Tell You Who They Are, Believe Them by Bari Weiss
Hunger in Gaza: Blame Hamas, Not Israel by Yvette Miller
Benjamin Netanyahu Is Israel’s Worst Prime Minister Ever by Anshel Pfeffer
What Palestinians Really Think of Hamas by Amaney A. Jamal and Michael Robbins
The Decolonization Narrative Is Dangerous and False by Simon Sebag Montefiore
Understanding Hamas’s Genocidal Ideology by Bruce Hoffman
The Wisdom of Hamas by Matti Friedman
How the UN Discriminates Against Israel by Dina Rovner
This Muslim Israeli Woman Is the Future of the Middle East by The Free Press
Why Are Feminists Silent on Rape and Murder? by Bari Weiss
#palestine#israel hamas war#israel hamas conflict#hamas#on war#essay writing#personal essay#rant post#stop terrorism#israel#writing#palestinian lives matter#jewish lives matter#jewish and proud#jewish identity#jewish muslim solidarity#on grief#on religion#antisemitism#anti zionisim#purim 2024#chag purim sameach#judaism#israeli palestinian conflict#am yisrael chai#kvetching#jumblr#the post that turned my blog into an anti-antisemitism blog
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Sujood has reached out to me to boost she and Sanaa’s fundraiser. They’re urgently trying to evacuate their family from Gaza and seek asylum in Belgium. Their previous campaign was suspended, so they have started a new GFM and currently have £1,642 out of their £50,000 goal! Please share if you can’t donate!
From their GFM page:
Dear friends,
We are reaching out to you with a heartfelt plea for help. Our names are Sanaa and Sujood, and we find ourselves in an incredibly challenging and dangerous situation.
Unfortunately, our previous attempt to receive donations was unsuccessful due to restrictions on transactions to Gaza. However, the urgency of our circumstances compels us to reach out again, this time with new procedures in place to ensure the secure delivery of your generous contributions. We are launching a new campaign because we cannot afford to wait for a long time for the restrictions on the bank account to be lifted it’s already being two months now. We are unsure if we will be able to access the funds or if they will be returned to the donors. In any case, here in Gaza, we are fighting against time. Every day poses a threat to our safety, and we cannot afford to wait. If, after some time, we are able to retrieve the previous amount, we will use it to rebuild our lives and continue the education of my siblings.
The situation in Gaza has become increasingly unbearable, and we have been left with no choice but to seek assistance from compassionate individuals like you. Your donations can make a significant difference in our lives and help us escape the dire circumstances we currently face.
This is ours story:
I hope this message finds you in good health and spirits.
My name is Sanaa Odeh, currently in Gaza, occupied Palestine. I am writing this as a plea for survival, for a future for my family and myself.
Our lives are in immediate danger, with non stop explosions everyday and every night, tanks and guns all around us, and fear as a constant companion. It is a non-stop nightmare, every minute of every day, for 6 months. Everyday is a struggle for survival. Lack of food and clean water creating a crisis of death by starvation and dehydration.
Despite the endless nightmare, we are a resilient and strong family. My beautiful parents gave everything to raise us as successful daughters and we are so proud of what we have achieved.
I work as a graphic designer and my sisters: a nurse/educator, small business owner, a medical student, and a field coordinator. Despite being on the path to rich and promising futures, it can all be taken away in any moment. We have already lost several family members, including my uncles and their entire family. There is little hope that the situation will end soon, all of us waiting for our turn next.
We are looking to seek asylum in Belgium. This campaign will help support us in covering the costs to do so, specifically in covering the evacuation costs per person. Your donation will provide us with the chance to escape the endless horror we’ve been facing for the last 6 months and give us a chance to return to a safe, normal life again, where we can once again contribute positively to society.
I understand that this is a challenging time for everyone right now, but please do not underestimate what even £5 can contribute to especially when it all adds up. It really does make a huge difference. No matter how small the contribution it can still change our entire lives.
Thank you for taking the time to read our story, your support means the world to us. Whether it is simply sharing our campaign or donating, it makes all the difference in the world to us. Your act of kindness can bring light to our darkest days and help us build a better future.
Thank you once again for all your support and kindness
With heartfelt gratitude,
Sanaa and Sujood
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Internet hug because this kind of sucks! If you would like:
Buck doesn't let Tommy just break up with him without a fight and they have an actual discussion about why Tommy can't be Buck's first And his last.
Buck remains frozen in his chair until the door clicks shut, at which he leaps up and yanks it open.
The force which he uses must have surprised Tommy, who is just a few steps away in the corridor.
"Don't you dare leave," Buck snaps out and grabs the older man's wrist. His vehemence catches Tommy off guard too, it seems, because Tommy lets him drag them back inside the loft without any resistance.
Once they're inside, Buck shuts and leans his back against the front door.
"Buck-"
"Evan! I am Evan to you," Buck corrects. His voice is frantic, nearly angry. Good. He is caught between fury and desperation anyway. "And you don't get to tell me how I may feel in the future. Like I can't tell you how you may feel in the future." He gulps. "We're first responders, Tommy. We may die on our next shifts. Can you predict that? Or maybe, maybe you get in your truck, and the next thing you know, some idiot SUV crashes into you. Or this building collapses."
Tommy makes an abortive motion to move forward but stops. "Buck-"
"Call me that again and I will hit you, I swear to God," Buck snarls. He's fighting back tears. "You know why I let you call me Evan."
"Because that's how you introduced yourself to me," Tommy said quietly.
Buck takes three strides forward and grabs Tommy by his shirt to pull him close. "Because I love you!"
It's the first time he's said it.
It feels right. It feels like fire and it feels like comfort and it feels like home.
"I, Evan Buckley, love you, Tommy Kinard, and I want this relationship with you to be my forever," he declares, staring right into Tommy's storm-blue eyes. When Tommy averts his gaze, Buck cups his cheek and makes direct eye contact again. "What are you really afraid of, Tommy? Because I know that your breaking up with me isn't because you're afraid of breaking your heart." He swallows, his throat already in pain. "Because your heart is breaking right now, and mine as well."
Tears are racing down both their faces. Tommy licks his lips and shudders as he bows his head. "I'm sorry. It's just... I told myself, I was moving at your pace, and I really thought I was ready, but now, it's so fast, and I'm not sure I can be what you want, Evan. I don't know if I can be what you want, and I don't want to fall short and be told I'm not good enough, not again-"
Buck kisses Tommy quiet. It feels exactly as it should. Like this is what their lips are made for.
"Thomas Kinard," Buck whispers, "you silly, stupid, self-sabotaging man."
"Evan..."
Leaning his forehead against Tommy's, Buck continues, "You worry you're not enough? I worry I'm too much. Don't you see? We're meant for each other. We complement each other, Tommy, in our strengths and our flaws, and you're enough for me, okay? You're who I want. You are who I need. You are. You take care of me the way I need to be, you let me be who I am, late night research and curses and eulogies to a dead dude and everything, and I honestly forgot where I was going with that, except that I don't want you to walk out of my life just because some voice in your head tells you a lie."
He stops talking. He's still cupping Tommy's face, still breathing his air.
Tommy nudges his nose against Buck's. "You really want me?" His voice is small, nervous.
"Yes, you idiot. Which part of 'I love you' are you not hearing? I love you, I am in love with you."
Another tremble shake through Tommy's frame, and he places his hands on Buck's waist. "I love you, Evan. I'm in love with you." He sniffles, and then chuckles damply. "God. We're both so snotty and gross right now."
"And whose fault is that?" Buck teases, his voice nasal and his throat sore. He slides his hands down, face to jaw to neck to broad shoulders. "You don't have to move in. But stay, okay? I need you to stay. To choose me. Not the lying liar in your brain."
"I'll stay. I'll stay until-"
"There is no until." Buck is adamant. "It's you, Tommy."
Tommy nods, smiling, and then huffs a short laugh. "Actually, you should move in with me. I have way more space than you, and a car lift and a Muay Thai setup. Eddie will kill me if I give all that up for this place."
"Can't have Eddie killing the man I love now." Buck brushes his nose along the side of Tommy's. "Okay. I'll move in with you."
Tommy kisses him, this time lingering, an unspoken question. Buck smiles into the kiss, and leads Tommy up the stairs to the bed.
#bucktommy#tommy kinard#evan buckley#tevan#it ran away from me#too many heightened emotions to have a discussion#pq writes
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Pick a card: What does this person want to say to you? ❤️
Good evening lovely darlings! I'm back with another Tumblr Tarot post- for the delusional girlies, this is another What would this person want to say to you? Particularly love focused! This could be a message from a S/O- or F/s/o or perhaps even a f/o! Depending on your degree of delulu, ofcourse. :)
Pick a pile! Use the pics underneath or go based on intuition. Thankyou! ❤️
Oh, love of mine. What wonders there are to be found when you look into my eyes. This is all poetic, truly, but in my soul, the deepest parts of it, I know that you'll still be hoping to come back to me. It is the way things are. I can't change it- even if I wanted to. I watch you. I see you. I hope you know I do believe in you- I love you. When I see tears on your cheeks, streaking like some porcelain beauty, some victorian soul, gauging at what is left of me, gauging at what the eye cannot see, I long to hold your hand, softly press a kiss to it and tell you all I have seen in you that you do not see. I would take you to my favourite spot, walk the whole way just to talk to you, I would tell you what I have been wanting to let you know- that no matter where I am, or what you do, or who we are, in our very souls, we are always one and the same. We are alike. Perhaps in spirit, personality, or maybe just in how we devote ourselves to spirituality, or God, but I know that I am yours if you will be mine. But you haven't been coming to me. You don't want to be mine yet. I know you think you do- but you're not ready for this. Neither am I. I have found myself trying to build what was left- to build a new. I have found I wanted to incorporate more of the old into my new life and therefore I am struggling to find my way to you- it will show some day but I will make time free. Free time for you. I promise you this. I fear some day, you may leave me entirely. Yet even when this happens, I'm but a cinder. I'm but a memory. A distant person you once knew. Distant eyes you once reflected upon, talked to, listened to, hoped for, wished and yearned. I'll not be the same because you won't either. We grow with one another. Tell me you love me. I need to know this. I need you to tell it straight to my face, to my memory, to my thought, to my soul, just think it. Think, say, breathe it. I will know when you do. Thank you for thinking of me today, I appreciate it.
You'll always be my true love, you know? ❤️
It's in his kiss, that's where it is. You can feel when I love you truly, baby, because I would kiss you like you've never felt before. I'd go as slow as you want, as sensual as I could ever be, as loving as I could try, I would do it for you. I know we don't know each other that well yet. We are new. But even if you know me for a long time, this feeling is new. We haven't been together before- not in other lives. I haven't loved you yet. This is new to me. I think we would fit together.... I am confused about it however. I'm not really sure what I want. I know, I am indecisive. But with you- it does feel right, it does feel... like I am a child again kissing his first crush. It feels this way- which is why I think it's important that we continue to communicate, about what you want, about what I want... it'll make this easier because I can't smell what is on your mind. I can sense your feelings, I am very empathic, but I don't know what you're thinking. And I have the feeling you're led by your thoughts, just as I am. We are horrible in listening to ourselves. Perhaps, I am better at giving you advice than I am for myself but in truth, it should be me who has to do the work and approach you, romance you, love you, not the other way around. You're so kind to me- this bamboozles the shit out of me because I am not technically seen as an approachable nice person, so your energy it really confuses me for that reason. Am I not repulsive? Do you not... want to run away from me? You're making my bad thoughts about myself resurface and dissolve all the same. When I think or look at you, even for a second, I just know that I am looking at something good. I know this is something to be cherished. Can I trust my own feeling however? I'm not too sure. I want you to know this. Just to make some clarification about where I am right now. I am not trying to push you away- nor do I want you gone AT ALL I need you and I want you by my side but I am just a torn up dunderhead. Forgive me?
"She's one of my favourite things." This is what I say when people ask about you. Hm, yes, I know. From me? You're surprised. I know some days you may think I don't know you, or don't like you, but I do, I like you a lot. You're my princess, in any fairytale that exists. And the divine to my subservient self. I'd worship you. Cherish you. Because, I know, that for you not to leave me, I have to step up and treat you well. I will be forthcoming, I will be consistent, and I will try to make your life as much of a priority as I will mine. It's not black and grey with me. It's quite clear with me. I want you to be mine. I need to marry you- some day or now. I do not care when. That's how serious I am. That's how real this feels for me. I don't need to figure this out by a 10 hour astrology research to compare my charts to yours. I don't need to figure out via a deity about what time you're going to call or text. I need to know just one thing- and that is that I can trust my feelings. I want you to trust yours. If you do- if you do feel for me, If you do cherish me, or even like me, or god above, if you even love me, if you could, that you won't break it hard on me. Do it gently. Tell me how you love me, and when you leave me, so I know it's easier. If you ever leave me, I would try to have you one more day. I really would. Not in spite or because I want some silly disgusting energy break up sex but because...I would just want to look at you, once more, see you, breathe you, just touch your hand perhaps, or even your hair, to just sit there and tell you nothing or a lot. But I wouldn't ever try to hurt you, I will never try to do this I just hope... perhaps... that you won't hurt me, all right? Can you do this for me? Can you do everything gently? (Except the sex, I don't need it to be gentle ok) but you get what I mean. My heart, my feelings, are much more tender than I can confess. I may look tough. I may be someone you think is tough- perhaps I am, maybe I am also that, but one word of you can silence me forever. Trust on that. So use your words well with me, it'll be better for both of us. Don't you think? I love you. ❤️
God speed your love to me. You thought this was going to be the romantic pile, didn't you? Hahahaha! Bitch please! I am your worst nightmare. Just kidding, I am just incapable of showing you the love you so desire and dream of. What is it with you and me? You like me obsessively. Trust me, your guides and I have been chatting away for a bit and you're.... well, let's just say, you're at wits end about me, aren't you darling? Hehe. I like when you're mad. Some days, I just think how lovely it would be if you'd be in my arms and I could just... have a peek at that lovely chest of yours. Too dirty? I understand. You think I'm a pervert. Honestly, darling, I do too. That's what I hide behind, mostly, truthfully, I'm disgusting myself sometimes, especially during those solo hours. You don't want to believe the things I've thought about you- oh my god. If my life's work and thoughts would ever get published, it would be the biggest event of all lifetime. The world would stop. The M25 would be in a traffic jam all fucking year- don't know why, but it would, wouldn't it? Say, I know you from somewhere... that's what I always say, I always begin with that. And then, I would transgress your interest and I would try and lure you into thinking of me. And when you're thinking of me, I am thinking of how you're hopelessly and desperately thinking of me and then I'll- you know, get creative thinking of you. Honey, what am I to you? Though? Like- can we be real? Am I your friend? Your lover? Your nemesis? Your teacher? Your mentor? What the fuck are we? I am so confused ! 🤣 You say things that literally bolder me off the side of the road and throw me right into the cut. Like can we pretend that for one day, you and I aren't you and I and then we can be delusional together in our own little world? You'd like that right? Well, I would too. I need to escape whatever the hell this is, or this life is, and then we can get coffee and a drink or two and you can tell me what we're going to do about this, about us, because I can't stop thinking how we are going to solve this or do this or just... how. Hm :) You look good. Just wanted to say that. Take some medicine when you feel bad, especially cramps. Take good care of yourself. I could write to you forever- know that. You can reach out to me.
#pick a card love#pick a card#pick a pile#pick a deck#pick a photo#pick a picture#pick a card reading#pick a card readings#pick a card crush#love reading#reading#tarot#love tarot#tarot community#pac tarot#pac#pactarot#pick a pile reading#pickapile#pick one
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Ok, could I PLEASE get a Leo x fem!reader fan fic where they're best friends but both want to be more (maybe they kiss...idk) ??? Pls, I'm desperate. There's not enough Leo fanfics and you're such a good writer.
— astronomy nerd
warnings: leo has W rizz 💯 (do people still say this?) pairing: leo valdez x fem! reader
“well anyways, there is no sound in space because there’s no atmosphere to carry the sound vibrations. It’s really cool if you think about it. are you thinking about it? whatever, did you know the sunsets on mars are blue? how cool is that?! and one million earths could fit in the sun, isn’t that awesome! just imagine that, the sun is huge, I mean seriously-”
your voice trails off forever, you had been talking non stop about miscellaneous outer space facts since leo had walked into your cabin and caught you reading a planet book. it’s not that he hated listening to you talk, gods no, he would listen to you talk for hours on end without a stop but in this particular moment he found himself distracted by the bright smile adorning your lips, he can’t seem to tear his eyes away. and with you being too busy caught up in your space talk you fail to realize leo hadn’t been listening
but you did, however, finally take notice when you ask him a question and he doesn’t respond, stuck in some kind of daze. you call out his name three times before snapping your fingers in front of his eyes, making them widen and his cheeks flush red
“you weren’t listening” you point out
“I’m sorry I- uhm, I’ll listen now. sorry”
you sigh. “what do you think about creating life on mars?”
creating…life? it doesn’t even take a second for leo’s brain to go from concentrating on your words to imagining creating life within you, forget fucking mars, when you’re older and leave camp preferably married with kids. with your good looks and his humor that’d be one hell of a child! he can’t suppress the widening grin, which you additionally notice
“you’re not listening again! what are you thinking about?”
“I think you should!”
your brows furrow at the late reply to your question. “okay… well I surely can’t. but the scientists at nasa know that mars has water so really if you think about it we need to bring seeds from earth to mars and we can build trees, y’know? then that will create oxygen— mars has a very thin atmosphere meaning you can’t breathe on it, but if you just put this huge tent around it the oxygen would start flowing and you’d be able to breathe. does that make sense?”
“what would the tent do if there’s no atmosphere on mars though?”
“I watched a movie about it once… but… you make a good point” you frown, realizing your information had gotten mixed. leo mirrors your expression when he realizes he had upset you. the aura of the room suddenly becomes very awkward
don’t say something stupid don’t say something stupid don’t say something stupid-
leo’s mouth fails him. “what does a star win in a competition?”
your lips twitching upwards was worth the idiotic joke he’s about to respond to
“a constellation prize”
“I have another! what type of music do planets sing?”
“what type?”
“nep-tunes!”
your laugh progresses. “where did you find these jokes?”
(the second he found out you liked astronomy and outer space he had researched like crazy so he could come up with the best jokes possible to impress you). he shrugs. “I made them myself”
“really?”
oh gods he hopes the blush on his face isn’t visible. “yeah…”
“you should be, like, a stand up comedian or something. you’re really good”
okay, yeah, he’s gonna put a ring on it the first chance he can get (your wedding has been elaborately planned already, he keeps the plans hidden underneath his mattress). with your smile as bright as the stars, eyes reflections of the moon, your hair cascading over your shoulders like the sunset over the evening sky, extremely captivating to the eyes of the silly son of hepheastus. he hoped he didn’t look like a lovesick puppy right now, staring at you like this, yet he’s surprised to find your gaze mirrors his. oh no
no no no. leo prays to ever god and goddess he’s aware of that you can’t visible see his cherry red cheeks or his smile of contentment
“do you think there’s more than one universe?” he blurts out
“of course. why?”
“because I think I’d love you all the same in every one regardless of our forms”
good gods of olympus your heart skips a beat or two. act casual
“even if I was a worm?”
“I’d build you a terrarium”
“If I was a star?”
“I’d place myself next to you”
you shouldn’t be tearing up at the thought of this but you can’t help the drops of salty water that fall from your eyes. “In every universe would you be staring at my lips instead of listening to what I’m saying?”
“if your lips always look this kissable, then yes”
oh gods oh gods oh gods oh gods so this is really happening? this is real life? surely, truly?
“leo, can I-”
“please”
you suck in a breath and whisper, “I’ve never done this before”
“I haven’t either”
very slowly, almost like neither of you had moved at all, you lean in until your lips finally meet in the middle at last. not just the first kiss, because this surely was not going to be the last
#xoxochb#percy jackon and the olympians#pjo series#pjo fandom#percy jackson#pjo#percy series#pjo hoo toa#leo valdez pjo#leo valdez x y/n#leo valdez x you#leo valdez x reader#leo valdez#percy jackson x reader
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The Hearthstone God
[The sequel to the God of Prophecy, and the Serpent God of Protection]
---
Fire is out of fashion, in this new age.
Some of my kind have found new homes, new names, in factories or forges, in the hearts of wildfires or crystals or volcanoes.
Most of us are simply forgotten.
I was a fire god, once. A god of gathering, a god of communion, a god of song and story. But there are no hearthstones now. No fires around which families gather to eat and talk and tell stories.
I am lucky. I am tied to a great flat stone near a lake. A lake that has survived all the wild exuberance of men, when they learned to change the world around them. Once, this was a place where travellers stopped to rest. At first they travelled on their feet, or on half-wild horses. Then there were carts, and a road. Much later, cars drove down the road. The road was paved.
But some things do not change. People need clean water to drink, and the spring here is good. They need to rest, when they are weary. And even now, when they come to camp in nylon tents, to fish in the lake, or to hunt the ducks, or drive camper-vans to the flat place, their ancient instincts wake, and they turn to fire once more. They light new fires atop my stone, so flat and safe, from which no log will roll to set the woods afire.
Not so many come now. Camping is less popular these days. But some still come. Some still light their fires, and settle around my stone, and talk, or listen to music, or tell stories. So I survive, just barely, on the edges of belief.
I feel it, when things begin to change. Something is happening. Something is drawing old gods back. Not the great ones, risen beyond mortal understanding, but the oldest gods, the small gods, those who rose when humankind were still learning what they were.
Far to the west of me, a god even more ancient than I wakes, and begins to hunt again. I remember the stories that were once told of that old serpent, and tell them over to myself in the long fireless nights.
A god of prophecy, not of this land, settles south and west, and I remember tales of ancient ravens, their wisdom and their guile and their sharp, sharp eyes. There was a raven clan once, who passed this way in the days of skin garments and stone tools, but I have forgotten their name. I only remember the symbol they wore, the black bird with its spread wings, marked in charcoal or charring on wooden talismans or leather garments.
I wait, to see who will awaken next.
To my great surprise, it is me.
The people who come this time aren’t like the campers. They come at night, a ragged family group with few blood ties between them, with a single tent and few possessions carried on devices I haven’t seen before. Bicycles, they’re called, slung over with bags the way ponies used to be. They come at night, and hide when cars pass on the road.
They light a fire on my stone, with wood scavenged from the forest, and huddle around its warmth. They don’t speak much, not at first, but they say enough. They have no home, I learn. They are travellers of a kind I have not known before, who are allowed to stop nowhere, but have no goal but a place to rest. They are thin, and worn, and so tired. So very tired.
They need a hearth.
I am only a weak shadow of a god, now, who once recorded the songs and stories of a thousand generations in my ancient stone, but I am still a god of fire. Their fire burns slow, their little fuel lasting well. The food they heat over it sustains them better. The water of that spring, my spring, puts a little life back in them. This stone has lain in this place since great monsters walked this world, since before humans spoke words to one another, and I came into being with the first fire that burned on it. I am old, old, and though weak, I am not powerless.
They stay.
I cannot speak to them. I am old, and weak, and they do not believe. But slowly, with the power of the fires they build every night, with the tiny offerings of scraps of food spilled into the flames, with their growing confidence in the safety of this place, I am able to do more. I give them dreams and they find the cave not far away, where they can hide. They dream of fish, and begin to try to catch some. A woman remembers that some of the local plants are safe to eat, when I slowly wake a long-forgotten memory of a camping trip from her childhood.
And then a child, a strange, quiet child who rarely speaks, a child without mother or father, in the care of an older brother who is exhausted to the very edge of death but cannot give up while she needs him… that child begins to hear.
She sits on my stone, sometimes for hours, not moving or speaking. It worries the others, but at least she is quiet, at least she is no trouble, and they are beginning to associate their hearth with safety. So they let her sit.
She is *listening*. She is listening to the sound of the water, to the sounds of the forest, to the wind blowing. And because she is listening, where no-one else has listened for so long, I sing to her. I sing to her the songs of thousands of years. From the wordless music of the earliest people, who sang what was in their hearts without words, to the songs I have learned from the fishermen with their radios and bluetooth speakers.
I do not know if she hears me, for some time. But then, one night, while they sit around their fire and eat food the oldest have almost certainly stolen, she sings one of my songs. “In a cavern… on a canyon… excavating for a mine…” she sings in a small voice. The others are startled, confused, for she has not spoken aloud since some bad thing they do not name happened, but one of the older ones knows the song and sings with her.
I have always liked ‘Clementine’. It’s been popular with campers for a long time.
The next day, while she sits on my stone, she sings along to one of the wordless songs the Raven People whose name I no longer remember once sang. It is a lullaby, a soft croon to soothe an infant, passed from mother to mother, and she seems to take pleasure in it.
She can hear me. She can even answer me, as the voice driven away by pain and fear begins to return. And so I grow stronger still. Strong enough to make the raven sign on the stone, one day, in the ashes of the fire of the night before.
She takes a half burned stick, and draws the sign on the stone. Pleased, I show her another sign, a leaping fish. She draws that too.
Soon, I need not shift the ashes. I can show her the pictures in her mind, and she draws them. She draws the wheel of a cart, and into her heart I whisper the stories the travellers in covered wagons once told over my stone. She draws a fish, and I make her laugh silently with the jests of fishermen who boast of fish who escaped them. She draws a horse, and I tell her about the wild horses who once drank at this lake, about the men and women who captured and tamed them and rode them through the forest when it was far greater than it is now. She draws a long-toothed cat, and I show her the great cat that once slept on my stone, and denned in the cave where her new found family sleep.
One night, when all the others are asleep and my fire has burned down to coals, she creeps back to the stone and looks into the coals. “Who are you?” she asks. “Are you real?”
She is afraid that the voice in her mind is the voice of madness, a lie created by a mind that does not work like other minds, that has endured great hardship. I do not want this child to be afraid. To instill fear runs counter to my very nature, save in whoever might threaten those my hearth protects.
I am a god of the hearth. I am a god of food, and communication, and peace, and safety. I am all the things that fire used to mean, before humans learned again to fear the thing they had tamed. I do not often take a form, for fire is my form, but for her I must try.
There was a wise woman once, who knew me, whose clan visited this lake several times every year. I watched her grow up, and grow old. I watched her learn of the god of the fire stone, and I watched her teach others. She slept beside me as a child, and as a woman. She sang her children to sleep beside me, and her grandchildren, and dozed beside me as an old, old woman. To her, I was represented by a sign of a flame in an oval, a fire and a stone.
I build a likeness of her out of the light of the coals and the shadows of smoke, a child with straight dark hair and a simple tunic, and in lines of light I draw the sign of the fire and the stone on the outlined chest. “I am the fire,” I tell her, “and the stone. I am all the fires that have ever burned here, all the stories told, all the songs sung, all the meals eaten. I am the traveler’s hearth, and the rest for the weary, and this is my place.”
“Piedra de fuego,” she says, tracing the symbol with her finger in the air. “The fire stone.”
“Yes. I am the god of this place.”
She frowns at this. “My brother says that God is in the sky.”
“Many gods are in the sky.” I cannot continue to hold the form of the girl, but the coals shift to make my sign. “I am not. I am here. I have always been here, since the first people built a fire on my stone, and warmed themselves.”
She nods slowly. “You are… a small god,” she says thoughtfully. “A place god. Like in movies.”
“Yes.” I’ve heard of movies, which are a new way of telling old, old stories. “Old places, important places, often have gods. And gods who are forgotten return to their old places and wait, until someone believes again.”
“Will you protect us?” she asks. “When the police come, to tell us to move on?”
“I am not strong,” I tell her sadly. “I cannot make men go away from here, if they are dangerous, or even call game here for you as I once did. But what I can do, I will do.”
She sits watching the coals for a long time, thinking. “Can we make you stronger?”
I think too, and she waits patiently. “You have already made me stronger. You listened. You believed. If you can convince the others to believe, that will make me stronger still.”
She sighed. “They don’t believe in anything, anymore. Not good things.”
It is a sad thing, that she knows that. They’ve been trying to hide it from her. “Then,” I tell her, “that means there is a place in their hearts that is ready for me. I am not hope. I am not a happy ending. I am not a god in the sky. I am a stone, and a fire, and a song. I am *real*. They can believe in what is real.”
The next night, she asks for a story, and one of the adults tells her an old fairy-tale from a country far away.
The next night, again, she asks for a story, and another adult tells a funny story about his childhood.
On the third night, she asks her brother to tell her a story. He tries, but he is so tired - not physically, but emotionally - that he runs out of words. So she lays her hand on his arm and offers to tell him a story, instead.
And she tells them all a story about a stone near a lake, flat and strong, that people wearing uncured skins and carrying flint weapons built a fire on. She tells of centuries passing, of people coming to the lake on their feet, on horses, in carts and wagons, in cars and motor-homes. Of thousands of years of fires, of people gathered around them, of the great continuity of humanity, and the Piedra De Fuego that has lain in this place since time began, listening to the stories and the songs and the voices of people long gone. Somewhere in the stone, she says, laying her hand on it, all those stories are remembered. All those songs are still sung. And it will remember us too.
I don’t know if it will work. But I was right. People need to believe in something. They need something to hold onto, when times are hard, when the ties of community and family are broken and they feel alone. And a stone thousands of years old, and a fire endlessly renewed on that stone, always new… that is real. They touch me, and think of those who came before, of thousands of years of history meeting them in this place, and they feel less alone.
It’s not much, not yet. But it is something. My nature, my existence, as explained to them by my small, strange priestess, is a slender lifeline flung to those who are adrift, a tiny certainty in a world they do not trust. And the more they believe in that lifeline, that certainty, then the more they believe in me. I *am* growing stronger.
When the police come, I will not be able to make them leave… but I think I am strong enough now to hide my people from unkind eyes. And if I can do that, then their faith will grow.
Tonight, three more people come. A mother and two children, weary and beaten down with hardship. My people welcome them, give them fish and greens grown by the lake, speak kindly to them. And when they have eaten, my little priestess sits between the two children and tells them a story of a stone, and a fire, and thousands of years of stories and songs, and she sings a wordless lullaby six thousand years forgotten, but living again in a child who draws the sign of the Raven in the dirt while she sings, and the sign of the fire on the stone.
And I grow a little stronger.
#short fiction#original story#i aten't dead#the old gods#small gods#household gods#forgotten gods who do not forget
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Changes
Jessie Fleming x Reader
Summary: Jessie’s used to change, but lately life has hit her with one thing after the next. When her best friend announces she’s leaving, she’s left wondering where it leaves her.
Warnings: none
A/N: Short little comfort piece based on this request.
“You haven’t had any of your tea,” you noted as you watched Jessie out of the corner of your eye.
She reacted slowly. After a few moments giving you a small noise of acknowledgment before she sat up on the couch and took a brief sip of her drink. She set it back down without a word or look.
Janine delivered her news today and Jessie had been very quiet and subdued all evening. She relayed the update to you over text earlier like it was something so trivial and commonplace. You’d asked questions, but even now as the day drew to a close, she very purposefully didn’t elaborate further.
You and Jessie hadn’t been together all that long, just a few months, but you knew her well enough to know that you shouldn’t push. She’d reveal more when she was ready.
So here you were, both quietly sitting on the couch, each immersed in a book. You read the same few paragraphs over and over, thoughts going astray and losing focus, made worse by how you noticed Jessie hadn’t flipped a page in several minutes.
Eventually, Jessie shifted, restless almost. You kept your eyes fixed on your book knowing it was best to let her come to you. In time she cleared her throat and spoke into her book.
“Janine’s leaving - moving away, getting married. Heck, who knows, maybe she’ll have kids soon. Sinc’s retiring. Maybe leaving, too, to be closer to her family.” She sighed quietly, opening her mouth to speak and stalling. She sighed once more. “I don’t know.”
Jessie set down her book and sunk further into the couch. She picked at her fingers absently and was quiet for a moment before giving you a fleeting glance.
“I guess part of me feels like maybe I’m falling behind in some way.” She stared vacantly at the floor before shifting again with another small sigh. “Or being left behind. I don’t know.”
“Hey,” you interjected gently, resting a hand on her shoulder. She didn’t react. “Even if it feels that way, no one’s intentionally leaving you behind. They both love you a lot and you’re important to them.” You struggled to find the right words. “I can’t say for sure, but it seems to be the nature of your work. It’s not easy to put down roots or stay in one place for long. That must be really hard though.”
Jessie exhaled, letting her head fall back against the back of the couch to stare up at the ceiling.
“It is,” she said simply.
“And you’re not falling behind. National team captaincy. You’re a consistent starter for a Shield winning team. The list goes on.”
“The National team is great, but there’s so much bullshit too. I’m doing what I can, but I can’t help but feel like I’m not doing enough,” she sighed, rubbing her forehead. “And I don’t always feel like I’m gelling with the team here. I may start, but I don’t know, sometimes I feel like I haven’t necessarily made the impact I’ve wanted to.”
“There’s absolutely no road map for what the national team is going through. You led them out of a near impossible situation. I’d say you did exceptionally. And as for the Thorns, even if you feel that way, your stats say otherwise. It’s still a new team for you, it’s okay to feel like you’re still finding your place.” You sought eye contact with her, which she offered briefly. “And I think we both know you’re your worst critic.”
“Well. Considering my best friend is leaving to be closer to her fiancé and to, you know, build her life and career and I’m sitting here feeling sorry for myself instead, I’d say I deserve some of that criticism,” Jessie said with a slight edge in her tone.
“Jess,” you said softly. “You need to be kind to yourself right now. It’s okay to feel bad or upset. I’m sure you were supportive when she told you and we both know you will be in all of your actions. You can still feel what you feel and be a good friend - all things can be true.”
She was quiet a moment longer before chancing a brief look at you before shifting and rubbing the back of her neck nervously.
“I don’t know. It just feels like a mess,” she said with a huff. “I guess I’m questioning some things now too. A big part of why I came here was to play alongside her and Sinc and in a few short months every aspect of that will no longer exist,” she relayed. “And I left Chelsea with so much confidence that this was the right move, that I’d never grow or get more of a chance there, but things have changed so much over there now I’m wondering what would’ve happened if I’d stayed.”
You cast your gaze downward for a moment, a pang going through you at her words. You hushed it immediately and refocused on her. This wasn’t about you.
“That’s understandable,” you said. “A lot of variables have changed. You couldn’t have known that would be the case though. You made the right decision for you in the moment and that’s really all you - or anyone - can be expected to do.”
She nodded quietly, eyes still trained on the ceiling. You tried to not let your emotions get the best of you. As apprehensive as you felt by this shift, Jessie was not yours to keep. You couldn’t and wouldn’t ever want her to stay unless of her own accord.
“Is that something you want to explore?” You asked, keeping all implications and judgement out of your voice. “Talk with your agent? See what options you might have?”
She shook her head right away. “No. I’m just - just talking. You’re right, I need to give myself time here. I’m just in my head. And being hard on myself.”
She offered you a small smile.
“And in some ways Portland feels more like home to me than London did even after three or four years,” she said. “Not only just lifestyle-wise, but I wouldn’t have met you if I didn’t come here.”
Despite her words, all you could muster was a half-smile that you hoped was reassuring.
“You do seem at home here,” you chuckled, but soon grew earnest. “But, if you wanted to explore other options, I hope you know I wouldn’t hold you back. That’s the last thing I would want to do. I love you and want to support you in wherever your life takes you.”
You did your best to seem nonchalant. “We’re still new, I’m aware of that. So I hope whatever you choose to do, that it’s with solely you in mind. You don’t need to worry about me.”
Jessie turned to you now, her body language opening up as she looked at you. She took your hand.
“Hey, I know we’re new, but I love you, too. Even if everything was falling apart here - which, it isn’t, even if I’m talking like it is - it would all be worth it because I got to meet and fall in love with you.”
You held her gaze, digesting her words before smiling and nodding your acceptance.
“That’s really sweet. Thank you. I really hope you feel like there’s still a lot of good for you here - outside of me,” you said.
“I do,” she said with a soft smile. She released a quick breath, looking away before meeting your gaze again. “I just need to remind myself that everyone’s on their own path. Janine has hers. Same as Sinc. And I have mine too. They don’t need to always be parallel or intertwine. I just need to adjust.”
“That makes a lot of sense. You came here with a particular expectation and vision and it’s turning out differently than you pictured. It’s normal that you need some time to adjust.”
Jessie sighed, more contentedly this time and leaned her head on your shoulder. A rush of warmth and affection went through you and you kissed the top of her head. She wrapped her arm around your middle and cuddled in.
“Thank you for being so sweet,” she said. “And patient.”
“Of course,” you told her as you kissed her head once more.
“No. Some people don’t get it. They have a hard time giving me space when I need it. Like Janine,” she joked before humming softly. You gave her a squeeze.
“She’ll still be your best friend,” you reminded her. “You’ve spent more time apart than together and you’re solid - it’s never stopped you before.” You gave her a light nudge. “You may just have to take on more media now that Janine won’t be jumping to step in front of the mic.”
Jessie groaned with a laugh. “Don’t even put that out there.”
She exhaled, resting against you more fully.
“Truthfully, I’m feeling a bit lost or uncertain in some ways, but I have trust in myself and in the process. I know even if I’m feeling apprehensive about all of the change and upheaval around me, I know this is where I need to be. And to be here with you feels absolutely right.”
#jessie fleming#jessie fleming x reader#woso x reader#woso imagine#canwnt x reader#canwnt#janine beckie
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Hellooo!! I was wondering if you could do a part 2 to the Sugardaddy!Miguel story? 🫶🏻🤍
Sure thing!!!!!
Part 1
Warning: MINORS DNI, some smut, language, Sugar Daddy/Daddy kink? What would that go under??
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It had been a year since you and Miguel made that deal at the strip club.
Miguel was going to be your Sugar Daddy in exchange for a few dates.
It lasted two months before you asked him to further your relationship with him. Miguel was young, hot, kind, charming and just perfect.
The two of you were in a happy relationship. Miguel still spoiled you as if he was still your Sugar Daddy. You didn't complain as much because you had told Miguel it was all going to be used for your education.
Miguel was fine with it, but he loved to take your shopping. Buying you everything you looked at, everything you wanted, it felt too much sometimes.
Luck was truly on your side to have taken such a risk that night. Not only had you paid off all your bills, but you were finally going back to school. Miguel was so understanding and supportive of you that you couldn't help but fall more in love with him.
Miguel was amazing at everything. Once the two of you became an official couple, he was more honest with you.
The man was the son of the CEO of Alchemax.
The man was SPIDER-MAN!
The later secret was told just recently. You had found Miguel injured and grew extremely worried as you helped heal his wounds. It made sense why he was so rich, so strong and so goddamn good in bed. The stamina he had was inhumane.
Honestly, you were surprised how Miguel hasn't put a baby in you yet. There had been times where Miguel would fuck you so good that you couldn't move for the next few days.
Speaking of numb...
"Migueeeeel, I have an exam today. I told you," You said with a soft whine, laying flat on the bed.
"Aye, sorry mi amor (my love). I did restrain myself just a bit," Miguel said with a hum as he kissed your head, "I can swing you over to the building."
"But then I have to walk inside," You said with a pout, "I don't wanna be charged the missed fee."
"If that's what you're worried about..."
You squealed as Miguel flipped you over and pinned you against the bed. His smirk growing wider,
"I can handle as many missed fees as we need."
"But Daddy~" You giggled, causing Miguel to kiss you.
If there was one thing about having Miguel as a young Sugar Daddy that was good...was that Miguel LOVED being called 'Daddy'. It was a kink that you got used too as well.
"Ah~ D-Daddy! R-Right there~" You moaned, arching your back as Miguel held your hips.
"Does my good girl like that?" Miguel hummed as he thrusted into you again, "You want Daddy to take care of everything?"
"Y-Yesh! Yes! I-I'm a good girl!" You cried out, feeling your orgasm approach.
"Don't worry, I'll take....nh...good care of you." Miguel groaned as you tighten against his cock, "You want Daddy's milk that bad?"
You gripped against the bed sheets, begging for Miguel to unload inside of you. You gasped and moaned as Miguel gave you exactly what you wanted.
"Such a good girl," Miguel grunted as he kissed your neck, "My good girl,"
"Hah...hah...Miguel, I know...you're rich, but I can't keep...mhm...abusing you like this." You muttered. Miguel raised a brow as he picked you up from the bed,
"(Y/N), You know well that I don't mind. I have too much money to know what to do with. I will gladly always spend every penny on you."
"Hehe, a true sugar daddy."
"You're daddy." Miguel said with a chuckle as he carried you to the bathroom, "You've worked too hard your whole life to allow me to let you continue. I want to make sure you are always comfortable."
"You're always working hard too, Miguel. You have to live comfortably too."
You closed your eyes as Miguel gave you a deep kiss. He turned the water on and laid in the large bath with you. His arms firmly around your waist as the two of you laid in the tub. Your hands stroking his scars on his arms.
"Why don't we go on vacation? To celebrate me graduating soon. You could use the week off."
"Hm?" Miguel nuzzled his head against the crook of your neck, "How about three weeks? Any country of your choosing."
"Oh, you spoil me, Daddy."
"Anything for my good girl,"
It was a good thing Miguel was paying that fee for missing your exam...
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Hope you liked it~
#miguel spiderverse#miguel o'hara x reader#spiderman 2099#miguel o’hara x reader#miguel spiderman#miguel o'hara#atsv miguel#miguel o'hara smut#across the spiderverse#miguel x you#miguel x fem!reader
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hiii lov, can u do mike w a pregnant reader please?🥹
i don't know how this happened but jesus took the wheel on this one. you can probably find the exact point where i had to tell myself to stop and just get to the fucking point of this ask
It was his mom that first had suspicion, having watched you nearly purge your lunch from simply the smell of French onion soup, though she remained reticent of her reservation. So, it became of no surprise to her when she calls her son one afternoon, only to find he’s meandering up and down the aisles of a CVS, in search of some Dramamine to help combat your nausea.
“I think it’s some stomach bug… All she does is sleep and throw up.”
“How long has this been going on for?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. A couple days? It’s worse when she first wakes up but it’s kind of up and down throughout the day.”
“You must have a good immune system if you haven’t caught this bug.” He doesn’t coherently reply, but she can hear him hum in response. “Well, let me know if she needs anything. See if she will try some peppermint tea to help with the nausea.”
She isn’t one to meddle; she’ll let her son figure this one out on his own.
It was on that third morning, for the third time, you found yourself sprawled on the bathroom floor, seeking the frigid linoleum with welcoming arms. You focus your thoughts on the sound of the ceiling fan in your bedroom whirring above, and the light snores coming from your partner, who is lucky not to have had his sleep rudely disrupted.
You think the worst has passed you, but any sudden movements could send you right back into a spiral. You close your eyes and pace your breathing, concentrating on the whirring, when you feel a shift and the bathroom door lightly knocks against your feet.
“Babe?” His voice is deep with sleep, and out of the corner of your eye, you see him peek from the sliver of space in the doorway. “Happening again?”
You murmur an acknowledgement, bringing your knees up to your chest to allow him full entry. He doesn’t say anything this time, not when the days before he’s met with a sharp remark, teeth clenching around unwavering nausea on the brink of collapse.
He shuffles in behind you, knees cracking as he bends down to join you on the floor.
“I need you to do me a favor,” you begin, “and I don’t want to talk about it… Just need you to do it without questions.” He’s staring at you, brows furrowing. “I need you to get me a pregnancy test.”
“You don’t really think—”
“What did I just say?” You bit back, and he instantly retreated. You felt him shift behind you, leaning forward to find your hand and give you a supportive squeeze.
“I’ll be back.”
When he returns, you have finally managed to return to the confines of your bed. He held the plastic bag in his hand, unsure where to put it; passing a glance to you as he met you on your side.
“Do you want to now, or…?”
The anxiety would eat you alive if you chose to wait another second without answers. You sat up, took the bag from his hand, and sauntered back into the bathroom. Mike sat on the edge of the bed, toying with the frayed ends of your blanket. He hasn’t really had time to process what could possibly be this life-altering news. You two had thought children were still a couple years out, though the idea thrilled him to a degree. He could always slow down his career if it meant he’d become a father in some 8 months.
He always imagined the spare bedroom as a nursery. He thought about what color they’d paint it, and if he’d take the risk and build a crib by hand. Who would the baby most resemble? What color hair and eyes? Would it have heterochromia like he did? Probably not.
He’s forced out of his thoughts when the bathroom door opens, and you return to him with the test in your hand.
“It says wait 90 seconds, but I haven’t been counting.” You look down at the test and tap it against your palm. “False positives and negatives can happen, so there’s another test in the box to take later to be sure.”
“What do you want?”
“What do you want?”
“I want whatever you want.”
“Mike, I don’t…fuck, I don’t do well under pressure.” You tighten your grip around the test to withhold the urge to hurl it across the room.
“Give it to me.” He reaches his hand out, but you hesitate. “It has to of been 90 seconds by now.”
“If I look then it’s real.”
“Babe, it’s real whether we look or not…and maybe you’re not. But if you are, I am here, and I’m not going anywhere.”
And that was the beginning. After a positive test that left you in a mess on the bedroom floor, and a second one later that evening – and ultimately a third one from a doctor – you two were moving onto this new chapter in your lives together, whether you were ready or not. It took a couple days to let that shock wear off, but once it did, you found yourself ordering pregnancy books online, and scrolling forums, and even looking at maternity clothes that you weren’t even ready for yet.
As for Mike, he was quick to understand pregnancy was not going to be an easy feat for you. The morning sickness persisted, and it led him to research online for some medicines that might ease that burden on you. Peppermint tea just wasn’t cutting it. He would also read the pregnancy books you got, because he couldn’t quite grasp the idea that your organs will just casually move out of the way as the baby grows.
“I don’t get it—where are they moving to? How is there room?”
“There just is…I don’t know.”
The cravings are what took him by storm. You’d wake up in the middle of the night to make pancakes, or a quesadilla, or brownies solely for the batter. If you didn’t have what you were desiring the most, you best believe you’re waking him up, ridden with guilt, because you can’t sleep because all you can think about is a Red Baron pizza.
You have an app on your phone that tracks the size of the baby, and compares it to fruit, so every month, the two of you go to the store to get the fruit that is subsequently your baby.
“Is it weird we’re going to eat it?”
“Just don’t think about it…”
He’ll hold the fruit in his hand and be completely mesmerized. His child is actually the size of a mango?
And you best believe he cried hearing the heartbeat on the ultrasound for the first time, and don’t get me started on when he got to see his little bean for the first time, who was merely just a grey blob on the screen.
He’s obsessed with your growing bump. Always wanting to touch it, lay next to it, feel the little kicks from the inside. Countless nights he has fallen asleep beside it. He keeps all the sonogram photos in his wallet, and some on his bedside table. He’ll show them to anyone who dares to ask.
“The size of a mango. Can you believe that?”
You’ll model for him your new maternity dresses that have been in your shopping cart for months. (He loves it all). He’s there for the foot massages when your feet begin to swell. The back rubs when your bump has grown large enough to cause discomfort. The minute panic attacks when your Braxton Hicks contractions hit in the middle of the night. (He was prepared for this one though, thanks to your pregnancy books).
There are hundreds of photos of you on his camera of your growing bump. He alone could fill a scrapbook to completion. Ones of you at farmers market stalls, or walking around the neighborhood, sorting through all of the baby clothes you bought, deeply contemplating the nursery color in the paint section.
He remembers how scared you were in the beginning, but the two of you have really become a proper family.
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I think the biggest culture shock I experienced in Finland so far is around friendships, as well as the area where I learned a lot of valuable things about myself. I might not be entirely right about this as I've only been here for a short time, but those are my main take-aways:
(under the cut to not block ur tags w my english rambling)
Trying to build real friendships takes time, much longer than in my home country. It is relatively easy to get in contact with Germans in my experience, especially if you live in a bigger city and speak the language, ESPECIALLY if you are a student and just starting out in a new phase of your life. You will naturally hang out frequently if you match well and spend a lot of time together. It might take a few meetings before people will invite u to their home, but generally there's not much distance as soon as the ice is broken.
Here I feel like people are much slower and more reluctant to open up. But that doesn't equal rejection, it's simply a slower process and you will still be able to tell the difference between being rejected and being on the path of friendship. In Germany, it's usually a lot more fast paced and there is a small window you have to catch to get into tight friendgroups. If you miss it, no chance of ever going back, vibe gone chance gone. Also people who might have found you interesting could lose interest if you wait for too long (meaning usually a month or so) to get back to them.
I actually realized that this way of socializing stresses me tf out. I much prefer a more laid back approach where you can get to know each other without time limitations (of course prerequisite is that you have the time). It is a much more sustainable, thoughtful and respectful approach to someone elses time. You're not treated as disposable, but rather as a person someone actively chooses to get to know.
Likewise, if people feel like they either do not vibe with you or if they already have a very busy social life or life in general, they will let you know and don't pretend to have time or like you. This was quite a new thing to me and felt a bit cold, but I actually really appreciate it now, as it's saving you from stressful, draining interpersonal connections. It also made me respect some people immensely, because they know their own self worth and boundaries quite well.
It made me reflect upon my tendency to be a people pleaser, and the strong yearning I have to treat my own relationships the same way as I've experienced it here. I've grown so tired of superficial connections that are placeholders for true, fulfilling friendships. I used to think being lonely was the worst thing in the world. It kind of is still awful, but what's worse is being surrounded by a bunch of people you don't really click with or can rely on, which leaves you lonely as well. I do think letting go of this is something that will slowly seep over into my own life, as it is so freeing.
I also intend on staying, or rather coming back when I've finished up all my business back in Germany (I am not really rooted to the city I live in). People who I've told about this recent development were very worried if I would be able to be happy in a country that is (generally) much more reserved when it comes to social interaction, as I need social interaction regularly. I don't really think it's that big of an issue, as I think I can balance out people's passive approach with my more active one in the beginning. I have a high social battery, so I'm fine with interacting with a few more people, before people get truly comfortable to hang out on the regular. Yet I also prefer quality interactions over a bunch of small talk meetups I don't care about. I also still have my core friends who I talk to regularly on the phone, and this has been a tradition for years already before I came here.
What I am immensely struggling with right now is trying to make sense of all the connections I made in the past 10 years. This is the 6th city I lived in the last decade, and the 8th move. All my relationships feel so spread out and scattered. I am holding on to some solely because those people were there when I moved somewhere new and I didn't have anyone else. Like back in school, when I was friends with people because they were the only ones there. It's all a bit confusing and painful right now, as my values and perspectives are changing. I think there are a lot of people moving from the friends to acquaintance category right now. I'm completely redefining friendships for me at the moment.
#is it appropriate to tag this with#suomipaskaa#also finnish people seeing this and agreeing or disagreeing or wanting to add on to this#please do tell#I am curious about this and open to hearing various perspectives#as this is my limited generalized opinion after living here for a few months
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I've finished Etho's s7 hermitcraft so guess who's back with a slightly updated/slightly consolidated list of things about ethoslab I have noticed! or just enjoy!
(the previous list)
I have no idea when he learned to noteblock. I don't know if he knows. he knows how to noteblock tho. he's really good at it.
on that note, did you know that there is not a single piece of non-noteblock music in etho's s7 after the first episode? there might not even be any in the first episode. every single timelapse or montage is set to noteblock music
(he sang along to parts of his paper planes noteblock cover too. he was going shopping. I was entirely too delighted)
(also, there is some like...sitcom music theme that I don't know what show it's from. it's bothering me that I don't know. what you need to know is that throughout his s7 etho uses said sitcom theme as the transition before Shenanigans With Fellow Hermits clips play. his life is a sitcom. yes it is the noteblock version.)
I think that etho desperately needs minigames for enrichment. if he's not playing one he's working on one. he needs them and he will let them completely consume his life
the etho decked out 1 runs are hilarious, partially because it's funny to see him play it and realize how absolutely insane decked out 2 is, and how much of a madlad tango is. etho is still the same menace with great luck and skills. I had forgotten about the hole to the void in the middle out decked out 1 tho, that was a fun reminder
etho could make a career out of translating classic type games into minecraft. he kind of has, but it's a pattern.
he also keeps coming up with new games that are minecraft only and is good at figuring out how to balance them well.
again, king of minigames. he will in fact analyze them as much as possible. he caught on to the pattern of impulse's whack a mole game in like...2 rounds? maybe 3? he's good at pattern recognition and will put it to good use no matter the minigame
etho, I cannot stress this enough, is a little shit and enjoys being such. free glass is obviously an iconic moment, but I had forgotten about him scamming scar out of diamonds for "information" about the resistance, or about sneak-e-e's business model (you can't tax what you can't find!), or about how he kept being extremely ridiculous with beef in regards to record shop payments...the list goes on
etho is also very competitive. I mentioned this in the last list, but man...he joins like every single competition he can. he wants to win. he's not like, a sore loser, but he likes to win, and he'll get a little upset if he doesn't.
etho and beef have clearly known each other a long time and ngl I miss their interactions a bit. let them bother each other a bit more please. I want to see them trying to kill each other in ridiculous ways again please. or doing minigames together. they're so silly.
kind of similar, but etho loves getting a rise out of people and it is the best thing ever actually. it's fun watching him use dirty tricks to beat bdubs to sleeping for a prize. it's perfect actually.
that being said, I still really like when etho is just on his own working on stuff too. s7 has a lot of moments where etho will go "I'm gonna use this block palette!" and I will think "bro that's ugly" and then he will make an extremely cohesive build that I want to live in out of it. I think a good way to describe it is that for example bdubs is really good at detailed builds with texture and not much color, and a very realistic twist to them. etho is not afraid to use color at all, and embraces how the colors can work together or contrast. it's fascinating to watch and I love it.
he is also a redstone genius. I feel I am starting to understand how some things with redstone work. could I design something myself? absolutely not but I could work from a tutorial and not feel completely lost on why I have to use a dispenser and not a dropper now.
I think s7 etho is really experimenting a lot with style and how he wants to do things. he does a few more elaborate intros, for example, that are very planned out, but he also does a lot of the classic "hello everybody this is etho and welcome back to hermitcraft!" it's fun and it works, but I honestly feel he might be more confident in some ways now in s10, which is nice to see.
(side note—I think etho has some trouble with tone sometimes, where he really wants to make sure everyone's having a good time, but also he really wants to tease people. this works well with like Beef, who he's known a while, but especially in people he's known less he's quick to catch on if they take what he's saying too seriously, and clarify that he is teasing. it's nice to see tbh, just the clarity even with his audience)
speaking of llamas, I had not realized how recent some really big updates were. bamboo and pandas were new at the start of s7. the nether update came like halfway through?? I was more in the casual build side of mcyt at the time but man...I didn't realize how crazy that is to think about.
just...the way that etho visualizes builds is great. not just like, leaving space for farms, but filling in the spaces with a lot of details that make sense but also work with the space to cover anything it needs to AND to connect with the rest of the base. the sightlines thing is something I see a lot of other builders using but etho really uses them a lot in the Monstrosity in order to keep it from being Too Much as you walk through.
really just...he wants to have fun, and he wants to learn, and he wants to experiment and figure things out. if he can mess with some friends when he does it, that's a great bonus, yknow?
man. what a guy.
#ethoslab#hermitcraft#etho hermitcraft season 7#hm now do I watch his s8 now or rewatch s9.or do I write a fwhip analysis post because I caught up on his hardcore world recently.or do gem#...does this give me full ethogirl status now lmao
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